How about now?
Leaders spend countless hours planning future work, often at the expense of meaningful action in the present. This article introduces a simple but powerful question—“How about now?”—to challenge habitual deferral, unlock momentum in meetings and reframe leadership as something practiced through action, not intention.
I was chatting with my wonderful colleague Kate Boydell the other day, and she brought up three magic words that have transformed the way she uses her time at home. The original premise is in a blog by Alison Hodgson, on a simple way to declutter your home. Alison advocates asking: “How about now?” whenever you’re about to say “later” as you pass over a small chore. I’m starting to believe this is a great question for leaders to ask at work too.
Here’s where I see the problem to solve: We spend too much time in meetings defining work that we will do in the future, rather than taking time to actually do some of that work. We squander our chance to use everyone’s time together in a meaningful way. Perhaps it’s because we’re very aware of the time we have in the present, and overestimate the time we will have in the future. Or perhaps we delude ourselves that in the future a better version of ourselves will create the perfect solution to something we just put on the board.
Whatever the psychology, the consequences can border on the absurd. I have encountered meetings where we are spending more time planning the next meeting than doing the work of that meeting. Moments where we have automatically listed follow-up action items that could be done there and then. Conversations where we describe what we will do when we could rehearse the actual doing.
That’s where “How about now?” comes in. It’s a clever way to interrupt the cycle. Whenever you list something to do in the future that involves the people in the room, ask yourself, “How about now?” You may find you can quickly rough out an idea that moves everyone forward. Or you may choose to say, “No, later.” The point is to be intentional and mindful.
Here’s an example. One of our teams was in a meeting to prepare for a big client workshop. We’re going through the various materials for the workshop and exercises, and we realize one of them isn’t working and we have to redraft it. The lead strategist agrees and we list it dutifully as a follow-up action. We’re about to move on, when the partner in charge asks, “How about we do that now? Let’s just lightly sketch it out together.” In 15 minutes, and in a flurry of enjoyable sketching and discussion, we’ve redesigned the exercise. Not only have we just saved time in the future, we also feel a sense of accomplishment and creative release.
Asking yourself “How about now?” is a technique that I think points to a larger question of leadership. I believe we all need to become more mindful of the now. It’s what we live in, and where we actually make things—decisions, ideas, solutions, questions. Leaders are rightly preoccupied with planning for the future. But we get a little trapped by that notion, and we get stuck in our heads, intellectualizing all the things that can be done perfectly in the future. Leadership is something you do now, in the present. It is kinetic, generative and productive. And it is often improvised and far from perfect. As the prolific Pablo Picasso once said, “action is the foundational key for all success.” Leadership is about galvanizing that action. And the more we act in the now, the more we move from talking about the future to actually creating it.
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