Appearing Busy: The Biggest Obstacle to Strategic Thinking
“I know you must be incredibly busy…” Many preface their email requests with this. It might even feel like a good ego massage to the respondents!
Being busy, slammed, swamped or up to your eyes, whatever you call it, is considered a marker of status symbol. The busier you look, or you actually are, the more ‘in-demand’ and ‘sought-after’ you come across.
Be warned, this thinking could be sabotaging your breathing space, killing your creativity, and leaving your strategic thinking out in cold.
Let’s look at how busyness is the biggest obstacle for strategic thinking for business strategists.
Two big barriers to strategic thinking
1) The External Pressure — Long hours proxy for loyalty & productivity?
First barrier, which gets cemented with ‘being busy’ mindset, is the absence of enough incentives or rather the presence of a culture counter to successful strategic thinking.
There is always a pressure, often unconsciously embedded, in the workplace that those who put in long hours are better employees. This mentality is present among both juniors as well as senior executives. Employees see their leadership stretching their work hours, they do the same as they are aspiring for these roles. Trouble arises when executives must double up as business strategists. Evidence suggests investing in long hours at workplace doesn’t necessarily improve performance and increase productivity.
A study by Stanford University suggests, taking a short walk, especially outside, is a good way to power creative thinking. Instead of just being tethered to your desk.
This is an external pressure. It eventually makes people settle for short term thinking and even give sub-optimal results. You may end up completing your tasks, but the quality might be suffering.
This is especially true for those at the leadership level. They often very easily fall into the trap of always (24/7) being on! In this practice not only people’s personal lives become the victim, but also the value they lead for the business.
Coming up with an original and innovative idea, or even reviewing existing processes, can be a huge problem when your head is cluttered with targets and metrics.
This is how stretching work hours become the biggest enemy of 🔗business strategy professionals and strategic mindset. It requires creating space and tethering to desk can on occasion be the hardest block to your strategic thinking.
2) The Internal Pressure — Being busy mindset.
Second and the most common barrier is internal in nature. We often rattle out reasons for being busy, to an extent it now feels like a badge of honor. However, Derek Sivers, an entrepreneur, and author opines, “busy is when you are at the mercy of someone else’s schedule.”
Appearing busy can clog your thinking, clutter your space, and in more tangible terms, make you seem ‘unapproachable’.
By changing how we think about busyness and giving up the self-esteem we implicitly get by being busy, it can become easier to say no to unnecessary interruptions and take on important obligations to become more effective in planning. It becomes easier when we associate busyness with servitude than a mark of social status.
The amount of work you have today, or the responsibilities placed on you are unlikely to stop existing anytime soon. Rather, when you as 🔗business strategists move up in your career, responsibilities would increase, and you will be expected to not only produce more but do it with top-notch quality.
The challenge for you is to not, yet again, let the need for a business strategy slip to the bottom of your priority list.
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Originally published at thegoogleblog
