A Note from Michelle: Busy Making Other Plans

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” That was certainly the case for one of our team members this week when she had to drop her well-laid plans due to an emergency appendectomy. It’s a lesson in the transitory quality of life itself for her, and an excellent business lesson for all of us.

Our team was lucky.

Deanell is organized and communicative. We knew what she had coming up, so we were able to contact the right people to bring them up to speed and reschedule.

Of course we had to huddle up to figure things out. Of course we'll have to hustle to get things done without her. But what could have been a fiasco turned out to be a hurdle that we can just manage to clear.

Will you be able to say the same when a crucial person on your team faces a similar emergency?

As a leader, how do you prepare for the unexpected?

Here are five questions to help determine your readiness:

• Do you know what your team members are working on?

• Do you have access to the project materials?

• Do you know the timelines required?

• Do you have contact information for the individual client representatives involved?

• Do you have the administrative permissions and passwords necessary to access a team member’s email or calendar?

I’m not talking about micro-managing your team. I’m talking about having the systems and protocols in place to deal with hiccups so they don’t turn into disasters. It benefits your business to imagine the worst.

And planning on the worst allows you to be your best self when something does happen.

You’re able to respond more broadly with empathy to your teammate’s predicament, instead of reacting with the tunnel vision of “Oh no, what does this mean for me?”

So, yes, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans. But it’s also making those plans that can help you deal with what life happens to throw your way.

PS Curious about the quote at the beginning? John Lennon is often erroneously attributed to it. But, although he used these exact words in his song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy),” he adapted it from a quote by writer/cartoonist Allen Saunders.