SUMMARY
How often do you struggle to navigate the desire to contribute high-impact, important work for your organization, and the seemingly constant demands on your attention from email, messages, and other activities? As a voice in the battle against busyness, Juliet Funt helps organizations release their people so that they can give themselves to their most important, high-impact work. In this conversation with David Ashcraft, Juliet explains some of the mindset shifts that leaders need to undergo in order to be champions for “white space,” and to minimize unnecessary busywork in their organizations.
IN THIS EPISODE
0:00 Intro
03:45 How did Juliet get into consulting?
06:15 Juliet’s basic approach to working with her clients, and their response.
09:00 Where organizations may struggle with adopting something like white space.
13:30 How does remote work impact efficiency and high-value work?
18:00 What kind of work does Juliet do with the military, and how did it come about?
28:20 Do individual attitudes about White Space change with age?
32:15 How do organizations benefit from focusing on efficiency?
39:30 What do leaders need to know about Juliet’s GLS talk?
41:30 Outro
LISTEN
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
STANDOUTS AND TAKEAWAYS
- The things that are great for human beings—standards, norms, ease, and skill—are the exact same things that can success for organizations.
- “Efficiency” has layers: blueprints (org charts, etc.) bricks (project plans, etc.) and mortar (human behavioral skill, norms, etc.). Most companies focus on the first two and neglect the third.
- White Space is not giving people a break to just space out or take a nap. It is liberating people from low-value work so that their minds are free to engage in high-value work.
- From COVID, to remote work, to the impact of AI, many well-intentioned leaders are stressed out and struggling to keep their heads above water. It’s easy to get trapped in a cycle: targets start to lag, so they push harder, but then the pushing negatively impacts the overall quality of work, which makes results happen more slowly, and so on and so on.
- Getting out of the cycle starts with measuring where the company is at with efficiency.
- The receptivity of the military to the concept of White Space is the number one surprise of Juliet’s career.
- White Space is not just about recuperation; it’s also about time to think strategically.
- The concept of the “work martyr” is still in our ethos but may be vanishing with the next generation of workers.
- Some generations derived satisfaction from the way they sacrificed for work, but that may be changing. Younger generations seems to have a high desire for meaning in their work.
- When you make work easy for people, they will bend over backwards to work for you.
- When work is logical, streamlined and thoughtful you have more time for strategic thinking, an increase in retention, a decrease in wasted payroll money, and more time for hard but high-value work.
- White Space does not result in more productivity; it is a by-product of a more productive workflow.
LINKS MENTIONED
David Ashcraft
President and CEO | Global Leadership NetworkWhitney Putnam
Vice President of Marketing | Global Leadership NetworkJuliet Funt
CEO | Juliet Funt GroupEp 180: Juliet Funt on Freeing Your People (and Yourself) for High-Value Work
TOPICS IN THIS PODCAST
CultureExecutionLeading OthersHow often do you struggle to navigate the desire to contribute high-impact, important work for your organization, and the seemingly constant demands on your attention from email, messages, and other activities? As a voice in the battle against busyness, Juliet Funt helps organizations release their people so that they can give themselves to their most important, high-impact work. In this conversation with David Ashcraft, Juliet explains some of the mindset shifts that leaders need to undergo in order to be champions for “white space,” and to minimize unnecessary busywork in their organizations.
On This Podcast
David Ashcraft
Global Leadership Network
David Ashcraft is President and CEO of the Global Leadership Network, as well as President of The Advantage, a leadership collaborative serving pastors in Pennsylvania. As Senior Pastor of LCBC in Pennsylvania for 32 years, he helped grow weekly attendance from 150 people to a combined average of more than 22,000.
Whitney Putnam
Global Leadership Network
Whitney Putnam is the Vice President of Marketing at the Global Leadership Network. She is passionate about men and women working together to expand their influence so that many more people come to know Jesus. As a builder, Whitney cares deeply about building healthy and holistic communities of people, from the team she has the joy of working with at the GLN to those in her neighborhood. She is a well-respected leader and innovator having served as an executive leader at several global non-profits. She’s a mom to three little girls and married to a tall redhead named Michael. They can most often be found dancing in their kitchen and occasionally sprinkling confetti in greeting cards, all while living in Dallas, Texas.
Juliet Funt
Juliet Funt Group
Juliet Funt is the CEO and founder of Juliet Funt Group, a training and consulting firm helping organizations, their leaders and employees reclaim their creativity, productivity and engagement. With thought-provoking insights and actionable tools, she has become a globally-recognized expert in helping leaders cope with the “age of overload” in which we all live and work. A warrior against reactive busyness and a force for change in organizations around the world, Funt teaches a streamlined method for personal process improvement that reduces complexity in the workplace. Teams that incorporate a WhiteSpace mindset and skill set increase creativity and engagement, reclaim lost capacity and execute at their finest. Her clients include a number of Fortune 100 companies and span a wide array of industries, from financial services to technology, manufacturing to the military. Funt’s new book, A Minute to Think, released at the 2021 Summit.
Show Notes
SUMMARY
How often do you struggle to navigate the desire to contribute high-impact, important work for your organization, and the seemingly constant demands on your attention from email, messages, and other activities? As a voice in the battle against busyness, Juliet Funt helps organizations release their people so that they can give themselves to their most important, high-impact work. In this conversation with David Ashcraft, Juliet explains some of the mindset shifts that leaders need to undergo in order to be champions for “white space,” and to minimize unnecessary busywork in their organizations.
IN THIS EPISODE
0:00 Intro
03:45 How did Juliet get into consulting?
06:15 Juliet’s basic approach to working with her clients, and their response.
09:00 Where organizations may struggle with adopting something like white space.
13:30 How does remote work impact efficiency and high-value work?
18:00 What kind of work does Juliet do with the military, and how did it come about?
28:20 Do individual attitudes about White Space change with age?
32:15 How do organizations benefit from focusing on efficiency?
39:30 What do leaders need to know about Juliet’s GLS talk?
41:30 Outro
LISTEN
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
STANDOUTS AND TAKEAWAYS
LINKS MENTIONED
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