LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner
On The Value Of Under-Scheduling
Strategic thinking doesn't find
itself. It needs time--about 30 to 90 minutes--and space. LinkedIn's Jeff
Weiner shows us why.
Jeff Weiner is a busy dude.
As the CEO of LinkedIn, he has a constant pull of
to-dos, and as leaders often do, he has days of meeting after meeting after
meeting. Realizing he had little time to think, he opted for what first felt
like an "indulgence": he started scheduling nothing.
Writing
on his LinkedIn page (naturally), Weiner explains that his scheduling nothing
are his "buffers," that is, 30- to 90-minute blocks of time without
meetings. And rather than a kind of indulgence, Weiner realized the free spaces
were "absolutely necessary" for him to do his job--as Bill
Gates and Warren Buffett would agree.
We
talk a lot about how busyness gets in the way of good business here at Fast
Company: that if we're going to solve any of the problems that are in front
of us, it will require actually attending to them (rather than our phones). Echoing what we once learned from Einstein, Weiner explains that one
of the responsibilities of leadership is to create the time-space to
strategize:
"As
the company grows larger ... you will require more time than ever before to
just think: Think about what the company will look like in three to five
years; think about the best way to improve an already popular product or
address an unmet customer need; think about how you can widen a competitive
advantage or close a competitive gap, etc."
He
then goes on to deconstruct the elements of such horizon-seeking. To
do it well, Weiner says, you require:
do it well, Weiner says, you require:
- Uninterrupted focus
- Thoroughly developing and questioning assumptions
- Synthesizing all of the data, information, and knowledge that's incessantly coming your way
- Connecting dots
- Bouncing ideas off of trusted colleagues
- Iterating through multiple scenarios
And
to do all that conceiving and re-conceiving, Weiner says, you need time, which
requires stepping away from tactical execution to make room for strategic
planning. This will only happen if you create the situation, he says.
"If
you don't take the time to think proactively you will increasingly find
yourself reacting to your environment rather than influencing it," Weiner
continues. "The resulting situation will inevitably require far more time
(and meetings) than thinking strategically would have to begin with."
In
other words, if we don't schedule time to think, we start to build up innovation debt. And while the costs of
constant busyness are not immediately apparent, from what Weiner says, they
most certainly accrue.
By: Drake Baer http://www.fastcompany.com/3013654/leadership-now/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-on-the-value-of-under-scheduling?partner=newsletter
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