Wow, I woke up with a bit of a heavy head today as I broke my eating late at night rule after a few beers in the evening. In my mind, it was not extreme and the whole idea behind Balance is that I am also allowed to break away from my focused diet. One of the food groups that I have had very little of in the past few weeks has been gluten as I have not really eaten bread and drank beer. Throughout the years I have done elimination diets and sometimes question if I have a slight intolerance. I am not jumping on the Gluten-free bandwagon, as I am not sure I could ever live without bread on occasion. However, I did feel a bit sluggish this morning and it made me think more carefully about my diet. One is everything in moderation and two, is all about timing. Victoria our Balance Nutritionist did discuss this with me and how the body needs to break this down and hence it impacts on ones ability to sleep properly. So that even though that late night pizza with extra pepperoni and cheese tasted great at the time – my body had to work hard at it while my mind just wanted to relax and ZZZ. Linking this to employee engagement and organisational change is the importance of timing and when is the best opportunity to introduce new layers to the transformation strategy. People need time to adjust to change and if thrust upon them at the wrong time or it too great a quantity they too can suffer their own version of my gluten hangover. We all have a slight intolerance to change but when delivered well and with clear rationale and participation then it can be made less extreme and without the heavy side effects. Back to my late night pizza for a minute as the other factor that needs to be considered was that I had not eaten since lunch so I was extremely hungry and consumed more that I should have. The Mind said more whilst the Body said enough is enough and I cannot take any more. This is the balance between senior leadership’s drive for change and the front line’s ability to manage it in real-time. They both often work on different priorities and timelines and when senior managers delay delay delay and then push push push it can overwhelm and unbalance the team that will be impacted most by the changes.
Mantra: Be kind to my body.