This is my 8th Holiday season at my company and once again people are starting to feel the heat.
Like always, we have big goals and want to provide the best customer experience possible. I've seen this cause so many people extra stress and anxiety. I've been there, but let's not go back to the year I was Holiday captain and wanted to physically harm our in-stock manager, but instead ate an entire jumbo bag of gummy bears.
Here are 4 ways to dominate and enjoy the Holiday season.
1. Go for B- work- I know what your thinking and yes, a leadership principle is to insistent on the highest standards, but hear me out. When it comes to the customer, the highest standard is always important, but we waste so much time on the last 20% of work on so many non-customer facing projects.
Think about the last doc you wrote. Did the last 20% of revisions actually improve the strategy and communcation or was it semantics and details to make sure it was perfect? Image what you could have been using that time doing if you just went with a B- doc. Let's be honest, no matter how great the doc is, your audience is always going to have feedback. Review the B- doc, get the feedback, then go deliver results.
2. Have a schedule and stick to it NO MATTER WHAT- I'm guessing you already know all the things that need to be done from daily stand-ups, flex flash reports, walking the store, to a post mortem. Map out each project, detail all of the steps necessary to accomplish the project, aim for B- work, then literally schedule every detailed step on your calendar. Limit how much time you are going to take to do each step and get it done during the allotted time. This means you have to be heads down and 100% focused because it HAS to be done in the time alloted. The biggest part of this step is to do exactly what is on your calendar even when you don't feel like it and don't let others schedule over your work time. This means you might need to schedule in "fire drill" time each day, but honor your calendar no matter what.
3. Remember we don't save lives- Seriously, we ship crap to people. I've seen so many people lose there cool over the dumbest thing. Yes we want to do our best and yes we want to create an amazing customer experience, but shift happens. It's important to keep a healthy perspective and remember the worst thing that could happen is a negative feeling and possibly a COE or meeting explaining what happened. Don't get caught up in the drama of it all. Things will go wrong and that's actually part of the fun. It if all went smoothly it would be so boring and you would wish you went bigger.
4. Bring the fun- Work is not fun but YOU ARE. Make a point to be the person that helps the team have fun along the way. Make bets on sales/traffic for Cyber Monday, buy a gong and create a rule requiring a 15 second dance party whenever someone rings it, include slightly inappropriate memes in status update emails. BE THE FUN. I know I will be.
And if nothing else, just remember your stock vesting is right around the corner. You got this!
Want help applying this to your specific situation? Sign up for free coaching at www.lindsaybuchancoaching.com
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