Musings at Altitude

I spend a significant amount of any business day now on conference calls.  As with most companies today, we have enormous challenges because of the economic conditions, because of the changing market and thus the changing buying patterns of our customers, and because of the incredible desire to hit expectations and deliver dividends even with the brutal affects on our revenues and thus income.  Each issue in itself drives intense dialogue.  All issues together drive a constant demand on time and thus the significant amount of time on conference calls.

For me, the worst use of my time is a conference call.  I get distracted easily and find myself occupying my time with anything else that presents itself as a priority.  Those distractions could be emails (I have a constant stream of them), overdue responses to specific packages (I have an enormous backlog of things I owe people), or callbacks to voicemails (no day ends without several in the queue).  Since I can’t multi-task, any time I divert my attention to any of these distractions, I lose focus on the call and the hours on the phone are then wasted.

But this week was different because I began putting into action my strategy of carving out time to focus on those high priority things, and then putting time in between any of the otherwise onerous conference calls to connect with our team and be visible to our business enterprise. 

I must say, after one week of trying, I have a strong sense of accomplishment now that I’ve managed my schedule just a little bit better and mixed in those emotionally uplifting people meetings amidst all the less than stimulating conference calls.

Business by nature is one heck of a roller coaster ride – significant highs and significant lows – and one of the primary roles of any business leader is to moderate those roller coaster peaks and valleys for both the leader and for his/her team.  I get my greatest sense of accomplishment when I create smiles in our team and when I create that sense of accomplishment for me.

Now I need to figure out how to track it and use what I’m learning to generate significantly more smiles and to create an even greater sense of accomplishment.