A busy weekend for me, but I didn’t want regular readers to be without a business post—especially as I have been known to be a “weekend blogger”. I blog most days, but the weekends have typically been heavier than a “mere” four posts.
   Having started volunteering on the mentoring programme, I am mindful that I do not want those seeking us to overwork themselves—unless that is their stated intent. And these were steps that I, too, took, when re-evaluating where I wanted my life to head.
   It’s easy for businessmen to advise on how to increase work—those of us who have been to B-school know the ways. But there was no course on how to decrease work and maintain an ideal work–life balance: de-marketing was a footnote in one of the textbooks, and that wasn’t even a standard one, but one I chose myself. What if one wanted to spend more time with one’s children, for example?
   For those who don’t want to overwork themselves and burn out, or aren’t happy in their work, I would ask: what makes you happy in life? If work isn’t making you happy, but something else is, then the logical thing to do is to increase that something else.
   For me, recently, I came to the conclusion that while I could work 18-hour days, I needed to be content doing so, and that meant removing some of the negative influences in my life.
   What kept me awake? What prevented me from having a deep sleep? What conditions did I have back in the days when I was bringing in a five-figure sum a month? Usually, they were the smallest things, such as the tidiness of your work space to how many phone calls you got. For me, solutions came in the form of answering services and equipping myself with voice-recognition software.
   The solution is often not to walk away from something—which some folks do when they change jobs—but to re-examine what elements are wrong with where you are.
   The minute we leaders feel under pressure to lead, then we need to be alert to that—and make some drastic changes. Because leadership is about reading signs in a stress-free way and steering an organization accordingly—not be under pressure to find those signs and desperately seek solutions. Calmness is the number-one condition of good leadership.
   Openness is the second condition: openness with clients, creditors, suppliers. Solutions can often come from one’s community of people.
   Contentedness is the aim throughout: there is no point having a stressed-out boss. That is never going to help the bottom line, even if that is the business’s stated objectives.
   Leaders are charged with not just leading, but creating. We must create rather than react, for reactions are repetitions of old behaviours that have proven not to lead to contentedness.
   The process can take months, but those who feel their lives are heading in the wrong direction should begin it now. The earlier the evaluation comes, the sooner the solution arises.
   A branding analogy might be this: maintain your personal brand, and do not lose sight of it. But if you are unhappy, re-examine how your brand is being interpreted. If the things you are doing are taking you away from that, then make some changes. Thinking of yourself as an organization may seem less human, but it is not a bad way to do an audit. Posted by Jack Yan, 06:42  permalink

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