#489 Four Work Complaints Everyone Has - And Realistic Ways to Take Back Control

0:00Teens share everything. That may include the bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease known as meningitis. Even if your teen's been vaccinated in the past, they could still be missing meningitis vaccinations. Ask your teen's doctor or visit meningitis.com today. Sponsored by GSK. Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers Podcast, a weekly show where we talk about the ins, outs, ups and downs of work to give you some tools, some advice and some tips to help you stay confident and in control. It's a weekly show we're nearly at episode 500 which means there's lots to catch up on if it's the first time you've listened and there's also lots of support in addition to the episode easiest way to access all of our toolkits all of our one-page summaries everything that we've got for you to help you learn is to sign up for Squiggly Careers in Action which is our weekly newsletter that will be in the show notes or you can just go to our website amazingif.com and you will find it there So this week we're talking about realistic responses to common work complaints and I'm not sure how motivating that is as a title both Helen and I were like oh usually we're quite upbeat and we're naturally both very optimistic people Helen's like super optimistic um if any of you ever done those profiles where you come out as colors Helen's like as yellow as you can get but you know what I'm not very yellow today no I know you're not I feel like I'm like what's it like a mucky yellow color okra I'm like yeah today I'm a bit mustard it's gonna be an interesting well maybe it's a good day to talk about complaints then and the reason that we picked this one is we all complain about work I think in some ways there's quite a lot of joy in complaining some of the time because it makes you feel a bit better and you kind of get them off your chest I think getting complaints off your chest can be helpful but what we were trying to talk about is if you look at the really common things that we like all complain about to do with work often when we try to then solve those things you're aiming for like a perfect solution and you're like oh if only I often feel like you kind of go from this sort of very day-to-day complaint and certainly if you're me i sort of then imagine a whole different world i'm like well i'm going to completely clear my week or like something radical is going to change or you know like i think probably you and i probably respond to complaints slightly differently i think sometimes you'll you'll be like oh just stop it on them we'll just stop it you're like that's not a realistic response because you've got blah blah blah or whatever but and what's my my what do you think my default would be to just just keep going it'll get better let's keep at it you're relentless in your well I'm going to just keep going but then I think you're hopeful it's just going to disappear but without actually doing anything like nothing's going to change but the complaint is going to go away yeah it'll be fine it'll get better that whole it will be fine when it kind of never it never is fine and so we tried to pick some common complaints that we thought might feel relevant for everyone you might have some different ones um but see if any of these kind of feel familiar um I've got too many meetings and they're not a good use of time every time I test that in a workshop I just get massive reactions doesn't matter what role people are in what kind of company people are in nobody sees meetings as like the best moment in their day yet let's say yeah so there's always like there's a meeting complaint um one just about I think volume you know it's like I've just got too much on I would say that's probably how Helen and I are feeling like this morning we've both had like quite a full-on morning and you know you're just like ah too much time and oh and you just complain about I haven't got enough time to do all the things I need to make happen the next one is slightly different to like volume of work it's sort of what you're doing with your time at work which is the whole I've got no time to think or I've got no time to zoom out or no time to be strategic um And so that can feel frustrating.

3:45You know, perhaps you feel very sucked into the immediate day to day needs of getting stuff done. And then the last one, senior people. So senior people are slowing me down, creating a bottleneck. I am sure our team who sometimes I'm sure listen to the podcast, I'm sure they would definitely say this about us sometimes. I think of at least two examples like right now where I know Helen and I are holding things up where we have said oh like you know what's stopping this from happening and essentially they've kind of gone well you you you are stopping this from happening and so you know they wouldn't say it to us because they're probably too productive and constructive but you know maybe to their partner while they're grabbing cup of tea like sometimes so annoying because they say they're going to do something and they don't or I've messaged them about that three times and they've just not sorted it you know you're like you're complaining right you're complaining about other people and which one of those for you Helen which what do you reckon is your most common complaint in a I was actually just thinking there's probably one we've missed I reckon there's like too many got too many meetings I mean it's the same it's the same sentiment I think it's just like the too many thing but probably like communications you know I think some people would say like I've got too many emails I'm getting too many messages like it's just like I think that would probably fit in there probably there's too much to do one which is obviously a recency bias because it's we're recording this and obviously feeling like it at the moment but I think um that probably is like the headline one because then there's you kind of go oh why have I got too much to do there's too many meetings or there's too many comments but actually it's just the too much to do probably feels like the yeah the biggest complaint that I would probably carry with me and bring into conversations in an unproductive kind of way what about you the same now but I think probably previously like kind of when we were both like in big companies it would have felt different big companies definitely sometimes senior people one where i get annoyed that i've got to like wait for a meeting to happen to get something signed off you know like lots of sign-offs yeah i suppose the complaint there is essentially bureaucracy i was actually reading a book about that on friday it's like too much bureaucracy it's like slowing me down it's like a waste of time why am i having to get four million people to sign this off before i can make this happen so i definitely would have felt that one um and probably the meeting one more in corporate life than now we still spend a lot of time we spend a lot of time like delivering learning and with other people but I don't I don't have as many meetings now as perhaps I did and certainly when I talk to people in those companies about meetings you know they're often in so many like back-to-back meetings and I work quite hard to not for that not to be my reality I think because you've been there you're like I really I try hard to I don't want to complain about that one I get very frustrated if I don't have time to think that's probably the complaint out of those ones where if I'm complaining about that that's where I'm most likely to be really dramatic and go well that's it I'm I'm stopping work it's interesting isn't it what the complaint sounds like because I think my too much to do I don't think I go ah I've got too much to do I'm not sure it sounds like that I I think it it's a control thing like I hate feeling like I haven't got choice over what I do I'm like well that has been determined for me that's probably my my rant or complaint would come out more like that but the origins of it is like the too much to do thing definitely so probably worth you thinking for yourself if you're listening to this or watching this almost in your own words and in your own way what are your most common complaints like what do you say that's why we actually had to go at writing them in first person because then I think you can kind of go you're probably saying these already to a friend to another work colleague to your partner or whatever so what do they sound like for you and then what we're going to talk through is for those ones just to give you some examples what's the kind of the trap that we can fall into when we try to design this perfect solution and then what would an imperfect solution look like that we hope would be way more realistic but would help you to make progress really on the kind of basis that better to do something than to do nothing or to just keep complaining because know you know i think we're all we can all give ourselves permission to complain some of the time but you know if you keep complaining it becomes quite demotivating and it's not good for energy it's not you know you definitely get more like pessimistic than optimistic so it's one of the things actually i look out for is like if helen and i are complaining about the same things to each other it definitely makes it sort of triggers something in my mind to think okay well what would an imperfect solution be because i think i've tried the perfect ones and they never they never stick and also I think the way that we've kind of framed the sort of imperfect responses to common complaints at work today is is from a very individual perspective what can you do but I do think there is a lot of value in talking about this together as a team now you don't want to tell you don't want to turn it into like a big moan zone thing because to Sarah's point not not that fun but I think you could say which of these complaints feels most real to us and then you could take the imperfect responses we're going to talk about now and say well which of these could we try out together i feel like that would be like a really useful team chat which is just you know acknowledging that of course it doesn't work brilliantly well all of the time like that's that's real life but we do have a choice about how we respond to it and we can do that in a sort of pragmatic way so it's framed for individually today but i do think you know turning this into something a team could talk about together would be a really i think a really useful conversation.

9:10So we're going to take these in turns. I will take the first one. So the first complaint we're going to work with is the too many meetings. And also these the meetings that I'm in don't feel like a good use of time. So the complaints around meetings, the perfect response to this kind of things, I think is sort of completely redesigned the way that meetings get done. So I've worked in a company that had like, it was like a no meeting Wednesday. And it was like, we're going to have no meet, no meetings on Wednesday. I think they also at the same time said no emails on Wednesday so it's like so basically the idea was you'd have I think they call it like a detox day or something from memory but the idea was Wednesday would just be the day when work got done but the reason that that perfect solution just does not reflect the reality is because you're not you're very very rarely working on your own and so actually I probably do need to get in touch with Sarah at some point and I might you probably you then maybe say to someone oh should we have a bit of a call.

10:04It's not a meeting. It's just a quick call because we're not allowed meetings on Wednesdays. And also people that maybe work outside of your little bubble where you're trying to put this perfect solution in place, whether it's your team or your company, they still want to call you on a Wednesday. They still want to put a meeting on a Wednesday. And so it's just it's quite an unrealistic way to respond to the problem of too many meetings, just to we'll just halve our meetings. We'll take a day out each week where we have no meetings. So we think an imperfect solution, a sort of much more realistic response to this particular complaint, is to redesign the meetings that you are responsible for.

10:42So, and it's interesting how much percentage of those meetings in your week are the ones you're responsible for, but these are the ones that you have a high degree of control over. And things that you can do, you could make every meeting 15 minutes shorter. So, you know, we often put sort of 30 minute or 60 minute meetings in, change your 60 minute to 45 minute. or just put the 15 minutes. I actually want to experiment with this a little bit more in my one-to-ones is I'm going to make the meeting slightly shorter, but then the last 10 minutes is for kind of the actions. Otherwise, like actions often like accumulate towards the end of the day and I'd rather kind of have get it done within the meeting in the diary or co-working meetings.

11:19We've actually experimented one of these this morning with the sort of recognition that we didn't want another meeting to go into people's diaries or another thing to go on the to-do list for this particular thing that we were doing together as a team. So it just got added into the meeting. The meeting was already in the diary. We took 20 minutes to sort of do the work individually. And then the rest of the time was talking about it together. But it meant that it wasn't another action to take away. It wasn't another meeting that had to go in the diary. And these are often things you can experiment with.

11:49So, you know, the 15 minutes after a meeting or the kind of co-working meetings, you can experiment with those without actually introducing too much change or risk into your business. and you can definitely do it with the ones that you are responsible for you might want to explain to people why you're doing it and what you're hoping to learn and potentially get a bit of feedback but it is something that you could you could try out this week yeah I think it was really interesting seeing our team's response to we essentially repurposed a meeting we already have to do something different and actually when I first suggested it I actually got a lot of relief from people and I think people are feeling relieved because of not this complaint but the too much to do complaint so we were using it to kind of get work done but kind of co-working at the same time and the reason people haven't done it before is not that we don't have a motivated team who don't really care because we do and it's just because it never ends up rising to the top of the list of priorities because it always feels it's a classic important but not urgent activity and I think rather than I noticed I was like I'm just chasing everybody to do this and I was like well, this is not fun for me.

12:55And I'm thinking, why are we not getting this done? Actually, just by kind of thinking about it differently, by just going, well, I can't take meetings. I can't completely change everything, but I can change how we use that meeting once a quarter. That's really easy to do. We did make it slightly longer to give everyone a bit of time for working and then talking. So they kind of got both of those things. And then we did a quick, what worked well, even better if at the end, which actually was really valuable to hear what everybody's experience of that was. you know what what i'd really appeal to people people definitely want to do it again and to helen's point people haven't got actions you don't go away with a big long list you go away going well i've done it i've done the thing i kind of need to do i do think what worked well with that kind of co-working meeting it was cameras on so because i think cameras on has a little bit of accountability weirdly like isn't we're all we're all here the purpose of this is all getting something done together at the same time but not necessarily directly with each other um and so cameras on i I think has much more of a, we're in it together, we're experimenting together.

13:57Whereas cameras off, I think would have felt like, oh, I don't know, maybe people are less committed to the co-working element of this. Yeah, and there was a moment today actually where I could see people were like, oh, should I just go away and work on this? And I was like, no, no, let's all stay. We're all going to stay here. And I was like, oh, it's not something we've done. So it does feel a bit, did feel a bit strange initially, but then you are like, the accountability definitely just went up and everybody has done the action. so I think it's just that thing of like if you are complaining about meetings and like who isn't it's those small and they are often imperfect and some bits of it might work some bits might not work but at least you're trying something at least you are trying to see whether you can make it better can I just add in one other thing which is slightly random but just because I experimented with it last week now it didn't actually work for me but it might work for other people that have got too many meetings is that reclaim AI tool it helps you with different habits actually in your diary and one of them being like you know if your complaints I've got too many meetings what it helps you to do is sort of manage that um better um and so you put in like well how much focus time do you want in your week how much time do you want in between meetings and it automatically based on how much focus time you want in a week and how much time you want to reflect after meetings it automatically puts that in your diary along with a slightly passive aggressive comment that you might be able to change that just says like Helen is no longer available she has no more focus time left in the diary I saw it in your diary and it really threw me I think I was looking for something for like you and I were going to spend some time and I was like what's happened to Helen over the weekend she's become a bit aggressive but no I and actually it was it wasn't quite right for me partly because of just the way that our mine and Sarah's diaries work but I did think oh I you could probably soften the tone and I could probably you know start with a bit less focused time so it was a bit less dominant in my diary but I would I think that is an interesting experiment if you've got too many meetings um actually having something that blocks time out that stops people proactively putting a meeting in that.

15:52I don't think people would vote over it in that time. I think they would have come to me and said, oh, it looks like you're blocked out. Can I have that? They would have at least asked rather than just stuck it in, which might be helpful depending on the direction of the meetings. So the next complaint, which I think we all have, is like, we've got too much to do. It always feels like there's kind of too much to do. And I think the perfect solution, which is sort of not hard to find because people sell millions of books based on this. And, you know, you can follow people on LinkedIn talking about it and you can read about this all the time is like right I am going to become a productivity guru I am going to follow all of those techniques and things which are going to just make me so efficient I think a real focus on kind of efficiency so it's like you know those inbox zero people or you go right I'm going to use the Pomodoro technique um I'm going to start getting up at five because by that I'll go for my big long run and be so fit from five till six then I'll probably get in some sort of ice bath and then I'll do I don't know read some book or whatever I'm going to do then I'm going to be so present I'm going to remove every distraction and just do deep work so you just you just kind of have this image also comparison here I feel like comparison can really get in your way of like how do they manage to get so much done and so the imperfect solution I think here I think there are two things that you could potentially try so the first one is being able to sort of zoom in and zoom out but quite quickly on what matters most so rather than just being like I'm going to create these perfect days actually just asking yourself what matters most today what matters most this week I think gives you a useful short-term focus and we are always really clear on what matters most this week because in our team meeting on a Monday we do what one thing so everybody has to say what one thing matters most this week so we have created that clarity because we always talk about it and then I just ask myself what matters most today and I that was actually useful advice that I just got from a boss from somebody who was a founder who ran who runs and still runs his own company and he was like there will always be loads of demands on your day Sarah but his point was yeah but you need to be really clear about what matters most today because that's where you've got to be like at your incredibly brilliant best you know that's you've got to make sure you're channeling your energy and effort into there and it's sometimes that feels hard because I'm like oh but that also matters and that also matters but there's usually is one thing that matters most so I I'm not short term at all I'm not as good at zooming in so just asking myself that the today in this week really helps and then for the kind of zooming out we use and we've talked about this on the podcast before and again we actually did ours this morning uh we do a wind watch for what matters most this quarter so again they're not these are not perfect solutions they're not particularly sophisticated solutions um but actually having a wind watch helps helen and i to figure out where's our focus and if we don't focus on these areas we're probably going to fall behind or we're not going to make the progress that kind of matters to us i think there's a bit of like acceptance of it will always feel like there's a lot to do so that's never going to change I don't expect that to change I also don't want that to change because that means I'm excited about all the things that we're working on but by asking ourselves those questions and having a few sort of they're basically like mini small mechanisms I suppose for having those conversations it always it does always really help me but if you do do a win watch every quarter it also at the end of the year when you're kind of when you have that moment that you're sort of reflecting and you think what have I done this year you can clearly look at your kind of quarterly wind watch and see all all like the winds you've accumulated because I think if you've got too much to do sometimes I don't think you appreciate what you've done you know it just feels like more and more stuff more and more stuff busy work busy work and actually there will have been a lot that you've done but it hasn't sort of sort of risen to the surface yeah it hasn't kind of popped out but it does it does pop out on the wind watch so I think it is it does become a very motivating thing I think to look back on and also if you're in a company that does an annual review I think it makes that process a lot more efficient as well because you've got all that in one place and then the one other thing I'd recommend just listening back to if this is like your really big complaint is we did do an episode on the podcast where we talked about when good enough is great this I do find I always find harder but I think through practice I have got a lot better at um because I sort of care I have quite high care and quality bar for myself but also for everybody I find it really hard sometimes to just like let stuff go and if you've got we've all got too much to do if your bar is consistently the same it's again that's really unrealistic that's like saying the perfect solution is every single bit of work that I do is going to be the same 10 out of 10 quality and it's going to get the same 10 out of 10 attention and care and again that just can't happen so there was a good example of something actually we were working on last week where a company wanted to write about squiggly careers so they're doing sort of a case study in a press release and I sort of said to someone on team right how can we review this and get it to something we feel good about really quickly because essentially this can't take more than 10 minutes of our time and we worked out actually again working together live was the best way to do that because initially we sort of tried to edit what was already there and I was like oh this is just this is just not working it's taking ages and it's not the right thing for it we don't want this to be taking up loads of time and that was a really good example I think I started to spot now oh this is a good enough is great moment this is a good enough is great piece of work and then I definitely have other things in mind where I'm like no I'll stick it with my great bar and I'm going to stick with that and and I want to put lots of time and attention because it's on the wind watch for example so I think that distinction also really helps me so our third complaint is the one around um I don't have enough time to think and sometimes sometimes people might say that I think sometimes this sounds like oh I get no time to be strategic I think people kind of put those two like things together but I take it as I don't I'm not able to put my brain in a thoughtful space in a reflective or kind of a way of projecting into the future and and so the perfect solution to this that I you know will often hear if people do is like well I'll have a strategy day I have a strategy day team away day yeah we'll do it on a team away day we have this period of time every year in August where we sort of change the mix of our work a little bit so that we do we do genuinely have a little bit more space in our diary but it's very easy to kind of start going well that'll happen in August well don't worry that'll happen in August and that August becomes our perfect solution and the problem is you it is very, very, very hard to protect that time.

22:47You can maybe do it as a one off. But other people have agendas. You, you know, you're not operating in isolation, there's other stuff going on in your life and family outside of work. And if you have put, like all the emphasis on it happening on that day, like it has to happen on that day on the 1st of September or whatever's going on. And then you know, you don't have any awareness of other things that might get in the way, then you can often feel even more frustrated than when you than when you started, which is not what we want for people so our imperfect solution here is to write at a think list it's almost like this is sort of in two two stages so stage one is like right just get out of your head this is quite a fast process i think this first part but get out of your head like the main things that you want to think about at the moment so if i was to put pen and paper now i might be thinking oh um i want to think about um how sarah and i are actually going to spend our time in august like what do we want to achieve i might think about how am i supposed to manage the juggle of child care over the next couple of months that I'm currently dealing with.

23:40So things are currently on my mind. So you get them down on paper, which I actually think is helpful in itself, because sometimes when your thoughts are going around your head, they can kind of be magnified. But putting them down on paper adds a bit of practicality to them. But then the next thing is you want to do a first thoughts five minutes. So you pick something off your list. So maybe I put Sarah and I were spending some time together in August. What do we want to get out of it? And I'm not going to solve that in five minutes but what I am going to do is just jot some first thoughts down I actually think setting a timer for this is quite useful um and I might just quickly just quickly get some thoughts and I think you can get quite far in five minutes and it's up to you whether you want to do it as a mind map or a list it doesn't really matter it just matters that quite quickly you have created some time to think about something that isn't going to derail your day or require you to schedule next month you can we can all find five minutes in a day um and I think then you could even share your first thoughts with somebody like you could do it as a voice note and there are a lot kind of lots of ways that you could do it so it then goes from you towards somebody else but it means that it doesn't just exist as this sort of growing mass in your head it just becomes something a little bit smaller that you can move forward more easily one of the other things that we know there's some interesting research around self-explaining so when you do kind of talk to yourself about your own thoughts out loud it actually does help you to figure out like what you think what you know what you don't know so again you kind of move forward fast so what you could do is self-explain for three minutes set a timer and just but I'm just going to say out loud what I think about that and even when you get stuck because I do this exercise a lot with people in workshops where I get people to do three minute mind maps when you get stuck my my top tip is always like just stay focused on the question because it is amazing how that when you get stuck what comes next is often really insightful because it's forcing your brain you've gone past the obvious and it's forcing your brain to kind of come up with new ideas or new answers so all you've got to do is just stay focused for that time i've been using the um the voice thing on chat gpt quite a lot i just find it quicker if I'm like just sort of thinking about something I was thinking about a random book this weekend I was like I might write this book obviously I've got no chance to write this book but I think about write this book anyway I was just sort of chatting along to chat GPT um but I think you could record like a minute or two of your thoughts and then and then ask it to summarize that into five points you know because I think you thinking about it is one thing and then I think you being able to share that with somebody else but in a much more succinct way or you're just dumping aren't you you're just dumping loads of stuff so if you kind of talk to chat gpt or whatever platform you want to use and then said summarize this into five points then that is a much more constructive thing for me to share with sarah than potentially just complaining to her for five minutes or just like writing a long essay about what's on my mind maybe i should start doing that because i think i just i think you get the unfiltered version um i'm allowed to i'm allowed That's one of my work-ons.

26:49So the last complaint is about basically other people. They don't always have to be more senior, but I think often they are because they're the bottleneck around if you do have sign-offs or if you do need someone's approval or someone just need to read something before you can send it. And I always think the perfect solution when you're thinking about this, and I did a lot of thinking about this when I was in big companies because I did work with lots of senior stakeholders, you were always thinking, oh, if I could just spend more time with them. you know like i'm going to try and put in more meetings with them i'm going to make the meetings with them longer i'm going to have more regular meetings imagine if their complaint is senior person's complaint is i'm in too many meetings senior person's like solution is have a meeting well and it's interesting because i see that a little bit with our team sometimes like they'll they will less so to me which is probably feedback for me but they will often be like oh helen we'd like more time with you because helen does um the one-to-ones with our team and people's default is sometimes more more one-to-ones with Helen longer one-to-ones with Helen and you sort of go sure in a perfect world yeah because that feels very perfect world because nothing's changed for Helen so where has that extra time come from for Helen to do that so either you've got to trade something off or you've got to make a choice or something has to change right whereas actually I think the imperfect solution here is thinking about how does that person you're trying to influence or who you kind of you need something from how did they like to spend their time and then kind of what could you do so what could you try out that might work better for them and so one of the things that we found we've been working um with Amber brilliant Amber on our podcast over the past few months and um amber started using notion so to kind of write down all of her thoughts and do her reports for us and then she does these really good videos which are summaries of kind of what's in that report now what is so good about that is it meant that it helen and i can watch those whenever it works for us so it mirrors the fact that helen and i don't ever have two days or two weeks the same ever so she's then created something that just works whenever it's very kind of flexible also and I only realized this when Helen told me recently she knows whether we've watched it or not I love that I hadn't realized that and I was like oh so she knows oh you've seen this much of it or you've watched this much and I was like okay that's probably that's quite useful to know and but what I think she has done is kind of probably caught on to the fact that like neither of us wanted more meetings we do care about the kind of work she's doing but we sort of wanted her to communicate in a different way and so that was just I think a really kind of smart way of like we could easily be a bottleneck for Amber but the reason we are not is because of how she has chosen to collaborate and communicate with us but I think almost based on asking us some questions and not defaulting to the obvious like the obvious thing would have been oh well once a week we'll all catch up and we'll kind of talk about it and And she's sort of gone, well, we could or what we could do is something kind of slightly different.

29:55And it's just worked so much better. And I don't think there's been too many bottlenecks for her. And also we've quite enjoyed we've enjoyed the process. It's funny because Sarah and I, because we don't have a manager, we sort of mainly manage each other. And we probably are a bottleneck occasionally to each other's work. So if I was mirroring how Sarah works in order to get something done, I would probably say, why don't we spend an hour doing it together and then have a bit of a break whereas my my thing would be let's work nine to twelve and not stop until it's done it's just it's sort of more it's more effective for the other person when you mirror them it's also just more appealing to them like if I said let's have a long meeting Sarah she'd probably be thinking oh whereas I if I said can we just have a bit of a walk and talk to think it through like even that that is Sarah's language like think it through it whereas my language is get it done because you have that get it done mindset i i wouldn't if you were my boss i would never turn up to a one-to-one without like a this is what i need from this meeting and i would use decision discussion agendas with you because also i'm a big fan of those to be honest i think they're really helpful um so i'd be like right helen i want us to discuss these two areas and i want to make two decisions um let's let's do that in 20 minutes and if i could i'd try and give you some time back i'd be like i think we we might have half an hour but i think you imagine how feeling that is to someone like me yeah if you have a manager if anyone has a manager like me definitely who likes getting it done and pacey stuff like if I always knew that I met with someone and I got 10 minutes time I'd be like I love meetings with them yeah I wouldn't even care what we were doing I'd be like I love meetings with them I always get 10 minutes back it'd be so motivating imagine if you were my manager um I think I would show you something visual and then I would green as we went through and being like right well that's green because we've sorted that then I'd do the next one I'd be like well let's get them all to green by the time we finish our time so just such a feedback for Vivi, Vivi who works on our team that I was with last week, who had used the notion thing, had this like checklist and we were going through and I absolutely, because it was like tick and done, tick and done, tick and done and it felt like at the end we're like oh but then she's quite like me as well so I think we both got that little buzz at the end of it whereas I think treating a meeting like a to-do list is not very you at all, you'd be like well if it's a to-do list we could have done it in a different way anyway.

32:01It does mean you have to be I think quite perceptive to understand how people, different people like to work but I think that's an important skill anyway and I do think it means you need to be quite adaptable so that you can take that approach with different people but it is effective and there aren't that many senior people that you're really trying to make this work for so I think it's quite it's quite a selective skill but it's a very it's like very valuable one I always think about it for our partners so we might not have managers anymore but we have loads of big brands that we work with all across the world and we have those learning partners and all of those lead people in those companies are all a bit different they definitely don't all like to work in the same way and they could definitely create a bottleneck for us you know if we we need to get some stuff done around like a leadership program we're doing or something as we were preparing this podcast I find it really helpful to just create those opposites because I think what we've described today with all those different complaints is like start with the sort of the perfect thing because that's quite fun I found it really fun to like imagine and I actually found Helen was like oh you're finding this really easy I did I was like oh I can just do this I can imagine oh yeah for senior people I just want loads more time or I'm just going to get rid of all meetings so just sort of imagine this like perfect world and I found that quite playful to do and then you sort of go well clearly that's not going to happen but it makes it easier I think to because you're creating a contrast I could do the opposite much easier because I'd sort of started with this perfect reality to then do the imperfect one and maybe for some of you you'll find it's the other way around or um kind of your brain works in a different way but I certainly found that once I got started you were like oh crikey you're off you're like just those ideas it was it was quite unlocking and so we will summarize all of these in the pod sheets so you will be able to see all of the complaints and you'll also be able to see the sort of perfect imperfect solutions and I think back to where we said at the start if you want to talk about this together in a team I think the prompt is probably which complaint feels most familiar to us and then which imperfect solution could we experiment with and you might want to do a bit of a how else because we've started you off with some ideas but how else what else um could we experiment with could be a good conversation to have together but that's everything for this week um as always thank you so much for listening we know loads of you share the podcast with other people which we really appreciate and we always love hearing from you we're helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com bye for now bye everyone