Making time for the projects and progress that are most important to us, sometimes seems hard, if not impossible between all of the meetings and disturbances. The things that matter most to us, often need more consistent focus than we are giving to them in the day-to-day business.
How are we supposed to drive them forward, when one or the other colleague is knocking at our office door, and when emails keep flying in with a “bing” that at best distract us and at worst send us on someone else’s errand?
Setting aside time for quiet work is a challenge for most people. When hierarchy is involved, it seems impossible to do so.
Imagine a nurse telling a doctor: “Not now, I’ve got to concentrate.”
Unlikely. But exactly that might be necessary for the nurse to write the right prescription for the right patient, a task that demands a 0% error rate. So the question is how a leader can do their job of empowering all of their employees to contribute their best work to the organisation. In the context of getting the important things done, this means creating an environment where everyone can focus on what produces lasting results.
At the end of the day it’s simple. Many organisations, just like individuals, have successfully triggered big scale change by introducing and focusing on just one core habit.
What’s the keystone habit that could catapult your organisation from good to great performance?
Here’s the example of an institutional habit introduced by an IT company that did not perform so well, because products were delievered late and with bugs. Here’s what turned the business around: Tuesday mornings and thursday afternoons were established as protected hours for silent work – no calling, interrupting colleagues, or meetings allowed. This habit created time for programmers to do the essential programming necessary for a timely product launch, and for everyone else to write concept papers, look over the numbers, or focus on whatever core job they needed to get done.
A notable side effect to the intended upsurge in productivity and performance quality is
the collective experience that a new habit can be a game changer for a whole organisation. Change becomes feasible.
