Employing Differences, Episode 88: Is now the time to reflect?

Karen: 0:08

Welcome to Employing differences, the conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul: 0:15

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:17

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:19

Each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Is now the time to reflect?"

Karen: 0:29

So we're recording this as we approach the end of 2021. So it's this sort of natural year-end thing that we think about doing. And Paul and I were talking about that there are times to do that that may be routine, calendar, habitual things but also that there are times when it actually isn't useful, no matter what the calendar says. And looking at recognizing that reflection, while it's super valuable and we do recommend it as a general practice, that it does take time and energy, and it does take resources, and there are times when it's super useful, and there are times when it's actually not all that useful. So well, maybe you want to talk about where you are at this moment, and then we can go another direction.

Paul: 1:15

Yeah, well, so you've alluded to the fact that oftentimes there's sort of a natural cadence dictated by something in the calendar, in the schedule, in the whatever it is that organizes our work that sort of indicates now would be a good time. We think about those a lot. Hey, the end of the week. The end of a particular period of time, the end of the year, or the end of a month, the end of a quarter, there's sort of a natural feeling about like,"Oh, now would be a good time to stop and reflect." We have a natural tendency to do that. I would say that those are not the only times when it's useful to do. But for me, part of the reason where I'm at since it is by the time people are listening to this, it's probably gonna be 2021. But it's near the end of sorry, 2022. I can't keep track of what year we're in anymore. Because I'm close to the end of the year. And I sort of wrapped up the last of the client work that I'm doing, I have some space. And so I have some room to reflect. It's actually the work that I'm doing has a natural cadence to it that happens to coincide with the calendar. And so I think that while the calendar or the clock(or any of those things) can be useful prompts and cues, I think we do need to be aware of how the work that we're doing that we're going to be reflecting on does or doesn't align with that sort of cadence.

Karen: 2:51

Yeah, and as Paul and I were chatting, you were talking about your reflection, and I was like, "Maybe I should be doing some of that at year end?" And then I thought about where I am in my work cycle and went,"Nope." Because where I am is having a few months ago decided to make a major shift in my business model and adopting a whole other approach that needs to be built out. And I am still actively building out the thing I decided to try. And so I'm getting lots of intermediate input and responses and little mini reflections are happening. I'm going, "Okay, a little more of that, and a little less of that," and a lot of tweaking. But in terms of do I want to take time now to go back and look at numbers and reflect on in a big way where is this? Not yet. Because right now, I'm still building the thing I decided to build. And so, a major sort of pause and reflect for a while? Not so much right now, because of where I am in the cycle of the work.

Paul: 3:51

Yeah. And, and cycling between those two modes is actually really useful, and having a useful cycle between operational and the reflective. In the reflective, we're looking at what's happened, and making some decisions and planning what's going to come next. And then the operational we're executing on those plans. I think where we run into trouble is where we only ever do one or the other. But you don't want to interrupt one with the other. You need to let the operational work run its natural course to generate enough material for the larger scale reflective to be useful. The thing you were mentioning about how in the middle of that work, I'm getting these indications that, "yeah, okay I don't want to tweak this," or "I want to stay on this line." That's useful. You don't want to shut off all sources of input, but you want to stay in that mode. What those signs are telling you is it's good, it's okay to keep working. If I were seeing vastly different things, I might sort of interrupt that cycle and go, hold on, I need to back up and out. And I think that's what we've kind of talked on a number of occasions about before. But what you're seeing right now is, hey, I don't need to stop and do this reflective work, because it is actually going the direction I'm seeing signs that we're going the direction that I established and wanted the last time I did that big decision point. This is the way I wanted it to be going and so I'm okay. It's going to be more useful for me to get a little further down the road before I stop and reflect.

Karen: 5:38

I think the flip side of that would be if I was seeing really strong signs that the thing I'm doing isn't working, or if I was getting really stuck. So you know, when things I'm in that operational mode, and I'm going to get things done. And I'm thinking I'll have a good cycle of this done three months from now on, I'll plan to pause and reflect. Ok, that's all good. But if in the meantime, I'm just hitting roadblock after roadblock, or I'm feeling really stuck in things, or the indications are"Wait, this really..." And sometimes you get this gut feeling, something feels not right, and it takes a time of reflection to look back and go,"Oh, wait, there was this indicator, and that indicator, and this other indicator, and I and I sort of ran over all of them, because I was in operations mode." And I need to pause and reflect to see it. So I do think there's some sort of instinct and discernment that goes on here of saying, is this the point to let my momentum carry me forward and keep going, because these are the speed bumps that are part of growing and having changed a thing and trying a new thing, or is there some sort of cumulative, this is harder than it ought to be, I need to stop and look back.

Paul: 6:51

Yeah. And actually thinking about that, before going into that operational mode is something that I actually try to work with a lot of my clients on. Particularly when they're planning something or a strategy shift or kind of what you were saying, like changing the approach to to this type of work. Great. Before starting thinking about what are the signs or signals that it is headed the direction we intend, and what are the signs or signals that it's not, and pre-deciding, thinking about that in advance. Because that way, you've got the built-in what tells us we need to pull the cord and go, "Hold on, this isn't going how we wanted it to go." Because if we start down that road without having particularly if we're doing this in a group... Like it's one thing for us to do it individually, but if we're doing it in a group, some people really love the operational mode and some people really love the reflective and feel naturally comfortable in one or the other. But it's very easy to once we say we're going to commit to this path for this period of time, it can be very hard to get out of that, unless you have a pre-arranged agreement, "We're going to commit to this for this amount of time, unless one of these things happens or unless these things become true, at which point we'll stop and reflect." If we don't think about that ahead of time it we can very easily blow past the stop signs, in some ways.

Karen: 8:25

And I think what I'm kind of hearing us say too, is that there are levels of reflection. There's a little bit of always keep that piece of your brain open that sort of takes in input that's coming along and kind of tries to integrate it with what else is going on. And then there's sort of mini check-ins that might be cyclical, especially in a group, there might be moments that you pause and check in. And then there are times that we just say, "Stop. Everything stop," and look back and gather data and think about larger reflective processes that really take us sort of deep into a period of time or a process that we've done or a workflow or even a sort of current experience what's our status quo right now compared to where we want to be? And those are different things, and really should be triggered by different circumstances.

Paul: 9:22

The idea of reflecting on different timescales to different degrees of depth and having an overlapping set of those practices and habits is really useful. Like one of the things I do, I have a small practice where at the end of every day, in the work notebook that I work on, I just have four questions that I answer about the day. What I want to celebrate from today? What is something that didn't happen today that I wished had or did happen that I wished hadn't? What's something that I learned today and what's something that I still have a question about? And so what I'll do at the end of the week, I'll actually look and see what I wrote, and do patterns start to jump out? And I might spend a little bit more time with it and, and sort of scope up and out. And so even though I'm not stopping every day to reconsider my business plan and look over the last year's worth of data, I'm spending just a little bit of time sort of stopping and reflecting in a way that may affect what I'm going to do tomorrow. But it may not be the thing that's gonna affect in a large way something else, I find it amusing because when we started to talk about what we wanted to talk about in this episode, we said, "Well, maybe we should talk about when not to reflect?" And of course, now we've just gone into this,"Well, no, actually, you kind of do want to be reflecting at least a little bit all the time." It's just that those bigger reflective periods need to be driven more by how things are going and what you're doing, rather than just we always need to stop and reflect on a particular time cadence or something like that.

Karen: 11:07

So I feel like what we're pointing to is there are different amounts, different depths, different intensities of reflection. The the low-level, sort of daily or constant practice of being engaged and being aware of what data is coming in and what it might mean, we think is a pretty good idea, always. And then maybe a slightly deeper dive at certain markers or certain points or in response to certain cues that we may have figured out in advance these are things that would tell us we should slow down a little. And then some kind of cadence of a deeper dive, and whether that's a cadence of when we get to the end of the stage of a project, or if we have a calendar year or weekly, or some kind of cycle that that fits with that, that matches with that, that might be. Or if just our gut is telling us something's not right or maybe something bigger than our gut is telling us something's not right, something more evident but when there's just this indicator of I think I might be missing something; those are all things that would tell us it's time to take some time out and think about a way to do a deep reflection.

Paul: 12:21

The last thing that I'll I'll add into there, which sort of all those things that you talked about, point at is that there's research that really shows that reflection is about learning, it's about what can we learn from what's happened, and we actually particularly in groups learn best at the ends of things, at the endings of certain things. Our brands are sort of cued up to do that reflection, and that drawing in, and that lessons learned sort of thing. And so finding natural sort of endings, whether that be the ending of a day, the ending of a project, the ending of a chunk, a milestone piece, and then doing the reflection around that is often very, very useful. And also, when you get to the end of discovering that your plan was working that's the other place there. So that's really I think, kind of what we're pointing at is looking for those spots where we're ready to actually learn something from reflecting on our experience.

Karen: 13:23

I think that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 13:28

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.