Saddle and the office chair | Work Series

I had some strong coffee with friends one late night.

Read time: less than a min.

I gave up after trying hard to sleep. I did what most people do for entertainment or killing time – Netflix.

Not in a mood for browsing, I picked what was on the recommended list – an old Western movie – Mackenna’s Gold. It was like reliving my childhood fantasy of owning a horse and riding away into the horizon.

It’s such a powerful feeling to straddle a large animal and steer it your way. Riding a bike or driving is similar, but not the same. Although the horse has a mind of its own, it submits to the rider’s wish. The rider controls the direction of the horse and can start and stop at will.

The rider has total control.

The operative word is ‘control.’

Do you feel the same after mounting on the office chair?

Emails and phone calls race your way, grabbing your focus and time, and you willfully submit to the calling.

For the most part, the inbox decides the course of your direction for the day, hour and minutes. Meetings determine what topics you will be discussing every 30 or 60 min of the day.

Whose mandates are we fulfilling?

There is no question that some of those emails and meetings are for meeting our goals, but I can guarantee that not all of them are, certainly not most of them.

Let me remind you and myself that our mandates are not to reply to emails and attend meetings but to create outcomes.

The sensible ones always remember this, whereas others get carried away into the never-ending agenda of others.

In the end, Meckenna does find some gold nuggets, and I hope we all do too.

Thank you for reading.

Bye for now.

Razak
CommonInterest