| With spring just around the corner and everything around us beginning to change, I want to share with you a story from my new fitness journey that has inspired the topic for this month’s newsletter. For those of you who don’t know, I decided at the beginning of this year to make my fitness a priority (finally!), instead of maintaining my usual excuses for why I didn’t have time to work out. As you can imagine, this has involved making several changes in my life – and sticking to them. The timing of my decision was great as a good friend of mine Charlene Micciche had just started her new coaching business and I asked her to be my coach. I had never done weights before or trained for anything, and although we do eat pretty healthily, I knew I could probably do better. As I reflect on my first 2 months of personal change management, I realize that this mirrors the way we make changes in our organizations. Here’s what I have learned and been reminded of so far… |
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| My thoughts What I have been reminded about during this journey is that having the right coach is important. They will help you learn things you do not yet know, they will hold you accountable to working on your goals, they will help you reflect on your progress and make adjustments to your approach, and perhaps most importantly, they will help bolster your spirits when inevitably you feel like giving up. What I have learned during this process is that you don’t always know what you need to measure when you are making a change. My coach did. I used to complain to my husband every week when I had to take progress photos and body measurements, thinking that this was a waste of time. All I wanted to know was “what does the scale say?” because this was the only way of measuring progress I knew. If I had done it my way and only focused on the scale, I would be seeing minimal progress right now (2 months in and only 6lbs lost). What I am seeing, however, is progress on multiple fronts (lifting more weights, longer cardio sessions, losing several inches off my body). What I have also been reminded of during this process is that you need a mixture of lagging and leading indicators (measuring inputs and outputs). When thinking about metrics our go-to measures are normally lagging (outputs) – things like weight, size, time, cost. These show the results of our efforts. If we include leading measures (inputs) – things like logging EXACTLY what food we are eating throughout the whole day, we understand how we are contributing to the situation and therefore can manage it. We will know what levers we can pull to give us the results we want, rather than just hoping for a better outcome. It is much harder to select and measure leading indicators however, and it generally takes more discipline. One final thought: remember to ALWAYS take photos! These will help you to demonstrate progress but also to establish a standard for what good looks like. |
| How to 1. Get a coach! This has been the single most important decision I have made (other than to make the change of course) 2. Make sure your coach has personally done this journey before – there is nothing like learning from others journeys and knowing they truly understand what you are going through 3. Make sure your coach will be a partner to you – this means being there whenever you need them (via email, text, Zoom, whatever). If you can only reach out to your coach once per week or month, this is not a partnership 4. Make sure your coach truly cares about your journey – not just the paycheck 5. Be 100% real with your coach – no matter how embarrassing that might feel. They can only help you if they have all the facts (metrics), and they will not judge you anywhere near as much as you already judge yourself |
| What change do you want to make in your life or organization? Could finding the right coach be a great investment rather than a cost or a burden? How long have you been trying to make this change by yourself and how hard has it been? Do you have the results you want? How long is it taking? |
| Eli Sharp. |
Posted in Making Work Flow!
