With a global pandemic making its way through the population, countries around the world are closing their doors and suggesting companies switch to remote-work mode. This considered, you might quickly find yourself in a sticky situation: working from home.
To those unfamiliar, it may seem exciting or even daunting initially. However, once those chores, pets, and other attention-sucking things start stealing your focus, you could easily become overwhelmed
Here are some quick and easy tips to help you focus and make sure you keep working as normally as possible – for as long as it might be necessary.
1. Communication
The chances are that your colleagues are probably working from home, too (or will be soon). That means it’s no longer as easy as popping over to someone’s desk to ask a question, or having a quick chat by the watercooler.
You still need to communicate with other people – and surprise phone calls can be long and draining, not to mention inconvenient. Chat software provides an alternative yet solid, reliable solution. Whatever you choose, always make sure that you’re using secure tools for work.
Secure messaging
Not all chat platforms are created equal. Avoid the distracting lure of Facebook and other social platforms, and stick to communicating with more secure options, such as Signal or Telegram.
Secure email
Whether or not the government is tracking you, keeping your privacy when it comes to email messages is something you need to be thinking about. Tutatnota is an email platform with high-level encryption.
Collaboration software
A great SaaS tool can be conducive to better workflow and communication across your organization as a whole. The most popular option by far is Slack, with alternatives such as Chanty and Fleep giving them a run for their money.
Video conferencing solutions
If you have a schedule filled with in-person meetings, video conferencing apps will quickly become your go-to solution. You can take advantage of Google Hangouts and Skype, which are more prevalent, but have relatively less functionality when compared to more modern competitors. There are more flexible options, including BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, and Zoom, that include better features for co-working, internal teams, and access options.
As a busy executive, Margaret Keane has had to find creative ways to fit time with her family into her busy schedule, especially when her children were teenagers. One method that she found particularly effective was driving her kids to school every day. “That way, we had at least 20 minutes just for us,” she says.
As the CEO of Connecticut-based Synchrony Financial, a credit card provider and consumer financial services platform, Keane does her best to achieve work-life balance but doesn’t beat herself up when she’s not able to achieve perfection. “Those years taught me to take each work-life challenge day-by-day and put less pressure on myself to accomplish everything at once.”
And Keane is far from alone: Professionals in what’s been called the “always on” work culture—especially women—often find it difficult to achieve work-life equilibrium. But, unlike Keane, many of these working people are wracked with guilt for failing to achieve complete harmony.
Now the idea of “work-life integration” is gaining currency, as more and more people concede the ideal of “balance” may just be an unattainable goal.
“It’s liberating to give up finding ‘balance,’” says Elisa Steele, CEO of the New York-based human resources platform Namely. “In fact, when I was seeking balance all the time, I just felt like a constant failure. There is no perfect balance—it’s just life. It’s dynamic and demanding and fluid and forgiving.”
Establishing your own personal definition of what balance means is the first step toward making it a reality, says Jae Ellard, author of the 2014 book The Five Truths about Work-Life Balance. And even though the original work-life balance idea has since morphed into discussions of like work-life integration or work-life harmony, her advice remains relevant.
Once a definition is established,” Ellard says, the next step “becomes about creating awareness around behaviors that support or sabotage the desired outcome at both the individual and organizational level.” The process might entail having uncomfortable conversations both at home and at the office about boundaries and priorities.
Ellard observes that the work-life conversation has recently evolved into one about corporate culture, “which is a huge leap in working to address some of the drivers of imbalance.”
Companies have begun to understand their roles in creating environments conducive to work-life success. Mathilde Collin, CEO of the shared inbox Front App and Forbes 30 Under 30 alum, is helping to lead this charge. She recently challenged her employees to delete all nonessential apps from their phones, including social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, as a way of keeping them more present both at home and at work.
Since work-life balance is no longer the only way to define the successfully management of professional and personal life, there now appears to be an opportunity for people to hone what works for them—without feeling as though they need to live up to a certain standard, set by someone else.
“I hold the belief that it doesn’t matter what you call it,” says Ellard, referring to the idea of “balance,” as opposed to “integration.” “What matters most is that people have a clear idea of what it is they are wanting to create.”
I’m the assistant editor for ForbesWomen and Small Business, where I cover all things women and business. I’m originally from Long Island, N.Y., but I spent my undergrad years at Boston University, where I majored in Journalism and minored in Spanish, and I now live in Brooklyn. Beyond my primary passion for storytelling, I have a love for learning and writing about anything food- and drink-related, as well as cooking and eating. Prior to joining Forbes, I worked at Wine Spectator where I covered wine and food, and how they connect to pop culture.
Topline: Microsoft’s Japan office experimented with a four day workweek in August, resulting in a 40% productivity boost, with over 90% of employees reporting they preferred the shorter week—which aligns with previousstudies that show greater work-life balance makes for more productive employees.
In addition to a burst of productivity, Microsoft Japan reported it used about 23% less electricity and printed around 59% fewer pages during the experiment.
Microsoft Japan will conduct a second experiment over the winter and will encourage more flexible working, but it won’t include the shorter work week.
But previous studies show that giving employees more flexibility increases productivity; a New Zealand company permanently adopted the four day workweek in 2018, after a trial resulted in a 24% productivity increase.
The Harvard Business Review reported that a Chinese travel agency experienced a 13% productivity boost when it allowed call center employees to work from home.
In the U.S., a 2017 Stanford University study found the average worker is willing to give up 20% of their pay to avoid their schedule being set with short notice, and 8% of their pay in exchange for the option to work from home.
A work-from-anywhere program for patent examiners at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office showed productivity gains of 4.4%, according to a 2019 working paper by the Harvard Business School.
Big number: 80 hours.That was the length of a required workweek for 25% of Japanese companies in 2016, according to CNBC.
Key background: Japan’s culture of overwork first made headlines in 2015, when a Dentsu employee died by suicide on Christmas Day after working excessive overtime, and again in 2017, when a Japanese reporter died after clocking 159 hours of overtime the month before her death. Since then, prime minister Shinzo Abe has introduced “workstyle reform” to Japan, including an annual cap of 720 overtime hours per person. Although workstyle reform’s intent is to get big companies to improve their productivity internally, the Japanese government acknowledged the burden of overwork might be passed onto small and medium businesses as a result.
Surprising fact: As a result of their brutal working culture, the Japanese coined the term “karoshi,” meaning “death by overwork.”
Tangent: Despite studies that show benefits to the four day workweek, it’s not universally favored by executives. Some owners have employees work on Friday when there’s a holiday the following Monday. Others have reduced vacation time to make up for the extra weekly day off. And one Portland, Oregon tech firm experimented with a four day workweek before returning to a five day schedule, because the owner realized a shorter week meant its competitors had a leg up.
I’m a New York-based journalist covering breaking news at Forbes. I hold a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Previous bylines: Gotham Gazette, Bklyner, Thrillist, Task & Purpose, and xoJane.
After spending August experimenting with a four-day work week in a country notorious for overwork, Microsoft Japan said sales per employee rose 40% compared with the same month last year. The “Work-Life Choice Challenge Summer 2019” saw full-time employees take off five consecutive Fridays in August with pay, as well as shortening meetings to a maximum of 30 minutes and encouraging online chats over face-to-face ones. Among workers responding to a survey about the program, 92% said they were pleased with the four-day week, the software maker’s Japan affiliate said in a report on its website on Oct. 31. Japan has been struggling to bring down some of the world’s longest working hours as it confronts a labor shortage and rapidly aging population. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s push to make workplaces more flexible and reduce overtime has drawn mixed reviews. The summer trial also cut costs at Microsoft Japan, with 23% less electricity consumed and 59% fewer pages printed compared with August 2018, according to the report. Some Microsoft Japan managers still didn’t understand the changes in working styles and some employees expressed concern that shorter workweeks would bother clients. Microsoft Japan plans to hold another work-life challenge in winter. Employees won’t get special paid days off, but will be encouraged to take time off on their own initiative “in a more flexible and smarter way.” Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2TwO8Gm TICTOC ON SOCIAL: Follow TicToc on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tictoc Like TicToc on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tictoc Follow TicToc on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tictoc Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2FJ0oQZ TicToc by Bloomberg is global news for the life you lead. We are a 24/7 news network that covers breaking news, politics, technology, business and entertainment stories from around the globe, supported by a network of Bloomberg’s 2,700 journalists across 120 countries.
Google might be a successful behemoth now, but at one time, it was a startup going through some serious growing pains. At one point in its aggressive development, co-founder Larry Page reportedly scrapped the company’s burgeoning middle management level. He quickly discovered that, despite his preferences, an additional supervisory layer was necessary to successfully scale operations without major hiccups.
Therein lies a major problem with scaling: It doesn’t just involve getting progressively bigger, like a blown-up balloon. Instead, its shape morphs as new needs arise, such as heightened employee responsibilities and changing customer expectations. And plenty of smart leaders ignore these red flags when they’re growing at breakneck speed.
What are some of those indicators of runaway growth? Team burnout might as well be a neon sign. Another problem is dwindling capital with no real profit sources in sight. Of course, unhappy customers are a sure side effect of unhinged expansion.
If you’re increasing revenue, you may be tempted to keep your foot on the pedal instead of tapping the brakes. Don’t halt your forward momentum, but remain open to addressing a few issues that will make scaling less challenging — and more rewarding — for all stakeholders.
Here are three ways you can help your office’s culture grow with the pace of your fast growing company:
1. Define and direct your team’s new cultural journey.
When you’re a 10-person shop, your culture may look and function like a big family. When you hit the 50- or 100-employee mark, complete with remote workers, you can’t sustain the same kind of atmosphere. That’s OK, but it means you need to rethink your team’s collective identity.
If you haven’t established your corporate purpose or vision, now’s the time. Choose a few main value points, and create robust statements around them. After you’ve run your ideas by trusted colleagues and tweaked them as necessary, release your vision so everyone’s on the same page.
Certainly, your culture will evolve as you get bigger. Google didn’t stay static; neither should your company. Nevertheless, establishing your corporate DNA before you get exceptionally large will help everyone remain true to your vision, even as changes naturally occur.
One of the biggest impacts I’ve seen on culture is to align everyone around shared values. The process of discussing the behaviors exhibiting each value has helped many of my clients create teams that work together toward a common goal.
2. Keep your head in the present moment.
Although you’ll need to project into the future, you can’t lose sight of your current growth stage. As a leader, your job is to be both a pragmatist and a visionary. Even as your world swirls with opportunities, you owe it to your workers to take the team’s capacity into account and establish a healthy baseline.
Are your people up to the challenges you’re about to face? Do they have the training and capabilities to handle emerging roles? Never make assumptions — they’ll always backfire. As you prepare for the next adventure, be open to upskilling staff and perhaps even shifting employees into different roles.
Experiment with new org charts, seeing which ones fit current and anticipated needs. Google’s Page quickly walked back his experiment in eliminating middle management, yet focusing on getting the right people in the right roles was crucial to Google’s success at that stage. Through trial and error, you can determine which employee, organization, revenue and profit restructures make the most sense to propel your business forward.
3. Discover and address operational bottlenecks.
When Page eliminated mid-level managers, he quickly realized that having one executive with 100 engineers reporting to him wouldn’t turn out well. Situations like that are bound to result in bottlenecks. Every fast-growing business experiences bottlenecks in areas like hiring, customer service and operations.
Some bottlenecks are relatively obvious, making them easier to fix. If an employee has so much paperwork to deal with that he’s become a living traffic jam, you need to streamline your processes — the problem is apparent, and you can intervene immediately.
Other issues may be buried deep within systems and supply chains, making them tough to pinpoint. For those situations, AI can provide critical insights. AI platforms can analyze thousands of data points at once, spotting problems that might take years to bubble to the surface.
You may or may not one day compete with the likes of Google. If you stick around, though, your organization will inevitably need to scale. The more you focus on thoughtfully navigating the experience, the better your outcome will be.
@Ade Oshineye presents from the Google Developers Summit on how you as a developer can grow with Google+, namely highlighting: Reach, user acquisiton and conversion, user engagement and retention, and finally, when needed, re-engagement. #developer#developers
I recently shared with you the concept of the “time and effort chains,” which are the factors that trap us within a business and force us to work longer and harder, with little to no additional value or payoff.
Today I wanted to share with you the final chains that hold us back and keep us from reaching our goals. These, coupled with an understanding of the time-value matrix and a new way to look at control within your business, will play a huge part in your success or failure as a business leader.
A lack of clear priorities and objectives.
If every member on your staff doesn’t understand your priorities and objectives, efforts get scattered and poor decisions get made. This leads to underperformance, which pushes you to chase after more control to set things back on the right path. This further robs the business of depth because you’re not prioritizing time to develop your team so that they can take on more responsibilities. It’s a negative reinforcement loop.
This also impacts your team as a whole. The lack of strategic structure for how priorities get established, goals set, and plans made causes your team to flounder and struggle. Of course, you’re always there to pick up the pieces and take back more control, but by this point you understand where that leads.
A lack of strategic depth.
When you have a team that lacks the experience or talent to accomplish the goals you’ve set, you often find yourself pulled back into more closely managing the functions of your department, division, or business.
It becomes a chicken and egg scenario: if you had the right people on the team, you could let go of more.
But because you have to handle so much of the work, you don’t have time to hire or develop the people who could take on much of the load currently on your shoulders.
Round and round you go.
Outdated time habits.
The world today is fundamentally different than the world we evolved in. Our time sense was developed in a business world where time and effort were what we were paid for.
But that has shifted. In fact, with the transformation of modern communication and technology, work no longer has to take place in an office or factory; you literally can work from anywhere.
Yet the geographical freedom we now experience, which our ancestors couldn’t have imagined, has a dark side.
More and more of us feel compelled to always be on, checking our devices, responding to messages. The changing, 24/7, interconnected world has completely altered the way we live and work, and many of us simply haven’t updated our time habits to design the structures and systems we need to effectively and sustainably produce.
If you see yourself in any of what I’ve shared, it’s time to take action and start moving toward a reality in which your time and value chains no longer hold you back from moving yourself forward as a leader.
Dr. Kelso discusses what many people feel is the most frightening part about pursuing a career in the medical field…the crazy work hours. He dispels the myth that it is impossible to enjoy yourself and work the hours of a physician!
The idea of working remotely has been more than bubbling on the back burner. It’s at boil status, and the ability to work from home well is one of the hottest job skills going. The pot may be about to overflow, and the out-of-office move is about to go mainstream. At least if Harvard researchers have their way.
Harvard Business Review recently wrote an article provocatively titled “Is It Time to Let Employees Work From Anywhere?”, and researchers from Harvard Business School and Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business made their case for working from anywhere (WFA) to become more the norm.
The team analyzed data on WFA case studies, especially an in-depth look at a WFA program started in 2012 among patent examiners at the U.S. Patent & Trade Office (USPTO). Their research, soon to be published in a working paper, found examiners working from anywhere saw their work output increase by 4.4 percent, while quality of work held up, representing up to $1.3 billion of annual added value to the U.S. economy (based on the average amount of economic value generated by each additional patent granted).
The research also showed that in the specific case of working from home (as the WFA location) versus the office, productivity gains were seen in line with other studies. One such study involved a Chinese travel agency that saw productivity increase a whopping 13 percent when call center employees were allowed to work from home.The Harvard and Northeastern research team also found that WFA examiners chose to work in locations with lower cost of living, effectively equating to a pay increase–one that didn’t cost the organization a dime.
Longer tenured employees tended to move to “retirement-friendly” locations like Florida, which, according to the researchers, could encourage these most-valued employees to stay in the workforce longer.
But what about losing out on that peer-to-peer magic? Enter the most interesting finding of all, the fact that WFA examiners productivity increased more if they were located within 25 miles of other WFA examiners. Why? Because, as the study says, “geographically clustered WFA workers whose job content is similar may learn from each other informally.” In other words, they have the chance to congregate and share knowledge, similar to the way that co-workers informally learn from each other through office interactions.
So, how to make working from anywhere work for everybody? Here are some recommendations:
Remote work must come with true autonomy.
I interviewed employees working from home for one company with a WFA program and found they loved it with one exception — their boss was “making up” for his discomfort with not having them in the office by micromanaging them from afar, often checking to see if they were indeed working.
That’s poisonous behavior. Trust must be at the core of any WFA initiative.
Use a common set of technology tools.
Of course, make sure any remote location has easy, reliable access to the internet. Then, insist on a common set of tech tools to help solve the greatest fear of WFA employees, feeling out of the loop or disconnected. In the USPTO study, examiners using common IT tools (VPN, instant messaging, etc.) saw an additional 3 percent increase in productivity.
Foster WFA outposts.
If you can identify clusters of where WFA employees are living/congregating, feed it. Make the small investment to pay for a lunch or a co-meeting space in that geographic cluster to encourage peer-to-peer connection (and all the good that comes with it).
Keep the newbies in the office, for now.
The Harvard research team’s study focused on WFA employees that were already experienced. You need time to mold newer employees before letting them detach (physically) from the mother ship.
Let the type of work inform the viability of WFA.
Not all work lends itself to having employees do that work remotely. It makes more sense for a more experienced workforce with a fairly independent job type. A good dose of judgment is your best guide.
I think it’s time for WFA to be much more common. If you’re a leader and/or an employee, be brave and experiment with it — or at least ask for the opportunity to try.
Pants optional. Wouldn’t that be nice for your work day? Remote working can make that possible, and many companies are starting to change their culture to offer those options. Justin Jones is currently employed as a Consulting Architect at VMware. His previous work history includes positions at Accenture, Lockheed Martin, Emu Systems, Creative Labs, and Keen Energy Services. Justin frequently presents at technical conferences, including VMworld, Puppet Labs conferences, RADIO, and TechSummit. He is an active member of the Fuse Coworking space in Richland, WA and winner of the 2016 Tri Cities Launch University for his team’s software idea, Compass DMS. His personal interests include board games, music, brewing, and tennis. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
There are some things you simply never want to say at work.
These phrases carry special power: they have an uncanny ability to make you look bad even when the words are true.
Worst of all, there’s no taking them back once they slip out.
I’m not talking about shocking slips of the tongue, off-color jokes, or politically incorrect faux pas. These aren’t the only ways to make yourself look bad.
Often it’s the subtle remarks—the ones that paint us as incompetent and unconfident—that do the most damage.
No matter how talented you are or what you’ve accomplished, there are certain phrases that instantly change the way people see you and can forever cast you in a negative light. These phrases are so loaded with negative implications that they undermine careers in short order.
How many of these career killers have you heard around the office lately?
1. “It’s not fair.”
Everyone knows that life isn’t fair. Saying it’s not fair suggests that you think life is supposed to be fair, which makes you look immature and naïve.
If you don’t want to make yourself look bad, you need to stick to the facts, stay constructive, and leave your interpretation out of it. For instance, you could say, “I noticed that you assigned Ann that big project I was hoping for. Would you mind telling me what went into that decision? I’d like to know why you thought I wasn’t a good fit, so that I can work on improving those skills.”
2. “This is the way it’s always been done.”
Technology-fueled change is happening so fast that even a six-month-old process could be outdated. Saying this is the way it’s always been done not only makes you sound lazy and resistant to change, but it could make your boss wonder why you haven’t tried to improve things on your own. If you really are doing things the way they’ve always been done, there’s almost certainly a better way.
3. “No problem.”
When someone asks you to do something or thanks you for doing something, and you tell them no problem, you’re implying that their request should have been a problem. This makes people feel as though they’ve imposed upon you.
What you want to do instead is to show people that you’re happy to do your job. Say something like “It was my pleasure” or “I’ll be happy to take care of that.” It’s a subtle difference in language, but one that has a huge impact on people.
4. “I think …/This may be a silly idea …/I’m going to ask a stupid question.”
These overly passive phrases instantly erode your credibility. Even if you follow these phrases with a great idea, they suggest that you lack confidence, which makes the people you’re speaking to lose confidence in you.
Don’t be your own worst critic. If you’re not confident in what you’re saying, no one else will be either. And, if you really don’t know something, say, “I don’t have that information right now, but I’ll find out and get right back to you.”
5. “This will only take a minute.”
Saying that something only takes a minute undermines your skills and gives the impression that you rush through tasks. Unless you’re literally going to complete the task in 60 seconds, feel free to say that it won’t take long, but don’t make it sound as though the task can be completed any sooner than it can actually be finished.
6. “I’ll try.”
Just like the word think, try sounds tentative and suggests that you lack confidence in your ability to execute the task. Take full ownership of your capabilities. If you’re asked to do something, either commit to doing it or offer an alternative, but don’t say that you’ll try because it sounds like you won’t try all that hard.
7. “He’s lazy/incompetent/a jerk.”
There is no upside to making a disparaging remark about a colleague. If your remark is accurate, everybody already knows it, so there’s no need to point it out. If your remark is inaccurate, you’re the one who ends up looking like a jerk.
There will always be rude or incompetent people in any workplace, and chances are that everyone knows who they are. If you don’t have the power to help them improve or to fire them, then you have nothing to gain by broadcasting their ineptitude. Announcing your colleague’s incompetence comes across as an insecure attempt to make you look better. Your callousness will inevitably come back to haunt you in the form of your coworkers’ negative opinions of you.
8. “That’s not in my job description.”
This often sarcastic phrase makes you sound as though you’re only willing to do the bare minimum required to keep getting a paycheck, which is a bad thing if you like job security.
If your boss asks you to do something that you feel is inappropriate for your position (as opposed to morally or ethically inappropriate), the best move is to complete the task eagerly. Later, schedule a conversation with your boss to discuss your role in the company and whether your job description needs an update. This ensures that you avoid looking petty. It also enables you and your boss to develop a long-term understanding of what you should and shouldn’t be doing.
9. “It’s not my fault.”
It’s never a good idea to cast blame. Be accountable. If you had any role—no matter how small—in whatever went wrong, own it. If not, offer an objective, dispassionate explanation of what happened. Stick to the facts, and let your boss and colleagues draw their own conclusions about who’s to blame.
The moment you start pointing fingers is the moment people start seeing you as someone who lacks accountability for their actions. This makes people nervous. Some will avoid working with you altogether, and others will strike first and blame you when something goes wrong.
10. “I can’t.”
I can’t is it’s not my fault’s twisted sister. People don’t like to hear I can’t because they think it means I won’t. Saying I can’t suggests that you’re not willing to do what it takes to get the job done.
If you really can’t do something because you truly lack the necessary skills, you need to offer an alternative solution. Instead of saying what you can’t do, say what you can do. For example, instead of saying “I can’t stay late tonight,” say “I can come in early tomorrow morning. Will that work?” Instead of “I can’t run those numbers,” say “I don’t yet know how to run that type of analysis. Is there someone who can show me so that I can do it on my own next time?”
11. “I hate this job.”
The last thing anyone wants to hear at work is someone complaining about how much they hate their job. Doing so labels you as a negative person and brings down the morale of the group. Bosses are quick to catch on to naysayers who drag down morale, and they know that there are always enthusiastic replacements waiting just around the corner.
Bringing It All Together
Eliminating these phrases from your vocabulary pays dividends. They have a tendency to sneak up on you, so you’re going to have to catch yourself until you’ve solidified the habit of not saying them.
What other phrases should be on this list? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
I am the author of the best-selling book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 and the cofounder of TalentSmart, a consultancy that serves more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies and is the world’s leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training (www.TalentSmart.com). My books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. I’ve written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.
What is the 80/20 Rule and could it actually make 80% of your work disappear?
If you’ve studied business or economics, you’re well familiar with the power of the Pareto Principle.
The Man Behind The Concept
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was born in Italy in 1848. He would go on to become an important philosopher and economist. Legend has it that one day he noticed that 20% of the pea plants in his garden generated 80% of the healthy pea pods. This observation caused him to think about uneven distribution. He thought about wealth and discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. He investigated different industries and found that 80% of production typically came from just 20% of the companies. The generalization became:
This “universal truth” about the imbalance of inputs and outputs is what became known as the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. While it doesn’t always come to be an exact 80/20 ratio, this imbalance is often seen in various business cases:
• 20% of the sales reps generate 80% of total sales.
• 20% of customers account for 80% of total profits.
• 20% of the most reported software bugs cause 80% of software crashes.
• 20% of patients account for 80% of healthcare spending (and 5% of patients account for a full 50% of all expenditures!)
On a more personal note, you might be able to relate to my unintentional 80/20 habits.
I own at least five amazing suits, but 80% of the time or more I grab my black, well-tailored, single-breasted Armani with a powder blue shirt. (Ladies, how many shoes do you own, and how often do you grab the same 20%?)
I have 15 rooms in my house, but I spend about 80% of my time in just my bedroom, family room, and office (exactly 20%).
I’m not sure how many miles of roads are in the small town where I live, but I bet I only drive on 20% or less of them, as I make daily trips to my kids’ schools, the grocery store, the bank and gas station.
On my smartphone, I have 48 different mobile apps pinned to the tiles, but 80% of the time I’m only using the eight on my home screen.
When I go grocery shopping, I definitely spend the most time in the aisles that are around the edges of the store: produce, the fish market, dairy, breads—and generally skip the aisles in the middle of the store (except for health and beauty).
As a massive introvert, I don’t actually socialize too much, but when I do, 80% of my time is spent with the same 20% of my friends and family members.
In my research into the productivity habits of high achievers, I interviewed hundreds of self-made millionaires, straight-A students and even Olympic athletes. For them, handling every task that gets thrown their way—or even every task that they would like to handle—is impossible. They use Pareto to help them determine what is of vital importance. Then, they delegate the rest, or simply let it go.
How You Can Use It
So how can you apply Pareto’s principle to gain more time in your life?
Are you an executive? You’re surely faced with the constant challenge of limited resources. It’s not just your time you need to maximize, but your entire team’s. Instead of trying to do the impossible, a Pareto approach is to truly understand which projects are most important. What are the most important goals of your organization, or boss, and which specific tasks do you need to focus on to align with those goals. Delegate or drop the rest.
Are you a freelancer? It’s important to identify your best (and highest-paying) clients. Of course, you don’t want all your eggs in one basket. But too much diversification will quickly lead to burnout. Focus on the money makers and strengthening those long-term relationships.
No matter what your situation, it’s important to remember that there are only so many minutes in an hour, hours in a day, and days in a week. Pareto can help you to see this is a good thing; otherwise, you’d be a slave to a never-ending list of things to do.
So, what 20% of your work drives 80% of your outcomes?
Few work experiences are as demoralizing as not knowing how your work fits into your company’s larger strategy or goals. It’s hard to thrive when the day-to-day feels meaningless, and I’ve got the data to prove it.
My firm recently conducted a study of 13,771 employees and asked them whether their bosses have explained how their work fits into the department or organization’s strategy or goals. As you can see, a paltry 21% of bosses are “always” connecting their employees’ work to some larger strategy or goal.
But there’s an even bigger twist: We also discovered that people whose bosses “always” tie their work to a larger strategy are nearly five times more likely to be inspired at work than those whose bosses “never” does.
While it might be momentarily satisfying to blame all the bosses for not doing a better job at connecting employees’ work to something bigger, the truth is that individual employees also have some responsibility.
In this same study, we asked people to rate the statement: “When I get an assignment, I find out how it fits into our organization’s strategy and goals.” And here again, we found that a minuscule 18% are “always” taking the extra step to find out for themselves how their work fits into their organizations’ goals.
But as you might expect, the people who do take that extra step are 5.7 times more likely to be inspired at work than those who “never” do.
If we want to enjoy and succeed at our jobs, the implication of this study seems obvious—we’ve got to proactively learn how our work fits into our organizations’ strategies and goals. This is accomplished with a four-part conversation, which, when done right, can also teach your boss how to share this information in the future without being asked.
But a word of caution before I give you the script: This conversation cannot feel like an attack on, or an end-run around, your boss. If your boss suspects that you’re looking for ways to usurp or chastise them for poor leadership, they’re likely to respond defensively (or worse).
There’s also a chance that your boss may not always know how your work ties into a larger strategy (your boss may actually feel in-the-dark about his or her own work). So always approach this conversation with caring, genuine curiosity and the mindset that you may not get every question answered.
Here’s the four-part script for talking to your boss about how your work connects to the organization’s (or department’s) larger strategy or goals.
Step 1: Find an agreeable time to have deep conversation by asking your boss, “Would you be willing to have a conversation with me about this new assignment? I find it really interesting and I’d love to learn more.”
It’s always a good idea to start the conversation by asking permission (i.e. “would you be willing”). Your boss will be instantly disarmed because you’ve made it clear that you’re approaching the conversation as an opportunity to learn, not to accuse. Additionally, the phrase “I find it really interesting” alleviates a common and understandable fear among bosses that employees only want face-time in order to gripe about something.
Step 2: Having opened the conversation, now say, “I appreciate you taking the time to give me your advice and thoughts on this project because I’d love to learn more about it and I really want to knock it out-of-the-park. So the first thing I’m curious about is whether there was some kind of strategic initiative or goal that sparked the need for this project?”
It’s important to reinforce your genuine interest and curiosity in the project before you ask about the impetus for the project. Don’t skip this step unless you have a sufficiently deep relationship with your boss that allows you to approach this conversation more forcefully. In general, it’s better to err on the side of tact and caution in these conversations.
Step 3: Ask, “Is there anything you’d like me to know about how this will get used (or incorporated into a larger project or initiative)?”
You don’t want to come right out and demand to know what the boss really intends to do with your work on this project. While there are certainly bosses who will appropriate employee work as their own, it’s awfully accusatory for a conversation like this. Instead, give them the choice to share or not share. This actually increases the odds that they will share, telling you a great deal about how this project connects to larger strategic initiatives.
Step 4: Finally, ask “Do you envision more projects like this coming in the future?”
If this is the only project of its kind, there’s a good chance there isn’t a grand strategy or goal underneath. But if this is just one of many similar projects, that’s a big clue as to the shape of your organization’s larger strategy and goals.
You probably noticed that this conversation is focused on specific assignments, rather than on your job as a whole. The reason for that is simple: If you directly ask your boss “How does my job fit into the company’s larger strategy?” there’s a very good chance you won’t get a coherent answer. That’s a big, abstract question, and most leaders won’t have a prepared response.
Instead, by gently probing for information about your current or latest project, you’re can tease out and piece together how your work connects to a larger strategy.
You may have to conduct this conversation a few times to fully glean how your work relates to a bigger strategy. But with enough repetition, you’ll typically find that your boss will start to proactively offer these insights.
Ready for the next challenge? Tune in on August 6 for Day 7.
I’m the founder of http://www.LeadershipIQ.com, a New York Times bestselling author and I teach the leadership course What Great Managers Do Differently I am the author of five books, including “Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More.” Some of my research studies include “Are SMART Goals Dumb?,” “Why CEO’s Get Fired,” “Why New Hires Fail,” “High Performers Can Be Less Engaged,” and “Don’t Expect Layoff Survivors to Be Grateful.” I’ve lectured at The United Nations, Harvard Business School, Microsoft, Merck, MasterCard, Charles Schwab and Aflac, among others.
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