The problem with being passionate about the job that you do and the people in your team is that you leave yourself open to the risk that sometimes it makes you sad. Over the last couple of months the ideas have been coming as ever but the blog postings have not. I’ve been embroiled in a few rather complicated topics which have taken up a lot of mental and emotional energy. The sadness comes from the fact that despite my being personally committed and completely convinced of a plan that I had developed, another route has been chosen by senior management and it is one that is likely to have a human cost. I suppose it’s somewhat ironic then that when I started to write this particular posting, I found an earlier half-finished posting which started by saying, “there are so many different lines of reporting and management that decision making power is all over the place and that people who sit together on a daily basis have much more ability to influence things than people who are travelling remotely, regardless of level of seniority in a company.” As I sit here in my new role as influencer rather than one of the two owners or decision makers who are finalizing their top down 2013 plan, I must make a mental note to be careful for what I wish for.
So that somewhat cryptic explanation aside, what else has been going on since Gaston and Capucine’s second birthday…
I find that we as adult humans tend to try and create generalizations to serve as short cuts in this time starved world. Despite getting better at trying to avoid living life at one million miles an hour, I unfortunately do the same – I’ve recently managed to refine and express my classification of French people into two categories. I believe that all French people are either râleur-moteur, or râleur-casseur. Basically this means all French people like to complain, although half of them complain and then try to make things better (“moteur” or a motor for change) , whereas the other half complain and then do nothing positive (from the verb “casser” which means “to break”). The trick in France is to surround oneself with the first type of person. A real life example is after a French team complained that there were never any social activities for them, I then arranged a series of nights out. Hardly anyone turned up. They only came after I pointed out to them that this was something they had asked for. Vive la France.
At work, I have had a number of key new people join the team in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. It’s been nice to see the building out of a team in line with the initial analysis and definition of a strategy that was done. Only six weeks after their arrival things are really starting to pan out nicely, and this quarter’s financial results should back that up. I’ve got a couple of new strong operational leads which means I can start thinking about what we need to do a few months down the line. I personally have spent an inordinate amount of time in various internal meetings most notably “quarterly business reviews”. A section of these meetings have always been dedicated to people’s views on 2013. This has been most surreal (and largely a waste of time) because this year’s annual planning process is massively top down (very different to last year’s consensus based approach). Sitting in internal meetings is bad enough, even worse when they talk about topics that you know that you, or they, can’t actually influence. Apart from that I’ve been travelling pretty much as normal taking in the sights of Madrid, Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels. I’ve also been down to Lisbon, or Estoril to be more exact. I took it as an opportunity to stay with a friend and meet the latest addition to his little family.
At home we had a change of au pair – we swapped an outgoing Nebraskan for a more reserved Californian. Lauren has been with us for a few weeks now and is getting used to the noise, disorder and general hustle bustle of life in a wet and chilly French town. I’ve also had a few more horse jumping competitions with some very average results, but I think I might have made a breakthrough (how many times have I found myself writing that over the last two years with this animal?!). We’ve addressed challenges associated with his back legs, when he turns left, when he turns right and now, most recently, with his head…Surely there can’t be much else I need to think about before he’ll jump a clear round for me? Anyway I persevere because Michel is convinced that the end is in sight…
So it’s been a busy two months although there is one thing that stands out for me. After significant personal investment in one particular topic a decision was made contrary to my recommendation. Both of the options being discussed revolved around a significant degree of change. I am now ok with the fact they chose a different option – that can always happen. The irony is that last week we sold a new medium sized contract to a new client, and as an immediate result they threw two months of discussion out of the window and opted to retain the status quo. What I take from it all, is that if you are genuine about wanting to do transformational change, then you need to do something different. Lots of people talk about transformation as a good thing, but there is a much smaller number of people are prepared to embrace a different daily life as a result. This power of inertia has made me more cautious about choosing which problems to try and fix – are people really ready for big solutions?!
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