Being Intentional in 2024
Focusing, and working on what matters to increase impact
Dear Leaders,
I wish you Happy New Year, and all the best for 2024: health, joy, sense of achievement, and continuous growth! Thank you for joining the Pay-It-Forward Society, and making it a thriving community where leaders can learn and grow together.
Before I dive deeper on this exciting topic, let me share an exciting opportunity offered by my friend Alison, a leadership workshop called “Take the Reins: Be the CEO of Your Life”. In her own words:
I built this workshop for a number of reasons, but a significant reason is that I was observing too many good, smart, creative leaders get sick because they had such a lack of balance in their life. Relationships, joy, wellness, personal growth, fun experiences were being pushed aside in favor of the never-ending pressure to work, work, work - more, more, more - to what end? And ultimately - work suffers too! I was certainly a culprit of this too. I want to help people find their fire again, find their joy again! In this experiential, 3-hour workshop, time goes fast (like life)! Attendees experience what it is to be the CEO of their Life by 'taking the reins' and owning their life like it's a corporation. They walk out of the workshop with a Visionary, Inspired, and Structure Plan for the year ahead, and even get some options for Accountability and Support. You can register Here and send your questions to The Lens Leadership here: info@thelensleadership.com
There are those moments in life when you get this feeling of discovering something new that has the potential to change your life, what we also call Eureka or aha! moments. Those times where you feel that something clicked in your mind. I remember vividly when I watched for the first time Simon Sinek’s famous “Start With Why” TED Talk. At that time, I got recently promoted in a larger role as Director of Solutions Engineering, responsible for a group of 20+ technical pre-sales engineers spread across Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (a.k.a. DACH). To be honest, I was struggling. There were great talents in the team, but we went through one or two rounds of layoffs, reorgs, and also the company went private in less than a year. I felt that the team was not super engaged anymore, felt loss, and there were a few challenges working with the new sales leaders. When I watched Simon’s talk, I felt that every piece of the puzzle finally started to fall into place. The very same day I watched probably 10 times the video, and started to think how to re-engage the team. The rest is history (and could be a topic of a further post).
A more recent Eureka moment is the conversation I had with Daryl Hammett, where he explained the power of being intentional. If you listen to this episode, you may sense how mind blown I felt by what Daryl shared.
During our conversation, Daryl highlighted several key values and reasons underlying the importance of intentionality, both in personal and professional contexts:
Enhancing Effectiveness and Focus: By being intentional, Daryl points out that one can significantly increase their effectiveness in any endeavor. Intentionality allows for a focused approach, ensuring that efforts are directed towards meaningful and impactful activities rather than being dispersed or diluted across less significant tasks.
Improving Personal Relationships: In his personal life, Daryl underscores the value of intentionality in nurturing and strengthening relationships. By being intentional in his interactions, such as regularly communicating affection and dedicating quality time, he demonstrates a committed and thoughtful approach that fosters deeper connections and mutual understanding.
Leadership and Team Management: In the realm of leadership, intentionality is depicted as a crucial element for effective management and global team coordination. Daryl 's practice of dedicating specific days for focused leadership tasks illustrates how being intentional can aid in managing complex, multifaceted responsibilities more efficiently. This approach ensures that key leadership activities receive the attention and priority they require.
Global Engagement and Inclusion: Daryl emphasizes the importance of being intentional in global engagement, ensuring inclusivity and meaningful interaction across different regions and cultures. This intentional approach to global leadership facilitates better collaboration, understanding, and harnessing of diverse perspectives, ultimately leading to more innovative and effective outcomes.
Strategic Planning and Execution: Intentionality in planning and execution, as highlighted by Daryl, is about deliberate decision-making and action-taking. It involves consciously setting goals, making strategic plans, and following through with focused execution, which is critical for achieving desired results and objectives.
Daryl definitively inspired me to become more intentional. But how can you become more intentional on the long run? I was kind of left alone with this question for several weeks after the episode, and it took me some time to put in place the mechanisms to make it happen. Yes, mechanisms are important!
“Good Intentions don’t work. Mechanisms do.”
Jeff Bezos
On the personal side, I started to create routines to keep me intentional. As many of you, with COVID, and work from home, I did not do much exercise, and consequently did not feel well in my body. The intention was to get better, and take care of my mind, and my body. The mechanism that I use is closing the rings on my Apple Watch, every day! To do this, I start the day with a 20-minute Yoga session, as soon as I wake up, before the breakfast or anything else. During the day, I make sure to walk enough (not 10k steps though), and squeeze another 10 min exercice. All small activities that add up at the end of the day, and even more at the end of the week or month.
Another intention is to be more in the moment. There are many distractions, that are keeping me away from my goal. The discussion that Lenny had recently with Nir is full of actionable pieces of advice, that I have put in place. I highly recommend giving it a listen.
Finally, for this community, I also want to be more intentional, create content more often, put the effort to deliver maximum value to you, and increase the impact being engaging with even more people. For this I have defined two mechanisms. One is a simple agenda item, 30 minutes slot every day to work on a piece of content, that will be released over the weekend. The second mechanism is to learn more from you about your needs, and what you want me to dive deeper on. So here is a survey, please help me deliver more value to the community!
You can expect to read more about being intentional this year, I will keep referring in 2024!
Thanks for the read, and keep learning!