Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, or on Plans, Processes, and a Crucial Skill

After the excesses of New Year’s Eve, many of us look into the mirror with serious concern. Who knows, perhaps it is remorse that drives those New Year’s resolutions. They’re surely a remedy and a way to waiting for the next day, because tomorrow, as Andrzej Sikorowski noted in his song, “we’ll go all the way once again”. Yet before that, we weave plans: some realistic, some rather less so. We may know our strengths, we may know our limits, yet the New Year’s mood makes us raise the bar. Practice varies greatly. Some intend to throw away this or that, sweeping aside the thought that it’s easiest to throw empty promises to the wind. Others, on the contrary, won’t throw away a single thing, because, as they maintain, you can never have too much of a good thing.

And so the world spins on.

From the whole palette of New Year’s resolutions, I’ve always chosen my favourite: to keep doing whatever has already been started. A relaxed, long-distance run. When you opt for a sprint without proper preparation, you generally end up out of breath. Regulating it takes time.

Time… I wouldn’t even dream of grappling against it or trying to stop its flow, although I do know people who firmly believe that the likes of botulinum toxin or baths in liquid nitrogen will help them do just that. I let time flow. In fact, I’m usually too busy to notice its passage, which, by the way, I’m not entirely thrilled about. If there’s anything at all you can do about it, that is to organise yourselves better. Make time for the things that really matter…

 

This reminds me of an old joke about a boss and an employee: “Boss, I promise to work 25 hours a day…” “Oh, right… right, but there are only 24 hours in a day!” “Don’t worry, boss. I’ll just sleep one hour less.”

Saving time is always commendable, yet, should we take the above declaration in earnest, economising on sleep will sooner or later drive us into a nightmare.

Stop for just a moment and you’ll shoulder more. That’s the way things are.

The problem is that the world has no intention of giving us breathers. The media excel at bombarding us with news, important yet more often trivial. The intensity of that barrage means that we are unable to absorb it, and leaves behind little more than a constant hum and a sense of chaos in our heads. You’re becoming a consumer in constant motion. Swallow irrelevant bits of content, race from sale to sale. Faster, or you’ll miss out! So off we dash, full throttle.

The pandemic showed us how a world that’s already fast can speed up even more. And how quickly some changes can take place.

Some might say: there’s nothing we can do about it. Life is constant change, a fact best acknowledged. Probably so. Yet if want to exploit these changes to our advantage, we need time and reflection.

Readers of or listeners to these columns will already know that, in business, I find one concept crucial – the long-term nature of a process. Yes, a process. On her way to school, a teacher I know used to joke that she was heading “to the process”. She enjoyed her job thoroughly, and wasn’t going off to the guillotine. She was simply aware that education, like running a company, is a series of actions spread out in time. You start at a certain point and intend to reach your planned destination. You begin by learning the shapes of letters and move on to researching the structure of a paramecium. You’re not contracted for a single round, but at least for ten!

Everyone who participates with you in a process – be it business, family or social – deserves some time devoting to them. That’s not all: if you want a good outcome, you’ve got to give them your time. That’s the way every successful enterprise functions: by devoting time to others, by talking, by taking care of communication, by listening to their arguments, and by making an effort to understand positions other than our own.

Building authority to a great extent depends on the ability to listen.

If this is not the case, the mirror will soon tell us our business is not the fairest of them all.

And that, of course, is something I certainly do not wish on you, or myself. Absolutely not, for this new year or at any time!