"Slow is smooth, smooth is fast"

This is a quote from my triathlon coach.

A triathlon is comprised of three activities - traditionally swim, then bike, then a run. It is very easy to think solely of things like swim stroke, bicycle aerodynamics, and running form when it comes to putting together the pieces of a successful race, but one of the often-missed aspects (from the outsider point of view) is the transition between each discipline. In a race, these are aptly named T1 (Transition 1) and T2 (Transition 2).

To help paint a picture, let's take a moment to walk through what needs to happen during T1. After the swim, the competitor usually, at a minimum, must find their gear bag, take their wetsuit off, take their goggles off, get their bike socks on, get their bike shoes on, get their helmet on, and get their race belt on. Then, there are personal preferences - affixing their Garmin to the bike, putting on their HR monitor, putting on sunscreen, donning cycling sunglasses, etc. In shorter races, missing one thing may not be that bad, but in something like an Ironman where the competitor is about to start off on a 112 mile bike ride - if the glasses or some sort of eye protection is forgotten, eyes are directly exposed to 17-20 mph winds for anywhere from 5-6 hours. Not fun.

So, why am I mentioning all of this? Because it is a great example of a situation with a lot of moving parts, where taking a moment to be mindful of your actions often results in smoother, and ultimately faster, execution.

I find the quote above to be a very simple way to remember that when my mind gets going, moving 100 mph and trying to keep a lot of moving parts in order, that I need to slow down, take a breath, and take the necessary time to be deliberate about my actions. Too often we end up in situations where time is of the essence and we are under pressure to produce results now. I find these situations to be ripe with the possibility of getting ahead of myself, missing a step, having to go back and make a correction (at best), or even redo a lot of work (at worst). I've yet to find a scenario where being hasty and having to redo work is preferred to taking the appropriate amount of time and doing something right the first time.

The quote may have been said in reference to the specifics of a triathlon transition, but 'Slow is smooth, smooth is fast' is something I find application for just about every day, both at work, and at home.

By the way - while my transition times have never been stellar (some people do actually rigorously practice them), I never did forget my glasses, or get to the bike mount line in an Ironman and only then realize I didn't have bike shoes - both of which I've seen happen.

What is a Goal vs a Strategy vs a Tactic?

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.

Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

- Sun Tzu

The terms goal, strategy and tactics are often used interchangeably in casual conversation - but learning what each is, and where each fits into the picture alongside the other two, was a light bulb moment for me. I previously wrote about the importance of execution, and to me, knowing the precise definition of these three terms is critical to laying a successful foundation for execution.

At its simplest:

Goal – What it is that you want to achieve

Strategy – The methods of how you are going to get there

Tactics – The specific action items taken

Developing a Goal

A goal is a very simple, clear, and almost reductive statement. It is simply “I/we want X”, with no consideration of how X gets accomplished. Most people are familiar with the idea of creating a goal, but many times what people think is a goal is actually a strategy or a tactic. For example, someone making a New Year’s resolution may say “I want to lose weight, so I have a goal of going to the gym 3x per week”. In this example, the true goal is to lose weight – going to the gym 3x per week is a tactic.

Developing a Strategy

Strategies are still fairly simple, but they start involving the question(s) of 'how'. This is often where values, such as those of a mission statement, or critical desires identified by the parties involved, start to become considered.

Continuing the example of a New Years resolution, lets say a person decides that the options are to eat smaller portions (fewer calories in), cook at home more (less processed food), or start exercising (increase calories burned). Those are three strategies. Notice that in our losing weight example, the strategy was not directly mentioned – it was implied by the idea of going to the gym 3x per week.

Developing Tactics

The tactics are the action items where the ‘work’ gets done, the 'what do I need to do?' questions. Thus, going to the gym 3x per week is a tactic. Or, coming up with a menu of potential home cooked meals to prepare during the week is a tactic if one is following a strategy to cook at home more. The tactics can be fairly flexible – if the tactics are not effective in implementing the chosen strategy, they can be adjusted based on newly obtained information.

Putting it all together

The real power of identifying goals, valid strategies, and effective tactics is the flexibility afforded as conditions change, which may otherwise derail forward progress. Going back to our losing weight example – if someone says their goal is to go to the gym 3x per week, and then they are not able to go to the gym for some time (injury, busy work schedule) – it is easy to succumb to a failure mindset and give up. By recognizing that going to the gym 3x per week is just a tactic, which is part of one (but not the only potential) strategy – the overall goal is something that can still be worked toward.

Two Rules I Follow when Changing A Scheduled Item

Finding a common time among a group of people to create a schedule item, such as a meeting, can be challenging. Even more difficult is when an item on the calendar involving a lot of people needs to be rescheduled. I find this situation to be ripe with possibilities of miscommunications, frustrations, and some people not receiving the update.

I’ve taken to adopting two rules that I have found very helpful in combating this:

Rule #1 - You can change an appointment/meeting ONCE

People are busy. They have their own calendars that are full, and they are also likely plugged into multiple calendars – their personal calendar, their work calendar, their spouses’ calendar, their kids’ calendar(s), etc. Making a proposed change to their calendar involves more than just finding an open slot – it may involve moving other stuff around to accommodate, which can result in a trickle-down effect on other calendars they are involved in. If I try to follow-up a change with a subsequent change (especially if the subsequent change is to go back to the original plan), things get confusing very quickly, and it is easy for mistakes to be made.

In short, attention is a resource, people have a limited amount of it, and changing a calendar item is often resource intensive. If I am going to make a schedule change, I really try to ensure that it is absolutely necessary, because I’ve found that once a change is made, it’s best to consider it immutable.

Rule #2 - Get positive confirmation that the change was received. Don’t assume.

Once I’ve decided to make a change, I make it clear to people that I am expecting confirmation from them about said change.

If I make a change in a schedule item without requesting confirmation, I don’t know whether they are OK with the change and just stayed silent, or whether they missed the request, or they are looking into whether they can accommodate and it’s just taking time on their end, or any number of complications that may have arisen. Requesting confirmation dramatically reduces the chance of a miscommunication – even if the response is ‘I may be able to accommodate, but give me a few days to verify other parts of my schedule’. At least the other person and I are on the same page.

Regarding assumptions - the only place I find they can be made is when a change is being proposed, and it’s done so with the statement “I’m going to assume that unless I hear from you, we are sticking with the original plan”.

The other reason to request confirmation is that if someone sees an updated calendar item, they check their schedule and are OK with it, then move on – there is a very good chance that they mentally didn’t register that change. Replying with a confirmation requires a level of cognition on their part that makes it far more likely that they will remember the change was made.

Why Those Days That Feel Unproductive Are Actually Beneficial

Every so often, when I ask someone how their day is going, the response I get is akin to “Dude, I haven’t gotten a thing done all day because I’ve been in meetings and on phone calls.” I can understand that feeling of the day slipping by, having experienced it many times in my own career - the end of the day comes, and you feel like nothing changed on the to-do list. It can be frustrating.

However, I think this is pretty common once one gets towards the middle of their career. My N=1 experience is that at first, it was easy to have some number of things on my to-do list, and they could all be completed in relatively short order. However, as I’ve gained skills and experience, the projects I am involved in are more complex, with more moving pieces. This takes more time and more deliberate effort to keep things moving, leading to some days feeling like I haven’t really done anything. This, in turn, can easily lead to increasing my level of anxiety.

To use a football analogy - I eventually came to realize that not every play is going to be an 18 yard breakout run, or a 30 yd down-field pass. Sometimes a project just needs someone to pick up the ball, run it a couple yards, and get a new set of downs. It’s not sexy, it’s not glamorous; however, it is required to keep things moving. Those days spent on conference calls and meetings are part of those grind-it-out plays, where the purpose is simply to keep the ball moving. Just because it doesn’t appear that the needle has moved significantly, doesn’t mean that no progress has been made. It just means that additional prep work was needed to progress to the next step, now that everyone is on the same page.

This realization has led to some interesting outcomes for me.

First, the anxiety of not feeling productive is significantly reduced, which makes it easier to turn off the work-brain at the end of the day. This, in turn, has had a major (positive) impact on my interaction with my family at the end of the day, when my leaving the home office coincides with dinner preparation. I actually spoke a bit about this in a previous post about some of the challenges of working from home.

The second outcome is that those days actually provide an opportunity to step away from the weeds, and think about the current status in a big picture view. Usually projects start to stall when things become difficult, and they become difficult because there is lack of vision for a clear path forward. On those days where I find my calendar is full of meetings or calls, taking some time in between to step back and think about what the next best steps should be helps me maximize my efficacy on days when I have solid chunks of uninterrupted time.

As we progress through our careers, the scope of what we are doing changes, and the expectations and how we view progress and execution on our projects must change also. We have to learn to be kind to ourselves, and be OK with days that seem unproductive, but are still necessary.

Three Ways I've Used Email Incorrectly

There's no doubt that email has become the dominant form of communications in today's world. After all, it provides several major benefits:

• It is super convenient,
• It can be used as a to-do list in a lot of situations,
• It allows us to reach out to colleagues without interrupting them, and
• We can respond to a colleague in a time frame that is, at least partially, conducive to our own personal schedule.

What's not to like?!

Yet, like any tool - convenience breeds misuse, which can easily lead to reduced effectiveness. The following are a few ways I've found myself (and others) using email in ways that does not obtain the intended or desired result.

Trying to convey complex information

As much as I try to be succinct and to the point, asking a nuanced question when there has been no previously established context is very difficult.

Much like social media is a poor medium for a debate, email tends to be a poor medium for describing a situation with a lot of moving parts. I've found that in these scenarios, it is easy to gloss over important points of cognition for the reader. This usually happens because I am so deep in the weeds that I simply don't think of any other way that the variables could be interpreted. And, the more points of cognition that exist in the subject matter, the higher the chance that the reader gets to the end, and is completely lost. As a result, the reader often replies back with an answer to what they understand the issue as being. Sometimes, the reader replies back with 'huh?', putting me back to square one. Frustration builds on both sides.

By contrast, a simple phone call, or person-to-person dialogue to establish context and discuss the fine points of the issue, is far more effective. This way, the recipient has the opportunity to ask clarifying questions, and I have a much higher chance of getting my question answered in a meaningful way.

Faux Progress

Another trap I've found myself falling into is the sending of an email and thinking that forward progress has been made simply because something is off my plate.

Lets say, for example, that I need a piece of information from someone in order to keep things moving with a project. I email the person who has the information, but I may now be at a stopping point until that person replies. The trap is that my brain thinks I've done what I can, I'm waiting on the other person, and then I move on with my day thinking that progress has been made on that project.

A lot of times, all that has happened is that I've wasted time for both me and the recipient. They are likely very busy, so their natural inclination is to reply back via email with clarification questions (see nuanced content, above), and a long back-and-forth email chain that takes place over an extended period of time has begun. Again, it'd have been much more efficient to set up a simple phone call or person-to-person dialogue when both people could be mentally present to the situation.

Lack of Direction

Finally, another really common mistake I've made is the lack of a clear action plan, or lack of what I'm looking for from recipients. Having been on the other side, I've received emails where there are multiple people on the recipient list, and it's not clear who should respond. The email version of bystander apathy runs rather high, and it's easy to think that someone else on the recipient list is better qualified to provide a response.

In this scenario, it's helpful if the email calls out what action items are expected from various individual parties. Even if it's just to hey 'Hey Alice - FYI, no action needed on your part' - that is extremely helpful.

The above are just a few ways I've misused email, where it's been an impediment to communications, instead of facilitating it.

To that end, here are a few general rules I find helpful when writing up an email:

• Make sure both sides have all necessary context of a situation before referencing it in an email.
• Keep questions short, to the point, and written in a way to likewise elicit a short and simple reply.
• When emailing multiple people about something requiring action, call out who I am looking to take said action.
• Finally, take a few moments, and read the email in a contextual vacuum and do what I can to make it easy for the reader. It may mean taking a few minutes to repeat some information that is embedded in a reply further down - but in the long run, it saves everyone time and effort.