Many Orgs are experimenting with flexible schedules, part-time work, job sharing, compressed workweeks, sabbaticals, mater/paternity leaves, etc. But this often conflicts with the cultural values of what constitutes “doing good work” and “being a good worker.”
By being constantly connected to work, teams seemed to be reinforcing — and worse, amplifying — the very pressures that caused them to be available. They are caught in the Cycle of Responsiveness. “Turning Off” is a Great Impossibility now-a-days.
- Culture of Responsiveness: Everyone here is tethered to their phone 24/7
- Pressure: To succeed, I have to be responsive
- Adapt and Adjust: I make sure I am always accessible
- Available more: Others know they can count on me being accessible
- Self-imposed Pressure: Many requests are not urgent but I am available and want to be perceived that way, so I respond. Besides, I like to keep up on my work.
In her book, “Sleeping with your Smartphone,” Leslie Perlow shares how she worked on breaking the 24/7 habit now prevalent in many Orgs, especially in the high profile consulting business. With a small step.
The main premise of the book is about giving a Team member a PTO (Predictable Time Off) one night every week — that is, log off by 6 PM.
And suggests Group-Help over Self-Help.
I thought this book is also a guide to facilitating self-organizing teams and create a truly humane workplace! And there are no easy ways to do that! Hope you will read this longish blog post leisurely and slowly. Or better, read the book if creating humane workplaces is a priority for you.
Small, Doable Changes
You and your colleagues should do it together. Unlike Lean, Six Sigma, PTO is based on a set of small and doable steps that can be executed by a single team:
- Team agrees on a predicable time off each week
- Team meets weekly to discuss how each member is achieving the goal
PTO inspires people to give change a shot. By starting with one small, doable change — a unit of PTO each week — team members discover that challenging the way it is and the way they have presumed it has to be is not as inconceivable as they once believed. And by allotting time to discuss issues — relating to both work and personal lives — the team ends up continually surfacing areas for change and then working together to improve their work process to the benefit of their work-lives and work. They end up challenging fundamental assumptions about how work is done. They test boundaries, consider options, and discover how to spend more time addressing the most important problems, effectively, and with more control over their work schedules. Individuals, teams, and ultimately the Org, all benefit.
Pulse Check
Is it possible to discuss not only how a given project was going but how they really felt about it. The Pulse Check consisted of four questions.
- How are you feeling?
- How much value are we delivering to the client?
- How satisfied are you with your learning?
- Is the current operating model sustainable for you?
These questions are now discussed by all in a Team Meeting. Imagine pushing a group of highly analytical people out of their comfort zone and asking them to talk about their feelings!
In the same meeting, they also discussed PTO.
- Did you take the night off as planned?
- What time did you leave work?
- How much time did you work after leaving?
As meetings progressed, people felt increasingly comfortable speaking up about what was on their minds. Eventually, responsibilities shifted. It was no longer just a burden on the Project Leader; it put the burden on the team.
As people spoke up more about their issues and concerns, and received positive reinforcement for doing so, trust and respect for each other grew. They shared more. They came to know each other in new, more personal ways. They cared more about each other as people. They ended up feeling more connected both as a work group and also as people with full, rich lives both inside and outside of work.
The meetings has also led to explicit conversations about priority, scope and how one can alter it. This is as opposed to being implicit that work has to be done regardless of how long it takes. It forces discussions to happen.
Just the PTO goal is not enough. Structured Dialogue is important! The power of the combination of a collective goal and structured dialogue!
Speaking Openly
The power of PTO is that it made it okay for people to speak openly about the work process and their work lives. This was a big deal. It is typically difficult to create an environment where people will take the risk associated with speaking openly. It was as if PTO was assuming that burden, and giving everyone the courage to speak up.
Like a Team member said, “You could talk about anything. They [more senior members of Team] did not always agree, but it was okay to bring anything up.”
PTO is also a mechanism for making it culturally okay to say, “Listen I need some help over here,” or “There is an issue in my personal life.”
Central to PTO’s success was this ability to foster open dialogue. After all, there are shelves of books on how to foster openness in orgs — and few examples of success.
- Sparks sharing personal issues
- Surfaces issues about work processes
- Challenges people to speak up
- Engenders the confidence to push back
- Enables hearing more from others
The Cycle of Transparency
PTO’s power was that it gave people something around which they could take a small leap of faith — to try speaking up and see how it went. Once people took the initial risk, they learned more about each other and each other’s expectations as they clarified, explored, tested, and negotiated their expectations. In turn, more trust, more willingness to speak up, and deeper and richer understanding of each other. Transparency bred more transparency.
Passion and Action
It is one thing to know about your employees’ personal lives — which most of us like to at least believe we do — and quite another for the team to own responsibility for addressing each others’ personal issues as part of figuring out how to best do the work. PTO can inspire the later. They become more passionate about helping to meet each other’s needs and about making their team the best it could be.
Dealing with a Deadline — Pre vs with PTO
Time pressure is pervasive in our professional lives. Work usually revolves around a set of deadlines.
PTO enabled teams felt that they owned the larger client problem and were eager to step up and deliver — for the good of the whole project and their leader. The project leader did not see herself as the puzzle master integrating the pieces. She had empowered her team. Teams now de-brief each other about what they were doing, sharing what they were doing, what their best practices had been. They are comfortable giving each other suggestions and feedback.
Team may not address every personal issue of a member, but all issues were welcomed into the work-related conversations.
I never had to worry that I’d be labeled the guy
wanting to be out of work.A Team Member
Benefits of Openness
As a culture of openness emerged on PTO teams, people came to better know what the others were doing at work and what mattered to them outside of work. They came to care more about each other and the team.
Gaining New Understanding
Leaders reported that they had a richer sense of what was going on in their team’s personal and work-lives, which enabled them to make changes on the work front that enhanced the team’s day-to-day performance. On the other end of the hierarchy, junior members came to better understand their superiors and their expectations.
Feeling Heard
The amount of change and insight into the work process that PTO was racking up among teams was impressive. Even just being able to speak up was a big deal for the people who did so. Simply knowing that their perspective was on the table mattered.
Connecting with something larger
Feeling part of a team seemed to generate a range of positive emotions: how “uplifting” it was to be part of a team with a common purpose. Discussions seemed to leave people feeling happier in their day-to-day work.
Taking the human factor into account
As a result of the increased openness and understanding, team members began viewing each other all the more as humans with lives both at work and beyond. From a team member’s point of view: If you just work with someone, you get to know them on a very uni-dimensional level. You don’t know about their life, if their father is ill, if they have children. He found that getting to know team members better on a personal level actually improved working relationships. He says “PTO brought the team together as humans.”
A Passion for Change
Why are you up? Go to bed.
This newfound caring became the motor for change, creating in teams the passion to take action to improve their work process to the benefit of themselves, their teammates, and the team’s deliverables. Someone would say that they were feeling stressed and others would immediately find out what they could do to help.
As passion to improve their world grew, so did their optimism about actually making change happen. That optimism was fueled by the real and measurable fact that their work processes were improving, as was the predictability of and control over their work schedules.
Learning to make the one night off a week a reality was having a profound effect. Teams came to appreciate just how much could change.
Experimenting with Change — Together
PTO inspired efforts to experiment in small ways toward solving problems. And more changes followed. As a result, people on PTO teams were constantly questioning the way they did things and assessing whether better alternatives could be created — alternatives that would benefit both the work and their personal lives. PTO inspired people to close the knowing-doing gap, investing a great deal of effort, working together, to discover and try out new ways of working. Engaging in ongoing micro adjustments has been PTO’s core outcome.
Travel
One of the most common areas for experimentation was the travel schedule. New norm became travelling only when there is a reason, and moreover minimizing these reasons.
E-Mail Overload
Exchanging e-mails late in the night? A quick conversation next day would have been more efficient. PTO teams would often set norms about when they would send e-mails. So many things can be solved in person!
Constraining Work Time
Leaving team room in the evening even if one has to work late. A senior taking a junior to be another set of ears and letting her capture key take-aways (while she also gets exposure to clients). Or a goal like never showing more than 5 slides to a client at a time. Recurring meetings.
Meeting Effectiveness
They become much more focused. The more engaged team members were, the more context they each had, and the better able they were to converse about their work. Collective intelligence of team is leveraged.
Meeting Times
5 PM meetings? PTO changed when meetings were scheduled.
New Ways of Sharing Information
Some teams started team blogs, shared websites to post comments and share information about client meetings and analysis.
Where Work Gets Done
Team room? Own cubicles? Hotel room? PTO enabled team members to raise their preferences and figure out ways that worked best for all of them.
Performance Issues
How team responds to under-performers? PTO enabled discussion of these performance issues. No more jumping to conclusions which can amplify performance anxiety. When mistakes happen, PTO offers the team a chance to explore why they occurred and what can be done differently going forward.
Achieving the Unimaginable: Change
The power of PTO is two-fold: work and personal issues are brought to the forefront, and teams are further motivated to explore ways to address these issues. Over and over, in small ways, assumptions about how the work is to be done are challenged. By altering travel times, meeting locations and schedules, team interactions, 24/7 demands to always make work the first priority, and tendencies to jump to conclusions rather than explore performance issues, PTO chipped away at the status quo. New ways of working evolved, with profound benefits for individuals and the Org.
Small Steps, Big Results
How will your team fare in this survey?
- Most people I have worked with are considerate of the impact of work on my personal life outside of <your Org>.
- Given the demands of my job, I have sufficient control over my work schedule?
- My work gives me a sense of personal accomplishment.
- My office/system has a culture where it is safe to speak up and express opinions.
- Our team is collaborating well.
- I believe that our work adds significant value to our clients’ business.
Eliminating Bad Intensity
Step by step, one change at a time. Team members tackled the bad intensity — the wheel spinning, unnecessary iterations, lack of communication and alignment, last-minute, late-night changes; and weekend emergencies — and get in the way of people doing their best at work and having time for life outside work. Eliminating the bad intensity energised people and gave them a greater sense of control and personal accomplishment. Not all bad intensity was eradicated.
Creating a True Win-Win
Living the dream: Those who experience high control over their work schedule and a high sense of fulfilment in their work. Caught in the grind: Low control and low fulfilment.
The junkie finds work fulfilling but is no addicted that he has absolutely no control over how much he works. He adores his work and everything that comes with it — the long hours, the travel, the thrill of being indispensable, the exhilaration of meeting tight deadlines. But he can’t make dinner plans, play with his kids, and no gym. And he may eventually end up jeopardising many other valuable aspects of his life. By contrast, the employee has a high degree of control and is grateful to have a personal life, but he has little attachment to his work, which he finds unsatisfying. He’s not learning, not being pushed, not achieving any real sense of accomplishment; he’s just punching the clock and collecting a pay check, all the while wondering if there shouldn’t be something more to work.
The power of PTO is that by eliminating the bad intensity, it helps people move from Grind to Dream. PTO clearly helps managers reduce the bad intensity undermining their teams, improving the work process and moving individuals closer to the sweet spot of the Dream.
Team Leader’s Crucial Role
PTO process requires people to say and do things that are at odds with the culture. For people to open and take risks requires that they perceive it safe to do so — safe to speak about their concerns about how the work is proceeding or, worse, mistakes they have made, and safe to take their time off regardless of what pressures at work might arise. That sense of safety depends heavily on the team’s leadership. Without team leadership support, PTO does not work well.
Is the leader willing to challenge old ways and explore new ones?
Leading a PTO Team
- Every team member must commit to the process. They will take this leap of faith if they believe that you, their leader, are behind this experiment
- Outright leadership resistance is sure to be a game-ender.
- “Leadership Support” does not mean you are convinced, but only that you are genuinely willing to invest the time and effort to engage in the experiment. And team members must sense your commitment.
- Beware of how you are coming across. How your team interprets your behavior is what matters most.
- Team members must feel that you are listening to them and understand why you are taking the team in one direction or another.
- Mistakes are bound to surface, and they need to be addressed constructively. True test of leadership is to turn mistakes into learning opportunities. Punishing someone for an error is likely to silence the whole team for a long time.
- Actions speak louder than words.
- Encourage others to take their time off. People respond very positively when their leaders explicitly tell them, “Stop working”; “Turn off”; “Go home” — and mean it.
- Call out those who don’t take their time off. Finding a way to take their nights-off is very important.
- Call out those who aren’t being open.
- Be open yourself. Participate in the pulse checks. Share anticipated challenges and concerns.
- Don’t pretend to be heroic. Make yourself human. Talk about your personal life. Admit when things are tough. Share your triumphs and concerns. Being honest in a PTO meeting, being open and sharing something yourself creates an environment where everyone can share.
Defining the Team and the Goal
Who will be involved? In what forum will you meet? What will be your collective goal of predictable time off?
The Team
Team members full-time working on a single project? Members part of multiple teams? Accountable to leaders of more than one team? To make the experiment possible, have a careful selection process. Consider work interdependencies and define the smallest group whose core work is done among the members.
The Forum for Structured Dialogue
Best time is an already existing meeting. If the team meets infrequently however, it is essential to create forum to meet. Put this on a calendar. Without these meetings, the structured dialogue and more generally PTO will not be effective. Initially, these meetings should be held once a week.
The Collective Goal of PTO
Identity the problem (a pressing personal issue) that is experienced as a problem by most if not all people (and if addressed, also stands to have Org benefits). When defining a goal, make sure it meets the following criteria:
- personally valued (ex — no work on weekends, time when no emails are sent, times when meetings cannot occur). Having a personal goal that feels beneficial to individuals motivates them to engage in the process and a personal goal further legitimates the discussion of personal issues. When coupled with the structured dialogue, such a goal provides a vehicle for ongoing reflection and improvement of the work process that positively affects individuals’ work lives and the work itself.
- a stretch but doable (the PTO itself!?!). Challenge the “impossibility”.
- collective and shared. Every team member has to try to make it possible for every other team member to achieve the goal. It is therefore, a shared responsibility. Without the shared aspect, people can end up looking out for themselves. Individuals must want it for themselves and accept the responsibility to make it happen for each other.
- concrete and measurable. These are essential in what ever goal you choose.
Remember — This is an Experiment
With PTO, the ongoing intent is for the team to be experimenting with new ways of working. Along the way, you may well need to experiment with getting the goal right. Finding the right goal may take some trial and error, and such floundering is part of the learning and discovery process.
A Firm-wide Initiative
The core message to keep in mind is that diffusion will be a slow, deliberate process that takes passion and commitment. Keep the following in mind.
Build Support:
- Create opportunities to share results
- Build alliances
- Enlist top management support
- Create peer pressure
- Create and sustain champions
Move forward cautiously but with conviction:
- Ensure conditions of success with leadership understanding, resources, genuine pull
- Persevere — and push through resistance
- Avoid dilution
Be open to learning as you go:
- Keep track of progress with metrics
- Learn from mistakes
Advocate for changes in formal structures to support PTO’s evolving practices:
- Revise performance metrics and review forms
- Create or expand trainings to include PTO
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate:
- Both formally and informally, at every level, make sure to get the message out there — and keep it alive over time with additional forms of communication
Introducing Facilitators
Facilitators are a critical ingredient in diffusing PTO throughout the firm. Facilitators help each PTO team establish the rules of engagement and stay true to the process, especially when stressful times hit and increasingly less-informed leaders become involved.
In normal social interaction people attempt to shape the impressions they give according to some shared set of guidelines about how one is supposed to act. Facilitators encourage individuals to challenge those guidelines and try out new roles. At the same time, facilitators act as a new type of audience, subscribing to a new system of practices, conventions and procedural rules, and applauding a new set of actions. The facilitator also plays the role of acting coach, helping individuals to perform their roles better according to the new script.
Helping Raise Issues Effectively
Facilitation was a particularly valuable tool for helping team members figure out how to raise issues with their colleagues, frankly and fairly. Facilitation can help team members handle their frustrations in “solution-oriented ways.” Facilitators can also help team members understand that the team leaders expected them to take ownership of the problem and work with the leadership to address it. The facilitator does not raise the issue on the member’s behalf but rather encourages and helps team members to discuss their concerns among themselves and share responsibility for resolving the issues as best they could.
Providing Back-Channel Feedback
When appropriate, and without violating the highly valued promise of confidentiality, facilitators might also choose to raise issues or help individuals raise issues among themselves in the weekly meeting or in a smaller, more informal setting. There might be issues team members might be uncomfortable raising and the facilitator can help get quick, efficient resolution from leadership.
Providing Space for Reflection
Weekly 1–1 meetings with the facilitator can help team members think through how the project was going and how the team was functioning. So often we get caught in the day to day demands, we don’t take the time to stop and reflect. Acts of reflection can be very powerful, saving us time in the long run as we recognise we are working in ways that are undermining our larger intent. Meeting each week with the facilitators forces time for reflection into the busy schedule.
Providing a Sympathetic Ear
Facilitators also provide immense value being good listeners, and become a regular sounding board and resource, especially for junior members of the team (like a life coach). Even for senior members, getting it off your chest and having somebody listen was 70% of the value.
Holding the Team’s Feet to the Fire
Facilitator also could be very helpful to encourage the team to stop and reflect when they reverted to bad habits, especially when the pressure mounted.
Practices of Effective Facilitation
Ensure confidentiality:
- Protect confidential information in all circumstances
- Share only aggregated or blinded information
- Remember: any betrayal of confidence sets back both the team and the larger effort
Balance flexibility and rigidity:
- Take the context into account to create rules that are achievable
- Keep both the demands of the work and the expectations of PTO in mind
- Remember: encourage teams, within reason, to embrace both rules of engagement
Take pride, not credit:
- Allow leadership to take credit where possible to build credibility with the team
- Help teams build skills and confidence to own the process
- When interjecting is necessary, take care not to dominate the discussion
- Remember: The objective is to get the team to engage in the process, not to run the process for them
Manage expectations:
- Frame value of PTO in realistic terms — PTO will not solve every issue
- Encourage teams to strive — benefits are proportional to the degree they embrace
- Remember: People need an aspirational goal to push them to great heights but a realistic goal to prevent disillusionment
Be persistent (about the importance of PTO):
- Help teams push themselves, even when things are stressful
- Push the team not to let PTO go when things get busy
- Remember: PTO is most needed exactly when people find it is hardest to make time for it.
Reimagining Work
The experiment started out in a culture where always being on was a “badge of honor” and to admit a desire to turn off was to admit weakness, an inability to cope with the demands of the work. PTO, however, shifted expectations about what it means to do good work. Doing good work is no longer about how much work one does — it is about doing the right work. Right work, work right. Even changes in the reward system at Org level followed.
Workaholics or Successaholics?
As the definition of good work began to shift so too did the meaning of a good worker. Many people who had previously been considered workaholics — by themselves and others — forced to try PTO quite unexpectedly enjoyed it. These people turned out to be not workaholics but successaholics!
Radical, Emergent Change
PTO changed how people worked together and what was rewarded. It altered what mattered to people. In the end, it affected people’s expectations of themselves and each other, regarding how much they were on and when they could turn off. The process of change catalyzed by PTO is best characterized as an emergent process, based on small wins that amount to radical change.
Toward a More Humane Workplace
What started as an exploration as to whether the cycle of responsiveness could be broken has ultimately transpired into so much more — a process to change the culture of the Org and create a more humane workplace.
PTO reconciles the inevitable conflict between managing people in a 24/7 environment and maintaining the Org’s competitive edge in the global marketplace by no longer relegating personal issues to eternal second place. Rather personal lives are placed on center stage where they can inspire rethinking the work process itself in ways that are a win-win.
The value of PTO is in fighting the assumption that work-life balance and effective project teams are mutually exclusive. Because they’re not.
altLearners 