Stuck in between mountains and valleys

I’ve made the mistake before of waiting too long to make a move. I keep waiting for the perfect moment or perfect timing, only to realize that I missed my best chance to make a move. Now that I have waited too long, I need to act, and act fast. I know I still have plenty of time, but now my surroundings have changed. If I had acted sooner, I would have been in a better position, but now when I look around all I can see are mountains and valleys. The mountains are the things that I knew needed improving, but I waited and now it’s going to be a lot more difficult. The valleys are the negative things that I wanted to avoid, or I had hoped would have taken care of themselves by now, but here they still are. So, what do you do when you are surrounded or stuck in between a bunch of mountains and valleys? The first thing that you need to do is to take some time to stop and evaluate. You are in this situation because at different points you didn’t stop and evaluate exactly where you were. Once you figure out where you are, remind yourself of where you want to go. What is the final goal? One of the things that I really want to work on towards the end of the year and getting ready for the new year is where  do I want to end up. Too often I think that if I have a set of goals and I work on them, then somehow at the end of the year I will be exactly where I want to be. How can I know that if I have no idea where I want to be? Once I know where I am currently and where I want to finish, I can really start to make a game plan. Now is the time for action! Now that I know it’s time for action, I probably need to make sure who I have on my team. Am I on my own or do I have team members who are helping me? If you have team members, are they the right ones? I ask that because in order to get to my final destination, I am going to have to delegate some tasks. I must understand that if I ever find myself in a situation where I feel stuck, I probably got there because I didn’t ask for help enough. It’s time to put away pride and start delegating. Now is the perfect time to separate tasks into different categories. How many tasks and how many categories might depend on how big the mountains and valleys are. But I think I want to start off by thinking about the tasks that I personally want to handle and do that based on what my strengths are. If this was a normal situation, I may choose a task that I can learn and grow from, but we don’t have time for that now. If I have teammates, what are their strengths? Hopefully some of the tasks are perfect fits for their strengths. If so, give it to them! So, what about the tasks that don’t fit perfectly for someone? I think you have two choices in these situations. The first choice is to do something like how many tasks and how many teammates do I have. If I have ten tasks that don’t fit perfectly for someone, and I have five teammates, I guess that means we are all taking two tasks. The other choice is that I start moving ahead and then I see if someone gets done with something, I hand them a task to do. Either way is fine, just keep in mind that I can’t give someone a task if it falls into the category of weakness for them. So now that we have tasks assigned to everyone, I need to put a due date on everything. I can’t get further behind because someone was unclear on the expectations. That also means that I need to communicate as often as possible. I need to find that sweet spot between continual communication and micromanaging. I need to make sure that people are making progress and are ready for the due date, but make sure that they don’t feel like I want a presentation. I think the best way to do this is to give an update on where I am to everyone, then they know how I want to be updated. The last thing I think that we need to discuss is that we must make sure that once we start showing progress, we don’t slow down or stop. It’s exciting the closer you get to a goal. It’s exciting to go places you have never been, but that doesn’t mean that the journey is over. When you get to a point where you can see that people are slowing down, have something ready. Maybe it’s a speech or maybe you do have a celebration of progress, but during the celebration make sure you mention how you aren’t finished yet. Don’t be afraid to point out how much you have left and don’t be afraid to take a few minutes to look back at how far you have come. Some people will tell you to never look back, but I worry that sometimes on a long journey if you never look back, you will have no idea how far you have come. When you find yourself stuck between mountains and valleys, you may think it’s time to call in the emergency helicopter to come to save you and get out of the situation. I challenge you to face the mountains and valleys head on. We all find ourselves surrounded by mountains and valleys at some point. Let’s go show the world that it doesn’t scare us. When you work as a team, anything and everything is possible!