Sitting here in my hotel room in Vegas, having just left our job site office at 9pm while our crews head out to the airfield, I can honestly say I don't think I've ever felt more pressure in my career.
This pressure has been building for three years and the recession has most to do with it: our revenue is down 13% from 2008, we have downsized staff which means everyone has taken on more tasks and responsibility, we are having to do more jobs to try and achieve our revenue (large jobs are harder to find these days) which means more work for less people, the jobs have very little money in them, and the owners/customers are pinching pennies and making everything a fight. After three years of fighting the recession, there were days when I would find myself feeling really down and burnt out.
Then, over the course of a month or so, I had an awakening. I realized that because of the recession, because of the downsizing and sharing of responsibilities, I had lost sight of what it is I love to do. And I had become bogged down in paperwork, contract negotiation, administrative procedures and labor laws. It was a very necessary thing to do because I needed to become the expert in these things for our company, and establish procedures that meant I could someday hand the tasks over and yet understand them enough to manage them. But I hated every minute of it. EVERY. MINUTE. OF. IT.
And so I made a conscious decision to start getting myself out on our job sites. Out where the action happens. And every time I stepped foot on a construction site, or met with a customer, or talked to our crews about what they were building, I would feel that spark. That spark that used to keep me working until midnight without feeling tired. That spark that would wake me in the middle of the night with an idea on how to approach a particular challenge. That spark that motivated me to motivate and mentor teammates to their full potential. It was still there, buried beneath the contracts, lawsuits and labor laws.
Luckily, I'm in a position to rearrange our organizational structure. Slowly but with a conscious and deliberate plan, I am finally shifting the paperwork to someone who likes the analytical details. I've taught our team the ins and outs of the labor laws so now I only need to give refresher courses. And me, well I'm out doing what I love: building things. My tools are not drills, backhoes or screwdrivers. My tools are communication, strategic planning, experience, and a love of our industry. I add value by supporting our project teams when they need a strong arm negotiator or help working through a particular challenge. A love of learning allows me to research details, probing and asking questions until our team comes to a collective AHA! moment in the face of adversity. My continuing goal is to align the members of our team according to their natural talents, and then support, encourage and challenge them to acquire the skills and knowledge they need to become experts. This is what I love to do.
A friend of mine sent this quote to our project team that is facing a very challenging situation and after my recent journey from downtrodden to energized, it really hit home. It's from this book "Today We Are Rich" by Tim Sanders (It's a free download on my new Kindle - a mother's day gift from my hubby!):
"Much of what you call bad news is actually get-busy news, information that gives you a reason to spring into action and focus on solutions. . . Very little news is truly bad (meaning the damage is permanent and there's nothing I can do about it). It's news that simply means, 'You need to get busy and do something about this. The status quo will no longer work.'"
I keep hearing people say this recession is like nothing they have ever seen. It is truly nothing I have ever seen in my career. But reframing the situation in your mind surely helps. This recession, no matter how much pressure it has caused, has made our company much, much stronger over the last three years. And because of that we are currently firing on all cylinders. The jobs are still scarce, they are still lacking margin, everything is still a fight, but our team is talented and we are ready. We communicate, we work as a team, and we are all heading in a very similar, if not the same, direction. More than that, we love what we do.
Yes, it's pressure. But it's the pressure that keeps me up until midnight without getting tired. I had forgotten the secret of doing what you love. Makes me think of a note I once got in a fortune cookie, that I didn't understand at the time but kept anyway:
Happiness is doing what you enjoy. Loving what you do is Freedom.
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