Speaker 1: It's three pm and Nicki's fat shot is ducking out
Speaker 1: of the office to go watch her kids perform at
Speaker 1: their school play. She's cool, right, But what you might
Speaker 1: not know is that Nicki is the CEO of Unilever
Speaker 1: Australia and New Zealand and at the time of recording,
Speaker 1: was also the global CEO of T two. So how
Speaker 1: can she possibly have time in the middle of a
Speaker 1: workday for a school show. Well, it's the positive side
Speaker 1: she's discovered in having an absolutely hectic work schedule as
Speaker 1: a global CEO. She's sometimes on virtual meetings in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night to talk to teams on the
Speaker 1: other side of the world. But if she's going to
Speaker 1: be working from seven to eleven at night, then she
Speaker 1: can definitely carve out some time in the middle of
Speaker 1: the afternoon for her family. So how does she keep
Speaker 1: it all from toppling over and how does she keep
Speaker 1: her schedule in order when she sometimes needs to work
Speaker 1: while everybody else is a sleep Well it all comes
Speaker 1: down to colors. My name is doctor Amantha Imba. I'm
Speaker 1: an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy
Speaker 1: invent Him and this is how I work a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. On
Speaker 1: today's My Favorite Tip episode, we go back to an
Speaker 1: interview from the past and I pick out my favorite
Speaker 1: tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with
Speaker 1: Unilever CEO Nicky Sparshot, who spoke with me about deliberately
Speaker 1: leaving time for urgent or reactive work in amongst her
Speaker 1: quarterly priorities. And I wanted to know what does that
Speaker 1: look like in practice, Like does she have buffer time
Speaker 1: in her diary?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I literally have, like my deep work is coded
Speaker 2: in yellow. That's my favorite color, and you know that's
Speaker 2: so that's my kind of maybe my favorite time. And
Speaker 2: then I've got yeah, it literally says do not book meetings,
Speaker 2: and it might be colored in orange, and I know
Speaker 2: that that time's then available. But you know what, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of freedom in it as well, because Anna,
Speaker 2: who works with me and she helps me manage my
Speaker 2: diary and does it really well. She can then call
Speaker 2: me and say, Henny, can know you've said no meetings here,
Speaker 2: but this has come up. Is this more important or not?
Speaker 2: And that's so helpful because then I can just take
Speaker 2: an informed decision about you know, whether I give up
Speaker 2: that space or actually whether or not I need it
Speaker 2: for something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I'm really fascinated with this. I need more
Speaker 1: detailed nikis so would every day of your week, because
Speaker 1: I know you have your specific deep work time, which
Speaker 1: I do want to get into, but with all the
Speaker 1: other days, Like, would I be seeing a chunk blocked
Speaker 1: out in your diary in orange that says do not
Speaker 1: book like? Is that a daily occurrence?
Speaker 2: If I can get it every day, then I will
Speaker 2: do it every day. To be honest, some days of
Speaker 2: train wrecks. You know, if you would look some days
Speaker 2: in my diary and it would look awful, it would
Speaker 2: look awful from seven thirty in the morning till eleven
Speaker 2: thirty at night because it just happened to be one
Speaker 2: of those days where there's you know, late night meetings
Speaker 2: with our global teams, and that I just suck those up.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: If every single day was like that, it'd be really difficult.
Speaker 2: But the nature of the job is such that there
Speaker 2: needs to be a certain degree of flexibility, And you
Speaker 2: know what, I'm fine with that because it means that
Speaker 2: when there's something on at the kids' school and they've
Speaker 2: gone exhibition and I think, gosh, I am going to
Speaker 2: duck out and go and go and see that, and
Speaker 2: it might be, you know, three o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 2: but that's okay, because then I'll come back home and
Speaker 2: I will work later on to the evening. I feel
Speaker 2: that that, to me is a version of work life balance.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I've been able to make the choices that are right
Speaker 2: for me and my family and still give what I
Speaker 2: need to do to the job, and so there's an
Speaker 2: enormous amount of freedom in that for me.
Speaker 1: Now, deep work, I know you take deep work seriously,
Speaker 1: and you're referring to kind of having that, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty thousand feet view from the air of what's going on.
Speaker 1: Tell me about your deep work routine or ritual.
Speaker 2: I think that the first thing that I love about
Speaker 2: it is that I'm not in a meeting, and I
Speaker 2: get a bucket boat of energy from being with other people.
Speaker 2: So this is not necessarily about the need to be
Speaker 2: on my own, but it gives me the space to
Speaker 2: have a bucket of time that I can now choose
Speaker 2: what I'm going to do with. And so I think
Speaker 2: just the very act of not having to be on
Speaker 2: a screen, not having to be in a conversation just
Speaker 2: allows me some space to go through just actions that
Speaker 2: require some thought. And you know, I can times get
Speaker 2: into a habit of feeling like when you take action,
Speaker 2: you've got momentum. But what I've learned the longer I've
Speaker 2: kind of been in their career is that actually, sometimes
Speaker 2: the moments of greatest impact at the times when you
Speaker 2: don't feel the need to act, but you just give
Speaker 2: yourself the space to think. And I'm getting better at that.
Speaker 2: You know, when I, on occasion receive an email that
Speaker 2: sets up like boiling, whereas my inclination may have been
Speaker 2: to respond, I now sit with it just that little
Speaker 2: bit longer than I normally would have, and I think
Speaker 2: nine times out of ten, my response is different to
Speaker 2: what it would have been had I just allowed myself
Speaker 2: to react instinctively. So that's what I love about that
Speaker 2: deep work time. I just have that opportunity to give
Speaker 2: myself the space to think about things without the rush,
Speaker 2: without the chaos, without the noise of the daily operation.
Speaker 1: Will you have particular things that you bring into that
Speaker 1: deep work time that you're like, Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: think about this particular goal or this particular project, Like
Speaker 1: how planned is that deep work time.
Speaker 2: It varies depending on what I need to do. So
Speaker 2: let's say it's a bit of work on the organization
Speaker 2: and people. Then I might actually use some post it
Speaker 2: notes and stick them up on the wall and you know,
Speaker 2: have a little bit of my own mini workshop on
Speaker 2: my own that's really valuable. Occasionally I will call other people,
Speaker 2: I will do a sort of dialar friend, because that
Speaker 2: is the time I actually want to get some outside
Speaker 2: in perspective. So sometimes I use that deep work time
Speaker 2: actually to connect with the people in other companies quite often,
Speaker 2: sometimes in other industries. Quite often that can give me
Speaker 2: a different way of looking perhaps at the problem. All
Speaker 2: the opportunity that I have.
Speaker 1: That idea of, like the kind of phone a friend.
Speaker 1: I like that, Like how how do you think about
Speaker 1: your networks in that sense? And who you'll call for what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, I think actually, you know, people will say
Speaker 2: how important it is to have a network and to
Speaker 2: do networking and all that sort of stuff, And I think, actually,
Speaker 2: just at the heart of it is two you can
Speaker 2: either feel incredibly resourced constrained at times, or you can
Speaker 2: realize that there's an incredible amount of resource abundance if
Speaker 2: you just reach out and generously share your knowledge and equally,
Speaker 2: you'll find that people are very very generous.
Speaker 1: In sharing that.
Speaker 2: That's been my experience at least, so sometimes the people
Speaker 2: that I have in my network, I like it to
Speaker 2: be varied, like I'm a really big believer in the
Speaker 2: businesses I lead or the teams that I'm part of.
Speaker 2: And I also would put this in my own kind
Speaker 2: of personal social kind of circle.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: Perspective. I like to be able to connect with people
Speaker 2: that can offer alternative ways of thinking about things. Cuze,
Speaker 2: just give you a very creative lens.
Speaker 1: I just love how structured and deliberate Nicki is when
Speaker 1: she thinks about her time, which probably explains why she
Speaker 1: was holding down to major CEO rolls when we spoke. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've enjoyed this episode of How I Work, why
Speaker 1: not share it with a friends that you think would
Speaker 1: like it too. And thank you to everyone that has
Speaker 1: done that and helped How I Work reach over three
Speaker 1: million downloads. How I Work is produced by Inventing with
Speaker 1: production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to
Speaker 1: Mit Nimba who does the audio mix and makes everything
Speaker 1: sounds better than it would have otherwise, see you next time.