Check Please

Last week I gave myself an A+ for productivity.  I was clicking things off my mile-long-to-do list with amazing speed.  And of course, when I completed something that wasn’t on my list, I put it on there so I could mark through it.  Does anyone else do that?  Pretty silly, I guess, but it gives me a real sense of accomplishment.

I didn’t read much last week.  If I did read something, like the great HBR article on why fair managers don’t move up the ladder as fast as ruthless ones, I didn’t take time to reflect on it.  Just checked it off my professional development to-do list and moved right along.  I didn’t wander around the office looking for colleagues to give me feedback.  What if they suggested a better way?  That would really slow me down.  Didn’t daydream about new ideas or about new ways to accomplish some of my other ideas.  At one point I had a really great idea on how to improve the membership quality audit process, but then I decided to just file that for later – otherwise I was going to miss my deadline to finish them by Friday.

All my expense reports got submitted, copied and filed.  All my calls and emails returned.  I was by most supervisory standards a real star.

There are times when we need this kind of focus, both internally and externally.  Internally because all the big picture stuff is hard to quantify a percentage complete so we are never sure if we are making progress. Sometimes it feels like we are running fast, but just on a treadmill.  Externally we need get-er-done days, because, our organizations demand it to keep the train moving.

But let’s face it, creativity, innovation, relationships, and leadership tasks are hard to check off a list.  They require us to have the insight to know what they are and the flexibility to work on them when the right moment presents itself.  (Yeah, sounds like a commercial for you know what, but you know what I mean.)

Now that I think of it, I’m not nearly as proud of my work last week.  I think I’ll pull those quality standards out for another look, and give my friend a call back to really listen to her ideas for the hospital collaboration.

 But first things first, got to check this blog off my list.  Check!

Everybody Should Go Camping

Of all my work assignments, nothing gives me more joy than a visit to a YMCA Camp.  Maybe it's all the good memories I have of camp when I was a kid, but a camp visit leaves me smiling for days.
This week I was lucky enough to attend the board meeting at the YMCA of Greater Charlotte's Camp Harrison.

The venue was breathtaking, the food was fine, and the finances are impressive.  But when you have the opportunity to see the kids -- the ones we pay (staff) and the ones that pay us (campers) it almost brings a tear to the eye.  Of all the good, life-changing work the Y is a part of, nothing is easier to understand than our camp work.

I'm not saying it's more important than the rest of our work, but it's easy and fun.  I mean, who else gets to table dance at lunch?  At least in a context you can talk about at church on Sunday? 

A Roller Coaster Kind of Week

Some weeks fly by, others not so much.  This week I visited YMCA's in Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky.  I participated in a camp board meeting at Camp Harrison and started a new hospital partnership project for the Louisville YMCA.  All my work meetings were great, but the Louisville meeting was the best.  Not only a great group of volunteers, but they also had homemade strawberry cake, coffee and cookies for the occasion.  Reminded me of my first "real" job at Nashville Memorial Hospital when our cooks would bake special treats for our special meetings. 

In Charlotte I was a part of a planning meeting to work on how to take our membership development efforts to the next level.  Exciting stuff -- and part of the meeting took place while floating in a colleagues pool.  

This week has me thinking a lot about what we can really do to make strides in the member engagement arena.  I mean, how do we really move forward?  We are all talking, reading, working to better engage our members, but are we making any progress?  I visited a Y where I watched one front desk person try deal with 20 current or potential members while five management staff were holed up in a back room meeting.  Huh?  Leadership moment.

But even better than the strawberry cake was having my 15-year-old-permit-holding son Andrew chauffeur me around.  I could get used to that!  We managed to spend a few hours at Carowinds and braved The Intimidator ride.  Scary, fun stuff.  I screamed, closed my eyes, grabbed onto a friend for support. No different than most days at work, except I was buckled in.