Work

Relationships / Work — 1 Comment
16
Sep 08

Boundaries. Chapter 2.

Today I had a great 3-hour session with my team of major gift officers.  The topic:  Creating a High Performance Culture.  Fun stuff, eh?  I brought in an executive coach who has been doing some work with the managers in our department (including me) to facilitate our discussion.  Our conversation boiled down to two main points:

1) we need to focus on our “core activity” which is generating 12 personal visits/month with right mix of potential donors, and

2) we need to create and protect time on our calendars to make the phone calls necessary to generate 12 visits pers month.

So, when the question was asked, “How do we create the time on our calendars to focus on our core activity?” I was shocked at what came next.  We had a 45 minute conversation about boundaries.  Yep, boundaries.  They are rearing their ugly head again.  Didn’t I just write about this topic a few days ago?  Somehow I think this is going to be a recurring theme for me. 

Without an exception, each of us talked about all the drains on our time and things we can do to protect our time so we can focus on our core activity.   At the conclusion of our discussion, we had come up with a series of “rules” we are going to put in place for our team.  Here they are:

1) Keep tabs on e-mail–it’s getting way out of hand.  Bundle e-mails together.  Only send an e-mail to a colleague if you have 3 items or more you need their input on.  If it can wait, hold off until you collect 3 items.

2) Respect closed doors.  If the doors is closed, do not knock, do not ask their assitant to interupt, do nothing to disturb them. 

3) Block off time on our calendars to focus on our core activity.  If that time is blocked off, do not disturb your colleague. 

4) Respect that we each have different preferences for communication.  If we don’t know, ask.  Do our best to work within those preferences.

5) Commit to focusing 3-5 hours/week on our core activity.  (The goal is to increase this allotment over time–in a perfect world, it would be 10 hours/week–5 for planning, 5 for phone calls.)

Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.  We have got to get good at setting them–for ourselves and for  how we interact with each other.  We all agreed that things have gotten out of hand in terms of interruptions and how “urgent” everything has become.  We all want answers to our questions NOW.  Is that really necessary?  Are we really doing life or death work?  I think not.  

We decided that at each of our bi-weekly meetings, we would review these rules and see how we were performing against them.  We also created a list of approximately 17 things that we can control (a key concept!) that will drive our performance.  At our next meeting we are going to prioritize this list then will focus on one topic each week at our meetings. 

So, once again, boundaries are the root of our issues.  I’ll report back on how we are doing.  (Speaking of which, I broke my new rule tonight.  And I’m only day 3 into my rules, that’s not good.  I spent more than 30 minutes on e-mail for work tonight.  I was in back-to-back meetings from 10-6:30 pm so I had to catch up or else tomorrow morning would have been swamped.  And what’s wrong with that?)

Life / Work — No Comments
14
Sep 08

Boundaries

That is the paradox of a rule–though it limits you in some ways, it simultaneously empowers you in others.  The limit forces  you to efficiency. It helps make better use of what you have and gets you focused within a real space.    –Dr. Henry Cloud

I definitely have issues with boundaries, or a lack thereof. (But that’s a story for another time!)  I am reading a wonderful book which I highly recommend:  The One-Life Solution by Dr. Henry Cloud.  The subtitle is “Reclaim Your Personal Life While Achieving Greater Professional Success.”  The instant I read the cover of this book, I knew it was meant for me.  The premise of the book is that most of our problems in our personal life and in our professional life are due to a lack of sufficient boundaries.  I’m not going to go into the details here but I want to share one example of how this applies to my life and what I’m doing about it.

For the past almost three years, I’ve worked in two positions that have consumed my life at various points.  Currently I’m in a position with significant fundraising and management responsibility.  I could literally work 24/7 and not run out of work to do.  At times the boundary between work and my personal life has been very difficult to find.  I’ve made big improvements over time but I still have a long way to go–both in setting and maintaining boundaries and in feeling comfortable about my decision to do so. 

In The One-Life Solution, Dr. Cloud encourages his reader to “Follow the Misery and Make a Rule.”  In other words, if there is something in your life that is causing you misery, figure out what you need to do to get rid of the misery then set a non-negotiable rule for yourself that will allow you avoid the misery.  If there’s no misery, there’s no need to set a rule.  In thinking about my life, one area that causes me misery is working at home.  Every day I feel like I “should” be working at home.  I can remote into my work computer thereby giving me access to everything I could possibly need to work on an endless number of projects.  I will never have a clean plate or empty task list so there is something that always needs to be done.  John doesn’t mind if I work at home and I’m willing to put in extra hours to stay on top of things.  But I don’t really like working at home very much.  I tend to work almost late every night as it is and that feels like it should be enough. Plus, I have a full, rich life with many interests outside of work and I want to pursue those areas of my life as well.  I decided to follow Dr. Clouds advice and set some rules for working at home.  Here they are:

1. I will only allow myself to spend 30 minutes each night working at home–primarily checking e-mail–which must be complete by 9:30 pm.  I will continue to work late each evening (but not beyond 7 pm) so I can finish things up before coming home. (I would rather stay late and not have to work at home then come home earlier and have to put in some extra hours from home.)

2. I will not allow myself to work at all on Saturdays–nothing, zero, ziltch. Not even peeking at e-mail.

3. I will allow myself to work on Sunday mornings until noon.  At noon, the computer is off and work is done.  If I have a lot to do, I’ll get up early to do it.

I applied rules 2 and 3 this weekend.  I have to say, I didn’t feel guilty not working on Saturday because my rule gave me permission to take the day off (woo hoo!) and I knew I could work on Sunday if I needed to.  On Sunday I worked solid from 9:30 am - 12 pm and I got a huge amount of work done.  I really cranked through things because I knew I had a deadline and I wanted to maxmize my time “at work.” I was far more efficient that I usually am at home because the clock was ticking.  That was an interesting surprise.  It felt good to get some important things done and I was able to enjoy the rest of the day off knowing I’d made progress on some projects.

I’m going to give these new rules a try for the next several weeks and see how they work.  I’ll report back in a few weeks!

Life / Passions / Work — No Comments
2
Sep 08

The Joy of Giving

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

Today I was reminded about one of the many reasons I love my work.  I have been in educational fundraising for 19 years.  I work at a major research university that is also home to the county’s only university medical center.  The CEO of our medical center was trained and worked for many years as a nurse.  Several months ago she, along with her mother, established an endowed scholarship to benefit a student in our new nursing program.  They established it in honor of our CEO’s grandmother (her mother’s mother) whose greatest wish was to see her granddaughter become a nurse (unfortunately she became a nurse after her grandmother died.)  Our CEO lost her mother this past weekend.  In lieu of flowers, she has asked members of her family and friends to make gifts to her grandmother’s scholarship–the one her mother helped her establish.  I spent over an hour with her this morning over coffee with one of our donors to the medical center.  She talked about the joy it brought her and her mother to create the scholarship and she was genuinely pleased to have this scholarship to channel gifts to in memory of her mother.  It was so nice for me to sit back and listen to her and think, “Wow.  This is why I’m in this business.”  I get to help people experience the joy of giving.  As she told her stories about her grandmother, her mother and their scholarship, the gentleman we were with was truly touched.  He asked how much she gave to establish the scholarship and he indicated that he might be interested in doing the same as he, too, is passionate about nursing.  It was a beautiful moment.  Giving has become a joyful experience for our CEO and she is inspiring others to experience the same joy.  And in the end, a talented and deserving student will have their tuition and books covered for an entire year.  A wonderful legacy–for a nurse, her mother and her grandmother.