The Manager - 107 - Flow
THE MANAGER - BY ROB LAMBERT
Hi,
I hope you are doing well and have had a nice weekend. Bit of a longer email this week.
I’ve been really busy this week some client work and putting the finishing touches to a new email course.
The course is an introduction to communication taken from my award-winning Communication Superpower Workshop. I’ll let you know when it launches.
This week I was in "flow" pretty much constantly - and I feel great because of it. So, this week's theme is flow - and how to help your people get in to it. Of course, the below is useful for yourself too :)
Flow
If you’ve not heard of “flow”, it is a concept discovered by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is essentially when we lose ourselves in our work. Time passes quickly, we are challenged and we tend to feel good about it.
As a manager, I like to spend Monday’s discovering what people have planned for their week.
I try to ensure they have as many opportunities as possible to be in flow. I help them manage their calendar to block out time. I ensure they are working on challenging work and delegate more challenging work if what they have planned is too easy. (and teach them how to also delegate to others, or to the floor - i.e. not do it).
I also ensure there are plenty of mechanisms in place to avoid people being interrupted.
These include a nominated person each day, from each team, who can be interrupted, plus a dedicated manager for incoming requests for the team. We always jump on customer issues, but often most incoming requests are a time sink that a manager can deal with.
We don't have any meetings on certain days, and all managers are to have their 1:2:1 and other meetings in the morning or late afternoon – allowing people the majority of their day to work.
All of these are designed to enable people to get in to flow.
As a manager, it’s important that your team get in to flow as much as possible. Here are some ideas.
Enjoyable activities
The work people do should be goal/direction orientated that is challenging to them. As in, it should be clear what is to be achieved.
Do you know your people well enough to give them work that is challenging but not impossible?
Attention focused
Is there so much going on in your work place, that people cannot focus on the task in hand?
Do you have so much work in process that people have no choice but to attempt to multi-task?
Is the goal of the work clear and well defined?
Do the rules change often?
Does the request change often?
If yes, what can you do about that?
Do people get feedback from the activity?
Feedback is part of flow.
It should be immediate, or close to it, and it should be used for people to change their behaviours.
This feedback should come from the work and managers.
Feedback is a good thing.
Deep involvement
There should be deep involvement in the work – a way of people forgetting other things going on in their lives.
How can you get people involved more in the work?
Could you broaden the remit of the work to push people’s abilities?
Could you set a shared goal across teams as a way to “force” cooperation?
Are people in control?
Have you given people the control they need to get it done - as in, can they actually complete the work without too much reliance on other people, budgets or controlling processes?
It is annoying to have work to do, but not be in control of it.
Are people learning from the work and becoming better?
Measure flow by how much people lose themselves in their work
It’s not a numbers game, but you can study people doing work
Watch them, work with them, see their work output – you can see when someone is in flow – the outside world disappears for them.
Encourage them to take breaks and go home!
Weird as it sounds but when people are in flow – they can often work extreme hours. They enjoy it – but watch for people tiring themselves out.
Measure the outcome
Did the work get done?
Has the person changed? Become better? Learned something?
Did they enjoy it?
Qualitative data is equally as instructive as quantitative – use both if you can.
And on a personal level.
Do you get in to flow as much as you wish?
What could you do differently? Are you doing work you feel a connection to?
Of course, our lives are full of work that doesn’t catch our attention or mean a lot. We always have to do things that aren’t great fun. But flow is a sign that we’re also doing good work, valuable work and meaningful work.
It doesn’t always have to deliver something for other people. It could simply be work or hobbies we enjoy doing for ourselves. Writing we never intend to release. Photos we never intend to share. Learning we do for the art of learning.
I use flow a lot. I use it as a measure. I use it to work out if I’m being true to who I am.
A week without flow is a sign I need to have a quiet word with myself. I need to get back to what I need to be doing.
Let me know, do you get in to flow often? What is it that gets you there? Do you use it as a measure? Do you enjoy it?
Take care, have a great week and until next time.
Rob..
What's new on Cultivated Management?
This coming week I have two videos going live; The Art of Journaling and Keeping a Commonplace book.
The last week was Agility Week where I released a short video each day. I covered how to release agility, how to measure agility, how to stop killing agility and how to understand the system of delivery.
You can find them all on the basics of agility page.
You can find the YouTube channel here.
FOOD FOR YOUR MANAGEMENT BRAIN
1. The big con of disruption. Why disruption is a bad way to describe work and how it became a gateway for tech companies doing whatever they want. - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/sep/24/disruption-big-tech-buzzword-silicon-valley-power
2. When corporate executives take things personally ; eBay PR manager and his campaign to "destroy" a critic of the company. As a manager and leader - you set an example - try not to set one like this - https://www.businessinsider.com/ebay-executives-cyberstalking-campaign-devin-wenig-steven-wymer-texts-doj-2020-6?r=US&IR=T
3. Gaslighting at work - a mental manipulation that I've seen in many places. Here's how to spot it - https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-recognize-gaslighting-at-work-how-to-stop-it-2020-9?r=US&IR=T
4. If you like writing - then there is plenty of inspiration from this email newsletter about the routines of famous writers. Of course, you should find your own routine, but it's intriguing to hear what others do - https://www.writingroutines.com/olga-khazan-interview/
5. The goal of getting stuff done is just to do it. Simple. - https://getpocket.com/explore/item/this-lifehack-will-change-your-life-if-you-can-stand-it
Thanks for reading this week's edition of The Manager.
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Thanks
Rob..