I'm dealing with a client situation right now that has taken on quite a life of its own.
What I mean is that it's as if the project is a living, breathing beast that has overtaken the people involved in it and is spinning them around like twister spins houses effortlessly as it passes through a region.
As far as I can tell, the people involved have not stopped to really focus their thoughts and feelings about the situation. And, so far, we (at Common Outlook) have not done a good job of it either. The effect?
All parties involved are engaged in a lot of "busywork";
generating a lot more activity than the situation requires.
But that is stopping tomorrow – at least for us.
I have decided to hit the "pause" button and have called a round-table discussion for tomorrow with a few of my key team members to step back and look at the big picture here. To help us do that, I have asked one of our team members who is not involved in the discussions – and therefore not lost in the forest, unable to see the trees – to join us in the discussion.
We will be asking big-picture questions like:
- Given the nature of this beast, is this a situation we still want to be involved in?
- What are the key goals we have in this situation?
- Are we still meeting them?
- Do we believe we will be able to meet them if we stay in the game?
All of the questions above are designed to help us renew our focus.
And, we will be able to do this because we are choosing to "unplug" long enough to regain the focus we have lost. I believe many of us would be better served by doing this. That is, unplugging long enough – even for only 15-30 minutes in some cases – to ask some big-picture questions in order to establish or regain FOCUS.
I find that this creates a much calmer atmosphere intellectually and emotionally, and it dramatically reduces wasted effort.
Especially in today's crazy economic times, I think this is something we can all use.
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