New Year’s Resolutions
I won’t lie – I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions – but I do hope to make changes. Here are a few of the changes that I hope people will adopt (including me) as we go into 2025.
Remember Commute Times
Yes – you read this correctly. Before the pandemic, we commuted to work and to meetings. (I worked for The Pillsbury Company many years ago; getting from floor to floor often involved changing elevator banks in the 40-floor building . . . . . . you had to build that into your timing.) We didn’t use technology (Teams, Zoom, etc.) as frequently before COVID. By January of 2022, 300 million people were meeting on Zoom every day. That was a 3000% increase from late 2019.
Technology-enabled meetings are efficient. They can be arranged instantaneously. You can have more of them – back-to-back – there is no real commute time. They start at a defined time (in theory, so do in-person meetings). The difference I have noticed – people ‘attending’ a Zoom meeting join right at the start time rather than making sure they arrive a few minutes early. There is not as much time to have small-talk – the meet/greet that gets us comfortable.
Is Zoom the best approach? Seeing people face-to-face is, in my opinion, the better way. We are a social people (part of being human). We need to go back to some in-person interaction. Relationships are formed in person – and better maintained in person as well.
Regardless, remember commute times – and build them into your Zoom meeting timeframe as well.
Slow Down Your Response Rate
The number of LinkedIn invitations I receive has gone up dramatically. So have the number of LinkedIn InMail’s (and e-mails as well). E-mail and InMail have sped-up communication – likely a good thing. (Remember when you had to mail out documents to be reviewed – or send them by courier – and then send them back? We are not likely to go back to those times.) But the immediacy of communication today does not always allow us the luxury of thinking we have the time to think things through.
Taking time to think before you respond will save you time in the long run. We have all responded to e-mails and then sent a follow-up response. We could have waited and covered our thoughts more comprehensively.
My 'resolution' – think things through while still responding in a timely manner. No need to set land-speed records – and then have to re-respond.
Take Time To Prepare
We are in the time of year where many people are thinking about career changes. The number of requests I get to meet with people to have a career discussion goes up astronomically this time of year. I do hold some of those meetings (I truly don’t have time to honor every request) – and career coaching is not what I do any longer for a profession.
At some point in the conversation, I will ask people if they know my background. More and more often, the answer is NO – and then they want me to tell them. This is not a great way to make a first (or by this time, a second) impression.
Research time can be measured in seconds or minutes (not hours). We don’t have to go to the library to do our research. If you are reading this, you are on a computer. Basic research is done through ‘Google’. The maximum of five minutes it might take to research the person you are talking to along with their company and related history will pay dividends. Take the time.
We Do Not Want To Go Back To ‘The Good Old Days’
We commonly remember the past in positive terms – call it positive attribution. The bad things that happened fade in our memory; the good things stand out.
There were some wonderful people interaction modalities from our past that I truly believe were positive and we need to resolve to resurrect them.
- Show up for small talk. (Okay – show up in-person.) Or at least be a few minutes early as a way to say hello in a non-rushed manner.
- Think things through. Computers make responding fast – and almost sets an expectation for us to do so; let our minds catch-up before we use the speed of technology to respond.
- Do your pre-homework. Take a moment to pre-think about the interaction you are about to have. Do you know the people and their organization? The beauty of the age we are in – there is information available. Take 5 . . . . . minutes (at a minimum) to do the research.