Strategic Fidgeting—When Everything’s Important, and Nothing’s Urgent

Welcome back to Communication Breakdown, a weekly podcast from the Observatory on Corporate Reputation. Thanks for joining us. I'm Steve Dowling in Silicon Valley. And I'm Craig Carroll in New York City. Each week, Steve and I take a look at strategies companies are using the shape headlines and sometimes save their skins. Supposed game show for PR pros.

This week, while you might be working twice as hard in July, just to avoid the discomfort of waiting, renaming the behaviors, killing the fake urgency and finding real ways to make next quarter easier on ourselves. Break out the sunscreen. Turn on the air conditioner. Summer is here. Conventional wisdom says executives are on vacation and consumer audiences are reading books at the beach rather than newspapers or blogs.

Your next major comms activities are probably in the fall, which feels over the horizon right now. And sometimes the quiet can be unnerving. Craig, we were talking earlier this week and you coined the term strategic fidgeting, which really resonated with me. Explain what it is and why it's important. Well, first of all, for all disclosure, I'm not sure I can take credit for quining it. I think I might have stolen it either from my subconscious or possibly from a group chat I was kicked out of.

But yeah, strategic fidgeting is the name I gave to that moment when senior leaders can't sit still. There's no fire to put out. There's no urgent deliverable, but the engine is still running. So you end up start tinkering. You're rethinking your org charts. You're reframing narratives. You're initiating projects that maybe don't need to happen yet. And it's not always unproductive. Sometimes it surfaces something useful, but it's important to recognize impulse.

You're not doing it because the business demands it. You're doing it because you can't tolerate stillness. The trick is knowing when you're thinking ahead and when you're just rearranging the furniture to feel like you're moving. So fidgeting isn't just nervous energy. It could also be a strategic asset if you know how to channel it. But first let's name where it starts because before we can turn restlessness into strategy, you have to admit what this moment actually feels like.

So let's just talk about the moment we're in. It's June, schools out, kids are home, where everyone else is kids are home. The inbox is quieter, the calendar isn't quite as brutal and yet somehow everything still

feels heavy. You know, you don't have the major campaign this week. You're not facing a crisis, but that doesn't mean that you're at peace. You know, you're just carrying a different kind of pressure, the ambient weight of everything that still matters, but you can't be forward on it right now.

You know, the CEOs out, your general counsel somewhere between Tuscany and a signal dead zone and your team is half on, half out and you know, in between being in Savannah for the seminar or being at can, you're left holding all the important but not urgent things. The brand narrative rewrite, the DEI narrative, the stakeholder engagement plan, so the Q4 campaign reset. None of it's on fire, but all of it matters.

And if we're being honest, you're tired, you're tired of carrying the way to things that won't move without the people who aren't here to help you and you know, you're just tired of feeling like you should be doing more, but also wishing you could do less. Sort of the summer slowdown paradox, no pressure, no drama to deadlines and yet still no peace.

Yeah, I've never been to Savannah or Cann, but I can relate because once you've worked and once you're used to working in a fast paced high pressure environment and then suddenly there's nothing on fire, I think there's this instinct that kicks in and you say, I should be doing something right now. If nothing seems urgent, if my phone isn't ringing off the hook, I must be missing something.

And this is an especially heightened response if you've ever over the course of your career, like missed something, which of course everybody has. So someone like me anyway, you never, ever want to miss something. Again, your instinct is to smother every issue. And so this phenomenon that you're describing, I think a lighter way of looking at it might be is that you're the dog who caught the car. You've reached the end of your to-do list.

This is a goal that we never really expect to achieve, but here you are and it feels weird. A solution or at least one way to try to think about this as I found is to set goals. Set goals for yourself. Set deadlines if you need to. If that's what's going to motivate you, if you can zoom out and really take the opportunity to assess the challenges that your org or your company faces, you can find the urgency.

Trust me, like if you're the type who thrives in that environment, you can find some urgency to motivate yourself.

It's a different pace and maybe it's a different mindset because of the slower pace, but I think once you start putting effort into it and maybe when you have other people from your team, then invested in it, the exercise of setting those priorities, having the space as you say to really achieve some things you've been wanting to do, that can be really healthy. Yeah. Sometimes that discomfort doesn't show up as panic, it shows up as activity.

You're not in crisis mode, but you're not exactly still either. You start tweaking things, revisiting plans, poking it projects that aren't broken, just to prove to yourself that you're moving. That's where this idea of strategic visioning comes in. It's I.K.O.S. It's not drift, it's something else entirely, and I think we all do it to some degree. Let's talk about what happens when you're a senior executive in the middle of slowdown.

There's no external pressure, there's no urgent deliverables, just that steady hum of the important but stalled work. You don't disengage, you don't rest, you fidget. Again, you revisit the team structure. Again, you reframe the brain narrative. Again, you start mapping out that re-orick that no one's asking for, no one's ready for. You don't need to do any event now, but it's the quiet, I think, that makes everybody restless. So that's where the idea of strategic visioning came in.

At a certain level, such as common, it's inevitable. It's sort of your brain-to-wave saying, "I need to move, but I don't know where yet." It might be subconscious pattern recognition, might be the residue of months in crisis mode, or might just be boredom disguised as vision. Sometimes visioning helps. It serves as tension, you haven't fully named yet, but left unchecked.

It can also send your team spending on things that they don't need to be fixing, or creating work with no business case, or a road in clarity in a moment that calls for restraint. I think the challenge is knowing when you're steering and when you're just shifting the wheel so that you don't feel still. Yeah, I think that dynamic that you're talking about, the urge to always be busy. In a way, it's kind of a crutch, right?

A lot of times, reactive issues are an easy and, let's admit it, an appealing distraction. They're a shiny object. And psychologically, they offer you this promise of, hopefully, instant gratification, right? The task is laid out for you.

And I think of it as like the old carnival game Wacomole. Remember that one? That's the appeal, right? You spot the rodent. It pops up and you know what to do with the mallet, right? So I think that that's the sort of reward system that we get trained on when you're used to dealing with crises or urgent deadlines and things like that. And I think also you know or you tell yourself you'd like to think that we do our best work under pressure, right? There's some glory to that.

And so if you find yourself creating pressure artificially to motivate yourself, I think that's the time when you need to step back and get some better perspectives. And I believe over the very long term, like over the arc of a career, the longer campaigns are where you can feel a bigger, maybe deeper sense of accomplishment. It's just that it takes longer. And I say that as someone who has spent probably the majority of his career playing Wacomole. So here's a question for you.

What's the signal that you've learned to watch for yourself that says this isn't clarity, it's just restlessness? For me, whether it's myself or some other, you know, team member or organization, for me, the red flag is complexity. When we feel we need to be busy or if someone else, you know, needs us to know that they're busy, I think that there's an instinct to like just start adding stuff, right? Even if it's just like it's sort of like a math problem where you have to show your work.

But there's this really, really valuable work in making things simple. And I think that's especially true in storytelling. And especially in setting strategy. And focus takes work in the end. If you're successful, you get something simple and clear, but that may not look like a lot of work, right? Oh my God. Simple does not mean easy for sure.

Right. But I think that when you think about deliverables and you think about a team member that really wants, you know, their manager, their superior, whatever, to know that they've done the work, I think that that's when I look for the complexity. And like, so I try to separate volume from the value of simple, clear, confident message

that's going to resonate like that's a lot more valuable than noise and complexity. And again, the like showing your work aspect of it, you know, even though people think that reflects a lot of work. That's one to remember value, not volume.

Okay. So, you know, what you're describing here is the discipline to resist the performance of work, you know, that instinct that we all have to equate effort with impact, especially when things are slow, which brings us to another form of strategic fidgeting, you know, not adding complexity, but cycling through it. And you know, the habit of checking dashboards, scrolling slack threads, bouncing between platforms, checking news reports one more time, just to feel connected to something.

Or maybe we should say checking linked in one more time. You know. It's not just the complexity for others to see, it's the complexity that we keep feeding ourselves, you know, it looks like vigilance, it feels like leadership, but we're often not. It's just what we're calling room scrolling. And so let's talk about that. What room scrolling looks like and white so hard to stop.

Yeah. I equate this to, this is an analogy that's going to become harder and harder as we all hopefully are driving electric cars, but you think of the old combustion engine and if you're in third gear on the highway, if you're in second gear on the freeway, like you are doing a ton of cycles and you are really over working. And I think that the skill building here is to get into fourth and fifth gear.

So you feel more like you are cruising and you can perform at the level that you want to without so many cycles. One way that I like to think of it is to pull back before you reach an extreme, it's really hard and you might not even want to let anybody know that you're doing it, but the advice that I've given people is when you're full throttle or heading towards full throttle, you increase your chances of making mistakes.

So creating those cycles is not a good strategy and I think you could burn yourself out, you

can push somebody else too hard. And you lose perspective. And so I think that just at the other same thing at the other end of the spectrum, that's when you miss things or you let them slip. I think the healthier state, and this is not always achievable, but it's like not the middle, but 90% instead of 100% because I think if we're honest and like for a lot of us, 100% to us is like 110% in any other situation. And so 90% to you might feel like 100% to us.

And at the other end of the spectrum, 25 or 30% effort to us probably feels like zero. And so I think of it as like holding back at the high end of the, continue the metaphor of the techometer, like before you hit the red, back off a little because you're doing yourself and your team a service by maintaining a manageable level of strain. Yeah. What's the saying? Sometimes good is good enough. I know we sometimes carry it too far, the other extreme. I don't look at it just honestly.

I don't look at it as compromising on the outcome or the quality. Oh, absolutely right. Yeah. I think it's just about how hard you push to get there and recognizing that your instinct may be, as you talk about room scrolling, your instinct, maybe to just keep going over it more and more and more. And you really don't need to, if you're good enough, and if you're in that role, I think that you probably are.

We have around our house, we have the saying that we've adapted from the safety announcement on the airplane. You know, they say in case of an emergency, when you know the oxygen mask, they say put your own mask on first and you the first time you hear that, you're like, oh my god. Why would you? But then you think like, if you don't have your own mask on, like you're not doing anybody any good.

So I think that training yourself to not overdo it, looking at a problem and going, I've spent enough time on this. Like, you know, time to move on to something else is a really critical time management principle. I think part of it also is that we've all been taught to separate performance from outcomes and for good reason. You know, it keeps us focused on what we can control, especially when the outcome is uncertain. But here's where it gets tricky.

We treat that separation like it's a straight line.

You know, the more performance, the better the outcome and that's not always true. Sometimes we hit the result at 40 or 60% performance and pushing it to 80, 90 or 100% performance I can actually get in the way. That's something a Marshall Goldsmith would talk about that, you know, more performance doesn't always mean better outcomes. Sometimes the wind comes from backing off, simplifying, creating space and not from turning every dial up to the max.

So I think the challenges that just staying in motion, it's knowing when to stop pushing and let the outcome land. Well, this may be tangential to, you know, what you've been thinking about here, but I think that sometimes when we think about coming at a problem, we have in mind the way we want to achieve it, right? Whereas you're looking for an outcome. And I think that if you get locked into that, that that it becomes problematic.

It becomes problematic for you, but in more cases, it probably becomes problematic for your team because really you should be open to, you know, other ways of achieving it. And I'm trying now to apply this to what, you know, what you've been talking about, but the broader point here I think is it's about breaking out of habits, like habits in time management, habits in how we, you know, what our expectations are for productivity.

Again, not lowering anybody's standards or expectations, but really just about how you come at it. And I think ideally if you change the way you come at work during the high pressure times, if you can, then that makes these low pressure times seem a little less anxiety inducing. Okay. Well, let's talk about a subtle leadership reflex that shows up during these slow cycles, especially times like now during the summer.

It's another type of strategic fidgeting, which I'm calling urgentsifying, urgentsifying meaning, making it urgent. Yes, that's it, right? Making it urgent, it's, you know, it's when we manufacture urgency around tasks that aren't truly urgent just to avoid the discomfort of stillness. Now, we don't call it that. What we do call it is getting ahead or showing momentum, but for honest, right, we're just really just filling the quiet, you know, you know, we've all done it.

You know, drafted a strategy memo from, from meetings that don't need to exist or we push

a narrative refresh while half your team is on vacation or we launch prep work for a cross-functional project that no one's ready for. And out of it's wrong is just, you know, mis-timed, you know, the urgency isn't coming from the business that's coming from us. And here's a catch, urgentsifying looks like good leadership. It's structured, it's proactive, it gets praised, but at the same time, it drains resources that creates confusion.

It fills the runway with motion that doesn't lead to movement. And sometimes what this is already saying you can do is match the moment, not by doing more, but by resisting the urge to create problems just so you can solve them. Yeah. I think somehow what you're describing, I think, is somehow people think of as a motivator. And, you know, this is akin to, you know, whether things are urgent or not, the, his phrase, like, "Oh, light a fire under them."

Or, like, somebody needs a kick in the pants or whatever. Peter Drucker used to say, you know, part of being a good leader is not just being firefighter, it's also being part arsonist. And I'm thinking, "Hmm, maybe, maybe there's a little bit here." Maybe when the time's demanded, but we're talking about a period when it doesn't. I think that, that fake urgency that you're describing, yeah. First off, it's easy to spot for people at all levels. And it undermines your credibility as a leader.

So I think you've got to recognize the signs in yourself and avoid doing that. It's just, it's not, especially over the long term, it's not a motivator for people. They just look at you and they go, "This person's just creating more cycles." And that's not a good use of my time. So you can still motivate people while acknowledging that, like, we're in good shape. And now's a good time to get some things done that we've had on our list. We didn't have the bandwidth for. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I also think that it's a great time to provide opportunities for your team, you know, when we're under pressure, we delegate things we don't have time for. When you've got room to breathe, you can create, as I said, these opportunities for somebody that might have been really waiting for their chance to shine, but because of all the crazy pressure that you're normally under, they don't get the chance. So I would try to look at a period of relative quiet or a slower pace to say, look around

and go, who might be ready to step up? And that's not, you know, step up because we're going to create some fake urgency, but like, here's something that maybe you can stay close to and be a mentor in that process. But I think that that's a healthier motivator, right, to say, here's something that we need. Here's something that's going to be valuable. And here's your chance to run it. Actually, that was pretty good.

I was not thinking about, you know, empowering your team that way, but that's a really good solution for how to handle the moment. Some of the things that I was thinking about here were certainly, you know, we don't want to force momentum. And, you know, we should be thinking about like how to create just enough structure to keep things moving on your own terms. But you know, it's not about over correcting. It's really about choosing where to apply your energy lightly, but deliberately.

So some that I've been thinking about separate from the one you mentioned is like, dang, that was good about team empowerment. It's like, where's my team? I'm not saying that's a good solution. But that's good. You're team deserves vacation. And you need to recharge. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So, but the way I've been thinking about it here is that during this moment, we kind of need, I like thinking about it as using forcing functions, right?

So it could be that, you know, we take, we use this time to pick a stalled initiative and we give it a quiet finish line. So fanfare, just to date, just to wrap it up or we can reframe the review, right? Or the, you know, don't say let's assess what's broken, say, let's make, here's my answer to it. Let's make next quarter easier on ourselves. And that is like a way of reframe. So we're using this month to learn, let's do the work now to make next quarter early easier on ourselves.

Oh, there we go. Yeah. Do the work now to make it easier on ourselves. And of course, the, the power question, what are we afraid will happen if we stop doing this? And if no one has a good answer, you probably have permission to pause. Yeah. I think that's the dynamic I was trying to describe earlier, which is like your instinct is to look around and go like, well, I must be missing something. Like if it's not on fire, I don't, I may not know how to identify it, right?

And so if I'm looking around and not seeing anything that I'm used to, then, you know, I must be doing something wrong. And that's, yeah, that's something where you need to get perspective and frankly, confidence that you're on top of stuff and that your team is on top of stuff. Absolutely. And the more constructive way to handle that is to, you know, start with that question that we often end with, which is, what am I missing? Right? But it's not a, I must be missing something.

It's, are we missing anything here? And, you know, at this time, you'd be okay with, if you're confident in it, like, no, I don't think we are. I think, you know, this is just a quiet time. I have one last one to mention. I know everyone's going to hate it.

And it's actually where I think it's just, you know, for people who are not willing to stick with it, they're going to revert back to strategic fidgeting and it's, it's taking time, blocking one hour of stillness, you know, not the meeting, not the brainstorm, just space to notice and pay attention to what matters. So it's not about doing more. It's about being selective in a season that tempts us to either over engineer or to check out entirely. So, you know, look, some are in the problem.

The problem is mistaking silence for irrelevance. And, you know, the reality is we can look at this just as much as a strategic opening. Yeah. I would say also just sort of in the final thoughts category for folks who are earlier in their career, folks who are not at the top of the org chart, the quiet time, assuming you have a, you know, a leader who is open to it. And I hope you do.

Like, the great time to show initiative by identifying some place, you know, in the organization or in the practices that could be improved and even just to bring it up and say, hey, you know what, like, we've got a little time here. Here's something that I've noticed we could be doing better or here's something that we could spend a little time on. You don't want to, you know, a deluge of random ideas.

Yeah. You think it's a good opportunity to again show initiative if you think that it's going to be well received. But I think it's, it's just again about showing that you can do things at different places, show some versatility in your, in your like mode. Like sometimes I think we have two speeds, which is like either again, full throttle or complete idle. Yeah. And the showing strength in the middle there is, I think, something that you want to,

you want to do is healthy. Yeah. I can think of a couple others I think that are easier and important here to do. One is using the time here for relationship building, you know, with members of your team as you're talking about empowering your team. I'm gritting my tea thinking about a team member coming to me with a project that we can do this summer. It's like, why don't we just focus on the relationship right now? I'm just getting it. It's a serious one.

Yeah. No, I think from a, from a leadership point of view, it's a great time to say, okay, well, it's we have our weekly staff meeting and nothing's on fire. Maybe it's a really good time to just do a recap and communicate things that you have seen the team do well. Maybe something is for improvement, but I think the current term is gratitude, right? Which may feel a little squishy. Yeah. Oh, that's great. We did not work that in yet. But yeah, I think it's, I think it's good.

I think it's just like if you know that your brain works better when, when you've got, you know, a solid agenda, right? And no one's putting stuff at the top of that agenda for you right now in the summertime. Moving up things that feel healthy, that feel team building. Again, we talked about empowering. Yep. I think those are things that can, that you can prioritize and scratch that, scratch that urge, gentzification itch.

But make them longer term or sort of more soft skills impactful if that makes sense. That is awesome. Excellent point to end on. Well, that's our show for this week. We want to thank Shawn P Neal and the team at Advocast as well as the people forward network for making our podcast possible. If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Our email address is podcast@ocrnetwork.com.

Communication breakdown is some production of the Observatory and Corporate Reputation. I'm Craig Carroll. And I'm Steve Dowling. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. [MUSIC] #StrategicLeadership #CorporateCommunications #CrisisPrevention #TimeManagement #TeamEmpowerment #WorkplaceWellbeing #ShawnPNeal #AdvoCast #OCRNetwork