Chapter 5

Real-world tactics: how to be productive when the rest of the world isn’t

In an ideal world, we’d get ourselves perfectly organised, know exactly what we need to do, be 100-per-cent focused, get it done and go home. In the real world, however, we have to work with and around other people’s priorities, schedules, expectations, delays and last-minute emergencies. What conversations can we have to set expectations and influence others? How can we equip ourselves to respond with calm and agility rather than react with our back against the wall?

In reality, none of us works in a bubble. We work with other people. We rely on other people in order to get our work done well: colleagues, co-workers, customers, suppliers, partners, bosses, staff, stakeholders – and everyone has their own agendas, priorities, schedules, expectations and ways of working. We also work in imperfect situations: project deadlines that were way too tight to begin with, emergencies we failed to scope, delays we didn’t plan for, curveballs and changes beyond our control.

What tactics can we put in place to help the day-to-day stuff work better? What uncommon conversations could we be having more often to ensure we have a common focus instead of taking each other off track? And how do we respond when mistakes happen and stuff hits the fan?

Day-to-day tactics

It’s one thing getting yourself organised and focused, but what about everyone else in the office? Here are some day-to-day tactics I have come across that can improve workplace productivity.

Do not disturb

‘Is now a good time? Have you got a minute?’ Well no, not really, but you’ve got my attention now, so ‘Sure, how can I help?’ you say.

Open offices can be great for collaboration, social interaction, building relationships and creating an energising buzz to work in, but they can also be the number-one killer of focused attention. The problem is there’s no easy way to tell whether it’s a good time or not, unless you have mastered the do-not-disturb glare – but, even then, you still need to spot them coming. In the days when we all worked in separate offices, we could close the door as a do-not-disturb signal. Nowadays, with open offices, perhaps we need to be a bit more creative.

Think Productive’s chief operating officer, Elena, has a china cat that she puts on her desk when she needs to have some uninterrupted time to herself. When the cat is on the desk, it’s her way of saying, ‘I need to focus right now. Unless it’s an emergency, could you come back later, please?’. When the cat is not there, she is happy to be interrupted. Other people use headphones, traffic-light signals, flag systems, signs or even hiding behind a plant.

The key to making this work is communication. If we expect our colleagues to be mind readers and to know what our signals mean, then we are setting ourselves up for disappointment – as well as the frustration and irony of having to stop what we’re doing to explain that we didn’t want to be disturbed. Instead of demanding mind reading, explain that there are times when you need to have your brain to yourself, when you’re unlikely to be able to give anyone else your best attention or your best answer. Show them what you’re going to use as a do-not-disturb signal, instead of expecting them to guess, and reassure them that there will be times when you will be fully available. Have a conversation that might start with something like this:

‘If the building’s burning down, do interrupt me! But if it’s not an emergency, and I’ve got my headphones on, could you just hold that thought and come back to me later? When the headphones are off, I’m all yours.’

You may find, when you have this conversation, that it prompts or gives others permission to do the same. We all have times when we need to have our brains to ourselves – you might just start a trend in the office! If you find it takes a little while for people to get used to it, give it time. It takes time and practice for people to get used to a new way of working. Don’t let one person’s ‘I forgot’ deter you. Some people may need a little bit more training than others.

What could you use as a do-not-disturb signal for those times when you really need to get your head down and focus?

Stealth and camouflage

There may be times when you do need to hide away, rather than have a do-not-disturb signal at your desk. This is where tactical hiding can be quite handy.

Physically being out of the office or away from your desk can give you that extra space and, for some people I’ve worked with, it’s the only way to ensure they get to focus their attention on their own agenda, rather than responding to others. As we’ll explore more in Chapter 6, we all need a combination of being available for ourselves and to others. In the meantime, where could you practise some stealth and camouflage? In a meeting room, working from home, or at another office? In a café, at an art gallery or the local library?

However, if you’re going to disappear for a while you might want to communicate this so everyone knows what to expect. Otherwise, if you develop a reputation for being too hard to find, it could backfire on you and you could end up playing an elaborate game of corporate hide and seek instead.

Chief Ninja Graham Allcott once sent an email to tell us that he was going to be ‘off the grid’ for a week to write his book:

Hi all,

Just a quick note to say next week I’m going dark, to write a big chunk of the ‘Introducing Productivity’ book.

So I’ll be off all social media, email and phone for the whole week. I’m around all of this week if you need stuff though.

And then back on Monday 3rd March.

Graham

Instead of just disappearing off the face of the earth, he gave us advance notice and made himself available the week beforehand so that if there was anything we needed to talk about, we could raise it before he disappeared. As it happened, there was something I needed to discuss with him. In my own timing I would have waited until the next week to raise it with him, but knowing his timing I was able to schedule a meeting before he ‘went dark’, resulting in no delays for my project and plenty of uninterrupted space to write for Graham.

Electronically unplugging is another form of stealth and camouflage. While Graham has managed to practise stealth and camouflage in style – he wrote most of his Ninja books on a beach in Sri Lanka – I have had to be a little bit more DIY with mine. My last book was written largely at my kitchen table and this one in a café, in slightly less sunny Stafford, around children, clients and other commitments.

My way of creating stealth and camouflage is by electronically unplugging: turning off email and social media and putting my phone on ‘Do not Disturb’ (a lovely setting on my iPhone, which means I can still receive calls from my husband and the children’s school, but divert everything else to voicemail). I even used social media as my accountability tool, declaring ‘Unplugging for the next hour to write another chapter on my book’, knowing full well that each status update is time-stamped, so the eagle-eyed on Twitter would call me out if they saw me online within the hour. This would also work well with instant messaging systems such as Lync and Skype: ‘Working on Project X today between 10.00 and 12.00. Back in communication this afternoon.’

The daily huddle

The head-office team at Think Productive has a daily huddle at 9:40 am, where they meet for 10 minutes and ask each other:

• What’s your good news?
  
• What are you working on?
  
• Where are we up to with the numbers and targets in the business?
  
• What are we stuck on?
  
• Are we ok for tomorrow’s call – is anyone not here tomorrow?
  

It’s great for bringing everyone together, reminding them what’s most important and encouraging good communication. It often flags up any hot potatoes, things that need further discussion, opportunities for collaboration and who might need some extra help that day.

Agendas

Paula is our Client Happiness and Logistics Manager. She handles all the logistics of booking-in workshops. Whenever I want to check in on the status of one of my workshop bookings, I can call her up or send her an email – except I’m not the only person whose workshops she manages. So, if we all called her to check on the status of our workshops, Paula wouldn’t have a chance to get any work done!

So I keep an agenda for Paula. Roughly once a week, we’ll talk on the phone and find out where things are up to with each of my bookings, if there are any questions I need to answer, further information to provide or people I need to nudge. I rely on Paula to tell me if she needs me to look at anything before we speak.

When there is someone you work closely with, it’s easy to get into the habit of firing off questions when they come to mind and you can end up constantly interrupting each other.

Instead, keep a running agenda of all the things you want to discuss with them and ask them to do the same. That way, rather than interrupting each other throughout the day, when you speak you have a list of everything you want to ask or discuss.

Who can you keep an agenda for? Who can you suggest this to?

Project updates

Why do we have update meetings? Seriously, what’s the point? The worst ones are where everyone just has their say – where everyone’s agenda is just to fill their slot with some kind of an update – usually along the lines of ‘this is what I’ve been busy doing’. But what does ‘Can I have an update?’ even mean?

Dr Penny Pullan of Making Projects Work says,²

The accountant’s definition of success may well be different from the marketing director’s and, as such, they will want to know different things. People have different preferences, depending on their personal style and level of involvement. Where one person might want a detailed briefing each week, someone else may want only the headlines once a month. Knowing those expectations upfront can make your life easier (less mind reading!) and your updates more meaningful.

A communication plan essentially boils down to these factors:

• Who needs what?
  
• By when?
  
• What format?
  
• How often?
  
• Are you going to keep records?
  

Once you know this, you can decide what an update could look like – for example, a super-quick update, a more comprehensive update or something visual.

THE SUPER-QUICK UPDATE

• Here’s what we achieved last Friday, last week, etc.
  
• Here’s what we’re doing now.
  
• Please help us with…
  
• What questions do you have?
  

THE MORE COMPREHENSIVE UPDATE

• Progress: what’s done, what’s on track, what’s changed, what’s next.
  
• Impact: what this means for you.
  
• Requests: what I need from you/please help us with…
  
• Next actions: who’s doing what next.
  
• Questions: what questions do you have?
  
• Next check-in: already in the diary/arrange date in diary now.
  

GET VISUAL

Your update might not even be full of words. Sometimes visual cues can be far more effective than lengthy documents or meetings. For example, the London 2012 Olympic Games update consisted of a single A3 colour sheet that showed the status of multiple projects, using traffic-light colours to track the performance of each project: red (significant issues), amber (potential problems that need attention) and green (going as planned).

How else could you give your update and invite questions? A three-minute video? A walking meeting? An internal client/project management system?

Uncommon conversations

One of the things I love seeing from workshops is the level of new conversations that come out of the discussion, as people are challenged to think differently, not just about their own individual habits, but about how they work together as a team. Here are some of the best conversations that I have seen teams take forward from their workshops.

What do we need to let go of?

‘Listen up guys, we’ve got a new client/project/opportunity…’

New opportunities come up, new clients, new projects, new ideas. Reviewing and setting new expectations is part of everyday working. ‘There’s more work’ is probably a conversation we are very used to having. But how often do we talk about releasing expectations? How often do we deliberately talk – with ourselves or with our team – about what we should stop doing and what we should ditch to make space for what we’ve taken on?

One of my favourite sayings is:

But sometimes what we hold onto isn’t necessarily junk. It might be the product that sells but is not particularly profitable, the legacy project that’s not quite failing but, equally, isn’t going anywhere fast, or the campaign or event you’ve always done that doesn’t really line up with your current vision.

What do we need to release? What do we need to be ruthless with?

How much of this problem are we creating, contributing towards or reinforcing?

Are you always working with your back up against the wall? Has firefighting become normality? Sometimes we accept things just as they are without really thinking about them.

One of the lightbulb moments I really enjoy seeing, when running workshops with teams, is when the conversation changes from ‘how do we cope with all this relentless work?’ to ‘how much of this are we creating for ourselves?’.

When one sales-team leader speaks up and says, ‘Yes, we do spend a lot of our time chasing the 80 per cent instead of focusing on the 20 per cent’ it opens up the conversation and gives permission for the rest of the team to challenge their collective focus.

When the web designer, whose customers always frustrate her by leaving things to the last minute, realises that, with the right conversations and pre-planning, she can proactively manage her clients and give them a nudge, that does wonders for their own project management: ‘Oh, thanks for the prompt! I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you about that’, as well as her own planning.

Or when the head of department realises that every email he sends generates more inbound traffic, and every time he replies ‘out of hours’, he reinforces the expectation that he is available out of hours – and sets an unintended expectation for the rest of the department too.

What is hampering your productivity or your team’s productivity at the moment? How much of it have you created for yourselves, do you contribute to or perpetuate with your own working habits? The beauty of being involved in creating the problem means that you’re in a great place to be part of the solution.

What do you want… and what do you need from me?

What do you do when you’re the person that everybody turns to? The oracle who knows everything and everyone? The problem solver that everyone wants in their meeting? The natural helper who can always be relied on to help you out of a pickle? The unofficial counsellor – the wise voice of reason who talks you out of hitting someone or gives you a shoulder to cry on? Or the boss people turn to for direction, decisions and authority?

It can be flattering and a real honour to be the person that other people turn to when they need help, but it can also be tricky to be the go-to person when you’ve got a lot on your own plate.

One university lecturer I spoke to told the story of a dean who would regularly arrive to find a queue of people outside his office wanting to ask for his expertise, decision, authority or influence; people who wanted him to help them solve a problem. Before he let them through the door, they had to answer two questions:

• What do you want?
  
• What have you already done about this?
  

He wanted to make sure that they had already done the ground work – that not only had they clarified the problem, but that they also had an outcome in mind, a proposed solution, and had already done what they could to tackle the problem. It ensured that they were focused on finding a solution and not just there to present a problem. It reminded them to take ownership of finding a solution, rather than just pass the problem on to him. And when the word spread and people knew to expect these questions, they were often pretty clear of exactly what they needed from the dean by the time they arrived at his office – whether it was his authorisation, influence, perspective, backing or his budget.

It can be quite cathartic to be on the receiving end of these kinds of questions, too. I remember calling Graham for a second opinion on an article I had written for a high-profile publication, and he asked me directly: ‘What do you really need from me here? Do you need my opinion as CEO on how this piece reflects on the company? Or are you just having an insecure author moment?’ The question made me laugh out loud. He was spot on: I was, indeed, having an insecure author moment. What I really needed was just a voice of reassurance. In a moment where I didn’t trust my own judgement, I needed someone who knew me well, and who knows my writing well, to tell me what I needed to hear: ‘Stop worrying. Trust yourself. It will be fine.’ And, indeed, it was.

Do you have this on your radar?

‘Rachel, are you going to be updating the brochure?’

‘Yes, Dave, it’s on my long list of things to do but I need to XYZ first.’

‘Ok, I just wanted to know if it was on your radar.’

Not everything that arrives in your inbox is an action, but sometimes it can feel like that. When someone sends you the name of a client to contact, an idea they had for your project or a piece of information to take into account, it can sometimes feel like they’ve just given you another piece of work to do. Do they want you to contact them straight away? Do you need to reply? Do you need to report back to them or keep them updated?

To make life easier and avoid ambiguity, make it clear if you are requesting an action: ‘Please can you update the brochure and let me know when it has been done’ or, if you are leaving it with them, ‘I noticed the brochure needs updating, too. Just checking you’ve got that on your radar as part of your branding project?’.

Dealing with mistakes

From an early age, I could tell that my children each had different ways of dealing with mistakes. One would spot a tiny mistake and want to fix it straight away. The other would try and sweep it under the carpet (sometimes literally) and try not to deal with it.

Mistakes are uncomfortable but the more we hide them, the more they tend to grow and fester. Overlooking them doesn’t make them go away. If anything, it creates a breeding ground for more mistakes. But, equally, turning it into a witch hunt creates a culture of shame and blame that, naturally, makes us want to hide even more.

Graham tells me he once had a boss whose mantra about mistakes was: ‘I don’t care if you f*** up, as long as you own up and clear up.’ What I love about this is that it tells us two things:

1. Mistakes are not the end. There is life after a mistake and what matters is what we do next.
   
2. It also separates the person making the mistake from the mistake itself.
   

The mistake is the problem. The person needs to be part of the solution. When we define ourselves by our mistakes, we can end up pouring our energies into defending, hiding or justifying our mistakes – or identifying ourselves as the failure or problem. Yes, mistakes happen and, yes, there’s often a cost attached. But they’re also an essential part of learning, whether that’s one person learning a new job or a whole company learning a new territory.

When I was teaching my son to ride his bike, every time he fell off I knew he needed to get back on, and every time he got back on, he got a bit better. Falling off still hurt, but what choice did he have? Avoid the bike, avoid the hurt and give up altogether: failure wins. Ignore the hurt, get back on the bike, hoping he wouldn’t fall off again: go into denial. The third choice was to learn to fall well: ditch the bike before you hit the ground and minimise the damage, practise on softer ground, wear protective clothing, for example. Failure sucks. It hurts, it costs, it feels bad. But if we can’t avoid it or ignore it, perhaps we can learn to fail well.

What does failing well look like? Let’s start with what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like what psychologist Henry Cloud describes as the 3 Ps of learned helplessness: personal, pervasive, permanent.³

Imagine something bad happens: a sales call goes wrong, that product launch fails, a major client is unhappy or the date night turns into an almighty row. This is what a lot of us do in response:

1. Make it personal – It’s my fault. I’m not good enough. I’m a failure.
   
2. Make it pervasive – It’s not just this one call. It’s every call. Nobody wants to buy from me. Nothing I do works. Everything sucks.
   
3. Make it permanent – It’s always like this. Nothing ever works. It will always be this way. All the time.
   

Yes, failure hurts, but it hurts a hell of a lot more when we make it personal, pervasive and permanent. What’s more, doing it this way strips away the very traits and resources we need – our belief, our courage, our vision, tenacity and hope – to recover from our mistakes and fix the problem.

How to do it instead? Instead of the 3 Ps, consider the 3 Cs: clarity, control, connection.

1. Clarity. Well, Henry Cloud calls it Log and Dispute, but I like alliteration so I’m calling it clarity. Clarity about what happened, what that means, and clarity about who you are. Log everything you find yourself thinking about the event itself and what that means. Log the personal, pervasive and permanent, and challenge those assumptions. For example:
   • One person didn’t like what you did. What was it they didn’t like exactly? What can you do about that? What do you want to do about that? Is it a failing by their measure or yours?
     
   • One conversation went wrong. What actually happened? What words were said in what way? What impact did they have? What else was going on at the time?
     
   • That was a stupid mistake; I’m so stupid I can’t even get that right. Was it a stupid mistake or a simple mistake? How did it happen? What else was going on at the same time? What simple solution could you put in place to check for these simple mistakes in the future?
     
2. Control. Learned helplessness starts when something happens outside of your control. The way to counter this is to recognise where you can take control. Just as we looked at the circles of influence and concern in Chapter 2, make sure you focus your energy on what you can control or influence, rather than what you can’t.

   Looking at a mistake:

   • What factors were at play that led to that mistake?
     
   • What could you have controlled? What was beyond your control?
     
   • What can you do now to fix things?
     
   • What can you do differently next time?
     
   • How can you increase your response-ability in the future?
     
3. Connection.
   

When we connect with others, our perspectives change. We find new solutions to old problems and new strength to fight ongoing battles.

Falling off a bike hurts, yes, but it’s far more painful if you have to do it on your own. Having support, accountability, encouragement, someone to cheer you on, help you back up, empathise with your pain and rally you back on the bike – that makes the biggest difference.

But it has to be the right people. Falling off a bike in front of someone who just laughs, criticises, belittles or blames you would be worse than doing it on your own. As social researcher Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly, helpfully defines, ‘Feedback is sitting on the same side of the table and looking at the issue together.’ Not sitting opposite someone with the problem between you. How could you change how you look at mistakes differently? By seeking true feedback. Asking someone to sit at the same side of the table as you to help you to own up and clear up.

How can you change how your team responds to mistakes?

By creating a safe environment to own up. By being more interested in understanding mistakes and finding solutions than apportioning blame. And by giving feedback in a way that says it’s not about me against you. You’re not the problem. Your mistake/behaviour/obstacle is.

Let’s look at that together.

Firefighting like the pros

Sometimes things don’t go to plan. Sometimes plans change. Sometimes we have to fight fires. We often associate firefighting with panic, chaos, running around like a headless chicken. But how do the professionals fight fires?

• With calm and focus. Firefighters assess the situation and deal with it. They know that panic impairs their ability to make the right decisions, so they ensure that their heads are in the right place to respond quickly and effectively.
  
• As a team. Firefighters rarely go and tackle fires by themselves. They recognise that working as part of a team means that they cover each other’s backs and blind spots, provide reinforcement and extra capacity to lighten the load. Communication is vital to ensure everyone is working together in the same direction and helping, rather than hindering. Who is part of your team? Who can give you that extra perspective, sanity check or extra hand? What happens when a crisis hits? Do you shut everyone out? Does all your team run around doing their own thing? Or do you pull together to put out the fire?
  
• With a plan. Firefighters always have a plan. They spend time away from the fires working out how best to tackle fires. They do the thinking upfront so that, in the heat of the moment, they already know exactly what they need to do and can spring into action straight away. How much space do you make in your week to clarify your strategy and plans?
  
• With protection. They take care of themselves. They make sure they are fit to fight fires. They take care to ensure they don’t compromise their ability to continue fighting fires by putting themselves at risk in one fire.
  
• With prevention. A large part of a firefighter’s job is spent educating people and raising awareness to prevent fires. The more fires they can prevent, the fewer fires they have to fight and, of course, the lower the cost in lives (and resources).
  
• With capacity. Firefighters always take capacity really seriously. Think about it, at any given time you wouldn’t want the entire fireforce out fighting fires because who’s going to deal with the next one? Firefighters make sure they always have the capacity to respond – even if they can’t predict when the next fire is going to be. How much margin do you give yourself?
  

The importance of margin

Most of us tend to fill our calendars to the brim, trying to figure out how to squeeze another five-minute job in between those two meetings. We think that makes us efficient.

I have come to realise that I’m a filler, by nature. Give me time and my natural instinct is to fit something in. Give me space and I see boundless opportunities. I like to be productive, get lots done, lead a rich and varied life, work and play, have my cake and eat it. If you’re like me, you will know that amazing feeling when it all comes together and works like a dream and the nightmare it is when it falls apart. And, let’s face it, when we stack the bricks up high, it doesn’t take much to topple the tower – a snow day, a sick day, a bad night, an unexpected phone call, a family emergency, a burst pipe, broadband outage, car trouble or an explosive nappy. And, sometimes, it’s entirely down to me, fitting in that phone call or errand when I’m running 10 minutes early, forgetting that nothing ever takes 5 minutes and ending up 20 minutes late.

Counter-intuitively, the most powerful productivity tool we can have in our arsenal is margin.

Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It’s having time beyond what is necessary. It’s blank space in the diary that gives us time to deal with the work that overspills, the unexpected glitches and the emergency firefighting. It’s breathing space that gives us time to change our minds, think, grow, laugh and play and the choice to stop. Like air in a pillow, the value of space is, in itself, immaterial, but it plays a vital role between what is solid, allowing for movement and comfort and absorbing impact.

Having margin means that when that lightning bolt of creative genius hits, we can go with it wholeheartedly and discover what we could never have planned for. It gives us the freedom to be pleasantly interrupted by a cuddle, a smile, an unexpected call or the jingle of an ice-cream van. And it gives us the capacity to be responsive to a cry for help, to receive an unexpected blessing, to be captivated by a perfect sunset or a child’s first step, and to be spontaneous when we wake up to snow.

Spare capacity can mean the world. Spare capacity can change the world. What if we had the capacity to stop for just five minutes a day to help someone out: to hold the door, give directions, stop and smile or tell someone to take their time? Or, when someone turns up unexpectedly, to say ‘pull up a chair and join us’, to wait with the child who’s just fallen off her scooter until her mum catches up or to help the old man with rickety knees get his bags down the stairs.

The thing about margin is we all love the idea. But, in reality, in a world where we are already stretched, it seems really, really hard to do! The trick is to start small. Here are some ideas:

• Build an extra hour or day into your deadline.
  
• Leave the office 10 minutes early to reach that appointment.
  
• Book in a 30-minute slot for a 20-minute meeting (make sure everyone is aware it’s a 20-minute meeting).
  
• Take one thing off today’s to-do list and don’t replace it.
  
• Say ‘no’ to one meeting or one extra request this week.
  
• Ask for that file a day earlier than you need it.
  
• Give yourself a lunch break and, when you take it, leave the phone at your desk.
  
• Give yourself an extra 10 minutes on top of travel time in between your meetings, so you can gather your thoughts, capture your actions, etc.
  
• Set your ‘out of office’ autoreply to tell people you return from holiday one day later than you actually come back, so you can catch up with yourself before everyone wants a piece of you. (Let the people who can see you in your office know that’s what you’re doing – or work from home).
  
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Let others do what they can do

Delegate: to entrust (a task or responsibility) to another person.

Part of creating margin is letting others do what they can do, so you can do what only you can do. Yes, they might do it more slowly, or badly to begin with. Yes, it will take time to get them up to speed – so, initially, it may slow you down, too. And, no, they probably won’t do it the same way as you. To delegate is to entrust; to let go of the fine control and trust someone else to get the job done. The goal is to stop being the bottleneck.

The easiest things to delegate are simple tasks and well-documented processes – worker-mode tasks, where you have already defined the parameters of the job and it’s just up to someone else to execute it. What’s harder is where decisions are involved but, even then, you can still build in margin, for example:

‘Many thanks for your email. I have cc’d in one of our Productivity Ninjas, Grace, who would be delighted to run through the options for you and your team. She will be in touch as soon as she is free to help you (please bear in mind that she may be delivering a workshop at the moment, though, so may not be able to respond today).’

Or, for Richard Tubb, an IT business consultant who occasionally gets interview requests from people in far-flung time zones that fall outside of his normal working hours, instead of asking his PA to check with him each time (and making himself the bottleneck), I suggested giving his PA the authorisation to pencil in appointments and set expectations accordingly:

‘Richard doesn’t normally have appointments on those days/at those times, but he will make an exception to accommodate your time zone. Let me pencil you in and confirm once I have checked with him/let you know if that is a problem.’

What about managing up?

‘I’m pretty good at organising myself, but I don’t know what to do with my boss!’

‘I think I’m on track, then wham – my boss comes out of a meeting and it’s all change again!’

‘Everything’s urgent and last-minute. How can I plan ahead if my boss doesn’t?’

Let’s face it: sometimes the chaos does come from the top. And, for some of us, we’ve been that person too. But it’s not enough simply to hand over the reins and put our boss in charge of our workload. The truth is we are all boss and worker, whatever level of the organisation we are in. Whether you run your own company, are the CEO of a large organisation, or an entry-level assistant just starting out, most of us work in roles where our job is as much about deciding what to work on, what not to work on, defining the work, what ‘job done’ looks like, what success looks like (boss mode) as it is how to go about it and get the job done (worker mode). And, to do that well, we need to manage our relationship with those who give us work as well as those we work with.

Jenny was at her wits’ end with her boss. He would email her ideas off the top of his head, usually with a super-tight deadline, she would work hard to deliver what she thought he wanted, only to have him redo everything or change his mind about what he wanted. She was someone who prided herself on getting things right, but it felt like however hard she tried, it was never right with him. In fact, often she would deliver something that worked fine but, by the time he tweaked and fiddled with it, he would hand it back to her broken. She started questioning herself, her competence and capability and, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, she started making mistakes in other areas of her work, too.

So how do you deal with a seagull boss (someone who flies in, dumps on you, then flies off again) or an overenthusiastic Tigger who doesn’t realise the havoc he causes?

Understand what’s happening behind the scenes

When we personalise the situation, we start to think that it’s either all our fault, like Jenny did, or all their fault: he doesn’t care, she’s failing to communicate or, even, they are doing it on purpose.

Take a step back and look at the wider picture. What’s going on in the wider world? Are you in a season of rapid change? Is your boss reacting to new mandates as much as you are? Do they have a ‘seagull boss’ firing surprises at them every day? Are they reacting to a new industry climate or a demanding customer? Are they suffering from new-parent sleep deprivation? Or is it part of their personality? Do they naturally tend to think much more in the moment? Are they firing ideas at you at the point where they are forming, rather than when they’re fully formed?

Why this is good for you: you stop winding yourself up.

Why this is good for your boss: you understand what’s motivating them or winding them up.

Result: you move from ‘why are you doing this to me?’ to ‘what’s going on and how can I help?’.

Understand what they want from you

Are they clear about what they want from you or are they inviting your input in defining the work? Do they have the bare bones of an idea they want you to add flesh to? Do they have an idea they want you to expand by yourself or help them explore? Are they saying ‘build this end-product ready to deliver to the client’ or ‘can you put something together along these lines to see what it might look like’ or, even, ‘hey, I’ve got a new idea, can you help me figure out if it’s got legs?’.

Knowing what they want will help you to avoid putting in hours of fine detail when all that’s needed is an overview, or avoid delivering a quick and dirty one-pager when they actually want a 50-page report.

Jenny thought her boss wanted her to deliver the final product, so every time he changed his mind she felt like she was having to redo work. In fact as an ideas person, her boss was just asking her to put each stage of his idea into action, so each iteration was actually progress because it helped him to get one step closer to the final goal.

Why this is good for you: you don’t have to guess – you know exactly what’s being asked of you.

Why this is good for your boss: they get what they want.

Result: you don’t waste time second-guessing and running in opposite directions.

Understand their communication style – and yours

If they have a tendency to think out loud, what they say at the beginning may not be the decision they end up with at the end. Make sure you listen to the idea as it unfolds and check that you have understood the final decision of what they want you to do. Ask if you can email them with a summary of your understanding of what has been agreed – so that you’re both clear about what you’re working towards and what your next actions will be.

If you need more time to process what’s been said, say that you would like to digest this further and ask if you can come back to them within a particular timeframe with any questions – or even before you make a decision. If you need a checkpoint halfway through, schedule that in at the beginning: ‘Let me put some rough ideas together and send them over. Can we check in on Wednesday to make sure I’m on the right track?’.

Why this is good for you: you don’t have to do all your thinking on the spot.

Why this is good for your boss: they’re free to communicate in their own style, and so are you.

Result: fewer misunderstandings, better communication.

Pre-empt, don’t mind read

If your boss has a habit of asking for things at the last minute, the more you know about their projects and deadlines, the more you can pre-empt and call attention to things that might require your input ahead of time:

‘You’re meeting with the client next week. Is there anything you’ll be needing from me before then?’

‘The deadline for submission is at the end of the month. Let me get a draft to you by 15th, then we can meet on 17th to review and agree any changes.’

‘Who else is involved in this project? Do we need to get their input on this, too?’

‘Have you considered…’?

Why this is good for you: you get to plan ahead with fewer surprises.

Why this is good for your boss: they get to plan ahead with fewer surprises!

Result: more proactive, less reactive working on both sides.

Use an umbrella

Ok, sometimes, when it comes pouring down, you do need an umbrella! If you find yourself on the receiving end of a barrage of emails, with enthusiastic new ideas, hot-off-the-press requests or a furious rant, can you defer the decision and buy some cooling-off time?

‘That’s a great idea. Let me come back to you.’

‘Let me get this project out of the door, then I’ll be able to give this my full attention.’

‘Lots of great ideas here. Best to talk them over. How about Friday?’

‘I’ll discuss this with…’

‘Let me think this over.’

‘Let’s talk in the morning.’

Why this is good for you: you create breathing room to respond rather than react.

Why this is good for your boss: they know that their idea or issue has been acknowledged and is in hand.

Result: you respond to the core of the issue with your best answers rather than react to the noise surrounding it.

Offer alternatives

It can be hard to say ‘no’ outright to your boss. But if what they’re asking for is not going to work, or is likely to be costly, it’s up to you to communicate that.

‘I can give you the quick-and-dirty version today or the fully polished version next Thursday. Which would you prefer?’

‘I can get this to you by close of play tomorrow, if I put Project X on the back burner. That means we’ll have to push back the launch to May. What do you want to do?’

‘The earliest I can get this to you is Wednesday. What you can use in the meantime is…’

‘What about…?’

‘This is what I can do…’

Why this is good for you: you can negotiate what works best for you.

Why this is good for your boss: your perspective gives them added clarity of what’s doable and what the impact is.

Result: more of the right things get done (and there’s a common understanding of what those right things are).

Building trust

‘Trust lies at the heart of a functioning, cohesive team. Without it, teamwork is all but impossible,’ writes Patrick Lencioni in his book The Five Dysfunctions of Team. ‘Teams that lack trust waste inordinate amounts of time and energy managing their behaviours and interactions within the group. They tend to dread team meetings, and are reluctant to take risks in asking for or offering assistance to others.’

Without trust, we can end up doubling up on the work: running through the figures ourselves to make sure they’ve done it; checking and triple-checking and worrying in between; it takes up extra space in our heads when we can’t just leave it with someone. We might even decide that it’s not worth the worry and that it’s easier to do it ourselves. At least we know it’s done and done properly then.

We may hold back from saying what we really mean. If we don’t trust someone to have our best interests at heart, we’re likely to think a lot more over how we say things and what we reveal. We might be more defensive in our communication, perceive or create conflict where there was none to begin with and end up having more conversations in our head instead of directly with each other. We can spend time justifying or proving our point of view, rather than focusing on moving actions and outcomes forward, and we can feel the need to fix how we feel, rather than address the problem at hand. We can find ourselves dancing around each other, covering our backs, avoiding conflict, hiding mistakes, protecting ourselves and valuing impression management over productivity.

To build trust, we need to be able to say what we need, admit when we don’t know, shout when we are in over our heads and confess when we’ve messed up. In other words, we need to be vulnerable and open with our mistakes, our weaknesses, our shortcomings and requests for help – and to know that it’s safe to do so.

‘It’s only when team members are truly comfortable being exposed to one another that they begin to act without concern for protecting themselves. As a result, they can focus their energy and attention completely on the job at hand, rather than on being strategically disingenuous or political with one another.’

Over to you