Page 88 - Make Work Great

It Starts with You

That’s Enough About You
We close the fi rst section of this book with a complete defi nition of
your personal node in the crystalline network. By being overt about
the tasks you must perform, you raise questions; by seeking clar-
ity through your relationships, you fi nd answers. In the process, by
balancing your attention between the tasks on your plate and your
relationships with others, you make improvements in both areas.
This overall balance—between tasks and relationships, between
questions and answers, between being overt and seeking clarity—is
your solution to the problem of maximizing output while minimizing

Stress in the Crystalline Network

The mandate of the early information age workplace is to make more
decisions, more quickly, based upon more information than ever
before. Yet, studies have concluded that in the absence of coping
mechanisms, time pressure adversely impacts the ability of decision
makers to consider and weigh competing information appropriately,
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make accurate judgments, and consider multiple alternatives.
Subsequent research adds ambiguity to the list of decision-making

stressors and confirms that such stressors reduce the opportunity to
gather information, process it, and give undivided attention to the
task at hand. And dividing attention is itself problematic: research
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suggests that the task-switching involved in such “multitasking” uses
valuable time and cognitive processing power. 5
In light of this, it’s easy to see how decision making and stress can
create a downward spiral—of information overload, ambiguity, time
pressure, and stress—that leads to decreased output and engagement.
Perhaps worst of all, the spiral accelerates itself naturally, because even
the anticipation of future stressful events can have the same cognitive
impact as actual stressors! Eliminating that spiral and replacing it with
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coping mechanisms in the form of an optimized balance between
output and stress is the key to survival and growth in the crystalline
workplace; it’s the key to making work great.

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