BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 141
Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time •• •M ANAGING Y OURSELF
in a third of the time they used to require.
Cluna built his second ritual around meetings
at branches with the financial specialists who
report to him. Previously, he would answer
his phone whenever it rang during these
meetings. As a consequence, the meetings he
scheduled for an hour often stretched to two,
and he rarely gave anyone his full attention.
Now Cluna lets his phone go to voice mail, so
that he can focus completely on the person in
front of him. He now answers the accumulated voice-mail messages when he has downtime between meetings.
E&Y’s hard-charging Wanner used to answer e-mail constantly throughout the day—
whenever he heard a “ping.” Then he created
a ritual of checking his e-mail just twice a
day—at 10:15 AM and 2:30 PM. Whereas previously he couldn’t keep up with all his messages, he discovered he could clear his in-box
each time he opened it—the reward of fully
focusing his attention on e-mail for 45 minutes
at a time. Wanner has also reset the expectations of all the people he regularly communicates with by e-mail. “I’ve told them if it’s
an emergency and they need an instant response, they can call me and I’ll always pick
up,” he says. Nine months later he has yet to
receive such a call.
Michael Henke, a senior manager at E&Y,
sat his team down at the start of the busy season last winter and told them that at certain
points during the day he was going to turn off
his Sametime (an in-house instant-message
system). The result, he said, was that he
would be less available to them for questions.
Like Wanner, he told his team to call him if
any emergency arose, but they rarely did. He
also encouraged the group to take regular
breaks throughout the day and to eat more
regularly. They finished the busy season
under budget and more profitable than other
teams that hadn’t followed the energy renewal program. “We got the same amount of
work done in less time,” says Henke. “It made
for a win-win.”
Another way to mobilize mental energy is
to focus systematically on activities that have
the most long-term leverage. Unless people
intentionally schedule time for more challenging work, they tend not to get to it at all
or rush through it at the last minute. Perhaps
the most effective focus ritual the executives
we work with have adopted is to identify each
harvard business review • october 2007
night the most important challenge for the
next day and make it their very first priority
when they arrive in the morning. Jean Luc
Duquesne, a vice president for Sony Europe
in Paris, used to answer his e-mail as soon as
he got to the office, just as many people do.
He now tries to concentrate the first hour of
every day on the most important topic. He
finds that he often emerges at 10 AM feeling as
if he’s already had a productive day.
The Human Spirit: Energy of
Meaning and Purpose
People tap into the energy of the human spirit
when their everyday work and activities are
consistent with what they value most and with
what gives them a sense of meaning and purpose. If the work they’re doing really matters
to them, they typically feel more positive energy, focus better, and demonstrate greater
perseverance. Regrettably, the high demands
and fast pace of corporate life don’t leave
much time to pay attention to these issues,
and many people don’t even recognize meaning and purpose as potential sources of energy. Indeed, if we tried to begin our program
by focusing on the human spirit, it would
likely have minimal impact. Only when participants have experienced the value of the rituals they establish in the other dimensions do
they start to see that being attentive to their
own deeper needs dramatically influences
their effectiveness and satisfaction at work.
For E&Y partner Jonathan Anspacher, simply having the opportunity to ask himself a series of questions about what really mattered to
him was both illuminating and energizing. “I
think it’s important to be a little introspective
and say, ‘What do you want to be remembered
for?’” he told us. “You don’t want to be remembered as the crazy partner who worked these
long hours and had his people be miserable.
When my kids call me and ask, ‘Can you come
to my band concert?’ I want to say, ‘Yes, I’ll be
there and I’ll be in the front row.’ I don’t want
to be the father that comes in and sits in the
back and is on his Blackberry and has to step
out to take a phone call.”
To access the energy of the human spirit,
people need to clarify priorities and establish
accompanying rituals in three categories:
doing what they do best and enjoy most at
work; consciously allocating time and energy
to the areas of their lives—work, family,
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