Leadership Insights

Balcony Exercise

Are you often so consumed by the day-to-day business that you can’t find time to think about the big picture or to reflect on what your teams and yourself actually really need right now? We present three ways to get you off the dance floor of day-to-day business and onto the balcony with an overview and this way a change of perspective:

1. Consciously schedule “Holy Me Time” per week and protect this time slot e.g. for “Deep Work”, self-reflection, vision work or thought flow.

2. Consciously sort out meetings – No POP? Let’s drop! POP stands for:

P – Purpose: What goal does this meeting fulfill?
O – Outcome: What is necessary to continue working meaningfully after the meeting?
P – Process: What does the meeting process look like? Is there a clear agenda, clear roles, clear processes and a transparent documentation?

3. Consciously take breaks: For example, by scheduling meetings with a 5 – 10 minute buffer at the end and allowing all participants this break rather than using this time for e-mails or phone calls.

An analogy, inspired by Malcolm Gladwell, that we discuss again and again in our Leadership Program for Innovation and Agility:

“Hamlet got it all wrong! Hamlet was someone whose doubting made him incapable of acting. Hamlet was frozen. To be or not to be. Hamlet had it backwards. Doubts should free you because once you have accepted that you do not know what happens next and that you can’t predict or plan everything in your life then you are free to act. What’s holding you back? What is there to be afraid of? You have given up the illusion of knowing what could possibly happen.”

What doubts do you have? What can you actively influence? What do you need to observe? We recommend: Act instead of re-act. Shape instead of manage. The aim is to take away the pressure off managers, who may think they need to have all the answers. Rather, it’s important to have the courage to honestly say, “I don’t know the answer – but we’ll find out.”

“The only Constant is Change”

You often hear these or similar statements when it comes to transformation or agility. But what does constant change actually mean for employees and managers? Our coaches Flavia Bleuel, Selina Mayer and Hilde Rosenboom, who specialize in leadership, have observed various patterns in the attitudes of employees and managers toward change, which Heike Bruch and Bernd Vogel have summarized in their book “Organizational Energies”* under four phenomena:

– Pleasant inertia: “Actually, everything is going quite well, and we don’t need or want to change so really ‘fast and much’.”

– Resignative inertia: “The pressure from outside and inside is high, actually we can’t do anything (more) anyway.

– Corrosive energies: “This is all very difficult and complicated. And I have to react very quickly to this emergency situation now, no matter what that means for the other departments.”

– Productive energies: “Something has to change, and finally we’re all pulling together. Something really good is coming out of this.”

Do any of these phenomena (with the somewhat pointed example quotes) sound familiar? If so, it may be instructive for you to look at your team’s energy level in relation to change: How can you mobilize and foster productive “Organizational Energies” according to your team’s attitude?

^{*Bruch, H., & Vogel, B. (2009). Organisationale Energie. Wiesbaden: Gabler.}