March 9, 1990
Dear Everyone:
Well, I’ve had a busy morning typing away on
WordPerfect, doing “current” lists for everyone in my group here.
It’s my own fault; I volunteered.
A couple of months ago, our manager, “Chris”, told
“Alma” to schedule a Staff Meeting.
He told her to make an agenda and send it to him so that he could
add any things that he wanted to cover.
Mistake #1. “Alma”
doesn’t do agendas. Agendas
require planning. She kept
saying that she didn’t have anything for us to meet about.
I believe she actually said that to “Chris”.
I also believe that she finally said that it was “Chris’s”
meeting and so he should come up with an agenda.
Which he did.
So, “Alma” scheduled a meeting for this Friday,
following our regular Friday morning meeting that we have every Friday
morning whether we have anything to meet about or not.
This was another of “Chris’s” ideas:
a regular “status” meeting in which we could each report status
of projects, problems we’ve run into and whatever else enters our little
minds.
I think “Chris” likes meetings.
I know “Alma” doesn’t
like meetings. While “Hubert
Sager” was our manager, she managed to abolish meetings for about 6
months before he discovered that we weren’t having any.
She just fell back on her usual:
“We don’t have anything (i.e., any crises) to meet about.”
Consequently, when we
do have a meeting, it tends
to reach colossal status in some minds.
People start preparing slide presentations.
Everybody kept asking “Alma” what we should bring to the meeting.
Would we be expected to report on our various projects?
“Alma” didn’t know.
After all, it’s ““Chris’s” Meeting” and she doesn’t know what he wants
to get out of it. (If she’d
paid attention during those videos on productive meetings, she might
have a clue.)
Finally, she said (to two of us, “Carla” and me, in
the hallway) that each person should be prepared to give a “thumbnail
sketch” of their projects.
“Alma” uses Management-by-Grapevine.
She figures if she tells
one person, it’s the same as telling
all of us.
The message is supposed to find its way through the grapevine.
If you miss hearing it, too bad.
Her all time, personal best, was the time she scheduled a staff
meeting and didn’t tell anybody.
It was at this time that I decided to do a little
volunteering.
In these staff meetings where we’re supposed to
give a short account of ourselves, “Alma” always jumps in at the middle
and some people end up giving a partial, or no, report.
I’ve been to several of these and have yet to get as far as
reporting on the Destruction reviews because of these interruptions.
And I’m not the only one.
I suggested that we
type up these “thumbnail sketches” and give them to “Chris” as a sort of
handout. That way, he
doesn’t have to take copious notes (and he still gets information about
some of us that he might not otherwise – I didn’t mention this part).
I made this suggestion, fully aware that, in this group, to
suggest is to volunteer. I
further volunteered to contact everyone in the group and notify them
that this would be expected of them – unusual, but not
unprecedented.
This is what I’ve been working on most of the
morning. I asked for the
information from each person by yesterday afternoon.
Naturally, “afternoon” means after I’d left for the day.
Most of them were waiting on my desk this morning.
There’s only one (there’s always one) who hasn’t given me
anything yet. So I feel like
I’ve had a nicely productive morning.
Although, it’s a little hard to get people to
“summarize”. Ask for a
“thumbnail” and you get the whole hand, plus several arms and legs.
One person, referring to an Active Files project, put down:
“Inventory files (all staff office, plus central files),
interview staff, recommend equipment/layout/supplies, develop file
structure and retention schedule.”
This covers just about everything we do.
I “summarized” it:
File structure, equipment, supplies.
“Just the highlights,” I said.
“But he needs more information!” (i.e., he won’t think I do
enough or that my job isn’t important.)
I tried explaining that management isn’t necessarily interested
in how you get to where you’re going as long as you get there on time
(and legally). But some
people can be very hard of listening.
Tomorrow’s meeting promises to be very interesting.
Especially as half the group is out in meetings today and won’t
see their “thumbnails” until just before the meeting.
But enough about that.
Last Thursday, “Frankie” arrived for her visit.
I went directly to “Jeannie’s” after work.
Previously, “Jeannie” and had said that we would go somewhere for
dinner (she lives within easy walking distance of several nice
restaurants). When I got
there, she and “Frankie” had decided to make stir-fried chicken and
broccoli instead. OK, plan
changed.
“Jeannie” had also told me that she would bring
“Frankie” into the City on Friday to see my office and so we could have
lunch together. I wrote it
into my calendar and made sure that I didn’t have any conflicting
appointments or meetings out in Company Park, "Martinez", etc.
I even told “Kevin” that I couldn’t schedule a meeting because my
sisters were coming into the City on Friday.
Thursday evening, “Jeannie” announced that she had taken a job
for Friday and they wouldn’t be able to come in.
How about Monday?
Plan changed.
During dinner, “Frankie” said that she wanted to
visit the house where we lived in Castro Valley.
Fine, I said. How
‘bout we do that on Saturday?
OK, they said. When I
got home Friday night, there was a message on my phone machine:
they had gone to Castro Valley on Friday (another plan changed)
and wouldn’t I love to go to see
The Hunt for Red October
with them?
Fine.
I’ll meet you at the theater.
I got there 40 minutes before the movie was scheduled to start.
So did about a million other people (great minds with a single
thought). These people, I
discovered, were the ones who already had tickets for the 10:30 showing.
The 7:40 showing was sold out and the 10:30 showing looked ready
to sell out at any minute.
When “Frankie” and “Jeannie” showed up, I explained the situation.
They had no problem changing plans again and wound up at my
place, eating hot fudge sundaes and watching
Working Girl on
my VCR.
By Saturday morning, I finally realized what was
going on: both “Jeannie” and
“Frankie” are expressives.
An expressive’s social style is oriented towards spontaneity.
Put two (or more) expressives together and you get spontaneous
combustion.
I had a quiet Saturday, doing chores.
Very restful. The
expressives (and “Marshall”, I found out later) went to Half Moon Bay.
Then, Sunday morning, I met them at “Jeannie’s” place and we went
off to spend the day in the Napa Wine Country.
“Marshall” has taken classes in wine tasting (complete with field
trips to various wineries), so we placed him in charge of the itinerary.
Very wisely, he never gave the expressives a chance to change
plans. We found out where we
were going when we got there.
We visited Stirling, Spring Mountain (from the TV
Series
Falcon Crest)
and Chandon. Before that, we
had a heavenly breakfast at Meadowood Resort.
I highly recommend it.
On Monday, “Jeannie” and “Frankie”
did come in to have lunch.
I was supposed to attend a lunch-meeting for the company blood
drive; but I figured: the
company has a blood drive every three months and “Frankie” only comes to
California every 13 years, or so.
So I prioritized and dumped the blood drive.
I sincerely hope nobody dies because of it.
(However, I didn’t call to tell the meeting leader that I
wouldn’t be able to show up until nearly lunchtime, just in case the
expressives decided to go to the horse races, or something, instead.)
Tuesday morning, “Jeannie” drove “Frankie” to the
airport while I attended a class on “Managing Your Hard Disks”, by which
they mean, your computer’s hard disk.
The best part about that was learning how to change the prompt on
my PC. The standard prompt
is usually something like C:\>.
This just means that the computer is ready for you to tell it
what to do.
After the class, I came back to my office and
changed the prompt to Yes, Boss!
What next? To me,
it seems more logical.
However, while I was at a meeting in Richmond yesterday morning (details
in the next Letter), “Ashley Holtz” came in to use my PC for something.
Instead of the usual prompt he got mine.
I think it scared him.
Love, as always,
Pete
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