Little joys can make all the difference

‘Doing more with less” is one of those phrases everyone seems to use during these lean times.

There might be some small point on the scale of productivity where this rings true, but it is a spot the size of an iota. We are really doing less with less.

Face it, we are asking more of the staff we have not laid off, management is working longer hours, and each day we make choices about what will and won’t get done.

I have heard leadership refer to what we do these days as triage. We access what requires immediate attention, and frankly let a patient or two die because we simply can’t get it all done with less. Sometimes the staff, already too small, is further reduced by illness. And the stress continues to grow.

I am always on the lookout for ways to lighten things up at the office. We spend way too much time dealing with unpleasant, unreasonable individuals. A laugh and a smile are critical counter measures to all that negativity. In the spirit of fun, we have an NFL Football office pool each week during the season. And an interesting thing happened on the way to a touchdown this year.

Week one is always meager in participation, and this year was no different. Those who think they know all about who will and won’t win hover on the sidelines, waiting for indicators and trends. Those who could not care less about football are not yet participating because there is little buzz about the process. This year I decided to help the cause and add to the fun, so I completed my entry plus one for the office dog, Itsy. I had a whole lot of fun with Itsy’s choices. Of course she did not like anything with a large predatory bird as the mascot; it was too frightening. She liked any kind of fish and chose the Saints for religious reasons. I have to admit, my reasons for the choices were fun all by themselves! The staff got a kick out of Itsy and her choices, and it added one more dollar to our tiny pot.

Monday rolled around and Bob the BBB Football Commissioner reported the weekly standings. You guessed it, Itsy won hands down! She even had the best record in a much larger pool Bob participates in outside the BBB! I have to admit, I was a bit shocked at how arrogant she was that Monday. But she soon returned to behaving as the kind-hearted office dog we all know and love, leaving her winnings in the pot for the following week. And that is where Itsy again taught the BBB a lesson.

Itsy made it OK to be silly, to not be an expert and to have fun anyway. So, the next week we had two fish, a dog and a cat enter the pool. But more important, we had more of the staff joining in the fun, the gentle ribbing and the laughter. And that is what makes life just a little easier in these days of doing what we can with what we have.

There is an abundance of challenge in life today. As leaders we need to look for ways to take the edge off anything we can. Giving your staff something to look forward to each Monday like a multi-species football pool is an easy diversion. We are all in this together, might as well get in the huddle and laugh! And if you want to follow Itsy and her football picks on Twitter, go to bbb.org and sign up. Oh, a human actually won the pool the next week – perhaps with the advice of his three live-in canine companions.