Good Morning

We all need a break from our jobs from time to time . 

What is it like to go back to our jobs once we have managed to switch off? 

Organization

There come many times when you feel as if you were in a whirlpool in spite of planning and thinking you have everything under control.

Managing a group of people is exciting as it churns out so many interactions between people and usually means doing many things for the first  time time, so we are always on edge.

As a result nervousness builds up and we lose our serenity.
This happens to me about five times a year, in fact.

So what can you do about it?

It may sound strange but getting away from everything for a while always helps. We are all different so it is impossible to state a precise amount of time needed for you to calm down.

I find that there is not one simple solution ever. But what always works is finding a quiet time to think, but it needs to be when I am ready for that quiet time.
It may be at 9 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon.

If you listen to your brain, it will tell you the answers, for sure.

Here is a short article for you to read. It is worth it.

How to Solve Problems with the Subconscious Mind

Working for what...?

Today, for some reason, just turned out to be a time for reflection. It has been a day to think back over where I have come from how I managed to get here today and write this.

Almost all of us are at the mercy of someone else: to be promoted, fired, given a raise... you name it.

So, what about it? 

It is worth thinking about and if you are lucky you will survive.

This is what happened to me:  I was offered a pretty good job and found out a year later that my boss had been thinking of firing me...but never discussed anything with me, in fact.

Logically, she had no management qualification and was directive in nature, stifling any creativity that the emplyees at the time had.

"Luckily" she left and a different kind of Director came in, but not so different.

Does a boss really know you well enough to take decisions that will change your life forever?

I am sure many of you have lived this situation or know someone who has. It is not surprising therefore those organisations that allow their employees to treat others unfairly, will eventually fail.

My advice?

It is that time of year for me when I need to get everyone involved in planning for the coming sales campaign.
This requires collating useful informatin that the team will find useful and help them make informed choices about the following

• SWOT and STEP re-visited
• Segments and subsegments
• Clients to visit or not visit
• Market share of each segment
• Sales share of each customer
• New staff
• PErformance reviews
• Salary adjustments
• Events planning

Work on this starts mid October and is a frenzy of activity up until Christmas, sometimes even after that.
It involves co-ordinating a team of 7 Area Managers just for the sales and expenses Budget.
This year should be slightly easier as it is the second year involving the managers...and believe me, this has made my life a lot easier.

We´ll see...

 

A Friday afternoon surprise.......

I was feeling pretty content with the week after signing a business deal after being way for several days in Portugal. At the same time, I was tired and looking forward to getting home ....around midnight.Flying back to Madrid only takes an hour but I happended to do some last checks on the teaam before we took off. I read one email that put me in a bad mood and at the same time made me quite sad.

As a manager we need to ensure that the team is pulling in the same direction, the direction we have agreed to go in. Right?

Well, when you discover that not everyone is going that way, we need to find out why, first of all, and then if there is no really good reason, we need to nudge them in the right direction.

It is the nudging bit that can go awfully wrong, especially if it can´t be done face to face and we leave it down to emails or a phone conversation.

This is what happended last week.

A local Area Manager has not responded to two reminders for herself and her team to carry out essential product training via webex.  This essential product training had to be done at a time when the reps are on the verge of  closing sales of a new product in a new segment and therefore require as much help as they can get. It is clear that if we fail to sell, then the budget will be affected negatively.

I sent a fourth reminder, thist ime to each individual and they all agreed to carry out the training on the Friday. However, when the time came, the Area Manager allowed her staff to do other work instead of the training, It wasn´t so much the fact that she overrode an order after ignoring requests for a month, but the fact that, after so many years of working together she took this "nudge" as personal and this made me feel bad, especially after working so hard to build a the team spirit.

I wonder if her reaction was due to tiredness and the stress of the campaing more than anything else...  I hope so because if not, then it would seem to indicate that a boss is always running the risk of annoying, hurting or disappointing someone.

Day off

Today is a public holiday in Madrid and it feels rather strange as our sales team, the vast majority who do not live in Madrid, and are therefore working as usual, are in the middle of their sales campaign.

In fact, we are just at the time of the year when schools start deciding which course materials to adopt.

Not surprisingly, I am not taking a complete break. Rather, I am using the time, sitting in my garden , to think of each individual I work with: how each person is unique and comes with  strengths, needs, weaknesses, fears, a wide range of internal and external relationships, education and dreams.

As managers, unfortunately, we have the power to ignore the individual.  On the other hand, we can also attempt to understand each person, and I do not simply mean, the work colleague, but the whole person, the real person behind the role they play at work.

Worth the investment?  I am convinced of it... Try it, even if it takes a year. You'll be on your way to creating an invincible team.

 

Tender Loving Care

I have just spent two days in the Spanish city of Zaragoza at a teachers' conference we had organised. The aim of the conference was to create a positive emotional experience for our customers so they would go away having a long lasting smile on their faces.

The first speaker ended her presentation entitles "Tender Loving Care"  with a poem which brought tears to everyone´s eyes. She was able to make every single person in the auditorium feel special. As a result she recieved a standing ovation which made her cry too. Wow!...we all react so well to such stimuli because we are all  in need of care and love,  we all are, wherever we are and whoever we are with.