One, Get Out Of Jail Card, Free!

Hasbro and Monopoly, Wow!

Create or start something new.  That is it.  That is your 'get out of jail' card for free.  When burn out has arrived and nothing seems fun anymore, just start creating something new.  It really does not need to matter what it is.  Just make sure it is legal, ethical and moral.  We do not want to pay those ugly prices, too.  Do not forget about the laws of compensation.  What goes around comes around and the payment for what comes around is not usually very cheap.  Make sure what you create for the heck of it is not something that will bite you on the butt.  We have enough challenges already that 'burn out' is not willing to accept.  Just begin tomorrow by starting something new.  It does not matter what it is, with the exceptions I just warned about above.


If you are a manager or an owner who has the symptoms of job burn out, accept them.  They are real and they are very demanding.  Your leadership will begin to feel a lot like being in jail if you do not harness this rotten pattern of feelings.  It is a pattern that is hard to identify until it is usually too late.  Learn to accept it and start doing something about it.  You can easily work on the repair of fixing job burn out.  It is a fixable challenge.  You can get re-energized and love doing what you do, again.  It is possible to have fun at work once more.


Let's kill burn out.  It is a nasty jail sentence.  We need to get out of that jail, right now.


If you care about going back to your life of having fun building a great business model, pay attention.  I have 'hit' job burn out a few times in my almost 40 years of business experiences.  Get real, managing a business is not always a fun thing to do.  It carries some real heavy burdens at times.  Some of those burdens can decided to run a string of connections that seem like a long line of painful experiences.  Eventually they wear a leader down until even the simple stuff seems very hard to do.  In forty years, it has happened more than once.  Burn out is real, it is debilitating and it can destroy everything in its path.  It can become a rotten jail sentence.  If you have it quit pretending you do not have it.  That is much like adding gasoline to a burning fire.  Quit it.


If you have the moxie enough to accept that you are dealing with some form of job burn out, start looking around your organization for the people who know how to finish work.  Look for the finishers in your organization.  They will be hard to find.  Not many people are great finishers.  Most of us are great starters, but finishing what we started is more rare.  Go find those who have the skills to be good finishers.  They will be very important to you in this repair process.  In order for you to feel good about the 'burn out' repair process, those finishers will have an important role to play.  They just do not know it yet.  We are going to use them tomorrow.  Find your finishers.  If you do not yet know who they are, that is what we call a clue.  You have not been paying very close attention to your staff.  Shame on you, but of course, you have 'burn out' to blame.  Identify who your finishers are.  In your private office somewhere, write their names down on a piece of paper.  Remember, I did not say you needed to like these people...only that they are good at finishing things they start.  Write their names down on a piece of paper.  If you do not know who they are, ask some of the people you employ who they think are good finishers.  You may also discover some interesting answers and conversations in that line of questioning.  Find your finishers.  That is repair step number one.


Now that you have written the finishers names down in a private place somewhere, think about what kind of crazy ideas you have always wanted to do but never had the courage to do them.  It might be as silly as painting your business front door a wild color.  Maybe we can paint it a deep green with a silver and black lined trim.  What a great idea!  Do a color that is strong and wild.  Combine the color with a little bit of black trim to make sure everyone knows you painted the front door.  Remember, you have 'job burn out' it is time to do something crazy.  You have the perfect excuse.  Job burn out is a serious excuse.  It is very user friendly for doing stuff like this.  Give that project to one of your finishers and give them the instructions on how you want it to be painted.  Tell that finisher that you picked them out because they are good at finishing and you want to make sure this project gets done.  The interest and stir you just created is the kind of stuff that makes business fun to do.  It is the crazy stuff that finds its way into the record books of the good memories we make.  Start doing them again.  Start feeding the creative part of your mind again.  Jump start it with little creative stuff that can be done that will help you gain control of what is running out of control.  Do not worry about what is not being done, get going on some new things that are going to get done.  That is why you picked out the finishers.  They will be responsible for making sure your creative ideas get finished.  Finishing is not your job.  Starting is your job.  Not finishing.  You hire others to do the finish work.  All you need to do is start stuff.


This process is a lot like practicing 'positive procrastination.'  It is a healthy technique to use when you are overwhelmed by having too many important things to do with no extra time to do them.  When the list is longer than the clock, procrastination sets in.  It kills a good business leader.  It can lead to job burn out.  It can lead to producing a rotten jail sentence at work.  When procrastination is unavoidable, you are not delegating duties well enough.  You are not trusting your staff enough to do some of the things you think only you should be doing.  You have become a rotten leader and will not accept this truth.  Hence, after a long period of operating in this fashion you discover you are burned out!  Go figure.  Gee, I do not know why I am so pissed off about how my business is going?  Delegate, delegate, delegate...stupid.  Just start to delegate stuff away from you.  Quit worrying about how they turn out when you give them away for someone else to do.  They will screw a few of them up, but at least they will no longer be laying on your desk collecting unwanted dust and destroying your positive spirit anymore.  Shove those piled up things onto the floor if you have to.  Get them off of your desk!  Quit coming into your office and looking at overwhelming piles of things not done.  Get hem out of your sight.  Burn them, I don't care.  Just get them off of your desk and out of your sight.  And for goodness sakes, quit bringing new procrastination's back to your office to lay them down over the ones that are already there.  Stop this silliness and learn how to improve your delegation responsibilities.  Give this stuff to your finishers.  Buy them a small gift card from Starbucks when they tackle some of your projects!  Your leadership will return.  Did you know that?

Get Out Of Jail, Free!

Once you finish painting the front door this week, make sure you ask everyone what they think.  Truly listen to their answers.  If they do not like the colors you picked, have them work together to bring their final color selection to you by next Tuesday!  Set a date for that to happen.  Give them a deadline to respond.  Write that deadline down on your calendar.  During the time gap before that deadline arrives, ask them once in awhile how they are doing with the new color choices.  They may already be done choosing their favorite colors.  Take those new color choices and give that second paint job to the same finisher.  Re-paint the front door again.  It will create quite a stir around the place, for sure.  This is one of the easiest ways for you to return back to your leadership role.  So many missing parts in your 'burned out' mindset have been missing in your leadership duties that this little project of creativity will help you to return back to your best managing attributes.  It is a simple way to create a plan, to delegate the work, followup with results, adjust what did not work in the plan, and do it all for very little capital investment.  The attention the results will attract will provide a sense of accomplishment and add to some interesting, but safe, marketing favors.  Every single one of these organizational additions will be the kind of additions your business needs right now.  It is one of the simplest ways you can start to repair job burn out and begin the steps to get out of jail for free.


When the re-paint job is completed, order a pizza for everyone to share.  Treat this project as if it was one of the greatest marketing ideas that has ever come along for a very long time.  Surprise the crap out of everyone.  In Bill Gates book, "Business At The Speed Of Thought," he describes how you need to practice a little 'off-step' once in awhile to keep everyone out of balance on purpose.  He considers this act as one of the main ingredients to success.  I think Bill Gates has delivered more successes than I have produced.  I do not question his working methods.  I copy them.  I find that a lot of them work well.  This paint job work on the front door is just like what he would describe needs to be done to provide the 'off-step' of leadership balance.  Not one sole inside your organization will recognize this step as the first move you are making to repair your accepted position of 'job burn out.'  You are safe to roam about the cabin!  Nobody will be able to evaluate how well you are doing with your rehab efforts!  Your attempt to start the repair will begin in a stealth fashion.  This will prove to be a good thing.  If you truly have some job burn out in your leadership ways, some of those who work for you have been unfortunately burned by your recent failure to lead properly.  Those who have been burned by your failure to perform well may delight in killing your efforts to repair.  Repairing job burn out in a stealth fashion is a good thing to do.  There are some people you employ who will need your repair to occur in a quiet fashion.  The floundering you have done lately, due to job burn out, has become good fodder for their attention growth lately.  Your efforts to repair and return to back to good leadership success will interfere with their pseudo attention gains.  Your repair will diminish their recent popularity gains.  Be careful with how you repair your burn out ills.  Two wrongs do not make a right.  Be smart in your attempt to repair.  One fire is enough to fight.


When you finish painting the front door, try another crazy idea.  Do the same steps.  Make sure you do stuff that is easy to do, however.  You want to do low cost, crazy stuff that does not carry the potential for someone to get hurt, lose face or ruin consumer attraction policies.  Crazy stuff like painting the front door a wild color combination are everywhere.  Go pick out some more of them.  Ask your staff what they would like to see you do.  You might be surprised at some of the answers.  People you employ have some serious ideas on how to attract attention form the customers you serve.  You might discover some great ideas that have been hidden in the minds of your staff.  Watch how this crazy stuff unfolds.  If they come up with a seriously crazy idea, for goodness sakes, do it!  Do it immediately.  Give it all of your support and efforts.  Overwhelm the idea with all that you can afford to offer.  Just get ready to watch your staff grow up and become good operators.  You will find the good starters and you will find the good finishers.  You will also find that there will be less finishers than starters.  This is normal.  Start teaching the starters how to improve their finishing skills.  This kind of work will help you to become a better role model for doing finishing work.  You must set the example if you are going to successfully teach it.  You will be likely teaching those starters how to use finishers to improve their finishing skills.  You will be teaching them how to delegate stuff.  Wow.  You will be returning back to doing the kinds of stuff you lost a long time ago.  Your staff will begin to have fun again and so will you.


Job burn out is a nasty illness to overcome.  It can feel just like being in jail.  When you are creating things to improve your business model you will be doing the kinds of things that will help you to remove the dread of going to work.  Creativity adds flavor to the working requirements.  Creativity adds ownership to the feeling of being lost and having no control.  When you feel lost and out of control you have no feelings of owning anything good that is turning out to be done.  It is an awful feeling to be out of control of producing good things to happen.  It is the fire that feeds the burn out position.  Dowse that fire with creativity.  Get control of what color your front door is painted.  Get control of how your staff begins to do good crazy things again.  Have them help you lead your way right back out of jail.  Your business deserves better.  Give it more to be proud of and make sure you delegate that kind of work to your hungry staff.  They want to have fun at work, too.


Have fun, create a mess and manage the teaching to include delegation principles.  Shove the crap on your desk onto the floor and start to get your spirit back.


Until next time...