10 Things Your Org Can Do Right Now To Give the Progressive Movement a Chance to Win

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Why? Because you can’t be really on if you are never off. Progressive work demands that you have super-sharp focus, one that is constant and sequential, always knowing the purpose of every encounter, driving toward a future that you (and your colleagues) have imagined. You simply can’t sustain that focus without ample time off, time to refresh, to renew, to enjoy yourself, to learn, to do something other than work.

Progressives have a tendency toward martyrdom. We associate productivity, and sometimes even leadership, with long hours and long faces, showing the seriousness we have for the cause. But who really cares how long you work? No one. Building a powerful organization matters. Winning matters. Developing other leaders matters. How many hours you work does not matter. Period.

And for the plugged-in generation? Turn the goddamn smart phone off. You will survive. Your friends and colleagues will survive without the fix. A local union leader told me the story of how she finally took a vacation. She went to a Mexican beach resort. Her first day on the beach, she was just beginning a novel when her phone rang. A problem had come up in the union that needed her attention, or so some people thought. She ended up working on that urgent problem every day of her “vacation.” As she told me later, “I shouldn’t have taken my phone on vacation. I ruined it, a vacation I really needed.”

The urgent problem really hadn’t been that urgent. Others could have dealt with it. And she was a much worse leader as a result of not insisting that she be off. She and the organization paid the price for her being mentally tired and physically enervated.

2) Cancel half your meetings. There can be little doubt that meetings were designed by the devil to keep us from getting anything done. Most of them are useless. Most of them enervate instead of energize. Almost all of them are too long, and lack specificity as to their real purpose.

Follow these few rules and eliminating half of your meetings will be easy:

a) Don’t go to a meeting unless the purpose of the meeting is stated in a short simple sentence. (Caveat: “Sharing information” is NEVER a good reason for a meeting.)

b) Don’t go to meetings in which you have no role; only attend meetings where your role is essential.

c) All meetings should lead to action. Therefore, be very wary of “regular” meetings that exist primarily because of their spot on the calendar. If a regular meeting has no action to approve, cancel the meeting. Everyone but the professional meeting-attenders will be happy.

If you are the one planning and executing a meeting, follow these rules, all under the umbrella of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you:”

a) Clearly state and communicate the purpose of the meeting.

b) No meeting should be more than one and a quarter hours in length (training excepted).

c) Most of the work should be done ahead of time, not in the meeting.

d) The meeting should move toward action.

e) The meeting speaks to both the head and the heart. Remember—there are human beings working here! Design the meeting to create a positive emotional experience.

f) Tension is a necessary ingredient of change, is part of every good meeting, and almost always is what people remember.

g) Focus on the engagement of the people whose action is critical for success and related to the meeting’s objective, not just some pseudo-engaged, egalitarian “participation” of everyone.