How to Change with Your Changing Workplace: Wisdom from Boston Consulting Group

You are busy. Probably too busy.

Can you change that in the new year? Probably not. But you can change how effective that busyness is.

That’s what’s happening at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). According to our podcast guest Alicia Pittman, BCG’s Global People Chair, the firm is constantly looking at how workplaces are changing, and the most effective ways leaders and their teams can change with it. They’ve become their own laboratory, testing new ways of running the organization, which informs best practices to recommend to clients.

Here are a few of BCG’s findings and the practices she shared.

Let’s start with an admission: your life really is faster-paced and busier than the lives of past leaders. It’s not just a perception issue; it’s been objectively measured. That makes burnout a greater risk than in the past. Obviously, this means taking downtime to recharge is critical, but real vacation time is rarely easy to wrangle. To keep calm and carry on in the meantime, face your emotions. Burying them can build mental pressure, increasing your odds of burnout while also sparking temper and poor decisions. Simply acknowledging what you’re feeling can be a relief in itself. Sharing with your bestie or a trusted advisor helps even more.

It also means you (and your team) must shift to being more motivation-driven. Hierarchical command-and-control styles limit energy, productivity, and engagement. Finding what really motivates you and the people you work with boosts those performance stats instead.

Boost your agility, too. You can’t just stay in your lane your entire career anymore. Workplace changes mean you need to adopt new skill sets to meet them – including how you lead. Neither can your team. Scan ahead to determine what your industry will look like in the next three, five, and ten years, then plan on how you and your staff will upskill to succeed in those futures. That alone will put you ahead of the competition: the typical C-suiter is 6 to 9 months behind!

Are you in the headspace to absorb information? The ability to listen rests at the core of learning and agility; it’s also important in being a good boss. Your team and front-line spot issues long before you typically do, so listen to them. Listening also enables you to understand when they need your help, too. So compare your time spent listening versus talking.

If you’re hyper-busy, you no doubt have a hyper-huge priority list. As with most productivity experts, Pittman advises whittling it down a bit by delegating…but with a different lens than usual. Focus on the things that you are uniquely qualified for. Let your team tackle the things on your list they can do as well (or even nearly as well; not being a perfectionist goes a long way in productivity). This may sound counter-intuitive, but pick up the pace on the items left on your list. We have a habit of sticking to a particular cadence in our work. When you’re able to fire on all cylinders, though, you’re capable of moving faster. Knock more of those items off your now-manageable list, and that vacation may be more realistic than you thought.

Finally, give yourself some grace. We all stumble. It’s inevitable. Agonizing over a mistake or faux pas consumes energy; use that energy to grow agile, learn, and change your priority list instead. You’ll feel better, and your entire team will, too!

This article was adapted by Dan Mushalko from our podcast episode In It Together: How Boston Consulting Group Combines Strengths from Every Generation.

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