Lawlady's Divorce Blog

Reentry

Returning to work after vacation is a dicey proposition.  Who hasn't entertained thoughts of quitting and moving to Mexico after laying on a sunny beach for a week?  How you experience your return to work can greatly impact your job satisfaction.  How depleting to return from a restful time away from the office, only to have your good mood popped immediately upon return. 

Here are the poor returns I've suffered through:

1. The stack of work piled so high in my in-box, it made me want to walk right out the door again. 
2. The scary series of ever increasing urgent voice mails from the boss, as the work nightmare evidently unfolded while I was away.  "Do you know where the Maxx file is?"  ... "We can't find the Maxx file..."   "You better call me immediately when you get this..."   "I'm calling to give you a heads up, John is really upset over this Maxx thing. I've been working to cover for you all morning...."
3. The horrifying letter that came while I was away.  "If I don't hear from you in five days, I'm going to bring a motion."
4. The sickening letters that went out under my signature while I was away.  My turn to be the harsh one.  "You said that?$#!@@  In writing!!! 

I'm back from vacation today.  I spent the car ride in from the airport wondering how I was going to keep the fuzzy cloud of contentment around me awhile longer.  It's rather like tying to keep that relaxed and enjoyable feeling in your body after a massage. 

Here is what I think helps with the reentry phase:

1. Plan your next visit/vacation away from the office, even if all it will be in a half-day off to visit the dentist and realign your tires.  Giving your unconscious something to look forward to can help cut down on work shock.
2. Plan your steps carefully.  What will you look at first, second, third. 
3. Skip the full day return.  Plan your vacation so that you only have to put in a partial day your first day back, it will help  you regain your stamina. 
4. Think positively.  Whatever has occurred while you were away can be interpreted as a good thing, or a bad thing.  Opt for the good interpretation.
5. Leave yourself a happy surprise before you leave.  A small gift.  Something wrapped.  A favorite work activity.  You deserve something nice your first day back.

Before you settle too far back into your normal routine, take time to implement whatever brainstorms came to you while away.  Another good thing is to take time to write out any career or life insights you made.  Typically, our best vantage points on life and work come when we can get some distance from the day-to-day tension of work.  Capitalize on the big-brain thinking that occurs when you travel, and record your thoughts.  If you take a few minutes of extra time on your first day back at the office to capture these treasures and make up an action plan, you will have squeezed the maximum value out of your time away. 

Welcome back. 

Business Planning

Here's an odd confession:  I enjoy writing business plans. 

That wasn't always the case.

Those first 5 years of self-employment, I got the sweats thinking about "doing a business plan."  In my mind it was some awful college thesis.  Lots of footnotes and extra research.  Unfamiliar constricting sections to complete. 

My business plan writing finally developed out of fear.  I thought the Entrepreneur God would strike me down if I procrastinated any longer.  I used legal sized paper and hand wrote the plan with a pencil.  Not much came of the plan.  It sat on the shelf as I tried to remember to make my monthly billable goal.   

Last year, I tried a more strategic approach.  I started reviewing the plan periodically.  Funny thing.  It worked.  Just like they say.  Having the magic number in my mind seemed to make the numbers appear quicker.  I beat my projections.  That was a first.   So I set this year's goal at a lofty level. 

Backfire. 

I was so off track by February 1 that I kind of gave up. There wasn't any way I was going to  recoup and get close to what I had targeted.  Next I did what failed Weight Watchers do:  I avoided looking at the numbers, and ate what I wanted.   

Today, with the employees out for the holiday weekend and breathing room in my schedule, I found myself going upstairs to their offices to play.  Oh my gosh:  making the business plan was so fun.  Rather like playing Magic Money Make Believe.  Just how rich do I want to be?  How much can I pay employees? 

I think that's the right attitude to have when you face the dreaded business plan.  Laugh into its face.  What beautiful, happy future can I envision for yourself?  Heck, you can even write in big-ass vacations and chart out the ideal client work load.  You might even get a free gift from the Universe like I did by the unexpected call from my friend Lily.  "Start offering collaborative law services in the other areas that you don't normally practice in.  Refer in specialists to explain the law.  You provide the collaboration skills."

"Hum..."  That sounded quite delicious. 

So I added in another revenue line: $10,500... Collaborative business services. 

And then the expenses: 

Spa Retreat, Austin, Texas:  $6,000
Hawaii in November. Two weeks:   $4,500

Easy come, easy go. 

Jane's Long Road to Paralegaling

I am a great boss.  My workers would not agree. They hate it whenI am a good boss. The better boss I am, the worse they like me. 

Take for example what happened with Jane this week.  Really, it didn't happen this week. It's been happening for 5 months.  We did "consequences." 

Jane wanted to move up in duties from chief housekeeper to legal secretary/paralegal. Her first assignment in the transition was to hire or arrange for a substitute for her housekeeping duties. Just because she was moving up didn't mean we were moving away from housekeeping.  In fact, the housekeeping job was only going to expand. 

She did whatever it was that she tried to do to find a replacement.  She came back to me.  "I can't find anyone else." 

"Hum,"  was my response. 

She didn't schedule a meeting to discuss alternative ways to find help.  She didn't send out an all- firm memo to seek brainstorming solutions as to how one finds competant help. She didn't try to negotiate her housekeeping duties away onto someone else so she could move into the work she wanted more of.  She didn't try to arrange her non-work schedule - say for example stopping her volunteer job or her cheerleading practice- so she could do housekeeping at night and paralegaling by day.  She didn't come back to me to tell me how unhappy she was in her work and to talk over her feelings and frustrations. 

She acted professionally instead; smiled at work; distracted herself with non-work things to make life barable at work;  sought career advancement opportunities elsewhere, not at Lawlady, Inc.; and basically became miserable at work but was so clever, stoic and diplomatic I was able to forget she really wanted to be doing paralegalling. I actually began to suspect that she might just be a flakey-college girl who doesn't know what she wants and is happy with mindless shopping and food preparation tasks.  That work does allow one to come in hung-over and when you are 20-ish, finding a job that allows drinking binges is a perk. 

So here she was all frustrated.  She would complain to co-workers who reported back to me.

Being a good boss, I bided my time frustrated that the house work was not being lovingly attended to by someone who takes pride in his/her work; frustrated that the paralegaling was not at my exacting standards because it was being handled by the writer (not the job he was hired for) and the lawyer (not her work either). 

"Well, if she's that unhappy, she should come and talk to me about it,"  I would say to her co-workers.

"She's afraid of you," was what I got back.

"Hum."

So I waited, like a good boss.  Letting the tension build. 

I say that like I was the Zen-master sitting back with slanted-knowledgable eyes purposefully training my acolite.  Mostly I looked like an over-forty stressed-out freaky person with too many committments to worry about the inner-workings of a college girl who works for me 10 hours a week.  But the social experiment was set up.   

I never changed my first requirement for the job switch over:  Jane hires her replacement.  At Lawlady, Inc., we don't promote until the employee oversees the hiring and training of the replacement.  I'm not doing all that work, when the staff knows best what the job entails.  I said it once, which for some people might be too few times. But... Had I been asked about job advancement,  I would have reitterated, "find your replacement.  How can I help?"

Jane eventually got there.  The pain finally got so large it bubbled up.   The staff is meeting next Wednesday to come up with potential solutions to the dilemma, how do we move Jane up and attend to housework.  I'm curious to see what they come up with. 

She doesn't move on until task 1 is completed.  It's been an long, achey wait for her to master her first task at the new job. 

Mind Contol

I was reading on Headrush.typepad.com this morning (LOVE that site), that our brains love learning. We love learning.  In fact, once you become used to it, it is quite like an addiction. 

We're going to be learning, so the question is: What are you going to learn. 

Are you aware that your quest for learning can make you a mighty fine marketer/networker/friend/acquaintance/cocktail party attendee/dinner party guest?

The other thing about humans is:  we love to teach what we know.  And we all know way more than we need to know.  We we teach, we clean out the channels for some new learning to come in.  We're pooped out so to speak.  We're no longer in learning mode, we are in out flow, or teaching mode.

When you are in a stressed out,  I-can't-take-it-any-more  mode, check your knowledge inflow/outflow tunnel.  Adjust accordingly.  If you are feeling all clogged, heavy, stopped up, it's time to write, teach, explain, demonstrate, or otherwise move that wisdom on to some other hungrier mind.  When you are feel edgy, whiny, bored, unchallenged, bland, banal, consider opening up the flood gates and letting some new stuff  poor in.  If you are really svelte, figure out your own personal knowledge flow needs and set up systems that maintain your base-line health, as far a brain power goes. 

Brain power management is pivotal in this Wisdom Era (as better explained by Dan Pink in his latest book- did I mention he mentions me in it!!@!, but that's not why I plug it here- Whole New Mind,  Information Age to the Conceptual Age).  We can not be wise counsel if our brains are fried on overload.  Wisdom comes from keeping a relatively Feng Shui'd mind.  Little clutter.

Gut Decisions vs. Higher Reasoning

I paid a business coach $200 an hour to tell me:  When you are in a time of transition, do what feels good.  You can mail me your partial payment for this pricey advice to my office at Roosevelt.  It was actually brilliant advice and it made me realize why she was right when she said that she is one of the top coaches in the area. 

The reason why you need to go with what feels good during times of transition, is that in times of transition the future is less certain.  More fine deviations are able to occur and should occur.  "What feels good" is a mammalian response to moving forward in the world.  Animals in nature don't put up too well with situations that feel stressful, awful, unrewarding or threatening.  They tend to take the path of least resistance.  Why try to eat something that scratches you, when you can pick a lesser, furry critter to chomp down on?

In times of change, we are so overwhelmed that we don't have time to rely on our typically-used highly-effective frontal lobe.  We're left mostly in the primitive back-of-the-head area of our brain, which makes decisions more on a yes/no basis. Yes feels good. No feels bad.  A crude tool, but... if you've got 4 seconds to decide the paint color for the living room, you aren't going to get there if your usual mode of operation is a careful and studied exploration of the meaning of color as has evolved in both the Western and the Eastern traditions of house decorating, art and Feng Shui.

I'd like to say I know all this.  "Learning in Process" is more accurate. 

I wish she had coached me a little earlier.  I might not have fried my brain circuitry trying to make mental decisions when I was playing in a tight game where gut instincts was all I had time and attention for. 

Gag. Isn't learning a bitch@!!  Which brings me to my next blog. 

 

Employees as a Warning Device

I read a funny essay in GQ this morning, standing in line at the QFC.  It was an article about traveling with your boss.  The humor comes in the awfulness of being trapped in close proximity to someone you only pretend to like.  Why is it that employees naturally gravitate to disliking their boss?

Wrong job? 

Shouldn't disliking your boss be a good indication you are in the wrong job?  Even the article's author admitted that it was the repulsive strip-club partying boss who lasted longest at the company.  Evidently strip-clubbing is good for business when you are in the pet food industry.  The author had to move on I gleaned from the subtext of the article. 

The article lingered with me and as I was untying my dog Queen from the bike rack where I park her when I grocery shop, I realized even good, healthy employer/employee relationships are going to have pit falls and bumps. 

The employer is thinking, "Shit, you have it so good.  When I was your age I was working for someone who would pop a summary judgment motion on me at 4 on a Friday and tell me that I had the opportunity to really shine for the client, and the firm, if I would show some hustle and work the weekend to have a draft by Monday." 

The employee is thinking, "I'm not being fulfilled as a person.  I want more challenging assignments and I don't work late, or weekends." 

I think evolution is the explanation for why the employer believes he/she is providing a benevolent and wonderful work environment and the employee sees the work as borderline shitty and demeaning, and the work place inappropriately chaotic and disorganized.  True, if they only knew what it used to be like, they could see more beauty and opportunity in the work place.  And true again, the work place isn't great.  More improvements need to happen. 

It's a growth spurt happening. 

Growth occurs when two opposing forces rub each other and cause friction.  I stimulate you, you stimulate me, and voila we change.  Stimulation can go by other names:  irritation, irritability, force, pressure, discomfort.  But it sparks us to keep moving.  Who wants to stay here if it feels so annoying. 

Employers, listen to your annoying staff.  They have something you want to know.  If you can figure out what is really bothering them, you will learn the answer to what has been really bothering you.  We are in close symbiotic relationship with our employees and staff.  Many of our questions and concerns about office protocols and ideal clientele is answered in the bodies and psyches of our workers.  If they aren't happy (they are like the yellow canaries in the mines), something is way off with the corporate culture.  Employees are the more delicate divining rods of the company's health.  They show signs of suffering first.  As it should be.  You have to be pretty thick skinned and impervious to make it in business.  They're barely in your business, so their skin is a bit daintier-- as far as office systems and protocols and client services are concerned.

I'm mostly referring to the lower paid employees here.  This theory doesn't apply quite so well to the equity stakeholders.  They have (or should have) a thicker skin for unsettling work systems.  It's their job.

The Seasonal Nature of Work

In this corporate restructuring we are doing at Lawlady, Inc.  I've become sensitive to the need for a rythym and flow.  Since there is a less definite business cycle to divorce work, I have the ability to superimpose the business cycle onto my practice and firm. 

I was thinking about nature yesterday as I formatted what our peaks and valleys will be.  Nature seemed the most natural triggering point.  Quiet mornings, peaking with more boisterous activity and talking later in the day.  Firm monthly meetings.  Seasonal reviews each quarter.  Year end celebrations and reflections.  Celebrations as naturally arise over the year, not canned events where people fake sincererity over a bad frosted white cake from Safeway. 

Sustainable business much sync up with the world and universe.  Who survives in a healthy state ignoring basic biology? 

It Won't Last for Long

Yesterday at the firm, we had a "Come to Jesus" monologue.  I'd say meeting, but I did all the talking.  For two hours. 

It became clear to me after scouring the books Friday and talking strategy over with someone Friday evening, that things cannot continue as normal.  We're hemoragging too much money still.  The move from a one woman show with a few helpers to a fully-functioning, property-owning entity has been a struggle.   The struggle isn't over.  Correction.  The struggling is over, the real swimming is about to begin. 

The Buddists like to talk about how life is change.  Life is evolution.  Life is new adventures always flowing.  The fact that we would like to have more stability and safety is a sweet sentiment, but not really a realistic one. 

I enjoyed my first job immensely.  Big firm; long, passionate hours; strangely hyper-erotic happy hours (it was the south, the post-Regan years, and partners still flirted with secretaries and young associates).  I enjoyed my job immensely except for the 25% of the time it was frying my central nervous system from stress.  I loved that job. It was like going to work at the fun factory (except for the 80+ hour weeks when I would get screamed at).    It lasted 3 years.  I wanted it to last a life time. 

The peak moments in our work life (and life) don't last.  Fortunately, the same laws apply to the bad times.  Shitty work scenario today.  Don't worry. It won't be with you forever.

So the big question becomes: 

How do I make the most of this moment, since I know it's just a short time before my life takes a turn for something different?  I do I cherish was is to be enjoyed and learn from all the bad stuff I barely tolerate? 

Learn something. 

Appreciate something.

Take in a lesson.

Say thank you.

Share. 

Integrity

I wanted to tell you a story about Tristan and his first week of work. 

Tristan in a young guy (20s).  I hired him to help me finish off articles and update the website content.  His job is a lot about marketing and implementing the long term projects I haven't been able to focus on. 

He started last week.  One of his more menial tasks is to drop my car off once a day in front of Whole Foods.  I have these (semi tacky) car magnets advertising collaborative divorce.  They have been surprisingly beneficial as a marketing tool.  Since Whole Foods and I share the same ideal client base, I find it worth my efforts to drive the car a few blocks over to the Whole Foods grocery and park it outside, with magnets on, for a few hours each day. 

Well, Tristan took the car over and dropped it off.  But he then forgot about it, and the two hour limit on parking.  He also didn't notice he was parking on the main thorough fare where they tow parked  cars  after 4:00...

At 5:00, I was talking to a new potential client.  We were talking about collaborative divorce and then he said, "By the way, where is your office?  Is it near Whole Foods?" 

"Why yes it is.  Why do you ask?" 

"Well, I just saw a silver PT cruiser with divorce logos on the side being towed down 12th Street."

Yes, that was my car.  First week of work, and Tristan got my car towed.

But here is where the character piece showed up. 

Tristan- making his paltry, just about minimum wage salary- offered, and then insisted, that  the cost of the towing and ticket be deducted from this pay check.  He confessed guilt gets to him.  But I like to think that it was motivated by something healthie:  integrity. 

Integrity is about taking the higher, harder road because of some inner moral principle.  It's about setting a course of conduct for yourself and then not deviating, despite external pressures (called life) that might make it more convenient to do so.  It's about showing up to work, rather than taking a mental health day, because of some commitment you made to yourself about what kind of worker you intended to become.  It's not about the external.  It's an inner act. 

When to Stop

Oh my crippled, deformed hands!

I started massage classes, in preparation for the real thing in autumn:  Massage School.  I'm shopping Brenneke, Brian Utting, Ashmead.  I took a Brenneke class this weekend, and the first of a six week series at Brian Utting last night.  Both Brian and Heida Brenneke announced that they have sold their businesses to a national chain called Kotiva.  (I might be spelling that wrong).  Heida is in her 60s and she felt it was time to find an exit strategy.  Brian sited rising concerns about the competitiveness of the industry.  Massage schools are proliferating, as colleges and profiteers move into this area.  Brian feels that it is a struggle to keep alive in the face of this incoming wave of newcomers. 

Which brings me to my main point:

How long do you struggle with your current work or career?  When have you had enough and you try something different?  When do you know to hang up the towel and move over to something else?

Sometimes that time is announced in the subtlest of clues:  an unhappiness, a disjointed experience of living, a tickle that something else would be appropriate.  For more stubborn people, the answer could come as a loud clanging sound as your world fails to fall together.  One mistake after another. 

A good way to test the situation is to try something else for awhile.  Explore something different to take your mind off your main concern.  With some fresh perspective, you might just be able to catch a much-needed sideview.

The more we know ourselves, the more strategic we become in our choices, and the more vigorous we become in pursuing our passions. 

Make it a great day.

Stefani