2010

How to make the milestone of the New Year work for you

December 30, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

At the end of the year, it’s common to feel many things.

These may be just some of the things that you notice when you pause and reflect:

- A sense of accomplishment at the things you’ve achieved

- A bit of regret at goals not met yet

- Excitement about the fresh year just ahead

I was thinking the other day about the finish line of a year, and how to make the most of the end point it represents.

Suddenly, I realized with a smile that the reason I love New Year’s is the starting line it creates, instead.

What does the New Year’s milestone represent to you?

1. A finish line

If New Year’s represents primarily endings to you, consider these things as you look back:

- How are you different now from what you were like a year ago?

- What are you happiest about with the way the year worked out for you?

- What do you wish you could change, or had done differently?

- Are there things you learned to accept, forgive or forget this year?

2. A starting line

If your focus at New Year’s is on new beginnings, and the fresh possibilities of a brand new year, consider these things as you look ahead:

- What’s one change you’d like to make in 2011?

- What would you like to learn this year? How can you do that most easily?

- In what ways would you like to challenge or test yourself in positive ways this year?

3. Both endings and beginnings

If you see both sides of the milestone – the finish line for one year, the starting line for a new one – consider these things as you prepare to move forward well:

- Are there expectations it would be helpful for you to let go of?

- Are there habits you would like to eliminate? How about habits you’d like to create?

- Are there dreams you’d like to give a test drive this year with even a single, simple first step?

However you see the milestone of the New Year, consider how you want to feel about yourself, your work and life at the end of 2011.

Let that felt sense of “you in a year” guide decisions about how you spend time, money, energy and attention throughout 2011.

And let this one be your best year yet.

Filed Under: Business Results, Musings, People watching, Strategic Planning

Sunset on another year

December 28, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

One year wraps.

A new one unfolds.

How has 2010 shaped up for you?

How are you different, and wiser than you were a year ago?

Best wishes for 2011.

Hopefully it becomes a year that you look back on with a big smile, a happy sigh, as you recall the great experiences you had and the great memories you made, day by day.

Filed Under: Images, Musings, Serendipity

What 3-5 photos tell the story of 2010 for you?

December 21, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Holiday greetings are arriving.

They’re usually full of stories of achievement and change.

One family who usually sends a chatty end-of-year newsletter sent a page with just a few pictures this year.

They needed no explanation.

This from two writers, people who love words and use them well.

One picture showed a son’s wedding, unexpected after it seemed he was content and committed to the single life.

Three more photos showed a new relationship that appeared to provide stability for another son and his children who’d had little in the past few years.

There was also a picture of a grandmother (and great grandmother) who had passed away after many years of illness.

This beautiful stark page from a couple of writers…just labels under photos that showed evidence of great 2010 change.

It made me stop and think. If I were sharing photos of the 3-5 most important moments of the year what those photos be?

They would include a graduation, two moves and a milestone trip.

And also the gathering of long-time friends, the publishing of a first book, and a kitchen that is normally a busy place at the holidays but now it’s busy over a longer time and in different ways.

What would the 3-5 photos that tell the story of your year include?

And looking ahead, what 3-5 photos would you like to have in a year to tell the story of 2011 for you?

Have your camera ready!

Filed Under: Musings, People watching, Serendipity

Tree trinkets

December 18, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Frosting for a tree.

Mementoes of memories made with loved ones.

Children’s handmade ornaments, gifts from the heart.

Snapshots of moments gone by.

Precious people.

Precious things.

What fills your tree this season, along with dreams?

Filed Under: Images, Musings, People watching, Serendipity

How to outsource the cleaning of your room

December 18, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Outsourcing can help you get more done than you can do alone.

To outsource well requires many things, including:

- A specific objective and success criteria

- Clarity about each others’ roles

- Simple, effective communication processes

- Clear decision-making processes

- Ways to measure if progress is happening and goals are being achieved

- Having a good process for working through misunderstandings, if they occur.

Outsourcing can also be used to get your room cleaned after you leave home.

I know. It’s been going on for a few weeks here.

My husband is on the phone now with our daughter who lives in Eugene, OR.

Having graduated from college a few years ago and changed locations a few times since then, she’s pretty well decided what things would move with her into the life she has now.

The rest of the stuff she’s left at home.

It’s been a room in limbo…no longer what it was, but not yet what it can become.

We all agree that it’s high time to turn the room into an office/study and guest room which will be her room the few nights a year when she’s home.

Gary created a room-clearing process that has worked beautifully over the miles. Here are the basic steps.

1. He knew what his goal was.

2. He knew the job was not getting done in the expected way, and had to figure out a way to do it in spite of the distance between where we live and where she does.

3. He envisioned a process that might work and wanted to try it out.

4. He proposed it to Anne in a way that it wouldn’t feel insurmountable, as clearing the room had felt up to now. She agreed to try the process.

5. He sorted through the many things that had gathered here, grouping like objects, making judgments about what he thought should be kept and what could be tossed.

6. He scheduled ten-minute calls with Anne each weekend for about a month, going over just the things they could review and she could decide on in that time.

7. In the call each week, he described each item that was up for a stay/go decision as well as he could.

8. She made a decision about each one, or asked me to supplement her instincts about it with what I knew about the item and its probable place in her life, before making the final call.

9. I’m the final arbiter on this end of the outsourcing process because I know, and will adhere to her decision criteria more consistently than he will.

Her decision criteria are:

- Do I love it?

- Will I use it again?

- Did it come from a person I love?

Gary’s decision criterion is simple:

- Is there any way I can get rid of this?

10. We’re making regular stops at Goodwill and the Salvation Army and someone who loves each item now will take it home. There may even be some people who will get a Christmas present of an item that Anne was long ready to let go, but just didn’t know it yet. For them, it’s a new item to love.

And to share just a small sample of this process (which has worked beautifully, by the way), here’s just part of my husband’s side of today’s call:

“It’s a red heart pillow, kind of like a Valentine. It has a big stain on it.”

I laughed to myself when I heard his description.

It was clear to me he thought the heart-shaped pillow should move out. He was focusing on the stain, not the heart, describing it in a way that would lead to the decision for which he’d hoped.

In this case, he got what he wanted. The stained heart-shaped pillow is moving on.

Are there lessons for you in this outsourced process?

1. Is there a large task you’ve been avoiding but need to do? How can you create break that big task into a smaller series of decisions and actions that allow you to make progress on getting that intimidating task done?

2. Is there a process you’ve outsourced that isn’t working well? Of the key steps in good outsourcing, is there a step you skipped or need to improve? Clarifying goals, roles and communication processes and mechanisms can do a lot to improve teamwork and effectiveness in any process or group.

Filed Under: Business Results, Measurement, People at Work, Process Management, Serendipity

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta”

December 10, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

So true, isn’t it?

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”
Frederico Fellini

Life is a combination of magic and the day to day.

Every day moments can be magic, too, in their own way.

Make…allow…see moments of magic daily.

Filed Under: Full presence, Just be, simply, Musings, People watching, Serendipity

What do you like best…and least…about your biggest change this year?

November 26, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

It was another interesting Thanksgiving this year.

Among the four families who gathered to share the annual feast, three had sent a child away to college for the first time this fall.

There’s was lots of happy chatter as we reassembled the group, now living in many different parts of the country.

After dinner, a mom whose only child is one of the three new college students asked them:

1. What’s the best thing about being a college?

2. What do you miss the most about no longer living at home?

The new freshmen each took a deep breath, and shared their answers in front of the large group.

All three like living with many students their own age.

It’s still exciting and invigorating. And for the most part, roommates are working out pretty well for each.

One misses her bed at home.

On the other hand, the one boy in the trio, 6’2″, likes his longer bed at school better because his feet don’t hang over the edge of the bed.

Then the rest of us were asked our answers to the same basic questions, in reverse order:

1. What do miss most about having your child (or sibling, in one case) in college?

2. What do you like best about it?

Everyone’s answers were much as you would expect.

Parents miss their kids, a LOT, as much as – and sometimes more – than we expected.

The one sibling-still-at-home expressed it this way, “I miss my built-in best friend.”

And the good thing about this major change?

We have all discovered that this time of great change is, or can be, a very creative time.

In various ways, we each expressed a feeling of rebirth as we rediscover things we used to love to do before our lives revolved around kids’ activities.

We’re seeking and taking on new challenges, and setting new goals of our own again.

What about you?

These questions can help you review big changes you made this year, and prepare well for future change:

1. What was the biggest change you’ve made this year?

2. What do you like best about that change?

3. What do you miss most about the way things used to be?

Filed Under: Musings, People watching, Strategic Planning

Taking the long view

October 26, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

Sometimes you need the long view.

Literally, and figuratively, a big picture perspective can help you:
- make good decisions, considering them in a long-term context.
- understand that a difficult circumstance will, indeed, end at some point.
- be fully aware that good times won’t last forever, either…and so these experiences are meant to be savored when they’re present.

There are many other ways that the long-term view has value…and among them is that the long-term view is often a beautiful one.

Filed Under: Images, Musings

Are you reading the signs of change right?

October 25, 2010 By Jan Richards Leave a Comment

A single sign of change can mean very different things to different people.

How you interpret that sign can lead to radically different decisions about what action you need to take next.

The benefits of being right when you read that sign correctly can be great.

The consequences of being wrong can be very high, as well.

In an everyday example recently, our cat returned sick from the kitty kennel where he’d been staying while we were on vacation.

Shadow was sneezing, having trouble breathing and showing signs of distress, though he’d been fine when we dropped him off. And we’d used this kennel before, and had had no problems with it.

Our dilemma was to decide whether we could let the cat ride the illness out and get healthy on his own, or whether we needed to get him to the vet in what might be a very expensive and unnecessary visit.

To complicate our reading of situation, it’s significant to know that the cat is 16 1/2 years old…very old for a cat.

We’ve had very good – and very feisty – years with him but we want even more.

And on top of that, Shadow and our son, now 18 and a college freshman who lives several hours away, grew up together.

Matt can’t imagine life without the cat, or our two dogs…and isn’t ready to get a call so soon after leaving home to hear that one of his beloved pets is gone.

Aggressive measures, if need be, were in order, for a variety of reasons.

Before the story completely unfolded, four people were involved in reading the signs, and making the call.

- The kennel owner thought the cat would be fine without the vet visit.

- My husband did, too – or hoped that would be the case.

- I hoped we could avoid a vet visit, too, but when I watched the cat’s labored breathing, I knew we had to get him into the vet as soon as possible.

- The vet initially thought Shadow had heart failure, given his signs and previous history, and gently warned me before he took an x-ray that the cat might not be long for this world.

How did the story play out?

The cat has a serious upper respiratory infection, and is on a long course of penicillin.

To survive the worst days of this medical adventure, he had to be force-fed his medicine, water and food.

He’s weaker, and bowed but not broken. And we are all wiser to the reality of his long-term condition.

We are so thankful he’s still around, as is his best friend in the family, our son.

What did we learn from this adventure?

1. Keep an eye on the big picture.

The cat IS an old cat. We must finally admit that. Still, we aren’t ready to let him go, if we don’t have to.

2. Know what the significant details are. Pay attention to them.

The key signs in this situation included the cat’s very labored breathing, food and water that he wasn’t taking in or wasn’t holding onto, and his lack of awareness, generally, of what was going on around him.

3. Watch for trends.

We watched the signs closely to see if the cat was getting better or worse. I was watching him very closely, so could tell when there were changes more easily than my husband could, who was watching him from a greater distance.

4. Know whose opinion to value the most, when many opinions are offered.

When we got to the vet’s office, he had the data about the cat’s health, of course, thanks to his experience and a few expensive tests and an x-ray.

He didn’t know how important the cat is to our freshman son who, a few hours away, didn’t have a chance to say good-bye, if that were necessary.

5. Know what the worst-case scenario could be, and what the early signs are likely to be.

The fact that the cat was not taking any any food, medicine or water on his own was a sign that we might not be able to save him. It meant force-feeding to prevent a dire outcome, if need be.

6. Know what the best case scenario could be, and what early signs are that things may have taken a great turn.

We hoped to see the cat’s normal fight and feistiness, and we’re seeing it now. That first slightly ticked-off tail switching when he didn’t want to take the medicine? It was wonderful to see.

7. Remain flexible.

The vet gave us a diagnosis, prognosis, medicine, and long-term advice. He didn’t advise us what to do if the cat couldn’t keep anything down, and may have thought the cat might not survive this bout.

Even though the cat wasn’t fighting for himself, at that point, we had to fight for him. We tried meat-flavored baby food delivered through the medicine dispenser, a device something like a little turkey baster.

That worked, and gave him enough nutrition that he turned the corner.

8. Celebrate small signs of success, if you’re working out of a difficult situation.

I never thought that after our great vacation, we’d come home to find the cat dancing at death’s door, as it seems he did. We celebrated each small sign of progress, and continue to.

At this point we know our often-ornery feline friend will, thankfully, be around a little while longer.

Filed Under: Knowledge Management, People watching, Process Management