"Generation X" or "gen x-ers" were born between 1965 and 1980, and can be most easily identified in corporate America as the team members working the hardest to remain relevant. Many of us are experiencing stagnation in our careers, while our millennial counterparts are frequently favored for promotion to Director or even VP despite our best efforts. Why is this? What has changed in the marketplace? What is it, I need to do in order to thrive in the 21st century workplace?
As gen x-ers, our parents tried to drill home a single formula for success: get your education, get a job with a reliable company, work harder than everyone else, and your success will come. We were touched by the stories of our parents and grandparents who experienced the Great Depression followed by World War II, i.e. the "greatest generation." Our parents made it on one principle: they worked hard, and their first hand stories of America's strife made an impression on us to do the same.
Millennials, born between 1981 and 2000, are the children of the latter end of the Boomer generation. Boomers had the advantage of an amazing economy. Money came easy, but at the price of time. Although many millennials were raised during some of America's most prosperous economies, they remember their moms and dads working A LOT. Because they are not as close to the "greatest generation," they are lulled into the sense that opportunities for money will always be there. What they value is something they feel their parents lacked, time and balance. Therefore, they drive innovation in the workplace to preserve their greatest asset - TIME.
C-Level officers in today's corporate America are tasked to squeeze broader margins from fewer resources to retain their favor with shareholders. With technology progressing at an incalculable rate, they need leaders in their organization who can grow the business at a ratio disproportionate to their most expensive resource - the human resource. As a result, it is imperative for you to re-brand yourself from the guy or gal working the hardest and longest hours on the floor, to the one who can take on a function, incorporate processes and tools to increase efficiency of delivery, leverage automation to reduce human error, and track the appropriate metrics to show the results of your innovation. This makes the most valued resource in the company not the "hardest working," but the "smartest working" - those who can creatively drive innovation and efficiency.
To initiate this change in yourself, it is imperative you first change how you think. Innovation is spawned from creativity, and creativity is a byproduct of mindfulness. If you are so "busy doing things" that you are not thinking about what you are doing, why you are doing it, or how you can do it better, you are failing yourself, and not tapping into your creative potential. See five things you can do to unleash your creativity. As you shift from busy to mindful, intentional innovation, efficiency, and opportunity will follow.
1. focus on your personal well being - a healthy mind is a creative mind
When we are spending an excessive balance of our time working, our health suffers. If we are getting into the office before 7 am and staying until 6:30 or 7 pm, we lack the time and energy to improve ourselves. If going to the gym means getting to the office by 8, but you feel refreshed, energetic, and ready to tackle the day, it is well worth the investment. In his blog called Why Leaders must Prioritize Health and Wellness, Skipp Prichard shares,
"The problem arises when we consistently put 'achievement' ahead of our health and wellness, which simply isn’t sustainable in the long run—and I think The New Alpha gives people permission to re-prioritize their health and wellness, even if it means perhaps being slightly less effective on a few short-term tasks."
Prioritizing your health over those emails that came in after 10 pm last night is part of your transformation - looking at the long range in lieu of the short range. You will have more energy and confidence to be more innovative in how you approach each opportunity.
2. be intentional with your social media engagement - time and purpose matters
As someone who has traveled far and wide and lived in several states, I do love social media. It helps me maintain contact with people who have been important to me, and as my children now live away from home, I also enjoy seeing what they are posting, making it a fun way to keep up with them. However, there are negative impacts to our creative thinking if we engage in Social Media without intention during the early morning hours when our minds are most agile. When we are on social media without intention, we immediately surrender ourselves to someone else's agenda. What are they posting? Do I like it? What about them? Oh, they are going to that event? Maybe I will, too. All of this is reactive activity. There are strategic reasons to be on social media on the morning, but I recommend you restrict your engagement to pushing out the information you want your colleagues, customers and prospects to identify with you and your brand. Swap your social distraction over coffee for meditation to drive YOUR intentions and YOUR agenda. Keep up with friends and family, but do so as you are winding down at night, not in the morning when you have the most potential to influence the success of yourself and others through innovative thought and planning.
3. mornings are golden - use them for creative journaling and driving innovation
It is easy to fall into the trap of our email becoming our "to do list." If we are getting into the office and the first thing we do is open our email and start responding, we are losing valuable time during our most creative time of the day. Like social media, answering email puts our mind into a reactive mode, and we lose out on the opportunity to drive innovation in how we execute our responsibilities. In her post, To Be An Effective Leader Keep A Leadership Journal, Henna Inam shares,
"Effective leaders are able to see what's happening with a clearer perspective. They are thus able to respond with greater agility to change. They lead effectively because they see effectively."
An agile leader is a creative leader. Morning journaling to open your mind to new ways of achieving your intentions is what many top leaders do to tap into their potential and continually improve in how they lead and inspire others. As you focus on how you can be more efficient and innovative in how you and your team approach your stewardship, you will be able to drive visible improvements that will increase your value in the organization.
4. be an example of appropriate work-life balance
I was having a touch point with an amazing member of my team, a very talented individual with a lot of potential and, yes, a millennial. In discussing his career ambitions, I shared with him that I really thought he could replace me some day. He emphatically shared that he had no desire to replace me as the job, as I do it, is overly taxing and will rob him of many of the things he feels bring life joy. This sent me into an immediate personal inventory, realizing that in working so much and such long hours, I am actually being a poor example to my team. I am still working through the appropriate balance of leadership expectations against personal priorities, but I am making a more significant effort to put family first, actually take some time off and give myself and my team a healthy break, and am making this visible to others. It is tough to change this habit, but it will actually elevate your reputation and respect in the workplace as someone who is not sacrificing their "why" for their "why."
5. know your tomorrow - plan ahead
As you close out your day, look ahead at your upcoming meetings. Clean the irrelevance off by declining unnecessary meetings, and block off appropriate time to truly prepare for upcoming days and weeks. Be sure that as you end each day, you are fully prepared for all scheduled meetings the next day. This allows you to absorb the "intangibles." Intangibles are the the urgent things that come up, i.e. an imperative leadership report, a customer escalation, a team member emergency, etc. that can derail your day. If you are prepared for your meetings at least one day in advance, you will be less stressed and free to creatively deal with the situations as they come.
By taking a step back from the "busy work" and leaning into habits that maximize your intentional creativity, you will thrive in today's workplace. You will be an agile leader who finds ways to be more efficient, delivering on old problems in a systematic, expedited manner. You will be the one to watch, and an incredible asset for yourself, your customers, and colleagues.