Too busy at work, here’s why- 3 tips that you didn't see coming #88

After all, all art is experience. Hello and welcome to The Company Doctor. Perhaps you're listening to this while writing an email and checking the weather. Maybe you're walking the dog and scheduling a work meeting. Whatever you're up to, you're likely no stranger to multitasking and the challenges that it presents. Which is why this episode, Gary and I are exploring how to reframe multitasking and how you can approach it from the perspective of a business consultant. This is Too Busy at Work?

Here's Why.

3 tips that you didn't see coming. Hello, Gary.

Hey, George, how are you?

I've missed you.

I missed you too. Fantastic.

I'm very excited today because you sent over some excellent and we were just saying very in-depth notes. And there's one particular part of it which I'm really intrigued by, and I just found it hilarious, the title of it, and I'll flag it up when we get there.

But okay, good. Well, what is funny actually, because when we very first started in our first episode, I gave him no notes at all. So we've come a long way.

Yeah, exactly.

Help me out. Well, I'll try. Should we kick it off?

Let's kick it off.

Yeah. Excellent. So topic number 1 for this interesting take on multitasking is controversial, of course, is to reframe everything you know and everything you do. God, devastating start to the podcast, isn't it? Throw everything away, start again.

That's a big ask.

Are you shocked by this?

I'm shocked and daunted by that.

Yeah, it's a tough one. You're used to me by now. Well, so look, here's, here's the frame. The reason for it is the height of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Therefore, if you want to be better at multitasking, you kind of need to reframe what you're doing, unless you want more to-do lists. You want more to-do lists? No, sir.

Nah.

So, so here's my take on it. Uh, I've been a business consultant for many years, and I thought, if I give you the framework of being a business consultant and then you can— people listening can relate it back to your job. You don't need to be a business consultant, but I just want to give you another perspective. In order to be a business consultant, you need to do this.

So this is the business consultant's perspective on multitasking.

Correct. But if you're listening, I want you to think through your own lens in your job. This isn't for you to be a business consultant. You can if you want, but if you're going to be a consultant because you're you're transitory, you're coming in and out, I mean, and your reputation is based on what you do and how you approach things. You don't have the kind of brand because you're a senior person, you got a big office and that kind of thing. So you kind of have to be impactful kind of quickly. So the first part about reframing what you do, for those of you that are completer finishers out there, I'm coming for you. I'm not saying you shouldn't be a completer finisher, but I'm coming for you. And for those of you that are kind of lazy or you're kind of chilled and, you know, I'll get to it, I'll get to it, I'm coming for you too. But the first thing is you've really got to do your homework before you start anything. And, you know, if you've got multiple things to do, then, you know, separating the urgent from the important is really important. But it's trying to work out what moves the dial the most. So do your homework first before you sort of delve into any task, you know, what needs to be done, what's— what's— what does that outcome look like, what does good look like if I'm successful doing this? Having a really good think about everything before you actually start.

Yeah, you don't want to just go charging in there, otherwise it's going to be chaos.

Exactly. And a lot of people do, so just because you're— we're so eager to get on with it and to show results that we just sort of charge in. Yeah. And then the kind of the second thing is, and I'll come back to it later, It's a weird thing to say at this point, but you've got to really build strong relationships deep and wide. Okay. George, you've got, you've tipped your head to the right. People can't see this. Your mustache has gone to the right. That's like, why would you need to? What's relationships got to do with getting stuff done?

Well, exactly. Yeah, I saw this as well. I saw on the notes, I saw that networking was a big part of this and I couldn't figure out why. So I'm interested.

Fair enough. I mean, we're going to talk about teams a bit later, but Building relationships is really important because you're doing things within a company that affects different stakeholders. And a lot of it is understanding, looking through their lens of what things might happen. But also you'll need help from other people in the organization. And in some cases you'll need to lobby people. So if you work really hard in isolation, A, it will be really lonely, and B, you'll miss the point because you're normally doing something for a reason, aren't you?

Yeah, it's a really good point, isn't it? Because you could, you could squirrel yourself away and just focus so hard on getting this done. That, yeah, you're right, that the sort of the actual effects of it don't register. And when it comes to require help or anything from anyone in the wider company, you're sort of stuck.

Yeah. And so when we get to the second part of this, I'll explain why. But just bear in mind that relationships are everything. It doesn't sound obvious for multitasking, but it absolutely is. And you're going to see why in a minute. And as a consultant, I have to build relationships and you need to get people to like you. And then the third thing of reframing yourself is the ways of working. And this is probably the most important one in this conversation because I mentioned earlier, you got to change the way you work, otherwise you'll get the same result. And this is where I think people need to be slightly more maverick. Okay. This will horrify some managers that are listening, but you don't always have to conform I'm not saying you should sort of break all the rules all the time. Yeah. Sometimes you need to kind of break some eggs, right?

Sure. So this is coloring outside the lines a little bit.

Coloring outside the lines. Yeah. You don't have to kind of— it's like, you know, you don't have to see a film to the end. You don't have to read a book to the end. You don't have to go to every bloody meeting. You know, you do what the right thing is. And as a consultant, I do that.

And experience will sort of teach you how to make those calls.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I don't want to annoy the people that are listening too much too soon, but I'll do that a bit later. But the way I explain it is if you've been on holiday recently, you only just stopped by the place before you go away. What at work, what are the most important things you do before you go away?

You do a handover, don't you? So that everyone knows what's going on. You do a handover.

Anything else?

Tie up all the loose ends.

Yep. You become like super efficient, right? Yeah. Why do you do that?

You want to make sure that all your colleagues are in a good place and all your work's in a good place. You don't want to leave any loose ends knocking around. So yeah, you sort of smash it out for a week and make sure that everything's good.

Exactly. So you want— you don't leave it a mess. You want to make sure when you come back, you haven't got ridiculous amounts of work to do. Yeah. And so the way to run— my suggestion is the way to run your life is as if you're about to go on holiday, but do it every day. Yeah, that's the way I run my life. If I'm not in tomorrow, and sometimes I'm not because I don't work every day in a company, what do I have to do? Who do I have to work with? What interrelationships do I need to have? What coordination do I need to do in order to make it work? Yeah, that's the reframing I'm trying to explain to people. It's like, stand back from what you're doing, don't dive straight in, and think of things slightly differently. And I'm going to lead on to that. The thing connected to that is There's a book called Eat the Frog. Have you come across that one before?

I have, yeah, I have heard of this one.

And we used to say— Brian Tracy. It's a really good book, actually.

Yeah, we used to do that every morning. We'd say, what's the frog? And then let's eat it.

I thought you were going to say we eat frog every morning. I mean, there's nothing wrong with eating frog, but just leap over the counter and I'll get you one. Yeah, but the principle of eating the frog is doing the most difficult thing first. And part of that holiday mentality is you kind of need to crack on and focus on what's important and prioritizing things is really important.

Yeah, we've used that with timekeeping as well, haven't we? It's sort of like you're not going to be late for an airport, you're going to be late to, you know, to catch a flight. So if you can be on time for that, you can be on time for anything. And I think that actually you're right, it's sort of stepping back and being like, I am able to prioritize. I just choose when it's important and when it's not.

I think that's a good analogy., and people do that in their social lives because, you know, you prioritize what's important, but it's harder to do at work. So here's some of the reasons. So, you know, I'm just— this is all part of the reframing discussion, and this is the controversial bit, really.

All right.

I work with people all around the world, and I would say it's pretty similar in every country I've been to, literally every country I've been to. And this is no disrespect to anybody, but people fill their days. It doesn't matter what job you do. Like, if I gave you a 5-day week, you'll fill it. If I give you a 6-day week, you'll fill it. Yeah, because you want to add value and you want to get the most out of the day. It's not because I'm not saying you're filling it by just hanging about, but people fill their days. And I learned this when I started as a consultant. It was natural for me to try and pretend I had a job. And so I went to all the meetings and I did all the things I did when I was employed. But it was killing me because I was working with 3 companies at once. I had their laptops, I went to their meetings, I went to their socials, and in the end it was like it was killing me. And the classic one for me is now because of the pandemic, people are like caught up in the Teams call loop. No one phones anyone anymore. It's like, oh, let's have a Teams call and that'll be an hour. It's like, why are we having a Teams call? Normally call me and say, how are you today? Now we're having a Teams call for you to say hello?

Come on. Yeah, I've experienced the same thing.

I used to work for a small company and the owner of the company said, what are you doing wasting my money in that meeting? He was a bit aggressive about it, but You know what?

I get it.

He's right. Meetings, meetings, meetings, emails. You know, we've spoken about this before. You know, basically you feel like you've had a busy day because you're looking at emails. Yeah, yeah. Well, say you shouldn't. It's all about balance, right? And then the other one is mobiles. I mean, unfortunately, you know, the good and the bad news to mobile phones and smartphones is that it's very accessible. The bad news is it's very accessible.

Yeah.

People keep bumping into me in the street. And because I'm old, it's really starting to annoy me. They're looking at their phones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going up the escalators the other day. I was in Canary Wharf and there was a guy looking on his phone and I said, surely you're not that important, mate. He was like walking really slowly. There was a big crowd behind him. He was stopping people going through and I went, I'm sure it's not that important, is it?

Yeah, I've stopped getting out of the way of people now. I've decided to just, I'm just going to keep going.

Keep walking into them. Yeah, that shows, that's old man syndrome. I'm doing the same thing. Not good, is it? It's looking at your mobile all the time, and I do this as well, by the way. So it's a— unfortunately, it's a bit of a habit, isn't it? Yeah. It's like going to the front door and opening the door and looking out every 10 minutes. Exactly the same. You must do that. Has anyone phoned me yet? Has anyone sent me a message? Is anyone at the door? It's normally Jeff Bezos in my house because we buy so much stuff from Amazon, he delivers personally. But hey, you know, so that's the meeting thing and the email mobile thing is out of step. Yes. Takes up, you know, if we actually analyze how much time we spend on it, it will scare us. And then the other part of just a couple of other things on reframing is I always advocate networking and it's just as important internally as it is externally. I'm not going to cover it today, but just to say, if you want to get stuff done, I'm going to show you how to use it in a minute. Network like crazy. Yeah. And then staying visible so that people, you know, they know about you, know what you're up to. The danger for people is to go, I'm working hard, people should know that, and therefore, you know, got my head down. It doesn't help you. And then finally on the reframing is keep reprioritizing. Do you really need to do that activity? The little phrase I use that reminds me is, will it make the boat go faster? Is that activity I'm doing going to make the boat go faster? If not, you know what, maybe I should put it further down the truck, you know, the list.

Yeah, yeah. Not the list because we're not having lists, but yes.

No, we're not having lists. True. So what do you think about the reframing part?

I think it's really— my personal favorite is this visibility thing. And I think that that is something which, unless you're told, you just won't know. Do you know what I mean? It's one of those things where you just assume that you work hard and that people are going to take notice and realize what you're up to. But everyone's doing the same thing. Everyone's in their own little siloed-off world. So actually, you need to make the effort to make sure that you're remaining visible. I think for me, that's the most important point, but they're all important points.

They're all important, George. Thank you very much. Okay, so should we move to number 2? Let's do it. Is this the one that you're excited about or not?

Part of this one is the one which I'm excited about.

Only part of it? Okay, you only like some of it.

I'm excited about the whole thing, but—

I understand. So you've reframed. Now I'm just recommending changing the way of working. I'm going to tell you how to apply that in part 3. Stay with us. Stay tuned to part 3 because you get the secret, of course. But in part 2, I want to talk about building a coalition and a fan base. Okay, you got that look again. You, you know, you tilt your head to the right when you're— when I'm confused, you don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, this is, this is probably a surprise thing to say, but you know, in management training— I do quite a lot of management training— we talk to people about delegating, and people confuse delegation with dumping on people. Delegation isn't giving the work to someone else, it's getting more people doing the work. People misunderstand delegation.

Yeah, it's become a bit of a cliché, hasn't it? Yeah. Oh, just delegate.

It's not a dump and run. I mean, it can be. You should empower people by giving them the opportunity to do stuff, of course. Yeah. And you will become a bottleneck if you don't. But it's bigger than that. It's actually getting more people doing the work.

Sharing the load.

Sharing the load with more people. And again, as a consultant, I don't have anyone that works for me. If I'm coming into your company to help you, the only thing I can do is get a team together from your company to help me do the work because I can't do it all on my own. Yeah. And it really throws people when I say that, but build a team wherever you are, even if they don't work for you. Yeah. And this might surprise some people. So a good example for me is I used to run the consulting business for a global company and I was the European head. And in each country there are country managers.. And the country managers had the professional services directors working for them and they were going to dotted to me, whatever the word is, right? Which basically means they didn't really work for me, didn't care about me. So I'm the guy in the center. No one really cares about me. But there was about 2,000 people in my team, right? And I've got to try and get that team to activate, do the work in line with my wishes. The easiest way to do that is I built a team, is I treated them like they worked for me. Did they accept that? Well, they only accepted that because I invested in building a relationship with them. I took interest in what they did. I generally built a relationship. I spent time socially with them, and we built kind of a cadence around looking at the business and holding people to account. Yeah. So build a team even if they don't work for you. So if you take a task, I mean, if it's a really small task, it's not necessary to build a team. But if there's something significant that you're working on, find some people in your organization that you need the help from. And just get them together and just, you don't have to make a big deal of it, but say, look, this is what we're doing. I need your input. You know, they don't have to be full-time working for you, but get them involved in the task. And then the secret to this is, you know, build a relationship with them, which is why we had it at the beginning, and then let them get the credit for the stuff you're working on. So when update the company function on a regular basis, but don't give the credit to you, give it to them. Say what a great job the team have done and by de facto you will look good too.

And 9 times out of 10, people are going to really appreciate being involved.

Exactly. And like, people like to be asked for advice. Yeah, I was helping another company build a services portfolio of some sort. Doesn't matter what it is particularly. I know how to do it. I knew the answers. I could have sat in my little room, churned it out and handed it out and said, there you go, it's done. I didn't do that because no one likes something that they didn't come up with. No one wants things done to them. I got a group of like-minded people together that had the expertise. We brainstormed some ideas together and I had some of my own thoughts and they did adapt my thinking and then we created the output together. Yeah, that was much more impactful because they felt, they felt connected to it because they came up with that.

Yeah, of course people want to be right. People want to be involved, especially if it's their own thing, you know.

And now we're multitasking because I don't have to do all the work. You with me? Yeah. So I'm trying to build an inner circle, the kind of the A-team. They may not work for me, but I treat them like I do. Again, the task has to be big enough, but I'm doing it for two reasons. One is that it's a much better way of getting traction on something. But secondly, I'm now spinning a plate and I can move on to the next one.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Have you, have you experienced any sort of like pushback or prickliness when you've tried to do this in the past?

No, no, it depends how you do it, right? I mean, some people haven't got time, or some people don't deliver, of course. So, you know, you have to choose which things are big enough that you want to build. And by the way, when I say team, it doesn't have to be 10 people, it could be 2, it could be 1. Or someone more junior that would benefit from learning how to do something, but they're committed to help. But the goal is to make sure that you embed what you're working on. So I help companies with change quite a bit, and the mistake people make on change is that you should design how to embed the change at the beginning rather than find out how you get out of the project at the end. So I work, I have the same mindset for working on tasks. It's like, how do I embed this task to make sure it sticks and works? I want to design that in at the beginning. Yeah. So that it works. So what we're doing, trying to find some trusted allies get their input, test their ideas, get them involved. You know, that's a start. And then the next thing for really building that coalition and fan base is to try and gain buy-in across multiple, I would call them stakeholders, but people in different functions that matter to what you're trying to do.

Okay. Does that involve sort of lobbying people from different— is this sort of speaking to people in different parts of the business and finding, you know, getting their input?

Yeah, it's actually— I don't want to talk about politics because it— but it is, you know, lobbying in politics has a similar principle. To it. It doesn't seem to be working very well right now, looking at the news. But yeah, the, the principle is that just the principle that we, we covered about building trusted allies works across stakeholders. So if you can get people to like you, understand what you're trying to do, and get buy-in to what you're doing at whatever level, getting other people to help you with the work, then you get this kind of buy-in from other functions. So when you're trying to land your idea. Yeah. People know about it, or even more than that, they've been involved in it. You're kind of, you know, you're kind of on the radar, if you like. Yeah. Yeah. Your activities on the radar and your credibility is much higher, and therefore your currency is higher. You get better traction.

And presumably we're talking ideally sort of more senior people here.

Well, uh, yes and no. I mean, yes, uh, on some, some occasions, but The interesting thing is people sometimes disregard more junior people. They're up and coming and they're quite influential because they're junior doesn't mean they're not smart. And a lot of people want to know their opinions. And so I do like to involve junior people because I think that, A, they're the future and B, they're smart and they have input. So not just senior people. Okay. But yes, yes and no. Gotcha. Gotcha.

I think we're on to the— I'm raising my flag here.

Are we going to the bit that you want, that you liked?

I think so.

Go on, tell us what that one is.

You've got written down here is challenge carefully and earn the right to tell people that their baby is ugly.

Wow. Is this the one thing you zoomed in on? This is the thing I was like, what could this possibly mean? Oh my God. Okay.

I mean, Knowing you as I do, I knew there'd be some sort of analogy, and I was just really interested to find out what it was.

I'm disappointed now because I thought I said so much better stuff before, but hey. Yeah, so basically I've conjured up this picture of harmony, you know, where working with people, getting their input, there's a bit of a loving, getting people to like you. But, you know, in the real world, it doesn't always work like that, and actually it shouldn't, because sometimes you don't agree with people or things that happen, and you should challenge the status quo. Yeah. So I highly recommend that you should challenge, but it comes with a health warning, which is you shouldn't just go around challenging people. I know some people that I say green, you'll say blue, and it would just be, just to be difficult. And that's why I'm mentioning it, that actually you should challenge people, but the way you have to earn the right to challenge someone. Yeah. And, and so I have a phrase which I do use quite a lot, is that you need to earn the right to tell someone their baby's ugly. Because sometimes if you say to someone their baby's ugly, it doesn't land very well. Sure. You really need to earn the right. And that's why I use the phrase, because it's quite funny, but actually it's true, because it hopefully conjures up a picture in your mind. Yeah. I'll give you an example. I was working with a leadership board and they were asking me to implement some kind of the services thing that I was mentioning earlier, and they were using a project approach. And the project approach doesn't work with with a services business in the way that— and I needed to tell them that. Yeah. And only because I'd earned the right in the meeting, I said, and I'm not suggesting people go around doing this, by the way, she'll get fired from— are you serious about this change? Because I don't see the behaviors that are making this work. Now, I had to do a lot of hugging to get to this point.

Yeah.

I felt comfortable enough to say that if I'd just rocked up and said that, yeah, I would have been shown the door. Does that make sense?

It does, yeah. So you've got to— you can't just stride in there and start telling everyone that their babies are ugly. You have to—

well, you can, but it might hurt you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So put in the legwork first, put in a bit of, a bit of effort in terms of getting people to trust you before challenging and making and suggesting radical change.

Yeah, you kind of know, you'll know when it's right. Some people say, how do you know? You'll know when it's right. It's a bit like trying to eat a chicken that's not cooked.

It doesn't work very well.

It makes you ill. Make sure the chicken's cooked before you ask those questions. But you should challenge, and I think part of, you know, challenge the timelines, challenge the activity, challenge the priority. All those things are important. Yeah. Cool. And then I'm going to number 3, which sounds like you're not so excited about it, but I'm really excited about it.

Yeah, the best part for me is over now, so I'm just going to—

You're going to just go and have a cup of tea now. Well, so here's how to put all of this stuff into practice because You know, we've come through, we've, you've gone through the pain of reframing yourself and building this fan base coalition. But what do you do with it? And here's, I'm going to be quite controversial. I think the number 3 for me is being impactful, being fast and getting results. You'd expect to hear that from me. And the word I'm going to use, which is not in George's notes, so he doesn't know it's coming, is think of MVP. And this is your test now, George. What is MVP?

MVP? Yes. Most valuable player?

Well, it could be, but it isn't. It's minimum viable product.

Ah, I was so close.

So basically, in the product world today, there's something called minimum viable product. And what it means is that you don't have to have all the lights to be green. Okay. They don't always need to be green. So let me explain what the minimum is. The most rudimentary, the bare bones foundation of the solution. That's really what it means in the real world. The viable bit, and this is an important thing for me, it's sufficient enough for an early adopter. If you're developing a product, it's sufficient enough, it's good enough. Now, when Steve Jobs released the iPhone, he did an MVP. I don't know if you remember when it came out, but you couldn't cut and paste messages. There was no cut and paste. Right. And then the year later, he released cut and paste as if it was like sliced bread, but everyone else had cut and paste already.

Right.

It was sufficient enough for early adopters. And the P is something tangible that customers or users can touch and feel. So my recommendation to people listening, if you want to multitask without to-do lists, think MVP in everything you do. It's the 80/20. Would it be impactful enough? And don't be a complete, and this is going to sound awful, don't be a completer finisher. Because what's the return on investment of being a completer finisher? I'm not saying don't start and don't finish anything, but is it MVP? Is it minimum? Is it the most rudimentary? Is it sufficient enough?

That's really interesting, isn't it? Because it does sort of go against everything that you're taught as a kid. Everything that's ingrained in you when you're growing up is like, if you're going to start something, finish it, see things through to the end.

And actually, you should.

And maybe that was the case when times were simpler, but I think, as you say, In this respect, things have changed, haven't they? Perspective has shifted. And it goes back to what Will Perkins was saying about, you know, because he was in the product world and he was talking about they just do incremental changes. And if something, you know, if they change something slightly, and as long as it's viable, they can then release it.

It doesn't mean you turn out rubbish, by the way, but it's still high quality, just not everything's done. A good example for me is I used to work in a company where the product team had a roadmap. And they had a 2-year roadmap of product development, which all sounded great until the market moved and you said, okay, well, we need the next blah, blah, blah. And they go, well, you can see the product roadmap, where do you want me to put it? So I'll put it at the end. Yeah, that's no good. The world moves on by then, right? And that's what's happening with people in work because the world is going faster. There's more communication. We're looking at our phones too much. We haven't got time, and therefore we need to find a different way. We need to reframe everything we know and do, as we said at the beginning, an MVP is a way to think about it. Don't be a completer finisher unless you really have to. And then connected to that, you need to be able to show progress. Otherwise, if you're sitting in a room thinking you've done everything, then there's a lot of PR to what you're trying to do. So my recommendation is to be visually impactful within 3 to 5 weeks in anything you do.

And have you got any tips on doing that? Just because it's quite, I guess it's a difficult thing to do without going in there, you know, blowing whistles and wearing flashing lights. You know, it's difficult to make yourself visible without coming across as bolshy or, you know, or I don't know, it must be quite a tough thing to do within 3 to 5 weeks and make sure that you and your task are visible.

Yeah, it is. And not everything, you know, let's put it into context. You know, if you're working on a small task, not everything needs the big flashing lights. Sure. If you're working on something significant, and I do this as a consultant, I try to create a visual of what I'm trying to do. In a one-page or two-page, high quality, with clear communication and clarity. And think of it as a campaign. You're— if you're on a campaign to get someone to understand what you're doing, you're meeting with people, you're sharing ideas, you're visually showing them what the endgame looks like. That's how I would recommend it. So I normally put, you know, something visual together, you know, maybe one or two slides or something just to explain something. But I go on a bit of a a road trip to explain to people what I'm doing so that it's not like you send it in the post and hope they like it or send them an email. Yeah, I'm going to get engagement with it. And then, you know, we said, you know, not all lights have to be green. So, you know, you need to be outside looking in. It's like looking— you're looking at the outcome rather than the way where you are now. So focusing on outcomes is really— it becomes really important. And the way to do that is to look through the lens of others. So it's like that fan base of people, how does it affect them? What do they need? And how can I add value to what they're trying to do? And then try to deliver little and often. So instead of waiting, like the roadmap thing where it's 2 years later, you know, that's what I'm saying, every, you know, maybe 3 to 5 weeks you get something, I show something and get a result, and then, you know, my MVP is moving forward. Yeah, nice. And then the kind of the last couple of things is don't be a magpie. Do you know what I mean by that?

Don't focus on the easy wins and the shiny things.

There's shiny things. It's like my wife, if she sees a shiny thing, she's like, and we're going to run over there. Don't focus on the shiny things. Focus on moving forward on things you're already working on and reprioritize. I know I said don't complete to finish, but get enough, long enough to make a difference. And then the final thing, which will contradict what I've said when I said you shouldn't finish anything, the things that you do finish, you should finish on a high.

Yeah.

Do you know what I mean by that?

Well, I suppose it's good for morale, especially if you've got your team around you, you want to make a big deal out of the fact that you finished something. Yeah.

I mean, I'm forever praising people. You know, there's a big event, there's a kind of a big, you know, if it's a big enough task, it's a big moment, there's a ta-da thing going on, but it's all about the people that have done it, not me. Yeah. Because that signals that there's the end of that MVP cycle and more coming. You know, we'll still do cut and paste next time. But the tenor, George did a great job. He drove down America and got arrested by the police.

Yeah, we have a massive party at the end of every episode, don't we? Just to celebrate each episode.

Yeah, exactly. That's where we do the music thing, right? Then we dance and it's all amazing. Yeah. So that's really it for me. So takeaways?

Yeah, takeaways. I mean, there's a lot there. There's a lot to take away. I've got a few t-shirt ideas about— Have you? Yeah. You know, making sure the chicken's cooked. I think having MVP big on a t-shirt, but with minimum viable product, I think would also be very cool.

Love it. Anyway. Okay, I thought you were doing my takeaways for me. Okay, here's my takeaway. So number one, there's a lot of stuff to cover today. Yeah. Yeah. Act like a consultant. Reframe your world. Yeah. Think about when you're about to go on holiday, how efficient you become and do that every day because people will fill their days. You know, you can work 5 or 6 days, but you can do this. I work interim sometimes. I do what people do in 5 days in 3, not because I'm super smart, just because I'm more efficient. I reframe my time. Number 2, build a coalition and a fan base. It's not an obvious thing. Forget the to-do list, or don't do a to-do list, but get more people doing the work. Delegation isn't about dumping your work to someone else. It's about getting more people doing the work. It gives them leadership. It gets more commitment. You get their experience. They're probably better than me anyway. So build that coalition, always think about what other people are going to get involved in the task if it's big enough, and obviously praise them. And then the third thing is work MVP, never finish anything, be impactful fast. Nice. Ta-da! There it is. That's it, George. We've MVP'd this episode, although actually we're over time.

Ironically over time, but that's because it was just packed full of excellent advice as ever. So thank you very much, Gary. We're going to go off for our wrap party now.

So let's go party.

We'll see you next time.

See you soon.

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