Tag Archive for: balance

Are you balancing the long term and short term?

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Most teams and companies do a poor job balancing the short term and long term focus. I see this without exception in most sectors and regions.

People say all the right things about how important it is to focus on the long term. They say things like: “Markets are changing,” “Customers are asking to consume new things in new ways,” “Technologies have advanced and it requires us to advance too,” and “We need to incubate new ideas and the next generation’s products and services.”

They even say things like: “We need to invest in order to make money and grow,” “We need to be prepared to sacrifice some of our short-term in order to gain the benefits of the long-term,” and the ultimate:  “Our future success depends on it.”

However, in reality, they manage things in a very short-term perspective, focus, thinking, and mindset. Furthermore, they judge and rate the health and success of their business based on short-term performance, events, and results and they react to circumstances based on short-term successes or failures.

Leaders and managers often tell me things like: “We say we should be willing to sacrifice our short-term for our long-term, but instead we keep sacrificing our long-term for our short-term.”

For example, if they had a bad month in terms of performance, they stop longer-term initiatives or put them on alert or hold, and they hesitate to invest in and green-light new initiatives. If they had a good month, they tend to let things continue.

The whole point of having a vision and strategy is to provide teams with a framework and context for thinking about the longer-term future of their business. A good strategy for the future should make people comfortable about setting priorities, as well as making choices, decisions, and tradeoffs in the short-term.

An effective strategy also provides teams and leaders with the courage and confidence to invest in a desirable future that they have outlined and articulated in advance, even when, perhaps especially when they have some turbulence and inconsistencies in their short-term performance.

However, it seems that even teams and companies who have a sound strategy have a tough time trusting it, relying on it, and using it to empower themselves to better juggle their long-term and short-term initiatives.

How is your team doing in this regard?

Work-life balance is possible…if you change your approach

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Many people struggle with the notion of maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

Ambitious, driven and committed people want to be successful in all aspects of their life, not just their professional career. They want to have it all. They want to have a great marriage, nurturing family life, fantastic health and fitness and a satisfying social life. And, they want to have or achieve all these desires simultaneously.

There is a notion that the Europeans have more of a “Work in order to Live” mindset while in North America, we tend to “Live in order to Work.” I think this is somewhat true. However, I have also seen from my own experience working with people from many countries and cultures that no matter what people say in public, most people who are healthy and ambitious tend to approach work as the highest life priority. Even in Europe.

This is the case because people tend to relate to their life desires and commitments as priorities, not promises.

The premise for “priorities” is fundamentally different from “promises”:

Seeing as we only have a finite number of hours in the day and scarce resources, we often feel as though we cannot accomplish everything we want. The “priorities” approach says, “We are not going to be able to achieve everything we want, therefore let’s put all our desires in order of importance so we can tackle them in that order. If we had 15 items in our priority list and only got to 6 of them – that is fine. After all, that is why we prioritized them in the first place.”

This paradigm reinforces the expectation that we won’t be able to achieve everything we desire or consider important.

In contrast, the “promises” approach says, “We are not going to be able to achieve everything we want, therefore, let’s pick the few things that are most important for us and promise them unconditionally.”

In the world of promising – a promise is a promise. In other words, if you promise multiple promises, each is equal in weight. You are holding yourself accountable for fulfilling each promise, without hierarchy of importance among them.

The “promises” paradigm compels and even requires you to be more innovative and resourceful about how you juggle and achieve all your promised areas. It also drives you to get support from people around you, delegate things to others, and overall build a network and structure of support in your community.

In the world of “priorities,” people often excuse or justify not achieving some of their desired areas and commitments because of other areas. For example, I often hear people say things like: “I just didn’t get to it,” “I didn’t have enough time or money to do it,” or “it wasn’t a high enough priority at the time.”

However, in the world of “promises,” people remain accountable and responsible for following through–no matter what the circumstances are.

I meet too many frustrated people who are out of shape or overweight who tell me, “I have been so busy with my job I didn’t have time to exercise.”

I meet too many unhappy people who have issues in their relationship or marriage who tell me, “I lost my marriage because I was a workaholic.”

I meet too many unfulfilled people who have abandoned their passions and hobbies who tell me, “I stopped playing my instrument or playing tennis because I had too much going on in my life.”

If you relate to all your key life desires and commitments as clear equal promises, you will start dealing with them differently.

For example, you could promise:

  • I promise to have an amazing marriage.
  • I promise to be a parent who is highly present and involved in my children’s lives.
  • I promise to have a very successful career.
  • I promise to be healthy, vital and fit.
  • I promise to be a contributing member to my church, synagogue or community.
  • I promise to have an active and satisfying social life.

Relating to your life desires and commitments as priorities is an easier way to live because you always have a way out, an excuse or something else to blame for not living up to your desires and having it all.

In contrast, relating to your life desires and commitments as promises may seem harder at first, but if you fully take it on it will afford you a much more inspiring, nurturing and satisfying life.

 

Managing your professional and personal life balance may be easier than you think

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Like many of you, I have a very full and busy schedule interwoven with business and personal commitments, projects and activities.

I am passionate about having it all so I go out of my way to not miss out on personal commitments like exercising, spending time with my wife and kids, etc. because of career and professional priorities.

Managing everything, though is often like riding an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes it feels like I have too much to do and I am not managing to get it all done. And, at other times, even when the load is the same, I feel that I am completely on top of it and I have time to spare.

But, no matter how I feel during the roller coaster ride I seem to always manage to get everything done in a timely and workable manner. Some things seem to go smoothly from the start and other things tend to squeak, push and kick until the last minute. However, I don’t recall the last time I failed to achieve a significant project, deadline or milestone.

When it comes to managing our professional and personal life balance there seem to be two worlds occurring at the same time. One is the actual events and activities that happen. The other is all the noise and self-commentary that accompanies the activities, in our head.

For example, I have a routine practice of exercising ninety minutes every third day. I try and keep that routine religiously in order to stay in shape. There seem to always be good reasons why I don’t have time to do it. But, I still do it. The little voice in my head often goes off with things like: “Today is not a good day for exercising” “You are going to miss your deadline if you exercise today” and “You don’t feel like it anyway.”

When I buy into what my little voice is saying I usually get stressed. Sometimes I even decide to not exercise. When that happens I almost always feel defeated and disappointed.

I have learned from personal experience that there is no real direct correlation between how much I get done and the noise in my head about it. In other words, no matter how insistent and convincing my little voice is about how if I exercise I will miss my other commitments, in reality, most of the time that is not the case at all!

As a result, I have learned to not give credence to my noise. I just let the noise go on and I go ahead and do what I promised myself and planned to do anyway. I trust that if I stay true to my commitments in all areas I will always manage to get them all done. And, 95% of the time that is exactly what happens. In the other 5%, I typically end up renegotiating the deadline or in rare instances working longer hours to pull it off on time. But, the long hours routine rarely happens.

People often ask me for advice on how to manage their professional and personal life balance.

My answer is:

    1. Be clear about your long-term and short-term professional and personal commitments and objectives. The more you occupy your consciousness with, and focus your intention on your dreams, commitments and goals the less space there will be for noise.
    2. Schedule the activities associated with fulfilling them in your calendar – for example: for professional: writing the proposal, reading the report, returning calls. For personal: exercising 3 times a week, date night with your spouse, quality time with kids, etc.
    3. Keep your schedule, no matter what. Don’t cancel your exercise or time with your kids because of work load or because your little voice says you will fail.
    4. Say no to others who want to double book things with you while you have planned personal activities. Be kind and responsible about it and offer alternative times.Don’t buy into the noise. Just be aware of it and acknowledge it but don’t buy into it.
    5. Gather evidence that no matter how loud and convincing your voice is, it’s just noise and it has no bearing on your ability to get everything done.
    6. Obviously, things are never perfect. At times you will need to be flexible and innovative, including perhaps rescheduling things or working longer hours to get everything done. But if you stand for having it all, you manage your schedule with the relentless commitment to never sacrifice or sell out on anything important.
    7. And, if you make sure that all your professional and personal commitments are accounted for, you will find that the noise has less and less control over your actions. As a result your ability to have a well-balanced professional and personal life will keep growing.

    Try it and see how it works…