Photography by Wesley Law
Trautman’s days are almost always made up of back-to-back meetings, a productivity killer for most. In order to be productive, Trautman simply tries to stay focused.
“If you are fully present,” she says, “you can solve more than when you’ve got too many things going on in your head. And I take a lot of notes.”
She describes herself as old-fashioned, opting to write things down in a notebook. “I have a little bamboo one, and I really like it because it reflects my love of nature. And I’m all about my black TUL gel retractable pen.”
At the end of the day, Trautman culls everything into a to-do list, prioritizing what someone else is waiting on. “I don’t want to not be able to move forward on something, because I haven’t signed a contract or something,” she says. “At the end of the day, that’s really my quiet time to just sort of get things finished.
“Days can stretch from 7 in the morning until 9 at night,” Trautman adds. “If it’s going to be a long day, I’ll try to take some time to myself in the morning.” She works out with a trainer on Wednesday mornings and Monday evenings.
One rule that Trautman has learned over the years is that you’re only as good as the people you work with. A book she and her team at Great Rivers Greenway all found helpful is Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by J. J. Sutherland. “We’ve adapted that Scrum philosophy, which is really to stay focused on the issues at hand,” she says. “On Mondays, our team divides up and meets individually. We moved away from weekly all-staff meetings because they weren’t productive for folks. Not everybody needed to hear everything. Now we do that once a month.”
Another book that was impactful early in Trautman’s career is Good to Great. “It taught me to make sure that you have the right people on the right seat on the bus. It’s not just about having good people but having good people in the right place.”
Citing Great Rivers Greenway’s large number of partners (250) and all of the political boundaries that the trails cross, Trautman says it can be a complicated but rewarding place to work. “You have to bring multiple parties to the table to get something accomplished,” she says. “To work here, you have to be really good with being flexible. Things will change constantly.
“Being outdoors is critical to my mental and physical health,” Trautman adds. “I spend a lot of time on the weekends riding or hiking. It can be challenging to find the time, but it’s important because if I go for a good ride, on my way back, my head will clear and a lot of answers will come to me.” For a quick, 17-mile ride, she’ll pop over to Grant’s Trail, close to her home. If she has more time, Rock Hollow Trail in Wildwood is her pick. She also keeps a spinning bike in her basement for long winters.
Music is essential for rides on the spinning bike. “I have a whole bunch of different spinning playlists in my iPhone,” Trautman says. “But I’m a Boomer, so I harken back to the rock of the ’70s or ’80s.” REO Speedwagon’s “Roll with the Changes” is the song that gets her pumped for a ride.
To decompress after work, Trautman will pick up a gardening or cooking magazine—“something super-light, because if I launch into a book, I will not put it down.” She saves books for vacations and airplanes. She reads Missouri Gardener, which features mostly native plants, to plan for her spring garden.
