Getting Hit By A Bus ... Or Break Your Thumb ...

 

IF YOU GET HIT BY A BUS … OR BREAK YOUR THUMB…

So a little over a month ago, I broke my thumb ….

As I spent a great deal of time in emergency rooms, doctor appointments, pre-surgery and post-surgery appointments, everyone said ‘well it’s not your writing hand, you’re lucky!’.

Who writes any more?  Sure, I can still sign cheques, but we live in a world of typing.  And I have to say, my 75 wpm rate was severely hampered.  With a two pound cast and an immobilized thumb, I had to have my IT department swap out my keyboard, because I had worn the letters off my keyboard, and typing one handed and looking where I was going, I couldn’t tell which key was exactly which.

On top of the inability to type, I was on some serious pain meds, up till a couple days ago.  So I was not exactly at my best … I was getting about 10%-20% of my normal day done, because I was slow, couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t drive, and was dopey.  But I am really lucky on two counts.


If I Got Hit By A Bus …

I often talk about ‘what if I get hit by a bus’ when talking about cross-training, putting in redundancies, delegating to other people … well, this last month was a test drive.  I told everyone to go to everyone else, wherever possible.  And the people who are our management team, our project managers, and people just willing to step up and give 110% did so, and nothing caught fire (well, aside from the normal things that just happen in business every day).


What’s This Weird Telephone Thing?

So, people would send me emails, IM chat messages, texts … and it was really impossible to type anything back aside from a few words (and typing hurt).  So I told everyone stop texting me, start calling me.  I can tell you, that was a very hard habit for people to break.  But we started having people lean towards calling me, which moved me for the last month from an operational touch point to a strategic touch point – what I mean is people stopped asking me small picture questions, and started calling me on big picture questions, or things not easily explained in a chat message or email, touching on company culture.


Conclusion

So things go wrong sometimes, and it’s important to be personally flexible, and have your company be able to roll with the punches.  While I wouldn’t recommend breaking your thumb, I feel validated in my trust for my team – if I got hit by a bus, they are there to step up.

Don't wait to delegate, don't wait to train your team to take leadership roles, don't discourage proactive thinking -- by the time you have a broken thumb, it's too late to put that into place in your company.  Start planning now.

Got questions about redundancy planning, Agile Management, or how much it hurts when they pull three pins out of your hand without anesthetic?  Drop me an email.

Thanks kindly,

Blair DeMarco-Wettlaufer
KINGSTON Data & Credit
Cambridge, Ontario
226-946-1730

blair@receivableaccounts.com