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Diary Entry #98 – Never as Bad as it Looks, and Never as Good Either

“Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” ~Thomas J. Watson

“Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Regardless of how your day, week, month, quarter or year is going, remember not only that things change, but that our view of the present is often fraught with inaccuracies. So when you find the elation of everything going your way, or the misfortune of everything falling apart, remember to “take a chill pill”, “slow your roll” and otherwise relax.

When you are at a new high, or a new low, it is good to pause for perspective and evaluate where you are at as honestly as you can and look to the future so that you do not get stuck in the past, even if the past was a success.

When things are at their worst, pause and ask yourself:

What is going wrong? Define the issue and look for causes, maybe the problem doesn’t lie where you thought it did originally. Either way, just defining what the problem is prevents you from thinking that EVERYTHING is going wrong.

How can you fix it? Coming up with a plan for dealing with the issue gets you focused on the solution and infuses HOPE into your thinking.

What is the end goal? Define what you want the end result to look like. This ensures that your action plan is focused on the goal and gets your mind thinking in positive terms.

When things are at their best, pause and ask yourself:

What is going right? What things have led to this success? Has this success opened up new opportunities?

What WORK can you do to keep it going?The most consistent management mistake across all industries is to rest on your laurels when things are good. You need to still put in the work to stay a success. A couple of projects to consider:

Crush the competition

Strengthen your competitive advantage

Keep doing what got you here

What is your goal? You may need to ensure the goal you’re working towards is still valid. Or perhaps you have met your goal already, well great!!! Now it’s time to get a new one!!! Without a goal out there, you have nothing to shoot for and are just adrift (and that is where success becomes a problem)

Bad times and good times don’t last forever, ONLY when your actions ensure they don’t. Make sure you are working toward your goal of continued success, or a turnaround from the decline you are in. Regardless, things aren’t as good, or as bad, as they may seem.

Your Job is to Deal with the Non-Ideal Situations

“Do not bring me your successes; they weaken me. Bring me your problems; they strengthen me.” – Anonymous

“The measure of success isn’t if you have a tough problem, but whether it’s the same one you had last year.” – J.F. Dulles

As a Supervisor or Manager, your role is to chart the course for the department and/or see that it is following the course that has been set. Listen, if it was easy, everyone would do it. Put another way, almost any monkey could run the department with the ideal tools, staff, and support. You are there to deal with the problems as they come up, that’s your “real world” role. I see too many Managers and Supervisors “Wigging Out” every time there is a problem or a lack of ideal resources like they can’t believe they are being inconvenienced by it.

You took the job to work and have the responsibility, you were given the job because you were deemed to be up to the task. The task of dealing with the non-ideal situations, process failures, the lack of resources, and all other problems is what comes with the territory. But with that said, there are a few things to keep in mind to minimize the issues and deal with them when they come up in the best way possible:

Get ahead of it – The best way to handle a problem is before it even becomes a problem. What are your most common issues or resource shortfalls? What is the cause of those issues? What can you do to handle the cause, or at least get a notification so you are ready for the problem?

Push the responsibility down – How many times has your staff just handed over the problem to you when they could have tackled it? Look to your empowerment options for your staff. Encourage them to take ownership and make the decision. Coach them when they pass something off you feel they could have handled

By setting the attitude example – You have the ability to defuse much of the stress and anxiety that comes with these issues just by displaying the right way of handling it. Take the opportunity to “model the way” for your staff.

Plan for problems – They are going to happen, so include some time for them in your project and include some time for them in your day (If your calendar is filled with back-to-back tasks, you’re begging for trouble).

Deal as it comes – The least welcome option is dealing with it as it comes up, but you need to, so just do it with as much grace as you can.

Fix it when it’s over – Don’t forget to try to prevent the problem from occurring again. Whether it is coaching the employee, following up with another department, instituting a new process, or any other of the myriad of ways there are to prevent issues from occurring, just be sure to do them.

I wish we didn’t have as many problems to deal with as we do, but the simple fact is that we need to be ready for them because they are the reason we have the position we have. Great managers and supervisors do more with less, and work towards the “ideal” by proving themselves capable of producing results.

Always Toughest Near The Mountaintop

"It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." -W. James

“We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills.” John F. Kennedy

Things are always more difficult near the end of the journey. We’ve been at it for a long time and we are tired and just want it finished. This phenomenon crops up in a few areas of our work life in order of frequency:

· The last days of a project – The most common one we all face, where the excitement has worn off, we’ve tackled some issues as they’ve come up, but the end isn’t quite in sight yet.

· The 2nd or 3rd layers of process improvement – You’ve already made the big improvements, now you are just “sharpening the saw” as Steven Covey said. You’re improving, but only in the scope of cents, not dollar. It’s necessary and good, just not as exciting as the larger improvements.

· The upper echelons of your career – Opportunities for advancement are fewer and further between as you reach the top of the career ladder. Too often, people with potential lose some of their passion as the exciting next step is longer in coming.

The view from the top is great, but the air is thin. The satisfaction of completing your work is wonderful, but you’ll likely be exhausted. There can only be so many groundbreaking improvements. But finishing strong is often the quality that separates Good Managers and Supervisors from Great Managers and Supervisors. So how do you do it?

· Look how much you have done – The sense of accomplishment reinforces that your time was productive and can give you a boost to try to do even more.

· Work up a plan for the rest of the journey (you should already have one) – Fight the unknown by having a plan. This allows you to create the short term wins that will keep you going, and who knows, once you write it down you may find there wasn’t as much to do as you thought.

· Find a point of personal motivation somewhere – Whatever it may be for you; Bragging rights, commission dollars, proving someone wrong, etc. Grasp for that motivation to finish strong.

A part of this is simply just knowing that it will get tough at the end of what you are working on. If you know you have an obstacle ahead it’s easier to deal with it, it become something you expect and can prepare for. So know that it gets tougher at the top of the mountain, the end of a journey almost always is (and is always worth the effort).

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