What’s your timeframe?
Pick anything important you’re working on and think about the question in the title. I’ll wait . . .
Okay, you’ve thought about it? Now answer these questions for yourself:
- Is your timeframe tied to your sales cycle? To your budgeting process? To your personal level of patience? To some arbitrary (meaningless) standard? Or what?
- How quickly do you expect a return from your efforts? How much of a return do you expect soon? How much in the long run? (And what do you mean by “soon” and “in the long run”? Does your team agree on these definitions?)
- How quickly are you asking yourself to act? To make decisions? Is this faster or slower than what you expect from peers / direct reports / bosses / vendors / clients / prospects?
Why am I asking all of these questions? Because experience tells me that mismatched timetables are a major source of business friction, misplaced urgency, and fouled-up projects.
What do you think?
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Photo by Alexander Boden, used under a CC-Share Alike license.
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I’ll be honest, I’m sitting in an emergency room right now on hour 7 with my husband with no diagnosis, so health is suddenly my only priority. I have a feeling (since I’m ocd) that it will take front seat and biz will take back. Has that ever happened to you?
Lani — So sorry to hear about Benn — hope he’s on the mend pronto. And yes, I’ve been there: big life events (births, deaths, and illness, but also divorce, business failure, and so on) have a way of hijacking everything else on our lists — and for understandable reasons.
My overall approach is to work to control what I can and keep myself from obsessing about the things that I can’t. Don’t know if that’s helpful advice, in general or at this moment, but maybe you can find a version of it that works for you. My thoughts will be with you.