I’m reviewing my year-end Benefits Summary at work . . . I’ve got life insurance plus supplemental life insurance at a multiple of my annual salary. I’m having a Willy Loman moment where it seems like after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive . . . Thus spoke The Programmer. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Work
How to Be a Good IT Customer
There’s a guy at work who tells me he’s the best IT customer in the organization. When I ask him why he’s the best IT customer, he says it’s because he understands that we in IT are very busy so he doesn’t bug us too much. That’s funny because the person I think is our best customer is just the opposite — she knows what she wants, and she doesn’t mind being difficult if it leads to better results. Yes we’re busy, but we’re trying to do this stuff as well as we can do it and it helps to get a sense from the customer that the work is important and that doing it well is worthwhile. Read more →
American Tune
Oh, and it’s all right, it’s all right, it’s all right You can’t be forever blessed Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day And I’m trying to get some rest That’s all I’m trying To get some rest — Paul Simon, “American Tune” Read more →
The One Most Important Thing
The first rule of thumb I pull out of my hat for myself and for my clients is this. Before you start working every day ask yourself “What is the one most important thing I could do today?” This is different than what you have to do or what you should do. It is the most important thing you could do. The answer, if you think carefully, is usually something that requires courage and integrity and not a lot of time. For instance, resolving an ongoing issue with a coworker or talking to your boss about the future of your career or hiring a personal trainer. When you consider To Do lists, they are infinite. In other words, there is an infinite amount of stuff you could do. So the best leverage you can get is making sure you do the most important thing first. It seems to be a… Read more →
Other Than That . . .
Fun with Charts
I use charts like this one to track open project tickets, color-coded by priority. At a meeting last week, I pointed out that the number of open tickets on this particular project had peaked out at 70 and was now dropping faster than the value of my house, at which one of the attendees laughed more enthusiastically than I thought was necessary. “Why is that funny?” I asked. I mean, it was supposed to be a little funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny. “I’ve been there,” she said. Read more →
Goofus on Software
When Gallant has a question for someone, he walks down the hall and asks it. Goofus keeps fruitless email threads going for weeks. Here’s an excerpt from the comment thread on a trouble ticket regarding a database record with an incorrect status code. comment 7563 posted by goofus on 2008-09-10 8:53 AM I did change the status code in test and this did fix the problem. However, we need to speak with JS regarding this issue as to how this will be affected in production. comment 7611 posted by me on 2008-09-12 9:15 AM Let’s get JS’s response so we can close this. comment 7621 posted by goofus on 2008-09-12 9:52 AM Emailed JS regarding this issue. Waiting on a response. comment 7637 posted by goofus on 2008-09-12 2:49 PM JS is out of the office until Tuesday, 9/16. comment 7773 posted by goofus on 2008-09-18 2:05 PM Sent another… Read more →
Wishing and Hoping: A Metaphor
“Where’d you get the Wish Hope Dream Post-Its?” I ask a co-worker. “Why?” she asks. “Is that your mantra?” “No, I was thinking more along the lines of wishes, hopes and dreams being peeled away one by one until you’re left with nothing.” “That’s an optimistic way of looking at it.” “It sure is.” Read more →
You Don’t Say
One of our exercises in Crucial Conversations training was to “think of a person who is really frustrating to work with,” and to describe in writing a recent interaction with that person in terms of what was actually said, and what you were thinking or feeling but didn’t say. My responses included the following: What I Actually Said This project presents some unique challenges. What I Didn’t Say I have a lot of experience managing IT projects, but not in running a day care center or a mental institution, which is what this project requires. What I Actually Said That’s not quite the way I would have phrased it. What I Didn’t Say Everyone else in these meetings seems to feel constrained by a sense of professionalism and decency that you appear not to possess. One of my colleagues at our table of four claimed that based on those responses,… Read more →
How Not to Succeed in Business
Come to the office on a weekend — when you’re not allowed to be there — not to work, but to store some of your personal belongings. Fall down a flight of stairs. Then file a worker’s comp claim. I’m not saying I know someone who actually did this . . . Read more →
Early Shift at Starbucks
I walked into Starbucks at 5:30 this morning, ordered a drink . . . the Starbucks guy asked my name and wrote it on the cup, despite the fact that I was the only customer in the store. Whether that would be considered a training success or failure depends on whether Starbucks trains its people to always ask for the customer’s name, or to use situational judgment. I was hoping the barista would call my name when the drink was ready so I could do a comical “who, me?” take, but she just set it on the counter . . . Read more →
Career Advice for the Deluded
If you don’t have something that is overwhelmingly important to do, then you probably don’t have anything that you’d absolutely rather be doing than getting up and going to work every day. So just start doing that. In any field. And stop deluding yourself that you have so many interests that you can’t choose. Really what you have is no clear interest and only a bunch of things you would consider if you had nothing to do. — Penelope Trunk, “Steps to figuring out your next career move” Read more →
Slipping Away
We may work more hours at our jobs without realizing that the childhood of our sons and daughters is slipping away. Sometimes these doors close too slowly for us to see them vanishing. — Dan Ariely Read more →
Trash by Any Other Name
Sometimes it’s hard to tell if boxes, etc., sitting around the office are supposed to go out with the trash. In Southern California, you’ll often see BASURA written on these things because the probability that a Spanish-speaking person will be taking out the trash is high. We couldn’t seem to get this box removed by writing BASURA on it, so one of our tech support people came up with this sign . . . Read more →
Playing the Expert Game
If . . . you are able to get important things done you are seen learning things on your own you are seen trying to do things even if you aren’t sure how you share freely the things that you know you don’t hide your ignorance, but also don’t rest on it you honor what other people know you know more often than not how to find out what you don’t know you know how to ask for help you offer to help people on their own terms Then . . . no one will care whether you succeed by learning or succeed by already knowing no one will care if you mess up occasionally because they assume you learn from it no one will mind if you forget (or don’t know) any given fact or method at any given time you will be treated as if you’re smart and… Read more →
Disturbing Sight of the Day
A fat woman at the office, sitting at her desk finger-fondling a frosted gingerbread man, whether because it was “male” or because it was edible, I’m not sure. It’s no less disturbing either way. Parenthetically: I don’t think she knew anyone could see her . . . Read more →
Open Enrollment
One of the HR reps at my new company is explaining Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance. “What if someone intentionally dismembers me?” I ask. “Could happen.” “Do you work in IT?” she asks. “Do a lot of people in IT get intentionally dismembered?” “Just something about your line of questioning . . .” Read more →
A Message That Sticks
John F. Kennedy, in 1961, proposed to put an American on the moon in a decade. That idea stuck. It motivated thousands of people across dozens of organizations, public and private. It was an unexpected idea: it got people’s attention because it was so surprising–the moon is a long way up. It appealed to our emotions: we were in the Cold War and the Russians had launched the Sputnik space satellite four years earlier. It was concrete: everybody could picture what success would look like in the same way. How many goals in your organization are pictured in exactly the same way by everyone involved? My father worked for IBM during that period. He did some of the programming on the original Gemini space missions. And he didn’t think of himself as working for IBM–he thought of himself as helping to put an American on the moon. An accountant who… Read more →
What Am I Thankful For?
I’m thankful that I have a job! A lot of people don’t! I lost my last job a few months ago, along with 9,499 other people in the Orange County real estate/finance industry over the past year. We all got to compete against each other to find another one. The Orange County Register ran a story yesterday on how some of these folks are doing . . . Delia DeYulia, a grandmother, was recently forced to take her first retail job. For the holiday shopping season, DeYulia, 53, is working part-time at Kohl’s, placing clothes on racks and cleaning dressing rooms. She resorted to taking the temporary work after not finding other employment. After 15 years with Fremont Investment and Loan, she lost her mortgage job in Anaheim Hills in March. “I’m used to sitting in an office,” said DeYulia, who audited loans at Fremont, a firm from which she… Read more →
Got a Job
After three months on the dole, I got a job offer from the IT director of a local non-profit healthcare association here in Orange County. I start next week. As Gerald Ford used to say, “Our long national nightmare is over.” It’s a small IT group — 8 people, including the director. I’ve got to admit I’m a little burned out on big corporate IT shops. I got out of hands-on programming and into leadership roles because I thought I could do a better job than the people I saw doing it. I wanted to develop teams that got things done using their skills and their collective intelligence, but in practice, you typically get locked into some corporate process standard. A process may be good for delivering consistent results, but they may not be consistently good results. Like at McDonald’s, every Big Mac is just like every other Big Mac… Read more →