Business Insight Zone

If you read this blog very much, you’ll have guessed at one of my major beliefs about the way we work today: the psychological hangups and gaps in thinking that we face as individuals mirror the hangups and gaps we face in organizations.

Often, it works like this: Individual X fails to focus because Team X fails to focus because Company X fails to focus . . . because Team X fails to focus because Individual X fails to focus. Yes, it’s a tautology — but it’s a real-life tautology that we face every day in the working world.

Individual performance = Group performance.

This outlook leads me to think about how individual lessons from psychology and cognition apply to institutional challenges, and to think about enlightened practices of business organization and leadership apply to personal excellence. These are fruitful veins to pursue, not least because they supply never-ending inspiration for how individuals and organizations can perform better.

Case in point: Marcia Conner’s latest Fast Company post, “More or Less.” Conner’s professional emphasis is on learning, and I would argue that what she recommends for high-achieving individuals applies equally well to high-achieving organizations. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, but meanwhile here’s a key passage:

Each day I ask myself these questions:

What is it time for?
What is it time to let go of?
Is there even more to let go?

Although some mornings I catch myself trying to separate or avoid the answers, I find these questions as intertwined as learning and life.

Asking them works. Change comes more easily. My capacity to make clear decisions has soared.

How does this apply to my business?

In my experience, both as a worker within organizations and as a business analyst studying them from the outside, this guidance works just as well at the group level.

• What is it time for your company to do?
• What is it time for your company to let go of?
• Is there even more for your company to let go of?

These are hard questions because they’re so basic (a theme we’ve been talking about recently). It would be much easier to fall prey to the mindset of more-more-more — the same one that Conner says inhibited her for decades. More is always better, right?

Sometimes Less Is More.

When we wake up to reality, we realize that we have old practices, old projects, and old ways of thinking that inhibit our success far more than they can ever contribute to it. If we’re honest with ourselves and our colleagues, we come to realize that we’ll be better off doing fewer things, but doing them better.

This is hardly new advice — it’s really just the Pareto Principle dressed in different clothes — but most of the time we don’t need new advice. We need to heed the same old good advice that we haven’t yet come to grips with.

How do I use this?

Looking ahead to this last week of business before the business world shuts down for ten days . . . what do you need to come to grips with personally? What does your organization need to come to grips with as a group? The sooner you face it honestly, the sooner you can benefit from the clarity of mind that Conner talks about in her piece.

While you’re at it . . .

Take heed of Conner’s advice in an earlier article and get some sleep:

The thinking part of your brain (the cerebral cortex of the frontal lobe) is the first area to falter when you lose more than a few hours of sleep. That part of your brain is responsible for your most important mental assets: focus, flexibility, innovation, decision-making, and putting things in perspective. Perhaps you justify lacking these skills at 1:00 a.m., but what about the next day? New approaches to sleep research show that sleepy people tend to use a smaller vocabulary, with more clichés, and have more trouble finding creative ways to solve complex problems. You’re sleepy and dopey, too.

It’s much easier for me to write this on a Sunday afternoon, with a good long night’s sleep under my belt, than on any other day of the week. “Be a good animal” first, and you’re much likelier to have success in your business.