How to eat an elephant...

You've all heard the old saying "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." That reminds me of new years and resolutions. When we look at what we want to do, sometimes we set overly ambitious goals and sometimes we set a lot of goals. Either way, we set ourselves up to fail. Most of us lack the ability to be successful at everything on our radar, all at the same time. There is a sense of optimism and renewed hope that comes with most new year resolutions. It causes the gym memberships to increase and the healthy aisles at the local market to be more crowded. Unfortunately, and somewhat inevitably for most, those resolutions become nothing more than good intentions within the first 6 weeks of the new year. 

As leaders, we can learn something from typical new year resolution failures. It involves the concepts of focus, simplicity and effective vision casting. We sometimes over complicate things or try to tackle too many things at once. It often leads to not completing work with quality in mind, missing deadlines or at worst, failure. For whatever reason, I have often found my role at work to be one that consists of multiple projects, multiple responsibilities and work that is of a critical nature. I can confess that recently, I found myself in the mental trap I just described. My new role involves so much work on a daily basis that it can overwhelm a seasoned employee quickly. As work came from all angles and in all magnitudes I found myself starring at what seemed to be a never ending list of things that need attention. In practical terms, in order to lighten the load and allow my team to be properly cross-trained while coming up for air, these things need to be done. Luckily for me, it only lasted a few weeks for me and I was able to recognize the volume of work and the sense of it being overwhelming was just me looking at the size of the elephant rather than which part I wanted to start with. 

I had some time off between Christmas and New Year's and instead of resolutions this year, my wife challenged me to find a word or a theme that would define my year. My word this year is refine – but I don't have time in this post to go into that yet, maybe another post in the near future! I am choosing to apply the word to every aspect of my life - including work. So I thought about how the team could keep it simple and how we could refine the work that was starring us in the face. The first week back in 2017 at our team meeting, I introduced a concept I am calling "one thing". Each team member, including myself, finds one thing that will provide some sort of relief to our team, our department or our customers in some way. Each person lets me know when their one thing is and owns it until it is successfully implemented. It's not over though, when the first "one thing" is done, each person is to pick their next "one thing" and the concept continues. Nearly every member of the team seems excited to identify and deliver their first "one thing", even myself. In fact, I had a chance to write some code for the first time in a while that will in effect save my team at least 8 hours per week. My code goes into production later this evening J. 

When you focus on the size of the work in front of you, sometimes it can be overwhelming. Keep it simple, grab the low hanging fruit that will provide as much value as possible and start moving forward. Some things will have to wait. Lead your people with clear, concise and simple strategies that will keep everyone moving in the right direction - toward the larger and more strategic goals.