I gathered my new team together last week to meet for the
very first time with the task of agreeing a project vision and mission
statement.
The room was filled with highly skilled professionals and I
was honoured to be standing amongst them. I outlined the basics of what we have
been commissioned to undertake and set them the task of writing a vision
statement.
Afraid that I may come across as some kind of ‘David Brent’
character (from the BBC sitcom ‘The Office’), I spent time at the start of the
morning nailing my colours to the mast as to why I believed it was essential
that we agreed a vision for the project before trying to create any detail.
Years ago, I remember spending an inordinate amount of time
in a meeting doing just the same task. As someone who easily gets impatient in
the work arena if I ‘can’t see the point of something’, I regarded that
‘visioning’ event as a gargantuan waste of time as I just wanted to crack on
with things and get the ‘real’ work done.
I have since learned that many a project succeeds or fails on
the quality and understanding of what the outcome should be. A vision should
paint the ideal – sometimes that ideal seems unachievable (The vision statement
of Oxfam for example is ‘A just world without poverty’) but I am adamant that
if we don’t have a vision that is inclusive of hope then it is not worth
setting out our stall.
I had set about an hour and a half for the task, and after
some initial discussions, I let the group loose to come up with some statements
in the hope that we may use these ideas to craft a collective vision statement.
Flipchart paper, coloured markers and post-it notes abound,
my newly established group of professionals eagerly complied and began to come
up with their ideas…
…after an hour or so, I could see that they were struggling.
All of them had spent a long time in discussion and debate.
As time ticked by, I noticed that every sub group had drafted
either a formal bullet pointed list or some creative buzzwords in different
coloured clouds. Nobody had drafted a sentence let alone a paragraph and I
began to feel a little concerned.
They all had a sense of the important things that should be
included in the vision of our project but pointed out that our vision statement
could not be a plethora of words that had no sense or synergy to hold them
together.
I was surprised just how difficult it was for them to grasp
what I had required.
I am so passionate about our project that I stood at the
front and waxed lyrically about the kind of message our vision statement should
hold. I gave them more examples from other organisations that had crafted
succinct paragraphs to paint a picture of what their work was aiming for and then
one of them, a very learned colleague said ‘You have such passion for what we
are going to do – you already have the vision – why don’t you write the
statement and we can just agree to it!’
‘No!’ I replied, ‘This is not about MY vision – it is about
OUR vision. It must be something that we create, that we sign up to
collectively. We must own it and then strive for it together.’
We broke for coffee. And then like so many great ideas and
decisions, our vision was borne away from the layout of the boardroom and on
comfortable chairs, over biscuits and caffeine.
On return to the session, we worked on it quickly,
creatively and with a firm understanding our vision for the future was
fundamental to our moving forward.
I love working as
part of a team.
As a leader, I lead from the middle as an integral part of
my team but I am prepared to be the gatekeeper of our work. I can do this with
confidence because I know that our decisions and actions have been planned
thoroughly with every member being fully valued. In short, I expect to lead
from the front where it is necessary but to be a team member first and foremost
is central to my leadership philosophy.
In my first year of my new normal, work has been my
salvation. I cannot say that when I returned last November, I had a spring in
my step but recently, my professional life holds more interest and motivation
than ever before. I am wholly surprised at this given the last 12 months but I
am exceptionally grateful for it.
However, life this
year has presented many more challenges when I return home.
On a personal level,
I have had to adjust to losing a team member. The one with whom I consulted about so many different things on a daily basis and on aspects of life that I needed
support with.
Away from the office and the boardroom there was a far more
important project taking place – LIFE.
In a team of two, that loss is utterly catastrophic. It
doesn’t matter how f***ing awesome your vision statement is for the project
that is life because it is aborted immediately.
And as failures go, I can tell you that this one sucks big time.
I could blame myself of course. After all, if I had chosen
to be in a team of one, a happy singleton with only myself to consider then I
wouldn’t have found myself in this position. Plenty of people are single right?
Plenty of people are successfully living their dreams without someone by their
side and they do not have to consult, plan or negotiate anything with anyone
very much let alone a significant other. Many of these people report that they
are happy with this way of life – ‘why complicate things?’ they say.
And who am I to argue with them? I believe them or at least
I believe a few of them – the few that I know really well and who all have very
valid and individual reasons for their choice.
There –in lies the rub. It is their choice. I do not relate to
that kind of choice but I don’t need to understand it – in fact, it is none of
my business.
I did not choose this way of life. My vision was not to live
my life alone.
I chose to be in a team of two. We sketched out plans for
our life with an understanding that many challenges would appear along the way.
We faced each hurdle as it presented itself and had team meetings accordingly.
And like all good teams, we discussed, we debated and we didn’t always see eye
to eye on every issue.
In our team of two, we had twice the confidence. Can you
imagine that? Having a confidence level to deal with life to the tune of 200%?
It meant that we were able to do so much more. I was more
productive at work because I had a powerhouse at home that enabled me to run
thoughts and ideas over a glass of wine.
There is so much I miss about being with Bebe. The daily
debrief which we used to call the ‘story of the day!’ was always something I
looked forward too. Over the years, our stories of the day took on many different
themes. We would share our frustrations, our experiences, our thoughts on the
news or a particular event.
As a team of two, we were happy, optimistic and upbeat –
even when life threw up difficult times, we found it possible to be pragmatic
and even humorous. Yep, there was a lot
of humour.
I was the class clown and he was court jester. Our home was
always full of laughter and nonsense and chasing each other and doing daft
voices.
The ‘in’ jokes.
And the jokes that probably weren’t that funny – but he made
me think that they were.
We had started a toyshop from scratch after Bebe had been
made redundant. I continued to work my full-time job while he ran the business.
The story of the day was always a highlight when we caught up with each other
every evening and I loved hearing stories about his customers and their idiosyncrasies.
On our first day opening, a customer came in and asked ‘will
you be getting any toys in for Christmas?’
Errr.. We had a shop
that was stacked to the rafters with toys. We were unsure which bit of the term
TOY SHOP she was struggling with! The clue was in the title really. It made us
laugh and we referred to it often, even years later.
When my team became
ONE, I struggled. The struggle is now well documented in my nods to tears,
pain, snot and anxiety, but the thing I found most difficult was that I had
no-one to bounce any ideas off.
I had nobody to check my decisions – not that I needed every
decision to be checked in our relationship but I knew that I didn’t have to
make decisions completely alone. The quandary of whether to accept voluntary
redundancy, the dilemma of which jobs to apply for – the wondering of whether
to sell or rent out my house when we moved to Wales…
…all of these were discussed with each other. Of course it
was necessary for the both of us that I made the right decisions because the
outcome would have an impact on our situations.
In my new normal, I
am having to make decisions alone.
I have plenty of wonderful people that I can voice my ideas
to but they rightly point out after letting me express my thoughts that ‘ultimately,
it is only you that can decide’.
And they are right. It is only me that can decide. I have to
do what is right for me.
I certainly have to do what is right for me when it comes to
major decisions – for example, I wonder whether it is right for me to stay here
in this house. It is where we lived together and it is where Bebe died. Nobody
can make that decision for me, I must do it for myself.
As the first year of widowhood is drawing to a close, there
are lots of decisions I still have yet to make. Most of the year has rendered
me powerless (or so I thought) but actually, I have realised that not
making a decision is a decision in itself!
I am learning to have faith in my own ability to decide the
BIG things in life myself. Without him here, I have already made the choice to
go back to work, to engage in some of life again, to take a promotion and to
set boundaries between myself and others who are not as helpful as I may have
hoped.
And most of all, I know that it is absolutely okay not to
make a decision at all. Some decisions can wait a while longer.
Some may wait a
lifetime.
When I am ready, I will know.
And what about my personal vision statement? I am working on it. With Biscuits and
caffeine.
And hope.
For
Bebe: I know now that there are many choices and decisions that only I, alone
can make. I valued your input on so many things and I really miss not being
able to run things by you.
However,
as the first year without you is coming to an end – I realise that I can still
apply all of the questions, logic and sometimes just raw instinct that we always
used – that is still at my disposal and I must use it!
And most importantly,
when doubts creep in and I find myself pondering – I say to myself ‘The best
decision I ever made was to accept a date with you!’ and that reminds me that I
am perfectly capable of making excellent choices.