growing up micro

So I talk about myself being very detail-oriented. I call it comfort with, passion for, experience handling--whatever. It's what I've had to do for the majority of my career: deal with a lot of details a lot of the time. Calm my managers with my sheer mastery of the small stuff. And I'm challenging myself to be less obsessed with micro (said details) and more mindful of the macro view.

I just passed my first active test. About and hour and a half ago, we closed the book on a fairly large event. It wasn't a whole lot of people, but it was fairly large in scope and involved different audience stakeholders. I found myself tamping down the urge to dive in to a minute by minute program. I didn't even make a spreadsheet.

Well, actually, that's not exactly true. I made one spreadsheet, but it just had names on it, no "6:32-6:38 Blah Blah Blah" type of my usual handiwork. I was responsible for one major area, and I did a bang up job, imho. I made sure that area didn't have a whole lot of opportunity for micro level scheduling detail. It was the best thing I could have done. It was an experiment my coach and I talked about some time ago. What would happen if I didn't do what I usually do--if I didn't play the role I usually play? How would the team function? How would it make me feel? I know that I felt darned uncomfortable. But I tried to think about it like I think about planning a wedding: as long as two people end up married by the end of the day, you can call it a success.

It was great. It really was. I'm proud of us, and I'm proud of the finished product. And I'm starting to trust in the process of transformation.