Protecting yourself from bears (or bullies)

I don't watch television, so I must have missed the breaking news. Bullying is a big issue in schools. Based on what I learned at a recent presentation I attended, it's a big issue at work also. I had no idea that stealing someone else's idea is a form of bullying. I think I may have been a victim of serial bullying.

It's important to know how to defend yourself from bullies. But first, let me tell you about a book I read ... [this blog moved to http://robertprol.com/?p=436. Please update your RSS feed.]

Indecision is the key to flexibility

On the surface, this statement sounds like the enemy of a good plan. If we made a decision, we'd be seeing progress already. Being indecisive is thought of as bad. But is it always? How often do we hurry to get a project started, to find that a decision-maker changes their mind? Probably more ... [click here to read more, and don't forget to update your bookmark or RSS feed]

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Widget issues on this site

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Stop having meetings, they suck up too much time

I blogged about meetings a few weeks ago, and provided some tips on how to approach them realistically. Let's face it, no one likes meetings.

Since I published that blog, I have been pondering an even bigger question. Why should we even have meetings? I'd say that very few meetings are necessary. Most of them could be easily replaced by collaboration tools, and accountability. Meetings are happening because people have always went to meetings. It's like sharing the pain. "When I was coming up, we had meetings! We'd all gather in a conference room, and talk. And then we'd talk some more!" It's a good thing smoking is banned.

There are some meetings that are highly valuable, and these are working meetings, where a deliverable is produced in the meeting. These generally focus on establishing or changing processes, or on planning. This needs to be done with everyone present.

Empty conference rooms rock

Most meetings are focused on leveling information across functions. This comes in the form of each person providing a brief (when we're lucky) update on what they are working on. Previous action items are updated, and new ones added. The meeting is really focused on making sure that stuff gets done, which is really just accountability. If you have a meeting coming up, and you were supposed to have something done for it, the peer pressure of showing up at the meeting with empty hands will probably motivate you to get the stuff done. Sharing information is a helpful part of the meeting also, it can validate the 120 e-mails we received since the last meeting. Attendees sit and think - yup, Bob got that done, it was in one of the 120 e-mails we had since the meeting last week.

If our meetings are primarily focused on sharing information and tracking action items, these can easily be managed using one of the many collaboration tools. Action items become assigned tasks, and "blah blah" updates become Wikis.

How much time do you spend in meetings that could have been eliminated by a few e-mails, a Wiki, or an task tracking tool? Would you still do your work if you didn't have a meeting to remind you to do it? Are meetings things of the past? 

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There are some things we shouldn't measure

I had an epiphany last week while bike commuting. Actually, the epiphany took a few days to come out, so I'm not totally sure I can call this an epiphany. Maybe it was more of a realization, a slow crawl to a truth about life. When we measure something, we want to see the numbers move. We may want things to be bigger, faster, stronger, or longer. Or we may want them smaller, shorter, thinner, or slower. Our desire is to see improvement, regardless of whether the number is increasing or decreasing.

Does it matter if you measure it?

There's so much at work to measure. We track revenue, expenses, sales, hours, work days, vacation days, pages, widgets, and so many other items. We develop dashboards, scorecards, and sometimes exert lots of effort into building the underlying data structure, just so we can press a button and turn these measurements into an assortment of fruit candy colors. All so we can put a nice graphic in a slide presentation so we can proudly announce how we changed the numbers.

This all makes sense, because if we can't measure it, we can't manage it. This is a reality in so many parts of life. We apply a number, and suddenly, we need to track that number. In my personal life, I track my miles - running miles, bicycle miles, and even walking miles. I track miles on pieces of equipment that go nowhere, such as treadmills, rowers, and bicycles clamped to resistors.

For my bike commute, I ride naked. Not the me, the bike. The bike is naked, without any measurement device attached. I don't wear a watch. I guess in some ways I do measure the ride, I measure it in smiles, not miles.

My bike commute is much more enjoyable this way.There isn't an average speed to beat, a time to a get to a landmark, or minutes to shave off my ride time. There's just me, the wind, the birds, and the sky. As life should be. An extension of me, something to be experienced. Not something to be beaten.

What are you measuring in your life that causes you stress? What aren't you measuring that you should measure? Can you unplug long enough to experience the journey?

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