Ready!

Dear readers,

Thank you for coming here.

Thanks to the holidays, I have rested for 3.5 days. And now I finally feel I am ready to go back to the fight again.

The past 2.5 weeks have been tough with the project with challenging clients and team. Towards the end of the last week, right before the holidays, I felt burnt out.

Luckily, we turned around the project.

We made the hard decision to stop the project if the client's direction continued to shift after every meeting. Apparently, that spoke loud to the client.

The clients stopped asking for the moon and started to talk sense, and the teams could finally sit down and focus on what needed to be done realistically. We have made some progress during last week itself.

Even though the journey forward will still be tough, at least we know what we should do and how we can measure ourselves. Simply put, we feel we can add value now.

The other challenge is that I cannot be on-site like the rest of the team. So I have to accept that I will not be able to get the latest information from the client directly and will not be able to interact with clients as well as the rest of the team.

Therefore, I think I need to be mindful not to add communication cost to the team, which means I need to lay back sometimes and refrain from asking for information from the team all the time. How to lay back and at the same time still be actively contributing to the project is a huge challenge for me. I have not figured out a good way except for planning everything two steps ahead. That was also part of the reason for feeling burnt out last week. 

Luckily, my manager is following up very closely on this project as well. So with him on-site, I guess I can relax a bit for now, until I need to take over again. 


For this experience, my takeaway is two-fold.

1. Being able to make hard decisions is important and it yields respect

To the team, giving up a project that we spent weeks' hard work winning was not easy; to the firm, giving up a few million in revenue was not easy, especially in the current situation.

However, once that decision was made and communicated, the situation turned around instantaneously.

Maybe that earned us trust from the client: a team who is willing to leave money on the table because they do not think they can add value for their clients must be trust-worthy.

Maybe that earned us respect from the client: a team who will say no to their clients even though that means losing business deserves respect.

Maybe that simply made the client realize they needed us more than we needed them.
 

The outcome this time was that the client changed behavior and we got ourselves a proper project.

Though I doubt it will play out like this every time, making hard decisions is both important and necessary for leaders.

2. There is so much to improve on

I have been quite proud of my endurance and adaptability. I slowly realized either I was wrong all along or my endurance and adaptability started to deteriorate.

2.5 weeks or less was what it took me to start feeling burnt out. I always thought I could hold on for much longer.

If the aspect I have been proud of is not even good enough, let alone the other many aspects. The only way is to keep fighting and improving.

Today I worked for about 2 hours and spent another 2 hours clearing miscellany items that have been on my to-do list. So far, I feel ok. I feel I am ready to get back in the fight!



Till next time!