Who Has Time to Think?

In the corporate version of the space-time continuum, executives don't feel they have enough of either to focus on the big picture.

by Louisa Wah and Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner

"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."

The concept of time has been a subject of fascination throughout human existence. And while each of us may have our own understanding of time, most people today share at least one similar perception: We feel there are not enough hours in the day. Before we know it, tomorrow is already here.

More than ever before, people in the business world are scrambling to control this elusive thing called time. The pace of marketplace change has become dizzying, making it difficult for executives to get beyond the day-to-day travails and grasp the bigger picture.

Indeed, the corporate world is experiencing the greatest calamity of its history as millions of corporate souls suffer from a phenomenon known as "time famine." It's not about having too little time to manage what you have to do on a daily basis; it is about not having time to think strategically. This inability to engage in long-range thinking affects the majority of executives today. They are in such a survival mode, always reacting to what's urgent, that they maneuver the bumps in the road rather than make decisions that will guide their companies' futures.

"People are becoming so tactical that they are losing their ability to think," says Joey Reiman, CEO of BrightHouse, an idea-generating company in Atlanta, Georgia. In fact, companies go to BrightHouse and pay as much as $450,000 for a single idea. It is a shame, concedes Reiman, that the managers in these companies cannot find the time to think for themselves. But this phenomenon also underscores the increasingly obvious fact that companies must prioritize and reposition themselves so that they will have time to think.

It is not a coincidence that millions of people are joining the queue for products and seminars that propose solutions to time-crunch problems. Some 17.5 million people use Franklin Covey's planners and agendas, for example, and more than half a million people are trained annually by Franklin Covey to better manage their time.

An entirely new type of consulting service is even springing up in the "time" arena. People like Robert Baldock, a former global managing partner at Andersen Consulting in London, see a market niche in helping people with their "quantity of life"--how to get more from their day. After experiencing his own time famine and doing extensive research, Baldock began a venture called time2. "I found that in every country I looked at, there was recently performed research which suggested that [time] was an issue--and it would only get worse," he says.

"Time is the thief you cannot banish."

--Phyllis McGinley (1905-1977)

Good Ideas Need Incubation Time

Indisputably, Albert Einstein is one of the greatest minds to have ever lived. He created the theory of relativity at the age of 16, but noodled with it for more than a decade before the theory came to its final shape. It's also true that he was a daydreamer. He liked to stare out of the window and daydream on the job while formulating his grand theory in his mind. Other great thinkers used rituals to formulate ideas as well. For instance, Leonardo da Vinci used to stare at cracks, Friedrich Nietzsche couldn't write unless he had taken long walks, and Gandhi used to have "Silence Days" when he set aside a whole day just for thinking and meditating.

But where is the time needed to think in today's business world?

"Thinking is not a core competency of the American corporate culture,'' says Reiman. "There is no place to think. You are not rewarded for thinking. You are actually penalized for looking outside the window."

Any creation requires time, Reiman says, and the trick to creating a really great idea is to generate a lot of options from which to choose. As evident as this logic may seem, it's not so easy to convince people to devote time to the incubation of ideas in a world where speed is touted as the solution to everything. Mary Spaeth, executive vice president of Angle Technology LLC, Evanston, Illinois, says that to suggest there is a connection between the speediness of business processes and a loss of effectiveness in thinking and planning is something "many of us would rather not admit."

She's right. By and large, quick thinking has become highly overrated in today's fast-paced business environment. In fact, speed and immediacy have become the modus operandi of companies today. This climate has been instilled in the workforce to the extent that they have a just-in-time mind-set, says Bruce Tulgan, founder of Rainmaker Thinking Inc., a New Haven, Connecticut-based research, training and consulting firm that focuses on the Generation X workforce. "It was management experts and business leaders who decided that everything in the workplace had to be just in time," he says.

As a consequence, employees have developed a mentality of immediacy and constant feedback in everything they do, including their career development. Their impatience and need for immediate gratification are actually byproducts of the pace of change in the world today, says Tulgan. But all the speed and immediacy that are an undeniable part of our modem-day reality could have a downside as well. According to Steward Brand, a scenario planning consultant and author of The Clock of the Long Now (Basic Books, 1999), U.S. fighter pilots tested for their reactions to random noises at very high speeds responded to all stimuli as if they were signals--regardless of whether the stimulus was random noise or truly a signal. The result for these pilots was the proverbial itchy trigger finger--with its unintended consequence. "The problem when things go too fast," says Brand, "is that we often draw the wrong conclusions."

Executives face a similar quandary: Is it noise or is it a signal to which I should respond? Anthony Aveni, professor of anthropology and astronomy at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, says that as organic beings, we cannot equip ourselves with a faster processor chip. So there is a point beyond which we simply cannot process information any faster. The solution, then, is to go slower, not faster. "Let's retreat from time," he says.

Contrary to what busy executives might think, retreat does not mean surrender. But it does mean slowing down your pace enough to take a step back from all the noise in the environment.

James Ballard, author of What's the Rush? (Broadway Books, 1999), says today's working people are metaphorically running all the time. "People are so used to always running that they lose their balance. They sort of tip forward all the time, poised for 'what's next,'" he says. Ironically, rather than feeling a sense of control and getting everything done, they feel like a victim of time--they never have enough time to do what they want. This, says Ballard, is "because power is in the present. People's attention is not in the present."

Ballard points out, "The most satisfying and transcendent moments of our lives are outside the clock time. Our relationships, values, deepest beliefs, dreams, aspirations and purposes all tend to be lost sight of when everyone is focused on survival."

As Jack London, a 19th century American novelist and adventurer, once said, "The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them, I shall use my time." Thus, extricating yourself from the "existence" or "survival" mode is the first step to slowing down and preparing for some quality thinking time.

Ballard says the most important thing to do is "enter your day" every morning rather than hit the ground running. "From the moment you wake up, if you immediately start dealing with fears, worries, etc., you are already at the mercy [of time]," he says. A person would be much more centered, he believes, if he were to get up a bit earlier and go for a walk, meditate or write in a journal so that he can start a flesh thinking process. "You have to create that reflection time yourself. Nobody is going to give that to you," he notes.

Sander Flaum, chairman and CEO of Robert A. Becker Inc., a healthcare strategic marketing and communications firm based in New York, says that great managers create reflection time simply by getting away from the office. "When you come in the office, your e-mails are all over the place, your inbox is up to a gazillion and your calendar is filled. Do you think you can think out of the box when you sit in such an office?"

When the "great ones" get away, he says, they do so with other "wise" managers who can help construct a vision for the company. "But the main thread that runs through the fabric of this whole thing is, great CEOs chase opportunity, not problems," Flaum says.

That's exactly what Marcel LeBrun does as president and CEO of IMagicTV, an interactive media software developer in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. In the highly competitive software business, he says, anyone in the world can create a product that's faster and better than his company's. The paradox is that to stay ahead of the speed game, one must slow down to think about strategic opportunities. "The need for speed and execution is the thing that fights against you, so stepping back and taking time to think is important,'' he says.

LeBrun organizes special events to give employees a timeout for strategic thinking. For example, he recently took nearly the entire company on a two-day canoeing trip. In between the rapids, he encouraged managers and employees to talk about where the company was heading, and also took the opportunity to understand different aspects of the company.

In addition, LeBrun takes advantage of traveling time on airplanes to talk to colleagues and ask strategic questions that will elicit the thinking process. "It's the CEO's job to trigger thinking by creating events or questions to get people's wheels spinning," he says.

Joe Crace, executive vice president and COO of Gaylord Entertainment Co., an entertainment and hospitality group based in Nashville, Tennessee, has initiated a series of "summits" that involve every division of the company in day-long synergy sessions at an entertainment venue. These summits aim to foster free-association thinking, which in turn sparks creativity--the cornerstone of the business. Crace wants to give his people the time to mix and exchange ideas and strategies, to "really have some playtime and free thinking time that unleashes their creativity."

Two weeks after the one-day summits, each group presents 10 new business ideas to senior management after brainstorming with people from different parts of the organization. "It sparks creativity," Crace says. "So you end up with 250-some new business ideas that are specific ideas, and they have a timeline to make them happen."

Executives need the space to think just as much as they do time. The two are inseparable companions on a continuum. Experts say that a gem of an idea could dissipate or die if it is not properly incubated and allowed to develop fully. For this reason, it is crucial for companies to create a space for thinking.

The benefits of creating such a space have a proven track record in companies such as IBM, Sun, Xerox and Disney. IBM has spun off a separate operation, IBM Research, to do explorative work on new technologies. Sun unplugged its Java development team to form a separate enterprise to focus on the new Internet scripting language. Xerox has created Xerox New Enterprises to allow its idea-generators to form independent startups with its financial and marketing support. And Disney gives executives "dream days" during which they retreat to undisclosed locations and dream about what the company will do next.

Alan Ganek, vice president of technical strategy and worldwide operations at IBM Research, Yorktown Heights, New York, says thinking was the raison d'être for creating his division in the 1950s. "By separating research out, even though we are very connected, we are missioned with a longer time [frame] to identify the way the company's technologies will evolve," he says.

Ganek says the research arm strives hard to ensure a constant flow of leading-edge technology explorations and to focus on thinking far into the future without being frazzled by all the technological frenzy occurring in the marketplace. "We have the same kind of time pressure as anybody else, but our mission is to think," he stresses.

Tom Koulopoulos, founder and CEO of the Delphi Group, a market research and advisory consulting firm in Boston, Massachusetts, says that when radical or experimental projects are not supported by the mainstream corporate culture and might even undermine current products, companies can unplug the brains behind these new ideas from the mainstream and give them the budget and time to bring their ideas to fruition. This way, they can keep innovation from going down the drain.

When nothing is done to allow ideas to incubate, however, they leave the organization like smoke. The Delphi Group has interviewed 350 Fortune 1000 organizations and asked what the likelihood is that a good idea will head out the door or end up with a competitor. The majority of the respondents said there is a 50 percent chance, says Koulopoulos.

"Ideas need time [to develop], but [people] also need independence and latitude to be creative," Koulopoulos says. Companies that set aside an idea-creation space recognize that a good idea may die simply because it doesn't fit into the corporate culture. "You can give people time to think, but when an idea doesn't fit well with the culture of a company, it's not going to persist," he says.

Of course, it doesn't always take a spinoff to capture great ideas and strategic thoughts. Something as simple as designating a physical thinking space within the office may do the trick for some companies. For example, IMagicTV's corporate office has a kitchen with a bar and a living room with comfortable couches where people can close the door and discuss business. LeBrun, the CEO, says, "No one feels they are wasting time if they are sitting on the couch, lying down or sitting in the kitchen looking out the window thinking."

At Robert A. Becker, Flaum gives young employees their own space to brainstorm among themselves before they present their ideas to senior managers. He has found this approach extremely useful in unleashing the creativity of the organization. "We know that young people have their point of view, but they can be intimidated when there are senior people," he says. "So we let them do it on their own, then they would come to the senior people to discuss the outcome. That way they aren't impeded."

Another way to create a space for thinking is to provide employees with learning opportunities. At Saba Software Inc., Redwood Shores, California, a new position of chief learning officer was created to institute a learning environment for managers across the company. "Learning gives us the space that we badly need to think through and articulate decisions," says President and Founder Bobby Yazadani.

Every quarter, project managers are required to be away from their clients for a week to think about their methodologies and devise new ones. "We encourage them to be away and go to a learning event just for a week," Yazadani says. "We have allocated funds and resources to manage learning events."

Besides creating space to think, Yazadani says his executive team consciously takes the time needed to make long-range decisions, even if that time frame turns out to be longer than what competitors take. He encourages the company not to come to conclusions too quickly. "It has helped significantly, amid the speed of change and the speed of decisions, to have the clear mind to make decisions," Yazadani says.

Prioritize True Importance

A person once asked Confucius, "What surprises you most about mankind?"

Confucius answered, "They lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. By thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future and they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived ..... "

This observation gets to the heart of how we waste away time in our present lives. The crux of the problem is that we lose sight of what is truly important. The same logic goes for one's professional life. Only by giving the truly important issues top priority can executives create a vision for their business.

Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Living the 7 Habits (Simon & Schuster, 1989, 1999), says the main reason people can't find the time to be reflective is that they mix up what's important with what's urgent. "If you ask [people] what percentage of time they are spending on things that are urgent but not important, most would say, 'Half of the time,'" says Covey. He adds that if companies really looked at the value of their meetings, they would discover that most do not need to be held or could be cut short by half. The same goes for bureaucratic rules and regulations.

"People become addicted to the urgent," Covey says. "They simply define importance as urgent. They neglect preventive thinking, they neglect long-term strategic thinking, they neglect the building of high-trust relationships, and they are consumed by an addiction called urgency.'

One reason for this lack of focus, according to Covey, is that managers and employees do not always reach a common agreement about what's important. "It's like the jigsaw puzzle: Everyone working on it has a different picture in mind," he says. Management, therefore, needs a deeply involved process to develop the criteria that determine the company's priorities.

"The mistake they make is that they rush mission statements, and then announce them and ignore them. Consequently, even though they have the definition of what's important, people haven't emotionally bought into it," he says.

A company's leaders also need to set a good example for others of how to get one's priorities straight. "The leadership should set the example of being more calm in the middle of all of these frantic pressures and focusing strategically,'' Covey says. "When people see that, they'll behave the same way. When top executives become frantic and are driven by numbers...it helps to cause the problem."

In essence, prioritizing is a really about good leadership. Baldock of time2 says that managers must recognize there are two parts to their job: leadership and operations. To make time for leadership, they need to delegate responsibility for the operating requirements. "[Managers] ought to make sure they put in place underneath them an operations management regime so that they're not required [to be] there on a day-by-day basis to make sure the operations are running smoothly," he says.

Maria D. Chevalier, director of special projects at HQ Global Workplaces, a workplace solution company in Atlanta, Georgia, is one executive who avoids "putting out fires" on a daily basis by helping employees think for themselves. In Chevalier's previous position as a vice president at The Travel Desk, a travel management company owned by HQ Global Workplaces, she attempted to nip operational challenges in the bud by ensuring that employees think strategically. "I never want a solution for the short term [because] I want to make sure that this fire never hits my desk again," she says. "The first question I always ask is, 'What have we done to address the situation today?' and then, 'What have we done to address this for the long term so that it never happens to another client, another employee, etc.?'"

Aside from helping employees to think strategically, letting them take action can set you free as well. According to Ballard, executives can make more time for themselves by surrendering control and not taking action when a problem occurs. "Don't just do something, stand there!" he suggests, as opposed to the common mantra, "Don't just sit there, do something!" By simply observing employees as they deal with the problem themselves, you will empower them and, at the same time, create more free time for yourself to think. "If you see that carried out, you wouldn't be rushed or stressed."

For the individual executive, deciding what's most important in your own life will help you prioritize your days, says Ballard. You can do this by creating a personal mission statement and then deciding what values are most important to you. "Construct a simple life purpose statement and review that every morning and set it against your to-do list," he says. "If it's completely in line with your true values, if your work fulfills the purpose, you can make some choices about getting work done that's in accordance with what you value inside. Then you won't be so driven by other people's urgencies."

Therefore, busy executives must take it upon themselves to prioritize their schedules and set aside the time and space needed to do things that are conducive to thinking. After all, companies don't always have the mechanisms in place. While Disney's "dream days" is a wonderful concept, that approach is not going to be available in every company, especially smaller ones.

Leigh Stron, director of inside sales for the Ken Blanchard Companies, a San Diego, California, time management consultancy, says she doesn't have the privilege of booking a hotel room for thinking like some people do, so she simply blocks out a couple of hours and informs her personal assistant that she isn't available--not to anyone, not for any reason.

"It might be urgent, but somebody else can deal with it," she says. "I am the only one who can think for me."

The Brave Slow World

Joey Reiman, who is writing a new book to be called Business at the Speed of Molasses, predicts that we are about to enter the era of slow. "The deadlines, finish lines and fast-food lines are going to be removed, and we are going to see a new dawning inside the corporate culture, a dawning of wisdom, which is the ability to take knowledge and process it to make it something greater," he says.

He believes that a slow company in a hypergrowth world will win. Why? "They will be more deliberate and purposeful," he says. "Will my company be successful or significant? If you want to be successful, continue the rat race; but if you want to be significant, you need to reprioritize and reassess your business, and that takes time."

Reirnan further predicts the emergence of a new kind of professional called "the thinker," who will work in a collaborative group and focus on simmering ideas rather than rushing through deadlines. "A deadline is the worst possible thing a creative mind can have," he says, comparing that to trying to get a cocoon to open and let the butterfly out before it has crystallized. Or, as a Chinese proverb says: It's like trying to pull up the crop to make it grow faster overnight.

"This notion of 'Hurry up, I needed it yesterday,' it's ludicrous," says Reiman. "People are realizing that now."

He says tomorrow's companies will focus on inventing themselves rather than reacting to things as they happen in real time. "The reactors are gone; the visionaries who are acting upon their vision will be the winners," he says. He also envisions that the office of the future will have incubation rooms; that "think time" will be added to the daily schedule; and that the person who daydreams will be highly rewarded.

Even in Silicon Valley, the more thoughtful leaders are starting to realize that amid the entire speed craze, businesses absolutely must slow down. Yazadani of Saba Software says, "Successful companies of the future [will be] the ones that create the environment for people to have the space to think."

Yes, the age-old fable will prove true once again: The tortoise will win the race and the hare will lose.

With additional reporting by Cheryl Comeau-Kirschner, Michael Hickins and research by Maritza Cales.