RE/PRO

I reckon you can divide your work life into two buckets.

🪣 Bucket 1: Re-active

🪣 Bucket 2: Pro-active

One thing leaders ask themself is... “how to balance these two buckets?”

I think the majority of your work is probably going to be reactive: managing what's in front of you, the day-to-day, fighting fires, steering the ship.

But for some leaders, bucket 1 is overflowing, and they NEVER GET TO BUCKET 2.

Bucket 2 is where long-term success comes from. Being able to look up, set your sights on something bigger, and make progress.

And here's my tip on how to operationalise this; how to manage your focus (because managing your focus is critical for leaders).

START THE DAY IN BUCKET 2.

Every day, at 0845am, I get a reminder to start the day with focus. My specific routine...

Meditate lightly for 3 minutes.

Then ask, 'what's the biggest step forward I could take today?'.

Then I either work on that, or assign a time for it later in the day.

It's working for me.

Maybe it might work for you too.

Get your start-the-day routine working for you. And spend a little more time in bucket 2, being proactive.

What do you think? How do you manage reactive vs proactive? What's your start-the-day routine?

Building a ‘nudge engine’

This year I’ve been focusing on running experiments in changing behaviour.

Shifting my own behaviour as a leader, business owner, husband and dad.

Above you can see an example of a habit I’ve been testing, to start my day in bucket 2.

And we’re working with individuals and groups to meaningfully shift their behaviour.

We’ve done this by building a ‘nudge engine’ into our work, which helps you…

1. Carefully define a new habit you want to try

2. Assign a buddy to hold you accountable

3. Send you daily reminders in a way that suits you

4. Check in and journal on your progress

5. Assess your behaviour change after around 30 days

I’m finding it transformational.

And our clients are too. In 1-1 coaching, training and team building.

In a recent leadership program, we targeted specific leadership behaviours, and the participants managed to improve by 119% in a month.

In a communications program, we targeted customer communications behaviours, and participants improved by 77% in 30 days.

In a culture shift program, participants chose a daily habit to fit under one of the organisation’s values, and managed to improve their daily ‘living’ of that value by 85% in 4 weeks.

Where this gets the attention of the C-Suite is when you can directly connect these behaviours to their strategy.

You want better customer relationships? Spell out the behavioural shift you want to see, run a short training session, and encourage each person to commit to a new daily habit!

You want more innovation? Tell me what that looks like and then help people build it into a daily practise.

Strategy has been converted into measurable daily behaviours.

Platform habits

Not all habits are created equal.

Let’s say you want to master an important skill, say ‘Managing People’. I reckon there is one habit you want to get right first: committing to quality 1-1 time with each direct report to set expectations, give feedback and agree development priorities.

I call this a platform habit.

That’s because, if you can build this habit into your routine, then you stack other habits on top of it. How you give feedback, how you coach, how you delegate – these can all build on top of the quality 1-1 check-ins.

For mastering presentations, I think one platform habit is to ‘start with a pen and paper, not PowerPoint’.

For mastering productivity, your platform habit could be your to-do-list. Or your start-the-day routine.

We’re busy converting our training programs to embrace habit-sequencing: embedding the platform habit first, and then using bite-size training sessions 4 weeks apart to stack habits on top of that platform.

That’s how we’re changing behaviour.

It’s been quite the journey so far, and I’ve become a believer through the results we’re seeing.