How to increase energy levels and beat the January blues

A fresh year is an ideal time to think about how to manage energy levels in your firm and to counteract those grey economic skies and winter blues. Since you won’t find many things with higher energy levels than CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, which is in the news fairly frequently, are there ideas we can spin-off from those physics boffins? Here are some thoughts.

1. Seek out energy. Positive energy is good, of course: yet negative energy also gives you something to work with, if you can turn it around. Just as a nuclear explosion demonstrates how a small piece of mass can be converted into vast amount of energy (E=mc2), so we’ve all seen how small proposals can release surprisingly large amounts of heat and angst within firms. To move our firms forward, we must first find and create sufficient internal energy.

2. Direct energy to where it is most useful. You must choose where you want to focus your energy if you are to get maximum bang for your buck. Unlike the LHC, you don’t want things crashing head-to-head at high speed, so agreed priorities can help. You’ll never be 100 per cent right but, major crises apart, you are likely to be 75 per cent right.

3. Increase the impact. People are attracted to initiatives if others they respect support it. If gravity is the curving of space in the vicinity of matter, how many people do you need to engage to create sufficient pull to bring others into your key projects?

4. Increase pace. By saying rest and motion are not absolute but are relative, Einstein effectively overturned the concept of motion accepted since Newton. Progress for our own firms isn’t against a ‘fixed’ point either, but is judged in relation to the speed and direction of other firms.

You may be getting better but, if others are getting better faster, you will be left behind. At the same time, be realistic about how fast your organisation can go – the highest speed is not the same as the optimal speed.

5. Reduce dissipation. Projects easily become overly complicated or bureaucratic and the resulting friction saps energy. Einstein suggests we make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

This has been a recurring theme in articles in Managing Partner: partners only have the time to deal with simple steps; complicated stuff will certainly disappear into a black hole.

6. Be sure what you want to measure. We are frequently told that if you can’t measure something it doesn’t matter and that if you are to effect change you need to measure things. Einstein had an alternative view: “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Think about some of those financial reports that certainly count something – but are not terribly illuminating. What matters most is how people behave. What are those few things that are truly critical for the year ahead and how do you keep the focus on them?

7. Be curious. Most of all, we should remain intensely curious: it is key to creativity. Being willing to question will also avoid the dangers of Management Group Think. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.” 

So from one newsworthy profession focused on logic, evidence and verification to another – perhaps we can start the year with the thought that achieving the right levels of well-directed energy will play a big part in getting the results we seek.