Goals, Priorities, and Problems

In some management training in my company, we emphasize a few principles about leading people.  The first principle (and therefore either foundational or most important) is that of clarity.

What this means is that we need to be clear with our team members about the purpose and mission of their work, how it ties into the larger organization, and what is expected of them.  Our people need to have this perspective, so they can make decisions when faced with new situations. 

It's easy to respond to a challenge when the answer is already in the playbook, but what do our people do when they are faced with new situations?  They need to understand the organizations goals, as well as the organizations priorities, preferably in a way that they can make decisions that tradeoff between priorities in the way the organization wants.

What does this have to do with me?  I think I've lost a bit of that clarity of my own goals, and specifically, my priorities and the potential tradeoffs between them.  Or at least if I haven't lost that clarity, recent developments have led me to question whether the current prioritization of my goals needs to be revisited. 

This happens to everyone, sometimes radically as the result of injury or illness, sometimes slowly as our lives develop, and even minor opportunities or troubles come and go, and leave us (slightly) different as people.  Fortunately, my current self-reflection is of the latter type. 

A development in my work has caused me to re-think where I'm putting my time.  The project that I thought was developing well, and was near reaching the next stage, has now taken a material step backwards.  I have to decide how to proceed: One path would have me pushing hard to meet an early deadline, sacrificing other projects,  the other would take a lot more time, and the project might not complete before it became irrelevant, but would give me windows to progress on other projects.

The real question is that of single-mindedness.  Do I put all of my effort and energy into Project X, do I balance my resources between Project X and all of the others, or do I actually put Project X on a back-burner, and spend most of my available resources on the other elements of my mission? 

It sounds like it could be an easy decision, but it's really not.  I've been working on Project X for a long time, and I have people counting on me completing it, but some of those same people want me to progress on other projects. 

As I write this, though, I realized that the time spent is a sunk cost, and not worth considering ( I can grieve for the delay in the project, but that doesn't help me finish it).  As for the stakeholders, I need to realize that I'm the most important stakeholder.  That's a lesson I have NEVER mastered.  Despite everything I read that says that a leader has to take care of themselves first, so they can help others, I've never really internalized that concept well. 

Service (in the guise of servant leadership these days) has always been top of mind for me, and has often led me to put responsibility to others ahead of responsibility to self.  I'm not totally sure from where that comes (my theory is that it's rooted in a deep-seated insecurity), but it manifests itself in a few ways.  First is taking on too many projects, only some (few) of which I do because they genuinely interest me; more often it's because something is asked of me, and I have a hard time saying no, especially to people I perceive as authority figures. 

Second is my inability to make hard decisions, and to walk away from a project when that really is the right thing to do.  I don't want to disappoint the others involved in a project by cancelling it, but really, the outcome is that I don't do well at multiple projects because I'm spread too thin.  The net result is that I become stressed, project stakeholders get frustrated, and I don't fully accomplish my mission(s). 

Lent is coming.  Maybe I need to take these upcoming 40 days to make some of these hard decisions, knowing that it's going to cause me to suffer as well as my stakeholders.  That would not be easy - it's going to require a major mind-set change on my part, and will cause me a lot of difficulty, both mental and practical, as I set principle-based priorities and stick to them, and also as I grieve for the projects that will have to come to an end (or a horizon that is so far out, the effect is the same).

In the end, I might find that suffering is a pathway to greater happiness and success.

The short month begins

January is now in the rear-view mirror, and as always, it had some mixed results for me.  While the month started terribly (with a cold and my quarter close), the last week provided some respite, as leadership meetings in my company brought the frenetic pace of the start of the new year to a quiet, dull roar.

That translated into me getting back a good portion of my mental and emotional energy, as well as my physical energy.  With a little less pressure (and a lot less e-mail) on the docket, I had time to reconnect with a few work projects, and spent less time spent at night handling e-mail and catching up.   [Side note: I fully realize that means I started to work the amount of overtime that most people in my area normally work, rather than my excessive amount - I said it was better, not that it was good.]  I got to bed earlier, and was able to get up earlier and get workouts in before work (which also didn't start before 8:00 for a change) and was working with more energy through the day than I've had in months.

So now what?  February is upon us; only four short weeks to make additional progress in my goals.  My training plan is working out so far, and while I don't have a specific rhythm to my training weeks, I should be able to keep up the 3-run, 2-cycle, 2-swim, 1 strength training sessions I've built over the past few weeks.  My weekends should be mostly clear, and my treadmill and bike trainer are both very handy tools to have available when the weather gets bad.

I also have a bunch of races on the calendar.  While I'm going to have to miss my next one (a 12.4 miler in two weeks), I have a race every few weeks that should keep me focused.  I'm not really racing them, but rather doing a long, slow run with other people, and where I get handed water and refreshments.  I'll need these to keep me going until Spring, when I can get outside on the bike.  August is going to be here before I know it, and I'd like to make the most out of this winter and Spring, and hit the Tri-training with a really strong base. 

There's more change on the horizon as well, or at least I hope so.  I should be changing jobs soon, and that's either going to make my work continue (in a more rewarding manner) or the work will abate, and I will have a little time to find other things to do.  I've already been recruited to lead a project at church for the next six months, and if my next job is closer to a 40-45 (-50) hour work week, I may look for a teaching position at the local university.  There's lots of potential, and with change comes, well, change.