When Productivity Plummets

I'm sure my thousands of fans have noticed the lack of blogging here lately. (Can you tell that was facetious?) I'd been on a mission to uncover the secrets to productivity -- how can one move from thinking about getting things done to actually getting things done? We all know what we need to be doing, now why aren't we doing it? I'd actually pulled together a framework and was working on an outline (quite proud of myself since I was actually getting something done!) when the unthinkable occurred.

My dad got sick. Not a head cold, mind you, and "sick" isn't really the right word. Basically, he's encountered a life-threatening condition that's left him all but quadraplegic -- he now has the use of only his right arm. To put it succinctly, his heart broke. His aorta, actually. Remember John Ritter? He died of the same thing my dad suffered back in June -- an aortic dissection. Practically unheard of, extremely rare, and incredibly deadly. We had several hellish days where death was imminent. Amazingly, my dad rallied. Someone keeping the bedside ritual with me commented that perhaps he was staying alive for his elderly mother, who is 94 and lives in assisted living. Another speculated that he didn't want to leave "his girls" -- meaning my mother, my sister and I -- or his five beautiful grandchildren. Nope -- I'm convinced that other than the tremendous power of prayer (we won't get into all that on this blog), my dad didn't die simply because he didn't WANT to. He wasn't ready.

We're 76 days in now. He's in a skilled nursing facility undergoing intensive rehab. We hope that he'll be able to go home eventually and have some level of mobility. We're thankful for every day we have with him. My mother's life has been turned upside down as she deals with the ramifications of this event -- from grief to loneliness, medical decisions and care concerns, security and financial issues, anger, frustration, bureaucracy, and a new "normal." I'm adjusting to adding the care of my father (and just as important, the emotional support of my mother) to my already full schedule as business owner, wife, mother, frustrated writer, community volunteer, knitter, avid reader, etc. etc, etc. Staying busy is rather my M.O., but this has jacked things up to an entirely new plane.

Because this article is about productivity and not my father's tragic illness, I'll get back to my main point. In the immediate days and weeks following my father's illness, my productivity was completely gone. I didn't work for an entire week and after that, only worked sporadically for several weeks. My poor family suffered as I struggled to deal with the mortality of my healthy, active father. Volunteer responsibilities went by the wayside. Things that had seemed vitally important only days prior suddenly dropped completely off the radar. Here are a few observations (in no particular order) regarding life in the wake of a life-changing crisis:

• Email can be a good thing. Thank goodness I had a laptop. I kept in touch with concerned friends and family via email, providing important updates in those early hours and days. This was a life-saver in that we didn't have to use a lot of additional energy responding to phone calls in order to keep everyone updated. I was also able to forward important work-related emails to my employees, thus ensuring that my business continued to operate uninterrupted. It would have also been helpful had I had an alternate way for others to check my email, in case I was the one incapacitated or unable to get to my own in-box. A simple program like LogMeIn could come in very handy, allowing others to log in to your computer from another location.
  
• Be sure to have things in order, so that stepping away from work and other responsibilities is not a complete catastrophe too. I had long since turned over vital, day-to-day responsibilities to key employees, a la The E-Myth so that time didn't stop just because I was out of the picture. The same goes for home -- a family notebook with key phone numbers, menus, school papers, and instructions regarding finances and schedules proved very helpful for folks trying to pick up the pieces behind me during those first few days.
• Give yourself a break. You will not return to "normal" quickly, if at all. I stopped everything but the essentials for quite some time. The first week or so was only about the hospital, sleeping, and eating -- though the last two weren't even possible the first couple of days. Life will eventually return to some semblance of normalcy, but to expect you can quickly return to a regular routine is unrealistic. I finally returned to the gym after a two-month plus absence. It felt great to get back, but there's no way it was going to happen sooner. I also had to frequently remind myself that there would be time to continue work on my book and my strategic planning at a later date. A crisis such as this one does dramatically reorder your priorities and leaves you stripped to the bone. Being kind to yourself when you're under this kind of stress is imperative. There's no other option.
  
• Have a good support system in place. I was fortunate in that I could rely on my wonderful husband and good friends to take care of the household and run kids to and from as needed. Others took over critical volunteer responsibilities. Still others provided much-needed emotional support. Church members mowed lawns and brought food. It is a cliché -- but cultivating deep friendships will stand you in good stead when the going gets tough. You must be a true friend if you ever expect to have true friends who will take care of you and yours when tragedy hits home.
• Faith does matter. You certainly don't have to worship the same God I do, but this situation has taught me that sometimes things happen that are only explainable if you have faith of some kind. And likewise, faith in God or a higher power can provide a footing that enables you to survive and move on, one small step at a time, even when it seems impossible to bear one more heartache. I found myself saying prayers and liturgical responses from my childhood and singing hymns I thought were long forgotten -- sometimes for comfort and other times, to keep terrible thoughts at bay. There are people who will tell you that it is impossible to have a true understanding of what faith really means in your daily life until a really bad thing happens. They are right.
  
• Grief is a process. Even if your loved one doesn't die, a health crisis of the magnitude our family has experienced changes life forever. There have been many losses. Everyone experiences grief and loss differently and isn't very pretty. Accept that you will react strongly and emotionally for months and years to come, for no apparent reason, to things that seem mundane. Understand that you will now view caregivers and those who've lost loved ones in a much different way. They become survivors in an army of walking wounded. You wonder how people manage to live and thrive -- yet they do, and so will you.
  
• Don't make any big decisions. Because life is so stripped down in moments of trial, important life decisions that perhaps you've been putting off seem suddenly so clear. I urge you NOT to take action yet. Your moment of epiphany might become a true disaster a few months down the road. Wait, let life settle back into something regular again, and THEN re-evaluate those areas of life that need examination. Your new knowledge in the light of these events can provide helpful insight as you contemplate change, but shouldn't be the basis for that change. So slow down and think it through after the initial crisis has passed.
  
• Live in the moment. Especially for those of us who are constantly looking for improvements and ways to streamline and plan life so that we can get through each day more productively, these kind of crises can really be devastating. "One day at a time" is a mantra for AA, but it is mighty universal. When you experience the complete lack of control that goes along with the critical illness and near-death of a loved one, the initial response is to work very hard to regain control wherever you can find it. Alas, that is impossible. We must constantly return, again and again, to the moment, for it is all that we truly know. We cannot predict how our loved one will feel tomorrow or in two weeks or two years. We cannot make them better or worse. This is a lesson though, that cannot be learned just once. Every new day the fears emerge. Will he ever walk again? Will he die today? Will my life ever be the same again? We don't know the answers and we're not going to know them. We have only today. And worrying, while natural when a loved one is at risk, is equally unproductive. Best to let it all go. To quote Mickey Rivers, former second baseman of the New York Yankees, "Ain't no use worryin' 'bout things you got control over, 'cause if you got control over them, ain't no use worryin'. And ain't no use worryin' 'bout things you ain't got control over, 'cause if you ain't got control over them, ain't no use worryin'."

I am gingerly setting some goals, working on getting things done. Soon, I'll get back to my book. But, in the meantime, "ain't no use worryin'."

The Wisdom of Bubba

As my husband's partner breezed out of their office last week, he waved and tossed the following jewel over his shoulder in his Mississippi accent: "Chris, I'm glad you got to see me."

Of course, it loses something in the translation to type, but my hubby nearly fell out of his chair laughing. What a refreshing twist on our usual perfunctory (and often disingenuous) greetings.

The larger point (you knew I'd have one), of course, is this: What else is out there in front of us every day that we are failing to appreciate?

Folks, I'm glad you got to read my blog.

The Big Questions

Do you want to live a more authentic life?
Do you desire to understand yourself. . . really know yourself?
Do you need to develop an understanding of the motivations of others? How to read them? What makes them tick?
Do you want to know how to capitalize on your strengths . . . every day?
Do you need to manage your time in such a way that you can "be there" for your family, your friends, your co-workers, your community?
Do you strive for balance?

Well, good luck. Odds are you can't do all that.

Why do you think I haven't blogged anything for the past three months? Don't you think I'm doing the best I can? I continue to try to "do it all," "have it all," be a "superwoman."

Know what? I quit.

As long as I continue to have unrealistic expectations about myself, my world will continue to spin wildly, just slightly beyond my control. Sometimes you just need to stop, breathe and reassess.

Let me know when you're ready to begin again.

"But I Don't Want To!"

I'm ticked. After working with a client for months in good faith, they've ditched us and are proceeding ahead using our creative ideas and resources. Are they going to pay us for our services? Of course not. We didn't have a contract with them, relying instead on existing goodwill. Our attorney advises that it's not worth pursuing from a collection standpoint even though we could certainly substantiate that a significant working relationship existed. Instead, he advises we write them a letter, apologizing for their dissatisfaction and asking that they send whatever meager payment they deem suitable. I cannot over-emphasize how undesirable this option is to me, realistic though it may be.

Meanwhile, a friend tells me her children won't be participating on a summer sports team this year, because they (the children) "don't want to." Hmmph, I grouse to myself, my son doesn't want to do a lot of things -- he doesn't want to do his homework or sing in the children's choir at church. But that's too bad. As his mom, I get to decide what he does and doesn't do. "I'm sorry you don't want to," I tell him, "but that's life. Once you grow up, you can certainly decide about what it is that you want to do, but keep in mind you'll have to do lots of things you don't want to do as well. Welcome to the real world." I know that down the road, he'll do his homework without being coerced and participate in certain activities because he wants to help the larger group. But for now, "I don't want to" isn't good enough. It's my job as his parent to help him understand the importance of those things he doesn't want to do.

Which brings me back to my grown-up life. I don't want to write that letter, and I suppose, I don't have to. It's unlikely that any payment will be forthcoming either way. But it's really about accountability and follow-through here. We did make assumptions that shouldn't have been made. And in this instance, perhaps operating solely in good faith was, in fact, a poor business decision. I do myself and my organization a disservice if I choose not to follow up because "I don't want to." Perhaps the exercise will serve as reminder of the specific lesson we've learned -- trust in God, but tie your camel.

What aren't you doing that you "don't want to" do? What are you doing? Welcome to the real world.

Holiday Stress Tips

Life is too short to spend it stressing about what should be a joyous time of year with family and friends.

Enjoy this interactive page of holiday stress tips and remember to BE MERRY!!

Here's wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a happy new year!

Innovation & Leadership

The Center for Creative Leadership recently published the results of a reader poll, questioning them about innovation in their organizations. While the vast majority believed that innovation was critical to their success as a leader and to the organization's success, only 27% of respondents "agreed" or "strongly agreed" that senior managers understand the essential principles for sustaining innovation. (Read more about the Innovative Leader and the poll results in the October 2006 edition of the CCL newsletter.)

Why the gap between the perceived importance of innovation and the ability of people to understand (and thus sustain) it?

What It's All About

As I went round and round on the name for our corporate training division, one theme kept coming up from all the research I'd been doing...the theme of connection. Over and over again, I find this is want human beings really want to do... and must do, to build sucessful teams and to live their best life. So, Quantum Connections it is.

In fact, when it comes to life -- working with groups, building and leading teams, and just plain getting along with other people, it seems that 5 C's apply.

Here they are, in a nutshell & in no particular order:

Communication
This one is huge, people. Whether it's a corporate or community group, church or volunteer organization, or just the four folks in my immediate family, communication (or more accurately, lack thereof) is the main thing.

Change
How we respond to and roll with change is critical to our success in life, whether at home or work. Change is surely constant. We can go with it or resist it, but it's coming, regardless. Being able to anticipate, adapt and even encourage change is critical, especially given the pace of life today.

Connection
Fundamental. Author and trainer extraordinaire Jim Cain recently reiterated the importance of connection for employees in the workplace in an article entitled What's Next, appearing on his web site Teamwork & Teamplay. He maintains there are three things necesary for highly effective teams:

1. A clearly identified, articulated and worthy task.
2. The opportunity for growth, advancement and building new skills.
3. The opportunity to create connection and maintain relationships with other members of the group.

In fact, if connection can improve performance, the lack of connection can prove positively harmful. Along with doctoral students Paul Harvey and Jason Stoner, Florida State University management professor Wayne Hochwarter surveyed more than 700 people about their opinions of supervisor treatment on the job. The survey generated the following results:

• Thirty-one percent of respondents reported that their supervisor gave them the "silent treatment" in the past year.
• Thirty-seven percent reported that their supervisor failed to give credit when due.
• Thirty-nine percent noted that their supervisor failed to keep promises.
• Twenty-seven percent noted that their supervisor made negative comments about them to other employees or managers.

Even worse, according to the researchers, "Employees stuck in an abusive relationship experienced more exhaustion, job tension, nervousness, depressed mood and mistrust."

Connection is not just the right thing, it's critical to personal and professional happiness and success.

Compassion
This goes along with the whole idea of Servant Leadership (ever read any Robert Greenleaf?)-- we've got to reach out to others.

Courage
Kind of a biggie! We can talk about all this stuff 'til the cows come home but that doesn't make it happen. Execution of great ideas/profound thoughts requires movement from Point A to Point B, which may require certain skills, but without courage, we've got nothing anyway.

Not a bad list for a fledging leader to keep in mind. What C's would you add?