My Passion: Empowering people to be live their best life.
I share with my teams that I don’t believe they have a work life and a personal life. I believe you just have a life. Finding harmony with the two is the key to a successful team. I love Dolly Parton’s quote: “Never get so busy making a living, that you forget to… Make a life.” This sits in front of me at all times in my office. Finding the harmony between my work and my home can prove challenging. Not impossible, but at times, complex. How do I keep it all together? How do I know what is due when, and what capacity I have to accomplish the tasks at hand?
In what could be perceived a chaotic life… pause… I’ll provide context to what is going on in my world. I manage a SaaS business with 50+ employees, and I coach and mentor many of them. I drive results and assist ownership with complex problem solving. I sit on a peer group of female leaders coaching and mentoring C-Suite executives. I embarked on a project to bring sustainable affordable housing to rural Illinois by flipping houses. I am embarking on city planning so we can bring livable wage jobs back to central Illinois. I enjoy DIY projects (restoring furniture). To top it all off my husband and I just had our first grandchild, and time with him is priceless. Can you see how this could be perceived as overwhelming and a lot? For me putting the right tools and process in place to drive solving complex problems with velocity was critical. I’m able to enjoy all the things I love to do outside of the office AND cohesively bring teams together to drive results at the office. The two do not conflict with each other. The tools I put in place to manage everything is critical.
What is required? A one stop shop to see what I have to do each day, who is accountable for what, what are the leading indicators in the business so I can focus on the highest valued things that week. My one stop shop is Meetings.io. This allows me to focus on my dashboard each day and drive results with my teams. Each one’s accountable to bite a piece of the elephant and together we each can accomplish everything we want to. I use processes to ensure consistency. I use our organizational chart to see who is accountable for what, the 5-6 things that provide a high level accounting of their role in the company. I use our KPIs to drive our leading indicators (my island view), I use our goals to track projects each team is working on for the greater good of the business. See where I’m going with this? You have access to hand off things so you are not doing all the work yourself and you have a simple tool to keep it in one place.
What does this provide you? Freedom! Freedom to focus on other things you want to accomplish in your life. This is where harmony comes in. Balance for me is deciding where to swing the pendulum today. Do I take time out of my day or weekend to focus on that work project or can I focus on my personal project? It goes one way or the other. Harmony is marrying the two communities. Bringing it all in one circle working closely together to provide a quality of life where everyone gets what they want. Owners see results, teams are acknowledged for those results, everyone has time to pursue passions and we all support and encourage each other to pursue those projects.
If you would like to learn more about my processes and the tools I use to increase productivity and harmony check out Meetings.io.
Written by
Kathy Mayfield