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You are here: Home / 2020 / Archives for April 2020

Archives for April 2020

Ministry Roundtable Discussion on the Pandemic with Challies, Heerema, Cosper, Thacker, and Schumacher

April 29, 2020 by Matt Perman

Last week Matt Heerema (founder of Mere Agency and former web developer at Desiring God) organized a Zoom discussion where I got to talk about the global coronavirus shutdown with some of the leading thinkers in the church today.

It was a great discussion and the video is above. Matt summarizes it better than I could:

Weeks in to the global coronavirus shutdown, there have been numerous articles, interviews, think pieces, and a ton of speculation. I guess I’m late to the party. 🙂

I had the opportunity to sit down with five of the smartest people I know and ask them what they were thinking, feeling, reading, and wondering about during this time. We came out with a little over an hour of fascinating (to me) stuff.

Topics ranged from communion to “virtual church”, God’s sovereignty, to lament, economics, to digital privacy and data security. All that and more!

I hope you find it useful.

My guests were:

Jason Thacker – Associate Research Fellow and Creative direct at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Author of “The Age of AI”. You can find more of his work at jasonthacker.com

Tim Challies – Pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario. Blogger at challies.com, and a speaker and author of multiple books.

Mike Cosper – Pastor at Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY. Director of Podcasting for Christianity Today, he’s also an author, speaker, podcaster, musician. Find him at his website (which looks like it needs an update 😉 mikedcosper.com.

Matt Perman – Director of Career Development at The King’s College, NYC, founder of What’s Best Next, and an author of a book by the same title. You can find more about him at mattperman.com.

Eric Schumacher – Associate pastor at Grand Avenue Baptist Church, Worship Songwriter, and author of Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women. His site emschumacher.com.

Filed Under: Current Events

Is Calling Some Jobs Essential a Helpful Way of Speaking?

April 23, 2020 by Matt Perman

Yesterday the governor of my state, Andrew Cuomo, said this:

 You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.

As someone who works professionally in the field of career development, I have something to say about this.

However, first of all, I want to say this: It is getting tiring to see the predominant ethic of shame on social media. If someone says something others don’t like, that person is shamed and silenced rather than respected. But the foundation of a free society is allowing people to say things you don’t agree with, and treating them with respect. Instead of shaming a person, the thing to do is express your disagreement by using reason and argument — and doing so in a gracious and respectful way. And you need to assume the best of a person. A society is healthier when all sorts of different views are able to be presented without threat of social stigma and social harm (shame is a form of social harm), and we treat one another fairly. Beyond this, if you resort to shame it is an almost immediate tip off that you might not actually have actually formulated good reasons for your position.

To apply this to Cuomo’s statement means this: This is probably one of those things he wishes he had said differently. Sometimes we all say things in the moment that come across differently than we mean. In this case, his comment seems very insensitive. I think he would probably prefer to revise it.

Now, to focus on the issues, his statement raises two broader issues that often come up in many other ways as well. First, the comment raises the issue of job choice. And the answer it implies is the wrong one (albeit somewhat common). The problem is that it goes against the nature of what it takes to build an effective career. To build an effective career, you have to give concern to what kind of jobs are a good fit for you. You cannot only say “this is available, this is easy to get, this is what I will do.” That is a reductionistic approach to career management that does not take skill and job satisfaction into account — things which are very important (even if they don’t always feel urgent — on which, see below). This approach is less effective — not only for you, but also for the positive impact you will be able to have on others. Even temporarily, it is a risky approach to choosing jobs. It is also inefficient. Should the sales manager at a car dealer, whose work is on hold right now, really set aside his career in order to take a job in an Amazon warehouse for three weeks? This implies that switching jobs is easy and can be done at the drop of a hat. Further, maybe it’s better for the sales manager to be getting ready to get back to work and taking this time to sharpen his skills and do professional development. Beyond this, it is not up to the government to tell people what jobs they should and should not be pursuing.

Second, it raises the issue of whether it is most helpful to speak in terms of “essential workers.” Here, productivity comes into play. What we are dealing with here is not actually the categories of “essential” and “non-essential,” but “urgent” and “important.”

What we really mean when we speak of “essential” work is urgent work. Almost all jobs are, I would say, essential in one way or another. Or, to put it in productivity terms, important. The issue is that some jobs that are important deal with urgent needs, and some jobs that are important deal with non-urgent needs. The fact that something is not-urgent does not mean it is not important. It just means you can delay dealing with it for a time. But if you delay dealing with it indefinitely, there is a price to pay — that is just as bad as ignoring urgent needs. In fact, if you don’t do the non-urgent but important work, it causes the urgent and important work to build — it’s why so often we are putting out fires.

Here is an example. Drinking water is urgent and important. If I go more than a day without drinking any water, I will start to experience many negative effects and fairly soon, my health will be at risk. Exercising, on the other hand, is not urgent. I can skip running for three days, or even a week, and not experience negative health ramifications. But if I never go running (or regularly exercising in some other way), I will experience significant long-term health issues. Exercising is important, but not urgent. As you can see, the fact that it is not urgent does not mean that it is not important, and it does not mean that I can put it off indefinitely.

So it is with “essential” and “non-essential” workers. The “non-essential workers” are doing things that are important and must be done. They are, in other words, doing truly essential things. They are just not doing things that are as urgent as those in the category being called “essential.”

Out of respect for all types of work, and all types of lawful careers, I would therefore suggest a better term is “urgent” workers, rather than “essential” workers.

Filed Under: Work

An Interview on Coronavirus and Productivity

April 21, 2020 by Matt Perman

A few weeks ago Daniel Kaufman, one of the members of our team, had the idea of sharing a behind the scenes look at what each of us is doing during this unique season. He created a set of interview questions for each us, and here are my answers. If possible, we’ll have interviews with Daniel and James coming up.

How has the current pandemic affected your work habits?
I much prefer to be in the office, and then working from home maybe one day a week if possible to focus on large projects. But there are two main ways I’m aiming to make the most of this.

First, I’m trying to get more rest and sleep. Because of not having a commute, I feel less pressure to do extra work in the evenings. I try to take that time to relax more and get rested (though I don’t always do that). I think this will have long-term benefits after things are back to normal. 

Second, I’m able to make more progress on some large, long-term projects I’ve been working on. These projects involve lots of writing and development of systems, which is hard to do when you have more interruptions.

What one piece of advice would you give to people who are suddenly having to work from home?
Lots of people right away say to make a schedule and respond quickly to emails from your boss so they know you are working. While those things may be important, they fail to take advantage of the new paradigm that working from home creates.

Working from home saves time in two big ways: no commute, and less in-person interruptions. Now, not all in-person interruptions are bad. I think they are an important part of what makes work human and effective, actually. However, the reality is that now you have less of them.

So you need to take advantage of this extra time created by increasing your professional development. Invest the extra hour a day, or something like that, to intentionally get better at the skills required by your job. That could look like taking some online classes at Skillshare or Coursera or Udemy, or self-directed learning. 

I would especially recommend that everyone learn about management. Many who are managers never received training; and those who aren’t in management now may be one day but, even if that is not the case, everyone needs to know what good management practices are so they can be supportive of them. The best book on management is Marcus Buckingham’s First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. 

Have you been able to get to anything that was on backlog prior to this?
Yes, I am spending a lot of time getting backlogged projects completed, which is one of my favorite things.

How does your view of the gospel affect your productivity during this time?
My view of the gospel is leading me to think hard about what the best strategies are to minimize the spread of the virus and help America get back to work. Someone might say that’s just for government leaders to care about. However, the NT was one of the first ancient documents to acknowledge that all people are equal, and it is the gospel which brought that truth into new focus.

Because all people are equal, that leads to the concept of self-government—which we have in America. This means that every citizen has a duty to think hard about our government policies and cultural strategies for dealing with large problems. This is a right and duty we all have, and society is better when everyone is exercising their critical thinking.

How does the call to love people look different when working remotely from home?
Working from home brings a unique opportunity to give more time to important but not urgent tasks. I think loving people well in this time means making sure we take initiative to make progress on those tasks, and not let our extra time simply be taken up by more email and Zoom meetings.

Be deliberate about where the extra time you now have available goes. It is easy for that to be taken by new kinds of urgency, or the wrong-headed value of instant responsiveness (unless you are literally in a customer service position). The projects with long-term value that no one is pressuring you to do–those are often the way to make the biggest impact in people’s lives and in your work. So protect the time to identify and do more of those projects.

Filed Under: Productivity Context

Overcoming a Whacking — Like the Impact of Coronavirus on the Economy

April 16, 2020 by Matt Perman

In his book The Real Life MBA, Jack Welch has a great chapter called “Overcoming a Whacking.” This is relevant to how businesses can start to recover from the economic pause created by the pandemic.

Here are my notes:

Overcoming a Whacking

…and getting better because of it

Business is like sports—fast, competitive, strategic, teamwork, nuance, surprise

Sometimes outright calamities, but sometimes whacked because not prepared. Didn’t see something coming.

Whack recovery:

  • Own your whack: distracted, frightened, depressed workers can’t fix anything
  • Hang on tight to your best
  • Get maniacal about drivers of cost, performance, and growth. Using data as guide.
  • Reinvent your strategy process
  • Reality check your social architecture
  • Worry more productivity

1. Own the whack

Know what happened and gain courage. Distracted, frightened, depressed workers can’t fix anything.

2. Hang on tight to your best

When a company gets in trouble, often knee-jerk reaction of firing people without consideration of performance. Often because no performance appraisal system, and want to show board how fast they are acting and deeply they are cutting. So take the easy way out—fire 10%, or cut salaries 10%, or buyout package to any worker willing, and highest paid and  most qualified tend to take

Epitome of weak, cowardly, demoralizing management. Why would you incentivize your best out the door and risk setting off a mass talent exodus?

You’ll never get out of a hole without your best people. So in hard times, must do the counterintuitive and even courageous—give your best people more in current pay and long-term performance based equity, and err on side of too many participants than too few.

This is the time, of all times, to unleash the generosity gene. The best stay, and then others stay.

“Your best people are your best hope for survival and success. Do what it takes not to lose them.”

3. Meticulously search for ways to improve every part of the business

Meticulous does not mean slow!

Determine the true drivers of costs and growth

4. Reinvent the strategy process

Not bi-annual session with elaborate presentations

5 slide approach

Draw the best people from every part of the organization to create

  1. Competitive playing field; who they are, strengths and weaknesses. Get into detail.
  2. All of competitor recent activity—products, tech, and people moves that have changed the landscape.
  3. What you’ve been up to in same regard over same period
  4. What’s around the corner
  5. Your big, wow-worthy, winning move to change the landscape

Find a smart, realistic, and relatively fast way to gain competitive advantage 

5. Reality check your social architecture

= How the business has its people arranged

Filed Under: c Strategy

This is a Time to Innovate the Way We Get Work Done

April 14, 2020 by Matt Perman

Jack Welch was right: we live in a time of dazzling innovation. Not just in terms of cool products and solutions to engineering problems, but also in terms of how we get work done.

Now this is even more true during the Corona economy, as so much of the workforce is having to adapt to remote working.

Remote working is a different paradigm from in-the-office working — which is often overlooked. If you simply try to adapt it to the rules of working well at the office, you will be unable to harness the unique advantages it offers.

Here are two books that can help you think through and make the most of the unique advantages of remote working. These ideas will remain useful even after people are able to go back to the office. Why? Because they articulate an improved way of thinking about work in the connected economy altogether.

Interestingly, both of these books are now several years old. But the concepts are still catching on and these are still two of the most helpful.

Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It. I wish this book was called something else. However, the concept of a “results only work environment” is huge. The principle is this: work where you want, when you want, as long as the work gets done. The full implementation of this might not be for every organization, but the underlying concepts of trust and freedom — with accountability for results, not methods (a core principle of good management) — are important for all contexts.

Remote: Office Not Required. By the founders of 37 Signals (now Basecamp; I actually liked the former name better). The authors can overstate things too much in some of their writings, but there is nonetheless a lot to learn from them and I enjoy their willingness to be unconventional and their lively style of writing.

Filed Under: Remote Working

Maintaining Motivation While Remote

April 8, 2020 by Matt Perman

Any chance you’ve been struggling with motivation after going remote? You might be helped by the interview I did on motivation with King’s 101 for students of The King’s College. The principles are relevant for everyone.

And they are even relevant for any mode of work — both now when many are working remotely, and once we are through this and people who don’t usually work remotely are able to go back to their workplaces.

 

Filed Under: e Motivation

What Results Are Expected of You?

April 5, 2020 by Matt Perman

A key question for staying on track with your work is this: what are the results expected of me? Each week, each quarter, and each month?

You need to have a general answer for this, and then you need to translate that specifically to each week and each day.

It works best to define your tasks from those results—rather than starting with the tasks and trying to get to the results. Start with the results and work backwards. That may sound easy, but most of us (including me) all too easily start the other way around—tasks to results.

Filed Under: Weekly Planning

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What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

We help you do work that changes the world. We believe this is possible when you reflect the gospel in your work. So here you’ll find resources and training to help you lead, create, and get things done. To do work that matters, and do it better — for the glory of God and flourishing of society.

We call it gospel-driven productivity, and it’s the path to finding the deepest possible meaning in your work and the path to greatest effectiveness.

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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3 Questions on Productivity
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Productivity is Really About Good Works
Management in Light of the Supremacy of God
The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards in Categories
Business: A Sequel to the Parable of the Good Samaritan
How Do You Love Your Neighbor at Work?

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  • Job Searching During the Coronavirus Economy
  • Ministry Roundtable Discussion on the Pandemic with Challies, Heerema, Cosper, Thacker, and Schumacher
  • Is Calling Some Jobs Essential a Helpful Way of Speaking?
  • An Interview on Coronavirus and Productivity

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