Daily Archives: June 29, 2023

3 posts



There you are: sitting on the beach, covered in sunscreen, reading your favorite book, drinking your favorite drink under the cool shade of an umbrella. Life doesn't get any better than this. Suddenly, a door slams, a phone rings, a printer turns on. You jolt back into consciousness. You're at work, sitting in your cubicle, without even a hint of sunshine streaming in from outside.

When you're working a full-time job, finding time to enjoy the warm, bright summer weather can be a challenge. This is especially true for young professionals, as many of them are used to having summers off (or, at the very least, having a flexible summer schedule). But there's no need to feel trapped behind your cubicle walls. Go out and enjoy summer!

Here are a few tips for making the most of your summer while working full time:

1. Grab Some Foldable Chairs


Man on phone makes plans after work in the summer

Keep a couple of foldable camping chairs at the office so you and a co-worker can catch some rays during lunch—whether it's in the park or in the parking lot.

2. Keep A Beach Bag In Your Car​


Coworkers visit the beach after work

Keep a bag full of summer supplies for your favorite summer activities. Having a bag (or, in my case, a backseat) full of towels, sunscreen, and swimwear keeps you prepared for anything. Friends hitting up the pool after work? You're covered. Once the clock strikes five, you can head to your destination of choice immediately.

3. Plan An Office Outing


Coworkers hang out and have a barbecue after work during the summer

Plan an office field trip to the beach, the park, or the pool. Just do something fun so your brain can recharge and refresh!

4. Organize Group Walks


Professionals/coworkers take a walk at work during the summer

Get a bunch of co-workers together and go on regular walks around town during lunch. (Or, you could suggest a quick jaunt over to the ice cream shop.) This is a great way to get some fresh air, sunshine, and exercise.

5. Eat Lunch At The Park


Coworkers eat a picnic lunch together in the summer

When you find yourself eating out, hit up places with a deck, porch, or patio of some sort. Obviously, eating out every day isn't really a feasible option for most of us, so look into alternative ideas as well. Pack a lunch and hit the park for your own little picnic.

6. Organize Office Sports


Coworkers/employees play frisbee after work in the summer to stay active

Whether it's setting up an official office sports team or just hanging out with your colleagues a few times a week, playing sports is a great way to get out and enjoy the weather. Have a field nearby? Try setting up some slow-pitch softball games. Or, see if you can get a basketball hoop for the office so you and a few co-workers can shoot some hoops at lunch.

7. Join A Professional Group


Coworkers eat lunch outside during the summer

During the summer, these professional networking groups often have fun events like harbor cruises, pub crawls, and outdoor mixers. Find a professional group in your area and make networking fun this summer.

8. Have An Office BBQ


Coworkers at an office BBQ in the summer

Get your grill on! Talk to your boss about setting up an office BBQ. Ask everyone to contribute their favorite dish, side, or drink. Fire up the grill and relax! Hey, it's summer after all.

9. Wake Up Early


Happy woman with coffee/tea starts her workday early in the summer

Yes, yes, I know...waking up early is an incredibly painful and unbearable experience for some of us, but waking up even an hour earlier has its benefits—especially in the summer. Go for a morning run, putter around in the garden, or watch the sunrise with a loved one. Talk about starting the day off right!

10. Strategically Use Your Time Off


Man on laptop works while camping in the summer

Strategically use your vacation days around holidays. This way, you can make a potentially long weekend longer without having to use too much of your precious vacation time. Half days are also pretty awesome. It's amazing how much you can do with four extra hours! If you want an early weekend but don't want to burn up your vacation days too quickly, try taking a half day on a Friday instead of using a full day off.

11. Bike To Work


Professional man bikes to work in the summer

If you're one of the lucky few who live within walking or biking distance of work, take advantage of it! Not only will you get plenty of fresh air, but you'll also save money on gas, which is always a plus!

There are plenty of easy ways to enjoy summer when you work a full-time job. So, this summer, try out a few of these ideas and make the most of the sunshine and warm weather—while it's still around!

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Companies often face tactical issues and adaptive challenges, and leaders are responsible for figuring out how to solve them effectively. The biggest mistakes occur when leaders focus solely on tactical issues instead of taking the time to solve adaptive challenges.

In this article, Work It Daily experts from Vistage discuss and offer insights into how CEOs can identify the root cause of a problem while providing actionable strategies to become more adaptive in their decision-making, cultivate a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, and drive sustainable growth and success. Read on to discover the key differences between tactical and adaptive solutions.

Kirsten Yurich


Vistage Chairs live event

The single biggest error I see in leadership today is leaders solving tactical issues instead of taking the time to identify and address adaptive challenges. Tactical issues are solved for "faster, cheaper, better." The questions consultants and experts help us solve. Whereas adaptive challenges are the underlying systemic root causes that often have us looking at ourselves. And this doesn't come easy. We need time, space, and different perspectives to identify and address adaptive challenges.

How do you know if you have an adaptive challenge? Adaptive challenges are complex, last over time, and often present as ambiguous in nature. Frequently, they will surprise you—and once uncovered, produce the “oh…yeah… that is what’s happening” response. Implementing solutions to adaptive challenges will force leaders and others to learn new ways of doing things; often we will have to look inward at our own ways of being in order to bring about adaptive solutions.

Let’s look at some examples. A leader has several direct reports. Most are performing well. One is an outlier. We could quickly scan that this outlier does not have the same training or experience as the others. Ah! There it is. He/she needs more training or experience to perform better. Problem solved. Um…not so fast. After some deeper investigation and (painful reflection) we come to find out that this outlier is often kept out of the leader’s "inner circle" of thinking and planning. He/she is treated differently by the leader. The result? With less knowledge about what the leader is thinking and expecting this leader cannot perform. And what presents as a tactical performance issue is a more adaptive challenge of bias on the part of the leader.

Adaptive challenges require adaptive leadership. Adaptive leadership is based on the principles of shared responsibility, self-reflection, and continuous learning.

Kirsten Yurich is a former CEO and current Vistage Chair. As a clinician, professor, author, and executive, she leverages this unique blend and creates learning environments for executives to become better leaders, spouses, and parents.

Mike Thorne


Business leader is adaptive instead of tactical during a work meeting

Learning to ask the extra question as owner/CEO matters. You will expand or shrink the business by being adaptable vs. transactional/tactical. What is that question? I believe it starts with: "What problem are we actually trying to solve?"

Actual experienced example - A sales leader gets a request from a large customer to change the case pack of product X and shares that with operations. Operations pushes back and says, “That isn’t how we do things.” The customer continues to pressure sales and threatens to stop buying product X, and sales and operations go round and round and nothing gets resolved. Given the hybrid/Zoom world we are in, this can become an explosive issue because it is hard to read the body language, nuances, and actual understanding of this situation.

Not asking the extra question goes like this:

Tactical answer - business shrink - loss of volume, customer, stress through the system, management time wasted, and potentially business layoffs as the customer goes elsewhere because not only is this opportunity lost, the customer sees you less as a solution partner and more as a “got to have” only vendor.

Adaptive answer - business expansion - team (customer, sales for client, operations experts, and key decision-makers) meet “live” or get on a call to discuss, "What is the problem we are trying to actually solve?” It gets explained that the customer is trying to manage inventory so they want a smaller case pack (say three vs. six) and the company says we are automated and it is in rows of two so we need even multiples to make it work. The company produces short videos of how the manufacturing process works and then lays out the complexities, adding costs to manually get to three. The customer says, "I get it and I don’t want to spend more and add issues on your end. Can you do a four-pack instead?" Answer: yes.

Benefit - It is a value-added complexity decision by the company to increase revenue/profit exponentially, increase relationships with customers, and present future growth ideas through collaboration. Customers feel heard and appreciated, employees in the “trenches” see the value of adaptive thinking, and, over time, decisions flow to the keys to relationships vs. those with the titles. Employee empowerment.

An adaptive mindset allows you as a leader and your organization to rapidly take advantage of or mitigate risk in an ever-changing landscape. It will transform your strategies, processes, and culture and keep you competitive. Reality matters, always. Ask: "What is the actual problem we are solving for?"

Mike Thorne is a former CEO and current Vistage Chair. He leads and facilitates a group of trusted advisor entrepreneurs and a CEO peer group in New Hampshire and Maine.

Mark Fackler


Leader talks to his team members

Tactical vs. adaptive; symptom vs. disease; surface vs. core; fixing problems vs. changing systems. I don’t care what you call it, the problem with many CEOs is they solve too many problems and often the wrong problems.

It is sort of funny to think that as your company grows, the number of problems increases, and yet the CEO needs to learn how not to solve the majority of problems. The CEO needs to learn how to focus on root causes—the disease, not the symptoms.

There were two concepts that I was taught as I ran my company: 1) getting problems off your desk, and 2) always work toward the root cause.

Getting problems off your desk is a mandatory skill to learn. I am not talking about critical problems or emergencies. It’s the day-to-day problems that CEOs are so good at solving. These problems have to be pushed down to the staff. Make them think. Make them work. Tell them how much faith you have in their abilities. Tell them that you want them to grow. By doing this you are not only training your staff but giving them pride. And as we all know prideful employees are long-term employees.

Finding root causes is the second mandatory skill to learn. I use the “5 Why Technique,” very simple and very effective. When someone presents a problem or even a solution, ask them, “Why, tell me more?” Let the question hang, don’t save them. Make them think. Make them work. Keep repeating the question until you feel you have gotten to the core.

For example, your head of customer service asks to hire an additional customer service rep:

Why, tell me more.
Calls are taking longer to answer.
Why, tell me more.
The pumps are failing more often.
Why, tell me more.
Seems that two gaskets are leaking more.
Why, tell me more.
We have a new supplier.
Why, tell me more.
The buyer wanted to save money.

Now we are getting closer to the core problem. It could be process or siloed communication. It could be training. It could be the wrong buyer. It could be the wrong hiring manager. By asking “why,” you peel the onion, you go from the symptom to the disease.

Mark Fackler is a retired CEO and currently leads the Vistage CEO group that he was a member of from 1991 to 2002. He is passionate about creating great ROI for his member CEOs.

What's your experience being tactical vs. adaptive as a leader? Join the conversation inside Work It Daily's Executive Program.


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3 Ways To Quantify Your Experience With Numbers



If you've been doing your homework on how to write an effective resume, you've seen a recurring theme: you have to quantify your work experience. Although most people understand the general idea of this, we find that job seekers often struggle with applying this idea to writing their resumes.

Here are three easy ways to quantify your work experience with numbers so your resume stands out!

1. Show How Many


Sometimes our responsibilities don't sound that impressive until we start detailing how much work we've been doing. For instance, if one of your job responsibilities is tracking your company's compliance with filing a set of forms every year, you could write that two different ways:

Ensured compliance with filing of annual forms.

—or—

Ensured compliance with the filing of 75 annual forms by 7 different company departments.

Doesn't the second example sound much more impressive?

2. Show How Much


Woman on phone and laptop quantifies her experience on her resume

If you have a job in sales, marketing, or any other business where profitability is the ultimate goal of your position, citing exactly how much money you've either made or saved your company is the way to go.

For example, if you're an internal auditor, your resume could say:

Saved company money by finding ways to cut costs.

—or—

Implemented new payroll and tax accounting systems that saved firm $1M in personnel costs over the next 10 years.

Estimates are fine when citing these types of numbers, as long as you can justify your claim if someone asks you in an interview.

3. Show How Often


Man on laptop writes down quantifiable accomplishments on his resume

We frequently talk with job seekers who have previously been successful in very high-volume environments. If you've worked in this type of setting, please give yourself credit!

Even an administrative assistant's job sounds completely different when quantified and given some context:

Answered phones at the front desk.

—or—

Managed switchboard with 10 incoming lines, effectively receiving and routing an average of 500 calls per day.

My goodness, who wouldn't hire the second candidate?

As you write your resume, ask yourself these three important questions:

  1. How many?
  2. How much?
  3. How often?

The key to landing an interview is to answer those questions as you describe your previous professional accomplishments. Once you learn how to quantify your results and work experience, nothing will hold you back!

Need more help with your job search?

Become a member to learn how to land a job and UNLEASH your true potential to get what you want from work!

This article was originally published at an earlier date.

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3 Ways To Quantify Your Experience With …