Raising Productivity through White Noise

 Wellbeing  No Responses »
Apr 282011
 

I’ve always worked well in a café – now there is research to explain why I’m not the only one.

One would think that the best ideas, the best proposals, the best pieces of work would come after thinking long and hard about them at our desks. But of course we know that this is not always the case. I have my most creative thoughts when walking or swimming and they tend to be the first seeds of a project, a book, a pitch, a workshop outline.

Of course they don’t all end in success – some of them disappear into that special place in the sky where all good ideas that don’t come to fruition fly to. But most of them do get developed. So for me, being away from my desk allows me to be at my most creative. And when am I at my most productive? Simple, in a café. (Of course, probably due to the fact that I live in London and can find one around the corner wherever I am.) I don’t carry my laptop around and I don’t have a smartphone so, if I’m in a café, my usual distractions disappear.

When I need to tackle a long piece of writing, or work on a project, write a proposal etc, I move somewhere where there are people around. (To clarify, this excludes my usual workplace which is either a small office where I’m the only one within four walls, or my home.) So there is obviously something about the setting and noise levels that make some busy places better to work in.

Even though I am used to working in a quiet environment, I remember being able to work in a large, open-plan office in a creative department with no problem – though I’m not sure whether this was due to noise stimulation or my ability to block out noise.

I’m obviously not the only one intrigued by why some noise seems to make me more productive than complete silence. As reported in Business Daily (BBC Radio 4) on 13 April, white noise or ambient noise is most conducive to working: constant and loud enough to drown out the noise that would distract us, with no sudden or sharp interruptions to disturb our train of thought. To try to understand why, the programme cites studies in Sweden that have been carried out over the last ten years, with children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. White noise helps children with ADHD to concentrate, by raising dopamine levels. The last set of studies has shown these children’s memory is improved by being exposed to the right level of white noise (by “right” I mean not too loud and made of a mixture of frequencies).

It would therefore seem, that in adults, working in a café-like environment, stimulates both our visual and auditory systems, making us more alert and therefore more prone to being effective. I do enjoy it – and if there is chocolate and coffee also involved, I am happy to allow my dopamine levels to hit the roof!

 

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Migrants Optimism and Residents Myopia

 Random thoughts  No Responses »
Apr 262011
 

I’ve recently started reading Nigel Nicholson’s “Managing the Human Animal”. The book uses evolutionary psychology to help us understand the behaviour of people in organisations.

I’m sure I’ll be blogging more about this book and evolutionary psychology later, but for now I wanted to share Nicholson’s terms “migrants’ optimism” and “residents myopia” – both of which resonate oh-so-loudly with me!

Migrants’ optimism is the tendency to think that after we undergo a change, things will definitely get better. For example, those people who move jobs will think that everything will be rosier in the new workplace. I’ve seen this so many times with friends of mine who have changed organisations (I am self-employed myself so haven’t been “migrantently optimistic” for a while). Picture this: you make the decision to leave your job. During that month where you can’t wait to wrap things up, you begin to imagine your new workplace: a happy place devoid of all those things you cannot bear any longer.

And indeed, the first few weeks are such. Until you begin to identify the little things that you didn’t observe in your previous organisation, but which now begin to bug you in this new one.

Of course we have to be migrantely optimistic (sorry, I know I’m making up words here), else, how could we cope with change? If we were convinced that our new situation was going to be much worse than our current one, we would never change and therefore, we would never evolve.

Residents’ myopia could be thought of as the opposite of migrants’ optimism. It is, in Nicholson’s words:

The tendency of the long-term denizens of a subculture to become blind to the inefficiencies, irritants and foibles of their local world.

The evolutionary advantage of this is obvious – if you are stuck in a situation (and I try to use “stuck” here without its negative connotations), then you might as well be a little bit oblivious to its “malfunctions”, to ensure your ongoing happiness.

I suppose then, that I would add a third “affliction”: residents’ pessimism, when you are stuck in a not-too-bad situation but can no longer see its advantages. To avoid both residents’ myopia and pessimism, it might be a good idea to check-in with someone outside your organisation often – be it a friend, a professional contact or just someone who knows your organisation but does not reside within it. Let them point out those things that could improve but also, make sure you listen when they identify those things worth hanging on to.

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Gestures in the Digital Age

 Random thoughts  No Responses »
Apr 192011
 

I’ve always been intrigued by the evolutionary reasons for crying. One of the most palatable answers I have come across is that, when we cry, we show everyone around us how upset we are. As we are a social animal and our survival as a species relies on us being close to others, I am happy with that explanation, for the moment.

Another aspect which has always intrigued me about the human race is our ability to speak. Let’s rephrase that, the need to use language. It’s fascinating to start to think of how speech evolved in the different parts of the Earth. Again, is language something that unites us, that gives us a sense of belonging? (A common example often found in multicultural settings, is that, everyone communicates in one language but as soon as two people realise they have a different language in common, they switch to that one. The more considerate ones, then quickly switch back to the original language so as not to isolate themselves or those around them.)

My third thought for today is the connection between gesture and speech. We all know that we pick up on visual clues as well as language when we talk to others. And we’ve all heard how much e-mail is destroying quality communication as it misses out on tone of voice, body language etc etc. Our need to communicate comes from our whole being, not just our speech muscles. The reason why this came to mind today, was that I observed a couple of people in the street gesturing widely, while talking on the mobile phone.

I often observe this and catch myself doing it often too. Mapping out the left/right/straight ahead combination when explaining to someone how to get to my favourite restaurant; or simply just waving my hands desperately when telling someone about my frustrating morning.

When I am in a voiceover session I make sure I use the whole of my body for “best results”. Sharp, linear hand gestures work best for corporate work or instructions; facial expressions help when bringing character toys alive. No one can see my body moving, but it definitely affects the voice.

I try not to over analayse human nature and human interaction, but the biologist in me wakes up occasionally and today it has surfaced while reading Nigel Nicholson’s Managing the Human Animal. (I’ll leave further thoughts on this for a later post.)

So, while facial expressions are being replaced by emoticons, it seems like our bodies (and this includes our faces) refuse to be demoted to second place.

;-) ;-) P.S. Interesting, no emoticon comes up for the sad face ;-(

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Stepping into Other People’s Shoes – does it always work?

 Leadership, Teams  1 Response »
Apr 152011
 

A close friend of mine started a trial period in a small company in London. He was struck by how informal everything was: no project briefings, no team meetings (even though, apparently, there were teams), no paper contracts, no Health and Safety talks. Being laid back himself, this didn’t worry him too much (and the emphasis here is on the “too”).

But then the anecdotes of poor line management began. They seem simple and unimportant, but worth telling.

My friend, let’s call him Carl, was working on some drawings for a scale-model. They weren’t finished, the deadline was approaching. “I’m going home now”, he said to his manager. “Oh”, his manager (let’s call him Sam) said. Silence.

Carl said:”Would you want me to take them home and finish them for tomorrow?”
“Yes, that would be great”.
“Then why didn’t you say so yourself?” went Carl’s thought bubble.

Anecdote number 2: Carl arrived one afternoon after his lunch break. “Carl, ” said Sam. “Would you go into the meeting with Martin? He’s meeting a client.”
“Sure. Anything I should know about it or anything you want me to look out for?” “No, just go in there with Martin”. “That’s considerate of Sam”, thought Carl, still in his trial period and keen to be involved.

Following the meeting, Sam comes up to Carl: “Okay, brief me. What’s going on with the project?”

Luckily Carl had his brain switched on (which is more than can be said for others) and was able to pass on the information, but surely a “Could you go into the meeting and brief me afterwards” would have been appropriate?

You can see how these anecdotes kept Carl and myself entertained for a while. Puzzled by all of this and knowing that Sam never really looked happy all day until he got to the pub, all I could of think of was, “Poor Sam, obviously he doesn’t want to be a manager. He is one of these people who was a good model-maker and has been promoted to team leader, when all he wants to be doing is making models.”

Oh how wrong I was. Not at all. My friend found out later that Sam had always wanted to be a manager, it had been his goal for some time. In trying to understand Sam’s inability to communicate and manage others, I had come up with a whole story to make sense of it, when the answer seemed so much simpler. Sam is just really bad at his job, mainly because he doesn’t talk to people.I had tried to make sense of a situation by putting myself in someone else’s shoes – unfortunately, unaware of Sam’s own parameters, I had used mine to solve the conundrum.

Needless to say, my friend is no longer working there. He was one of three people who left in a month.

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Book: Managing Transitions by William Bridges

 Book  2 Responses »
Apr 112011
 

William Bridges’ book focuses on the need to pay attention to the “neutral zone”, that obscure area of uncertainty that we all have to go to as we let go of the way things have been and try to understand how we fit into the new order.

What I think “Managing Transitions – making the most of change” does best, is painting a very clear picture of the role of the individual in organisational change. By addressing the ways in which people in organisations will be affected by change, it paints a very clear picture of the role of the leader: clarifying the way forward and communicating all the way through. And by communicating, of course I mean listening and watching, as well as speaking and writing.

Although the book was first published in the early 90s, part three, “Dealing with nonstop change in the organisation and your life” seems particularly relevant. I encourage you to read the book, especially if you are looking for gems that you can apply directly. Meanwhile, I leave you with Bridges’ suggestions of how to help people “let go” of the past.

  • Identify who’s losing what.
  • Accept the importance of subjective losses.
  • Don’t be surprised at over-reaction.
  • Acknowledge the losses openly and sympathetically.
  • Expect and accept the signs of grieving.
  • Compensate for the losses.
  • Give people information – and do it again and again and again….
  • Define what’s over and what’s not.
  • Mark the endings.
  • Treat the past with respect.
  • Show how endings can lead to new beginnings.

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Learning from our successes

 Leadership  No Responses »
Apr 072011
 

The Harvard Business Review have titled this month’s issue “The Failure Issue”. I celebrate this because failure is seen as… well, just failure, whereas it forms part of every business’ development. Of course, failure is not pretty and sometimes it has devastating consequences but the good thing about it is that we can learn from it.

Plenty of evaluation and dissecting of failure goes on in teams and organisations – as well as in individual’s minds, of course. So much have we focused on learning from failure that I fear some times, we forget to learn from success. When we achieve success or when we coast along successfully, we rarely stop to think why. Are we just happy to enjoy our success? Do we build on it by looking forwards and not analysing what we did in the past that enabled us to grow? Everyone understands the urgency to stop and dissect what led to failure but the opportunity to really learn from success is often missed.

That’s why I really welcomed the HBR’s article this month on learning from success. The article is published on the HBR website and is called “Why leaders don’t learn from success”. I won’t summarise their ideas here (I’d much rather give you the LINK)  but would like to mention just one point. Well, two.

One of the main reasons why we should analyse our successes is because, in doing so, we might realise that forces outside of our control were key to our achievements. You can see how, if a team makes a breakthrough, that was due to luck, they might become unaware of the amount of work (and learning) that they still need to carry out. “We make our own luck,” I hear you say (some of you are whispering it even). Then it is important to identify what precisely allowed us to take advantage of a favourable situation.

The other point I particularly welcome in this article, was the fact that learning from our successes, does not mean replicating them. And that is why it is so important to turn them into a learning opportunity – to be able to remain succesful, but flexible. What we did yesterday might not be what we need to do tomorrow, but there are elements that might be worth persisting with.

Finally, it is so much more fun to learn from success than from failure, so why don’t we encourage this more often?

 

 

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