Chloe Foy: Strategic slowness for business success

It finally feels like summer here in the UK, and I’m feeling the busyness of life. For lots of people, summer means more socialising, plans, childcare, hobbies, and holidays. I believe we’re predisposed to be busier in the summer, and that we might mimic the cycles we find in nature – spring brings the new shoots, summer the busy-bee bloom, harvesting in autumn, and embracing slowness as we treat ourselves through the winter.

It’s 20 years since Carl Honore wrote his international bestseller, ‘In Praise of Slow’. He passionately wrote about a ‘slow movement’ and how it’s challenging ‘the cult of speed’ but really, we’re moving faster and busier than ever through life.

Why?

Professors at three different universities, including Harvard Business School, decided to address the reason. The self found that people are shifting the way they ‘consume’ time as an alternative social status to material goods: “Busyness and lack of leisure time are driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (e.g., competence and ambition) and is scarce and in demand in the job market.”

Essentially, being busy is a badge of honour. I also think it’s rooted in FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) – but rather than ‘having it all’, it’s ‘doing it all’. Is this driven by social media? Probably. Of course, this isn’t true for everyone, let’s bear in mind the people who work multiple jobs and care for children and parents. For them, busyness is not a sub-conscious social or societal choice but a necessity just to make ends meet.

Of course, Uber, Amazon and Deliveroo to name a few, have sped up our world which has created a ripple of instant gratification and expectations.

The subtle but powerful continuous influence technology has on us means we continue to operate and live faster in our own lives and with each other. But how does this affect our wellbeing or business? How much are we falling victim? How much do we think we’re in control?

‘Strategic slowness’ is a term coined by Stanford University’s Professor Bob Sutton which went viral off the back of a LinkedIn post on what leaders thought would be ‘the next best thing’ for 2024.

So, over halfway through the year, are you witnessing any strategic slowness?

I’ve recently had the pleasure of facilitating coaching sessions with multiple senior leadership teams across contrasting sectors and there are some common themes:

• Trying to do too much or more with less resource
• Lack of ownership and accountability
• Lack of lateral or longer-term thinking, just a need to ‘get sh*t done’ or ‘fail-fast’ (and hope for the best)

One woman at a recent offsite said that her favourite part of the three-day gathering was prioritising accountability.

Business is in constant flux, but are we avoiding big decisions to save time, reduce risk or just ‘see us through the next quarter’? Are we simply suffering a huge bystander effect and waiting for others to do what’s right? I’m curious to know what effect these have on business, and on people. It all revolves around the need to do more, faster, with less. Which, as we know, leads to burnout.

Gallup’s State of the Workplace report 2024 reported a quarter of leaders feel burned out often, so who’s looking after them?

Leadership is an active role; ‘lead’ is a verb. But the leader who tries to do it all is headed for burnout in a hurry.

Call me biased, but coaching can be a powerful solution. It’s rare you’ll find a very wealthy and successful leader who hasn’t had coaching (even American author, coach and speaker Tony Robbins has his own coach!) because good business starts from within.

As Andy Warhol once said: “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Coaching creates space which in turn drives creativity. It evokes confidence, self-awareness, curiosity, fulfilment, and empathy; aspects which are vital for good leadership.

Let’s look at self-awareness…

According to Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves, who put self-awareness as one of four areas of emotional intelligence, 83% of people with high self-awareness are top performers. In his research titled Mindful Self-Awareness as the Basis for Effective Leadership, Dr. Lippincott examined the relationship between emotional self-awareness and leader effectiveness and reported that 100% of the participants noticed a significant improvement in workplace effectiveness, 81% described its impact on stress reduction and 79% mentioned more effective workplace relationships.

Research also suggests that when we see ourselves clearly, we’re more confident and more creative, we make better decisions and communicate more effectively. We’re less likely to lie, cheat, and steal and we’re more-effective leaders with more-satisfied employees and more-profitable companies. Pretty good then.

But before we can cultivate self-awareness, let’s be clear on what it is. Psychologist Tasha Eurich ran a large study with 5000 participants to explore this and just how self-aware people were. And only 15% are, it turns out.

Internal self-awareness represents how clearly we see our own values, aspirations and reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviours, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others. External self-awareness means understanding how other people view us, in terms of those same factors listed above.

Bob Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot said, “I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.”

What can we do to slow down and become more self-aware in order to help business growth?

1. Speak up when things feel too much and ask, ‘What can we say no to or what can wait?’. Remember, less is more.
2. Be mindful of breaks – you may have heard the term ‘mindful of time’, but it’s important to be mindful of breaks too. We’re more creative and able to make better decisions when we’ve had a break, ideally outside.
3. Push through discomfort and question assumptions you hold about yourself – ask for feedback and act on it. We’re poor witnesses to our behaviour, so have the courage to ask for feedback as a chance to learn and build self-awareness.
4. Go outside (ideally in nature) – lots of research shows that even 20 minutes outdoors in nature helps calm and slow down the mind, helping to reduce stress and create clarity (think what an hour or a day could do?).
5. Practice makes progress – practicing 10-minutes mindfulness a day is scientifically proven to build self-awareness by observing one’s thoughts and emotions.
6. Be humble – build an understanding of oneself and our blind spots so that we can seek help in the areas we could do better. Being humble also leads to a better understanding of other people and generally having a higher appreciation for their diverse skills and backgrounds.

In conclusion, have a think about the one thing you can do to slow down and become more self-aware – is there anything you’ve found in the past that really works for you, but you’ve lost along the way?

The benefits may not just be good for you and your business but those around you too.

And as Ghandi said, ‘There’s more to life than increasing its speed.’