Refresh Your Enthusiasm for the Job

It is human nature for you and every entrepreneur to fall into a routine of taking care of day to day issues, meetings, communicating with customers and shareholders. But you remember the thrilling days when everything was newer, each decision an event, each milestone something to be celebrated. If you think about it, you also remember that you spent much more of your time on strategic issues and thinking about the business and its growth, as opposed to thinking within the business about its process issues.

Your value as a CEO or executive is inherent in creating the vision, providing the drive, and forcing focus upon successful implementation of the vision that you bring to the enterprise. It is where the fun is.

So, how do you regain that enthusiasm for what is best for you and for the company? There are a number of things you can and should do, and soon.

Take a day—a full day—off to walk, sit, and think of where you want this company and your role in it to be in the future. Don’t let interruptions from emails, phone calls and people at the door interfere with this focused effort.

Then call a strategic planning session, off site, for you, your board, your advisers, and direct reports. If needed, hire a facilitator. And provide for someone to take notes. Lay out your vision to those present as a starting point. Ask for comments, challenges, and additions. Then spend the rest of the day developing strategies and tactics to get you there. Finish the process by refining the resulting document, passing it through the same group for comments. Then call an all-company meeting to focus everyone on the vision, goal, strategies and tactics. Stand back and watch for the reaction. Most everyone wants direction and to buy into a vision that makes their jobs have meaning.

Starting the very next day, begin monitoring progress toward the goal or goals, raising your job to one of strategic implementation and guidance, not of day-to-day process.

Your value will increase in the minds of your board, and you will feel much more enthusiastic about your contributions to the success of your enterprise.