Let’s Monkey Around: Will the Year of the Monkey Improve or Thwart Productivity at your Workplace?

The Year of the Monkey has arrived in the lunar calendar bringing in wittiness, cleverness, intellectual curiosity, and, of course, fun and mischievousness.

The Buddha used Monkey as a vivid metaphor: “Just as a monkey, swinging through a forest wilderness, grabs a branch. Letting go of it, it grabs another branch. Letting go of that, it grabs another one...In the same way, what’s called ‘mind,’ ‘intellect,’ or ‘consciousness’ by day and by night arises as one thing and ceases as another.” (Samyutta Nikaya 12.61) BJ Gallagher pushes the destructive side of the metaphor further, describing our minds as “drunken monkeys, jumping around, screeching, chattering, carrying on endlessly.” (Buddha: How to Tame Your Monkey Mind in the Huffington Post.)

Monkey, therefore, is a great symbol for our distracted, do-more-with-less, fractured Whacky Workplaces. But Monkey has other alleged characteristics we can use to create a more productive environment; hard work, adaptable, fast learner, clever, intelligent, many interests, disciplined, creative, and fun.

Think about your current work environment. Which part of Monkey’s persona describes it best? Which Monkey comes out to play? Positive environments invite us to be creative and use our full spectrum of talents and brain power while negative ones simply drive us to distraction, suppressing our initiative and creativity.

Nine is a lucky numbers for Monkey. Here are 9 tips to keep those Naughty Monkeys at bay, free up our Ingenious Monkeys to counter the Whacky Workplace and create an environment where we can tap into all our positive traits.

Monkey works very hard: In a Whacky Workplace hard work is not rewarded. In fact, the boss often assigns more work because of poor delegation and management. We know we are supposed to work smarter. Hard-working Monkey knows the secret; work very hard on the most important tasks aimed at accomplishing objectives and getting necessary results.

Monkey adapts: In a Whacky Workplace the situation is always fluid and chaotic, lurching from crisis to crisis. Adaptable Monkey doesn’t waste time bemoaning the situation, gossiping, or supporting dysfunction. Adaptable Monkey focuses on objectives and results, figuring out HOW to get the job done.

Monkey is a fast learner: The Whacky Workplace lacks formal training and education and teaches the wrong lessons. Learning Monkey wants to learn and use every resource available to increase knowledge and skills. Learning Monkey is always proactive and never sits back waiting for the company to provide training.

Monkey is clever: The Whacky Workplace ignores ways to improve. Clever Monkey cannot resist seeking a better way to get the job done. Clever Monkey wants to improve efficiency AND effectiveness, asking, “How can I make this better for our customers and colleagues?”

Monkey is intelligent: The Whacky Workplace is DUMB, wasting time, money, people’s abilities, and everything else. Intelligent Monkey is too smart for that sort of nonsense. Intelligent Monkey harnesses brainpower to analyze the situation, finds the root cause, tries out solutions to solve the problem, and thinks ahead to prevent problems in the future.

Monkey has many interests: In a Whacky Workplace, only the Distracted Monkey is encouraged with endless incentives to multitask. But Interested Monkey knows neuroscience; the human brain cannot multitask but moves from task to task and back again, eliminating focus and flow. Interested Monkey focuses on the most important tasks, getting results and meeting goals before grabbing the next interest branch.

Monkey has discipline: In a Whacky Workplace, self-discipline goes out the window. In these environments being disciplined and focused is seen as a negative when everyone else acts like drunken monkeys. Disciplined Monkey creates an oasis in the chaos so important work can go on. Disciplined Monkeys and their teams keep on turning out results.   

Monkey is creative: In a Whacky Workplace, creativity is consumed in survival. Creative Monkey keeps creative intelligence focused on creating new goals, inventing new products, and anticipating customer needs. “Thrival” is Creative Monkey’s watchword.

Monkey has fun: In a Whacky Workplace, fun is off the menu. In fact, communication, relationship-building, and cohesion are frowned upon, while fear, cliques, and internal competition are promoted. Fun Monkey knows play releases our creative and intellectual powers. Fun Monkey focuses on building strong teams who enjoy working and playing hard together. Fun Monkey makes sure we celebrate milestones, holidays, birthdays, and exult in the pure joy of life.

Let all these great Monkeys loose in your workplace, your team, and your life. Monkey around a little and enjoy the results in greater productivity, better results, and happier team members.

Monkey Business is Good Business.

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Find out how your organizations compares to the Whacky Workplace. Take this short survey bit.ly/1ir731H and discover where you score on the Whack-O-Meter (designed by Mischievous Monkey.)

Looking forward to your comments on the Year of the Monkey. 

Nobody's Listening! And 5 actions you can take

Over 80% of people in any presentation - on line or live - are not paying attention! They are "multitasking." Have we all gone over to the Dark Side? Are we distracting ourselves to death?

The Professional Convention Management Association, UBM Studios, and The Virtual Edge Institute partnered up to conduct the research and published it as a white paper, Business Motivations and Social Behaviors for In-Person and Online Events.

The science is clear: Humans do not "multi-task." The brain just switches back and forth among things. Even the famous multi-tasking Millennials haven't changed evolution...yet. They've just trained themselves to move between tasks faster than us old folks.

The end result is still the same. Those milliseconds of distraction don't make it into short-term memory and therefore have no chance of transferring to long-term memory.

Our electronic companions just make it easier to be distracted. Back in the day, we used to doodle or daydream. Today we obsessively surf, text, and read email...What's the difference? When we doodled or daydreamed, we eventually realized our mind was wandering. When we do the digital dance we delude ourselves into thinking we're doing something important. We'll tune back in when the other person, speaker, or cars on the road do something interesting. Talk about destructive self-adsorption...

But this is not a new human phenomenon. Back in 1787 at the U.S. Constitutional Convention, one of the first tasks the delegates tackled was setting their meeting rules. They reveal their very human tendency to be distracted...

Every member, rising to speak, shall address the President; and whilst he shall be speaking, none shall pass between them, or hold discourse with another, or read a book, pamphlet or paper, printed or manuscript...A member may be called to order by any other member, as well as by the President; and may be allowed to explain his conduct or expressions supposed to be reprehensible.

I remember watching congress people texting and tweeting during the current president's State of the Union Address. Our founding fathers understood human nature quite well. As James Madison remarked, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

The debate about what to do about our total distraction infractions is hot. Some say, "let's tell people not to do it." Others say, "let's get the tweeting built into the program." Both miss the point. The first doesn't work because people will ignore such instructions. The second doesn't work because it only encourages what our 18th century predecessors recognized as reprehensible behavior.

Why are you attending the webinar or seminar, teleseminar or conference in the first place? Isn't part of your motivation to learn something? Research shows, if we want to remember something, that is, move it to long-term memory, we need to engage as many senses as possible. Watching, listening, and writing engage at least 3 senses. Suck on a lollipop and write with a scented pen and you hit them all.

So here's my prescription to apply a little Conventional Wisdom:

1. Gandhi said it best: Be the change you want to see. You are in control of your own behavior. Stop distracting yourself.
2. As our Zen masters teach us: Be in the moment - in the NOW. Engage yourself entirely in the presentation, conversation, event. Focus your energy.
3. Use all 5 senses and maybe that elusive 6th sense. Emphasize your own preferred learning style to maximize retention and movement into short- and long-term memory.
4.  A member may be called to order by any other member. Take responsibility for the success of every event yourself. Ask others (politely) to respect the speakers and give them full attention. Or suggest they help you by not behaving in a distracting manner.
5. Practice Morita psychology: Know your purpose. Feel your feelings. Do what must be done. This simple prescription from Japanese psychologist, Shoma Morita, can be applied to anything. In this context: "My purpose is to gain this knowledge. I feel like every stray thought must be communicated to my tribe and every email must be read instantly. I quiet my mind and focus on the speaker and ignore my urge to distraction and self-importance."

Consider the advice of all these cool folks - the founding fathers, Gandhi, Morita, and thousands of years of human insights into grappling with our...ooh, bright shiny object...human nature.

I'm off to a webinar soon and will try to practice what I preach...
How about you? How do you un-distract yourself...or do you?

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(C) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.

References:

Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 reported by James Madison. editor, Adrienne Koch, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1987

Sign in and read the original report: http://www.virtualedgeinstitute.com/business-motivations-report/
Want to know more about what we can learn about business from the founding fathers and contemporary executives? http://www.ConventionalWisdomCenter.com