Cyclic Nature Of Performance

I'm not going to bore you with the details, suffice it to say it was one of those weeks where you wish you lived in a cave. Alone. With a blanket.
I had such a rough week -- I emailed my lawyer this morning, moaning about things that were going on, explaining why I thought some legal strategy wasn't going to work, lamenting some lost opportunities. Nice job, only I emailed the wrong person by mistake -- sending my confidential stream of despair to some guy who commented on the web site last month. Had a name that was similar. Now THAT'S a bad week.
But you have them. And I'm not complaining. A long time ago I learned that my productivity and motivation came and went -- sometimes it seemed like all of the cycles were on the "down" stage.
So you slog through. Soon enough the tide turns and things are going your way again. I've actually come to relish these down spells: usually it means that things are going to get very exciting, and soon! It's a positive sign.
Teams are the same way. Some weeks the team is able to solve world hunger, other weeks they're lucky to order pizza without throwing rocks. Some weeks they could solve anything, others you wonder how we all got dressed in the morning.
I've found -- and this is my opinion only -- that you can spot the trends of the team and act accordingly. Most weeks I try to start on an upbeat note, hit the heavy stuff in the middle, and then end on a good note. Can you do that all the time? Nope. But it's worth a try. If you have a lot of material you have to go through, say on a re-engineering effort, picking the right material for the right time in the cycle is critical. You do NOT want to get into that big process question nobody can agree on first thing Monday morning. Most people are probably a little ticked to have to start the week up, they've got the whole week in front of them, and they'd like no better than open season on the other side -- not productive. Mention it? Sure. Solve it? Maybe not so much. Wednesday might be a good day to float a suggested answer. If all else fails you can slug it out Thursday, ending on a "tomorrow is the last day of the week, we can't leave without a resolution on this." Friday morning, miracle of miracles, everybody gets much more agreeable.
Take this for what it's worth. A good friend of mine leads completely differently -- he sees a problem, and immediately wants to go run over it, like he was on a lawn mower or something. I've found that we have about the same success rate, but he has a lot more problems with passive-aggressive behavior than I do.
If you know where you are in the cycle of things, you can make magic happen. If not -- well, life is a really long slog. Something to think about.