Learnings at the top

Since the last 6 months, I have assumed a board role. In the past 10 years of my career, I have done a variety of jobs in different countries, most of them manager jobs but still functional, and with a functional boss that I report into.

As I find myself reporting to the MD and part of the board, there are huge differences. It is just a different ball game, and certainly less enjoyable, at least in the begining, until I don't get used to it and am still the rookie...

- you don't have a close boss to report into, that will guide you and cover you
- when there are problems, most board members worry about pushing them and quickly placing the blame on other board member
- most of my time and concerns are now to be spent on managing these relations and making sure my teams work is perfectly done by the books (even if this takes more time and makes the company less efficient and customer focused)... Now only in parts of the day am I finding some time to progress the work of my team!

I know that it is my first role like this and I shouldn't really generalise. I also know that in difficult times, like the current ones, with accute economic pressure and decresing sales, these situations become much more visible. I also know that I work in a multinational and smaller companies are for sure simpler and more straightforward.

But nevertheless, it is a different life.
For the time being, I will experience it and learn from it. Later I will decide if I want to cope with this and progress or look at my career in a different way, probably in a different place.

Stop and organize

The last few days have been stressful. As we near the begining of a sales quarter, and specially on a year that is difficult in terms of sales results, the pression mounts significantly!
With the ammount of tasks and pressure on my time, I am struggling to fund the time to stop and meditate or to organize and prioritize tasks. Unfortunately, this immediately begins to show in the quality of my work.
Definitely it is a better use of time to stop for 20 minutes or so and get organized, define priorites, define what you will do and what you won't. I'll recover these minutes over and over again.

Productivity Tip

In the last couple of weeks, I've been doing something that I've found really helpful in getting me to be more productive.
Usually I have a list of all my tasks, of all the to-dos, and then I break them down into A's, B's and C's, according to the importance/urgence.
What I've also started doing now is, 1st thing in the morning, before anything else, I set the 2 achievements for the day. The 2 things that no matter what, I really need to get done.
And usually I start by doing these 2 things, progressing them.

What usually happens is that I get them done and this gives me a good feeling of achievement and builds confidence. Gives me the strength and self confidence to then go on and tackle all the other activities on my list, and on top of it all, on a good mood, as I feel that I am being productive!!

Benefits of massage

Back from holidays. It was a good break, not typically relaxing as I went for for city breaks instead of beach but definitely a change of set.

After 1 week away, I wasn't really relaxing... and you know what really did it for me?
Walking down the street, in an impulse I went for one of those places where they give you 10 minutes massages... By the end of the massage I barely could speak and at night all I could think of was 'bed please!'. I had a fantastic night sleep, like a rock and woke up really energised though a bit sore. The rest of the week I kept sleeping really well and feeling increasingly relaxed. It made me realize how much my body was stressed (I didn't really know until I started to feel it relax).

Definitely I will do it again. I've done massages before, the difference about this one was that it was really quite hard, aggressive almost, but really perfect for relaxing your muscles!

Getting out there

I've had a friend from overseas stay over in the last week or so.
The funny thing is that having this friend over has made me go out of my routines and rediscover some things that I enjoy!
In the last months (or more!) I now realize I have kind of fallen into routines... Yes I do go out with friends, yes I keep on doing a lot of sport, yes I do go away on weekends, yes I do travel... but sometimes I just stay at home at night. And there are some things that I used to enjoy in the past and that I don't do anymore - just because I thought it would be boring.

With my friend over, I had to show her round and it made me go back to old haunts that I used to love and... I realised that I still love them and really enjoy being there!!!! I had just been thinking 'been there, done that' and thinking how boring it would be but... there's nothing like going out and doing it.

Smell of success

Again, some positives coming through. The European MD of my company, who has been recently appointed, is coming over for a visit. The MD of my division asked me to prepare a presentation about the division, big figures and also key achievements and issues/opportunities to tackle.
I put quite a lot of work into it:
1. I organised myself well, sumarizing the presentation at hand and all the info I needed to get in an excel spreadsheet, like I do for projects.
2. I then chased people early for the stuff that I needed.
3. And I worked on the pres, I really put some effort behind it. Meaning couple of late nights.
The results were really good. My MD really loved it. A couple of guys from the board were also there and they were really impressed, to the point of making positive comments to me.
We then went on to show it to the country MD who was impressed to the point of sending it to other divisions for them to use as benchmark.
Great stuff, made me feel great.
And also showed me a couple of things.
+ it's good to work on things that you do well. I have always been good at presentations, and when given this opportunity, I jumped on it, as I am cravin a bit of success at this point.
+ putting work in usually brings you results.

To top a really nice day, the country MD came up with the proposition of showing of 3 of my projects in the meeting room where the meeting will take place! Just what the doctor ordered...

Getting back to sleep with the help of meditation and NLP

I've read bits and pieces about NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programming - though I'm not a great believer, I can see the usefulness and merit behind most of the techniques.
Tonight I had a great experience on how they can work!
I woke up at 4am. I arrived late yesterday from a long weekend away, and I guess I was still a bit revved up from the flight and a bit anxious from going back to work.
I did the usual stuff I do to get me back to sleep: ate some cookies, then read for a bit... but to no avail. In fact, I was getting more anxious, as I knew I had a lot of work to cover the following day.
Then I tried something: I forced myself to take deep long breaths. I wanted to take at least 6 in a row. It wasn't easy (!), sometimes I got to 2 or 3 and my mind wandered to one of my problems! But as I was patient and eventually managed to calm the breathing, slowly I noticed parts of my body releasing tension. One of my hands had a really tight grip that started to loosen up... and so on. Simultaneously my mind started to get a lot calmer and rested. In a few minutes, I was getting back to sleep!
It's a great learning! Basically it takes a bit from meditation, the deep breathing to refocus and quieten the mind; and also a bit from NLP.
One of the most popular techniques of NLP is the act as if. For example, if you want to be more confident, act as if you are confident. Stand up straight, look people in the eyes, and so on. And then you will start to feel more confident.

In this case, though my mind was overactive, I started breathing as if I was calm... and the mind soon followed!

Great quote

"When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery."
Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), Russian novelist, short-story writer, dramatist

New beginings

I am just over 3 months and the current job and yesterday finally had the feeling that I am coming to grips with it and can start laying my rules!
Basically 2 things drove this feeling:
Yesterday we had a category review meeting, basically all the categories were presenting their grwoth plans for the next 3 years to the board, for discussion and ultimately resource allocation.
1st, I felt totally confortable presenting the stuff I am managing and it was great seeing that the comments from the board were exactly in line with what we me and my team have been discussing! Also, I felt in my depth in all the discussions that were happening. I remeber my first meetings in this new job, where half the conversations I did not get at all!!! It's a great feeling now.
2nd, I was in a chat with a group of people in one the breaks and found myself strongly defending arguments in a couple of subjects. Meaning I was confident and new enough about the subject to be doing this. Knowing myself, I only do it when I know what I am talking about, no point in making up just for the sake of shining a bit.

It's a great feeling.
And a learning too. It's easy to put ourselves under pressure in the begining of a new job, but there will always be a need for time to soak in all the information and the new reality.
You need to give yourself time! Plan for it. Plan time to adapt.

Competence

I was reading yesterday a book from an entrepreneur, where he said (about one of his first jobs) that he was enjoyinng because he was good at it.
And I couldn't stop thinking how true this is.

You enjoy doing something when you are competent at it. It's good to be and feel competent at something. It's good to have people asking for your help and advice or admiring what you are doing.
It's good to feel that you are doing a really good job.

Obviously there are passions as well, things that you get easily engrossed in and as you do them, time just flies without you noticing. These are the things that you should be doing to be on purpose!

But it is also great to do things you are competent at.

The learning for me is that it is absolutely normal that when you start a new job, the 1st months will be difficult. Because you will be dealing with people that are doing it for years and are much more confortable. Because you are in a learning curve, and are not competent yet. Because people expect a lot and it will be difficult in the beggining to meet and even more so to surpass expectations.
But that is normal.
When changing a job, it is important to plan:
- what you want to achieve on the 1st 90 days; detailed plan of what to do, who to go out with, what things to understand, who to meet
- where you will be (what level of knowledge do you want to have); what things you expect to have achieved by then

It's important to do this plan to put things in perspective.
It's also probably a great idea to share it with your boss, to set his expectations as well.
But most of all, it's important to you, in order to limit the pressure you put in yourself!