1176: How to Stay Effective Amidst Chaos with Melissa Swift

0:09 Write down for a day what you do. Do that across a week, I think many of us would be shocked, and there's some good effectiveness insights just from doing that, because you may say, I thought my job was this, but actually I'm spending my time on this, and I forget any other accounts of the job, I don't think this is what I should be doing. That's Melissa Swift. She's the CEO of Anthro May Insight and a leading voice on how professionals can succeed in an ever more challenging world of work. She's also a consultant, keynote speaker, and author. Her latest book is Effective, How to Do Great Work in a Fast Changing World. So you'll learn one the four trends that make work feel more intense and chaotic. Two, How to hone in on what makes you effective, and three, two critical questions to ask in the face of chaos. And if you'd like a quick summary write about the actual wisdom that Melissa shares, you can find that in our Gold Nugget free email newsletter, which you can grab at awesomatyourjob.com. I'm Pete McKitis, this is how to be awesome at your job, and now here's Melissa.

1:12 Melissa, welcome. It's great to be here. Well I'm excited to talk about Effective How to do great work, you know, being awesome at your job, being effective at your job are kind of similar. And we could debate the the distinction, but

1:25 Could you maybe kick us off with a definition of effectiveness here? Yeah, so it's I think effectiveness is getting done the things you really need to get done. You know, there's a ton of literature on kind of productivity that you can do all the things. And I don't think effectiveness is about doing all the things. It's about doing the things you really want to do to the standard you really want to do them and to a s the standard that others are happy with as well. Mm-hmm. And and I guess I would imagine there's also perhaps a dimension of in a way that doesn't s leave you bitter, burnt out, exhausted. Furious. Frustrated.

1:59 Absolutely, absolutely, right. Cause if it takes all of your energy to be effective for this period of time, what about The rest of the time. Okay. Well, so I'm I'm eager to get into the the particulars of of the how this is done, but could you perhaps kick us off with a cool story of someone who cranked up their effectiveness.

2:21 So one story that I absolutely love, um, that I actually I talk about in the book is the CIO of a company called Farrovial. They're doing the I don't know if you've flown through JFK Airport in the last, you know, year, couple years, right? But there's this massive renovation of JFK going on. And Farrovial is doing it. And Demetris Von Tulis is the CIO of Faravale. One of kind of the sort of his key pillars for dealing with chaos, which is a topic I I talk about in the book, and I talk about this strategy.

2:51 Is this idea of what activities do you need to protect in a chaotic environment? Right. What can you let go and what must you absolutely protect? So, you know, for instance, right, it's been getting fairly hot here in New York, you know, in the summers. One activity they need to protect is they absolutely have to make sure, you know, they've got like little mini data centers running as as part of this massive renovation project. They have to make sure the air conditioning stays on. And I love kind of that simplicity and clarity. Of you know, okay, crazy environment, twenty zillion things going on, large scale capital project at a live airport.

3:29 And you know what we need to do? Air conditioning. That level of focus and that level of clarity, I think, is is really powerful. And that's what's enabled them to kind of, you know, keep the lights on during again a a project at a a complexity and at a level of stakes that I think many of us would be very intimidated by. Well, yes, I was intimidated just imagining beginning such a process or program. So

3:52 And that is a key thing. What might be harder for some is identifying well what can they really let go of? Yes, we have to have the air conditioning and the catering and the hydration station. You know, it so

4:07 Do you have any pro tips for how folks think through well, what can they let go? I think this is a a good kind of role for scenario planning, to be honest. Do start just think about it like okay, that's critical, that's critical, that's critical. Okay, well scenario plan it out. Let's say you let This piece drop. What's gonna happen? What might happen? What is not just what you think is gonna happen, but what are a few different scenarios that might happen? If you really pressure test.

4:32 all this stuff, you might say, Well, okay, you know, if I don't do that initiative, you know, oh my gosh, this very senior person's gonna get angry at me. Or scenario two They might not notice that Or Scenario three

4:45 somebody else might notice that you appropriately prioritize, you know, the task they were advocating for, et cetera, et cetera. So Just doing that kind of pressure testing on different scenarios of how things might play out, I think sometimes helps us like overcome our our anxious mind. Certainly. So so the the scenarios you're imagining are if this element just disappeared, got no love attention whatsoever. What are the consequences? And sometimes you see, well, the consequences are absolutely catastrophic.

5:16 versus the consequences are, Oh, someone's a little bit miffed. It's like Hm. Okay, well. That one is much more severe than the other. So

5:26 Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, our psychology plays tricks on us, right? Especially if, you know, I talk about people having kind of different things that might make them effective in the book. So if the thing that makes you effective is dealing with people, you might intuitively have this response about, oh gosh, I cannot get people mad at me, right? Because my human connections are so important. But you have to be able to take that step back and say, well, what are the Actual other scenarios. And might there be some where it's not just about people feeling bad. It's like there are concrete bad events that might result. Yeah, I think that's great in terms of we go from the general to the specific. And and I too really like my relationships and good agreeableness. And every once in a while, though, I encounter a situation where it's like, you know what? Even if

6:10 This relationship were utterly destroyed in the course of this. series of conversations. I would be okay with that if I Got what I want. And even if they were to scream. that they hate me every time my name is uttered in their presence. Now this is a

6:26 It's scenario planning. It's extreme. I don't think this has ever happened to anybody. And rare, but it but it's good to take that stock of in this particular circumstance uh perhaps the the people relationshipy matters are not the number one consideration.

6:42 Yeah, absolutely. Well, so you you've got four areas, and before we sort of tick into each of them, could you share with us your big message of effective how do we do great work in a fast changing world? I think it's two things. I think number one, understand what makes you good at your job. And those are the the four things that we'll get into in a second. But this fundamental thing of what actually makes me decent at the work I do. It's I think it's gotten really lost in kind of our contemporary context that it's all like, you must have these 20 emerging skills and these 17 things. And it's just, it's exhausting. It's overwhelming. It's like no. Basic, basic stuff. What makes you good at your job?

7:19 And then number two, I think you need to know sort of what you're up against in contemporary working contexts and just kind of have some have some plans, have some strategies. So I talk about chaos, which we already spoke about. Hyper transparency is an interesting one. There's all this information floating around organizations, and like, what do you do? Work intensification, work has has simply gotten more overloaded in recent years. Uh, and then also work has gotten very emotional. as well. And I hear a lot from people who are really grappling with that. And so if you know, okay, this is kind of the current set of stuff we're up against, and you know what makes you good at your job. A lot of the battle is fought. It's not

7:59 Everything. But Day to day, you're kind of like, all right, this is what I gotta amplify and this is what I've got to combat. Well said, in terms of Fast changing world, chaos.

8:11 Yeah. And You know, and not to be the introduction to every business book ever. Today everything is different and it's so hard. And so So yeah, I mean there's certainly truth to that with you know new technologies and AI and yada yada.

8:24 Tell me about Work be Becoming more emotional. In recent times, what's this about? This is an interesting one. I think

8:32 Some of it is, and a big theme of the book, honestly, is that I think work goes through cycles. And we're just at kind of like a tricky point in a cycle right now. And a lot of it relates to technology. And this is a good and a bad thing, you know, and the good part is we have these amazing technologies and they like save people's lives and they enable us to do all these incredible things, but technology also is gumming up the works in in certain ways. And a big part of where it's gummed up the works. is kind of in the the communication realm. I mean, I quote some crazy stats in the book that, you know, something like eighty-five percent of emails contain some form of misunderstanding or miscommunication. And that's

9:11 Nutty. That's just Absolutely cuckoo for cocoa puffs. But what happens when we have all this sort of weird electronically intermediated communication, the emails and the the teams chats and the texts and the pings and a lot of crossed wires and misunderstanding is It ends up, there's this weird paradoxical thing where all of this flat electronic communication, people get really stirred up and emotional. And then you combine that with, again, some stuff that like the world's at a weird cycle point, too. You know, we've got a lot of sort of political polarization, a lot of geopolitical conflict, a lot of, you know, again, the environment is going through kind of a weird moment by certain measures were at a moment equivalent to like the late 60s or something. You know, just there's a lot going on.

9:55 And Put those two trends together and you've just got these very emotionally stirred up. workplaces. And it absolutes a toll on people. I mean, again, this is one I just Hear about. a lot and I think it's worth consciously taking a step back and saying, Okay, well

10:12 I do feel like I walk into like an you know an emotional house on fire every day. What am I gonna do about that? Well tell us. What do we do about that? And Doing great work in general in this chaos. So you know, number one

10:28 Part of what we need to do to kind of minimize the like the emotional load in the workplace is Very, very simple. I interviewed a professor from uh UVA, Jim Dieter, who's an absolute guru to me, and he he studies like civility. in the workplace, how we actually kind of get along in sensible ways. By the time somebody's upset or yelling or emotional or crying, they've usually tried to express that message before.

10:55 Quiet and calm fashion. And you know what happened? When they did that originally is is nobody listened. So if we could do a better job at listening to and picking up on even messages we don't

11:06 Love to hear. Right or Bad news, disconcerting stuff. Uh stuff that you know. You might want to brush away. That minimizes the number of people who will then end up coming to you really emotionally stirred up.

11:20 You know, again, it doesn't solve for everything, but I think there are some of these little tips and tricks that if we took a step back. And you know, the first time somebody tries to deliver a message, really heard them and said, Okay, I hear you, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z, didn't dismiss them, then we get hit with those emotional aftershocks a lot less. Yes, okay. That that's great for the emotional side of things is if we are Proactively listening hard. We are less likely to encounter subsequent blow ups.

11:51 That that makes sense. Can you Share with us The overarching approach you recommend for being effective in the fast changing world.

12:02 Yeah. So you know, number one And know your job. Yeah, and that sounds silly. You know, okay, when you signed up whenever that was five minutes ago, five years ago, fifty years ago. You know, you got a job description.

12:13 Those job descriptions A are usually not that fabulous in the way they're written. But number two, they They change in real life. in real time. And again, especially with a lot of technological change in the equation a lot. And You know, then you get things like mergers and acquisitions, company restructurings, reorgs.

12:30 Our jobs change. So number one. Take a second and think through your job from the point of view of all the different people who encounter it. So what does your boss think your job is? What does your customer think your job is? If there are people who are your peers, What do they think your job is? Are there people who are doing the same job as you completely differently? Which happens a ton, especially in large organizations, but honestly in every organization. So

12:54 You know, number one, do something about what your job is. Number two? What makes you good at your job? So is it knowledge? Do you just have this amazing kind of storehouse of facts and insights in your head?

13:07 Is it methods? Are you like a great operator? Are you just great at operationally putting all this stuff together and getting things done? Are you great at relating to people? Right, are you good at you know managing people and navigating stakeholders, all that stuff. Or you great with technology. And you know, most of us are some combination of those four things, but you know, we pretty much all have one kind of bigger spike.

13:28 So once you know okay, this is my job. This is what makes me good at it. And then you know, those four forces we talked about, the chaos, the emotion, blah, blah, blah. What is potentially impeding? My effectiveness. And again, different workplaces. Some workplaces might be very high on chaos.

13:44 Some workplaces honestly hyper transparency. might be more of a struggle. And then you get, you know, effects between those that sometimes hypertransparency, if everyone talks about everything all the time and nobody knows the quality of each other's information, that can cause chaos, for instance. But it's kinda that The multi step and then finally the sort of the fourth step that I talked about in the book is

14:06 There may be times when you cannot be effective at your job. And then you have to figure out what to do from there. And there are a a zillion, you know, pathways there, uh, starting with Talk to your boss about how your vision of your job might differ from theirs.

14:23 You know, talk to a mentor. Seek out other roles. in the same organization. You know, there's a lot of different non dramatic ways that if your job is truly one you cannot be affected in, and I've list a whole set of criteria for that.

14:38 You know, you can Change the game there. Well, thank there's so much goodness here. I'm a tree by

14:45 The notion of what makes you good at your job. And you've proposed Four. Elements. I'm imagining

14:54 In so far as you have the Assuming equal levels of enthusiasm, drive, motivation, hustle, like hours to pour into something. Assuming that those are constant. You know, between two different people. Yeah, I I mean that that see it feels pretty good with regard to these are the four

15:16 superstructure macro categories by which We could B. Effective. Or

15:23 ineffective and and I think maybe individual people come to mind with regard to well that person has high knowledge, they got low knowledge. You got high people ability, they got low people ability. So Could you Elaborate upon for a sentence or two or three.

15:36 Each of these elements, what precisely do you mean by it? Like how is knowledge different than methods, for example? Yeah, so knowledge is it's really about the stuff behind the stuff. So I'll I'll use a concrete exam, right? So you could have two chefs. And one has got this incredible knowledge of like the chemistry behind cooking, right? Molecular gastronomy and you know, oil's boiling points and like stuff like that, right? Another one is just really good at kind of intuitively figuring out when things need to sort of like shift off the burner, you know, how to do kind of the mise en plus so like the timing is right, right? It's all of these kind of

16:16 very like operational elements. And they could both be great chefs, but their source of greatness. is wildly different. And oftentimes, you know, great kitchens will have a mixture. Of those archetypes. Right. It's a

16:31 I I quote in the book, I quote a scene from the the Breakfast Club where The criminal guy and the the nerdy guy. And they're they're arguing about the nerdy guys complaining that he he I got an F in shop class because his lamp wouldn't like turn on, right? It's the only bad grade he ever got. You know, and so he's explaining to like the criminal guy, he's like, you know.

16:52 Do you understand how much like, you know, electri you know, the theory of electricity and the trigonometry that you know goes behind, you know. Without all that, there would be no electricity. And the criminal guy goes, Well, without lamps, there'd be no light. And You know those those are kind of the Two different

17:10 archetypes, right, between knowledge and and methods, right? The knowledge people understand the electricity and the atoms and all of that, and the methods people are good at making lamps. And You need both. And well I well not while we're talking about recipes. I think about breaking bad as I often do, you know, and there's one scene. Way I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but it's been a while for a while, I'd recommend it. It's the best. Where so Are

17:36 Protagonist. has deep, profound knowledge of chemistry. And he's making math. Then he he thinks that he's like Irreplaceable because of his tremendous knowledge. And then this guy who's just been watching them in the meth lab for a while just starts doing it.

17:53 And he's like, It's a recipe. So that's what's crystallizing for me, Crystal. Between uh knowledge You know? Walter White versus method, hey, just just follow the recipe That difference there.

18:06 And I guess in some ways to be effective or awesome These things really do flow into each other, you know what I'm saying? Like your your knowledge can be translated somewhat into methods, which can be transferred somewhat to people, and a portion of which could be transferred into, you know, software or technological incarnations. Of that. So there's a bit of a a fluidity interchange among them.

18:34 Absolutely. And something is like you don't want to get too intellectualized about it. What I recommend in the book is how are people interfacing with you? So For instance, there's actually this is hilarious because researchers have documented this. There's a phenomenon of becoming the informal IT person for your office, right? You are not in the IT department, right? You are not the help desk. You are doing some totally other job, and you become the de facto IT person. And It it's oftentimes in the research they describe it as well. It's like, you know, it's that like Alaska, remote Alaska office, you know, and there's no one else. But it it happens in in a lot of like big complex offices too, in in, you know, far less remote locations. And so that's When you gotta say, take a step back and say, Okay, well

19:19 Know what I might be good at technology, and it's a funny one because a lot of times people will not describe themselves as being good at technology, and then you say, Okay, well. Have people ever treated you like IT support and they're like, Yeah, all the time, all day long. Everyone's bugging me. How do you use this? How do you use that? What? You have some chops that you may not have given yourself credit for. That's why it's important to kind of look at How's the world?

19:42 Interfacing with you. Yeah. I'm thinking that that's so true that often when it comes to strengths, we we undervalue them just because they're easy for us. Just like Well, I don't know why everyone else is just such an idiot when it comes to their laptops. It was like, Oh, hint, hint, you have a strength, a gift, you know, some talent in the zone of technology ability, and you didn't even know it just because it seems pretty easy to you. You don't even know what he would call it. That. And it was funny, I'm thinking about

20:08 My buddy Quame. I've been on the podcast a couple of times, says, I buy what Pete buys because I know Pete has done an outrageous amount of research on any purchase that he makes. And so it's a joke, but he's done it again and again and again. And so in that zone. I suppose It's a bit of knowledge, it's a bit of methods in terms of I have

20:31 My method is I obsessively research a thing in tremendous detail, and by doing so I acquire knowledge. And I say this is the thing I love. And then Kwame just takes the shortcut, says okay, I'm buying it. That's what my my late father used to do that with uh ordering off the menu that I had in general, I'm a knowledge person, but when it comes to menus, I'm very intuitive. I'm just like I can spot like descriptions of things that are gonna taste good. You know, it's I don't know, it's in the different part of my brain.

21:01 But my dad used to just yeah, whatever I would order, he would order the same thing. I think it was after like years of him just eating my food off my plate and me telling him you gotta order your own thing and it evolved into that. But yeah. Same approach. It's right. The world is giving you feedback about something you're doing well. Okay. So when we follow these broad steps, hey, we know our job. And we know it not just what the original job description said, but in terms of how our boss would describe it, how our peers would describe it, what it's looking like right here and right now. I'm curious, do you have any pro tips on

21:33 Knowing better what your job is, if you have perhaps made some assumptions. Yeah, so the interesting thing is the federal government actually maintains a database of all jobs called ONET. And there's like a certain fraction of occasion, I'll say ownet to an audience, and occasionally yeah, somebody will like sit up in their seat, right? Because it's a it's a really cool database. It contains for Basically every job, what does this job do? So one thing you can do is go into ONET and literally, you know, if you're having one of those, am I losing my mind? I feel like this job is the weirdest version of this job possible. You can actually look at like

22:09 the government account of your job and say, Okay, well All right, this sounds nothing like That. You know, I'm also a big fan of right the talk to your peers. Talk to the extent that you can do so without giving away trade secrets. Talk to your peers at other organizations. That can be very telling. Organizations can get super idiosyncratic about

22:29 what it means to be, you know, financial analyst or something that sounds completely generic. within a particular organization they can end up with a Strange version of that. Mm-hmm. So, you know, again, don't don't give away any trade secrets, but talk to people at other organizations. You know, there are You can go back to the job description you were hired to. Now, do I think that will be a useful conversation where you march into your boss's office waving your job description? Like, no, of course not.

22:57 But It can at least give you some language to say, Okay, well Is this aspect of the role being neglected or something like that? I think the key thing is just have something to hold it up against. You need some

23:12 alternate version of something to make the comparison because that's that's where we go wrong. You know, we start to ruminate about is this the right way to oh I just don't even know. And The second you start comparing it, either you'll say, Okay, well No, you know, the federal government, I don't agree with this version of the job, right? I think the way my company does it is better. Or somebody working for my competitor is working half the hours I'm working because they don't have all this weird stuff loaded in, you know? But it gives you something to react to. You basically you have to go out and find Some account of your job either through a

23:44 person or in a documented way, do we at least start just making comparisons. And to do that, by the way. You also have to be honest with yourself about what you do all day, which is something that many of us struggle with. And to do that, you almost want to do your own little time and motion study. Right. These are the famous, you know, from like the eighteen hundreds of like, okay, then the factory worker puts like the brick here or whatever.

24:07 Just write down for a day what you do. Do that across a week, I think many of us would be shocked. And there's some good effectiveness insights just from doing that, because you may say, I thought my job was this, but Actually I'm spending my time on this and I forget any other accounts of the job. I don't think this is what I should be doing.

24:24 Oh yes, well we love time diaries here. Laura Vander Cam has been on the show a couple of times talking about it, loving it. And so that's good. So we had a really clear what is the job. And I I think within that We want to get a sense of thus Le so what is What does good look like and what does bad look like and what does like okay. look like and practice. Yeah, absolutely. And again, separating that from our own

24:48 Emotional constructs around that because I think sometimes what trips us up is the things that feel good to do aren't necessarily the things that really hit outcomes properly. So for example, I think many folks in kind of managerial Roles. It feels good to overload yourself because you you like you're I'm busy. I'm really busy. I'm doing all the things. I'm like in it to win it. That feels good.

25:11 Emotionally. I mean, of course, until it doesn't, until you burn out, you're exhausted, you can't do anything. But Until that point, right, to a lot of people, that feels great. I'm crushing it. Whereas what would actually drive outcomes is to say, back to our our discussion about what are the activities I absolutely must protect, is to say, okay, well, you know. These three things are the core of what my next six months are about. I'm just gonna really lean into those. I'm gonna let some other stuff drop.

25:39 And you have to live through that moment of that doesn't intuitively Feel good to me. But I've made this agreement with myself that these are the outcomes I'm seeking. Yeah. That's nice. Okay.

25:52 Well, so in the midst of the fast changing world, can you give us the the quick rundown of Work intensification, emotional inflection, hypertransparency, sheer chaos. What's the deal there? And um What are your best tips on how we can Keep her cool.

26:08 Well, I'll start with work intensification, because probably out of those terms, that's that's one of the ones people will be less intuitively familiar with, although once I describe it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. So work intensification, there was a great study out of the EU a few years ago that defined it. Defined it in three pillars. First pillar, too many tasks and too little time. We have all been there. Second pillar. Access interdependence. And I love this one because I think it's an addressable lever both for individuals and for the companies they work for. But we just sort of don't think about it this way. This one was a big aha for me.

26:39 So interdependence is when you depend on too many other people to get any one thing done. And I did some research last year. And people actually feel more effective when they can work with a smaller circle of people on any given task. And sometimes it's not always within your control. I don't want to pretend that's always within your control, but sometimes it is. And it's great to look for those opportunities where if you set as your mental goal,

27:03 My goal is actually to work more independently. Which again, that might feel weird or counter-cultural, or like we've all been beaten over the head to collaborate as much as you can. You say, actually, I'm gonna prioritize. Independent work. Because I know I'm already at a very high level of collaboration. That could be really game changing for that excess interdependence one. And then the third pillar of work intensification, which I actually treat separately in the book because it's got its own ball of wax.

27:30 It's just excess emotion. at work. And that can show up a lot of different ways. You could be at a tech company where teams regularly bicker with each other. Or you could be a frontline worker in a healthcare environment where patients routinely yell at you, right? There's a lot of different ways to be emotionally saturated. So that kinda covers those two. I think chaos is fairly self-explanatory. In the book, I do talk about two types of chaos that there's

27:56 Just the natural chaos of the world. Right? You know, the like Komodo dragon exerts a breath and a volcano goes off halfway around the world kind of stuff. That just is. That's just a part of life. And then there's Actually chaotic ways of operating. Which you employ different strategies.

28:14 To defend against. Right. For the chaos of the world you might say, Okay, I'm gonna figure out my activities to protect. When people are operating chaotically, you might say

28:24 I actually need to protect my personal boundaries. So I'm gonna do things like if I have a co worker who I know is Totally chaotic. And meetings always go upside down with them. You know what?

28:35 That co worker is no longer allowed to meet with me on Friday afternoons. Because I am emotionally exhausted at that point. I don't have anything left to give, and by the way, I need to like deal with family dinner at five thirty. So if the meeting goes on forever, right, that's gonna mess up my whole work life integration. So that's the chaos one. And then finally, hypertransparency is just an interesting consequence, again, of a more data and information driven world.

29:00 That If you think about it, if you were a CEO in nineteen fifty five. Your a lot of how you sort of had control over your corporation was you had this giant information advantage. You knew so much that your workers didn't know. Today Not

29:16 As much That a lot of times, especially within a particular team, the workers on the team like we'll know more than our bosses know. Because you know there's 20 zillion data feeds coming in, 20 zillion dashboards. Everyone's on Teams, you know, pinging each other. Everyone's texting. We're we're floating in information. And in general, a lot of that's good.

29:40 It's good to have more information. Except sometimes you Lear things you didn't want to know. So Yeah, look at what's happen with pay transparency, right? That you know, you Okay, oh my gosh, you know, they just posted for a job similar to mine and the pays twice what I make, you know, things like that. And so it's emotionally tricky live in a more transparent

30:00 work world, you know, you might find out things about your boss on social media. You know, you don't you don't necessarily want to know all this stuff. Yeah, well, no doubt. It's a tricky world. And these things are happening. So tell us. What do we do about it?

30:14 Well, I think you know, for hyper transparency, one of my big tips is just Kind of be a fiend for the truth. And you can't stay completely out of that. information soup. That it used to be, you know, it was like oh well, stay out of office gossip.

30:32 To the extent possible, but also you might miss key information if you're not communicating with people. But Being a little bit intense about, okay, you just told me something as if it was a fact. Where'd you get your information from? Okay, where did that person get their information from, right? You know, is this written down anywhere? So just being a little bit obnoxious about Whether the

30:54 facts and data that are coming to work are actually facts and data. You know, okay, well look, this dashboard says you're down seventeen percent. Okay, well what's the source of that? Data. Uh been personally in situations. I I once had someone have to call me up and apologize and say, you know We just it tried to hold you accountable for the entire performance of the Atlanta office and you only have three team members there.

31:18 Like okay. Fair enough. Thank you for that. But you know, it was At the time in the meeting, it was this is the data, Melissa. What are you gonna do about it? And I think we all have a lot of those moments. Yeah, we we can all see that. Okay, so when you say be a fiend for the truth.

31:34 Tell me more about that, because at times I find For me as a super curious individual. That's been Suboptimal. And moments of for example with the news.

31:46 I Here. Something. That sounds not quite right. And by golly, I'm gonna get to the bottom of it.

31:54 And I I've done this many times. And and so it's like forty minutes later, I feel like I have a deep thorough, nuanced understanding. of the matter. But it's like, wait, who cares? Why, why did I invest that time?

32:09 in doing that. So I'm a fiend for the truth at times indiscriminately. Not a selective fiend. So so tell us, how do we apply our our truth fiend Mm. Tendencies. And how do we not? I think

32:22 Some of it is just having kind of if your standard basic question is where did that information come from? A lot of times that'll cover it. And you don't have to, to your point, go down a forty minute Rabbit hole. Because the part of it is you're trying to drown out some noise that

32:37 Organizations today, there's the possibility to like really swirl on things because again of just the constant chatter. That You're in a group chat with dozens of people, which is not uncommon at this point in history. And people are constantly like coming at you with, ooh, this is gonna happen, this is gonna happen. And did you know this was going on? And something it is, you need to know what to just. absolutely ignore and not think about again. And to your point, save yourself some time with the rabbit hole. So just being able to pick your rabbit holes, you need kind of a screener question. And my screener question is always, where did that information come from?

33:11 Yeah, I like that a lot. And I'm finding that more and more I am I'm getting a bit more Shall I say assertive in my decision making, even though no one else is around. I I'm looking at like a headline or or a YouTube title thumbnail.

33:25 It's like I definitively choose not to care about that at all. Next. I do the same thing. I do the same thing. I'm just gonna scroll right on by that one. As triggering as it is. But I think that's what you have to do. In the the part of what what's going on here is the world is designed to trigger us more. And at work, we're all kind of trying to get each other's attention all the time. And we're all trying to interrupt each other all the time. That's one of the most interesting facets of especially modern knowledge work to me. You know, you don't get this dynamic on like You know, in a in a warehouse or a manufacturing plant, they're not all trying to interrupt each other, right? Because that would be actually physically dangerous. But in in knowledge work. Right. We are just constantly ping thing ping ping thing ping. Let me interrupt you. You interrupt me and

34:12 Some of it is. I in the book I actually talk about, there's an emergency room physician, Dr. Rebecca Parker, who I interviewed, and she talks about she had to get good at being interrupted. That was an actual skill that she she developed. And for her, it was just about Knowing the points in a task when you can and can't safely stop. So if somebody interrupts her Before she's written down all the notes from the patient she just saw, she just like, nope, well Don't don't talk to me yet.

34:36 Finishes the notes, okay, now you can talk to me. And I love that. Because You know, you just that's sort of the nature of the modern workplace. And the more we have strategies like that, the more we can feel like we're just in control of what's happening with us. Well, before we hear about some of your favorite things, could you give us your top most favorite?

34:54 Strategies tactics. approaches that make a world of difference. I think another strategy I really like on the hyper transparency front is just Being a bit simple about things.

35:07 Think about like a wall in your house. If it's like super minimalist, there's one painting on it. It's pretty easy to keep clean, right? You got shelves of knickknacks, right? You're dusting, you're doing all this stuff. It's the same with when transparency happens. So

35:22 If you've got all this complex weird stuff going on behind the scenes at work, and you've got all these little intrigues and office politics, and you're doing strange things, and then somebody finds out about it, because people find out about all kinds of stuff at this point in history. It's a lot to explain. So just having less to explain. I think is a powerful strategy because it works well for hypertransparency, but it also works well for chaos and work intensification and all that. Just being like sort of I'm gonna Marie Kondo my work life.

35:52 That one I just think has a lot of power across a lot of situations. Big thanks to Melissa for sharing the wisdom with us. Big thanks to our sponsors. Check'em out. Okay, thank you. Well now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspired. So I'm not gonna get right verbatim, but there's a quote from Dr. Richard Feynman, who is this illustrious physicist who was the part of the Manhattan Project. And he talks about the diabolical thing with computers. And remember, he's talking about like punch card computers at this point, right? This is like mid-20th century type computers is

36:27 Like the diabolical thing about computers is you play with them, you know, it's intriguing with the ones and the zeros. And What I like about that quote is he's talking about enjoying technology. Which is something we could stand to do more of at work. We would also just get a lot more done and be a lot more effective if we could get back to that place of. I enjoy the technology I work with. Okay.

36:49 And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research? There's a study out of Germany that talks about different kinds of systems. So they talk about naturally occurring systems, and that's like the water cycle, like actual things in nature. And those just work. They're amazing. And then they talk about engineer systems. Those are the systems that humans build, right? The the interstate highway system, you know, something like that. And then they talk about, and this is very common in organizations, slipped systems. So you built the system to do this, but actually it's kind of not doing that. It's it's doing something else.

37:22 And so I always mash that up with the great, you know, the Stafford beer systems thinking, you know, the purpose of a system is what it does. And Right. I think about how many organizations we're dealing with slipped systems that Okay, you know, performance management is supposed to operate this way and we're all supposed to be doing this, but we end up doing this because it kind of pushed us in the wrong direction, or you know, something like that. And I think it's a great insight again to have as an individual is okay.

37:48 I'm dealing with a slipped system. And that gives you that nice moment of awareness of I'm gonna stop thinking that like I'm the problem. in every possible way. And I'm gonna start saying, Okay, how do I better grapple with a system that's not perfect?

38:03 And a favorite book? I'm gonna forget the author's name, but the warmth of other suns, which is about the great migration and I love it because it's In some ways it's about kind of individual worker agency. That

38:17 If it'cause it re completely reshaped the American economy completely. And but it was a bunch of individuals saying I don't like how I'm treated in this society, but a lot of times I don't like how I'm treated At my job. And I'm going to

38:34 Make changes. Right, that are gonna make my life better. And you know, that's a big theme. And it doesn't have to be that, you know, you you leave that job and you move geographically. It can be really Micro stuff. But having that moment of agency and saying, I want my life at work to be different than it is exactly right now.

38:53 That's awesome. All right. And if folks want to learn more, get in touch, where'd you point them? So you can find me on LinkedIn where I'm very active. You can find me at my company's website, and throminsight.com. I have a small presence on Instagram and a burgeoning presence on TikTok as well. But uh First line of contact LinkedIn is always fabulous.

39:13 Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks seeking to be awesome or effective at their jobs? Figure what you're great at. And lean in on that and ignore some of the rhetoric about kind of like oh our human workers are very endangered these days and just Figure out what you're amazing at and and and be in that space. That's a great starting point for anyone. All right, Melissa, thank you. Thank you.

39:36 I think a lot about Melissa's Four part framework there. What makes you effective? Is it about knowledge, methods, people, or technology? and really lean into that. It's like wait a second, I'm spending all my time fiddling with technology when really

40:00 My strength is people. Uh How can I shift this and really make the most of what I'm great at for bigger impact? Handy stuff from Melissa, if you want to check out the show notes or the transcript or the links to items that we've referenced, please drop on by awesome at your job.com slash EP one one seven five. Hope to catch you next time and peace.

40:20

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