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| Tom Handcock |
In the last 5 years, what new belief,
behavior or habit has improved your life?
Understanding that for high stakes or difficult decisions there is
always an element of being wrong that you have to be comfortable with. Given
the number of stakeholders we typically have today, at least one of them is
going to be unhappy with the decision; and if the decision is complex, there
will be wrinkles as the decision plays out that create discomfort for you.
Focusing on what you learn from each decision is important (e.g. what didn’t I
anticipate, that I perhaps could have), but burning emotional energy worrying
that you should have made a different decision is unproductive. The thing is,
if you had decided B instead of A, you’d be in the same position, it’d just be
a different unhappy stakeholder, and a different set of wrinkles.
It’s a bit like the challenge of choosing
the best route home when there is lots of traffic. Invariably the route
you take is slower than you would like so feels like a bad choice; but given
you are not able to drive the other route at exactly the same time, you have no
way to know whether that other choice would have been better. Your passengers
will say you made the wrong decision either way. Telling them that there is no
way to know whether the other route was better tends not to help matters though.
What purchase of $100 or less has most
positively impacted your life in the last 6 months?
Hmm, not sure I have purchased anything of note for myself
recently. But now it is getting colder I’ve busted out my merino wool
running hat – I’ve had one for the last 5 or so years. I love running in the
cold, and this is the perfect piece of gear to keep you warm without
overheating. It means you can run without an extra layer. It’s also small
and light enough that you can easily take it off mid-run and carry it or
tuck it in your waistband.
In
the last 5 years, what have you become better at saying no to?
Hmmm, tough question. Mid-afternoon biscuits and cake in the
office; second helpings of dessert. Perhaps on a more career relevant level I
have gotten a lot better at distinguishing between (and hopefully helping
others distinguish between) things that are interesting, and things that
actually create value. If you take running a leadership council, or now a
KI, there is lots of interesting research we could do or resources we could
create, and there are a lot of demand signals we get for them, but demand for
something and interest in it should not be confused with value. Ideally they
overlap, but often they don’t (at least not perfectly). In the Recruiting
Leadership Council we made a very deliberate decision a few years ago to be
better at fewer things, and to really focus on issues that were truly senior
most worthy. Our operating model research (Recruiting for the Digital
Enterprise) was not popular with a lot of our stakeholders as we were writing
it because it was not an exciting topic, but it was a hugely successful run
with clients, and contributed to strong commercial results, because it hit on a
set of issues that the Head of Recruiting had to personally own.
When
you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Regular exercise, enough sleep, and quality time with my wife and
kids are the foundation that help keep my stress levels in check. I’m pretty
militant about making time for these.
I guess there are different types of being
overwhelmed though. The two that spring to mind immediately are:
·
Having
a big and poorly defined goal or decision to make (e.g. a big research
deliverable, or needing to figure out what to do with an underperforming product/asset)
where when you get given the task you are at such an information deficit it
feels overwhelming.
·
Having
way too much on your plate, and feeling overwhelmed because you can’t action
stuff fast enough.
I’ve tried to develop different strategies
for coping with them. Taking control is really key to both. For the first its
identifying small interim decisions that you can make (that could be as simple
as deciding how many member calls we are going to do or who you need to get
help from) and creating forcing mechanisms to drive forward momentum. That’s
why we love a checkpoint process here. For the second it’s just a good
old fashioned prioritization exercise. To do that you need to step back and
clarify what the big objectives are you are held accountable for. Of all of the
things I am doing, and emails I have in my inbox, which of those support those
objectives and which of those don’t. The (uncomfortable) reality is that
this means some of those emails will go unanswered – rest assured though, if
it’s really important to that person, they will chase you on it. Then jump on
the phone with them and solve it in 2 minutes rather than 5 emails.
What
are the bad recommendations you hear in your profession or expertise?
I always really hated the “where do you see yourself in 10 years?”
question, or the recommendation that you need a grand plan for your career. For
me what I have learned is important is:
· Having
a sense of forward momentum (and that’s not simply about promotion and scope/responsibility
increase, but more so about feeling appropriately challenged, continuing to
learn new things and building relationships).
·
Being
engaged and interested in my work (and at times that has required me to
actively search for the thing that is interesting in a project or
responsibility that is on its surface not at all glamourous).
What
is one of the best or worthwhile investments you have ever made?
Time free of distractions is probably one of the most valuable and
rarest things out there. Taking a day off work to just hang out with my
kids when they don’t have birthday parties or swim lessons etc. to go to. My
older son and I went to the science museum during his last school holiday and
it was just such a fun day with lots of time to chat.
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