The Corporate Woman

Setting aside time to reflect gives you the opportunity to see how things fit together and identify gaps.  This nothing new, right?  You know this, have experienced it, whether it was in your personal life or work life or both.  So if we know it, have felt the benefit of it, why is it so hard to do?  Why do we feel compelled to fill up every precious waking minute with a task?  How many of you feel the impulse in an idle moment to pick up your Blackberry or iPhone (or similar item)?  Do you ask yourself why?  I do.

I’m a big fan of reflection and thinking time.  I am also an unrepentant and inveterate multitasker (yes, I’m doing it now – picture me listening to music, checking email, Twitter, blogging and researching chi square testing).  I find that I have to remind myself of how much I can get done by taking the time to step back from it all and reflect.  Even given that, some of my best insights and ideas have come from when I am doing some mindless task instead of doing nothing at all but thinking.  Knowing that, I seek out that form of reflection and integrate it into the flow of my life.  Don’t think I’m all successful at it though – it’s an ongoing practice.  And although it doesn’t come naturally, I do the quiet, non-task version of reflection too… just not as often.

I can tell you that I have learned that if I don’t have this time on a regular basis, I’m less happy, less productive, less creative, less insightful – more restless, more stressed and more easily distracted.  There’s an inner warning bell that goes off when I start to feel like this.  I know it’s time to step back.

How have you found the power of reflection working for you?  Do you make time for it?  How does your life feel when you don’t make time for it?  Share your stories with me because I’m really interested in learning how it works for others.

Tags: insight, Reflection, thoughful

The business planning cycle I have gotten used to seems to be one of good intentions but just slightly off.  I have had the good fortune to see this planning cycle work the same at more than one company.  I ask myself this (and you, of course) – is this cycle a necessity or can it be successfully improved upon?  Here’s the one I mean – it starts with budget time (where you hope you have a solid long range strategy to lean on).  It’s approximately mid-summer.  Now, for some it actually starts a bit sooner or a bit later but I picked a mean.  You haven’t solidified your plan for the next year yet but you have the framework, so you can put together the money.  Then year end hits (for those of you on the calendar fiscal year, which is quite a lot of you) and everyone is focused on that.  Come January, you hope to have a finalized budget and plan for the year.  That is always the goal.  It’s part of why you start the budget cycle early, right?  But how many of you make it to the goal line of early January?  Part of that is because you need to see how year end close went but there are often other factors that get in the way.  So you may not have a final plan and budget until February or even March.  It’s a crazy cycle – shampoo, rinse, repeat!  Every year this happens, everywhere I work or where my friends and colleagues work, it tends to happen.  Does it work better where you are?

Tags: Balance, Change, Leadership, Work

The holidays are over and I am back to work after my longest vacation off in my working history.  It was lovely but it will come as no surprise to those close to me when I mention that I managed to snag an awful virus and was sick for the whole two weeks.  I am still dragging through the dregs of it…  All of that aside, it was a lovely and quiet holiday, filled with family time and I treasure the opportunity I had.

And now, it is time to work with my team to put definition to the strategy elements for 2009.  This is always such a great time of year for work, in my opinion.  I love looking at the long term plan, figuring out what needs to be done this year to get to fulfill that vision and breaking it down to quarterly chunks.  This is the year for retention and customer focus, no doubt about that.  Any company not thinking in those terms are going to have an even tougher year.  

Step one – find our retention version of the angled measuring cup.  If you haven’t heard the President of Oxo International talk about this invention and how it fulfills their principles, you missed out (http://gelconference.com/videos/).  In short, it’s time to find a clearer way of looking at the information to better understand what our challenges are.

Step two – use that information to make the customer experience even better, so we are able to deliver more value to our customers and they want to stay with us longer.

Which brings me back to the beginning – it’s time to plan!  Is that what you are doing this month?

Tags: Balance, Customer Experience, Loyalty, Vacation, Work

I have a lovely, long holiday planned with my husband and daughter.  Sixteen days off.  A rare thing in my life.  Normally, I only have a week off at a time (total of nine days), so this rarity will be something to treasure.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time the past few weeks encouraging my team to do the same.  For a Customer Insights organization, the end of the year is not a crazy one like some parts of the org, more a time to wrap up projects. 

I believe in setting a goal to try to get to zero by the end of the year when it comes to vacation time.  There is a reason we get that time off – it’s for balance, for health – both physcial and mental.  And it’s important to take time off.  This year, I won’t quite make zero – I’ll be short by a day and a half but that’s pretty darn close.  And it’s important to remember that there’s no award or recognition for not taking time off.  So if you are one of those types – you know the ones, the hoarders of time (I am a reformed hoarder, so I know what it’s like) – then try it for just one year.  Make it your goal in 2009 to get to zero vacation days by the end of the year.  You never know, if you try it once, you might find you’ll never go back to hoarding again.

Tags: Balance, Customer Experience, Family, Health, Vacation, Wholeness, Work

Today, we get a call, bright and early from my daughter’s new pediatrician’s office letting us know there was a cancellation in the schedule tomorrow and could we please move our original appointment for our daughter’s annual well child from January 2009 to tomorrow.  Now, to put this into perspective, we don’t know this doctor yet, that’s part of the plan for this visit.  And now, we have a last minute switch.  Well, I am a fortunate woman because my husband is a fantastic stay at home dad but there’s a line here right?  What things are musts vs. nice to have when it comes to your child’s life?  It’s not a lack of trust in my husband, it’s really about wanting to be present for certain things.  So what do  I do… I frantically go through my afternoon schedule and beg for patience while I reschedule the block of time so I can be there.  Because it’s important to be present as part of the balance, in my view.  Some choices and tradeoffs have to made, I know that but this time, I was lucky, because I could manage the last minute reschedules – next time I might not be so lucky.  But for this week, I made it.

Tags: Balance, Family, Work