A Balancing Act

Most kitchen and bath showroom owners likely spend too much time focusing on their business and not enough time with family, friends and for themselves.  BKBG Shareholders also need to provide the right environment for their team members so they too do not spend too much time focusing on the job at the expense of their health and healthy relationships.  One of the great lessons that Will Guidara learned in building 11 Madison Park into the best restaurant in the world is that one size fits one.  The same can be said for creating an effective balance for your team and yourself between work and other life priorities. A key to finding the right balance is to understand that how you spend your time most effectively is not divided into equal pieces of a pie.  Similar to showroom projects, effective work-life balance requires knowing what your priorities are and then having the discipline to respond to them consistently.

To determine priorities, prepare a spreadsheet that identifies all of your roles.  For a showroom owner, it may include the following:

• Business owner
• Mentor
• Parent
• Friend
• Manager
• Spouse

The next step is to identify where you spend most of your time:

• In the showroom/at the business
• With family
• Hobbies
• Exercise/Physical well being
• Traveling
• Reading/Learning/Professional Development

Monthly determine if you have dedicated the amount of time necessary on each role.  This will help you to reset priorities if one of your roles is not receiving sufficient attention.  Determine if the number of meetings that you attend are worth the time required.  What can change so you can focus on more important priorities?  Cultivate high-quality relationships with those who are most important to you.  

Prioritization requires gives and takes.  Every time you make a commitment to doing one thing, you are also making a commitment not to do something else.  There are sacrifices to being physically fit and to eat a healthy diet. 

BKBG has the easy button to create a winning work-life balance formula for you and your team members.  Plan to attend BKBG’s Well In Life – Well at Work: Making the Connection Workshop at the BKBG Annual Conference, Wednesday, September 20.  The workshop, presented by Julius Rhodes will provide proven strategies Shareholders can use to:

• Utilize and incorporate identified themes to positively support team members in their pursuit of a more comprehensive approach to addressing issues that impact their lives.
• Understand critical areas of differentiation between controllable and uncontrollable forces to develop a concise model of action to address concerns.

More clearly identify and incorporate practices needed to accomplish a synergistic approach to addressing personal and professional conundrums utilizing best in class standards of excellence