What your favorite day of the week says about you...

One of my mentors said to me, "If you get super excited about Fridays à la TGIF, then you have an employee mindset". I argued that the work does get intense and it is justified for anyone to look forward to the weekend to "recharge", even himself. He smiled in concurrence, and I was happy I had landed a good point. Then he told me this...

He was expecting feedback on a bid his company made for a $300,000 government project where his company was the underdog. He had delivered a great pitch and was optimistic about the outcome, except that projects are not always assigned based on pitches.

The past week, the DG of that parastatal had a meeting at the presidential villa on Monday, was attending a 2-day conference in Lagos on Tuesday and Wednesday, and was due back at the Abuja office on Thursday, to preside over a meeting where the decision would be made. You can imagine the frustration when he learned the DG did arrive in Abuja on Thursday, but was tired and went straight home, and we know that kind of meeting was not going to happen on a Friday. As such, his tension and pressure was being carried forward to the next week.

He explained this was one out of an average of 6 contracts and jobs he is bidding for at any point in time, and the situation is almost always the same.

So long story cut short, his best days are Mondays, because it opens up another 5 days where he can submit more bids, get feedback on open bids and execute contracts in-progress and get paid for the concluded ones. None of these happen on the weekend.

He receives a status update every Friday from his P.A. on the position of all bids, and he spends most of his Sunday mapping out his follow-up strategy for the 5-day window.

So please share your thoughts with me,

1. Do you agree that if you look forward to Mondays with frustration rather than excitement, then you approach your work with the mindset of an employee rather than an entrepreneur?
2. Do you think maybe the workplace is structured such that the days of the week work differently for entrepreneurs and employees and both players are justified in their own right?

For me, it did change my perspective about how to look at the days of the week and I made the following adjustments to how I work.

1. Something about the label of having an "employee mindset" didn't quite sit well with my ambitions. So I made a decision to approach my job with the mindset of an entrepreneur, and see my job simply as 'practicing with resources and structure of another'.
2. I always made sure I had a plan for what I wanted to achieve for the week, and I held a Monday meeting with my teams so we were all on the same page. I then did a check in (with myself) every Wednesday on actions that required my attention or the attention of the Board Members.
3. I would always confront employees of small businesses when I see a lazy or rigid attitude. I could not pay for bread at a bakery because the POS was not charged, and I simply asked 'if this was your business, would you let that happen?"

In summary, I believe the attitude towards Monday or Friday is a state of mind. Most entrepreneurs need everyday to be Monday for them to survive (not just the business), an employee can maybe get away with a slow Monday and a lazy Friday. The challenge is how does the entrepreneur get the employees to up their engagement, which will be subject for another article.

Thanks for getting to the end, I hope this sparked some thoughts in the constant battle between Entrepreneur-ship and Employee-ship. Today is Wednesday, are you looking forward to Friday?