In moving among organizations today we are encountering one situation that is rearing its’ head more and more.  It occurs in companies that operate from multiple national or international locations.  It’s a situation that brings definite opportunities and some very real challenges that apply to both leadership and employee team members alike.  Specifically, the execution of one’s job responsibilities with the added complexities related to distance, time zone variance, basic communication and other elements of their life calls for a master juggler.  It’s pretty much a certainty that if you reading this blog you either work at such a company or know others who do.  Here’s the good news … like most all challenges, making things better is possible.

First, however, it’s important that we all understand that companies establish such a wide-spread structure for the advantages that it offers.  Attracting needed talent, ability to expand ones’ marketplace for distribution and the potential impact on costs are some.

As is often the case, with advantages come challenges and in this situation, their resolutions differ whether viewed from the perspective of the leader or the employee.  As such, and I will address them separately in a two-part blog.

Part I …The Employee

You took the job because of many right reasons.

• the challenge in general
• the nature of the work that allowed you to apply your expertise in an exciting and rewarding manner
• the ability to affiliate with a company that offered you a desired challenge
• the value that you know you brought to the organization
• the ability to have all of this and avoid uprooting your family and all this can bring
• the compensation and other related realities that were offered to you as an employee

Great! And perhaps what you didn’t anticipate or did, and thought we could handle it, was the impact on you personally in your work and overall life.  Here are some reported issues:

• The need to juggle your hours to accommodate the expectation to be in remote meetings with those in the home office and in different time zones that can be many hours earlier or later than yours’.   Often this requires that you contribute time that is potentially far outside of the willing and anticipated i.e. 10 hour work day
• The need to sacrifice personal family time when not available to have the involvement that you consider important and desirable.
• The loss of sleep due to the need to be available for calls and meetings that require your involvement beginning very early in the morning and again often very late at night.
• With the above, a slow loss of enthusiasm for the job and the company as you build resentment for what is actually required as you see it.
• An awareness of unhappiness that is permeating the entire family for what you are not available to do with them.

 Clearly this is not a good situation and yet, there are things you can do about it.

1. First and foremost, maintain a real awareness of all the reasons that attracted you to the job initially as those reasons are most likely still valid. Make a list and post it where you can be reminded daily.

1. What have you encountered that you see as a job requirement that is different than what you anticipated or were told.  Ask yourself if these requirements are clear expectations of the job or some that you presume go with the job?  If you’re presuming, you have some clarifying to do.

1. What are the specific disappointments that you feel stuck with in your job?  In identifying them you will also have identified what you want to change to make this continuing long-term feasible and positive.

1. What things do you find yourself involved in that perhaps, are not a requirement of your position?  Rather, something you started doing that you have imposed on yourself … possibly, in the name of doing a good job and making a good impression?  Meetings? Conference calls? Maybe it’s time to rethink these things as a means of getting greater control over your work day.

1. Knowing the nature of your organization, were you to design your position in a way that would allow you to still achieve your responsibilities yet be more ‘workable’ for you, how might you set that up?  What would be the same and what would be different?  What are your solutions to the very issues that are negatives as you experience them?

Once you have created your ideas of how to alter and improve the execution of your responsibilities you have the basis for making constructive suggestions to management that will probably be welcome … by management and co-workers alike. After all, why wait for others to make the needed changes.  In seeing this as your responsibility, you have the opportunity to improve the current negatives of your job and along the way, show the potential you have for being sent up the success ladder as leader.  How’s that as a reward for speaking up … even from a distance?

NOTE: I will view this situation as experienced by the company management soon.  Stay tuned.
Mike Dorman

Very interesting.  After several years of a very challenging economy that impacted so many industries, organizations and individuals … things are clearly on the upswing.  Isn’t that great and exciting?  I sure see this in going from company to company and from client to client.  For many 2014 was the year that signaled “we’re back!!!”

But wait.  Oddly enough what I’m experiencing as a coach isn’t matching this positive change. This year, for a noticeable number of folks, the starch to take themselves higher and maintain their motivation has diminished and noticeably.  Why?  Where did their ‘’mojo go?  What took it away and what needs to happen to get it back?

  One can dwell on the questions of where it went and what took it away however ultimately
the focus needs to be on getting it back for without it, we lost the starch that serves to drive
us positively.  And losing one’s ‘mojo is not that rare or unusual for there are times when
we all hit a plateau after being excited and energized about what we’re doing.  And when
we do, we feel stagnant and unproductive and there goes our motivation, compelling desire
and enthusiasm for the work at hand.

After reading some articles on this topic, two summed it up well.  One in Forbes was written by contributor Josh Linkner and the other by Marshall Goldsmith in the WSJ.  Here are suggested steps we can all take when we find ourselves trapped in the land of “nojo”.

• Change your window – Where is it written that when we’re working that you must always be at your desk, your cubicle or even in the office?  And if you think about it there are aspects of your job that can be accomplished elsewhere.  By changing the view through which you see the task at hand it can reinvigorate us and our views.  Doesn’t sitting on a bench at the beach or in a park or walking through a zoo with pad in hand sound potentially expansive?  Try it even if only for an hour, just once or twice a week.
• Change your attitude – When the mojo is gone, “I can do” often becomes “I can’t do”.  As soon as we recognize this in ourselves, we are able to ask the likes of this: “When I am successful at this what will I have accomplished?  What will I have learned that was necessary to complete the task?”  With that vision of success, identify what you now know you need to learn that will enable to reach the envisioned goal and set out to do just that.
• Break your ‘normal’ pattern – So often we approach each day in a set pattern.  On one hand this is good because we can execute in an organized manner.  And still, we can find ourselves bored with our own routine.  The solution is simple.  Change it.  Maybe you now work out at the end of the day.  Try doing that enroute to the office.  Perhaps you work on spreadsheets, address emails, return phone calls in a certain pattern because that is what has worked for you previously.  All good except that it’s not working now.  Create a new routine and you are likely to find that mojo hiding among the tasks.
• Change or simply find a mentor – There has never been a coaching client whom we work that hasn’t realized success in some way.  And yet, a most compelling reason that they undertake the ‘coached approach’ as the tool of choice is because they recognize that the old ‘mojo’ has taken a hike and they want and need it back.  Whether it’s a coach or a mentor you select in the form of a co-worker or friend, the value is that we recognize that we want and need the help to regain our advantage.  Regardless of how or who, just making this decision is invigorating and a big step to taking your own reins again.

Losing one’s ‘mojo’ is nothing to be concerned about.  The concern comes from realizing the absence and doing nothing about it.  Are the above steps easy?  Not necessarily because they all represent making a change.  However, the initial step is … and that is recognizing it’s missing and refusing to settle for that.  Mojo on!

Mike Dorman