What the hell was I doing?

In early 2017, I left a 20-year career in the City of London. I'd had enough. I couldn't stand it any more, it felt toxic and it wasn't just me. On my daily commute, I would stare out of the train window, using music and noise-cancelling earphones, desperately trying to block out the noise around me. What the hell was I doing? Whatever it was, I hated it.

I think it had been happening for years, I had been just going through the motions and hadn't really questioned it. But as I walked down Old Broad Street one day, I noticed that it was filled with people like me, miserable people on their dull silent march to work. Some stood sharing a cigarette, moaning about their miserable existence and their crappy managers. When I got to the office, they were doing it there too, either at their desks in low voices or in precious meeting rooms. It seemed to be the only thing happening in meeting rooms all of a sudden. Then I noticed it on the train, it was everywhere.

How had we got here? I thought it was leadership, or the lack of it. Despite the many millions of pounds that had been spent on leadership development, there were no more leaders that day than 20 years ago. Anytime we heard the word 'leadership' it was usually in the context of 'poor leadership'. Why was that? 

I had attended a leadership development course. I thought it was very good. At the end of the first day, I asked one of the others (a very senior person in the company) what they thought of it. "It was okay I suppose, but how am I going do all of that while I already have the stuff I currently do?". I couldn't believe it. That was their job....LEADING. The stuff they were already doing was day-to-day transactional stuff that they should have delegated ages ago.

The conversation lead me to assume that managers simply didn't value leadership. They had deserted us, they didn't care, I was done!

I went out on my own, looking to help businesses finally find an answer the 'leadership culture' problem. "I'm too busy to talk", would come the answer, time and time again. It sounded like they were asking, “How do I get time back”, “How can I be less busy?”. But was it an excuse or the truth. Either way, I didn't have a response. It was frustrating, all I was trying to do was help. I had to create an approach that would give people back some time to talk. It had two-steps, and was based on an approach I had used when running a large organisation. But it caught people's attention.

Having opened the door, I gained an insight into people's diaries and the reasons they gave for the things that made them so busy. I made a profound discovery. Managers' lack of leadership wasn't because they didn't value it, it was because they already thought they were doing it!

They thought that working evenings and weekends, micro-managing, doing things themselves, "...because it's just quicker if I do it.", cancelling holiday and training because of looming deadlines, and not spending time with friends and family wasleadership. They were filling their days with it. No wonder all that money spent on leadership development had gone to waste.

It wasn't their fault though. Leadership wasn't taught formally, at school, college or university. We got our first taste when we got to work. The problem is that we learnt it from those who were there first, and they weren't taught it either. We'd passed down our experiences from generation to generation without realising the damage we were doing.

It should have been obvious. I'd seen a survey that said 65% of people surveyed said they would forego a pay-rise in favour of seeing their manager sacked!!

I realised that people weren't leading because they were too busy, and they were too busy because they didn't realise what they're doing with their time. I'd had enough! I decided to show them. Three more steps were added, and the Diary Detox® was born. I had created something that not only gave people back their time, but also gave them a thirst for leadership.

The look on people's faces when the colours are turned on, and their diary becomes a heat-map, is priceless. I feel excited, because I know that they finally see what I see. They see what they are doing for the first time. I know that their frustration is finally over and they'll never look at their diary (and their time) the same way again.

They all now know what they are doing. The question is, what are you doing?