How to stop the viruses that are stunting your leadership & killing your organizational culture
The ultimate starting point for eliminating the single biggest virus in your organization and how to prevent others in the future.
By Jayson Krause, Managing Director of Level 52 & Author of The Science Behind Success
LEADERSHIP & VIRUSES
Most of the viruses that impact your culture are parasites you ignore or become blind to. They also show up as behaviors.
Think about a behavioral virus that was spread to you. You won’t have to look far. The words you speak, the clothes you wear, and the way you work have all been adopted from someone else, most likely without you even being aware of it.
Viruses are sneaky and powerful, and they are always seeking to maximize their fitness as they infiltrate, replicate, and spread. In a world where Covid-19 has brought to our attention that viral pandemics can quickly take lives, we still need to accept that behavioral viruses are quickly killing the cultures inside businesses and communities around the world. We help leaders conduct viral analyses in our Accelerated Leader Programs so they can stop the spread of damaging cultural pathogens and spread something more productive.
THE ‘BUSY’ VIRUS
Just like the blind spots you can’t see, there are viruses you become so comfortable with that they seem normal and don’t appear to be a problem.
I once worked with a client who was a leader in the technology industry. He held a strong vision to disrupt his industry through the way they used technology. He was passionate and driven to change his business but unfortunately was infected with a common virus.
One day he asked me, “How can I lead effectively when I’ve got so much work to do?”
I’m referring, of course, to the virus of ‘busy’—a strong and deadly soul-sucking pandemic that masks itself as a shiny badge people unconsciously celebrate with passive-aggressive pride.
‘Busy’ is an easy and lazy answer to everything. It’s probably what you’ll answer if I ask you, “how you are doing?” Or if I ask you why you are late or what stopped you from getting something done. If I ask you why you didn’t have that important conversation. If you are like most people, the answer will be the same: I was too busy.
The biggest risk to the long-term success of your company is not competition, and it’s not market conditions. It’s one simple thing: busy.
Think about all of the things that you don’t have time for:
You don’t have time to properly clarify expectations on what people should deliver—the result is disappointment at their performance and more work on your plate as you fix their work.
You don’t have time to coach or develop your people—the result is a lack of improvement and the continuation of bad habits and poor performance.
You don’t have time to have an offsite with key leaders or your team—the result is a lack of alignment, trust, cohesion. You know, all of those things that are luxuries and non-essential. I hope you sense my sarcasm.
Be very cautious of the busy disease. I’m not perfect and can be just as susceptible to it as you are. It is a vicious and persistent virus that requires frequent treatments to keep it at bay.
THE GRAVITATIONAL PULL
‘Busy’ has a gravitational pull that takes you out of intentional action and into a slumber of mindless routine. You stop making time for process improvement because you’re busy.
You don’t make time for post-mortems or look-backs that make things better because you’re busy. You don’t take the time to leverage the intelligence in your company and collaborate to solve your problems because you’re busy. You race from meeting to meeting unprepared, and you stop focusing on getting better for tomorrow because you are in demand right now and it’s hard enough to keep pace, let alone get better. ‘Busy’ results in shortsightedness which, when unmanaged, can lead to a degenerative condition that negatively impacts the way you lead and can quickly spread throughout the organization.
Are you showing your team that being busy is more important than anything else?
Being busy is strangely comfortable. You allow yourself to get consumed by never-ending meetings, pandering to instant demands instead of considering what is really most important. Being busy can create the illusion that you are effective. If you do not pause and ask yourself what is most important, then everything becomes important, and when everything is important, nothing is important. This is when time becomes a scarce resource, and you’ll often choose the path of least resistance, which means instead of coaching and course-correcting your people, you do the work yourself and stay busy. This further perpetuates the scarcity of time and the busy virus, and the cycle continues. It’s part of the inescapable prison you create for yourself and spread to others.
So how can you break out of the prison of busy? How do you stop yourself from constantly fixing people's problems and fighting fires as they break out? Here are four simple things that deliver significant results.
Prioritize
Manage Choices
Delegate
Obliterate ‘Busy’
PRIORITIZE
If everything is important, nothing is important. Understanding your priorities is paramount to anything else. Clear priorities act as guard-rails so you don’t get stuck in the gutter.
Questions you must have answers for are:
What are the organizational priorities? [List them in order of importance because there’s always one that sits on the throne above all others.]
What are my priorities? [If you aren’t clear what sits on the throne, get clear]
What activities in my functional area deliver on these priorities?
MANAGE CHOICES
If you are maxed out, over capacity and the people at home are paying the price, then things need to change. You aren’t busy. Everyone I’ve ever worked with has a lack of resources and time to get everything they want to get down. Lack of time is a product of a lack of choices. Busy is a choice.
Make better choices by challenging the things you are choosing to spend time on.
You get time by investing time. Pull things a part and put them up against one-another. If they squared off in a battle for your time, what would win? If everything wins, then you, your team, and your family are the ones that lose. This method is called The Tournament Technique and you can check out the article by Dr. John Berardi.
Other classic tools to help you manage your choices are the timeless Eisenhower Matrix and the Getting Things Done method.
DELEGATE
New leaders often tell me: I feel bad when I delegate. If this is you, ask yourself, what do you feel bad about? What assumptions do you have about delegating? How might you reframe the negative story about delegating into something that is an opportunity to develop people?
The way people take on a task you delegate to them tells you a lot. Clock punchers will complain, and your future game-changers will take it on. Invest more in your game-changers and less with your time vampires.
Where to start? Answer this question: If I had to leave and couldn’t do this, who would take it on? The answer to that is the person you delegate the more complex tasks to.
OBLITERATE BUSY
To stop negative behavioral viruses begins with identifying them, removing them and replacing them with something else.
Being busy is lazy. The more you say it, you give others permission to say the same thing and make the same poor choices you have (up until now).
When people ask you how you are, instead of saying ‘busy’, what virus do you want to spread?
“I’m making hard choices…”
“I’m learning the necessity of no…”
“I’m getting better at delegating…”
“I’m getting clarity on what’s important...”
There are viruses that create critical momentum and ones that create downward spirals. Being busy, is not a state of being at all. It is, in fact, the opposite. It is the irresponsible injection into your company that lets people off the hook for NOT doing the work to get clear, make choices and stand behind them. Take the steps above to help you get on track and claim some time back and stop transmitting the busy virus.
WANT TO LEARN MORE? GO DEEPER?
Then download a free sample of my latest book, The Science Behind Success – What every leader needs to know about mindset, influence, culture and performance.
The Science Behind Success shares the tips, strategies, and lessons I’ve learned working with leaders from Singapore to Silicon Valley to deliver meaningful leadership. Over a decade of research and experimentation is distilled into relatable anecdotes and actionable tools for you to change your environment and change your results.
Whether you are a senior leader responsible for a billion dollar business, an emerging leader starting your career, or part of that overlooked middle band of management seeking to be better, The Science Behind Success will help you get clarity on your leadership impact, give you the compass to stay steady during chaos, and the tools to accelerate your career, impact, and legacy.
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