Tag Archives: work/life balance

New Year’s Resolutions – one month in

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Do you make new year’s resolutions? Do you share them with others for accountability? Do you use the new year as a time for reflection and goal setting?

I have made explicit resolutions in some years and not others. A few years ago, I framed them as intentions – they were balance, passion and engagement. Regardless of what form it takes, the start of a new year is a good time to reflect on the past year and plan for the coming year in both your professional and personal life.

My resolutions at the start of 2022 revolved around life/work balance and I’m happy to say I have made good progress. In 2022, my work schedule was very manageable, I spent more time with family (including fun times with grandkids), got a lot of exercise (including becoming a Pickleball addict), and vacationed without worrying about work.

More time with family may sound like a cliché – maybe more available to family is another way to say it. So, what are some examples of being available? When my daughters tell me about a game or performance that my grandkids are in, I now have the flexibility to say yes, I’ll be there. When my daughters ask if I can take care of their kids for a few days, I now can say yes. That included “Nana Camp” last summer. And when my sister’s husband passed away back home in Minnesota, I was able to spend extended time with her.

I am carrying all these positive 2022 changes and more into 2023. Continue reading →

End of year thoughts and advice for 2023

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This week in between holidays is a time when leaders may be working a more relaxed schedule and planning for the coming year. When I was a full-time CIO, I appreciated this last week of the year with few to no meetings and the opportunity to cleanup, catchup, and prepare for the new year.

While the past three years have at times been a blur as I try to recall when certain pandemic related events and changes happened, and the political discourse is incredibly discouraging at times, I remain optimistic about our collective future.

Health IT leaders will continue to face staffing challenges and cost constraints as organizations are under increased financial pressures. The successful health IT leaders in 2023 will be those who can partner effectively with their peers as a member of the executive team, support their organization’s strategic priorities and goals, find ways to reduce costs without reducing services, create flexible work environments with workforce strategies that ensure the best talent on the team, and embrace new and innovative technologies that solve real problems and improve the patient, clinician, and employee experience.

As in previous years, my StarBridge Advisors colleague, David Muntz, has again written an excellent year end blog – 12 Steps to Prepare for 2023 – Big Challenges – Bigger Opportunities. His 12 steps are worth considering as you plan for 2023. And his intro is a powerful reminder of why we work in healthcare and the kind of people we should strive to be in all our interactions:

“Healthcare is a people business.  We need to remind ourselves and our coworkers that mercy and compassion, not anger, define our profession and us as professionals.  We need to model mercy and compassion in our personal lives, in our interpersonal relationships, not just with family and friends, but with strangers and, equally important, our coworkers and business partners.  One way to do that is through genuine listening in pursuit of true understanding – so easy to say, so difficult to do.  Give others an avenue to express themselves.   For your own sake, lower your defenses.  As you create a list of resolutions for the new year, please add to it active and courageous listening, building trust, and treating everyone with kindness.”

May your 2023 be a healthy, peaceful year filled with kindness!

Grateful for the love of family, savoring the moments

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What can I say at Thanksgiving this year that is new and unique? How about the fact that two of the biggest birds I’ve ever seen flew by my home office window yesterday? You guessed it, they were wild turkeys. Yes, we live in a more rural area now. In fact, last year while the dogs and I watched two wild turkeys strut along behind our townhouse (you can imagine what the dogs thought….lot of yelping through the window), my husband who was on a conference call later told me he saw a third one up in a tree wondering how it got there and not looking very elegant as it tried to get out.

On the turkey cooking front, we had to cook ours yesterday, two days in advance with a plan to reheat it on Thanksgiving when the family arrives. Why? There were no frozen turkeys at the store and buying a fresh one 4 days in advance we have learned is too far – google says cook within a day or two. Guess that’s my health angle for this post – not serving my family old fowl that will make them sick, and my technology angle – depending on the power of google to ask any question and get an answer. The downside is when everyone arrives, we won’t have that wonderful turkey cooking in the oven fragrance throughout the house. There’s an idea for a candle maker! But the upside is more room in the single oven to reheat the side dishes our daughters are bringing.

I’ve said to a few people that we’re ready for plenty of chaos as the six adults will be outnumbered by our four grandkids and three dogs including a very active 7-month-old puppy that is bigger than both our 3- and 14-year-old little dogs. But it will be wonderful, loving, family chaos. The best kind!

10 years ago on Thanksgiving I was on baby watch. I had just moved to Ann Arbor for my new CIO job and was living alone for 9 weeks. My first grandchild was due any day out in California. Continue reading →

A post vacation teaser for future posts

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I am just back from a long vacation in Europe. Probably too long away from home but it was wonderful overall. I learned a lot, saw a lot, took hundreds of pix that I now must organize, kept in touch with family back home, and made some new friends.

And I have a lot of takeaways for future blog posts such as:

  • smart technology in everyday life (Europeans seem ahead of us)
  • importance of infrastructure (can’t say enough positives about the train system in Europe)
  • value of language translation tools (Google translate is a great tool for basics)
  • learning value of travel (part of trip was Road Scholar cruise with professors lecturing onboard and local experts on tours)
  • email management (the art of monitoring while on vacation)
  • and yes, some political commentary (Europe knows what it takes to fight fascists and Nazis)

I will be writing some of these posts in the weeks to come as I am still catching up and getting back into work and routines.

I leave you with a quote we saw on a small riverboat in Narbonne, France (which looked like a wonderful place for retirement if you didn’t have family and grandkids you wanted to see often). I used the Google translate app to get this: “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it’s deadly!”

Related Posts: 

Vacation season reminders for a more balanced life

4 tips when you must work on vacation

Paying it forward with career advice

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I get a lot of calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages asking for career advice. Knowing that people have been very supportive of me over my career, I try to pay it forward. I do a short call, find out where the person is at in their job search and career transition, ask some key questions, and give whatever advice makes sense for their situation. For people I know well and keep in touch with during their search, I often share useful articles that I find. These may include resume writing and layout, prepping for the interview, how to follow-up after the interview, dealing with rejection, how to identify red flags, or building your personal brand.

Many of the resources I have found and shared are from LinkedIn which as we all know is the “go to” for professional networking and content.

A Fortune article by Jennifer Mizgata in March of this year addresses a key question many people are faced with – “Should I take a fancy new career opportunity or stick with the old job I still like?”.  In it she references a great HBR piece, “A Scorecard to Help You Compare Two Jobs”, written in 2017 by a former colleague of mine from Mass General, Allison Rimm. It includes a scorecard tool similar to one I have used when doing career coaching.

I’ve written a lot on career management over the years. My post, “Career advice revisited” from May 2021 has links to most of them. Check it out and share with anyone you know who might find it helpful. In other words, let’s pay it forward!

Note – I am taking a short break from writing new posts over the next month. With all the blog posts I’ve written over the past 8 years, I’m using this break to share some of my “classics”. Thank you for being a subscriber – I hope you will encourage your colleagues to subscribe in the coming year.

Living a balanced life?

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As summer comes to an end, I hope you find yourself renewed and more relaxed. And that you’ve made some great memories with family and friends. The time between Labor Day and the end of year holidays can be a very busy and intense time in healthcare systems. I recall a VP colleague from my Brigham and Women’s Hospital days who would say after Labor Day – tell your family that they won’t see you much until the holidays as new initiatives would start ramping up at an intense pace.

Whether you are consistently busy at work or dealing with peaks and valleys throughout the year, it’s important to keep trying to achieve that elusive life-work balance. I’ve written several posts in the past that might be worth revisiting:

Renewal, big rocks, and the elusive work life balance

Managing priorities and maintaining balance

Family first

Do you know your big rocks?

Note – As part of my life-work balance, I am taking a short break from writing new posts over the next month. With all the blog posts I’ve written over the past 8 years, I’m using this break to share some of my “classics”. Thank you for being a subscriber – I hope you will encourage your colleagues to subscribe in the coming year.

 

Best employers for women – is your organization on the list?

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It’s Getting Harder to be a Woman in America by Claire Suddath, senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek, is a powerful, must-read piece for anyone concerned about what is happening to women in this country.

I have long been a champion for women and a proud feminist. Doing what I can while in leadership roles to support women, not being afraid to speak out on women’s issues, and voting for candidates who are truly pro-women’s rights. I encourage you to do the same.

It was good to see the recent Becker’s story “30 hospitals, health systems and biomedical companies on Forbes’ top 100 list of best employers for women” that listed all 30 and their rank within the top 100. According to the Forbes article, “America’s Best Employers for Women”, the survey respondents were asked to rate their organizations on criteria such as working conditions, diversity and how likely they’d be to recommend their employer to others. These responses were reviewed for potential gender gaps. Female respondents were then asked to rate their employers on factors such as parental leave, discrimination and pay equity, and to nominate organizations in industries outside their own. Representation at the executive and board levels were also factored into the final score.

If your organization didn’t make the list, ask yourself what you can do. Are you in an HR leadership position and able to directly influence employee policies and benefits? Are you an IT leader who consistently creates a supportive culture and values diversity? Regardless of your position, do you help create a supportive work environment?

We’re all in this together – at home, at work, and in our communities.

Related Posts:

A step backwards

Women need male allies

Vote your values

9 articles on women and work worth your time

Family support systems: priceless

Balancing career and family

#BreakTheBias

Vacation season reminders for a more balanced life

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I’ve written a few posts in previous years about the importance of taking vacation time and truly taking a break from work. It seems even more important this year after 2+ years of Covid and the realities of remote work where separating work from one’s home life can be a challenge.

I’ve also written about work life balance, or life work balance as my colleague David Muntz likes to say. For years it was elusive, but I am doing much better getting the right balance at this late stage of my career.

Summer is already a third over. Hopefully you have made plans for a break of some sort with family or friends in the next few months. My husband and I have our first international trip since 2018 planned for later this summer. Seeing friends posting photos from their Europe trips in recent months is encouraging – it tells me that international travel is doable again.

As you make your own personal plans for downtime, remember the 6 R’s of summer – rest, relax, refresh, renew, reflect and reboot. And if you have to work or keep in touch with work while you take a break – check out “4 tips when you must work on vacation”. Let me know if you have any tips to add.

My post “Take time to reboot” is a great reminder that you can leave your work in the trusted and capable hands of others while you are away. That’s exactly what I intend to do!

Happy summer to all!

Related Posts:

4 tips when you must work on vacation

Take time to reboot

Do you know your big rocks?

 

Aging, but getting fit and healthy? Yes, it’s possible!

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When I turned 50 nearly two decades ago, I got myself a gym membership as a birthday present. Prior to that, I hadn’t worked out much and don’t remember ever having had gym memberships. I took a few aerobics classes once in a while and we had a treadmill in our basement for a few years. I had long commutes for most of my career and would try to take walks in the evening when the kids got older. That seemed the best I could do.

When I got the gym membership, I remember saying that no one is going to come into my office and tell me to go home and take care of myself. Rather, I had to tell myself. As a parent and a workaholic with big jobs, long hours, and an hour plus commute each way, where would I find the time to workout?

I have had gym memberships steadily since I turned 50 and used them consistently with some ups and downs. Like many people, we cancelled our gym memberships early in the pandemic. But I set a step goal that first summer and happy to say I hit or exceeded it most weeks. I amped it up in recent months and am now averaging 13,000+ steps a day. But I have missed the weight training I used to do to maintain my strength.

Fast forward to a month ago. We joined the local YMCA. I’ve been exploring classes to see what I liked and would be willing to do on regular basis. So far that has included Urban Fusion (dance routines for cardio), Cardio Fusion (combo of aerobics with some dance steps and weight training), Y Strength (interval workout for cardio and weights), Gentle Strength (decided it was too easy!), and Matt Pilates (might consider it someday). I have now booked the first three classes on my calendar as recurring appointments so will try to go to them each week if my schedule allows.

And then there’s pickleball. Continue reading →

April reflections

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I often write about my “big rocks” in April. This year is no exception, especially after two years of the pandemic. Spring represents a time of new life, rebirth, hope, and renewal. Yet I am always reminded that it was a sad time in my childhood. My father passed away after a 2-year battle with cancer four days before my 4th birthday. I remember the last time we saw him was in the hospital on Easter a few days earlier. He gave my sister and me popcorn Easter bunnies. A strange memory, but one of the few I have from then.

On a happier note, during these April weeks and into early May, I have milestones to celebrate – birthdays for my husband and me, our 46th wedding anniversary, and wedding anniversaries for both our adult daughters – already 12 and 8 years for them. There will be no one special celebration but plenty of opportunities to raise a glass and toast one another when we are together.  They are my biggest rocks!

This spring I’m also spending fun vacation time with family that will include a few days at Disney with two of my four grandkids. Disney with grandkids is something my husband and I have looked forward to since before we even had grandchildren. We’d joke that if we did eventually have grandchildren how old would we be when they were old enough to go to Disney, and would we still be able to do that or even want to. We were supposed to go with this family to Disney for their first time in April 2020, but we know how that worked out.

I will also be spending a week with three close girlfriends from my Michigan days. When I lived there for 3+ years, the four of us got together for long lunches every month and during the pandemic we’ve done weekly zoom calls to keep in touch. They are true friends – the kind of friends who come to help you pack your house when an ill-timed injury gets in the way of what you can do yourself. They too are my big rocks!

Do you know who your big rocks are? Do you spend enough time with them? And what do you do for yourself to renew and reboot? If you can’t easily answer these questions, I encourage you to make time so you can. Life is short.

Related Posts:

Renewal, big rocks, and the elusive work life balance

Do you know your big rocks?

Take time to reboot