CHAPTER 17

The Management Level

Okay, managers. Question time!

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every executive in your company read this book and agreed with it? That would be fantastic, right? Being a manager would be so much easier.

Some companies are more flexible and open when it comes to this stuff. Yet for most, the life of middle management is a realm of limited control. Painful yet true.

For the purpose of this chapter, let’s assume the worst-case scenario. Let’s imagine that you, as a manager, are essentially on an island when it comes to this Oasis stuff. The C-level execs haven’t gotten their hands on this book yet — let alone read it and agreed with it. No employees who work under you have any idea about the Culture of WIN or Oases or any of this cool stuff. You’re the only person in your company who has read this book.

What is your next move? Do you even have a move to make? You should. Per the Kelly Global Workforce Index, 63 percent of employees claim their managers have a direct influence on their job satisfaction. Additionally, 74 percent feel less loyalty toward their employer than a year ago. If you take a moment to read between those two lines, there are a couple of hidden messages:

(a) You’re directly contributing to the level of satisfaction of your employees.

(b) There’s likely a lot of room for improvement.

The Culture of WIN will help you regain control. Let’s look at steps you can take almost immediately.

Live It

As you might expect, you can and should establish your own Personal and Family Oases. Even if these must occur outside the flow of the normal workday, you can still establish control for yourself. Take thirty minutes for your favorite show each day. Go for a hike each week. Whatever floats your personal boat.

If you have flexibility in your day, build Work Oases around your personal ultradian rhythm. One manager I coached decided to use a boxing interval timer to establish a ninety-minute reminder to stop and have some fun. Once you find your groove, you can make it more official by scheduling the breaks into your workday.

As others around you, particularly those you lead, see the results that these meaningful breaks have on your performance and productivity, they will want to do the same. In other words, people will do as you do.

Encourage Your Team

You can encourage those you manage to create their own Oases. In the next team meeting you have, teach a principle or two from this book. If you need help, just search my blog at DaveCrenshaw.com for videos about The Power of Having Fun. You’ll find some free, helpful resources that you can use for a future training session.

Be aware of the emotional and physical condition of your employees. Are they starting to slow down? Do their eyes have that glazed over, running-on-Red-Bull-alone look? Is there a new subtext of frustration or hostility in their communication because they’ve been pulling too many all-nighters?

If so, when and where appropriate, encourage them to take and plan meaningful breaks. The key here is not to tell them what you would do. Instead, ask them what they do when they need a pick-me-up. Something like this: “When you need a break, what do you like to do for fun to recharge your batteries?” Then, whatever their answer, encourage them to do it at their earliest convenience — then come back to work with a little boost of energy.

You know how it can get. Occasionally, office demands pile up, and everyone needs to pull together to work unusual hours for a week or two. You and I wish it didn’t happen, but sometimes it does. In those stretches, there is still a lot of power in pausing and considering, “When can I next take a break?” Then schedule that time in your calendar. Encourage your team members to do the same.

Plan some time to meet with team members and share a principle or two from this book.

Is there a member of your team who is showing signs of burnout? Consider encouraging them to take or plan a meaningful break.

Make the Case

Ever have that experience where you have this A-MAZING idea that the company should implement? That if they just listened to you, they’d make more money and work would be more productive? And then you share this fantastic idea, and it stops cold at the C-level, like a pebble smacking a brick wall? If you’re making an effort to be innovative, you’re likely familiar with this experience.

The reason why most people don’t buy into the change is that they are understandably skeptical. Few people want to put their neck on the line for your wonderful hunch. They need evidence.

Which is why we want to remove the guesswork from the Culture of WIN. I’ve claimed that if your team plans meaningful breaks, productivity will improve. I’ve cited some studies and evidence to show that longevity, performance, and employee retention will increase if you use this system. But don’t take my word — or any researcher’s word — for it.

Test it!

Begin by measuring where you are right now before implementing the Culture of WIN. Most companies have some metrics or numbers they use to gauge their teams’ performance. Customer complaints resolved. Sales conversions. Widgets per hour. Whatever number your company uses, start with that.

Then, ninety days after you’ve tried to implement the principles in this book, reassess your performance. My belief is that you’ll see a dramatic increase.

If so, then you can show the results to the next layer of management. Perhaps give them a copy of this book and let them know about the experiment you’ve been running. See whether they’re interested in creating their own Oases and running an experiment on a larger scale. Take this approach, and, in most cases, you’ll find more buy-in. Why? Because you’ll have moved past what some dude from Utah wrote in a book: you’ll now have evidence.

People can and will come around to this way of thinking, but it must be done in the proper order. We didn’t begin our exploration in this book by encouraging wholesale policy revisions that could potentially cost a company a lot of money and time. No, we first took a look at the power of taking a little break to have more fun. We started with a spoonful of sugar — not the medicine.

Identify the numbers your company uses to measure your team’s performance. Make a note of where you are currently:

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

After encouraging your team to take more Oases for ninety days, reassess your team’s performance using those same numbers:

_____________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________

The Checklist

If you’re a manager, here’s your checklist in rough order of investment:

□ I have clearly defined and scheduled my Personal Oases.

□ I keep and enjoy my scheduled Personal Oases.

□ I have clearly defined and scheduled my Family Oases.

□ I keep and enjoy my scheduled Family Oases.

□ I have experimented with and found my optimal work-day ultradian rhythm.

□ I encourage team members to take a meaningful break of their own choosing when I see that they need it.

□ I have trained my team about The Power of Having Fun.

□ We have identified the key numbers our company uses to measure team performance and have a record of our current level of performance.

□ We have implemented the Oasis system among our team members and have tracked the progress of our performance after ninety days.

□ I have shared concepts from The Power of Having Fun with my manager.

□ I have presented the results of our ninety-day Oasis experiment to my managers or C-level executives.