Articles
Here is where you find out about the real me! The articles in this website are to some extent a "web journal". That is, they are generally my personal thoughts and meanderings. Some form the basis of presentations or an anecdote within a presentation.
For articles specifically related to learning, visit the articles on the website for Active Learning Partners.
For articles related to engineering, which Bronwen has written in her role as Engineering Solutions Manager for Plant Solutions, please visit the Plant Solutions Website.
I hope you enjoy the insights into my personality and my personal life.
Contents
Integrating home and work - have I taken it too far!!
Idle thoughts on working from home
A day in the life of a home-based working mother
Married to a speed hump?
March 2004
I just came back from a fabulous weekend of being treated to a wealth of wisdom and ways with words from the speakers at the National Speakers Association Convention. One of these was Patricia Cameron-Hill, who is renowned for her humour and insightful observations on everyday life. One of her wisecracks really got me thinking. "Here I was living life in the fast lane and then I married a speed hump." I had to laugh, because my husband often tries to slow me down. He tries to be my "speed hump" (or to translate for my kiwi readers, a judder bar). He is genuinely trying to help, but at my breakneck speed, I don't always appreciate the jolt!
He did the "speed hump" thing that very evening. Here I was all fired up from my inspirational weekend and I pulled out my latest project which I had started with the kids. Inspired by my mother's impending book launch in New Zealand, I had suggested to the kids that we could also write a book. Mindful of my time - or lack thereof - along with the ability of the kids to see a long project to completion, we had decided to keep it very simple and had just written a short poem, based on a real life story from our last trip to the farm and illustrated it with photographs. So the children and I were excitedly chatting about how much it would cost to print, how we could sell it, whether we could get it done in time for the New Zealand book launch, and how many we should print.
Rob listened to our lively conversation with increasing concern, and started to point out some of the issues with getting it done in such a short time and to ask if we had thought of our target audience, our cost structures, whether we had a marketable product etc. All very valid concerns of course and things we needed to think about. He was just trying to slow us down to avoid seeing us rush headlong into failure and debt.
But the danger of putting up the speed hump too soon, is that we will simply stall. An idea at its beginning needs to be gently accelerated with enthusiasm and creativity, to give it enough momentum to overcome the speed humps that are put in its way. Placed at the right time, the concerns and objections will do what they are meant to, which is to slow you down enough to keep you, and those around you, safe, just like the speed hump. But put up too soon, and the problems raised might just as well be a brick wall - they will stop an idea dead in its tracks.
I am very lucky that Rob has learned to calculate the required angle of the speed hump. In our early days he put up the brick wall objections and I faced the frustration of having idea after idea stopped dead in its tracks. Now Rob manages to raise just enough concerns to slow me down but not enough to stop me. Although I was too busy dealing with the jolt to appreciate his comments at the time, I certainly recognised the validity of his concerns. With another day to think about his suggestions, and to reword them in a way that the children are happy to accept, the kids and I have adjusted our overly ambitious plan, and our result should be a much higher quality product.
So it's good to be married to a speed hump! Especially now that I have the momentum to keep on going towards my goal after being alerted by the jolt to make sure I deal with the risks. So welcome the speed humps, but don't let them make you stall!
Living by the 80:20 rule
June 2003
I am often somewhat surprised when people compliment me on how much I achieve. Sometimes I feel as though they don't see the real me - and I hasten to let them know that I am not at all the superwoman they think I am. "Just look at the state of my office", I exclaim, "and you will see that I am not as good as you think I am!"
But then I start to look at what I have achieved in the last decade, or even in the last few weeks, and I start to realise that it does seem quite substantial, given that we are also raising four children at the same time. And, you know, I think the key to it is in fact the messy office!!
Now, I know this seems like a very strange statement, especially to those who espouse that you simply cannot be efficient if you are not organised. Of course, it is generally accepted wisdom that by being organised, you can be more efficient, and I don't deny that at all. I would love to have a more tidy and organised office and house, and there is a certain minimum standard that I try to maintain. I recognise that beyond a certain point, things start to go out of control, and I do start to lose things and get behind. So there are certain basic essentials, which I organise very carefully (most of the time!!). For example, the essential paperwork is organised carefully and dealt with at the right time. There is some order to my apparent chaos!!
So how does this fit in with living by the 80:20 rule?
The 80:20 rule in this instance, means that 20% of the effort will give 80% of the results. It follows that the final 20% of the results will take 80% of the effort.
And this is the key to my productivity. 20% of effort in my paperwork will get the bills paid on time, the tax receipts recorded and filed and invoices are raised at an appropriate time and followed up. If I wanted to have a perfectly tidy and organised office, with everything beautifully categorised, filed and labelled, it would probably take another 80% of effort, and is the 20% return worth it? As far as the house is concerned, as long as there is food in the cupboard, the washing is up to date, and it is sufficiently clean to be hygienic, I am happy. The extra 80% of effort to get the toy cupboard perfectly tidy, the books off the floor next to the bed and the pile of old photographs put into albums just doesn't have enough return to make it worth sacrificing getting something more worthwhile done.
Let's look at effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness is concerned with getting the job done, and achieving the objectives that have been set. Efficiency is concerned with getting the job done with the minimum use of resources, or the minimum waste.
I long ago decided that for me, effectiveness as a parent meant having a good long term relationship with my children, and helping them develop habits that would keep them healthy, safe, and assist them in achieving social, academic and financial success. Spending hours on housework to provide a perfectly tidy house has very little impact on that effectiveness - and can even be detrimental!
Effectiveness as a writer, trainer and speaker means actually getting out there and doing as much as I can. It does not need to be perfect. I would love it if I did have time to make each article, each training course and each speech absolutely fantastic, but I can learn so much more and give so much more by accepting an 80% result and being able to do five times as much. I think my customers, audiences and trainees benefit more from my broad range of experience than by having every phrase word perfect.
Living by the 80:20 rule makes me efficient - I get the job done with the minimum use of resources. And it makes me effective - I have time to do much more than if I were trying to be perfect.
Of course, some things are worth the extra effort - you must tie up all the loose ends in a project for a paying customer, or you risk your reputation. You must make sure that anything to do with safety is never compromised - or you may pay the price with an injury. And you must pay attention to finances, or you may run into financial difficulties.
But some things don't need to be perfect. 80% is good enough. Work out whether you could be more effective by accepting 80% on some things. Could living by the 80:20 rule help you to efficiently achieve your objectives?
Perhaps it was meant to be
April 2003
We often hear people saying "It was meant to be". How often have we had experiences like that where something happens and it just feels right, or something comes up completely out of the blue at exactly the right time. Of course, there is also the belief that success is where opportunity and preparedness meet. Perhaps these "meant to be moments" occur when we have prepared ourselves - consciously or unconsciously. When the opportunity comes along, it just seems right - our intuition tells us it was meant to be.
Some believe that intuition and the universe work together. Mary King, in "The Intuitive Voice" comments that by acting on your intuition and watching the signs with each step things can fall into place beautifully. She quotes Deepak Chopra who says "Let the universe handle the details."
While I found Mary King's book to have some interesting assertions on the power of intuition, I was somewhat sceptical of the reality of your intuition leading you to your goal. However, some recent experiences led me to reflect on these concepts.
I started to think about getting a job - then out of the blue, I got a phone call with a fabulous job offer! A week and a half later, after accepting the job, I was still wondering about the issue of childcare, but was not actively seeking a solution. Then, again, by sheer coincidence, the nanny I had employed 5 years previously rang seeking a reference - it didn't take long to make the decision to ask her back to work with us again. Neither of these people knew that I had been considering going back to full time employment. It must have been meant to be!
A few years ago, my parents were visiting me from New Zealand. They were in the process of selling their house. They received an offer, and then discovered that a house in another part of New Zealand that they had made an offer on unsuccessfully two years previously was on the market again. For family reasons, the move was now much better timed than it would have been two years previously. In the space of a week, their house was sold at the price they wanted and they had secured the house of their dreams - all from the distant shores of Australia! It must have been meant to be!
There are other times where my intuition has told me not to take an opportunity that has presented itself. Years ago I was offered a promotion. On the face of it, it was a fabulous opportunity - a general manager's position - and this at a time when many women in technical fields protested the existence of a glass ceiling. But it just did not feel right. And now, 10 years on, I have added three more beautiful children to my family, while the company I would have been managing has hit serious financial trouble and closed its doors. My intuition was right. It must have been meant to be.
In my last article on planning, I talked about operating on broad intent and planning only the absolute essentials. Perhaps that then gives us the opportunity to listen to our intuition. Again, as Mary King says "Your intuition will lead you to your goal." She points out that the journey on the way to the goal is where the gold is.
If it is meant to be, it will happen. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the gold in my journey. Are you?
Planning
November 2002
I came across this advice recently.
The advantage of not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, and is not preceded by long periods of gloom and depression!
Now while I don't generally advocate avoiding planning, I do find that there comes a point where excessive planning can limit flexibility and cause disappointment when it doesn't all come together. Maybe we can change it to say:
Planning only the absolute essentials means we can make the most of opportunities and enjoy the unexpected.
Another way of looking at it is the broad brush approach - planning the big picture and leaving the details flexible. I tend to operate on intent, so that I know the general direction that I want to head, or the general outcome that I want to achieve, but I don't plan the minute detail of how I will get there. Some would argue that this approach is likely to be inefficient and that it will take longer to reach the desired goal. Perhaps they are right. But does it really matter?
If success is a journey, not a destination, then does it matter if we take the winding path or the straight path? Freeways may be the fastest way to get from point A to point B, but I have not come across a freeway yet that is as interesting and enriching as the sideroads that lead to the same destination. I used to find it fascinating to observe that when I was rogaining (which is a sport involving many hours of walking or running through bushland, along roads and across fields, navigating to checkpoints as you go), I would often find that it was far more tiring walking along a straight road, than picking my way through bush or over rugged terrain. On the face of it, more physical energy was consumed on the rugged terrain, but the interest and variety more than made up for it by increasing my mental energy.
I find the same with my energy in achieving my life goals. The overall intent, and planning the absolute essentials, seems to give me enough focus to keep heading in the general direction of my goal, but gives me enough flexibility to enjoy the journey and renew my energy with interesting little asides and diversions along the way. Yes, I have no doubt that if I planned the exact details, that I would, in theory, be able to achieve the goals much faster and with far less energy consumed. But a rigid and tight structure seems to suffocate me and bog me down. As an extreme E (Extravert) on the Myers-Briggs (Carl Jung) psychometric construct, I thrive on energy exchange. By taking the diversions and enjoying the distractions, I get the opportunity to draw energy from the interesting people and experiences that I encounter. It may take me longer to reach my stated goals, but I have developed and achieved a whole lot of sub-goals along the way.
Life is a journey. I am not sure if I will ever reach my destination, but I can say that I have had the pleasure of exploring a lot of opportunities and have been able to enjoy the unexpected in a way that I never could have done if I had single-mindedly pursued my goals. There are many times when I believe I had my ladder up against the wrong wall anyway - I climbed part way up and realised that although it was interesting, it was the wrong wall. If I'd made it to the top, I am convinced I would have been disappointed. I'm still moving my ladder - but I am sure that one day I will find the right wall. When I do, I had better climb the ladder quickly - perhaps I will need a tighter plan then! In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy the journey.
Integrating home and work - have I taken it too far!!
November 2002
This week was Liam's birthday. Now, turning five is an important milestone. He has got his schoolbag for next year, has tried on his big brother's school uniform and has his Harry Potter art smock all ready for school. Of course, as a loving and indulgent mother, I had to make sure that he had an enjoyable and memorable birthday!
Now, here is the challenge. How do I achieve this in the middle of a lengthy training course, being piloted for the first time, with representatives and evaluators from Canberra, Tasmania and Victoria? I have long days at the course, meetings in the evening and the duty of entertaining the interstate representatives.
Tradition in our house demands that the day would have presents in bed, a special breakfast, party food for his friends, a special dinner and of course, the birthday cake. Fortunately, tradition in our house is based more on the broad intent than the detail, so the children have developed a very flexible approach to the way we achieve the individual elements. Great expectations based on the minute detail of the type of cake or the exact nature of the present or party are non-existent in our household, and the element of surprise is the key ingredient to success.
So my little five year old, endearing for his enthusiastic approach to life, demonstrated his immense delight with his little $2 cars purchased at midnight the night before at the 24 hour supermarket, and was terribly excited about the coins wrapped lovingly in an origami construction by his two brothers that morning. He even managed to accept that sachets of oat temptations (otherwise known as porridge) were sufficiently different to the norm to be a special breakfast - not that he ate it with the same enthusiasm as the usual pancake special breakfast - but there were no complaints! He happily went off to Kindergarten with a couple of packs of mini Smartie packs to hand out to the other children - hours slaving over a hot oven to produce individually decorated party cupcakes for each child simply was not an option this week! In his bag he had a bit of extra party food to take with him to a friend's after kindergarten while I worked - thank goodness for a network of other parents willing to help out.
At 6:00, my husband was despatched to take the interstate guests to dinner, while I picked up the two younger children and took them out for the "special birthday dinner" at McDonalds. A quick dinner, picking up the older two children from another valued friend who often helps out with childminding, and then it was back home for the birthday cake. We had not managed to avoid the evening work meeting, so had simply invited everyone to our place to brainstorm the examination questions for the course. But first, we had to have the cake. As I directed everyone to their places and lit the candles, my husband raised the obvious question - do we have to do this now?!? Yes, it is most important, was my response. As I looked at the people singing happy birthday, I wondered briefly - have I taken it too far?!? Integrating home and work is natural for me, but did the National Manager from a Commonwealth Government Department, the General Manager from a company in Tasmania and the two instructors from the course see it the same way? The look on Liam's face, the smile from ear to ear, as we all sang happy birthday, made the question seem rather redundant. Yes, I had done the right thing. Five minutes was all it took, and then my husband took over the task of getting the children to bed, while I commenced what was a very productive business meeting.
It is an interesting challenge, integrating home and work. Sometimes organising the logistics of children and work commitments seems like an insurmountable problem, and sometimes it just doesn't work out and I have to deal with the fallout. But when it works, it makes it all worthwhile. Look at Liam's birthday. He had a fabulous day and was made to feel really special. I got to be a part of it, and was instrumental in making it happen. It cost next to nothing, didn't need any fancy entertainment and I got all my work goals achieved as well.
What a magic way to work. It's challenging, but I love it.
Idle thoughts on working from home
26 August 2002
Working from home is:
- popping in for ten minutes after dinner to check the emails and emerging three hours later
- having your 2 year old take the business calls
- sausages, eggs and mushrooms for brunch
- afternoon naps
- emails at 1 am
- phone calls in the middle of the witching hour
- typing with a child on your knee
- finding a cheque in the mail your 4 year old collected and left outside for three weeks
- a child's artwork on the urgent proposal
- ink running out in the middle of the second print of the urgent proposal
- spending half the day cleaning up the house for a meeting
- job rotation - breaks from the keyboard spent hanging out the washing
- emptying the dishwasher while making the coffee
- sitting in the sun for lunch
- sitting in the sun with the laptop
- having the neighbour accidentally water you and the laptop (instead of the potplants on their deck)
- entertaining unexpected visitors on a working day
- wishing you had hidden under the desk when the unexpected visitor arrived
- staying up late at night to get the work done that you should have been doing when the visitor arrived
- talking to anyone that will listen
- role modelling for the kids
- saying yes to anything to get the kids out of the office during an important phone call
- locking yourself in the bathroom to negotiate contracts
- expressive body language (out, out, out!!!) while maintaining a professional interested telephone manner
- turning your back on the mess
- following the housework philosophy of "a quick flick is better than no flick at all"
- becoming an expert at multi-tasking (hanging out the washing while working out the strategic direction of the business)
- telling the kids they shouldn't watch so much TV, then telling them to go and watch a video, so that you can get some work done
- telling the kids that they spend too much time in front of the computer and having them say it right back
- saying the computer is a bad influence on them - and having them say it right back
- writing occupational health and safety manuals without a break until your neck hurts, your eyes hurt and you suspect you are developing occupational overuse syndrome
- networking, networking and more networking.
A day in the life of a home-based working mother
25 July 2002
I have just finished reading a series of articles by Robin Wheeler on
her website.
She has inspired me to finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard)
and write. I have been thinking of writing in a more personal vein for
some time, but wasn't sure I had anything to say. She has convinced me
that I have.
One of the (many) articles that struck a chord was the article on working from home. I read what she had to say and could identify with much of it. Then I started to consider some of the other realities of working from home. Let me share some of my reality with you.
I sit here in my tiny study, surrounded by several piles of unfinished work. Deadlines loom, but I am beckoned by a desire to take the first step on the road to what I really want to do. As Robin Wheeler put it, being yourself for a living.
Through the closed door I can hear the music of the video of Joseph and his Technicoloured Dreamcoat - I have just turned it down from a blaring 66 on the volume control down to a bearable 40 to try to reduce some of the damage to my children's hearing. I console myself with the fact that it is a wholesome video, with music, religion and art - then remember that the storyline has its fair share of sex and violence - and we think it is only our modern times that suffer this!! The kids love it though and sing along at full volume to the catchy tunes. The bowl of popcorn and video should give me at least an hour of relatively uninterrupted time to write - barring wars over the last few kernels of popcorn.
So, back to my working reality. My brother-in-law cannot understand my desire to work from home - he says every time he calls, I seem to be working. Not quite true. I find that at this stage of my life I can only sustain around 20 hours of paying work in a week around the demands of four children, and especially two pre-schoolers. There have been times when I have averaged 9 intense hours a day, but after three months my health suffered too much to be able to continue at that pace. Of course, there are many more hours of non-paying work that goes with any small business - the accounts, the networking, the planning for the future - working out what you want to be when you grow up!!
So I snatch what moments I can to do the work I really want to do - usually this is the non-paying variety! In a creative or soul-searching phase, I snatch as many moments as I can in my study - much to the detriment of my family's environment and nutrition.
Today, I picked my way over the toys that have accumulated in my study (how?!) on my way up the stairs to produce a rudimentary dinner. Maternal guilt ensured that I stir fried some vegetables to accompany the pizza and oven-baked chips. Half an hour later I scraped the unfinished vegetables from my children's plates and wondered why I had bothered. At least one child and I had consumed a few natural vitamins and fibre. Dinner when Rob is away is generally a pretty basic affair - a whole week becomes nutritionally scary. Again I manage to convince myself that I am covering the important food groups with fish fingers, frozen lasagne, pizza - and yes there was that home-made soup. Funnily enough, I am very strict about not including crisps or junk food in the children's packed school lunches - earning me the mean mother title.
After dinner, the children seemed to be happily occupied playing together, so I came down to read a few more of Robin's articles. The noise level escalated to the point that I thought I should investigate. In the short 20 minutes I had been gone, the state of the house had deteriorated further - cushions, books and dress-ups all over the floor. Years of trying to study, work and raise children has enhanced my ability to put a priority on what I am trying to achieve and turn my back on the mess (my mother would argue that this was a natural in-born ability demonstrated throughout my teenage years).
Breanna, my 2 ½ year old, has just popped in to the study. I admire her body art in the form of green texta all over her arms, achieved when 4 year old Liam left a texta within her reach. A gentle green shade adorns her face where she has rubbed it with a texta-smeared hand. I manage to convince her that dolly and lion should go with her to watch Joseph - and thereby manage to remove at least a couple of toys from the floor of my study. Five minutes later she arrives back in with a single kernel of popcorn for me - where else could I receive such service with a smile!
Why do I work from home?
So why do I work from home? There are a host of reasons. Integrating my home and family life is first and foremost. A greater freedom in how I utilise my time is another reason. My natural peak work times do not coincide with the normal working day. I work in bursts of energy, and often late at night. An afternoon nap is not an uncommon occurrence after a late night session, or a disturbed night with the kids - I have almost mastered the art of sounding professional and awake when the phone rings in the middle of my sleep.
The advantages of being able to quickly put out a load of washing during morning tea, or unload the dishwasher while the kettle boils make it possible to stay on top of things - just. My youngest daughter still goes to childcare 3 days a week - without that I would achieve very little. I do have the advantage of being available for my 4 year old to do kindergarten pick-ups and drop-offs and bring him home to relax and amuse himself for a couple of hours while I get a little more work done before the school pick up.
He is incredibly accommodating of my work and keeps himself well occupied. His penchant for the computer and his ability to navigate his way around software independently helps enormously. Again, I assuage the guilt of using the electronic babysitters by telling myself that he has had outdoor time and educational play at kindergarten all morning. He has learned to be very considerate and keep very quiet if he sees me on the phone. He regularly checks on me and sometimes pops in for a quick cuddle before returning to his games. I really enjoy these moments and feel that no amount of quality time after a traditional work day could compensate for just being there at the right time.
Today he had a friend round to play and came in very excited. "We are doing something very important!" he announced. "We have found a tiny snail and we are babysitting it!" He had such an air of importance and responsibility and spent the next half hour collecting flowers and grass and a cup of water for the tiny snail to eat and drink. When I was summonsed out to inspect their work, I noted that the tiny snail had been somewhat over-enthusiastically "babysat" and was a little worse for wear. But the loving and caring intentions were so evident - another snippet of his character I would have missed out on observing had I been working elsewhere.
I feel I know my two younger children so much better than my two older boys, simply because of the way I have integrated my work with my home life. When the older ones were young, I was busy trying to "do it all". I had a high level management position, spent their first years studying for my MBA and regularly travelled interstate. They had the very best of care with a fabulous nanny, who occasionally travelled with me, and I was very proud of the fact that both of them were breastfed for a significant time (14 months and 2 years respectively). But I realised when filling out the forms for kindergarten that asked what their favourite colour was and how far they could count, that I simply didn't know! And this was in spite of as much "quality time" as I could manage - a lot more quality time than my husband received!
Things had to change.
After being offered a transfer to Sydney and agonising over it for six months, we decided to opt for a larger family. With some reluctance, I resigned my high status job with all its benefits and executive perks and settled in to full time motherhood with baby number three. For a while I loved the coffee mornings with the other Mums and the time to keep the house looking good. I even commented to a fellow MBA student that I wasn't really interested in looking for work. "Don't worry" he said, "Work will find you."
He was right. I was approached to do some part time work with an occupational health and safety consultant and later, after doing a Certificate IV in workplace training and assessment, was asked to do some teaching at a TAFE (Technical and Further Education) institute. After baby number four was born, I was approached to undertake some course development work for a large Government Department. I haven't looked back and have been busy with an interesting variety of projects since - all from the comfort of my home office, with just enough outside meetings and training to keep my need for adult contact satisfied.
Working from home works - even for an extrovert like me. The ability to integrate work and home has so many fabulous advantages that the drawbacks become mere irritations. With conscious effort, these can be overcome. Most importantly, you can do it your way. What works for me, may not work for you and vice versa. There are no hard and fast rules - you get to make them for yourself, and break them when it suits you.
So go for it - at whatever level suits you. For some of us working from home fulltime is a better way of working. For others, the occasional day working from home gets a project kick-started without interruption, or allows some thinking time which might be impossible in a busy office. Most of all, the integration of both provides an opportunity to maximise your efficiency and effectiveness both professionally and with your family.
Good luck on your journey to integrating your home and work life.
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