Tag: Powerful

What if it mattered?

 mead quote

What if? What if your team became ‘thoughtful, committed citizens’ to your vision? What if your team felt so strongly about their work – with you as their motivator – that they enjoyed coming to work? What if they found the ability to recover from the inevitable pitfalls to truly succeed – success being feeling happy with their work life?

We find happiness in our life (work and professional) when it matters to us.  We succeed because we found something that matters to us.  We change the world a little step at a time when it matters to us.

Matter in your own life.  Become ‘thoughtful, committed citizens’ to your own world and the big world (even your office) will get a little bit better – or maybe even a whole lot better.

Karenwiley@appliedteamdynamics.com

Making the impossible feasible, then successful

 

Complacency / Apathy / Boredom

bored in the office

There’s this mad rush every morning.  People struggle to get out of bed, get ready, and race to work in rush hour traffic with millions of other people in every developed country.  They arrive at their building and sit in their cube where there’s a long list of things to do – some worthwhile and most not.  They don’t run the company, they aren’t in a corner office, and they never will be.  It’s ‘just a paycheck’.

A few musings on a Tuesday morning:

  • Own it! Why are you here just for the paycheck? Make it better or move on.
  • Stop whining! Make it better or move on.
  • There are soo many emails – unless you need documentation, email is the WORST form of communication. Talk to people – engage with people.  Make it better or move on.
  • Give a damn about your life and Make it better!

You are in charge of your life.  Make it better – Make it matter – Make it count.

karenwiley@appliedteamdynamics.com

Making the Impossible Feasible, then Successful

Case Study: Project in Flames

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Returned to a old client to complete a Big Data conversion project.  The architecture was bleeding edge technology and not working as expected, the team was drowning in nine different integration and testing environments, and the entire project lacked focused attention. Using only email for tracking per management: coordinated the releases into each environment, tracked the constantly changing purposes for each environment, and handled inconsistent management attention along with an aggressive timeline. All new deadlines were met without any further delays and the client was very happy.

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Too much to do? Slow Down!

WHAT?!?!?!?  How does that help me?  I’m working on slowing down now and I am finally seeing the results – it works!  There are two things at play here:

One is how your brain works when it’s overwhelmed – it’s ineffective. Effectiveness comes from being focused and relaxed.  Are you focused and relaxed when you’re overwhelmed? Yeah, neither am I.

The second thing at play is what are you working on? How do you know what’s the most important thing you should be doing?  For me, I do a brain dump of everything I need to do ON PAPER.  As I get it all out of my head, I categorize – family, house, boss, project, marketing, etc.  Then, I look at 3 criteria for each – urgency, importance, and impact.  This gets to the heart of why you need to slow down.   These three criteria will find the assumptions you’re making about what is really a priority.  But most importantly, it allows you to use your intuition on where you need to focus.  (this is the gushy part: this is slowing down, this is living intentionally, this is mindfulness)

From here – you can make real decisions.  What is the most urgent/important/impactful thing you need to be doing now, today, this week? What can you delegate?  Once you answer those questions for yourself, you can get soo much done on your list.  You’re free from anxiety as you work because you KNOW you’re doing the right thing. 

Try it – it can’t hurt and it just might help you find that illusive balance.

karenwiley@appliedteamdynamics.com

Making the Impossible Feasible, then Successful

Case Study: B2C Troubles

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
I started with a retail supply company shortly after they had lost their good standing with Amazon for 5 days, costing them approximately $80,000. B2B had been their bread and butter and was operating normally through their warehouse. Their B2C dropship channel was in dire straits. Their core physical problem was their order process required a manual interface between the vendor and the warehouse. For B2B orders that are one order for thousands, this was manageable. But dropships are thousands of orders for one item and that became too cumbersome. Automation was attempted but was unsuccessful. Their core strategic problem was there was no strategic thinking.

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