The Truth About Being a Lone Wolf, and Why It’s No Good For Your Productivity
How to use Design Thinking principles to supercharge your productivity (part 2)
Design Thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that helps you understand people’s needs, think creatively, and produce innovative ideas. It’s like putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, exploring a problem from different angles, trying out new ideas, and learning as you go.
In this second article of five, we will explore another key principle and how you can apply it to make yourself more productive.
On to today’s article!
When you find your rhythm and flow, getting things done can feel easy.
Especially if you do work that repeats itself regularly.
However, when other people get involved, it can complicate things.
I mean, if only they did things the right way – your way!
Other peoples’ methods and priorities can sometimes throw you off track.
A lot of meandering later, and you just might get to the same outcome you were at before you involved them.
Involving people can make the work environment more complex.
And this often leads to more tasks being added to the never-ending to-do list. That list just keeps on getting longer.
So, how are you supposed to get things done when you can’t shut yourself completely off from the world and work as a lone wolf?
Can you even still be productive whilst collaborating with others? And if so, what is the best way of doing things so that you don’t have to work all hours of the day?
The answer is to involve the right people, at the right time.
Including the right people at meaningful stages of your work can avoid re-work of unworkable ideas and solutions, reduce built-up frustration and remove unnecessary to-do items.
Who are the right people?
Your customers and key stakeholders – these are the people that are paying for your time to work on this. They will have the greatest say in what you are doing.
If what you’re doing doesn’t provide value for the customer, then what’s the point of doing it?
You could also include those that are resistant to what you’re doing or reject your way of thinking – bring them along and notice how quickly they become allies instead of adversaries. Instead of blocking the progress you’re making, they become enablers of it.
People who offer diverse perspectives -especially those from different backgrounds or cultures to yourself can be a wonderful source of improved productivity.
As Matthew Syed says in his brilliant book Rebel Ideas: “When you are surrounded by similar people, you are not just likely to share each other’s blind spots, but to reinforce them.”
When should I involve them?
Rather than waiting until the work has been done, get the right people involved up front in the design and decision making of whatever you’re doing. Let them help build the future, that’s where the magic happens.
This way they’ll feel like they’ve had an opportunity to add their thumbprint to what you’re doing, which leads to much higher levels of buy-in to the end output. And guess what? Less re-work = more time saved.
But why should I do this?
After reading my August monthly musings, my husband said ‘It’s not that I think you don’t do anything, it’s just that I don’t know how you get things done so efficiently without bringing people along with you.’
Of course, Mr. S doesn’t have the power to see and hear through walls, so this is a misconception. Which illustrates my point perfectly.
If you work in a bubble where you don’t share ideas with others or get input from various perspectives, then you risk:
Producing lower quality work;
Not getting buy-in to your ideas;
Being bombarded by extra work to do when you think you’ve finished;
Generally pissing people off; and
Ruining your reputation because people think you’re slacking.
Even when you know the objective is clear, giving others the opportunity to input can allow you to work smarter AND deliver superior outcomes for your customers.
In many businesses, people are often looking for a ‘yes’ rather than a genuine input. A common saying in my line of work is ‘consensus kills collaboration’.
You don’t want everyone to just agree with you.
You want rich, new, expansive ideas that allow you to create your best work. You want proper collaboration with diverse minds.
Otherwise, you’ll be working in your own bubble, and everyone outside of the bubble will form their own opinions of what you’re doing.
Besides, the act of co-design and co-creation creates more productive (and fun!) patterns and ways of working.
When people work together, they become focused on creating the future together, moving beyond disagreements and misalignments, towards good design, which in turn makes the completion of said task more efficient and effective.
How do I do this then, Selda?
Firstly, involve differing perspectives – a range of ideas increases peoples’ optimum creativity levels. Plus, each idea sparks other ideas.
Secondly, there is huge power in groups. You have much more chance of getting to the right answer if you involve a diverse group in a shared challenge.
When this process is facilitated correctly, everyone gets the chance to contribute their ideas, AND they understand that it will be impossible to take forward every single idea.
The good ideas will stick, and the lesser ones will naturally fall away. But it won’t matter because you’ll all be in alignment that you’re making design decisions together for the greater good of the end output.
I remember one project I ran a number of years ago now, with a client who had been trying to solve a specific problem for over 60 years. They never managed it because so many parts of the business disagreed about what needed to happen, they spoke a different cultural language to each other, and some just plain didn’t like each other!
We got seventy of their people into the same room, and took them through this process to create one common way to solve the problem, and guess what?
They did it.
Five days, many arguments later, they all left as friends, with the problem solved.
Of course, it's not quite that easy. There is a lot more nuance around it, than what I’ve mentioned here.
To get to those five days, we planned for six months. And it was hard. But it was worth it.
So, how can this general design thinking principle apply to you and your productivity levels this week?
You can iterate faster.
Save countless hours reworking materials, if you’ve already done the discussion and thinking behind it with the right people. You can prototype, test and refine more quickly with a team to think it through with. (I cover this topic and several others from this email in greater depth in my course Supercharge your productivity).
You can share your workload.
Working with diverse people means lots of diverse skillsets. What may take you five hours to do, could take someone else five minutes. But you won’t know that until you find those people and ask.
You have an added layer of motivation.
I wrote recently about how we are either extrinsically or intrinsically motivated. When you involve others, it’s easier to stay on track, meet deadlines and maintain momentum.
You have somewhere to turn for encouragement.
No one wants to feel alone at work. By involving others you create yourself a sounding board, from which to bounce ideas around and come back for moral support.
You learn new skills.
You build your own skillset while benefiting from the collective knowledge and experience of your collaborators, which ultimately enhances your productivity in the long term.
The Takeaway
By involving others, you harness the power of collective intelligence, reduce your cognitive load, and navigate complex challenges more efficiently.
In a design thinking approach, where empathy, collaboration, and rapid prototyping are key, the benefits of involving others in the right way can dramatically increase your personal productivity, leading to more meaningful, impactful, and faster results.
How easy do you find it to maintain your productivity levels when others are involved in your work?
See you next week.
-Selda
P.S. If you’d like to learn more about how to build a life you love, here are a few ways I can help you:
Personal guidance and coaching to find more hours each day:
Double your productivity and do more of what matters to you:
🚀Supercharge Your Productivity: Take the stress out of your week and juggle all of your jobs without working yourself to death
⚖️7 Proven Strategies to a Better Work Life Balance: Spend less time at work and more time on the things you really want to do
I’ve found that involving other people, as you say, really helps to evolve our points of view. No one benefits from hearing the same thing all the time, or not being challenged.
Sometimes a dissenting opinion is exactly what we need to cause reflection. Just asking AI for other points of view on a topic is a great way to stimulate thought.
What’s up w u today Selly? U quiet or what?