Cool Down by Steve Prentice Read Free Book Online Page A

expectations in advance rather than as they happen. By taking the time to learn more about her client, possibly identifying him as a workaholic, or merely a stressed or disorganized businessperson, Leanne would be in a far better position to anticipate his needs and prepare accordingly. This is the kind of communication and understanding you just can’t get through email.
    My second piece of advice was for Leanne to pause and take some time to assess this customer’s overall value. Sometimes the cost of maintaining a client can be too high. Leanne was not able to grasp this until I explained that the cost should not be viewed in terms of the relationship with that particular client, but in terms of what it is doing to all of her other client relationships—the ones she can no longer maintain correctly owing to the incessant demands of this one individual. This is typical of the way in which the silo effect brought on by information overload wreaks its havoc by preventing us from seeing ourselves from the outside.

THE NEED TO STAY IN THE LOOP
    The addiction to speed goes further than just the hard-wired need to respond to individual messages and clients. It has insinuated itself even further under our collective skin to the point that even when there is no email or voicemail message demanding immediate response, a craving still lurks. It’s the need to stay “in the loop.”
    This is an obsession, a very human one. As I described earlier, a great many people yield to the temptation to check in and read their email moments before going to bed, simply because they have the technology to do so. Or they check it during their kid’s school recital, or during a meeting, or in a restaurant or movie theatre. Some call in to the office for messages while driving. (This latter example, of using a cell phone while driving, has been proven to deliver the same degree of functional impairment as does a blood alcohol level of 0.08 percent, which is the standard of defining impaired driving in most states and provinces. 2 ) The call of the loop even makes a walk between point A and point B feel like wasted time if our wireless PDA or cell phone is not activated and used along the way.
    These people will even check into the office while they’re on vacation, sometimes sending the rest of the family off to enjoy themselves, while they stay in the hotel room, tending to the loop. Surely this isn’t because they find their work to be preferable to spending time with their children. It’s because they fear the repercussions of not being there. Work or customer issues might escalate into problems in their absence, and then one of two things might happen:
    â€¢ Either the problem gets worse because they’re not there to fix it, which is going to cause further problems after the vacation is over, or
    â€¢ The problem gets fixed in their absence, thereby exposing them as less-than-absolutely-essential parts of the corporate machine.
    People who feel the pressure or the desire to always stay in this loop should take care to note that a loop is much like a hamster wheel, with no beginning and no end. It does not guarantee progress. Instead, it guarantees a constant revisiting of the same surface-level problems and delays, eliminating along the way any possibility for longer-term creative resolution. Such a loss of control can actually result in the obligation to stay in the loop actually being imposed by others, not just by yourself. Consider the following case study.
Mary’s Interruptions and the Escalation Factor
    Mary works for a large organization. Like many of her colleagues she receives a large number of emails per day from customers who have questions or requests. Many of these people send their messages with the “Read Receipt” feature attached, which informs them the moment Mary has opened and read their letter. Mary already knows that it makes sense to assign all but the most