Chapter 24 Chapter 16 No longer an enemy of time

Not long ago, in session two of our leadership and self-mastery training program, I spoke with an Indian-born and raised manager who had worked in both American and Japanese companies.She said that in the Japanese company, when a person sits quietly, no one will disturb her, because others think she is thinking.Conversely, if the person gets up and walks, colleagues can come to her at will. "It's interesting that American companies are doing the opposite. In America, we think that if you're sitting quietly, you're not doing something important," she said. How can we expect people to learn if they have so little time for individual and collective reflection and reflection?There are very few managers I know who don't complain about not having enough time.Most of the managers I've worked with really try really hard to get some quiet time for reflection.Is this a cultural phenomenon we take for granted; the constant hustle and bustle of the day?

How to create time to study? Xiong En pointed out in his book "The Practitioner of Reflection" that "immediate action" seems to come from the learning tradition in school classrooms, and teachers, under the shackles of bureaucratic organizations, do not encourage students to reflect. "If a teacher has to manage thirty students in a classroom, how can he really listen to what any one of them has heard?" So in the school classroom, learning becomes a one-way absorption of information poured out by "experts", and students Both the teacher and the teacher try to speed up the speed of teaching and learning, and the more they absorb, the better.

According to Xiong En, in an organization, if no other more authoritative figure can be found, the manager is regarded as an "expert".In this way, to be a successful professional, one must develop the ability to "stop to develop a hypothesis-action-stop to reflect on the results"-the ability of continuous improvement and continuous improvement.Xiong calls this "reflection in action" and discusses it as a trait of successful professional learners.He said: "We must not only think about doing it, but when we are doing it, we must also reflect on what we have done."

But many managers are too busy to reflect in action.Most people's view of work is that activity is a good thing, and that the job of a manager is to keep the activity going and to drive people to move at the same pace. We often blame organizational pressures on the need for constant activity and lack of time for reflection; yet surprisingly, many of the experiments we have done show that even when there is plenty of time for reflection, there is also enough equipment. In order to obtain all kinds of relevant information, most managers have not reflected on their own actions.Managers in these experiments typically use one strategy first, then switch to another strategy when that strategy starts to run into problems, and then switch to another, and then another... .In a simulated four-year exercise, managers might switch from three to six different strategies, but never examine why a strategy failed or articulate what they hoped to achieve when adopting a strategy result.Apparently in corporate America, this "draw the gun and shoot" model is fully baked into the culture of most companies.

Learning takes time.For example, when one is learning how to improve mental models, considerable time is spent laying out hypotheses, testing the consistency and accuracy of those hypotheses, and seeing how various mental models can intertwine to form A more holistic view of some important issues. supervisor's agenda The management of time and attention is an area where top management has significant influence, not by command but by example.O'Brien never schedules short meetings.“If it’s not an hour-worthy topic, it’s not on my agenda,” he says. In a well-designed organization, the only things that need to be brought to the attention of senior management should be limited to complex, stuck issues. "Divergent Issues".These topics not only need on-site opinions from people with less experience, but also the thoughts and experience from the most senior people.If top management has twenty problems to deal with in a working day, he is either spending too much time on "convergent" problems that should be handled by lower levels of the organization, or too little time on complex problems.Both are signs of poor management.O'Brien went on to say: "If I make twelve decisions in one year, it's going to be a big year. The decisions I make are setting the direction and picking people who report directly to me. But my job isn't about making a lot of Instead, it is spent identifying important issues that the organization will have to deal with in the future, helping other managers identify which kinds of issues should be decided by him, and the top-level work of organizational design." (See chapter 19 on leadership. design function)

This principle sounds simple and easy to understand, but most organizations don't work that way.Most executives are constantly making decisions about many non-focused topics, such as how to promote rather than why they need to promote; or talking about how to win a certain customer, rather than inquiring about the sales of their overall products, whether the customer satisfaction is obvious with implicit requirements. On the other hand, when basic learning disciplines are integrated into the organization, managers will view management differently.At that time, action is still important, but it should be done decisively and not confused with daily uninterrupted activities.There will also be time for reflection, conceptualization and examination of complex topics.

No one knows how much time future organizational managers will spend reflecting, modeling, and programming learners; but what is certain is that much more time will be spent than in the past.Simon, of the Herman Miller furniture company, asks his management team to spend a quarter of their working time doing what he calls learning to be an "organizational architect."Over the past year, the group has dedicated themselves to mastering the reflective and inquiry skills necessary for the discipline of mental models and applying these skills to their most strategic topics.He says this investment of time is necessary because while there is much to discover about new jobs for managers and leaders, "we know enough to start making improvements."

Taking stock of how much time you spend thinking is a useful starting point for all managers.If not enough, why?Is work pressure keeping us from spending time?Or are we spending too much time doing things we shouldn't be doing?In either case, where are the leverage points for change?For some, this may require changing personal habits; for others, it may be necessary to moderate the organizational need to work non-stop to achieve "maximum efficiency."The way you and your co-workers manage their time will have a big impact on how the group learns.