Society trains us to think of time in very similar ways. Conventional blocks or periods of time dominate how we organize ourselves, measure our progress, and set goals for the future.
We operate our lives and teams in minutes, hours, weeks, months, and years, often punctuating our progress at well-established moments with important labels.
Performance reviews, earnings calls, forecasts, training milestones, strategy updates, team meetings, project planning, and numerous other activities typically occur at regular intervals. Leaders depend on the structured time commitments to promote execution and results.
For instance, a monthly sales or revenue update pushes team members to book revenue before the update meeting so it is recognized, rewarded, and counted against their goals. Monthly or quarterly deadlines are common timeframes for many of an organization’s most important milestones and progress reports.
But what would happen to productivity if the leader drastically changed the timeframe?
Periodization is the idea that setting new and often non-traditional periods or timeframes to mark progress changes how people orient toward goals and the work it takes to achieve them.
For instance, what effect would it have on a sales team if they had weekly, instead of monthly, check-ins and sales goals?
To promote a new mindset and to encourage more activity, leaders sometimes violate social norms and set entirely new periods to measure and reward activity.
Shifts in the frequency and timing of training sessions or project reviews, for example, can have drastic effects on how team members focus and execute.
Imagine the impact of recasting a fiscal year into two parts, complete with all the activities involved with ending the period.
In many instances, simply shortening a traditional timeframe dramatically shakes things up and produces a different level of engagement and production. Leaders sometimes make these changes temporary instead of permanent.
Creativity and common sense are the primary guides for thinking about how to incorporate periodization into the workplace. Time traditions are highly resistant to change, but leaders who occasionally introduce new periods often reap significant benefits.
How we choose to count and measure time is more fluid than most leaders think. And changes in time periods get people thinking and working differently.
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