Deep Thinking | Accelerate Success with Lorraine Moore

Many executives are inadvertently getting in the way of innovation, creativity, and productivity from their teams. And sometimes from themselves. We now have ready access to more information from more sources than at any other time in history. We don’t even have to seek it out. Our news feeds alert us to breaking news, interrupting our train of thought, and distracting us from our other tasks.

Most of us have read the articles or heard the research. Our performance while multi-tasking declines to a level below that of having consumed cannabis. Much of what we are prompted to read is not only not urgent, often, it requires no action on our part. This applies to email almost as frequently as our news feeds.

We have mastered incoming phone calls. Many offices no longer have landlines in corporate offices. When our cell phones or landlines ring, we typically let calls go to voicemail. We have adapted to returning calls when convenient. Of course, knowing this, others will often send us a text, as it is quicker for them and more likely to generate a response. We simply traded answering the phone for a new attention disrupter – sending and replying to texts.

We know this. In my experience, we ebb and flow between mastering our time effectively, ignoring the distractions, and being caught up in a wave of interruptions, some self-initiated such as checking our email or sending a quick text. Importantly, what can you do to foster innovation, creativity, and productivity in your company? Allow, enable, promote, encourage, and perhaps even mandate, time dedicated to thinking – deep, broad and rooted thinking.

Most of you who are reading this are running companies or leading teams of knowledge workers. You rely on the sound judgement, creativity, thorough analysis and simply, well thought out ideas and execution of your employees. How can you better foster deep thinking in yourself and those knowledge workers?

While leading Microsoft, Bill Gates situated himself in an isolated cabin in a forest for a week, twice a year. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, he would immerse himself in reading papers written by employees, pitching new investments or innovations. The launch of Internet Explorer was attributed to one of Gates’ thinking weeks.

Many prolific authors attribute their creativity and productivity to solo, dedicated time away from the day to day. Clayton Christensen (Harvard) published over 70 books and developed the theory of disruptive innovation, which some have called the most influential business idea of the early 21^st century. Ken Follett has sold more than 160 million copies of non-fiction novels. J.K. Rowling sequestered herself for six months at an Edinburgh hotel to complete the final Harry Potter novel.

Assess. How much are you contributing to disrupted workdays for others? Do you send a stream of emails or texts, or do you call your team members throughout the day as items come to mind? If so, it may feel productive to check items off your list, but it may also be providing a false sense of satisfaction. You may have interrupted your own deep-thinking time and you will have to reset your focus when you return. It is likely that you have interrupted another. Your CFO, middle manager or other will almost always feel compelled to respond promptly to your question.
Turn off all alerts. Shut your office door, or even better, remove yourself from the office (this includes the home office). Sit down with pen and notebook or with a list of printed articles, emails or other items you want to review. Stay there for at least an hour. Our nervous systems are used to continuous motion and multi-tasking. It takes time to calm our minds and to adjust to this new pace.
Provide a conference room or office space with no technology – no phone, no computer, etc. Provide water, pads of letter or legal-size paper and pens. Ask your direct reports to commit to a number of hours that they will spend in the room, dedicated to deep thinking, each month. Follow up – to see how many hours they dedicated to thought and the outcomes.
Rather than immediately taking action when you want information from one of your employees, start an electronic or paper list. Save the items for your weekly or daily checkpoint, or send all your requests at once, later in the day. Only 20 percent or less of what you require from them is urgent; the rest can wait.
Create email-free days (or half days). Declare one day per week or two days per month as email-free. Do not initiate any internal emails yourself. If you feel compelled to prepare that communication to one of your direct reports or for your marketing team, create it, but save it in draft until the next day. Instruct everyone that no internal emails are to be sent that day (or half day), or at minimum, prohibit internal emails to front-line and customer-facing staff – on these designated days. If you were to ask most front-line employees about the value of the internal emails they receive, if they were honest, they would tell you that at least 80 percent of the average 120 daily emails offer nothing to improve the quality of customer service delivery.

Some years ago, we travelled through Turkey, a country rich in history, culture and tradition. One of the most awe-inspiring stops was Ephesus. As I considered the explosion of information available to us at any time, and my own and others’ decrease in deep-thinking sessions, my mind took me back to the Ephesus ruins. The ancient Library of Celsus was a repository for 12,000 scrolls and was considered one of the most impressive buildings in the Roman Empire. People would travel for days, sometimes weeks, to spend time in the library and then face a lengthy return trip to their homes. What struck me was that the travel to and from the library would have provided hours or days for contemplation, to consider what answers and information one was seeking and later, to consider the implications of what one had learned. This provided a fruitful opportunity in which creativity could flourish.

What a contrast to our pinging phones, email alerts and vibrating watches. We can all learn from the practices of Bill Gates and others. By setting aside time for deep thinking and minimizing our disruptions to others, our brains will benefit and our employees and companies can flourish.

During these challenging times, we need each other. Reach out to discuss how I may support your success. Contact me today.