Bizcuits | An ode to sleep

Leanda Lee

I need sleep.
That’s the only thing really on my mind these days: how to get more of it at the appropriate moment. Rather than pull the ‘I’m so tired’ bunting out as a medal of honour of the busy and, by implication, the important and successful person, I raise it as it should be, a warning signal that something is out of control.
Topics like ‘sleep: a business case for bedtime’ and ‘Sleep to be successful’ – not to be confused with other forms of ‘sleep one’s way to the top’ – are examples of titles on recent reports and articles that highlight the importance of sleep to individual employees and business-­people in their ongoing maintenance of quality performance. Sleep is a business resource.
Some people might not be convinced, but sleep cannot be cheated, not for long. Sleep deprivation and the consequent fatigue impairs judgement and decision making, it decreases motivation and makes us intolerant, not to mention the long-term health effects. There are those that believe that they can make up for lost sleep or that they are the special ones who simply require less sleep. We can do it; it begins to feel normal but peak performance will always suffer.
This lack of energy, motivation, ability to focus enough to make decisions that might change our circumstances can lead to inertia that keeps us staring at computer screens mindlessly picking away at the incessant days’ tasks.  This is presenteeism: showing up for work when incapacitated. More work is not necessarily better work. Fatigued, we can do little to improve our situation or that of the business. We see the problems, but sleep deprivation leaves us critical, yet defensive; and scared to voice concerns for fear of narkiness of tone and non-responsiveness of others. Bitterness, negativity, damage to relationships (even if only in our own minds) – none of this helps a developing workplace that should thrive on continuous improvement.
Excellence and constant improvement are the hallmarks of highly reliable people and enterprises. Human incapacity in its many forms, however, pulls the rug from underneath desire to initiate change. The five characteristics of what organisational researchers and thought-leaders, Weick and Sutcliffe call High Reliability Organisations (and people) depend upon change.
Although they celebrate success, the highly reliable are preoccupied with failures and encourage reports of mistakes and error, not to blame but to fix them. They actively seek out signs and symptoms of problems, but the sleep-deprived have enough negative talk happening in their own heads to eschew seeking further evidence of external woes that might require too much further effort and action to fix. The highly reliable will also seek alternative views and not be satisfied with the first solution that might be ‘good enough’, but that takes perseverance. They are also resilient and take the reporting of errors as positive opportunities, not annoying disturbances that get in the way of the day’s urgencies. And finally, as Weick and Sutcliffe propose in their tome, ‘Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity for high performance’, highly reliable organisations (and people) defer to expertise, but it takes positive energy to seek this out.
None of these characteristics of high performance sits well with the bitter, inert, negative, guilt-ridden and sleep-deprived bothered individual.
This is a wake-up call to go get some sleep. It’s a business imperative.