Mo asks L. David Marquet: How can the language of leadership help us control the clock?

Controlling the clock is the antithesis of obeying the clock. In the industrial age it made sense because that’s the way production was done, but it doesn’t serve us in the way human teams interact now.
For creative work, controlling the clock is about acknowledging deadlines but controlling the rhythm between action and doing, and pausing and thinking. Doing is all about focus, whereas variability is an ally for thinking.
Many organizations are biased towards doing and action, and leave very little time for thinking and reflecting which leads to less innovation over time.
Another aspect of the industrial age is coercion. The very structure of most organizations is about controlling the actions of other people, and if that bleeds over into your client relationship, it’s not going to be very healthy.
Work with a client to choose a time to pause and get feedback, and as you get closer to the goal you can deliver more each time.
You want your decisions to have expiration dates. When you reach the expiration date, you revisit the activity and evaluate what’s working. The key is to commit until that date.
When we work in teams, we want the commitment to be small, so that the team can buy in without having to change their thinking right away. Make it easy for them to commit in the beginning instead of requiring them to admit their prior thought process was incorrect.

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