244: Build Buffers, Be Better

Good morning friends

This time is hard.

Every day, we are bombarded and destabilised. Whilst the world undoubtedly needs disruption, we have more than enough resources to ensure that no one lives in poverty; yet, billions do – what we’re experiencing, both politically and technologically, is profoundly unsettling.

Add to that the horror of witnessing genocide, whilst the world’s powers either send more killing bombs, or wring their hands in performative protest, but no sanctions ensue, and our resilience is stretched thin.

The risk of reactivity increases, plummeting our chances for effectiveness, increasing the chances of making poor decisions, and so the whirlpool deepens. 

More than ever, we must build buffers for our businesses and ourselves. A sustainable life needs them.

Please share today’s letter with someone who, like all of us, is confronting overwhelm. It may help them. 

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/strategy
In a 2019 HBR article, The High Price of Efficiency, Roger Martin argues that building better businesses and world requires that we build capabilities for resilience, because “an excessive focus on efficiency can produce startlingly negative effects, to the extent that superefficient businesses create the potential for social disorder”.
 
This is not new.
 
In Scaling Up, Verne Harnish tells us the successful companies he works with “held three to 10 times more cash assets than average for their industries, and they did so from the time they started”.
 
Jim Collins’ Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, reminds us that growth without cash buffers can lead to bankruptcy, “rapid growth can create a perilous cash flow situation. A common pattern is that a company shells out cash to purchase materials and labor in anticipation of rapid sales increases. It then turns those materials into products and sales but, as you know, cash doesn’t come in until months after the initial purchases. If the company doesn’t hit its forecasts, cash is tied up in inventory. Cash is like blood or oxygen; without it, you die. And growth eats cash. This is why roughly half of all bankruptcies occur after a year of record sales.”

It is not only cash.

Back-to-back meetings spike stress. By your third, you’re no longer thinking effectively, you’re just there.  
 
Peter Drucker noted some sixty years ago, “The effective executive therefore knows that they have to consolidate their discretionary time. They know they need large chunks of time and that small driblets are no time at all. Even one quarter of the working day, if consolidated in large time units, is usually enough to get the important things done. But even three-quarters of the working day are useless if they are only available as fifteen minutes here or half an hour there”.
 
Harnish names it ‘the golden hours’. Simply, chunks of time for deep thinking that unlock clarity, effective decision making and action. 
 
Executives wear back-to-back ten hours a day of meetings as a badge of honour. We’re so busy. We’re so tough. Whenever I encounter that, I know the organisation is ineffective. Thinking has to be sub-optimal. 

If you’re a leader and your team tells you this. Help them. Pause. Get an action plan going. Build buffers. Create space. Protect it. Within a few months, you will all be more joyful and effective. The rest of the organisation will say, ‘We want to work there’. And they’ll celebrate your leadership genius. 
 
Martin suggests one way to increase resilience is to introduce friction. A few letters ago, we explored removing friction, but Rao and Sutton also celebrate friction’s usefulness.

The Friction Project shares Professor Dana Kanze’s study, comparing “managers who were urged by their leaders to rush ahead, to focus on ‘locomotion goals,’ to managers who were urged to slow down and evaluate their actions, to focus on ‘assessment goals’…When participants ‘read a mission statement that emphasized urgent action over thoughtful consideration,’ it quadrupled their odds of taking unethical actions”.  
 
Build buffers. It will save you from bankruptcy, help you think better and avoid unethical decisions. Seems like a win.

//self
You already know all the buffers you need – good diet, good sleep, regular exercise, strong friendships, hope, an active learning habit – and how to build them. If you need a reminder, read this HBR classic, The Making of a Corporate Athlete.

Still, the medical-machine metaphors that dominate our world have us looking for the most efficient way to build resilience. We overschedule our diaries with great intentions, and nothing happens. We become stressed about not meditating and wake up to check our sleep app.

In a 2012 study, psychologist David Strayer found people were 50% more creative (as calculated on a measure of creative thinking) after spending 3 days hiking in the wilderness.

Annie Murphy Paul comments in The Extended Mind, “It’s not the case that nature is simpler or more elementary than man-made environments. Indeed, natural scenes tend to contain more visual information than do built ones – and this abundance of visual stimulation is a condition we humans crave. Roughly a third of the neurons in the brain’s cortex are dedicated to visual processing; it takes considerable visual novelty to satisfy our eyes’ voracious appetite. But balanced against this desire to explore is a desire to understand; we seek a sense of order as well as an impression of variety. Nature meets both these needs, while artificial settings often err on one side or the other. Built environs may be monotonous and under-stimulating: picture the unvarying glass and metal façades of many modern buildings, and the uniform rows of beige cubicles that fill many offices. Or they may be overwhelming and over-stimulating, a barrage of light and sound and motion: call to mind New York’s Times Square or Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing.”  

Strayer believed it was a combination of nature and separation from digital devices that super-charged his participants’ creative thinking.

Paul notes, “Our electronics are deliberately engineered to grab our attention and not let it go; our devices work against the diffuse mental processes that generate creativity, and escaping into nature is one of the only ways we can leave them behind”.

Many years ago, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey noted that we can be efficient with process, but can only be effective with people. Trying to be efficient with people creates ineffectiveness. True for others, true for ourselves. 
 
///soul
One of my pet peeves is the dull, factory-produced artefacts that masquerade as art in way too many offices and hotels. My view is, if you’re going to spend money, support an artist, preferably a living one.

For this reason, I will be staying at the Radisson Red Rosebank when I next visit Africa’s economic hub, Johannesburg.

Earlier this week, Sam Nhlengetwa (one of my favourite artists) opened this exhibition celebrating the confluence of jazz (another favourite) and art there. He replaced this work by the talented Tega Tafadzwa. It is amazing what inspiration can be unlocked by a little intention.

When you next open your wallet or sign that procurement contract, remember the Radisson Red, pause and use your spend to build the world you want. Every moment, every interaction gives us the chance to build a better world. 

If you’ve built buffers, you’ll see possibilities, make better choices and build a better life. With no buffer, well, you already know what happens then, we’ve all walked that path. 

Remember Viktor Frankl, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
 
Best wishes 

Karl

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