It's three pm and Nicki's fat shot is ducking out of the office to go watch her kids perform at their school play. She's cool, right, But what you might not know is that Nicki is the CEO of Unilever Australia and New Zealand and at the time of recording, was also the global CEO of T two. So how can she possibly have time in the middle of a workday for a school show. Well, it's the positive side she's discovered in having an absolutely hectic work schedule as
a global CEO. She's sometimes on virtual meetings in the middle of the night to talk to teams on the other side of the world. But if she's going to be working from seven to eleven at night, then she can definitely carve out some time in the middle of the afternoon for her family. So how does she keep it all from toppling over and how does she keep her schedule in order when she sometimes needs to work while everybody else is a sleep Well it all comes
down to colors. My name is doctor Amantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent Him and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. On today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Unilever CEO Nicky Sparshot, who spoke with me about deliberately leaving time for urgent or reactive work in amongst her
quarterly priorities. And I wanted to know what does that look like in practice, Like does she have buffer time in her diary?
Yeah, I literally have, like my deep work is coded in yellow. That's my favorite color, and you know that's so that's my kind of maybe my favorite time. And then I've got yeah, it literally says do not book meetings, and it might be colored in orange, and I know that that time's then available. But you know what, there's a lot of freedom in it as well, because Anna, who works with me and she helps me manage my
diary and does it really well. She can then call me and say, Henny, can know you've said no meetings here, but this has come up. Is this more important or not? And that's so helpful because then I can just take an informed decision about you know, whether I give up that space or actually whether or not I need it for something else.
Yeah, now I'm really fascinated with this. I need more detailed nikis so would every day of your week, because I know you have your specific deep work time, which I do want to get into, but with all the other days, Like, would I be seeing a chunk blocked out in your diary in orange that says do not book like? Is that a daily occurrence?
If I can get it every day, then I will do it every day. To be honest, some days of train wrecks. You know, if you would look some days in my diary and it would look awful, it would look awful from seven thirty in the morning till eleven thirty at night because it just happened to be one of those days where there's you know, late night meetings with our global teams, and that I just suck those up.
Right.
If every single day was like that, it'd be really difficult. But the nature of the job is such that there needs to be a certain degree of flexibility, And you know what, I'm fine with that because it means that when there's something on at the kids' school and they've gone exhibition and I think, gosh, I am going to duck out and go and go and see that, and it might be, you know, three o'clock in the afternoon, but that's okay, because then I'll come back home and
I will work later on to the evening. I feel that that, to me is a version of work life balance.
Right.
I've been able to make the choices that are right for me and my family and still give what I need to do to the job, and so there's an enormous amount of freedom in that for me.
Now, deep work, I know you take deep work seriously, and you're referring to kind of having that, you know, thirty thousand feet view from the air of what's going on. Tell me about your deep work routine or ritual.
I think that the first thing that I love about it is that I'm not in a meeting, and I get a bucket boat of energy from being with other people. So this is not necessarily about the need to be on my own, but it gives me the space to have a bucket of time that I can now choose what I'm going to do with. And so I think just the very act of not having to be on a screen, not having to be in a conversation just allows me some space to go through just actions that
require some thought. And you know, I can times get into a habit of feeling like when you take action, you've got momentum. But what I've learned the longer I've kind of been in their career is that actually, sometimes the moments of greatest impact at the times when you don't feel the need to act, but you just give yourself the space to think. And I'm getting better at that.
You know, when I, on occasion receive an email that sets up like boiling, whereas my inclination may have been to respond, I now sit with it just that little bit longer than I normally would have, and I think nine times out of ten, my response is different to what it would have been had I just allowed myself to react instinctively. So that's what I love about that
deep work time. I just have that opportunity to give myself the space to think about things without the rush, without the chaos, without the noise of the daily operation.
Will you have particular things that you bring into that deep work time that you're like, Okay, I want to think about this particular goal or this particular project, Like how planned is that deep work time.
It varies depending on what I need to do. So let's say it's a bit of work on the organization and people. Then I might actually use some post it notes and stick them up on the wall and you know, have a little bit of my own mini workshop on my own that's really valuable. Occasionally I will call other people, I will do a sort of dialar friend, because that is the time I actually want to get some outside
in perspective. So sometimes I use that deep work time actually to connect with the people in other companies quite often, sometimes in other industries. Quite often that can give me a different way of looking perhaps at the problem. All the opportunity that I have.
That idea of, like the kind of phone a friend. I like that, Like how how do you think about your networks in that sense? And who you'll call for what?
Yeah, look, I think actually, you know, people will say how important it is to have a network and to do networking and all that sort of stuff, And I think, actually, just at the heart of it is two you can either feel incredibly resourced constrained at times, or you can realize that there's an incredible amount of resource abundance if you just reach out and generously share your knowledge and equally, you'll find that people are very very generous.
In sharing that.
That's been my experience at least, so sometimes the people that I have in my network, I like it to be varied, like I'm a really big believer in the businesses I lead or the teams that I'm part of. And I also would put this in my own kind of personal social kind of circle.
I like.
Perspective. I like to be able to connect with people that can offer alternative ways of thinking about things. Cuze, just give you a very creative lens.
I just love how structured and deliberate Nicki is when she thinks about her time, which probably explains why she was holding down to major CEO rolls when we spoke. Now, if you've enjoyed this episode of How I Work, why not share it with a friends that you think would like it too. And thank you to everyone that has done that and helped How I Work reach over three
million downloads. How I Work is produced by Inventing with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to Mit Nimba who does the audio mix and makes everything sounds better than it would have otherwise, see you next time.