2015-03-11 02:20:59
Tony Schwartz
Catherine McCarthy
Steve Wanner is a highly respected 37-year-old partner at Ernst & Young,
married with four young children. When we met him a year ago, he was working
12- to 14-hour days, felt perpetually exhausted, and found it difficult to
fully engage with his family in the evenings, which left him feeling guilty and
dissatisfied. He slept poorly, made no time to exercise, and seldom ate healthy
meals, instead grabbing a bite to eat on the run or while working at his desk.
Wanner s experience is not uncommon. Most of us respond to rising demands in
the workplace by putting in longer hours, which inevitably take a toll on us
physically, mentally, and emotionally. That leads to declining levels of
engagement, increasing levels of distraction, high turnover rates, and soaring
medical costs among employees. We at the Energy Project have worked with
thousands of leaders and managers in the course of doing consulting and
coaching at large organizations during the past five years. With remarkable
consistency, these executives tell us they re pushing themselves harder than
ever to keep up and increasingly feel they are at a breaking point.
The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource.
Energy is a different story. Defined in physics as the capacity to work, energy
comes from four main wellsprings in human beings: the body, emotions, mind, and
spirit. In each, energy can be systematically expanded and regularly renewed by
establishing specific rituals behaviors that are intentionally practiced and
precisely scheduled, with the goal of making them unconscious and automatic as
quickly as possible.
The core problem with working longer hours is that time is a finite resource.
Energy is a different story.
To effectively reenergize their workforces, organizations need to shift their
emphasis from getting more out of people to investing more in them, so they are
motivated and able to bring more of themselves to work every day. To recharge
themselves, individuals need to recognize the costs of energy-depleting
behaviors and then take responsibility for changing them, regardless of the
circumstances they re facing.
The rituals and behaviors Wanner established to better manage his energy
transformed his life. He set an earlier bedtime and gave up drinking, which had
disrupted his sleep. As a consequence, when he woke up he felt more rested and
more motivated to exercise, which he now does almost every morning. In less
than two months he lost 15 pounds. After working out he now sits down with his
family for breakfast. Wanner still puts in long hours on the job, but he renews
himself regularly along the way. He leaves his desk for lunch and usually takes
a morning and an afternoon walk outside. When he arrives at home in the
evening, he s more relaxed and better able to connect with his wife and
children.
Establishing simple rituals like these can lead to striking results across
organizations. At Wachovia Bank, we took a group of employees through a pilot
energy management program and then measured their performance against that of a
control group. The participants outperformed the controls on a series of
financial metrics, such as the value of loans they generated. They also
reported substantial improvements in their customer relationships, their
engagement with work, and their personal satisfaction. In this article, we ll
describe the Wachovia study in a little more detail. Then we ll explain what
executives and managers can do to increase and regularly renew work capacity
the approach used by the Energy Project, which builds on, deepens, and extends
several core concepts developed by Tony s former partner Jim Loehr in his
seminal work with athletes.
Linking Capacity and Performance at Wachovia
Most large organizations invest in developing employees skills, knowledge, and
competence. Very few help build and sustain their capacity their energy which
is typically taken for granted. In fact, greater capacity makes it possible to
get more done in less time at a higher level of engagement and with more
sustainability. Our experience at Wachovia bore this out.
In early 2006 we took 106 employees at 12 regional banks in southern New Jersey
through a curriculum of four modules, each of which focused on specific
strategies for strengthening one of the four main dimensions of energy. We
delivered it at one-month intervals to groups of approximately 20 to 25,
ranging from senior leaders to lower-level managers. We also assigned each
attendee a fellow employee as a source of support between sessions. Using
Wachovia s own key performance metrics, we evaluated how the participant group
performed compared with a group of employees at similar levels at a nearby set
of Wachovia banks who did not go through the training. To create a credible
basis for comparison, we looked at year-over-year percentage changes in
performance across several metrics.
On a measure called the Big 3 revenues from three kinds of loans the
participants showed a year-over-year increase that was 13 percentage points
greater than the control group s in the first three months of our study. On
revenues from deposits, the participants exceeded the control group s
year-over-year gain by 20 percentage points during that same period. The
precise gains varied month by month, but with only a handful of exceptions, the
participants continued to significantly outperform the control group for a full
year after completing the program. Although other variables undoubtedly
influenced these outcomes, the participants superior performance was notable
in its consistency. (See the exhibit How Energy Renewal Programs Boosted
Productivity at Wachovia. )
We also asked participants how the program influenced them personally.
Sixty-eight percent reported that it had a positive impact on their
relationships with clients and customers. Seventy-one percent said that it had
a noticeable or substantial positive impact on their productivity and
performance. These findings corroborated a raft of anecdotal evidence we ve
gathered about the effectiveness of this approach among leaders at other large
companies such as Ernst & Young, Sony, Deutsche Bank, Nokia, ING Direct, Ford,
and MasterCard.
The Body: Physical Energy
Our program begins by focusing on physical energy. It is scarcely news that
inadequate nutrition, exercise, sleep, and rest diminish people s basic energy
levels, as well as their ability to manage their emotions and focus their
attention. Nonetheless, many executives don t find ways to practice
consistently healthy behaviors, given all the other demands in their lives.
Before participants in our program begin to explore ways to increase their
physical energy, they take an energy audit, which includes four questions in
each energy dimension body, emotions, mind, and spirit. (See the exhibit Are
You Headed for an Energy Crisis? ) On average, participants get eight to ten of
those 16 questions wrong, meaning they re doing things such as skipping
breakfast, failing to express appreciation to others, struggling to focus on
one thing at a time, or spending too little time on activities that give them a
sense of purpose. While most participants aren t surprised to learn these
behaviors are counterproductive, having them all listed in one place is often
uncomfortable, sobering, and galvanizing. The audit highlights employees
greatest energy deficits. Participants also fill out charts designed to raise
their awareness about how their exercise, diet, and sleep practices influence
their energy levels.
The next step is to identify rituals for building and renewing physical energy.
When Gary Faro, a vice president at Wachovia, began the program, he was
significantly overweight, ate poorly, lacked a regular exercise routine, worked
long hours, and typically slept no more than five or six hours a night. That is
not an unusual profile among the leaders and managers we see. Over the course
of the program, Faro began regular cardiovascular and strength training. He
started going to bed at a designated time and sleeping longer. He changed his
eating habits from two big meals a day ( Where I usually gorged myself, he
says) to smaller meals and light snacks every three hours. The aim was to help
him stabilize his glucose levels over the course of the day, avoiding peaks and
valleys. He lost 50 pounds in the process, and his energy levels soared. I
used to schedule tough projects for the morning, when I knew that I would be
more focused, Faro says. I don t have to do that anymore because I find that
I m just as focused now at 5 pm as I am at 8 am.
Another key ritual Faro adopted was to take brief but regular breaks at
specific intervals throughout the workday always leaving his desk. The value of
such breaks is grounded in our physiology. Ultradian rhythms refer to 90- to
120-minute cycles during which our bodies slowly move from a high-energy state
into a physiological trough. Toward the end of each cycle, the body begins to
crave a period of recovery. The signals include physical restlessness, yawning,
hunger, and difficulty concentrating, but many of us ignore them and keep
working. The consequence is that our energy reservoir our remaining capacity
burns down as the day wears on.
Intermittent breaks for renewal, we have found, result in higher and more
sustainable performance. The length of renewal is less important than the
quality. It is possible to get a great deal of recovery in a short time as
little as several minutes if it involves a ritual that allows you to disengage
from work and truly change channels. That could range from getting up to talk
to a colleague about something other than work, to listening to music on an
iPod, to walking up and down stairs in an office building. While breaks are
countercultural in most organizations and counterintuitive for many high
achievers, their value is multifaceted.
Matthew Lang is a managing director for Sony in South Africa. He adopted some
of the same rituals that Faro did, including a 20-minute walk in the
afternoons. Lang s walk not only gives him a mental and emotional breather and
some exercise but also has become the time when he gets his best creative
ideas. That s because when he walks he is not actively thinking, which allows
the dominant left hemisphere of his brain to give way to the right hemisphere
with its greater capacity to see the big picture and make imaginative leaps.
The Emotions: Quality of Energy
When people are able to take more control of their emotions, they can improve
the quality of their energy, regardless of the external pressures they re
facing. To do this, they first must become more aware of how they feel at
various points during the workday and of the impact these emotions have on
their effectiveness. Most people realize that they tend to perform best when
they re feeling positive energy. What they find surprising is that they re not
able to perform well or to lead effectively when they re feeling any other way.
Unfortunately, without intermittent recovery, we re not physiologically capable
of sustaining highly positive emotions for long periods. Confronted with
relentless demands and unexpected challenges, people tend to slip into negative
emotions the fight-or-flight mode often multiple times in a day. They become
irritable and impatient, or anxious and insecure. Such states of mind drain
people s energy and cause friction in their relationships. Fight-or-flight
emotions also make it impossible to think clearly, logically, and reflectively.
When executives learn to recognize what kinds of events trigger their negative
emotions, they gain greater capacity to take control of their reactions.
One simple but powerful ritual for defusing negative emotions is what we call
buying time. Deep abdominal breathing is one way to do that. Exhaling slowly
for five or six seconds induces relaxation and recovery, and turns off the
fight-or-flight response. When we began working with Fujio Nishida, president
of Sony Europe, he had a habit of lighting up a cigarette each time something
especially stressful occurred at least two or three times a day. Otherwise, he
didn t smoke. We taught him the breathing exercise as an alternative, and it
worked immediately: Nishida found he no longer had the desire for a cigarette.
It wasn t the smoking that had given him relief from the stress, we concluded,
but the relaxation prompted by the deep inhalation and exhalation.
A powerful ritual that fuels positive emotions is expressing appreciation to
others, a practice that seems to be as beneficial to the giver as to the
receiver. It can take the form of a handwritten note, an e-mail, a call, or a
conversation and the more detailed and specific, the higher the impact. As with
all rituals, setting aside a particular time to do it vastly increases the
chances of success. Ben Jenkins, vice chairman and president of the General
Bank at Wachovia in Charlotte, North Carolina, built his appreciation ritual
into time set aside for mentoring. He began scheduling lunches or dinners
regularly with people who worked for him. Previously, the only sit-downs he d
had with his direct reports were to hear monthly reports on their numbers or to
give them yearly performance reviews. Now, over meals, he makes it a priority
to recognize their accomplishments and also to talk with them about their lives
and their aspirations rather than their immediate work responsibilities.
Finally, people can cultivate positive emotions by learning to change
thestories they tell themselves about the events in their lives. Often, people
in conflict cast themselves in the role of victim, blaming others or external
circumstances for their problems. Becoming aware of the difference between the
facts in a given situation and the way we interpret those facts can be powerful
in itself. It s been a revelation for many of the people we work with to
discover they have a choice about how to view a given event and to recognize
how powerfully the story they tell influences the emotions they feel. We teach
them to tell the most hopeful and personally empowering story possible in any
given situation, without denying or minimizing the facts.
People can cultivate positive energy by learning to change the stories they
tell themselves about the events in their lives. We teach them to tell the most
hopeful stories possible.
The most effective way people can change a story is to view it through any of
three new lenses, which are all alternatives to seeing the world from the
victim perspective. With the reverse lens, for example, people ask themselves,
What would the other person in this conflict say and in what ways might that
be true? With the long lens they ask, How will I most likely view this
situation in six months? With the wide lens they ask themselves, Regardless
of the outcome of this issue, how can I grow and learn from it? Each of these
lenses can help people intentionally cultivate more positive emotions.
Nicolas Babin, director of corporate communications for Sony Europe, was the
point person for calls from reporters when Sony went through several recalls of
its batteries in 2006. Over time he found his work increasingly exhausting and
dispiriting. After practicing the lens exercises, he began finding ways to tell
himself a more positive and empowering story about his role. I realized, he
explains, that this was an opportunity for me to build stronger relationships
with journalists by being accessible to them and to increase Sony s credibility
by being straightforward and honest.
The Mind: Focus of Energy
Many executives view multitasking as a necessity in the face of all the demands
they juggle, but it actually undermines productivity. Distractions are costly:
A temporary shift in attention from one task to another stopping to answer an
e-mail or take a phone call, for instance increases the amount of time
necessary to finish the primary task by as much as 25%, a phenomenon known as
switching time. It s far more efficient to fully focus for 90 to 120 minutes,
take a true break, and then fully focus on the next activity. We refer to these
work periods as ultradian sprints.
Once people see how much they struggle to concentrate, they can create rituals
to reduce the relentless interruptions that technology has introduced in their
lives. We start out with an exercise that forces them to face the impact of
daily distractions. They attempt to complete a complex task and are regularly
interrupted an experience that, people report, ends up feeling much like
everyday life.
Dan Cluna, a vice president at Wachovia, designed two rituals to better focus
his attention. The first one is to leave his desk and go into a conference
room, away from phones and e-mail, whenever he has a task that requires
concentration. He now finishes reports in a third of the time they used to
require. Cluna built his second ritual around meetings at branches with the
financial specialists who report to him. Previously, he would answer his phone
whenever it rang during these meetings. As a consequence, the meetings he
scheduled for an hour often stretched to two, and he rarely gave anyone his
full attention. Now Cluna lets his phone go to voice mail, so that he can focus
completely on the person in front of him. He now answers the accumulated
voice-mail messages when he has downtime between meetings.
E&Y s hard-charging Wanner used to answer e-mail constantly throughout the day
whenever he heard a ping. Then he created a ritual of checking his e-mail
just twice a day at 10:15 am and 2:30 pm. Whereas previously he couldn t keep
up with all his messages, he discovered he could clear his in-box each time he
opened it the reward of fully focusing his attention on e-mail for 45 minutes
at a time. Wanner has also reset the expectations of all the people he
regularly communicates with by e-mail. I ve told them if it s an emergency and
they need an instant response, they can call me and I ll always pick up, he
says. Nine months later he has yet to receive such a call.
Michael Henke, a senior manager at E&Y, sat his team down at the start of the
busy season last winter and told them that at certain points during the day he
was going to turn off his Sametime (an in-house instant-message system). The
result, he said, was that he would be less available to them for questions.
Like Wanner, he told his team to call him if any emergency arose, but they
rarely did. He also encouraged the group to take regular breaks throughout the
day and to eat more regularly. They finished the busy season under budget and
more profitable than other teams that hadn t followed the energy renewal
program. We got the same amount of work done in less time, says Henke. It
made for a win-win.
Another way to mobilize mental energy is to focus systematically on activities
that have the most long-term leverage. Unless people intentionally schedule
time for more challenging work, they tend not to get to it at all or rush
through it at the last minute. Perhaps the most effective focus ritual the
executives we work with have adopted is to identify each night the most
important challenge for the next day and make it their very first priority when
they arrive in the morning. Jean Luc Duquesne, a vice president for Sony Europe
in Paris, used to answer his e-mail as soon as he got to the office, just as
many people do. He now tries to concentrate the first hour of every day on the
most important topic. He finds that he often emerges at 10 am feeling as if he
s already had a productive day.
The Human Spirit: Energy of Meaning and Purpose
People tap into the energy of the human spirit when their everyday work and
activities are consistent with what they value most and with what gives them a
sense of meaning and purpose. If the work they re doing really matters to them,
they typically feel more positive energy, focus better, and demonstrate greater
perseverance. Regrettably, the high demands and fast pace of corporate life don
t leave much time to pay attention to these issues, and many people don t even
recognize meaning and purpose as potential sources of energy. Indeed, if we
tried to begin our program by focusing on the human spirit, it would likely
have minimal impact. Only when participants have experienced the value of the
rituals they establish in the other dimensions do they start to see that being
attentive to their own deeper needs dramatically influences their effectiveness
and satisfaction at work.
For E&Y partner Jonathan Anspacher, simply having the opportunity to ask
himself a series of questions about what really mattered to him was both
illuminating and energizing. I think it s important to be a little
introspective and say, What do you want to be remembered for? he told us.
You don t want to be remembered as the crazy partner who worked these long
hours and had his people be miserable. When my kids call me and ask, Can you
come to my band concert? I want to say, Yes, I ll be there and I ll be in the
front row. I don t want to be the father that comes in and sits in the back
and is on his Blackberry and has to step out to take a phone call.
To access the energy of the human spirit, people need to clarify priorities and
establish accompanying rituals in three categories: doing what they do best and
enjoy most at work; consciously allocating time and energy to the areas of
their lives work, family, health, service to others they deem most important;
and living their core values in their daily behaviors.
When you re attempting to discover what you do best and what you enjoy most, it
s important to realize that these two things aren t necessarily mutually
inclusive. You may get lots of positive feedback about something you re very
good at but not truly enjoy it. Conversely, you can love doing something but
have no gift for it, so that achieving success requires much more energy than
it makes sense to invest.
To help program participants discover their areas of strength, we ask them to
recall at least two work experiences in the past several months during which
they found themselves in their sweet spot feeling effective, effortlessly
absorbed, inspired, and fulfilled. Then we have them deconstruct those
experiences to understand precisely what energized them so positively and what
specific talents they were drawing on. If leading strategy feels like a sweet
spot, for example, is it being in charge that s most invigorating or
participating in a creative endeavor? Or is it using a skill that comes to you
easily and so feels good to exercise? Finally, we have people establish a
ritual that will encourage them to do more of exactly that kind of activity at
work.
A senior leader we worked with realized that one of the activities he least
liked was reading and summarizing detailed sales reports, whereas one of his
favorites was brainstorming new strategies. The leader found a direct report
who loved immersing himself in numbers and delegated the sales report task to
him happily settling for brief oral summaries from him each day. The leader
also began scheduling a free-form 90-minute strategy session every other week
with the most creative people in his group.
In the second category, devoting time and energy to what s important to you,
there is often a similar divide between what people say is important and what
they actually do. Rituals can help close this gap. When Jean Luc Duquesne, the
Sony Europe vice president, thought hard about his personal priorities, he
realized that spending time with his family was what mattered most to him, but
it often got squeezed out of his day. So he instituted a ritual in which he
switches off for at least three hours every evening when he gets home, so he
can focus on his family. I m still not an expert on PlayStation, he told us,
but according to my youngest son, I m learning and I m a good student. Steve
Wanner, who used to talk on the cell phone all the way to his front door on his
commute home, has chosen a specific spot 20 minutes from his house where he
ends whatever call he s on and puts away the phone. He spends the rest of his
commute relaxing so that when he does arrive home, he s less preoccupied with
work and more available to his wife and children.
The third category, practicing your core values in your everyday behavior, is a
challenge for many as well. Most people are living at such a furious pace that
they rarely stop to ask themselves what they stand for and who they want to be.
As a consequence, they let external demands dictate their actions.
We don t suggest that people explicitly define their values, because the
results are usually too predictable. Instead, we seek to uncover them, in part
by asking questions that are inadvertently revealing, such as, What are the
qualities that you find most off-putting when you see them in others? By
describing what they can t stand, people unintentionally divulge what they
stand for. If you are very offended by stinginess, for example, generosity is
probably one of your key values. If you are especially put off by rudeness in
others, it s likely that consideration is a high value for you. As in the other
categories, establishing rituals can help bridge the gap between the values you
aspire to and how you currently behave. If you discover that consideration is a
key value, but you are perpetually late for meetings, the ritual might be to
end the meetings you run five minutes earlier than usual and intentionally show
up five minutes early for the meeting that follows.
Addressing these three categories helps people go a long way toward achieving a
greater sense of alignment, satisfaction, and well-being in their lives on and
off the job. Those feelings are a source of positive energy in their own right
and reinforce people s desire to persist at rituals in other energy dimensions
as well.
This new way of working takes hold only to the degree that organizations
support their people in adopting new behaviors. We have learned, sometimes
painfully, that not all executives and companies are prepared to embrace the
notion that personal renewal for employees will lead to better and more
sustainable performance. To succeed, renewal efforts need solid support and
commitment from senior management, beginning with the key decision maker.
At Wachovia, Susanne Svizeny, the president of the region in which we conducted
our study, was the primary cheerleader for the program. She embraced the
principles in her own life and made a series of personal changes, including a
visible commitment to building more regular renewal rituals into her work life.
Next, she took it upon herself to foster the excitement and commitment of her
leadership team. Finally, she regularly reached out by e-mail to all
participants in the project to encourage them in their rituals and seek their
feedback. It was clear to everyone that she took the work seriously. Her
enthusiasm was infectious, and the results spoke for themselves.
At Sony Europe, several hundred leaders have embraced the principles of energy
management. Over the next year, more than 2,000 of their direct reports will go
through the energy renewal program. From Fujio Nishida on down, it has become
increasingly culturally acceptable at Sony to take intermittent breaks, work
out at midday, answer e-mail only at designated times, and even ask colleagues
who seem irritable or impatient what stories they re telling themselves.
Organizational support also entails shifts in policies, practices, and cultural
messages. A number of firms we worked with have built renewal rooms where
people can regularly go to relax and refuel. Others offer subsidized gym
memberships. In some cases, leaders themselves gather groups of employees for
midday workouts. One company instituted a no-meeting zone between 8 and 9 am to
ensure that people had at least one hour absolutely free of meetings. At
several companies, including Sony, senior leaders collectively agreed to stop
checking e-mail during meetings as a way to make the meetings more focused and
efficient.
A number of firms have built renewal rooms where people can regularly go to
relax and refuel.
One factor that can get in the way of success is a crisis mentality. The
optimal candidates for energy renewal programs are organizations that are
feeling enough pain to be eager for new solutions but not so much that they re
completely overwhelmed. At one organization where we had the active support of
the CEO, the company was under intense pressure to grow rapidly, and the senior
team couldn t tear themselves away from their focus on immediate survival even
though taking time out for renewal might have allowed them to be more
productive at a more sustainable level.
By contrast, the group at Ernst & Young successfully went through the process
at the height of tax season. With the permission of their leaders, they
practiced defusing negative emotions by breathing or telling themselves
different stories, and alternated highly focused periods of work with renewal
breaks. Most people in the group reported that this busy season was the least
stressful they d ever experienced.
The implicit contract between organizations and their employees today is that
each will try to get as much from the other as they can, as quickly as
possible, and then move on without looking back. We believe that is mutually
self-defeating. Both individuals and the organizations they work for end up
depleted rather than enriched. Employees feel increasingly beleaguered and
burned out. Organizations are forced to settle for employees who are less than
fully engaged and to constantly hire and train new people to replace those who
choose to leave. We envision a new and explicit contract that benefits all
parties: Organizations invest in their people across all dimensions of their
lives to help them build and sustain their value. Individuals respond by
bringing all their multidimensional energy wholeheartedly to work every day.
Both grow in value as a result.
Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of
Be Excellent at Anything. Become a fan of The Energy Project on Facebook and
connect with Tony at Twitter.com/TonySchwartz and Twitter.com/Energy_Project.
Catherine McCarthy (catherine@theenergyproject.com) is a senior vice president
at the Energy Project.