Let’s start with some practices of the most effective leaders. Effective leaders prepare themselves, their team, and their organization for the future. They know that preparing for the future puts them in a better position to create new realities. They realize that the creation of new realities requires a significant investment in time to: (1) understand their current state situation; (2) establish their leading and lagging goals and objectives; (3) design their desired future state; (4) grasp the significance of the gap between their current state situation and their desired future state design; (5) identify and prioritize the actions required to close the gap; allocate resources to the prioritized actions; (6) assess their performance on their actions and adjust; (7) understand the on-going and rapid changes in their external environment so as to anticipate the next new reality; (8) continue to apply a growth mindset to refine their ability to be a more effective active learner.
So, what’s the big lie that many aspiring leaders tell themselves about preparing people for the future? They say, “I don’t have time to prepare people for the future – I’m working 10 to 12-hours per day during the week and I am working some weekends as well. I am taking care of what needs to be done now for us and for me to compete – I don’t have time to waste on thinking about and then planning for a future that may never occur.” Let’s consider the implication for an aspiring leader that believes they just don’t have the time to prepare themselves for the future.
Well, what I’ve learned is the problem has nothing to do with their time – they have all the time they need. Their problem has everything to do with the priorities – or the lack thereof – they place on their time. Either they are not completely sure what they value most in their life, or their short and long-term actions do not match what they value. What I’ve also learned is that aspiring leaders that are not clear on what they value most in their life, more than likely do not have a well-thought through and written plan for their personal life. And aspiring leaders that do not have a long-term plan for their personal life, will more than likely not have a long-term plan for their organization. And aspiring leaders that go through life without a plan for themselves and a plan for their organization are usually frustrated in many aspects of their life, but they don’t understand the source of their frustration. I have a considerable amount of experience helping people prepare themselves, their team, and the organization for the future. It is always refreshing to see a leader develop to the point where they are clear and act on what they need to stop doing, start doing, accelerate doing, and they understand why they need to do so.
Over the course of my career thus far, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with some outstanding leaders and managers that work at some excellent companies. One of the companies I worked for was Harley-Davidson, which at that time, had one of the most intense and results-driven cultures that I had ever experienced. I’ve benefitted immensely from working in such a culture. While employed at Harley-Davidson I reported to Karl Eberle. Karl always believed and he acted on his belief that the development of each team member goes hand-in-hand with improved individual, team, and organizational performance. Karl provided an opportunity for me to attend a Franklin Planner (now FranklinCovey) time management workshop that changed my view of the world. There were about 30-people that participated in this workshop – all of us worked at Harley-Davidson – and we ranged in age from 30 to 50+ years old. As it turned out, all of the participants in the workshop had children and a few of the participants even had grandchildren. At the time of this workshop my wife and I had two small children.
At the beginning of the workshop the instructor focused us on identifying what Peter Senge calls our mental models, which are the deeply held internal images we hold that express how we perceive the world works. Our instructor also got us to think about, and then start to identify, what we valued most in our life. I had no idea that effective time management starts with identifying and writing down our beliefs and values. Finally, to illustrate for us the relationship between what we value most in our life and how we allocate our time, he put us through a simple, yet very effective two-step exercise.
In the first step of the exercise the instructor asked us to shut our eyes and envision we were standing on the roof of two adjacent skyscrapers. He then asked us to visualize an I-beam that stretched between both of the skyscrapers, which he informed us were about two-hundred feet apart from one another. Then, he asked us to keep our eyes closed and raise our hand if we would be willing to climb across the I-beam to get to the other skyscraper. He asked us to open our eyes and look around to see how many hands were raised – there were two. We all had a good laugh because we could all have guessed the identity of the two death-defying dare-devils. I was not one of them.
In the second step of the exercise the instructor asked us to shut our eyes again. He asked us to put ourselves back on the roof of the same skyscrapers, only this time he changed the situation. He asked us to visualize the same I-beam connecting the two skyscrapers, but this time he asked us to see a man standing at the other end of the I-beam. He paused for a few seconds. He told us that the man on the opposite end of the I-beam was dressed in dark clothing and was wearing a stocking hat that concealed his face. He paused – we were silent. He told us to notice how the man was standing motionless and was looking directly at us. He paused. In my mind I began to visualize myself looking to my left and my right and behind me … I was afraid he was going to say that someone was going to approach me from behind. He told us to not look around, but to look directly at the man standing on the other skyscraper. After another pause, he said the man lifted a child up high enough for us to see them. The instructor said that we immediately recognize that this is our child. He tells us that the man on the other skyscraper is a known terrorist. The instructor then tells us that the terrorist uses both hands to roughly grab our child by the back of the coat. He tells us that the terrorist then places our child over the edge of the building. The instructor then pauses so we can see this taking place in our minds. Although I realize this is not real, I panic. Suddenly, he says, another terrorist appears – only this terrorist is not wearing a hat to cover his face. The second terrorist forcefully points directly right at you and motions for you to come across the I-beam. He then points at your child and points over the side of the building. The message is clear. If I do not come across that I-beam my child will be thrown over the side of the building. The instructor asks us to make eye contact with our child to see the terror in their eyes.
The instructor then kept silent for about 15-seconds to allow the situation to play out in our minds. What I distinctly remember was the sound of some of the workshop participants holding back emotions. The instructor reminded us to keep our eyes closed. Then he asked us to raise our hand if we would be willing to go across that I-beam to get to the other side. He asked those that had their hands raised to keep them up and then after about 5-seconds he asked us to open our eyes. We all looked around. EVERY hand was raised. What we valued most was directly linked to our actions.
During the de-brief for this exercise the instructor helped us gain an appreciation for how in life the problem is not time – we have all the time we want. The problem lies in values and priorities we place on our time. One of the points that he made was that if we want to see what we truly value most in our life, then reflect on our actions because what you do reflects what we value.
After the debrief for this exercise we took a break – we needed it. When we returned from our break we discussed the importance of specifically identifying our beliefs about how we perceive the world works and prioritizing what we value most in our life. These are two of the key building blocks to effective time management.
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