I normally try to finish the work year well before Christmas eve – at least a week – so that I can relax and enjoy that slow build up to the big day. That was certainly my intent this year. I had planned to take this week off – spend time at home – relax with my wife and the dogs – enjoy having the kids home – all the things that make the week before Christmas such a treasure. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way – for a couple of reasons.
The first involves my “round to it” problem. I’ve been telling myself for more than a month that I really needed to block this week off on my calendar but I just never got ’round to it. I let other things at work take precedence, I kept telling myself that no one would be around to make demands on my time during the week, that the week would just stay clear and be open for me once I finally got to it. Well – guess what – it didn’t happen that way. Not blocking the week just gave too many people the opportunity to schedule meetings and I kept making one off exceptions – accepting a meeting here and there – until by the time it got here – the week was just full. Thank goodness my EA had the presence of mind to block off the second half of the day on Friday.
The second thing that kept me in the office was the people who work for me. This has been a pretty overwhelming year for my Organization and I’ve asked a great deal from everyone. Over the course of two years, I’ve changed almost every process and practice they’ve ever known. I’ve watched the vast majority of them accept change and adopt new ways of doing things, stay flexible and focused and work really, really hard to perform.
I’ve watched each one of my Sales Leaders start to focus on becoming good coaches and teach their people how to manage a territory, build a sales pipeline, nurture leads, transition them to opportunities and – finally – move them to the closed / won category.
I’ve watched my Marketing team completely change the way they work – shift their focus from product to customer, build value propositions, generate quality sales enablement packages, redesign our website, automate a big piece of our early lead generation process and launch a new Corporate brand.
I’ve watched my Commercial Analytics group build out our customer databases, develop relevant market definitions, construct robust forecast models, design and implement a rational approach to sales territory alignment, establish universally accepted performance metrics and design and launch an incentive based compensation system.
I’ve watched my State and Payer Relations group dig really hard to develop new relationships and secure the third party drivers that were so critical to our sales people.
Here’s the kicker – while I’ve asked them to do all that – I’ve also also pushed them harder this year for results than they’ve ever been pushed. So…with all that going on, I just didn’t feel right walking away and taking time off. Most of my folks worked through the better part of the week and I don’t think I could have left them to finish it out alone. When all was said and done, even with the family time I lost and the quiet days that I passed on, I’m really glad I worked through the week. On Thursday at 9:10 AM, we booked just enough to exceed 2017 business plan targets and we got to celebrate the milestone together. That was a big day for an Organization dealing with major changes.
Now I’m home – with my family, writing a little, reading a lot, enjoying the tree and the Christmas carols, finishing up a little last minute shopping (very little), enjoying a scotch or three and falling asleep in front of the fire. Still plenty of Christmas to celebrate with the people I love the most.
Cheers