I have been in the most intense meetings for the last 2 days. The negotiating power the members of this group have are by far superior to any others I have seen. With just a look I folded to their demands. In all fairness though, they are 2 and a half year old twins and call me “my grandma”, so they are my kryptonite. I will give them almost anything when they say in their cute voice “gram-ma, I want mac and chz for br-kfst”. yep, I fold.

Why do I bring this up today? Because for me this is success at failing forward. Epic failure 326, work life balance. I suck at it. In my head I picture myself at a WAA meeting (workaholic anonymous) and stand up and say “hi, I’m Cindy, I’m a work acholic, it has been 20 days since my last personal experience”, and in the past this statement would have been completely correct, but, the days would have been like 98 or more. I would work every single day of the week. Working has always been so easy for me. I am a fixer and a doer. Expectations are clear cut when it comes to work, get the job done! Personal, well….not so easy for me.

I tried to be a stay at home mom at 19, yep, 19. I had 2 children by that time, a house, husband, dog and 2 cats. I gave birth to my 2 second child and my husband and I decided I would stay home with the kids. I lasted all of 6 months, and that is pushing it. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my kids to death, but, being a stay at home mom is hard! Anytime I ask a woman what they do, and they say, “I’m a stay at home mom” I want to bow right there in front of them and start chanting “you are a domestic goddess”. I refrain, and just do it in my head. But, something changed for me….Life.
I lost everything in my personal life I felt. Epic failure 501, which we will discuss another time, and I realized I did not want to have my headstone say “she worked herself to death” which was the direction I was going. So, I slowly started integrating my personal life into my work life….and then, I meet a boy. Ok, not really a boy, a man! This man had 5 kids. Wait, let me add this up, he has 5 kids, I have 3, 2 daughters-in-law’s, 1 nephew, 4 grandchildren, how many is that? 15!
My leader use to joke with me and say, “per your contract you are not allowed to have a boyfriend”. And in my mind, I thought, that wont change anything with work, guess what, it did. And I am loving it! I spent 2 days with 5 of the small people, then, went and spent 3 days with 4 more of them this week. And did not look at my work once. (well, the quick check of email during nap time does not count).
I failed forward and have been succeeding at having a personal life.
Lets get back to my current epic professional failure though….November 2016. In 2 years, I went from being a frontline worker, to a manager, and now to an associate director. My life was good! My career path was going the direction I worked hard for it to go. But, unlike other associate directors that may lead a small team with a director and or VP above them to help mentor and grow them, I did not, I reported directly to the president of the division and oversaw the entire medical management department, including oversight of vendors and subdelegates, and, ¾ of the department needed fixing. Yep, I got this! Or so I thought.
Do you know the biggest difference between being a manager and higher leadership positions? Appropriate delegation. Being a manager, you are doing, being a leader, you need to get use to being a followupper. Yep, that is a word. Followupper. That means, you delegate and then follow up to insure things are done so that you can focus on the bigger picture. Now don’t get me wrong, my president was the bomb shigity, yes, that is a word also, and I learned a lot from her, but, how can she run the company and mentor me?
I am a fixer. Something is broke, ill fix it, if I don’t know how to, ill figure something out. For the last 2 months of 2016 I looked at the problems and focused my energy on the ones that needed to be fixed first. Audit and hospital reviews. I poured all my energy in them since we could get the biggest bang for our buck on them, now, I learned long ago when you become a manager or leader, do not go in like a “bull in a china shop”. Go in, understand first, take time to evaluate, then make strategic changes.
They’re where a lot of coach up and couch out opportunities that I needed to do. I worked hard, long hours, weekends, preparing and evaluating. The time had come for audit first. We needed to get a 95% to pass. The last 2 years we did not make it out of the 70’s, and those results put us in a tough spot, we needed to pass this year. My team and I worked hard, and I was in fight or flight mode. Sitting across the table from the auditor and answering questions, going through our items on the 266 document I jokingly named it, which was the number of pages in this audit. Group chats with other team members back home finding items that where needed, calling, searching, putting things together, until the very end. (my team said the looks I was giving them from across the table where quite frightening) but, we needed to pass. And then it was done…..and the results where……..