The Dream Manager Blog

Fatigue makes cowards of us all. When we are tired our judgment becomes clouded, and it is simply harder to be a nice person. Twenty years ago, we could bring balance to our lives with an annual vacation. Today, things are different. Few people come back from an annual vacation feeling truly renewed. The very make-up of our days and weeks and months has changed. Today's challenge is to do things each day and week to create and restore balance.

Each morning, pick one thing you can do that day for 10-15 minutes in each of the four areas - physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. It doesn't take hours and hours to balance our lives. A few well-placed, brief activities can make all the difference to your health and sanity.

One of the hardest lessons we ever learn, and re-learn, as managers is to manage by outcomes. Our tendency is to manage by actions. We tell people, "Do this and do that!" and we tell them, "Do it in this order, not that order!" and we tell them, "Don't do this and don't do it that way!" Managing by actions produces an enormous amount of stress in our lives as managers. The alternative is to manage by results. Tell your people what your desired outcome is and the required timeline, and then let them do their work. Explain to them that you don't mind how it gets done, as long as it gets done within the parameters of your company's core values and practices.

It's easy to write about, but for those of us who have any semblance of control freak tendencies, it is really hard to do. But most people complain that they have talents and abilities that they don't get an opportunity to use. Most employees complain that their manager does not give them work that challenges them.

What's the danger? There is only a danger if you don't have the right people on your team. That is a separate problem. Start managing by results rather than by actions. You will be less stressed, and your people, sensing their independence, will blossom. If you find you have to constantly manage by actions, either you are not fit to be a manager, you have the wrong people on your team, or you and your team members need some coaching.

Emails like this remind me why I continue to do what I do, even when the days are long and hard.

Hi Matthew,

How are you doing? Our team met this morning to talk about the Executive Off-site Retreat --

I wanted to share something you probably know but I found interesting: This past Sunday night during our "family counsel," I handed everyone notebooks to start writing down their dreams. I've been talking about/prepping them for a couple weeks. I told them they just needed to do 15 for now and share 2. (My 16 year old has ADHD and I didn't think she'd last any longer.) My husband struggled to come up with 5. Scout, my 16 year old quickly wrote 16. (Wow! An over-achiever!)

My 9 year old wrote and shared her 15. I left her writing at the dining room table while I ran to the drug store. I came back and she was still writing. She had 92! Many revolved around getting a dog :) and not a word was spelled correctly. She had "visit Australia", and "visit..." half a dozen other places. She also had "be more responsible", "love God more" and an impressive variety of less tangible dreams.

What amazed me is how easily the youngest came up with her dreams as opposed to the adults who struggled to think of even a few -- kind of sad how that happens to us as we age, isn't it?

Colleen