Getting up in the morning to face another day can become a bit of a chore and dragging yourself into work can become a dread. Perhaps when you first started working, you were full of enthusiasm for the difference you thought you could make through your expertise and energy. And now things have dulled down a bit or a lot and you feel a bit numb about everything. Life has lost its excitement.
What changed? Was it the work? Was it you? Or is there another unsuspected reason?
There are several other reasons in fact! A couple of light bulbs went off in my head on this matter a couple of days ago and reminded me of these reasons.
Strong Purpose
First of all, let me clearly state that my team love their jobs and what we do to help healthcare professionals change their lives and their practices for the better every day through management training and consulting. However, it could get down to coming in every day and doing the “usual,” and so our answer to keeping our purpose strong is to have morning meetings and a weekly meeting where the staff share with everyone the wins and improvements of our many clients as a result of our help.
It is so easy in the day to day activities to lose sight of the reason you are doing what you are doing and the difference you are making. Patients and clients will often originate to one staff member or another in your practice as to how happy they are or what a difference your service has made in their life, and these comments need to be shared with all the other team members for inspiration.
Fun and Games
Sometimes there a “boredom factor” that can set in on a practice or business and frankly, it comes down to not enough fun and games
A light bulb went off in my head on this point when I heard an announcement on the radio that the Kidney Foundation was having a Kidney Clothes campaign that invites people to donate their gently used clothing to the Foundation to help people who have kidney problems. This seemed like a good purpose and my team decided to take this on as a company project for the month of August. (A good opportunity to clean out our closets to make room for new stuff while at the same time improving someone else’s life!) We got posters from the Foundation and posted them by the elevators in our building and the game has started … how many bags can we fill and donate? The team got interested and excited.
Aha! We just needed some fun and games!
Acknowledge Your Progress
Another light bulb went off in my head last night when I was speaking with a mentor/friend in LA who touches base with me every few months. We have goals and a direction that we have been working towards for 4 years but it seemed like we were not making a lot of progress on a day to day basis. However, my friend saw it differently because she knew where we started from and reminded me of that and I suddenly saw the progress when she compared where we are to where we had been. I had been focused on the “inches” whereas she saw the “miles” and I suddenly felt much more enthusiastic about everything.
So, the lesson here is to have periodic reviews (maybe at a quarterly meeting) to look at your progress in terms of “miles” rather than the weekly “inches” (which are important in order achieve the miles).
Summary:
Have a strong purpose.
Keep it fresh in everyone’s minds.
Look for wins.
Have fun and games.
Keep your eyes on the miles.
