I recently completed a 4-week series of workshops for nearly 60 nonprofit leaders from around the globe on managing themselves and others. Many new folks on this list are coming from that incredible crew of folks - welcome! It was a delight to support you and your mission-driven organizations over the last month. Let's get to your Monthly Management Memo - as always, with something bold, something new, something borrowed, and something to pursue.
🔥Something Bold - Give People Time Away There are some stressful, infuriating, and anxiety-producing things happening in the world right now. I love this advice from years ago from The Management Center: "When things get really hard, sometimes the best thing a manager can do is to say, 'Hey, just take the day off to recuperate. What can I do to make that possible for you?' At TMC, this is part of our culture. In the wake of the Buffalo shootings, our Chief of Staff sent the following message: 'Some folks—including you—may need time away from work. Some folks may want the opposite. We want to make sure people know that if they need the time, they have the time (and to be explicit, paid leave from TMC, not using their vacation or personal time).' Part of using your power for good is knowing when the value of eight hours of rest and distance from work will far outweigh the eight hours they'd be putting in on the clock."
🆕 Something New - Refresh Your Meetings One of you (hi, Lisa!) recently wrote to ask about how to rethink team meetings - she has a team where most folks think their staff meetings are effective, but some disagree, and she wondered about doing a survey. Here's what I suggested she try: "I wonder if a team conversation might be better than a survey here. The way you might think about it is have everyone spend five or seven quiet minutes jotting down their thoughts, perhaps on Post-it notes, about what the team should stop doing when it comes to meetings, what the team should start doing when it comes to meetings, what the team should continue doing when it comes to meetings, and what the team should grow (do more of) when it comes to meetings. Then, have everyone put their thoughts up on the wall together if you are in person, or use a Zoom whiteboard if you are virtual for that meeting, group answers together if they are similar, and then you could have people do some dot voting. They could put dots on their favorite ideas, for example. That would generate some ideas that the team could try, maybe for one month, or 3 months, and then revisit to see how it is going." Try this if your team meetings could use a refresh.
🤝🏼 Something Borrowed - Cal Newport on 4-Day Workweeks Cal's one of the foremost thinkers on productivity myths and doing work that matters. I appreciatedthis piece he wrote, which reviews the science on 4-day workweeks. He names a concept the "workload fairy tale" - the story we tell ourselves that our current pile of commitments represents exactly the amount of work we need to be doing to succeed. Here's what's fascinating: studies on 4-day workweeks consistently show that when people work fewer hours, productivity stays the same or even improves. Newport's insight? Much of what fills our weeks might be optional. We keep saying "yes" and inventing busy work until we've packed every minute, associating all that activity with being productive.
I'm not working a 4-day workweek myself, but I also think that there's no reason to believe that I'm any different than the hundreds of thousands of workers who are proving that it's no less productive than the traditional 5-day workweek. I am going to move in this direction. What do you think?
🏃🏾♀️Something to Pursue - Make Sure the Annual Review Headline is Clear If you've a practice of annual or semi-annual performance reviews in your organization, it's easy to get caught up in the compliance logistics and forms. This can cause some major mistakes - I've seen situations where significantly underperforming employees walked away without clarity that their jobs were at risk, and I've seen the opposite - where high-performers left performance conversations defeated about the feedback they heard. It's critical that both in writing and in conversations that your team members leave with the same understanding of the "headline" of the review as you. If they're a high performer, you might write and say, "The most important thing for you to take away from this review is that you are doing excellent work right now. We are so lucky to have you, and I'm hoping we get to work together for many years to come." If their work is not up-to-par and it's a problem, you might write and say, "It's difficult to say, but it's important that you hear from me that if there's not significant improvement in the areas covered here, your job might be at risk. I'm hopeful that's not the case and I'm here to support you, but I also want to be clear about the stakes because you deserve to have the full picture."
P.S. I haven't announced this anywhere yet, but I just finalized the dates for the next cohort of Joyfully Managed Worklife. It's a revamped program, and the price is even going down! Be sure to get on the waitlist to hear about it this week or next, once I have all the information ready for you.
Bring your team; I'll bring my A-game. I love helping teams with workshops on productivity, team culture, and effectiveness at work. Find out more and book a free chat to see if I can be helpful to your organization.