“Over the past several years, it’s been more difficult to balance
the focus on results with reality,” says Merdinger. “You focus on
what looked like reasonable results but then ended up being not
realistic. This increases the level of frustration and anxiety.
Nobody anticipated what happened to the economy. We’re working
harder with less resources, so we’re trying to do more with less.
Combine that with the fact that when the economy slows down,
you start to watch the bank account. That causes you to think carefully
about how to maximize your ROI on revenue generation. I
have to keep my focus as narrow as possible, and you can’t overinitiative
yourself, taking on too many projects.”