Breathe in and breathe out

The title relates to yoga, which I'm very much influenced by. But this post is not about yoga. It's rather my reflections from two good days with our IT leadership team, but the perspectives are very much connected. So please bare with me.

As for many of us, the days at the office are busy. Running between different activities, just trying to execute and hoping that you prioritize the right stuff. So how do you set up a two day leadership meeting? Putting all the questions and activities on a board, trying to answer them all? Probably not a very efficient way to do it.

I think we had a very good structure for these two days and that is what I at least want to try to share with you.

We started the first day with some financial stuff and it's always good to set the frames, or guard rails to start with. Then you know what you have, and what you don't have. That brought us into working with our team topologies, ways of working, flows and structure. We ended the day by playing a game, and when doing that we had lots of fun filled with smiles and laughter.

Today we worked a lot with the "people" side. The specific topics were very well planned and prepared and we used "reflecting teams" in our exercises. I think the outcome was awesome and we got really fast results and findings. The day the ended with a specific high prio topics and we succeeded in creating concrete actions.

Except that the topics were carefully chosen, but I think the important findings are:

• Breathe in and don't be too ambitious and try do to too much. Choose carefully and plan accordingly. Make sure that you have enough time to spend on the topics.
• Breathe out and create space between the topics to recharge.
• Have fun! And at least as I see it, this is what happens when there is some slack in the agenda. Laughter is good. Lots of energy in it!

It's been two great days. Demanding but also very rewarding. There is a lot to do, but I have a feeling of focus, determination and alignment that I will carry with me. Which brings me back to my "yogic" reflections:

It is between the inhale and exhale the magic happens.        

And I think that is what happened to me during these two days. So don't forget to breathe in and breathe out!

Namaste!

Mats