I’m guessing 3rd Grade…
My daughters had “picture day” last week. They looked great: hair carefully styled, faces clean, teeth brushed and looking good in their chosen outfits. I’ve been working from home for almost three years now so I’m usually around for these happenings.
My work is speaking and consulting to organizations on leadership and organizational culture. I work with a number of individual leaders in coaching relationships and I also do a fair amount of writing. Typically that writing consists of a semi-regular blog post but for much of this year it has been focused on something bigger. I made the decision to put the lion’s share of my professional effort this year on getting a book written for publication in 2016 (and I’m happy to report that the writing and editing are complete!). Doing this required that I do a few less speaking engagements and take a few less consulting and coaching assignments. It also means that I am home even more than usual.
By the time picture day rolled around my kids were used to seeing me in “writing mode” most of the time: comfortable clothes, maybe workout gear, a day or two of stubble on the face, a baseball cap.
On this particular morning, however, I was getting ready to visit a client. I followed the conventional ritual of shower and shave, put on my best professional attire and exited my room to head down for breakfast. I met my oldest daughter on the landing and without skipping a beat she said: “Is it picture day for you, too, dad?”
It was both a compliment and a dig, a great line delivered in a moment of surprise. My unexpected attention to grooming, at such an early hour no less, threw a wrinkle in the system that she caught right away and handed back to me with the graceful ease of her impeccable timing.
Her question got me thinking about the necessary transition from one kind of focus to another. For so many months now I’ve been of one mind, giving my energy to the work of completing the book. And as gratifying as it is to have come this far, I am fully awake to the reality that an even bigger question looms: So, now what?
That question carries with it the sizable implication that every effort we make will eventually yield to the responsibility of the next one. There is a season for all things, as the verses of Ecclesiastes assure us. As such, you don’t write a book forever. At some point that experience ends, giving way to a new question and a powerful opportunity: what to do with it? It is time to emerge from the cave of creative effort and organization, the cave of comfy clothes and shave-less days, into the realm of activation and application.
I have done something and it is time to share it. It is picture day, once again.
DAVID BERRY is the founder of RULE13 Learning. He speaks and writes about the complexity of leading in a changing world, especially the parts where he doesn’t handle it very well. If you enjoyed this post someone else might, too. Please pass it along.
