ELEVATED INSIGHT

September has arrived, which means something very important has returned to my life:

Predictability.

At least on paper.

Monday starts at 6:30 a.m. By 7:15, I’m out the door, dropping three kids across two schools before getting to my desk around 8:30. I work until 2:30, then leave to pick up my daughter.

Tuesday and Thursday add another layer. Pick up my son from middle school soccer practice at 5:00. Get him to club soccer practice at 6:00. Eventually make my way back home and, more often than not, back to my desk around 9:00.

Friday might mean a middle school soccer game.

Or futsal training.

Or both.

Compared with summer, I actually welcome it.

Summer has fewer commitments, but every week is different. Camps move. Times change. Locations change.

September gives us a schedule.

And when you’re this busy, consistency is everything.

There’s just one problem.

The calendar doesn’t care.

It Looked Good on the Calendar

The first week of school was a pretty good reminder.

My son forgot his Chromebook.

Road construction appeared on the most logical bridge we use to get to school.

Rain changed soccer practices.

Locations moved.

Times moved.

Meanwhile, we’re trying to solve the daily logistical puzzle of when everyone is going to eat and how homework gets completed somewhere between all of it.

None of that was on the calendar.

That’s the interesting thing about calendars.

They create a sense of control.

I have one for work and another for home, but they all feed into Apple, so I can see my entire day in one place. I deliberately try not to put things on top of one another. I leave grace periods where I can. I look ahead.

When everything fits, there’s something reassuring about looking at it.

I have a plan.

But a calendar is really just our best prediction of what’s going to happen.

Clients change things.

Employees change things.

Weather changes things.

Kids definitely change things.

Life changes things.

The calendar doesn’t.

Everyone Has a Plan

When candidates interview for internal positions at Kennedy Services and ask me what a typical day looks like, I usually borrow a famous Mike Tyson line:

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

That’s staffing.

You can walk into the office with a perfectly planned day.

Then an employee calls out.

Another employee doesn’t call at all.

A client changes a requirement.

An order becomes urgent.

A candidate disappears.

Something that wasn’t a priority at 8:30 becomes the only priority at 9:15.

The call-outs are actually predictable.

We know they’re going to happen.

What isn’t predictable is who, when, why, or whether we’ll even be told before someone is supposed to report.

So the challenge isn’t creating a system where nothing unexpected happens.

That’s impossible.

The challenge is creating a system that can absorb the unexpected without everything else falling apart.

I’m beginning to realize the same thing is true outside of work.

The Fixer

My natural response when something goes wrong is to fix it.

Move something.

Rearrange something.

Make a call.

Open the laptop.

And, yes, occasionally drive a little faster.

My computer travels with me. My work calls come to my cell phone. I can work from almost anywhere.

I’ve intentionally created an infrastructure where work doesn’t have to stop just because I need to be somewhere else.

I’m proud of that.

But there’s another side to it.

If I see an open block on my calendar, I fill it.

There is always something on the to-do list.

Something to build.

Something to improve.

Someone to contact.

Something that can move us forward.

I’ve spent a lot of this year writing about constant movement, and I still believe deeply in it.

But lately I’ve been thinking about something I hadn’t considered before:

What if using every available ounce of capacity isn’t efficiency?

You Wouldn’t Burn Gas for No Reason

Someone recently gave me a different way to think about unused capacity.

If you had extra gas in your car, you wouldn’t drive around aimlessly just because the gas was available.

You’d preserve it until you had somewhere worth going.

That hit me.

Because I don’t treat my own energy that way.

An unused hour feels available.

And if it’s available, I’ll find something productive to do with it.

But time and capacity aren’t the same thing.

You can have an open hour without having another hour’s worth of energy to give.

I wrote in June about running on fumes. Looking back, I think that was part of what I was experiencing.

I had enough energy to get through the predictable things.

The school runs.

The meetings.

The games.

The responsibilities.

But then I’d get to the part where I normally ask:

What’s next?

What can we build?

What can we improve?

How can we grow?

And there wasn’t much left.

It’s like the day after a hard workout. You can still move, but your muscles remind you that yesterday took something out of you.

Some days, life feels like that workout.

And then you wake up and do another one.

Maybe Margin Isn’t Waste

This is where my Lean brain gets uncomfortable.

I’ve spent years thinking about waste.

How do we remove unnecessary steps?

How do we make something more efficient?

How do we maximize output?

How do we create flow?

But maximum utilization and maximum effectiveness aren’t necessarily the same thing.

If every minute is committed, what happens when something changes?

If every employee is operating at maximum capacity, who handles the unexpected client request?

If every recruiter has exactly enough time for today’s priorities, who responds when tomorrow’s problem arrives early?

If every minute of my day has a job, where does the forgotten Chromebook go?

Maybe margin isn’t wasted capacity.

Maybe margin is what allows a system to respond.

We’ve started becoming more intentional about this at Kennedy.

We block time.

We communicate priorities.

We share information so someone else can pick up a task when necessary.

Our team is willing to step in for one another.

And increasingly, I’m looking at technology and automation differently.

Not simply as a way to do more.

As a way to keep things moving while human attention needs to be somewhere else.

That’s an important distinction.

Urgency Doesn’t Mean Faster

One of Kennedy’s four Pillars of Success is Urgency.

I’ve realized that word can be misunderstood.

Urgency sounds like speed.

Move faster.

Answer faster.

Get there faster.

But that isn’t really where the pillar came from for me.

The idea traces back to something I learned in the Army called range walking.

The way it was explained to me was simple:

Walk with purpose.

That stayed with me.

Urgency isn’t panic.

It isn’t rushing.

It isn’t filling every available second.

It’s knowing where you’re going and moving toward it intentionally.

That’s different.

And maybe I’ve needed to remind myself of that.

Constant movement only matters when the movement has purpose.

The Biggest Variable

Then there are kids.

Kids may be the ultimate challenge to anyone who loves systems.

I’m trying to teach mine planning, goal setting, preparation, and execution.

And then I have to remind myself:

They’re kids.

That’s probably one of my biggest flaws as a parent.

I expect predictability from inherently unpredictable human beings.

Although I’m getting better.

I’ve started recognizing patterns in their unpredictability.

I know something will be forgotten.

I just don’t know what yet.

That’s progress, right?

But there is one thing in the chaos that I try very hard to protect.

Their games.

Unless three kids create conflicting schedules and we’re forced to divide and conquer, I don’t want to miss them.

I learned that from my mom.

She was a single mother. She worked full time. She carried more than I probably understood as a kid.

But she didn’t miss my games.

I remember that.

And now I understand what it probably required.

Maybe that’s another lesson about calendars.

Some things don’t make the schedule because they’re efficient.

They make the schedule because they’re important.

Work-Life Intention

I hear a lot about work-life balance.

I’ve never particularly liked the phrase.

Maybe balance exists, but I don’t think it means giving everything equal time.

Sometimes work gets everything I have.

Sometimes my kids do.

Sometimes one child needs more than the others.

Sometimes a client needs more.

The important part, to me, is intention.

If I’m going to give something my attention, I want to give it maximum effort.

Then, when something else requires me, I want to be able to turn and give maximum effort there too.

That requires something I’m only beginning to appreciate:

Capacity.

Not empty time for the sake of empty time.

Not doing less simply to say I’m doing less.

Enough room in the system to respond when something that matters needs me.

Packed

If you looked at my calendar right now, it would say:

Packed.

Life would respond:

There’s more to do.

And there always will be.

That’s probably the biggest lesson I’m taking into September.

Everything requiring my attention believes, quite reasonably, that its need is important.

My kids don’t care that I have work to do.

A client doesn’t stop needing us because one of my kids has soccer practice.

An employee’s problem doesn’t know that I’m supposed to be somewhere in 20 minutes.

The rain doesn’t check my calendar before moving practice.

None of those things are wrong.

They’re just life.

My responsibility is to build systems capable of handling that reality.

At home.

At Kennedy.

And, increasingly, within myself.

I’ve spent a lot of this year thinking about movement.

I still believe you can’t get anywhere without it.

But maybe the next evolution of that philosophy is understanding that you don’t have to spend every ounce of fuel simply because it’s in the tank.

Sometimes the most purposeful thing you can do is preserve enough capacity for the road you haven’t reached yet.

Because the calendar will change.

The plan will get punched in the face.

Someone will forget the Chromebook.

And there will always be more to do.

The goal isn’t to build a life where nothing unexpected happens.

It’s to build enough margin that when it does, you can keep moving with purpose.