Colleagues,
The temptation will be to get back to building things next fall because things will be back to normal. By building things, I mean making the changes to all of the things that need changed. The problem is that things won’t be back to normal. Most of us are exhausted – physically, emotionally, or both. When do we pause? If we really care about the people we serve, is there a point at which we say, “no big changes this year”? Maybe little changes are good enough? Cheers! Frederick
0 Comments
Colleagues,
In July, Pam and I are planning to do the 270-mile Pennine Way hike in England. We have both had some mild knee issues over the past couple of years and hadn’t done much hiking since out summer trip in the Sierras. Before buying tickets, a fitness test was in order! The first part of that test was our 25-mile hike two weeks ago. The second part of that test for me was a checkup with an orthopedic doctor to make sure that some of the issues I’ve been experiencing wouldn’t be catastrophic on a long hike. I received a clean bill of health, so this week we are getting our tickets and the hike is on! I wish I went through a similar process when initiating change. I get a big idea and begin to run with it before fitness testing my organization. My guess is that your organization does the same. Just because we need to change something means that we have the capacity to change something. Especially now. The emphasis for APEx in April is incremental change, so you’ll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks. Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
No, actually we don’t. Meetings are great for ideas but not so great for getting things done. Of course, there are times when we need to meet. A good meeting should include:
Use meetings to achieve only the things that require us to be together to achieve. Do you have a meeting today? How will your life, or the lives of those you serve, be better at the end of the meeting? Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
There is an old adage: plan your work and work your plan. Sage advice, except when it doesn’t work. I had plans to work on my greenhouse all last week. I even had a flow-chart of tasks that needed to be completed and in what order! But the weather did not cooperate. My plan did not account for the external forces of the weather. We are into the two-year anniversary of the time when our world went sideways in response to the arrival of COVID-19. Today, reflect on the past two years. Think especially about the plans you had that you either weren’t able to work, or that didn’t go so well. I suspect that some of us continued to push change initiatives at a time when we should have stopped. Maybe it was like trying to put the roof on your greenhouse in the pouring rain? Cheers! Frederick Colleagues,
As we get older, our packs need to get lighter. On our hike last week, Pam and I ditched a lot of gear and stripped our kits (the term for what you take in your pack) down to the essentials. At multiple points during the hike, we evaluated our kits.
The distance we traveled was progress monitoring, which leaders are usually decent at. However, evaluating how our kits were working out is process monitoring. Process monitoring helps us evaluate our systems. This is something leaders often miss. Reflect:
Cheers! Frederick |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|