S12E02: The reason most people get stuck in the weeds

Davina Stanley
Hi there. Welcome back to the Impact Multiplier CEO Podcast. I'm Davina Stanley and I'm here today with Richard Medcalf to talk about his new book. Hello Richard, great to have you again.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Hi Davina, great to see you again. Looking forward to getting back into the discussion again with you.

Davina Stanley
Absolutely wonderful. I love your book. I said that last time and I'll say it again. So tell us...

Richard Medcalf
I'll give you the check later. Don't worry.

Davina Stanley
Oh Dear, look at this think that the whole idea of making time for strategy is essential. Making time for everything that's important is hard and it's, you've got such really good practical ideas for it. So why don't we dive in? So how do you free up? So how do we free ourselves up from the operational that busyness that we all get caught in?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so first of all, it's a question I often get asked, as I'm working with executives, who are trying to next level their own results and their organizations. They do say like, I need to get more strategic out of the operations, how do I free myself up from the operational details? And I have to tell them, I'm afraid you can't, at that point, they kind of look at me and like, well, hang on, Richard, I thought you you could help me with this, and so yeah, it tends to stop them in their tracks but the I tell them a story. A previous interviewee, actually, on this podcast, mentioned that he had become a delegation expert overnight and I said, Well, that's interesting. How did you do that? He said, Well, my wife became seriously ill and she went into hospital and so I dropped everything, delegated everything and focused on her. Obviously, that's the most important thing that I had to do. So all the excuses went out of the window, all the reasons that we give ourselves for why we can't possibly delegate went out the window, because he had something really, really important to focus on and so what I like to say to people is, look, it's really, really hard, it's practically impossible to free yourself up from operations but it's actually quite easy, surprisingly easy, perhaps, to free yourself up for something more important. So the point is here that often we don't know, really, what are we going to do if we have an extra 10 minutes of an extra hour? An extra day? You know, we, what are we actually going to do with that? Right? Well, how are we going to create value? What's Why is it so important for us to have this time? What is it that we would really do? That would make us go hell yeah and so that's the first important thing, the reason most people get stuck in the weeds is because they don't actually have that clear understanding of their highest value activities, the most strategic thing for them to be doing.

Davina Stanley
And it becomes self reinforcing, doesn't it? Because you're so busy, you haven't got time to think to work that out.

Richard Medcalf
That's the Infinity trap. That's what we talked about last time. Exactly. We're running so fast, we feel we're doing what's important but we haven't really taken the time to step back and think what would be even more important?

Davina Stanley
So how do you work out? How do you work out? What's the most important thing?

Richard Medcalf
Well, there's a few ways of doing it. I'll give you a couple of ideas. The first one, I want to say is identify for yourself, what are your highest value activities? And what I mean by that is what are the things that you find fascinating, motivating, super valuable, perhaps for the organization? So it's a question of like your own engagement with it, and actually the external value that it creates for your for your different stakeholders. In other words, another way, when you are doing something at work, what are those moments when you're like, wow, that was an hour really well spent, or that was a day where I really knocked out the park or that was a that was an if you look back, perhaps looking back in the rearview mirror, what was that moment or that day or that or that thing that you did, which was a game changer for you in the past? For example, for me, if I look back, one of the things that I did, my early days when I was at Cisco was I tried to I took some work that I had done had a customer and I transformed it into a piece of thought leadership that could be kind of discussed and explained to, to anybody to anyone in the market, any customer and that piece of work nobody asked me for but that kind of piece of content creation and really drawing out key insights was a game changer it for me, it kind of put me on the map, I was invited into customer meetings all around the place, I invited, invited to speak in customer forums, etc, because I created this thing and so I realized that creating content, creating content is one thing that I'm really good at, it's a high value activity form is wherever the book, right, it's why I do the podcast or how I engage my clients. So for me, creating content is one of those high value activities. Another one for me is connecting with high level leaders and then another one for me is what I call coaching, which is really just working with people one to one, or in a small group to help push their thinking and so for me, those ideas of creating, connecting and coaching are my three high value activities. Interestingly, they tend to form a circle when you find your three high value activities, because they tend to reinforce each other. So I've actually got literally on my computer monitor just down here, a little sticky note, I can see it right now saying content, connecting and coaching, right, those three things are to remind me, those are my high value activities. I'll give you another example. I worked with the chairman of a very successful telecoms company, he founded the company itself and when I asked him what his three high value activities were, he thought and he came up with, like, I remember the more I remember, at least two, one was setting vision. I wish I could remember all three, what was setting vision, one was engaging with investors and, and the other one was championing the social cause and the broader impact that he felt his company could uniquely make and those were his three areas have said, You know what, I'm in those in my genius zone, I love it. I'm super credible, I can do things that nobody else in the organization can do. Then I said, How much time do you spend doing that right now? And it was like 10 20%. So okay, that suddenly there is the game changer. If you could move that from 10 or 20% to 30 or 30%, or 50%, things will start to shift with recommendation three high value activities.

Davina Stanley
Yes, yes and I hear you saying, to listen to yourself and note those moments, we think, Gosh, that was what I just that was such fun. I felt so engrossed in what I was doing. I felt such pleasure and reward from doing what I was doing, because it felt so fulfilling. So is it also a little bit of intervention, somebody who's fairly new in a role that might not yet have that sense in the new role? is a little bit of Gosh, I wish I could, is there a little bit of that?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so it's a good point. So the first thing actually is the danger of looking back and then looking back is great, because you'll find the themes, but you need to be careful not to just do the things that made you successful in the past. So what you need to do is look at the themes. For example, you know, being highly creative, or engaging with people or something and then you say, well, do I want to turn that into a forward looking activity, right, something which is going to help me in the future, often it's repurposing those same themes, but aiming them at a higher level. So for example, if you're a problem solver, well, you probably shouldn't be solving your team's problems in your new role. But you should be solving, you know, what's the next level set of problems I need to be addressing? How do I level those skills? And I think you're right, when when there's, when you're new in a role, you might not know exactly what those areas might be. So first of all, you have to kind of start to make a hypothesis. One way of doing that is just to say, well, if somebody was came in and absolutely nailed this role, what would they be doing? But what would be the three most important things where they spend their time? Just getting in your own head, rather than looking at your own to do list and just going okay, what does it take to be successful in this role? I think what very quickly give you a sense of what those key areas are.

Davina Stanley
Yes, yeah, no, I can see that and I think you're right, there's there's a danger in looking back. Although we should build on what we see when we look back, shouldn't we rather than just repeating, repeating history, and that's so much easier said than done. When looking back, we think we feel very comfortable because we feel like we've been very successful at what we're doing and it's very tempting to keep doing that, because it's comforting, isn't it?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, exactly and and I think so, the pipe activities, the half of the equation, perhaps in terms of a Where do you want to focus? You know, what are you freeing up time for? The other half is really what's the breakthrough projects? So I call this in the book a call it your number one improvement project. So the idea here, it is an improvement project. So it's actually going to uplevel your capabilities, right? other than just solving the operational issues. So I just say, you know, what's the one project that would represent breakthrough progress? Or what's the one thing that's gonna make everything else easier for you in the next quarter or the next month? What's the capability you need to build or the risk, you need to get rid of all the person who didn't need to develop? It's another form of capability building. So what is it that's going to help you level up your capabilities? So I'll give you some examples. From my own life and business. I guess I could think of three over the last couple of years that have been important. Number one is this podcast right? At one point I this podcast didn't exist and when I said, Well, what's it going to take for me to multiply my impact? This podcast came out is a key thing to do. So it's now happened, we've created it, it's now got over 100 episodes, it's got a following is creating extraordinary conversations with key leaders. For me, it's been great to talk. That's one example. Another example is, I launched Rivendale, which is my community of high level CEOs and entrepreneurs from around the world. Again, that didn't exist and I said, I'm doing lots of work one to one. Wouldn't it be amazing if I could bring these high level leaders together and spark off each other? And we did that and it's been incredible. This year is absolutely incredible. So that's a new capability that we didn't have in the business just a couple of years ago and then finally, you know, the book, the book is, it's been a project over the last year. At one point, it didn't exist and I was like, well, what's the again, what's the capability, what's an asset, that I want to build into the business, to serve more people, and to avoid having to be me to literally tell people, things time and time again, you get the three examples of improvement projects that are leveling up.

Davina Stanley
And codifying, and synthesizing and finding it easier to help people to to make it easier for them to get hold off. You know.

Richard Medcalf
If you look back at them, they link quite nicely to my three high value activities, right? The book, ground content, creating content. podcast has a bit of creating content in there and it also has the whole connecting with high level leaders and Rivendale is around that coaching part, right, actually delivering extraordinary experiences to people. So you see how these linked together but the differences, one is more of the general focus area, the way you should be investing your time and then the project kind of crystallizes that into what's something I can actually deliver perhaps in the next 90 days, that is going to be an investment of my time.

Davina Stanley
And I love the way you said you wrote the book, correct me if I've got the number of days wrong, but I think you wrote it in 100 days or something.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, pretty much give me the secret there. That's probably a whole nother conversation but the way I the way I did that was you got to be really clear about what you're going to say and then once you know it, writing, it isn't so hard. So it's all about the outlining and of course, this is work I've done on my programs, with many people with clients, one to one. So these were conversations I've been having already. That wasn't venting it from scratch. Right? I was kind of distilling information.

Davina Stanley
Yeah, absolutely. I was chuckling on the inside when you said once your ideas are clear and once you've got your outline, it's actually really quick to write. That's rather singing my song, Richard? Absolutely. It takes no time at all once the idea is that clear? Does it, so?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, definitely the expert. Yes. Yeah.

Davina Stanley
Not in your area, but certainly in the idea of getting your ideas clear. Absolutely. Absolutely. So you've given us some really useful thoughts there but where do you start?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, where do you start? So once you once you've got that real clarity around, why is it important? Do you really want to free up time? Is it really something you want to do this again, you want to go on a game you want to play and then what am I going to do once I actually have the time but those are the foundations we just talked about and then how do you go about actually creating that space? To think and Enter? Well, as I mentioned last time, there are four areas that we need to address, like four barriers we need to knock down or get over before we actually see that time really free up and as I mentioned last time, there's the acronym time this these four areas, the T is for tactics. Tactics are, are important, because that is, when you get down into the concrete behaviors. Do you have a plan, you need a start point, you need to know where you're starting from, you need to know where you're ending, like, what what's your goal? Is it to free up an hour? Is it to free up a day, a week? What's your goal here was actually your goal, and over what timeframe. So give yourself a bit of a bit of healthy pressure to get it done and then also, do you have the basic habits of workflows in place to manage that infinity of demand coming in for you, all those calls on your time and attention. So there are some really practical things that I see that even very senior leaders, they don't actually all have in place and obviously at that level, your time is so precious, if you end up getting sucked into useless meetings, or spending your time in your inbox. It's not a great use of time, as somebody wants to say to you, you know, great business has ever been built from the post room.

Davina Stanley
I like that. I haven't heard that before but it's so true and we get stuck in our inbox so often. Dont we?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, and you know, and all these reasons. I mean, I think Napoleon was famously, he famously didn't open any of his any of his mail for three days, two weeks or something like that. I forget now, actually, I think it was three weeks time. But um, yeah, he just didn't read it because he realized that by the time he opened it, it would be it'd be solved at that point, most of it would be solved and things that weren't solved. Actually didn't need his attention. So yeah.

Davina Stanley
Yeah. But you know, great, great filter, great filter.

Richard Medcalf
So yeah, so this is the tactic stuff, right? So the tactics does help us on, on making sure we've got the blocking and tackling in place, and it shouldn't be overlooked but that's not enough and most people kind of stop there and they go, Yeah, I just need another hack. But then once you've got your tactics and your plan, you need influence, that's the eye of time, influence is so important because unless you get people on board, with the way that you want to shift how you operate, you're kind of get pulled back by their expectations and their requirements. So if you've decided that, you know that that report you write for your boss, frankly, it takes far too much time, it's not really adding that much value and to be honest, you could deliver the same essential facts in a much shorter document just to make it up, then you need to let your boss know what your thinking is around that and why it's beneficial for for him or for her, for you to deliver a shorter, more condensed document and you might have to kind of sell it to them a little bit, hey, I'm not gonna give you all that all the long details I used to give you just a high level summary but that's going to free me up to these other projects, which you know, I need to get to, and I think you're still gonna get the value, in fact, and possibly even more valuable, because you're not going to have to read as much. So you need to kind of sell what you want to do differently to your senior stakeholders, to your peers, and possibly even to your reports. So the influence part you get into is, are you having the difficult conversations, then when it can be difficult, but just the critical conversations? Are you having those key conversations with the right people to be able to level up how you use your time, and often that's not happening and so we get stuck?

Davina Stanley
Yeah, yeah. No, I see that a lot and, you know, of course, you're hitting reports, which is a bit of a sweet spot for me, I see a lot of need for that conversation you just described, but influence so tactics and influence what else?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so then we have mindset and mindset is, you know, is really fact that what we think is true is creates the world that we live. So what we believe is necessary, desirable and possible and actually shapes the way we look at things. That's why I hear leaders go, you know, they'll say things like, you know, I just, I literally right now, I can't make I can't see at the time, I can't do it, right? It's like now it's really important for me to be doing X, or, you know, I'm just it's just not the moment is crazy busy. It's gonna get quiet next quarter, all these lies that we tell ourselves to be busy with perfectly busy with as busy as we have decided to be and when people go, no, no, that's not true. You don't understand my situation, which I've got my board, my managers, my stakeholders, and like, well, you know, you don't you need to take ownership for this. We've decided that this is our priority right now and we need to just decide is that based on reality was that based on just that thinking about, about how we see things for the moment.

Davina Stanley
I really particularly loved that chapter, I thought, I'm not going to obviously go there just now we'll wait till we get to talking about it in more depth but the way you talked about that business of being perfectly busy really rang a big bell for me.

Richard Medcalf
Not to like push people, because a lot of my clients that you know, very high achievers, they feel they have ownership and total self responsibility and then when it comes to this question of time, they'll kind of go, ah, you know, it's just crazy right now. It's crazy. It's like, well, how are you treating that craziness? No, no, you don't understand Richard. It's like, we're how are we getting into victim thinking at this point? You know, are you thinking yeah, it's not my fault. Poor old me. It's just a crazy world. Yeah, so I love to fish them on that. I love to fish them and so the issue here is that sometimes we're often driven, our behaviors are being driven by our identity, the way we see ourselves where we see other people, and that's the mindset issue.

Davina Stanley
And the very last bit of time, what is it?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, so they'd love to time is environment. So we need to be setting up first of all environment for ourselves, to operate effectively, but also for our, our broader team and even if we're in senior leadership, perhaps a whole company, because so many companies, I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were complaining, they're saying, you know what, we've got messages, emails going, we've got WhatsApp messages, we've got Microsoft team threads, impossible to know what's going on, we're expected to have notifications on all the time, so everyone is distracted permanently. It's so hard to kind of focus and so that kind of culture of busy work and I see it as people describe it as living agile and flexible but actually, it's just chaos, right? It's just we will rocking and rolling 20 things out but an organization, there's massive inefficiencies, when that's when that kind of knee jerk reaction becomes the norm and so if the whole organization is full of people being super, super busy, stuck in the weeds, and not putting themselves out to really align, then you have a problem. So environment is the area of how do I as a leader, shape the culture of immediately around me around my team, and around the boardroom of that organization? So that we can cme from this place of stillness, and being more strategic?

Davina Stanley
No, that's, that's fantastic. That's, that's really practical and, you know, the the idea of it almost sounds unachievable, until you start getting into the steps that I think you're going to share with people. So, you know, you start with tactics, I think, for pretty good reasons. talk just a little bit about that and let us know some more if what you've got in mind, then.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, well, so starting with tactics is often for many people the best place to start, because actually like with anything, unless you know, any journey, you need to know, where are you starting from? Where do you want to go? And how long is it going to take you to get there, and then start to do some of the practical things to go from A to B. And so tactics is a great place for everybody. However, it's not always for everybody. The reason for that is, for somebody, they might actually be pretty have their tactics printed and mailed in but their influence isn't really creating the results that they need, or actually they needed. They're actually perfectly really, really strategic, but they need to address the organization first, if they're going to make further progress, or getting somebody else it might be their mindset that the first place to start, because right now they don't even believe they can make any more time for strategy and so the book actually has a bit of a choose your own adventure path built into it. When I was a kid, I used to love these clever stories that you know, you'd read the first paragraph, and then it would give you a choice of what you wanted to do next, you know, if you wanted to open this door, turn to page 59. If you wanted to move on to the next place, go to page 52 and so the book is a bit like that you can you can jump straight into tactics and work your way sequentially through the book, or you can jump into whichever part is most relevant and there's even actually a little quiz, which is on the main book website at making time for strategy.com. We actually just answered 20 questions, and it will give you first of all, a quick assessment about what is your making time for strategy score, right? So just roughly where are you on this journey of being more strategic? And then secondly, which is perhaps the number one place you might want to start and so it's not always tactics, but I think for many people tactics is a great place to start and and just getting clear about about what the game is and what's it going to take is often a good first step. So I think we can talk about that one next time, and then take it from there.

Davina Stanley
No, that sounds fabulous and, you know, if I think of my own adventure with this sort of productivity, strategic improvement to a game, I suppose I think what I realized from listening to speak there is the only things I had done were tactics and I had missed actually all of the other things and, you know, they put me some distance, but it wasn't nearly enough. So now I'm really excited to take everyone with you on this journey,

Richard Medcalf
That I think you've really nailed something that's often said so often what happens it's in why why I wrote the book, because people often go, I've done all the productivity advice. I've gotten through those 99 tips I found online, about all the things I can do with my gmail and filters and batch things allowed I deal with some of that stuff in the book, but but it's still too much and it's because we haven't, there's other things, right, we still feel the obligation by our peers, our stakeholders, our boss, by the company we're in, you know, and even by ourselves, we still feel that need to do things in a certain way and that's what's holding us back.

Davina Stanley
Exactly. It just tidies up what's in front of us, it doesn't give us any, anything more than an incremental shift. I think, at least that was my experience and then I got quite stumped and I was like, what on earth do I do now? And then we started talking about, oh, that's what I do. So it's probably a good note, to segue to the you know, I guess to close out today's conversations. So if you're looking for the show notes, you can go to xquadrant.com/podcast and we very much look forward to talking to you again very soon to talk about some more tactics. Thank you so much, Richard.

Richard Medcalf
Thanks, Davina. Speak soon.