Latest / Communication Breakdown / Strategic Fidgeting—When Everything’s Important, and Nothing’s Urgent

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Strategic Fidgeting—When Everything’s Important, and Nothing’s Urgent · Communication Breakdown

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  Welcome back to Communication Breakdown, a weekly podcast from the Observatory on Corporate
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  Reputation.
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  Thanks for joining us.
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  I'm Steve Dowling in Silicon Valley.
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  And I'm Craig Carroll in New York City.
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  Each week, Steve and I take a look at strategies companies are using the shape headlines and
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  sometimes save their skins.
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  Supposed game show for PR pros.
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  This week, while you might be working twice as hard in July, just to avoid the discomfort
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  of waiting, renaming the behaviors, killing the fake urgency and finding real ways to make
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  next quarter easier on ourselves.
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  Break out the sunscreen.
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  Turn on the air conditioner.
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  Summer is here.
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  Conventional wisdom says executives are on vacation and consumer audiences are reading
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  books at the beach rather than newspapers or blogs.
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  Your next major comms activities are probably in the fall, which feels over the horizon
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  right now.
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  And sometimes the quiet can be unnerving.
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  Craig, we were talking earlier this week and you coined the term strategic fidgeting, which
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  really resonated with me.
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  Explain what it is and why it's important.
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  Well, first of all, for all disclosure, I'm not sure I can take credit for quining it.
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  I think I might have stolen it either from my subconscious or possibly from a group chat
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  I was kicked out of.
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  But yeah, strategic fidgeting is the name I gave to that moment when senior leaders can't
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  sit still.
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  There's no fire to put out.
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  There's no urgent deliverable, but the engine is still running.
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  So you end up start tinkering.
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  You're rethinking your org charts.
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  You're reframing narratives.
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  You're initiating projects that maybe don't need to happen yet.
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  And it's not always unproductive.
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  Sometimes it surfaces something useful, but it's important to recognize impulse.
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  You're not doing it because the business demands it.
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  You're doing it because you can't tolerate stillness.
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  The trick is knowing when you're thinking ahead and when you're just rearranging the furniture
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  to feel like you're moving.
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  So fidgeting isn't just nervous energy.
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  It could also be a strategic asset if you know how to channel it.
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  But first let's name where it starts because before we can turn restlessness into strategy,
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  you have to admit what this moment actually feels like.
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  So let's just talk about the moment we're in.
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  It's June, schools out, kids are home, where everyone else is kids are home.
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  The inbox is quieter, the calendar isn't quite as brutal and yet somehow everything still
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  feels heavy.
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  You know, you don't have the major campaign this week.
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  You're not facing a crisis, but that doesn't mean that you're at peace.
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  You know, you're just carrying a different kind of pressure, the ambient weight of everything
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  that still matters, but you can't be forward on it right now.
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  You know, the CEOs out, your general counsel somewhere between Tuscany and a signal dead zone
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  and your team is half on, half out and you know, in between being in Savannah for the seminar
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  or being at can, you're left holding all the important but not urgent things.
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  The brand narrative rewrite, the DEI narrative, the stakeholder engagement plan, so the Q4 campaign
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  reset.
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  None of it's on fire, but all of it matters.
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  And if we're being honest, you're tired, you're tired of carrying the way to things that
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  won't move without the people who aren't here to help you and you know, you're just tired
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  of feeling like you should be doing more, but also wishing you could do less.
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  Sort of the summer slowdown paradox, no pressure, no drama to deadlines and yet still no peace.
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  Yeah, I've never been to Savannah or Cann, but I can relate because once you've worked
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  and once you're used to working in a fast paced high pressure environment and then suddenly
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  there's nothing on fire, I think there's this instinct that kicks in and you say, I should
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  be doing something right now.
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  If nothing seems urgent, if my phone isn't ringing off the hook, I must be missing something.
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  And this is an especially heightened response if you've ever over the course of your career,
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  like missed something, which of course everybody has.
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  So someone like me anyway, you never, ever want to miss something.
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  Again, your instinct is to smother every issue.
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  And so this phenomenon that you're describing, I think a lighter way of looking at it might
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  be is that you're the dog who caught the car.
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  You've reached the end of your to-do list.
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  This is a goal that we never really expect to achieve, but here you are and it feels weird.
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  A solution or at least one way to try to think about this as I found is to set goals.
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  Set goals for yourself.
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  Set deadlines if you need to.
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  If that's what's going to motivate you, if you can zoom out and really take the opportunity
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  to assess the challenges that your org or your company faces, you can find the urgency.
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  Trust me, like if you're the type who thrives in that environment, you can find some urgency
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  to motivate yourself.
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  It's a different pace and maybe it's a different mindset because of the slower pace, but I think
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  once you start putting effort into it and maybe when you have other people from your team,
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  then invested in it, the exercise of setting those priorities, having the space as you say
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  to really achieve some things you've been wanting to do, that can be really healthy.
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  Yeah.
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  Sometimes that discomfort doesn't show up as panic, it shows up as activity.
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  You're not in crisis mode, but you're not exactly still either.
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  You start tweaking things, revisiting plans, poking it projects that aren't broken, just
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  to prove to yourself that you're moving.
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  That's where this idea of strategic visioning comes in.
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  It's I.K.O.S. It's not drift, it's something else entirely, and I think we all do it to some
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  degree.
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  Let's talk about what happens when you're a senior executive in the middle of slowdown.
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  There's no external pressure, there's no urgent deliverables, just that steady hum of the
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  important but stalled work.
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  You don't disengage, you don't rest, you fidget.
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  Again, you revisit the team structure.
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  Again, you reframe the brain narrative.
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  Again, you start mapping out that re-orick that no one's asking for, no one's ready for.
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  You don't need to do any event now, but it's the quiet, I think, that makes everybody restless.
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  So that's where the idea of strategic visioning came in.
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  At a certain level, such as common, it's inevitable.
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  It's sort of your brain-to-wave saying, "I need to move, but I don't know where yet."
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  It might be subconscious pattern recognition, might be the residue of months in crisis mode,
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  or might just be boredom disguised as vision.
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  Sometimes visioning helps.
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  It serves as tension, you haven't fully named yet, but left unchecked.
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  It can also send your team spending on things that they don't need to be fixing, or
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  creating work with no business case, or a road in clarity in a moment that calls for restraint.
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  I think the challenge is knowing when you're steering and when you're just shifting the
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  wheel so that you don't feel still.
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  Yeah, I think that dynamic that you're talking about, the urge to always be busy.
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  In a way, it's kind of a crutch, right?
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  A lot of times, reactive issues are an easy and, let's admit it, an appealing distraction.
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  They're a shiny object.
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  And psychologically, they offer you this promise of, hopefully, instant gratification, right?
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  The task is laid out for you.
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  And I think of it as like the old carnival game Wacomole.
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  Remember that one?
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  That's the appeal, right?
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  You spot the rodent.
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  It pops up and you know what to do with the mallet, right?
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  So I think that that's the sort of reward system that we get trained on when you're
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  used to dealing with crises or urgent deadlines and things like that.
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  And I think also you know or you tell yourself you'd like to think that we do our best work
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  under pressure, right?
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  There's some glory to that.
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  And so if you find yourself creating pressure artificially to motivate yourself, I think that's
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  the time when you need to step back and get some better perspectives.
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  And I believe over the very long term, like over the arc of a career, the longer campaigns
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  are where you can feel a bigger, maybe deeper sense of accomplishment.
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  It's just that it takes longer.
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  And I say that as someone who has spent probably the majority of his career playing Wacomole.
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  So here's a question for you.
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  What's the signal that you've learned to watch for yourself that says this isn't clarity,
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  it's just restlessness?
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  For me, whether it's myself or some other, you know, team member or organization, for
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  me, the red flag is complexity.
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  When we feel we need to be busy or if someone else, you know, needs us to know that they're
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  busy, I think that there's an instinct to like just start adding stuff, right?
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  Even if it's just like it's sort of like a math problem where you have to show your work.
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  But there's this really, really valuable work in making things simple.
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  And I think that's especially true in storytelling.
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  And especially in setting strategy.
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  And focus takes work in the end.
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  If you're successful, you get something simple and clear, but that may not look like a lot
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  of work, right?
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  Oh my God.
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  Simple does not mean easy for sure.
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  Right.
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  But I think that when you think about deliverables and you think about a team member that really wants,
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  you know, their manager, their superior, whatever, to know that they've done the work, I think
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  that that's when I look for the complexity.
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  And like, so I try to separate volume from the value of simple, clear, confident message
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  that's going to resonate like that's a lot more valuable than noise and complexity.
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  And again, the like showing your work aspect of it, you know, even though people think that
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  reflects a lot of work.
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  That's one to remember value, not volume.
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  Okay.
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  So, you know, what you're describing here is the discipline to resist the performance of
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  work, you know, that instinct that we all have to equate effort with impact, especially when
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  things are slow, which brings us to another form of strategic fidgeting, you know, not adding
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  complexity, but cycling through it.
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  And you know, the habit of checking dashboards, scrolling slack threads, bouncing between platforms,
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  checking news reports one more time, just to feel connected to something.
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  Or maybe we should say checking linked in one more time.
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  You know.
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  It's not just the complexity for others to see, it's the complexity that we keep feeding
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  ourselves, you know, it looks like vigilance, it feels like leadership, but we're often
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  not.
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  It's just what we're calling room scrolling.
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  And so let's talk about that.
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  What room scrolling looks like and white so hard to stop.
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  Yeah.
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  I equate this to, this is an analogy that's going to become harder and harder as we all
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  hopefully are driving electric cars, but you think of the old combustion engine and if you're
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  in third gear on the highway, if you're in second gear on the freeway, like you are doing
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  a ton of cycles and you are really over working.
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  And I think that the skill building here is to get into fourth and fifth gear.
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  So you feel more like you are cruising and you can perform at the level that you want
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  to without so many cycles.
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  One way that I like to think of it is to pull back before you reach an extreme, it's really
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  hard and you might not even want to let anybody know that you're doing it, but the advice
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  that I've given people is when you're full throttle or heading towards full throttle, you
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  increase your chances of making mistakes.
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  So creating those cycles is not a good strategy and I think you could burn yourself out, you
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  can push somebody else too hard.
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  And you lose perspective.
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  And so I think that just at the other same thing at the other end of the spectrum, that's
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  when you miss things or you let them slip.
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  I think the healthier state, and this is not always achievable, but it's like not the middle,
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  but 90% instead of 100% because I think if we're honest and like for a lot of us, 100%
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  to us is like 110% in any other situation.
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  And so 90% to you might feel like 100% to us.
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  And at the other end of the spectrum, 25 or 30% effort to us probably feels like zero.
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  And so I think of it as like holding back at the high end of the, continue the metaphor
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  of the techometer, like before you hit the red, back off a little because you're doing
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  yourself and your team a service by maintaining a manageable level of strain.
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  Yeah.
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  What's the saying?
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  Sometimes good is good enough.
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  I know we sometimes carry it too far, the other extreme.
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  I don't look at it just honestly.
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  I don't look at it as compromising on the outcome or the quality.
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  Oh, absolutely right.
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  Yeah.
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  I think it's just about how hard you push to get there and recognizing that your instinct
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  may be, as you talk about room scrolling, your instinct, maybe to just keep going over
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  it more and more and more.
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  And you really don't need to, if you're good enough, and if you're in that role, I think
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  that you probably are.
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  We have around our house, we have the saying that we've adapted from the safety announcement
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  on the airplane.
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  You know, they say in case of an emergency, when you know the oxygen mask, they say put your
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  own mask on first and you the first time you hear that, you're like, oh my god.
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  Why would you?
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  But then you think like, if you don't have your own mask on, like you're not doing anybody
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  any good.
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  So I think that training yourself to not overdo it, looking at a problem and going, I've
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  spent enough time on this.
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  Like, you know, time to move on to something else is a really critical time management principle.
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  I think part of it also is that we've all been taught to separate performance from outcomes
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  and for good reason.
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  You know, it keeps us focused on what we can control, especially when the outcome is uncertain.
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  But here's where it gets tricky.
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  We treat that separation like it's a straight line.
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  You know, the more performance, the better the outcome and that's not always true.
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  Sometimes we hit the result at 40 or 60% performance and pushing it to 80, 90 or 100% performance
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  I can actually get in the way.
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  That's something a Marshall Goldsmith would talk about that, you know, more performance
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  doesn't always mean better outcomes.
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  Sometimes the wind comes from backing off, simplifying, creating space and not from turning
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  every dial up to the max.
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  So I think the challenges that just staying in motion, it's knowing when to stop pushing
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  and let the outcome land.
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  Well, this may be tangential to, you know, what you've been thinking about here, but I think
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  that sometimes when we think about coming at a problem, we have in mind the way we want
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  to achieve it, right?
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  Whereas you're looking for an outcome.
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  And I think that if you get locked into that, that that it becomes problematic.
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  It becomes problematic for you, but in more cases, it probably becomes problematic for your
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  team because really you should be open to, you know, other ways of achieving it.
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  And I'm trying now to apply this to what, you know, what you've been talking about, but
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  the broader point here I think is it's about breaking out of habits, like habits in time
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  management, habits in how we, you know, what our expectations are for productivity.
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  Again, not lowering anybody's standards or expectations, but really just about how you
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  come at it.
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  And I think ideally if you change the way you come at work during the high pressure times,
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  if you can, then that makes these low pressure times seem a little less anxiety inducing.
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  Okay.
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  Well, let's talk about a subtle leadership reflex that shows up during these slow cycles,
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  especially times like now during the summer.
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  It's another type of strategic fidgeting, which I'm calling urgentsifying, urgentsifying meaning,
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  making it urgent.
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  Yes, that's it, right?
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  Making it urgent, it's, you know, it's when we manufacture urgency around tasks that aren't
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  truly urgent just to avoid the discomfort of stillness.
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  Now, we don't call it that.
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  What we do call it is getting ahead or showing momentum, but for honest, right, we're just
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  really just filling the quiet, you know, you know, we've all done it.
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  You know, drafted a strategy memo from, from meetings that don't need to exist or we push
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  a narrative refresh while half your team is on vacation or we launch prep work for a cross-functional
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  project that no one's ready for.
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  And out of it's wrong is just, you know, mis-timed, you know, the urgency isn't coming from
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  the business that's coming from us.
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  And here's a catch, urgentsifying looks like good leadership.
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  It's structured, it's proactive, it gets praised, but at the same time, it drains resources
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  that creates confusion.
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  It fills the runway with motion that doesn't lead to movement.
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  And sometimes what this is already saying you can do is match the moment, not by doing
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  more, but by resisting the urge to create problems just so you can solve them.
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  Yeah.
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  I think somehow what you're describing, I think, is somehow people think of as a motivator.
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  And, you know, this is akin to, you know, whether things are urgent or not, the, his
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  phrase, like, "Oh, light a fire under them."
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  Or, like, somebody needs a kick in the pants or whatever.
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  Peter Drucker used to say, you know, part of being a good leader is not just being firefighter,
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  it's also being part arsonist.
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  And I'm thinking, "Hmm, maybe, maybe there's a little bit here."
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  Maybe when the time's demanded, but we're talking about a period when it doesn't.
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  I think that, that fake urgency that you're describing, yeah.
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  First off, it's easy to spot for people at all levels.
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  And it undermines your credibility as a leader.
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  So I think you've got to recognize the signs in yourself and avoid doing that.
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  It's just, it's not, especially over the long term, it's not a motivator for people.
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  They just look at you and they go, "This person's just creating more cycles."
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  And that's not a good use of my time.
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  So you can still motivate people while acknowledging that, like, we're in good shape.
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  And now's a good time to get some things done that we've had on our list.
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  We didn't have the bandwidth for.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  And I also think that it's a great time to provide opportunities for your team, you
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  know, when we're under pressure, we delegate things we don't have time for.
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  When you've got room to breathe, you can create, as I said, these opportunities for
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  somebody that might have been really waiting for their chance to shine, but because of
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  all the crazy pressure that you're normally under, they don't get the chance.
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  So I would try to look at a period of relative quiet or a slower pace to say, look around
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  and go, who might be ready to step up?
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  And that's not, you know, step up because we're going to create some fake urgency, but like,
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  here's something that maybe you can stay close to and be a mentor in that process.
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  But I think that that's a healthier motivator, right, to say, here's something that we need.
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  Here's something that's going to be valuable.
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  And here's your chance to run it.
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  Actually, that was pretty good.
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  I was not thinking about, you know, empowering your team that way, but that's a really good
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  solution for how to handle the moment.
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  Some of the things that I was thinking about here were certainly, you know, we don't want
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  to force momentum.
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  And, you know, we should be thinking about like how to create just enough structure to
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  keep things moving on your own terms.
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  But you know, it's not about over correcting.
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  It's really about choosing where to apply your energy lightly, but deliberately.
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  So some that I've been thinking about separate from the one you mentioned is like, dang,
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  that was good about team empowerment.
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  It's like, where's my team?
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  I'm not saying that's a good solution.
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  But that's good.
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  You're team deserves vacation.
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  And you need to recharge.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  Okay.
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  So, but the way I've been thinking about it here is that during this moment, we kind of
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  need, I like thinking about it as using forcing functions, right?
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  So it could be that, you know, we take, we use this time to pick a stalled initiative and
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  we give it a quiet finish line.
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  So fanfare, just to date, just to wrap it up or we can reframe the review, right?
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  Or the, you know, don't say let's assess what's broken, say, let's make, here's my answer
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  to it.
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  Let's make next quarter easier on ourselves.
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  And that is like a way of reframe.
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  So we're using this month to learn, let's do the work now to make next quarter early easier
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  on ourselves.
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  Oh, there we go.
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  Yeah.
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  Do the work now to make it easier on ourselves.
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  And of course, the, the power question, what are we afraid will happen if we stop doing
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  this?
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  And if no one has a good answer, you probably have permission to pause.
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  Yeah.
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  I think that's the dynamic I was trying to describe earlier, which is like your instinct
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  is to look around and go like, well, I must be missing something.
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  Like if it's not on fire, I don't, I may not know how to identify it, right?
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  And so if I'm looking around and not seeing anything that I'm used to, then, you know,
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  I must be doing something wrong.
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  And that's, yeah, that's something where you need to get perspective and frankly, confidence
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  that you're on top of stuff and that your team is on top of stuff.
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  Absolutely.
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  And the more constructive way to handle that is to, you know, start with that question
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  that we often end with, which is, what am I missing?
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  Right?
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  But it's not a, I must be missing something.
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  It's, are we missing anything here?
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  And, you know, at this time, you'd be okay with, if you're confident in it, like, no,
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  I don't think we are.
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  I think, you know, this is just a quiet time.
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  I have one last one to mention.
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  I know everyone's going to hate it.
• 21:38
  And it's actually where I think it's just, you know, for people who are not willing to
• 21:41
  stick with it, they're going to revert back to strategic fidgeting and it's, it's taking
• 21:46
  time, blocking one hour of stillness, you know, not the meeting, not the brainstorm, just
• 21:55
  space to notice and pay attention to what matters.
• 22:00
  So it's not about doing more.
• 22:02
  It's about being selective in a season that tempts us to either over engineer or to check
• 22:07
  out entirely.
• 22:08
  So, you know, look, some are in the problem.
• 22:11
  The problem is mistaking silence for irrelevance.
• 22:15
  And, you know, the reality is we can look at this just as much as a strategic opening.
• 22:19
  Yeah.
• 22:20
  I would say also just sort of in the final thoughts category for folks who are earlier in
• 22:25
  their career, folks who are not at the top of the org chart, the quiet time, assuming
• 22:30
  you have a, you know, a leader who is open to it.
• 22:32
  And I hope you do.
• 22:33
  Like, the great time to show initiative by identifying some place, you know, in the organization
• 22:40
  or in the practices that could be improved and even just to bring it up and say, hey,
• 22:45
  you know what, like, we've got a little time here.
• 22:47
  Here's something that I've noticed we could be doing better or here's something that
• 22:51
  we could spend a little time on.
• 22:53
  You don't want to, you know, a deluge of random ideas.
• 22:57
  Yeah.
• 22:58
  You think it's a good opportunity to again show initiative if you think that it's going
• 23:04
  to be well received.
• 23:06
  But I think it's, it's just again about showing that you can do things at different places,
• 23:12
  show some versatility in your, in your like mode.
• 23:15
  Like sometimes I think we have two speeds, which is like either again, full throttle or
• 23:20
  complete idle.
• 23:21
  Yeah.
• 23:22
  And the showing strength in the middle there is, I think, something that you want to,
• 23:27
  you want to do is healthy.
• 23:28
  Yeah.
• 23:29
  I can think of a couple others I think that are easier and important here to do.
• 23:33
  One is using the time here for relationship building, you know, with members of your team
• 23:38
  as you're talking about empowering your team.
• 23:42
  I'm gritting my tea thinking about a team member coming to me with a project that we can
• 23:46
  do this summer.
• 23:47
  It's like, why don't we just focus on the relationship right now?
• 23:50
  I'm just getting it.
• 23:51
  It's a serious one.
• 23:52
  Yeah.
• 23:53
  No, I think from a, from a leadership point of view, it's a great time to say, okay, well,
• 23:57
  it's we have our weekly staff meeting and nothing's on fire.
• 23:59
  Maybe it's a really good time to just do a recap and communicate things that you have seen
• 24:04
  the team do well.
• 24:05
  Maybe something is for improvement, but I think the current term is gratitude, right?
• 24:10
  Which may feel a little squishy.
• 24:12
  Yeah.
• 24:13
  Oh, that's great.
• 24:14
  We did not work that in yet.
• 24:15
  But yeah, I think it's, I think it's good.
• 24:16
  I think it's just like if you know that your brain works better when, when you've got,
• 24:20
  you know, a solid agenda, right?
• 24:22
  And no one's putting stuff at the top of that agenda for you right now in the summertime.
• 24:27
  Moving up things that feel healthy, that feel team building.
• 24:31
  Again, we talked about empowering.
• 24:33
  Yep.
• 24:34
  I think those are things that can, that you can prioritize and scratch that, scratch that
• 24:38
  urge, gentzification itch.
• 24:41
  But make them longer term or sort of more soft skills impactful if that makes sense.
• 24:47
  That is awesome.
• 24:48
  Excellent point to end on.
• 24:50
  Well, that's our show for this week.
• 24:52
  We want to thank Shawn P Neal and the team at Advocast as well as the people forward
• 24:56
  network for making our podcast possible.
• 24:58
  If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, we'd love to hear from you.
• 25:03
  Our email address is podcast@ocrnetwork.com.
• 25:07
  Communication breakdown is some production of the Observatory and Corporate Reputation.
• 25:11
  I'm Craig Carroll.
• 25:13
  And I'm Steve Dowling.
• 25:14
  Thanks for listening.
• 25:15
  We'll see you next week.
• 25:15
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• 25:25
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