If you walk into Gothic Landscape first thing in the morning after the weekend, you will not see everyone scrambling to finish last week’s tasks. You will not see the employees stressing about how to approach the current week’s projects. Instead, members of the executive management team will be calmly putting their heads together to best prepare for the week ahead.
This structured, organized approach to Mondays is exactly how Gothic CEO Jon Georgio likes to get his week started. Georgio was “born into” the industry, as he likes to say, and since taking over Gothic, he has taken inspiration from some famous motivators to set the tone for his business. Georgio has the time for this relaxed meeting every Monday because of his Sunday routine, a routine he borrowed from famous businessman Lee Iacocca.
“He hit pretty hard in his autobiography on this idea of taking a Sunday, an hour or two on a Sunday, to go through your calendar at night, and that gets your head around exactly where you need to be during the week. Kind of gives you a head start. Better than doing it on a Friday or a Friday afternoon, it’s a closer proximity time,” Georgio explains.
Georgio, who now runs his family’s multimillion dollar company that services the states of California, Arizona and Nevada, has definitely seen the positive effects of his Sunday-night ritual. Devoting just an hour or two at the end of the weekend has made his Mondays less about stress and more about proper motivation. Since starting his Sunday planning, he has been able to focus all of his, and his team’s, energy on simply getting excited on Monday mornings.
“We talk about longer-term projects, we talk about short-term projects that need our immediate attention. Kind of just get our head in the game as quickly as we can on Monday morning,” Georgio discusses.
This routine does not always run smoothly for Georgio, however. As for most people, Friday comes equipped with many distractions and a general lack of focus. Georgio, however, needs to leave the office on Friday with everything handled so he can direct all of his attention to the next week from Sunday on.
So when it comes to those pesky Fridays, Georgio suggests taking it one task at a time.
“What I try to do is set up timeframes and say ‘OK, by this time today I have to have my email cleaned up,’” Gergio says.
