Effectiveness Can Drive So Much More Than Thriving at Work

Greetings friends!

I’ve been focused on being more effective for so long that I sometimes skip over the foundational question: Why should we care about effectiveness? What’s the big deal about effectiveness anyway?

That deserves an answer, which I expect will differ among individuals. The benefits of effectiveness will also differ for the same person over time.

Developing our effectiveness is the most powerful lever we have to drive satisfaction over our whole lives, not just our working careers.

What effectiveness does for you

At its most fundamental level, we can think of effectiveness as a means of achieving an end.

Say you want to finish school with a degree. Not only that, but you want to get good grades. Now say you want to find a job at a great company and then you want to perform well in that job and see progress in your career.

Effectiveness thus simply means getting what you want.

To that we add this important modifier: The more efficiently you can achieve your goals, the more effective you are. That is, can you do it in less time, with less effort, and with fewer mistakes?

• For some people, effectiveness is a matter of competitiveness. As in, “I want to perform better than my peers or others I see myself in competition with.”
• Others may be driven by a sense of personal satisfaction. They want to live a life consistent with their values, which may include performing at their best at all times. A ready guide to your values is what you do when no one is watching.
• And for yet others, the drive for effectiveness is functional: How can I get my work done quickly so that I can enjoy my life outside work?

What do you want to get better at in life? (For inspiration on this, see How to Use Metrics Wisely, Instead of Letting Them Manipulate You.)

Whatever is on your list, learning to be more effective is one of the best tools I know to help you achieve your goals.

When you know your goals and your values, effectiveness helps you reach your goals efficiently

Developing a personal mindset is a great starting point

What kind of person are you? How do you see yourself responding to pressure? Are you a leaf tossed in the wind, a cork bobbing in the water, carried along by the stream?

Or are you a rock that is unshaken by the wind?

What happens when the wind becomes a storm? When water is rushing past you, tearing at your foundation?

Does the friction and pressure erode you, turn your surface to mud, and wash away your substance? Or does it brush against solid rock, revealing the light of an unbreakable diamond shining through?

Think of yourself as strong, unshakeable, and in control of your fate.

Is this mindset strictly necessary for you to leverage effectiveness habits? No. However, I’ve found a positive and confident outlook to be highly complementary to improving effectiveness.

Think of yourself as strong, unshakeable, and in control

You must know what games you’re playing before you can win them

I recommend you pay attention to how systems work. That’s because we’re always operating within larger systems.

• The business world, with rules around basic economics and competition
• Laws and regulations and their enforcement (or lack thereof)
• Human psychology, emotions, and incentives and how they drive behavior

The more you understand what systems you’re operating in and how those systems work, the more effectively you can navigate the relevant levers within those systems.

This is another way of getting at the question: What works and why does it work?

When I ran the legal team, pragmatism was one of my favorite principles. As in, will this idea work? I don’t care how elegant or logical your idea is. I care about whether we can implement it and whether it will solve our problem.

Pragmatism must be tempered by our understanding of the systems we’re operating in. The most pragmatic solution may be illegal, immoral, or inconsistent with our values. So we discard those.

I call this bounded pragmatism. We want the most effective solution that works (pragmatic) within the rules of the systems we’re operating in (bounded).

Observe systems to master them. Operate within the bounds of those systems

You cannot do everything, so choose wisely and work well

It is seductively easy to respond to the demands of the business and just do the work that is in front of you. This will kill your effectiveness and lead to burnout.

Why? The business offers up countless tasks, many of which are not high-value activities. Merely responding to what’s put in front of you risks your being overburdened and wasting time, which is a terrible combination.

Activity without purpose is not productivity, merely being busy

That’s where strategy comes in. The purpose of a strategy is to drive the allocation of resources. For a legal team, those resources are people and time. The legal strategy thus identifies what are the high-value activities the team should spend time on.

Productivity comes from proactive planning

Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, put it this way recently:

Time management may be the most underrated capacity of great managers. Controlling your own time well and not permitting others to dictate how you spend it is one of the determinants of successful leadership.

We can help the business work well with the legal team by making the legal strategy and corresponding priorities public. Go ahead and make a list of what the team works on and why.

Then when the business comes with a request, have them consider where it belongs on the list. (That doesn’t mean we’ll agree with their prioritization. It does help ensure they’ve seen everything we’re working on and are aware that we have other projects.)

Our activity should always be self-directed and in line with both company and legal team priorities. As a team member, you should know how what you’re doing helps advance the legal strategy.

Ask, how does this work help advance our strategy?

Work deliberately for high quality (go slow to work well)

If you are hurried, you will get through tasks quickly but are more likely to make mistakes. No one needs a sloppy lawyer.

If you are deliberate and purposeful, you will take the time to do what’s needed. That almost never means perfection. Good enough is good enough. It takes experience and collaboration with colleagues to figure out what’s good enough in a given setting. More on this in a moment.

Doing work well always takes longer than we first estimate. I recommend doubling the time you estimate it will take to complete a project. That is both more realistic and increases the chances you will not feel hurried to just get it done.

Do fewer things, with focus. Do less, but do it well

Effectiveness is very much a team sport

Lawyers often fall prey to believing their individual effort is most important. After all, thinking, problem-solving, and much of our work is done independently.

In the business context, too much independence is an effectiveness killer. Why? Because to have an impact, others must use, understand, and accept our work.

• A template has no value if colleagues don’t use it.
• A guideline is worthless if employees don’t understand it.
• Our recommendation is wasted if management does not follow it.

I wish, oh I wish, that the better idea always won the argument. For years, I honed my logic and rhetoric hoping that others would be swayed by reason and my persuasiveness. Sometimes cool reason works. But not nearly enough to rely upon it alone.

So, what makes the difference in helping us make a difference? It is personal connections.

• The more people know you as a person with values, the more likely they are to trust your recommendation.
• When colleagues see that you understand their priorities and the company’s strategy, they will believe that your recommendation is the right one.
• When you have laughed together, survived tough times together, and simply spent time with one another, you build reserves of goodwill that you can call upon when needed.

There is no substitute for spending time with people

At first glance, spending time socializing, having meals together, and attending meetings can seem like a drag on your effectiveness. You do need to watch for wasting time, true. The value of relationships on effectiveness is so strong, however, that it’s worth a considered investment of your time.

Some of the most inspired ideas I had, serendipitous information I learned, and the best luck I encountered getting projects approved happened when I was at work and not “working.”

• A morning run often fostered great discussions with colleagues, giving me inspiration for a new approach.
• A chat over coffee, or even just a meeting in the hallway, led to learning information about the business I never would have heard otherwise.
• A casual inquiry at lunch led to project approvals I would have struggled to get with a careful proposal in a formal setting.

That’s to say nothing of the emotional benefit we get from spending time with colleagues in casual settings. It’s just fun to work with people we like. Work is hard enough without it also feeling lonely.

Spending time with your colleagues provides an emotional boost in addition to practical benefits

Effectiveness is a lifelong game that you should enjoy

I’ve got one more bit of practical advice I’ll end with. To understand it we need to go back to the start.

If you recall the question I started with, it was, “Why should we care about effectiveness?” We discussed how effectiveness is a great tool for helping us achieve our goals.

If there’s a secret to thriving in life, it’s to always have goals you are pursuing. No matter how far you’ve come, no matter how much you’ve accomplished, people find more meaning in making progress than they do in the destination.

Always have goals you are pursuing because making progress towards your goals gives your life meaning

That’s great news for the student of effectiveness (a) because you can always get better and, (b) you needn’t rush, since yours is a lifelong pursuit. Instead, your task is to make each day effective by taking a single step in the direction of your choosing.

If you hear me saying that following continuous improvement principles will make you a master of effectiveness, that’s exactly right!

Remembering that effectiveness is a slow and steady game makes it sustainable. Sharing the journey with colleagues makes it enjoyable. Seeing your regular progress makes your life meaningful.

I think this is a great way to manage your career and your life.

Be well.

If you want more practical wisdom like this, see my stories when they’re published.