My day started innocently enough. I had shared breakfast with my older daughter this morning, hit minimal traffic on my way in, and had no outstanding crises walking into a full day meeting. I was feeling pretty mellow.
My People Strategy team was together for the day, the whole collective lot of us. We were in a planning session to aid us in determining what we must do as we continue on our hyper-growth path, as well what we want to do to ensure we are the best possible company to work for. Of course, working with a group of super creative people, many of us were more excited to focus on the aspirational things that we believe set our company apart - the things that make us “people strategy” rather than the “must have,” more mundane human resources items. Both are necessary, and it’s my mission to make the latter as appealing as possible. Try making the words “governance” and “policy” sound sexy. They actually make me bristle. And yet, to be grown-up company, it comes with the territory. And I’ll be damned if this team won’t be known for crushing it all.
We broke from our meetings in the afternoon to go to an team-building event at the Urban Art Bar. On the drive over, I was reflecting on the morning, and how much this team had accomplished in its existence. There actually wasn’t a team just 2 1/2 years ago when I joined. There was one young woman, playing a role as an admin, with a side role helping with benefits. She’s now playing a significant role as a People Strategist (HR Manager), responsible for the soup to nuts of people’s lives in our company. And another woman…she joined us last year as a Talent Scout (Recruiter) and has hired literally 100 people herself - 100! - in the past year. That’s insane. I’m incredibly proud of this team. And yet, I’m slightly concerned because it would appear I have a team full of Type As. And I think I’m an A+. I can’t decide if this is a scary thing, or a great thing.
We role into the art space, and I put my thoughts of the morning aside, and just try to enjoy the afternoon. We have a lovely young woman who acts as our instructor, and she spends the next two hours guiding us through painting a lighthouse and ocean scene. About halfway through, I go rogue. I spend so much time trying to get my sand right, I say screw the house she’s trying to teach us to do. I’m just supposed to be there having a good time with my friends, and enjoy the process of painting, and I just can’t relax and enjoy it - I’m focused on getting my f’ing seagulls the right shade of grey.
The good news is, I am sane enough not to be in competition with my co-workers. None of us were professional painters, and it was a great event and really fun to just enjoy the time spent with each other. The bad news - damn, I have a hard time relaxing. I set my bar so high on everything for myself, and for my team, it’s sometimes hard to know when it counts and when it doesn’t. The paintings don’t count. That was just for fun. The work at the company does count. We are all in this to win. So working with like-minded people matters. And it’s going to take a bunch of amazingly hard, focused work to pull this off. But I know this team will do it. Because each time they reach a goal, I’ll raise the bar a little higher and lead them to achieve the impossible. Because if I can, they can. We can.
And when we have, I’ll relax, take a nap, and enjoy painting. And then I’ll rinse and repeat. Because I’m Type A+. I own it.
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