How To Keep Your Body And Brain In The Same Place

Lately I have noticed a number of executives experiencing increasing demands on where they need to be when. As demands increase, not only do you have to be ruthless, in a thoughtful way, about which requests for your time, presence, or brainpower you say yes to, but once you have made your decision, you need to not second guess yourself and keep your brain and body in the same place.
 
When working with my executive clients as an advisor I ask them:

• What would be your ideal allocation of work by percentage (e.g., 10% board relationships, 20% team management, 20% product reviews, etc.) 
   

• Now look back on your calendar for the last three months and what has your actual percentage been?

This is what needs to solely drive what goes on your calendar, and where your time and energy is focused. This is one of the questions on my Thoughtfully Ruthless® Executive Assessment which you can download here. 

Don’t get caught in any of the three ways you can excessively worry about your calendar:
 
Pre-worry: 
Not: “I am double and triple booked this week and have no idea how to prioritize” but “I was ruthless in prioritizing based on my goals."

Parallel-worry: 
Not: “I know of three other places I should be right now; I hope I made the right choice,” but —SILENCE! no parallel thinking— Bring your focus to your current meeting or piece of work.

Post-worry: 
Not:” I should have gone to that other meeting, I made the wrong choice,” but instead —analyze the patterns, ask yourself are you regularly making the right calls about where to spend your time and energy based on what you are delivering for your business? —Address that —not individual choices.
 
The same applies to your personal calendar. Look ahead to all of your holiday commitments and ask if you are spending the most time with people who energize and inspire you? If not, change your commitments, proactively manage the demands on your social calendar and that of your family and be ruthless, in a thoughtful way, with where you spend your time and energy over this upcoming holiday season.

To your continued success,

Val

How To Quit When You Are No Longer Valued

Amazon just quit New York because it no longer felt that their expansion plans for HQ2 were valued. 

I’ve been speaking to several executives lately where my advice has been “get out of there!”

While you can roominate and convince yourself how you could possibly try and make it work where you are, the best solution is usually to walk away. 

If you are not having fun, or those promises for promotion and progression have evaporated it’s time to walk away. 

Take a critical look at your boss, their peers, and your board. Do you have confidence in them and are learning from them every day or do the stories you tell your friends at the weekend resemble a story line from Dilbert?

Amazon quit New York because they didn’t feel valued and thought that the battle to bring a new HQ to the region was going to be just too hard. 

Do you feel like your work is a battle? If so it’s time to say I quit!

I’m going to be holding a free confidential “Should I Quit?” Ask Me Anything by text for the next seven days. Text me any question +1 626 406 2474 and I’ll reply there.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val

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Boost Energy And Success By Preparing Without Worrying

There are three parts to worrying, pre-worry, parallel-worry, and post-worry which will feature in the next three posts. Here’s part one:
 
How do you spend your energy before an important upcoming event? Whether it is a meeting with your board, a crucial presentation to your executive team, or speaking at a conference, thoughtfully ruthless leaders know how to manage pre-worry that can accompany the preparation for an event.
 
One of the clients who I mentor has a very successful consulting practice, and she was asking my advice about a potential client. She was worried about the legal documents that the potential client might want her to sign. She asked my advice on how to negotiate elements of the contract that included payment terms, nondisclosure agreements, and working arrangements. She worried a lot about how she would request changes and how she would manage their reactions, and she wanted to talk about it. It was not even settled that her potential client was going to actually become a client, but my mentee wanted to be prepared.
 
This paranoid preparedness is excessive, and I refused to offer advice until she had an agreement with her client, but still she worried, despite my telling her to “just stop it!” Even the procurement team got involved with wanting to talk about the detailed requirements of the contract that had not yet been agreed to. Much to her disappointment, she never did reach agreement with her potential new client, so all of that worry, conversation, and mental energy was completely futile, but it could have taken up even more energy and time. The one lesson she did learn and is acting on is not to expend energy on items until the appropriate time.
 
Preparation is always wise, but a complete virtual run-through of a conversation or important meeting is expending unnecessary energy. It is helpful to consider the possible outcomes and visualize questions and obstacles and how you may improve your probability of success, but excessive pre-worry wastes your time and energy.
 
What important event do you have coming up on your calendar? What imaginary conversations and scenarios are you entertaining in your head? Notice what’s going on and use that energy to turn your pre-worry into appropriate, purposeful planning. And then let go until your event arrives. Focus on the present and don’t waste your energy with obsessive thinking about what may never even happen.

Parallel-worry and post-worry will be the features of the next two ​blog posts.

Dedicated to growing your business,

Val