Transcript
Sam (0:00)
Foreign.
Ray Spadoni (0:09)
Welcome to Leading Organizations that Matter, a podcast about leadership and how we find impact, meaning and joy in our work. I'm Ray Spadoni and today's topic is you have to have a system. I learned early on in my career, and actually probably before that when I was in school, that a major determinant of success is the system. That is the methodology and the associated tools that a person uses to remember stuff, to track details, to know when something's due. To ensure you get back to people when you say you will get back to them. To collate, organize, parse and make sense of both connected and disparate bits of information in ways that become meaningful and informative over time and when needed. Back in the day, we called this getting organized. Today, specialists abound online who describe this as personal knowledge management, organization, or creating your second brain. It's important. It's really important. But before you roll your eyes and declare that this is trivial statement of the obvious, I'll add that even after all these years, I still encounter many professional executives and managers who do not have a system. They have tools, they try to, but they don't have a system. A system is something that you're committed to using religiously. This takes discipline and clarity of thought. You have to use the system over time. It must be integrated into your life such that you are going to feel lost without it. That's a system. That's your system. I once worked with a COO who had a small steno pad of paper. This was her system and it was bulletproof. That was not because of the sophistication of the tool, but rather because of her devotion to it every day while at meetings, on a phone call or alone, and just thinking you would jot notes into that pad. We never talked about it specifically, but I always observed her making small marks in the margin which I presumed were codes or keys to things like this is a to do or make sure I remember to schedule this, that sort of thing. She never forgot anything when we met and she told me that at our next meeting she would have X, Y and Z. I knew that I'd be staring into the face of X, Y and Z at our next meeting. Bulletproof. I've also worked with people who had the latest computer based apps. These synchronized across their computers, iPads and Apple watches. More often than not though, these individuals who are now probably all googly eyed about AI, were enamored by the tools themselves, even swapping them out whenever anything new arrived on the scene. Sometimes these individuals succeeded, sometimes they didn't. Typically, the systems were not more effective than the one used by the COO with the stenopad. You have to have a system. A system. One you develop and use consistently. Again, I've been surprised by the number of people I meet who are deep into their careers and who clearly do not utilize such a system. Some of them are high ranking leaders who walk into meetings without paper or any kind of electronic means of taking notes. They view their roles as being a thinker on the spot who can lead with their words and their decisions and their rhetorical wizardry. Well, I'm sorry, even the highest level people need to take notes, jot down reminders, and remember things. I once worked for a major integrated healthcare system CEO who never used agendas and who rarely if ever took down a note. Over time I came to realize that his promises might never be fulfilled, not because of bad intentions, but rather because of forgetfulness and even worse, I myself felt little pressure to deliver on my own personal promises because I understood that he would not hold me accountable for them. Needless to say, this is bad. So if you are early on in your career, develop a system and stick to it. If you are later on in yours, it's not too late to start using one. And again, it's not about the sophistication of the tool, it's about your devotion to it.