Nobody Cares How Busy You Are.

And the truth is, I'm probably more available than I've ever been in terms of to my partners, to the business.

Switched on a lot.

My phone's practically attached to me.

Probably work way more now than I did at certain points when I've worked for other people.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize it's kind of like slightly different and it's a bit of a contradiction in a sense because I probably work more now than I used to, but I waste considerably less time looking busy or um doing activities that maybe were again just to just false or just to look like you're being productive and there's a huge difference between the two and i never pretended to work i was always wanting to work but there were some of those tasks where it was a meeting for a meeting sake and you have to present something that no one kind of really wants to be part of so you're kind of prepping your notes for that you have the meeting then you have to go into another meeting with the execs to then discuss what's happened in that last meeting and all those little things is almost kind of like pretending to fill the day with something valuable and then it's all kind of hot air in a sense I think and it made me think that we've become very good at looking busy Last week I was on holiday.

I was away on one of the Greek islands.

Like I said, the business is going from one of the busiest periods we've had.

So up until kind of, I suppose, getting to the airport, doing emails, doing WhatsApp, doing some calls, got around nine or 10 deals moving at the moment across Europe.

various partners.

Um, and the work kind of stems UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia, um, America, Australia.

So even the times under, uh, Kind of not tough.

I suppose tough to manage in a sense.

Some of the roles we're working on are connected to politically or geopolitically difficult operating environments.

So there's a lot of other things there to consider around offers, compensation, tax, insurance, I suppose, safety to an extent, relocation, security.

um different nationalities different countries of residency um and and again the times are on piece right so the middle east is moving a little bit before we get started europe comes online similar time america's wakes up later in the day and you need to be kind of up and at them for asia and australia um effectively at the other side of the the clock so um Answering WhatsApp beside a swimming pool, it's not noble, but it's kind of part of the course, I suppose, taking some Teams calls while technically trying to unwind on holiday, moving interviews around, dealing with negotiations and speaking to kind of clients and candidates all the time.

And people will probably say, well, you know, you own your own business.

You can't even go on holiday without working.

But I came back the other day super refreshed, super energized, ready to go.

And I think part of the reason is that almost everything I was doing while I was away has an actual purpose, right? There's an actual tangible real outcome to doing it.

Somebody needed an answer, an offer needed moving, a problem needs solving, a decision needs making.

And compare that with some of the things all of us have probably done at some point simply because it looks like you're doing work or it's an hour till dinner time or lunch time or whatever.

And I think that's where this gets kind of interesting, this question, because activity is definitely not the same as value.

And I think certainly in sales, a lot of managers, hiring managers, CEOs think of activity as value.

And we've probably spoken about it on one of the very first podcasts that we ever did that was kind of pretty raw and obviously I was out with just setting the business up after leaving kind of over a decade of um i suppose working in business development roles with direct lines to the ceo and um yeah we're talking about what what kind of needs to be done in business to have a successful team and things like that and um I think the old school targets and hammering the phone and ringing people for the sake of it just to get your call stats up on, you know, it's not value, right? And it's taken a long time for people to start seeing value differently.

You know, people being at the desks till... gone 5 30 waiting for the boss to go or whatever it may be teams icons being green in the evening because you've gone on even though you're not doing any work you've just gone on to to log your teams on so that if other people are on the off chance they'll see that oh you were active six hours ago what were you doing um replying really quickly to messages attending all the meetings sending 40 emails ringing 20 people before lunchtime um all that nonsense telling people that you know you're absolutely manic and all those things are incredibly visible and you can see everything but none of them automatically tell you whether anything useful has actually happened like what value has happened in that week apart from you being burnt out because you've kind of almost been doing this facade of ticking boxes what other people see as value and literally worked in them environments first hand I've also kind of been on the opposite side where I've been almost expecting that of people because that was the culture of being a manager in one of them workplaces right but Ringing 20 people before lunchtime is just not, you know, that's not value, right? Because there's potentially 20 goals you're making.

And the truth is, I'm probably more available than I've ever been in terms of to my partners, to the business.

Switched on a lot.

My phone's practically attached to me.

Probably work way more now than I did at certain points when I've worked for other people.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize it's kind of like slightly different and it's a bit of a contradiction in a sense because I probably work more now than I used to, but I waste considerably less time looking busy or um doing activities that maybe were again just to just false or just to look like you're being productive and there's a huge difference between the two and i never pretended to work i was always wanting to work but there were some of those tasks where it was a meeting for a meeting sake and you have to present something that no one kind of really wants to be part of so you're kind of prepping your notes for that you have the meeting then you have to go into another meeting with the execs to then discuss what's happened in that last meeting and all those little things is almost kind of like pretending to fill the day with something valuable and then it's all kind of hot air in a sense I think and it made me think that we've become very good at looking busy Last week I was on holiday.

I was away on one of the Greek islands.

Like I said, the business is going from one of the busiest periods we've had.

So up until kind of, I suppose, getting to the airport, doing emails, doing WhatsApp, doing some calls, got around nine or 10 deals moving at the moment across Europe.

various partners.

Um, and the work kind of stems UK, Europe, Middle East, Asia, um, America, Australia.

So even the times under, uh, Kind of not tough.

I suppose tough to manage in a sense.

Some of the roles we're working on are connected to politically or geopolitically difficult operating environments.

So there's a lot of other things there to consider around offers, compensation, tax, insurance, I suppose, safety to an extent, relocation, security.

um different nationalities different countries of residency um and and again the times are on piece right so the middle east is moving a little bit before we get started europe comes online similar time america's wakes up later in the day and you need to be kind of up and at them for asia and australia um effectively at the other side of the the clock so um Answering WhatsApp beside a swimming pool, it's not noble, but it's kind of part of the course, I suppose, taking some Teams calls while technically trying to unwind on holiday, moving interviews around, dealing with negotiations and speaking to kind of clients and candidates all the time.

And people will probably say, well, you know, you own your own business.

You can't even go on holiday without working.

But I came back the other day super refreshed, super energized, ready to go.

And I think part of the reason is that almost everything I was doing while I was away has an actual purpose, right? There's an actual tangible real outcome to doing it.

Somebody needed an answer, an offer needed moving, a problem needs solving, a decision needs making.

And compare that with some of the things all of us have probably done at some point simply because it looks like you're doing work or it's an hour till dinner time or lunch time or whatever.

And I think that's where this gets kind of interesting, this question, because activity is definitely not the same as value.

And I think certainly in sales, a lot of managers, hiring managers, CEOs think of activity as value.

And we've probably spoken about it on one of the very first podcasts that we ever did that was kind of pretty raw and obviously I was out with just setting the business up after leaving kind of over a decade of um i suppose working in business development roles with direct lines to the ceo and um yeah we're talking about what what kind of needs to be done in business to have a successful team and things like that and um I think the old school targets and hammering the phone and ringing people for the sake of it just to get your call stats up on, you know, it's not value, right? And it's taken a long time for people to start seeing value differently.

You know, people being at the desks till... gone 5 30 waiting for the boss to go or whatever it may be teams icons being green in the evening because you've gone on even though you're not doing any work you've just gone on to to log your teams on so that if other people are on the off chance they'll see that oh you were active six hours ago what were you doing um replying really quickly to messages attending all the meetings sending 40 emails ringing 20 people before lunchtime um all that nonsense telling people that you know you're absolutely manic and all those things are incredibly visible and you can see everything but none of them automatically tell you whether anything useful has actually happened like what value has happened in that week apart from you being burnt out because you've kind of almost been doing this facade of ticking boxes what other people see as value and literally worked in them environments first hand I've also kind of been on the opposite side where I've been almost expecting that of people because that was the culture of being a manager in one of them workplaces right but Ringing 20 people before lunchtime is just not, you know, that's not value, right? Because there's potentially 20 goals you're making.