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| Learn the purpose behind the chart and the Blackberry. |
Ah-Ha! Moment – In late December 2012, a rumor floating around for over a year was finally confirmed – the building where my office is located will be demolished in 2013 to make way for another use. Yikes!
On that same phone call, we were "requested" by the leasing agent for the landlord to work as quickly as possible with their space planner to layout our new space, and to do so on a force-fed deadline of only 8 weekdays!
Fortunately, we had a "relocation" clause in our lease, which requires the landlord to pay ALL the costs of relocating us. The only cost they didn't have to cover? Our time. Let me assure you, it takes a LOT of time to work through the issues on a MAJOR decision having implications for years to come.
My staff and I shifted into high gear, setting aside routine tasks to ensure we covered both the "big picture" overall space issues, as well as "the devil's in the details" items like comparing the specific dimensions of existing rooms against those for the new rooms. Our attention to details large and small turned up some major surprises, which we easily addressed now ... rather than the day we moved into the new space.
Lesson learned? When an unplanned issue this Urgent AND Important gets dumped in my lap, I have no choice but to reschedule priorities to deal with it. Fortunately, our hard work helped ensure we ended up with a better office configuration than we have currently, in a slightly smaller space. In spite of this issue, all other major tasks got done, including all my "Todd's Results" goals for January!
