Last week I felt stuck, like I didn’t know what to do next.   Not because I didn’t have work to do – my ‘to do’ list was a whiteboard without any white visible.  It just felt like everything was equally urgent.  It felt like trying to decide what to eat for lunch, but everything in the fridge is in identical shiny cans marked “to eat”.

Then my mind did a short circuit and tried a different approach.  Instead of telling myself what I need to do, I imagined how I would explain to someone else what needs to be done.  This slightly different way of looking at things broke up the logjam, and by Friday I was back on track.

The problem was that I was standing too close to my work, and couldn’t see how the tasks immediately in front of me fit into the larger picture.  Sometimes we just need to look at the situation from a different perspective.  Imagination is powerful tool for doing this, one with unlimited applications.  Here are a few mental gymnastics to challenge your current mindset.

1.  If you were hit by a bus…

This is the one that worked for me.  Imagine you are suddenly taking a different job and have to leave instructions for your successor.  What would be at the top of the list for him or her to do their first week on the job?  Those should probably be your priorities right now.

This line of reasoning is also applicable to ‘succession planning.’  What things depend on you and you alone, and no one else could do them?  Hopefully that last one is a short list.  How about your key employees?  If you lost one, how long would it take to get the next person up to speed?  Is there information that would be forever lost?  Healthy organizations have written procedures in place to offset this risk – does yours? Continue reading →