TSR #8: How to sustainably impact your work environment
Highway hypnosis is killing your work environment, here’s how to overcome it.
4-minute read
What’s in this newsletter:
Highway hypnosis at work (yes, it’s a real thing)
What is environmental alignment?
Why it’s important
One actionable exercise you can do with your team
Don’t fall into highway hypnosis at work
Have you ever been driving somewhere, and all of a sudden you look around you and think “How did I get here? Have I been running red lights this whole time?”
This is called highway hypnosis.
It’s a nice little break that our brain gives us while we run on auto-pilot, “take this drive off, shout that Taylor Swift song, I got this”.
Highway hypnosis is not such a nice break for our work lives…
What is environmental alignment?
When you start at a new company or get a promotion, your first step is always to get acquainted with your new environment.
“Here’s how we do things around here. This is who you should be working with daily. Read these resources, and let me know if you need anything, I’m your go-to person.”
This is environmental alignment.
Why environmental alignment is important
This environmental alignment is important because for a glorious moment you are hyper-aware of:
The company's aspirations
Everyone’s roles and responsibilities to fulfill those aspirations
The processes and tools available to help you achieve those aspirations
Then you get into the swing of things, and start to lose this clarity. Little changes to roles, responsibilities, and processes add up over time and the once clear vision of your company’s ways of working is now a dirty windshield that you try and clean by turning on the wipers (ok sorry that’s the last driving reference, I swear).
What can you do to gain environmental alignment without having to get re-onboarded?
The sustainable way to do this would be to
Revisit your company goals and objectives
Break those down into specific tactics
Map out your ways of working system (roles, responsibilities, processes, tools, etc.)
Redesign the system to match your company’s needs
Unfortunately, most teams don’t have the time to go through this process. They need something more lightweight, and more actionable now.
One actionable exercise you can do with your team
As you go through the next week, reflect on the decisions you’re making, the things you’re doing, and the processes you’re following.
Assess what each of these things is accomplishing or unlocking for your company. Are these actions contributing to the outcomes our company wants to prioritize?
Define any gaps or overlaps in your list. Where are we doing too much to achieve the same outcome? Where are we not doing enough?
Act on it. What can we do about this? Can we reduce processes where there’s an overlap? Can we add a commitment or responsibility where there’s a gap?
You can use this as a conversation starter with your team, or to back up proposals with your leadership.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
