100: Juliet Funt — A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work
Jun 7, 2023
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Juliet Funt, globally renowned keynote speaker and founder and CEO of the efficiency training firm, discusses the significance of empathy in leadership and the need for a focused, agile, sane, and humane work environment. She explores the challenges and exhaustion faced by individuals in the working world, particularly during the pandemic. Additionally, Juliet provides strategies for improving email communication, reducing unnecessary recipients, and emphasizes the importance of teaching rather than just talking in leadership.
Leaders should prioritize empathy and understanding towards employees, fostering a work environment that values both focus and agility, as well as sanity and humanity.
Creating space in the day, such as adding white stripes to meeting calendars, improves individual well-being, time management, efficiency, and problem-solving skills.
Deep dives
The Need for Empathy and Understanding in the Workplace
Juliet Funt emphasizes the importance of leaders having empathy and understanding towards their employees. She suggests that leaders should spend time with new employees and listen to their complaints and concerns. Fostering a work environment that is both focused and agile, as well as sane and humane, is the ideal goal. This means creating a work culture that values order, cleanliness, and logic, while also allowing individuals to be human and take breaks when needed.
Creating Space for Innovation and Efficiency
Juliet Funt uses the analogy of building a fire to explain the importance of creating space in the day. Just as a fire needs space between its combustibles to ignite, our minds need space to be innovative and efficient. She suggests adding white stripes to meeting calendars to allow for breaks and reflection between meetings. This space not only improves individual well-being, but also leads to better use of time, increased efficiency, and improved problem-solving skills.
Overcoming the False Gods of Busyness
Funt discusses three drivers of busyness: insatiability, conformity, and waste. Insatiability leads individuals to focus on quantity over quality, constantly seeking validation for the amount of work they accomplish. Conformity causes individuals to follow the norm, even if it means engaging in wasteful practices. Waste refers to unnecessary activities that create inefficiency and hinder productivity. Funt encourages individuals to challenge these drivers and seek more meaningful and focused work.
Teaching and Implementing Change in the Workplace
To overcome busyness and promote a more efficient work environment, Funt emphasizes the importance of teaching and providing tools to employees. This includes mental models, frameworks, and shared language to help individuals understand and implement change. She suggests focusing on the concept of space and its positive impact on innovation, productivity, and overall well-being. Leaders should strive to clarify expectations and empower employees to ask questions and offer suggestions for improvement.
Featured in top media outlets such as Forbes, CNBC, and Fast Company, Juliet Funt is a globally renowned keynote speaker, tough-love advisor to the Fortune 500, founder and CEO of the efficiency training firm, Juliet Funt Group.
Juliet is the author of A Minute to Think, nominated for the Next Big Idea Club curated by Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Susan Cain and Adam Grant. She is an evangelist for freeing the potential of companies by unburdening their talent from busywork, and she has brought her powerful concepts to Spotify, National Geographic, Anthem, Vans, Abbott, Costco, Pepsi, Nike, Wells Fargo, Sephora, Sysco, and ESPN.