Growth tips 30 seconds to business enlightenment.

Make time to reflect

21-Jul-2011

If you are anything like me, life seems to be getting busier and busier, and the rate of change means you feel like you are running faster and faster just to keep up.

The ability to execute your strategy at a rapid pace is a vital ingredient on the path to success, but if you are not careful, you can become so stuck in “busy-mode”, that you spend all of your time “doing” and not enough time “thinking and learning”.

A recent article in Chief Executive provided some tips to help leaders to create more reflective time.  Here is our take.

Speak slowly, and pause often.

When speaking with your team, be comfortable with silences, and take the time to collect your thoughts in-between sentences. Frequently the most interesting part of your speech will come after the pause. Watch great orators and notice how slowly they speak, and how they take the time to pause.

Build in quiet time.

Filling up your calendar with back to back appointments, with barely enough time to squeeze in a quick phone call or email in-between each meeting is not conducive to quality thinking.  Force yourself to build in a few minutes every hour to get away from people and away from your communication devices to go somewhere quiet and ponder: What went well in my last appointment?  What did I learn?  What could I have done better?  How is my emotional state?  What energy do I need to bring into my next meeting?

Don’t get bogged down in the details.

Strategic thinking means getting clear on “what” needs to be done.  Encourage your people to figure out the “how”.  Hire great people, give them the tools and training they need to do their job, give them clear goals and standards, and get out of their way.  If you insist on getting involved in every detail you will not have time to step back think strategically.

Take proper vacations.

It can take 1 full week of being fully unplugged (no email / no phone calls) to even begin to feel like your batteries are being recharged.  2 week vacations are probably better.  No one can keep their pedal to the metal forever - eventually your mental and physical health starts to break down.  Book some meaningful time out.  Slow down.  Relax.

Go to conferences.  

Go to the lectures.  Learn from the thought leaders.  Mingle with other people from your industry after hours.  Take an extra day to drive the long road home so that you have time to ponder what you have learned.

1 Minute of Silence.

I have not tried this practice yet – but it sounds like a great tip that I want to try:  Begin all meetings with 1 minute of silence so all participants can gather their thoughts and be fully present in the room.

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