Her message is simple and powerful – Get some sleep.
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After viewing this clip, you may be thinking, “What has this got to do with HR professionals and strategic planning?” The answer lies in the power of giving organizations time for dreaming. Especially when those organizations invest in the creative processes of shaping their own mission and vision. Strategic planning should not be the production of a management checklist. Rather, it should arise from the power of creative thinking.
When are our thoughts the most creative? When we are given time to rest and to dream.
As Ms. Huffington states, we are in a society that seems to value the sleep-deprived state of one-upmanship. Organizations, reflective of this society, seem to be caught up in the busy-ness of the business. How much time is spent resting instead of doing, in order to allow for big picture thinking, planning and looking out for the future? There seems to be far too much emphasis on a frenetic goal oriented checklist that narrows our work-life focus into the minutia and drains us of organizational life. Getting ‘stuff’ done becomes critical so that we can prove our busy-ness worth in comparison to each other.
What gets lost in all of this frantic detail driven activity? The ability to see and create mission, vision, and values, which come from, and enable, big picture clarity.
Organizations are living creations, made up of valuable human energy that ebbs and flows in natural rhythms. All living things need to rest so that they can be re-filled and re-charged in order to meet new challenges in positive ways. At the very least, let’s give ourselves a break and start building in some ‘organizational dream time’ on that checklist.
Maybe, we should sleep on it first.
Discussion Questions:
- How much time in your workday is devoted to thinking and not doing?
- When you are tired, how would you rate your ability to be creative?
- When are you most creative and productive within your workday?
- What is the value in being sleep deprived?