“Received! Will review and get back to you shortly.”

Or 2 seconds. Press. Tap.

👍🏻

Or even a few more keystrokes to insert a snippet.

“Thank you for your ticket! We’re investigating and will reach out with next steps as soon as we can.”

Why do many of us find it inconvenient to acknowledge one another in our digital communication?

What might change in our interactions if we made the time for it? With our team? With our customers?

People want to be acknowledged

In a previous role, I helped build a piece of internal software that enabled our inside sales reps to respond to web inquiries with a phone call within 60 seconds of their submission. Our president was early to read this research and we made rapid response a reality. As it happens, customers loved it. It was an extremely satisfying and culturally defining project with real business impact.

But, I’m not just talking about sales leads. The value proposition for acknowledgment exists in more subtle interactions too.

One of four pillars in Atlassian’s team communication philosophy is “Show that you are paying attention.” This includes a statement on digital reactions. Within modern communication tools, every platform has some version of a reaction. These are fantastic for acknowledgement. It takes such little effort to double-tap a message or click an emoji to just let the sender know they’ve been seen.

“Saw it.” “I see you.” “Thanks for the effort.”

Acknowledgment makes them feel seen and heard, which is good. But here’s the enlightened self-interest: Acknowledgement also buys YOU time.

Clarity creates time to respond

I will speak for myself, any demand to respond quickly to others is annoying. I genuinely dislike the presumption on my time. But as I have learned to subdue that urge within service roles, I’ve learned that a good and honest acknowledgment will buy me the flexibility and control to follow up thoroughly at a time that works best for me.

“Got your message! There’s a lot of information here. Busy day, but I’ll review and respond soon with the attention this deserves.”

In my current capacity of managing IT service organizations, problems can be complex and take real time to triage and understand. I would prefer that my customers know we’re aware and doing that work on their behalf.

Acknowledge is the first step to every protocol.

• When a error alert hits Slack, the on-call engineer is responsible to react so that everyone knows eyes are on the issue. No pressure to resolve it immediately, but you must acknowledge it.

• When a customer support request hits Jira, an acknowledgment is expected within 15 minutes. Let them know the message was received and triage is underway.

We are rarely able to fully respond right away. Time is often necessary to respond and resolve what is being asked.

With acknowledgement, the sender can be at peace with the time you’re taking to respond to their need. Without acknowledgment, they will be left wondering.

When stakes are low, this is unnecessary stress. When stakes are high, this can cause real damage to the relationship. Customers don’t like yelling into the void. How many of us like to be left on read for hours or days? A simple acknowledgement would go a long way.

One final note: Acknowledgement must be backed by action, otherwise it will lose its integrity. If you promise to follow up, then follow up.

It’s all upside

Walk into a cafe and the barista is rushing to serve the queue of people hovering around the counter. How would you feel if they never say a word or look up until 10 minutes later? Would it feel easier to wait if they give you a smile and nod?

“Welcome! I’ll be with you shortly.”

No one likes a long line, but they like it far less when it’s invisible and no one is managing their expectations. For those of us who work online or communicate through our fingers and screens every day, everything is invisible unless we choose to call it out.

Acknowledgement is often so easy, and can have outsized benefit to both you and them. Consider making it a priority in your digital communication.

Television has a schedule.

Radio has a clock.

Athletics have a season.

Olympics are every four years.

Monday arrives every 7th day.

Accountants have “month’s end.”

The “All Hands” meeting is every Tuesday at 10.

Rhythm makes the rules.

Recurring events set expectations.

Ritual creates order. It creates beginning, middle, and an end to otherwise unstructured existence.

If collaborating with others, it puts everyone on beat.

If collaborating with yourself, it creates clarity and accountability.

Lists are hard. Time is harder.

Deciding WHEN removes the hardest decision: Where will I find the time?

Few of us ever find time. We need to make it.

I will work on this project for 2 hours every Friday.

I will try this new habit for 1 month then reasses.

I will work out every morning at 6am for 20 minutes.

How far can we get?

Fixed time, variable scope.

How much dysfunction can we avoid if we stop trying to decide when something is done or ready?

All scope is variable. Deadlines are made up.

It’s ready, because it’s Tuesday, and that’s the day we show progress!

It’s done, because the month is over and we were only willing to give this thing one month of effort. (We could choose to spend another month on it now. Does it deserve it?)

How much progress can we make in the time we allotted to it?

Move with time, not against it.

What changes if we can rely on one hour of progress each and every week. When will that hour be?

You have the list. You will always have the list.

First, claim the hour. When that hour arrives, start at the top of your list!

If the work is worth doing, then it’s worth deciding how much time we can give it and how often.

This decision provides relief too. When we can trust that “Tuesday is when we do that” then Monday breathes a bit easier.

If something disrupts us once, we know exactly when we’ll get back on track.

Time continues to move. Move with it.

Participants spent half a day exploring the value of WHY and in service of WHO, building pages of notes and ideas of WHAT they might do next. There is real excitement and motivation to bring ideas into reality.

So, the question I got to ask is WHEN?

I have a theory that all work is lists and time. Lists can be hard, but time is harder. To elevate above the chaos and confidently march forward requires one to embrace the reality of change and continually realign to what matters most. There are many ways to be intentional with your time, and here’s one of them:

The Weekly Ritual

List 1: What are 5 things that you want to do?

(Each person used a BLUE sticky note for this list in the workshop.)

Boil it down to the five things on your mind right now. What are a few meaningful things that would move you forward? In service of your mission, your goals, your customers.

What would you do, if you had the time?

List 2: What are 5 things that took your time this week?

(Everyone used a RED sticky note for this.)

What was the unplanned work? Without judgement, “unplanned” is not automatically unnecessary or even unwelcome. Often, unplanned work is the work. There is opportunity in crisis and our schedule bends in service of the customer.

But, as it relates to our ability to manage our time and move forward confidently, unplanned is unpredictable. If we are overtaken by the unplanned, then the net result is our planned work will never get done. The result is stagnation and frustration.

How well does that serve the customer?

Schedule: Choose a focus for this week.

(Break out the YELLOW sticky note.)

On this note, we’ll three things, specific to this week:

• Reflect — Review your RED list.

  • First, what’s one thing that was the most painful or disruptive? (Circle it)

  • Second, what’s one thing you can do this week to better anticipate and respond to similar events?

• Realign — Review your BLUE list.

  • First, choose one thing you definitely Won’t Do … yet. You can’t do it all, so relax any anxiety about that getting that thing done this week and refocus on the others. (Cross it out)

  • Second, choose one and only one thing that you can commit to doing.

  • Third, schedule it. Give it one hour and decide WHEN that hour will be.

• Repeat — When will you do this exercise again? (Schedule it)

  

Done once, this exercise doesn’t feel like much. Done every week, and the momentum builds. Every time you do this, you create the opportunity to remember what is important to you and to choose how will you spend your time to realize it.

What changes when you reflect and learn from interruptions as a habit? You will weaken their power to derail you.

What changes when you can consistently rely on accomplishing at least one meaningful thing each and every week? Your list may always grow, but it won’t stagnate. You’ll be solving new problems and moving forward.

As outlined here, this is a personal ritual intended for you to lead yourself. It can scale! Partnerships, Teams, Organizations — any collection of people who are trying to move forward can benefit from an alignment ritual together: Reflect, Realign, Repeat.

In this moment, Mack expounds on Agency as characterized by four interdependent skills:

• Clear Thinking

• Resourcefulness

• Bias-to-Action

• Disagreeableness

Each of these deserves an essay of their own, and in total, I was struck by their interdependence — remove any one of the four and you have a very ineffective or abrasive person. As with any model of human behavior, balance is key.

I was first introduced to this term “disagreeableness” in a Malcolm Gladwell piece about “culturally acceptable” coaching strategy in ice hockey. I love it — the hipster streak in myself appreciates the permission to disagree with consensus and question norms that just don’t make sense. A trait often praised as genius in retrospect, but rarely appreciated in the moment. Disagreeable people can be disruptive and make people uncomfortable. Again, balance is key.

I am also struck by the overlap with tenets of Design Thinking — which has many definitions, but typically includes ideas of:

• Empathy

• Ideation

• Prototyping

• Iteration

This makes for a really compelling model for creative leadership.

• What can happen if we reframe every circumstance with a resourceful mindset of “No problem is unsolvable”?

• When we disagree that “the rules” apply to us or that the answer we’ve been given is the acceptable one?

• What challenges will we choose to face with a commitment to empathy and clear thinking?

• Prototyping and Iteration demand a bias to action by definition.

What can’t we do with this combination? Design + Agency. What aspect of life is not enhanced in some way by these mindsets?

Anyway, that’s my thought of the week. Enjoy the day! ✌🏻

Post-script: Elsewhere in the conversation, Chris affirms the act of writing and sharing one’s thoughts in a public forum, if for no other purpose than to clarify and improve your own grasp of those thoughts. Yes! That was a needed reminder of the reason I am writing this substack. Thanks for being part of that process. 🙏🏻

As a business leader responsible for investment in technology, I use this tool to manage our roadmap of software applications. The end game: Informed priority. What manner of love does each application in my portfolio need? Where should we direct our limited resources and effort?

I’m not sure where I first heard of this method, but LeanIX has the best write up I can find online. I’ve shared this many times with many people.

Step 1: Make a list

Make a list of your applications! If you don’t have an inventory yet, this is your sign from the universe to make one. Don’t overthink it, just write down every application under your purview. Spoiler alert: this list is always longer than you expect.

Step 2: Assign ratings

For each application, assign two scores on a 1-10 scale: Technical Fit and one for Functional Fit.

• Y-axis: Technical Fit — What is the technical quality of this application? i.e. What’s the measure of security, reliability, and performance? How much do your users love or hate it? How much does your IT and security admin love it or hate it?

• X-axis: Functional Fit — What is the value to the business? How well does this system perform the business purpose? I.e. How much do your users depend on this system to deliver on their work?

Don’t overthink it. What do your users complain about? What systems are commonly discussed in operational support? Use data if you have it. Trust your intuition if you don’t.

Consider comparative ranking as you go. Make sure each item is appropriately lower/higher than another when compared to one another.

Step 3: Profit! (aka, Chart it.)

Once scored, chart it. This is a classic two-axis, four box grid. Every application will fall into one of four quadrants:

Tolerate: High technical quality, low functional fit.

• GEMO! (Good enough, move on.) Don’t spend your time here.

• The high technical quality of these applications should mitigate risk while the business maintains status quo and focuses effort elsewhere.

Invest: High technical quality, high functional fit.

• These are your high-performing assets. Every dollar spent here is moving you forward.

• If you’re coming off a season of investment, you may be able to let these investments mature and begin to realize your intended return.

Migrate: Low technical quality, high functional fit.

• These demand your attention — applications that the business relies on, yet technical performance is unreliable or the user experience is poor.

• Every dollar spent here should mitigate risk and pull you out of technical debt.

• Work here may not be sexy, but will be necessary. Failure to take action here may see painful outcomes among business-critical tools.

Eliminate: Low quality, low fit.

• The dead weight dragging your portfolio down.

• Every dollar spent here might feel wasted, but you’ll reap benefit in time, attention, and reduction of risk.

• Addition by subtraction. Close these systems and move on.

A few considerations

This tool is: A means to clarify the big picture and drive communication. TIME takes very rough qualitative data (a list of applications and two scores) and turns it into perspective. Your mileage may vary.

This tool is not: A plan, a timeline, or a cost-benefit analysis. It cannot dictate what to do first or what should be done at all. All of these quadrants represent effort and work. Let this be a data point to compare what kind of work may be appropriate.

Garbage in, Garbage out: Your analysis is only as strong as the data and context you bring to it. Consider this:

1. Completeness — Is your inventory thorough? Is anything missing?

2. Bias — Be honest about how subjective your scores may be. If they’re pulled from your point of view, own that. Where aggregating input from business and/or technology specific stakeholders, own that too.

3. Customer Voice — Tap into existing feedback mechanisms. Where you have data, use it. Volume of support requests? Volume of errors and issues? Talk to stakeholders to validate your quantitative and qualitative assessment — does it feel right?

Go forth and prosper

TIME Analysis doesn’t give you all the answers, but it’s a powerful starting point. For those of you in a position to decide priority, it shines a spotlight on what’s working, what’s failing, and where you may want to focus your energy.

I’ve found it useful. Hopefully you do too. 🖖🏻

I can’t deny my nature as a Project Management Guy™. This was going to be the greatest project of our lives with an 8-month immovable deadline!

One of life’s most exciting moments brought instant anxiety. The first featured loop on life’s rollercoaster of parenthood. We’re having a baby!!?! What now??!?

Step 1: Identify All The Things

Armed with a blank canvas and virtual sticky notes, we wrote down everything we could think of.

Every task. Every idea. Every fear. Every concern. Every anxiety. Every decision.

No editing. No judgement. No de-duplication. No assignment. No sizing. No prioritization. No categorization.

We filled the board. It took us mere minutes to produce a hundred disparate thoughts.

Step 2: Decide What’s First

1. Of all these things, what should actually be done within a month? No more than ten items were grouped to the left.

2. Of those, what should be done within a week? There were three.

3. Close the laptop. Great work! We’ll think about the other 97 things next week.

Eight months of pregnancy and a potential lifetime of parenthood reduced to three simple, unassuming first steps. Three things for now, the rest for not now.

This sorting exercise would become a weekly ritual for us — adding new ideas as we discovered them, and refocusing on the few things we could actually do now. This is one of the few practices that have carried us through our daughter’s arrival.

When faced with an overwhelming challenge, take a moment. Reset. Sequence the concerns. Identify all the things, then decide: What is for now and what is not now?

We can do anything, just not everything, and not all at once.

To be fair, the weather has undeniable significance in the cycling experience. Rain is wet. Sun is hot. Ice is slippery. Humidity can put you in the hospital (it did so to me once).

And the wind? The wind is our nemesis. Second perhaps only to sailors and base jumpers, cyclists consider the wind in every aspect of our sport and strategy. Aero is everything.

The affects of weather are real, but our obsession with it is obnoxious and unhelpful. Focus on weather takes us out of the moment. Weather is an easy excuse. It gives permission to complain, to become moody, disgruntled or even angry when things get hard. As if we deserve comfort while choosing to do an intrinsically uncomfortable thing like exercise.

Weather isn’t good or bad. Weather just is. Weather is part of the environment we live in and part of the world we step out into. Acknowledge it. Prepare for it. Adjust course to deal with it, or use it to your advantage.

If you have a tailwind, celebrate! You’re fast today. If you have a headwind, put your head into it and pedal harder. Rain can be refreshing. Sun can warm you. Accept and choose it all. The Velominati’s Rule #5 says “HTFU”. The Norwegian’s say Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!

This approach to accept the natural environment we operate in — quietly, without comment or obsession — can also be applied to work and life. What headwinds of industry do you allow to slow you down? What heat of your environment is making you sweat? What demotivational rains keep you indoors waiting for the perfect day?

In regards to weather — in cycling or in life — give no credit, assign no blame. Let’s stop talking about it and get to work.

No. “Let’s take a walk and I’ll show you.”

In digital industries and knowledge work, it’s work making our work visible. We spend so much energy trying to quantify and qualify progress, with good intentions. In reality, so much is lost in translation as we communicate about the work.

It’s also tempting to hide behind the ambiguity of soft updates and flexible interpretations. Words can have multiple meanings and sometimes come up empty. Actions are more concrete. You’ve either done something, or you haven’t.

When communicating about our work, everyone benefits when we choose to show, not tell.

Show a newly released software feature in action with a real world example. Don’t tell your users how much they’ll love it.

Show your discarded drafts and invite others to appreciate your design process. Don’t tell them to take your word for it.

Show collaborators your calendar and and invite them to help you make time. Don’t tell people how busy you are.

Show your boss the list and ask them to help you prioritize. Don’t tell them you’re overloaded.

Show stakeholders the obstacles you’ve encountered and invite them to help evaluate tradeoffs. Don’t tell people the project is late.

Show your attention to a customer issue and actually solve it. Don’t tell me you how much you care.

Show impact.

Show scale.

Show emotion.

Show setbacks.

Show data.

Show effort.

Show the mess.

Show reality, and share clarity on where we are now — giving us the opportunity to move forward together.

By solving a problem.

By doing the work.

Am I preventing others from growing? Learning from experimentation, from pain, from failure.

What if they never feel the pain?

When do the “bulletproof” systems and processes put in place to fix, protect and restore start creating weakness?

A rigid cast around a fragile or broken limb will help it heal. But very quickly, muscles atrophy and become weak.

When does the cast come off?

When does active rehabilitation start?

When do we start training the old and new muscle around it?

When does that transition happen in the workplace?

Something is broken, and it’s painful. Surgery, stitches, splints, and the bleeding is stopped.

New structure is formed around the healing process, as it hardens.

A fixed problem. It’s yours to protect, care for, keep safe.

You’ve gotten used to living with it.

That helpful brace is comforting. Removing it is going to hurt.

Rehab is uncomfortable. Therapy requires unlearning a few things.

But keeping that cast on too long has created new problems. Ugh. 😑

Life is phases.

What phase is this work in? What does it require?

Bulletproofing? Firm formation of protective layers and defense outside elements? Or is it time to rebuild new muscle?

By doing your job, are you protecting others from pain or from growth?

What qualifies one as a professional might be material for another post.

A universal characteristic of plans is that they will change. Rather than be frustrated by this reality or abandon structure in the name of infinite agility, there’s a third way: Get good at changing your plans.

As a professional planner and a technology team leader, my role — in large part — is to solicit desires from an array of diverse stakeholders, reconcile them with reality, recommend a plan to deliver on those desires and then implement that plan through a team of talented creators.

In our world, the planning horizon is a calendar quarter, subdivided by months, and further distilled to weeks.

It’s hard work to determine priorities in the first place, build a good plan, and get everyone to buy into it. Once that work is done, new ideas and priorities can feel threatening. And yet, a universal characteristic of stakeholders is that they will change their minds. Priorities, like the weather, shift.

There are many times when I feel compelled to defend a plan from these shifts. How do you listen to a stakeholder’s idea of what they want now while reminding them of what they wanted previously?

Agility is a solution buzzword in software. It’s a buzzword because software teams often get this balance very wrong. Invisible forces drive us to build more detailed and more thorough plans. Over-planning is an industry-wide dysfunction. The opposite problem — rudderless pursuit of every new idea is equally dysfunctional.

Over-planning and under-planning both bring us to the same place: Failure to deliver what matters, on time.

We don’t have it all figured out, but I’m proud of our team’s planning process. We systematically make medium and short-term plans while inviting the continual discovery of new ideas and issues. These new candidates aren’t granted VIP passes to skip the line. They’re filtered at the door with [at least] these two simple questions:

• Have our goals changed? Short-term plans were built to serve longer-term goals. This question reveals a couple of things — If we weren’t able to articulate the goal in the first place, it’s hard to articulate a departure from it OR if the goal has in fact changed, then the plan should naturally adapt. Those adaptations may encounter new realities and everyone should prepare themselves to accept that.

• When do you really want it? Keep it simple. Use the calendar. Principally, if you want now, you’re changing plans already in motion. If you can wait, even for a short time, then we can make plans around the new requirement.

This scales up or down to whatever time horizon you work at. Need it today? I’m going to have to drop everything else. Can it wait for tomorrow? I’ll plan around it.

The costs of changing plans are not easily quantified. Your dependable, steady software developer who thrives getting “stuck in” to deep problems, may grow to resent you for changing their priorities quickly and often. A designer who needs time to think through a solution, may create a less thoughtful design if you give them a new problem and half the time to adapt. Productivity erodes when we shift contexts.

Business strategy itself will suffer if our process has no mechanism for maintaining longer-term focus. Reactionary fire fighting is an operational necessity, but should be channeled into a mental fast lane, rather than disrupt the steady rhythm of progress.

Change your plans if you need to, but if you find this becoming a habit, ask yourself if there’s opportunity to make them a little differently.

Former IBM CEO Ginni Rommety spoke about her value pillar of “In Service Of” in an interview with Lex Fridman last year. The concept is expanded in her biography and the phrasing has really stuck with me.

It was recalled to mind when I recently facilitated a workshop of department leaders. One of the goals for this workshop was to realign our shared understanding of our technology work justification model (“Why we choose to invest in X, Y, or Z”) and with that, refresh our roadmap for the next several months.

We can do anything, but not everything. So, what’s the best use of our time and investment?

A simple model of our dependancies this might look like concentric rings:

• They are your customer, and you are my customer.

• I serve your needs to position you to serve theirs

• Their success is your success, and your success is our success.

• Their standards are your standards are my standards…. and then some. Because, these things can be exponential.

• What we choose to do should be in service of real Customer needs.

Service professionals — including myself — can get caught up with the concerns of their specific ring, their link in the supply chain. It’s understandable. Every one of these stakeholders has their stakes — ideas, experience, direction, opinions and perspective on what and how to best do the work. Life is tradeoffs and there is no one way.

When collaborators disagree, the right answer is often to look up and look around.

Not often enough do we review the ultimate benefactor of our work. Not often enough do we ask who is this actually for? Who is our work in service of?

• The Patient, in surgery, waiting for an implant.

• attended by Nurses

• directed by Doctors

• supplied by Stockroom Managers

• sourced by Purchasing Agents

• enabled by Contracting Officers

• educated by Sales Reps

• delivered by Truck Drivers

• scheduled by Third Party Shippers

• coordinated by Fulfillment Specialists

• directed by Operations Engineers

• informed by Account Managers

• helped by Help Desk Operators

• supported by Systems Administrators

• enabled by Software Products

• designed by UX Designers

• managed by Site Reliability Engineers

• protected by Information Security Analysts

• …and so it goes.

Why should we care about our link in the chain? Because it will affect the patient.

As Tom Loosemore, one of the key architects of the U.K.'s Government Digital Services, says in this elite presentation on service:

“It’s not complicated, just hard”.

In a way, all work is service. We can choose to be mindful of it, or not.

I want feedback quickly. Is this on?

Is this working? Are we there yet?

I demand progress. I want to see change.

I change my mind. I change my plans.

I try something new. Maybe this will work?

I like working for it. But I like the work I like.

The hardest work is never the hard work you want to do.

Don’t be surprised by the results you’re not getting from the work you’re not doing

I’ve lost the source of this quote. (I’m not sure if it was from my typical teachers James Clear, Ryan Holiday, or maybe a drive-by kick in the butt from David Goggins.) This is one of the few quotes that has held an executive parking space in my mind; one of the few that I haven’t tried to move past for some new shiny idea.

The truth in it is undeniable: Why are you surprised?

You haven’t changed your diet. Why are you surprised that you’re not losing weight?

You haven’t been in the gym. Why are you surprised that you’re not getting stronger?

You haven’t initiated a tough conversation with your co-worker. Why are you surprised your project is behind?

You haven’t meditated in over a month. Why are you surprised that you’re feeling stressed?

You complained yesterday, then did nothing, so why do you expect today to be different?

Inaction removes any grounds for expecting progress. (To be clear, inaction is not to be confused with patience. We’re not questioning the need for patience to realize results.)

The bricks aren’t going to lay themselves.

On this particular day, my plan was to leave for this hike at 5pm, endure a long drive in rush hour traffic, then cram in a short hike before camping outside for the first time in my adult life. I was training for a week-long backcountry hike and this would be my 1-night dress rehearsal.)

My brain was fried. It had been a long week, and it was only Wednesday. I finished another frustrating meeting around midday and in a rush, decided “screw it, let’s go now.” I had no more meetings scheduled, nothing due the next day, and all on-call concerns were covered by others.

The only thing to get over was the guilt of leaving my chair before the “workday” was over. I kept checking my phone until service disappeared and I was forced to disconnect.

It only took me a few hours before my mind cleared. As I walked through the woods, phone off, camera and trekking poles in hand, thoughts started to sort themselves out.

Through the rest of the evening, ideas would flow and I would repeat them aloud into the voice memo app on my phone. Well into the night and early next morning — as I scrambled over rocks with a 40lb pack, battled mosquitoes, made coffee from river water, and read a book with a flashlight like a kid — novel ideas presented themselves on problems that had plagued my productivity for months.

Returning to normal life the next day, it took me two full hours to process these notes. Documents were drafted. Emails were sent. Plans were updated. Work moved forward.

Why did I feel such guilt and resistance to making this happen?

You can’t hike every day. (Managers, relax, I’m not advocating r/antiwork. That place is yikes 😬). Can we acknowledge that knowledge work may be different? More often than not, work demands we show up when we don’t feel like it. That’s great, but this is not about feelings. A surgeon may not be able to perform surgery in the woods. But when your product is your mind, creating space for it to work is a necessary investment.

A simple hike. 20 hours alone in the woods. There are moments when the most valuable thing you can offer your employer or customer is your inattention. Just don’t forget to take notes.

I find it difficult to measure and communicate the performance of “business capabilities” with no clear beginning, middle or end. This work isn’t counting widgets on a conveyor belt, though at times I wish it were.

This leadership challenge was in the back of my mind recently as I listened to an excellent podcast featuring Dr. Allen Lim, the founder of Skratch Labs and a well known face in professional cycling.

He described the experience of serving a World Tour cycling team as Director of Performance and Nutrition.

“The guys stopped complaining. [Stomach distress in races] was no longer a discussion…and that freed up our ability to have discussion about [the new] things they were now complaining about! You move forward.”

Interesting point. Dr. Lim. Can the absence of frustration be used as a metric for progress? 🤔

This idea of monitoring the evolution of customer complaints is very intriguing to me. One might infer that while it can hard to measure progress, it’s not that hard to hear what people are frustrated about. People like to be heard

So, how might one approach this?

• Listening — How are you listening? Who are you listening to? How often do you ask? How do you tune into quiet voices and normalize the loud ones?

• Transcription and Interpretation — What are we really saying? What are the themes? It’s never about what it’s a about, so who’s keeping score?

• Respond — Map these new inputs to your outputs. Make sure your problem solving process is informed by the voice of the customer. This becomes more difficult the further away the “listener” is from the “problem solver”.

• Close the loop — Did we actually solve it? Has the tone changed? Are we hearing new complaints or did our solution just miss the mark?

There’s promise here, but I can anticipate some challenges. Culturally, complaining is cancerous. Dwelling on frustrations and vocal dissatisfaction is a great way to kill positivity and team morale.

We could reframe “complaints” in this model to “constructive feedback”, but sometimes it’s not. Service can be messy. A pissed off customer won’t be having their best day. As a service organization, you must be prepared to receive feedback in whatever form it is offered and make it productive.

After all, in service, it’s not about you.

As such, I believe in leading others with a request-driven style. Asking questions is a very effective and respectful way to lead, influence, and unlock the contributions of people above, around and below you in the org chart.

But can people tell you no?

“If no is not an acceptable answer, then it’s not a question”.

A key mentor and my favorite boss would say this occasionally as I grew into leadership roles. It’s a wise reminder.

As a leader, you must be mindful that your requests may often be perceived as commands. Authority Bias is real, and the HIPPO shows up, even when phrased with a question mark.

The onus is on you to ensure that every question is genuine. This can be communicated implicitly (tone, phrasing) and explicitly (”You can say no”).

When a command is clothed as a one-right-answer-question, the power of the invitation is lost. Make this a habit, and engagement will be replaced with resignation and even resentment. What happens to creativity when a leader routinely asks for input on decisions that have already been made? (Sigh)

Be impeccable with your word

— The Four Agreements

Be honest with yourself and others. There may be times when you simply are not asking. This is also the onus of leadership. A director is paid to direct. If you have already built a culture of invitation, engagement and request leadership, then clear directives used sparingly will be appreciated.

And if you are the one being asked? How do you answer a leading question with a productive “No”? That will need to be another article. 😆

The promise of specialization is that with investment of effort, one might ascend deeply and advance a given domain to a new limit.

The promise of generalization is with similar investment, one might advance in many directions, leaping from one point to another to make novel connections and spread knowledge more broadly.

The reality of specialization includes the opportunity cost of variety, and tunneled focus of vision and tradition.

The reality of generalization includes loss of footing and identity, the risk of shallow connections or moving on before a return on investment can be realized.

Specialists may build on the work of others.

Generalists may build with it.

Specialists start early and utilize compounding interest of time.

Generalists come late, but bring with them diverse experience and perspective

Both have a role.

Both work.

Both are good.

We get to be both.

Does one path suit you better than the other?

One such framework is "Consensus Decision Making," which aims to incorporate cooperation into the decision-making process. The ability to discuss, disagree, and decide is fundamental to any organization's effectiveness.

Of course, this is not my original idea, but I've yet to find a succinct guide with the right level of informality that makes it approachable. This should be easy to implement and simply enough to explain to strangers in 3 minutes. So, here's my version.

Prerequisites

• The group must share a common goal. They may disagree on the path, but the goal is shared and the best intentions must be assumed of everyone.

• The group’s input must be genuinely desired. Have you every been asked for input on a decision that has already been made? What a waste of time. Appeal to consensus when and where consensus is truly needed or desired. Most decisions can be made by a group — this creates ownership and buy in — but if a decision should be decided by a decider, don’t belabor the process.

• Prepare to disagree. This is the space to air your disagreements. When you walk out of the room or close the Zoom call, the group will have made a commitment — The time for objections will have passed. There will be no I told-you-so’s or revisionist renouncements. (Of course, new information might present itself later…and then you’ll be presented with a new decision to make.)

• Someone needs to facilitate. One person in the group (maybe you, if you’re reading this) will lead the room through the following steps, soliciting participation from everyone and restating outcomes for clarity.

These rules of engagement honor the process and make it possible. Okay then, with that out of the way, the process can be pretty simple:

Step 1: Reframe the decision to be made as a proposal statement.

Let’s assume there’s been some healthy discussion. Information has been offered, challenged, remade, etc, etc. Facts and opinions have been exchanged. But, it’s time to snap a line. A decision needs to be made.

What may have started as a question or many questions should now be reframed as a single statement. Multiple choices are sorted, with one choice at the top. The appointed facilitator of this decision process should reframe the decision as a proposal statement that can be answered by everyone in Step 2.

Step 2: Poll for consensus.

Presented with the statement, each participant is required to give one of three possible responses. Everyone must participate.

1. I agree.

2. I agree, with reservations

3. I disagree

Some models expand the possibilities to 5, allowing for greater nuance in disagreement. I like to keep it simple, especially when introducing this method on-the-fly to a new group of participants. There is opportunity to handle nuance in step 3.

Step 3: Process the outcome.

Let’s digest the meaning and response to each of these positions.

1. Agreement with no reservations or hesitations! No further explanation needed.

2. Agreement with some reservation, though not enough to disagree or block the decision. This is not an “abstain” or pure neutral vote. This participant — by sharing their concerns — owns their position and is committing to trust the wisdom of the group. The group may volunteer to modify the proposal to address raised concerns, or may not.

3. Disagreement. This is where the magic happens! This participant knows where they stand and they cannot support the proposal as it has been presented.

If all votes are for 1 or 2, then congrats! The work is done and decision made. But, if we have any votes for #3, then there is a bit more work to do.

Healthy disagreement.

By participating in this consensus process, anyone who votes #3 has agreed to a critical additional step:

Offer a modification to the proposal that, if accepted by the group, would enable you to change your vote to at least #2. (In other words, tell us what we need to do to win your agreement.)

This modification is critical. It eliminates fruitless dissent I-don’t-know-what-I-want-I-just-don’t-like-your-idea energy. This requires an exchange of reason.

The group is now presented with the choice to accept or reject the modification. The facilitiator restates the modified proposal and poll the room again for new votes.

Ideally, the group finds agreement within a few of these modification “loops”. The modified proposal is often better than its initial form, especially if the group understands the nature of win-win agreements and the dangers of compromise.

If the modified proposal cannot be accepted — having heard all proposals, counter-proposals and ensuing discussion — the facilitator (or ultimate decider, if not the same person) may make a new choice:

1. Ask remaining dissenters (#3 Voters) to change their vote to a new (previously unavailable) #4 option: I disagree, but I will not block this decision and I will trust the wisdom of the group.

2. Suspend the process and delay the decision — Assign tasks to gather more information or explore issues raised in the discussion.

3. Make an executive decision — This has its risks, but may be the right thing to do, having formally solicited and received group input.

In my model, this 4th option is not immediately available. I want dissenters to offer modified proposals. But at the end of the day, we may have to “agree to disagree” and do so with the commitment to unity once the decision is made. There will be no “I told you so’s”.

And that’s it! Easy to read, hard to do. But, if you find yourself in the position of facilitating or participating in a group decision, I hope this technique may help you.

Humans are complex and when humans get together, complexity explodes. No methods we invent can fully manage the messes we will make.

As I’ve led myself and other humans through projects at every level of this complexity, these three basic ingredients always emerge:

1. A motivation to achieve something (Why)

2. A list of what to be done (What)

3. The time needed to do it (When)

(”How”, “Who”, and “How much?” are natural derivatives, but they may fall off when at the lowest levels of complexity, especially on the personal project portfolio where “Who” is just “You”.)

The science of getting things done, might be that simple.

Meet your lists

Lists are everywhere. I have lists in Gmail, Confluence, Google Sheets, Things, seven different Jira projects, a scrap of paper, Excel, Notion, Audible, Netflix, Reminders, Training Peaks, and even Google Maps.

Lists are unlimited and theoretical. You can assign yourself a lifetime of work with a few bullet points.

Consistency is good, but you don’t have to move all your lists to one place. Meet them where they are.

Make time

Lists are an imagined future. The calendar is reality. It’s not real until it’s scheduled.

These two elements work together. Without guidance from a well-formed list, time is wasted. Without intentional allocation of time, what’s on the list won’t matter because it won’t get done.

Examples from my current week:

A weekly ritual

Equipped with this mental model, you’ll need only one ritual to manage it. Start each week by reviewing all your lists:

1. Choose which are important to see progress right now.

2. Schedule time.

For some areas, you’ll hold the time and choose items from the list later. For others, you’ll choose items and schedule them specifically.

“I have one hour this Saturday to work on my side project. I have 10 things on the list. We’ll see how many I get through before the hour is up!

“I have 2 big deliverables for Project X this week. Item #1 I’m doing at 1pm on Tuesday. Item #2 I’m doing at 7am on Thursday.“

I have a meeting with vendor ABC on Thursday, what’s on my agenda?

In your review, take an additional minute to do some housekeeping. Rank the remaining items. Maybe delete a few things? Lists are always evolving. Keep the lists organized such that when your scheduled work time arrives there’s no question about what’s at the top.

This idea transcends all project management tools and methods — it works with them. This is a personal practice to synthesize across all the lists in your life and intentionally realizing progress.

Make it happen

There you go. Please, be free of the ridiculous mental pressure for a perfect project management system. Life is lists and time. Let it be that simple.

1. Make note of what you’re trying to accomplish, and why

2. Make lists

3. Make time

— Phil ✌🏻

Presented with minimal comment: Two of my favorite modern philosophers, talking about stuff and things.

I spend far more time thinking and sharing about what I want — to do, to buy, to learn, to accomplish, to achieve….

I spend far more time on that than I do thinking and sharing about what I have been privileged enough to do, buy, learn, accomplish, and achieve already.

Gratitude puts things into perspective.

—Phil

When thinking about your willpower, power of choice, and motivation to set good habits, consider the ways we unwittingly make things harder for ourselves than they could be.

Case in point: If don’t want to eat the Oreos, don’t buy the Oreos.

Please indulge simplicity of my argument and take it at face value. For me, this is a reminder that a choice upstream can set the path for many otherwise difficult choices downstream.

While shopping, you made a single calculated choice to not buy the Oreos. Now, while bored, hungry between meals, up in the night, or watching TV, you don’t even have the choice to binge on the sugary treat.

What is an “upstream choice” you can make today to improve your downstream odds of success?

—Phil