It's About Time

Shouldn’t you start advocating for longer-term goals?

“I wasted time and now time doth waste me;

For now hath time made me his numbering clock:

My thoughts are minutes.”

— William Shakespeare, c. 1595

You’re in a hurry, I get it.

You want the three-bullet memo. Could this meeting have been an email? Could this email have been a Slack? Could this Slack have been telepathy?

You have 1,001 things to do — and you need to check your various feeds for updates, replies that need replies, and DMs — a newsletter? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Time is part of our modern lexicon: time travel, time zones, time warp, time enough at last, etc.

But it’s also how the industrial world measures its worth and dispenses rewards: time clock, overtime, time-and-a-half, downtime, time off.

“Tardiness is next to wickedness in a society relentless in its consumption of time as both a good and a service—as tweet and Instagram, film clip and sound bite, as sporting event, investment opportunity, Tinder hookup, and interest rate—its value measured not by its texture or its substance but by the speed of its delivery.” — Lewis H. Lapham, 2014

Productivity measures how effective employees are with their assignments, but executives hellbent on getting employees to return to the office seem more interested in measuring the amount of time employee spend in the office.

Never mind that productivity rose during the pandemic; certain employers would rather look over employees’ shoulders rather than trust them to do their jobs.

Owl Labs CEO Frank Weishaupt “actively encourages his employees to create schedules that work for them, in locations that make sense, he says — even if what makes sense is “coffee badging.”

His approach is sensible and refreshing:

“We hire people to do a job. I don’t hire people to watch them work. I do love the in-office participation when we get it, but I want it to be organic.” (CNBC)

“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.” — François VI de la Rochefoucauld, 1678

In my work, I practice a similar philosophy: by slowing you down, I help you speed up.

That is, I give you a chance to step out of the frenetic pace of doomscrolling and email reply hell by asking you each week to focus with me on something a little deeper. By reflecting on a topic that connects to your wider work.

“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear the future...For they dash from one pleasure to another and cannot stay steady in one desire.”— Seneca, 49 B.C.

And with the shortening tenure of certain C-suite executives (particularly the CMO), time is of the essence. There’s less and less time to make an impact:

Average Fortune 500 C-Suite Tenure (Years)

This is why a clear and compelling vision and relentless communication are so important. Every leader has a responsibility to set expectations and communicate about their progress.

If they want to focus on a longer-term strategy but fear it won’t be complete before their time is up, they ought to seek clear guidance and agreement from leadership, so that everyone is on board for this longer timeframe.

A high-functioning executive team will develop realistic timelines to determine how the ship is turning, particularly about things like morale, culture, and strategy. These are not measured with quarterly KPIs.

If you’re focused on the right things and are trying to make things easier, create value, and move in the same direction, then perhaps our greatest critics will have neither the time nor the need to check their calendars. Or even their watches.

I’d say it’s about time, wouldn’t you?

There’s so much to learn,

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