It is that time of the year when an excuse for doing nothing is easiest. “Let’s wait until so and so gets back” is the happy refrain to the difficult decision which should have been taken before so and so went away on “annual leave”.
The other great solecism is to use the weeks of August to strategize, the summer strategy session is about congratulating each other on progress to date and discussing sport over long and often boozy lunches.
If I sound like a disgruntled protestant, tied to his work ethic, it is because I am. And I fear that the tanned relaxed co-workers who return to their desks in September will have the edge on this frazzled old-timer – the guy who got no sleep!
The time to do it is now
A pretty good indicator of how hard you are working (rather than how long you are working) is to ask how many times in your day you felt uncomfortable. As a sales guy, I feel uncomfortable asking the closing question – which is always “will you buy?” though it is shaped a thousand ways. My original mentor, John Ottensooser said you should be having 10 such uncomfortable moments a day. Necessarily one would be productive and the nine that weren’t at least told you to move on.
It is of course harder to have a conversation with Mr/Mrs out of office. So the challenge is to find the people who are at work. But the good thing is that the people who are at work are probably not doing anything (see above) so the time to talk to them is now.
I imagine that my colleagues, the risk officers, the compliance officers, the marketing officers and those who would call them administrators have different uncomfortable moments, like explaining that the suite of ESG documents that were produced in 2021 are no longer relevant and need to be re-written. The time to have that conversation is now. You are never going to get so much attention from your Board as now.
Even if you have nothing to do, because the boss has gone away and left you no work, now is the time to find out what needs to be done with that fine question “can I help?”.
In the office
August is also the easiest month not to go in but plead that the summer heat makes working from home the best option. This of course will get general consent, especially if the bosses are on holiday or doing the same thing.
Now is the time to go into the office and show the kind of leadership you are capable of. Be on that Teams call so that others see that you made it and they didn’t. You may call it presenteeism, I call it getting on with it.
So if you think you aren’t getting blogs from me the next two weeks, think again. I am more than ever enlivened by the company I keep and the challenges we face. We are launching Pension SuperHaven in a blaze of apathy from a world that is more interested in the next Pimms on the lawn.
To those who have no appetite for work in August, I suggest you close your laptop , ignore your phone, for where there are eyeballs, I will be there also! I am not out of the office – definitely not!
