Monday reflection: Quiet reflection

 

Peter Drucker said that we should, “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” 

We all need to recharge our personal batteries, but do we do it enough? How often do you retreat?  Retreating in its spiritual or religious sense is about taking time away from everyday life and reflecting and seeking to find answers to the issues or problems that we face. 

Retreat, or quiet reflection, as a process helps us with our personal lives, but can also help us in our working lives too. Quiet reflection can give us perspective, clarity, give us space to learn and grow and also help us to be more self-aware. When we have days on the production line, wall-to-wall Teams Meetings, rushing between activities and meetings when do we give ourselves time to reflect? Meetings can be very good to air views and opinions and reach a consensus, but a trap that many organisations fall into is to end up having a meeting to discuss what you they are going to discuss at the next meeting and so on and so on and never making any decisions other than the date of the next meeting.

How noisy is your office space, are you constantly being interrupted when you are trying to think through ideas? Are you encouraged to leave enough time for quiet reflection in your working day or do you make space for reflection?  When project timetables are developed is the need for reflection incorporated into the design process i.e. building in having time to “sleep on it”?  How many times has your organisation decided in haste and repented at leisure? If the answer is “Too many times!” then maybe you need to consider incorporating this management process more effectively into your corporate style!

Have colleagues been developed in the art of quiet reflection and is this valued as a management process?  In your personal or organisational values do clarity, perspective, learning and self-awareness feature? If not, why not?