The Benefits of Boredom

A freelance opportunity to write about hair loss popped up in my email a few days ago. I considered submitting a bid. But then I jumped over to Twitter and back to the email, went to get a third cup of coffee, sipped it as I jiggled my leg and thought about my sloppy golf game. I was bored, definitely bored.

Rather than blaming my dull disposition on my inner child, I sat quietly for a while figuring out if boredom had any benefits. There had to be. At a minimum, boredom should force us to think about why we are bored. More important, confronting boredom could prevent future boredom.

Come with me and I’ll show you what I'm thinking.

Beam yourself back to the last dull meeting you attended. Perhaps you were trapped in the middle seat of the conference table, far from the door, out of coffee, and without your Blackberry. Your eyes are adjusting to the lights that just went on following a lackluster PowerPoint presentation on some mundane project. Two of your colleagues are jockeying for the attention of the group and of your boss at the end of the table, who just returned after stepping out early in the presentation, presumably to take a call. You’re feeling mentally constipated and anticipating another hour of tedium.

5 laxatives to dislodge your boredom.

1 Let’s return to the beginning of the presentation.
Lean back, cross your legs, and prop your writing pad on your lap. This will prevent your side companions from glancing at your notes. Then, about two-thirds of the way through the presenter’s spiel, do the following:

• Write down three brief reasons why you like the presenter (you already know why you don’t). For example, she seems to have worked hard on the presentation and you respect that, or she admitted not knowing the answer to a question, and you admire her honesty and courage.


• Next, record the three factors that drained the life out of the presentation: the room was dark, too much data on the PowerPoints, presenter’s voice was dronish, etc.


• Now, imagine yourself making a presentation to the group. Write three reasons why the audience would like you and another three reasons why they would like your presentation.

You might say, for instance, they would like me because I would demonstrate that whatever I say in my presentation I will do. Another: They would like me because I would use “we” much more frequently than “I.”

Regarding your presentation, perhaps you might write:
• I would limit my PowerPoints only to information I understood thoroughly and believed in.


• I would sit at the table rather than stand up front and engage the group in a discussion focused on just one PowerPoint as the reference.

Boredom Benefit #1 You just learned – perhaps once again -- that you are the presentation and that the mechanicals (PowerPoints) must flow from and around you. As a result, participants will come away from your next presentation with a clear understanding of the topic and a strong desire to work with you. In other words, you won’t be considered boring.

2 Think about the dreary discussion that follows the presentation.
Before it begins, sketch the seating configuration of the people around the conference table. Then ...

• Every time someone requests information or asks for clarification, put a question mark beside his or her name. Whenever someone expresses an opinion, put an “O” beside the name. Whenever you hear a recommendation that sounds like a possible solution, write “S” beside that name. And when you hear a complaint, can’t-do, it-won’t-work, or general whining, put down a “W.” Sure, there will be overlap, but precision is not important, patterns are.


• After the meeting, count the number of letters in each category. Determine if there are patterns, such as:
  
• What percentage of the total remarks made by the group falls into each category? An abundance of questions marks could suggest that the issue was not thought through sufficiently by the presenter. More “S” marks might reflect a viable idea that everyone can rally around.


• Was there more negativity (more “W’s”) in one section of the room? What about opinions? Were people who disagreed seated across from each other, and where were they in relation to their boss and/or the person running the meeting?

Boredom Benefit #2 You now have a fresh perspective on social dynamics, on how factors such as seating positions influence those dynamics, and, most important, how you might manage those dynamics and organize those factors to run more productive, less boring meetings.

3 If the discussion slips into pandemonium or dullness, ask three questions at key junctures (and, yes, I am anal about three’s).

• Using a non-threatening tone, say to someone who is monopolizing the group’s time: “What was your last point again, Tom? I don’t think I quite understood it.” You do this to break Tom’s rambling and ranting, which suppresses discussion, intimidates the timid, and bores everyone. Repetition will force him to hear what he is really saying, should cause him to edit and shorten his previous remark, will likely reduce his tension, and will open the gate for someone more interesting to slip in with a comment.


• Another question at the right moment: “Would it be helpful if we stopped for a few minutes and go around the table to ask what each of us thinks is the expected outcome of our meeting, just to make sure we’re all moving in the same direction?” This maneuver will wake up the comatose non-participants and will refocus everyone on purpose and away from palaver.


• If the group is deadlocked and you want to get to lunch, ask: “What if we did nothing at all about this issue? Would it go away? Would anyone’s life be different? Would anyone clamor for us to implement it?” You might be surprised by the reaction. Someone might say, “You know, Judy’s right. How critical is all of this?”

Boredom Benefit #3 Rather than being a contributor or passive observer in a disorganized, disorienting, dull meeting, you have tested out a technique that could create focus, purpose, and value, if not for this gathering then for the next one.

4 Boring meetings often result from a boring or bored person who called the boring meeting. Try this. During the sessions, study the person (your boss?) who is leading the meeting.

• Scratch on your notepad the reason you think she called the meeting. Be honest. Sure, she wanted to air a particular issue and get everyone’s input -- or it would seem. Did she steer the group so that actually happened? How vital was the issue to her? Did she list action items at the end of the session?


• If she actually did step out of the meeting at some point, why did she? Did the momentum, tone, productivity, or content of the meeting change after that happen?


• How often does she speak in the meeting, and what is the nature of her comments?


• What do her non-verbals tell you? Does she appear bored, engaged, or subtly angry?


• If she is not leading the discussion, who is? Is that deliberate on her part or negligence?

Boredom Benefit #4 Boredom has given you an opportunity to analyze the impact of a designated group leader on the productivity of a meeting and to decide how you would perform that role differently.

5 At the point in the meeting when participants are suppressing yawns, write a one-sentence summary of what everyone seems to agree on and what the next step should be. Then suck air and offer your synopsis to the group.

If little has been accomplished, don’t suggest a follow-up meeting unless you're a glutton for boredom. If some members opt to prolong the discussion, let the meeting leader draw it to a conclusion, which is likely to be the conclusion you suggested since your sensibility amidst stupor was refreshing.

Boredom Benefit #5 You have demonstrated your ability to retrieve value from chatter and separate substance from personalities.

Richard Skaare 03.10.09

Photo credit: Toastforbrekkie

Learning to Hustle ... and Swing: Back to Basics

It’s not likely that I will Twist again like I did last summer. I was showing off my archived dancing skills at a wedding reception in July. Some folks were impressed; others thought … hmm, alcohol. I thought pain because afterwards I could hardly limp to my car. My right knee wasn’t working real well.

Now, five months later, I’m back to the basics. I’m standing with my wife on the dance floor at Arthur Murray’s for our first lesson, still feeling twinges of dull pain in that leg (the orthopedic doctor told me to buck up). The ballroom has more mirrors than a Poconos hotel room, the other couples don’t look like they’re fellow AARP members, and I’m wondering if the lovely young instructor would be a dating possibility for my oldest son.

Tonight’s lesson is Rumba and Swing, next week Hustle and Foxtrot.

It’s not easy returning to basics. Pride makes up lots of excuses: no need, no time, no gain for the pain. But whenever I was dogged about doing some particular thing right or better, I went back to basics, such as:

• when I took swimming lessons at age 40 after swimming since I was five.
• when I joined a Beginners Golf class after playing the game off-and-on for twenty years.
• when, now at age … well, a good age, this American Bandstander is back taking dance lessons.

But for me, returning to basics was the toughest when I had to do it in my profession. I led corporate communication departments because I was presumed to be the best and I later advised clients who trusted that I knew virtually everything about communication. Despite the image, I never lost sight of hindsight. So, I went back to basics at times to shore up my skills and confidence, and learned or relearned:

• how to write more with nouns and verbs, less with adverbs and adjectives;
• how to listen intently even though I had counseled many people;
• how to give up on slick marketing ideas when the market had no interest;
• how to nurture a creative idea rather than grabbing an answer off the shelf; and
• how to start always with the audience’s needs rather than unloading information on them.

3x5 Thinking
If you wonder whether or not it’s time for you to return to some basics, here are:

3 tell-tale signs:

1. You’re coasting, and you sense it. The CEO or client trusts you; management likes you; your staff is still smiling. You’re managing the workload. You’ve got the organizational script down. Your career is on course – or was that the career you have had but may not have if the economy continues to plummet?
2. You’re jabbering, and you hate it. How many times can you tell habitually sceptical people that “your organization is well positioned for the future because you have the bandwidth to push the envelope with mission-critical, next-generation deliverables?” If you talk and write like that, I say “eat your own dog food on a daily basis going forward,” or drop back and learn to write like people talk – like you once did.
3. You’re suffering, and you’re not admitting it. You look and sound successful, your paycheck confirms it. But, face it, your work bores you and the environment is suffocating. You’re up a pants size, you can’t remember what you’ve accomplished on any given day, and even if you have a friend who would understand, you wouldn’t know how to explain what’s happening to you. Don’t wait to go flat-line before you stop and start again.

If you missed them as you raced ahead in your career or need to relearn them, here are:

5 shoulda-coulda-outta basics

1. Relearn how to think. Switch from uber-linear to free association. Learn simple mind-mapping. Understand patterns of thinking, not just logic. Also, read novels for two months rather than business books. Rediscover the powerful advantage of stories over white papers.
   
   

   Dance lesson: Foxtrot in a straight line and you will eventually crash.

2. Relearn how to write. Learn brevity by writing your resume in 140 characters (not words, characters). Here’s mine:
   
   Communication experience: been there, done that. Write like I talk, talk like I write. Smart, getting smarter. Eager to give more than take.
   
   Once you do that, you will know at your core who you are and why you’re good. Then, write up your full resume with those truths as your themes. Also, post your resume bite on Twitter, which mandates 140 characters or less, and watch the effect of personal viral marketing.
   
   One more writing suggestion: always carry 3x5 cards. Write one impression, one story idea, or one nugget of wisdom per card. You’ll be amazed at how having cards in your pocket improves your vision and hearing.
   
   

   Dance lesson: If you want to Swing, rock in place, side to side, then left foot behind right foot, and rock, rock. Short and simple, huh? And cool, very cool.

3. Relearn how to listen. Spend time listening closely to the folks who leave work promptly at 5:00 p.m. – the ones you sometimes consider laggards. Hear how they help out each other without being asked, how they gossip because they don’t qualify for information benefits, how they get excited about going home to coach soccer, read romance novels, watch “Heroes” – simple stuff, fun stuff, life stuff. Hear the beat of their work-play lives.
   
   

   Dance lesson: If you can’t hear the beat of the music, the rest of your body gets confused.

4. Relearn how to present. For your next report presentation to management, don’t use PowerPoints, organize everything around the only two messages the group is likely to remember, use at least one personal story, warm up before you speak not as you speak, say what you know and simply, and be more interesting than your audience’s Blackberries.
   
   

   Dance lesson: With slow, formal dances, you look good from the armpits up even if your feet are catching up.

5. Relearn how to relate. Explain what you did at work yesterday to a four-year old, then your neighbor, then your clergy leader, and finally to your partner. Do that weekly until every one of them maintains eye contact. Now you’re relating.
   
   

   Dance lesson: If you’re the leader and think your partner can easily follow, remember she or he is trying to follow you backwards.

__________

Resources
When Adjectives are Necessary
How to Listen
How to be Creative (from the Dilbert blog)
How to Mindmap (Tony Buzan)
Writing with Confidence
Panorama of presentation styles here

How To Up Communication During This Down Time

Whew! Your job didn’t get eliminated. Your boss is gone and so is half your staff, but you still have a paycheck and benefits … at least for awhile.

Two other positives to ponder:

When you have nothing, you may realize you didn’t really need something. (Preach it, brother!) It’s true. You can now cut those budget line-items you inherited that eat up trees and your time but have little traction with audiences: for starters, the holiday card, pocket calendar, and reprints of aren’t-we-wonderful booklets.

You also have an unusual opportunity -- though painful -- to test your leadership mettle, which you may not have done on your own. Maybe you will even re-engineer yourself. A CEO boss of mine used to say that anyone can manage in the good times, but …

Back to the uncomfortable news. Here are scenarios that are likely to befall you.

If you lead a headquarters and/or service department, the “o” in overhead just got capitalized. Every sale not made or order cancelled means that your colleagues are struggling that much more to pay for your existence. They like you, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that they don’t quite know what you do and, if they have some knowledge they’re not sure that what you do is worth doing. It’s not that you have a bull’s eye on your back; it’s that you have to demonstrate your worth more aggressively but authentically as well.

While employees have been cut, expectations have not. Whatever your group had been doing, no one higher up or sideways is thinking that your output will go down. In fact, if your team complemented or coordinated the work of counterparts in other departments, probably those counterparts have departed. Expect a batch of hurting managers to be calling with that team-spirit pitch for help.

Your remaining staff is experiencing a death in the family. Their colleagues/friends are gone, the programs that defined much of their identity are gone, and whatever predictability there had been about the future (though a delusion) is gone.

• Some of them have now become super-busy real fast out of fear of looking dispensable.
• Others have gone catatonic, thinking that a low-profile keeps them below the radar.
• Still others scan for scraps of rumors and quibble among themselves as to who really should have been let go.

What all of them share are a degree of survivor guilt and a deep-rooted sense – or hope -- that maybe, just maybe, they will survive all of this mess.

Your assignment is to move the group from survive to thrive -- not an easy role but, then again, you are a leader. You can start by setting three priorities:

1. Focus much of your time over the next month on intra-staff communication. Win over your staff to possibility thinking and they will encourage others to tough it out. Shift their focus gently from empathy toward colleagues who have exited to the special challenges that require their resourcefulness.


2. Focus communication on the positive without being pollyannaish, on honesty without naiveté. Stick to the facts about the organization's unfolding financial situation and cite comments and stories from seasoned, credible leaders with survival experience.


3. Focus on producing more results with fewer resources. You don’t want to just boost morale, which can be fleeting, but bolster a spirit of ingenuity, ideas, productivity, and results.

Consider implementing these five ideas:

1. Develop a Survive and Thrive kit, which should include your reconstituted 12-month plan and whatever clever ideas can convey the more-with-less message. Make it upbeat but not silly.


2. Direct the staff to convert the 12-month plan into individual performance objectives. But change the format. Tell them you want those objectives in a resume as if it were written one year from now. What do they expect to accomplish that will convince a potential employer they had produced impressive results under pressure? If you effectively lead the group to greater productivity in this downtime, they will stay with you for the long-term.


3. Share with your staff the job descriptions of former staffers and, for each one, ask them to prioritize the three most important responsibilities, given current conditions. Then ask who would want to take all or some of those responsibilities as a way to stretch themselves professionally while keeping the department and organization functioning.


4. Spring for a half-day from a skilled social marketing consultant and have him/her review your new 12-month plan and explore with the team about how to reroute efforts and increase effectiveness through viral communication, social networks, and other cost-efficient sources. Make sure the nodes in that network are those most likely to be suspect of your department’s value.


5. Identify external resources --- whose charges these days are negotiable -- who can support those departments that are looking to you for help. When they have to pick up the tab, they may quickly develop priorities and back away.

Resources
How to boost team morale after a layoff
Mass layoffs can lead to ’survivor guilt’
Layoff Aftermath: Learn how to minimize the aftereffects of layoffs


Illustration by: Joan M. Mas

Emails, Calls, Meetings -- all Twitter

Depleted from the labor pains of birthing my blog, I turned for titillation to Twitter, the online, hyperventilating chat network.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t set up my “friends” network when I signed on months back, and I wasn’t sure who I would talk with. But, c’mon, of the 2.3 million people who use Twitter, surely someone would say “hello” (which is 139 words fewer than Twitter’s longest short message).

After signing on, a window popped up saying that no one was following me and I was not following anyone, and asked, “What was I doing?” In other words, “Nothing to say … no friends?”

Aren’t those the two reasons why corporate managers – the decision-makers who thumb social networking up or down -- won’t take to Twitter. They don’t have time to follow anything else nor do they want anyone following what they’re doing. And when they hear about Twitter, it strikes them as a lot of key-tapping for what amounts to trivial exchanges.

But, is Twitter really extra work and a waste of time or, strangely, could it possibly be a more engaging, and, yes, efficient way to achieve business results? Is it much different than what occupies our time now? Stay with me.

Look at what we say runs and over-runs our lives: emails, smart phones, and meetings. Why? Don’t blame technology. We choose to open emails, turn on phones, and attend meetings. We impulsively tell colleagues and new acquaintances to “keep us posted,” “call us,” and “set up a meeting about that.”

Why?

It’s because we humans crave attention, news, and companionship. We are driven to be in the know and be known, to like and be liked, and to draw power from information and people. We will even consider that information when it’s trivial -- gossip, speculations, reality TV – and from people we don’t like all that much.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Call it chatter. We chatter when we jot a few words in response to emails from colleagues, banter with customers by phone between golf swings, and when we catch up on each other’s lives while waiting for a meeting to start.

Quick-fire exchanges seem like time-wasters -- rationally thinking, that is -- but are they ever informative. The more emotional the conversation, the less posturing people do; the more babble, the more we seem to understand what’s going really going on behind what appears to be happening. That’s because, in part, the messages are short, transparency abounds, and PowerPoints are missing. Chatter is good: it informs, centers, and stimulates us. And we like all of that.

Strangely, meetings are more fulfilling than phone conversations, which are more satisfying than emails.

• Emails are one-to-one, pre-meditated, time-delayed, and impersonal.
• Phone conversations are one-to-one, spontaneous, immediate, and friendly exchanges that rely on questions for context: “What are you doing now?” “Where did you go for lunch?”
• Meetings are one–to-many, many-to-many, and yet personal. The most effective meetings involve lots of interaction, honest sharing of ideas, to-the-point questions, and concise dialogue.

Now we’re talking Twitter: one-to-many and many-to-many; quick transactions of unedited, raw-honest comments that feel personal.

But do we really want all those interruptions? Don’t we encourage that now?

• We tell everyone that our door is always open to them.
• We extol the interactivity that cubicles are supposed to provide.
• We let our staffers have our cell number on speed dial.

As David Sacks notes – he’s the founder of Twitter competitor Yammer -- we don’t want to hear five times a day what friends are doing, but we do want to hear from co-workers five times a day about what they’re working on.

If I have convinced you at all that the nature of Twitter is the nature of what we’re doing already – and want and need to do – then why not try out this new channel as possibly a more effective way to learn from each other and increase productivity.

Here are three painless ways to explore the possibilities, ranging from you as a bystander to you as a full participant:

1. Pick an enterprising staff member who is a social networker (uses Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.) and ask her to set up a staff Twitter group. Have your administrative assistant participate. Your lead staffer will give you reliable reports; your AA will tell you if and when you should connect.
2. Set up a Twitter group among those with direct and dotted-line reporting relationships to you and who are working remotely (at home, in other offices and countries). Explain that you are exploring new, possibly more efficient and more human channels for keeping everyone informed and swapping ideas. In this scenario, you join in, at least every few days, to check progress and add comments.
3. Set up a group for an upcoming event -- a trade show, annual meeting, customer outing – and use Twitter on laptops and cell phones, primarily, to orchestrate the logistics. Here you are a constant participant by monitoring your staff’s work, adding brief revisions, and throwing in accolades.

Try out Twitter for three months with these guidelines.

• Stick with this one channel for now; jumping headlong into My Space, Flickr, and other networks will make you cool with your kids but will quickly lead to fatigue.
• Get regular staff feedback on how to customize the use of Twitter to your group's specific needs.
• Focus on results, though don’t be too rigid on making a go/no-go decision at the end of the three months. You may want to extend its use or apply it to a different situation before you add or cut Twitter.

I almost forgot. What about the concern of being followed? If you’re a leader or emerging leader, you know the formula: be transparent, dialogue honestly, show trustworthiness, be available, entertain all ideas – in short let people know you, how you think, and how you act and, perhaps, they will indeed follow you at work and on Twitter.

Resources
Set up a Twitter account
Read 11 reasons to use Twitter for business
Read Applying Twitter: How It Works For Business
Read Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter
Read The Secret to Twitter
Subscribe to TwiTip, a new blog on Twitter
Twhirl. a tool that reportedly simplifies. beautifies, and amplifies twittering
Statistics supporting the Twitter craze