Just When You Think ...

You think it’s all under control and life is ticking along well at work it all changes.

The part of the job that I’d been working on so hard to get right, that’s taken hours of trying to understand, write procedures for and get agreement on and that has been in abeyance recently is now back with a vengeance.

I guess I knew it would happen at some point. The problem is I was hoping it would hold off just that little bit longer so I could catch up with all the other aspects of the job.

Process ...

Just when we have things understood, agreed and documented almost every process is turned on it’s head.

This merger is going to be a rough one…

Deep Dive ...

“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions”. Edward R. Murrow

A Deep Dive is neither deep nor a dive but an excuse to get someone in and tell them how badly you feel they are performing.

It is not a solution to any of the problems.

Wikis ...

So, in the space of a few months we have gone from one to three Wikis that I now have a hand in.

I know that sort of breaks the idea of a single repository of information but the fact that we have any at all; that the ones we do have people are enthusiastic about and that they are on a supported product set (albeit Sharepoint which has as much to do with information sharing as I have with Lithuanian) is a great step forward.

I’m sitting running WOS for my own ends and every time I try to do anything other than put simple text into Sharepoint I grimace at the lack of functionality but people are slowly begining to see the value of collaborating and sharing information.

Maybe blogging at work will be next ?

Roundabout ...

With things almost coming to an end at work it’s time to think about where I go and what I do next.

If you have read this for any length of time you will know I’m still not settled as to what I want to do here so I tend to approach this decision with all the excitement of going to the dentist for root canal work.

I asked the question “What next” some three weeks ago before I went on holiday. After some cajoling this week the response came back : there’s probably no opening for me in my part of the organisation.

I’m still asking around but, ironically, my old boss who moved on and left me in an organisational reshuffle is looking for people again.

Perhaps it’s time to cast the net a little wider.

Bits and Bytes ...

I got my laptop back today all cleaned, pressed and rebuilt.

Now all I need to do is get the data back onto it.

This could be a long night ….

Suited and Booted ...

Back at my desk today I was, for once, actually in a suit.

Just as well as I had to go out for a meeting with one of our suppliers. Luckily for me this was one chap I’ve known for over eight years as we both moved from one employer to another.

We still seem to be in the Easter lull at work and email is scarce and meetings sparsely attended.

At least I had an excuse to finish on time, change into a pair of shorts and sit out and read tonight.

Easter is the New Christmas ...

I walk through the underpass, the warm wind blowing past me into the darkness bringing with it the smell of newly cut grass and petrol fumes.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed it getting warmer and people beginning to make more use of the parks and spaces I walk through at lunchtime. It started with the occasional book reader in the sun, then games of football behind the college and today children and mothers in all the playgrounds.

I step out of the underpass and back in the sun I look up at the clear blue sky and wonder if this really could be the end. It’s rather like Christmas : work is amazing quiet - people are taking time off and large chunks of the project seem to be winding down.

Could this be the end at last ?

Self Protection or Self Deception ?

“Two weeks I think and we will have the worst of it over, just three projects to complete and more time to devote to them.”

I pull the car up and wave at Martin and Joanne as I finish the call and take off my earpiece. “Where have you been ?”, says Joanne over her shoulder as she scoots away on her bike. “Walk ?”, asks Martin and I park the car, change and head after them to the park.

Six in the evening and still light. We wander and talk as Joanne cycles around the park stopping every now and again to describe to me some complicated task I need to undertake to measure her speed and time taken. “You stand here and count every branch in the tree and if you haven’t finished by the time I come back you have to chase me.” She cycles off again and I look up at the tree and it’s hundreds (thousands ?) of branches. It seems a lot more achievable than the tasks I’ve had at work of late.

I feel cramped, I need to be outside and I need to have all this work finished. We turn and head to the swings again. I wonder if it really could be soon over or if I’m deceiving myself to get a little distance from the stress.

What Would Gordon Say ...

I let the car roll to a stop behind Martin’s and turn off the engine.

Outside it smells of evening, a hint of damp in the air mixing with a coal fire somewhere. It’s the first time I’ve got home from work in daylight.

I close my eyes and wonder what would Gordon say and see again his face with that matter of fact grin.

“You gotta do what you gotta do, it just needs done”, I hear him say in his broad Scottish accent.

He’s right and it’s just what he would say if we were talking over the mess that this has become.

I smile. Of course he’s right and I close the front door behind me.

Tomorrow is another day - it just needs doing.

Work to Rule ...

“I’m on a work to rule”, said John, oddly reflecting my mood of yesterday. “I’ve done my free half hour, how long are you working tonight?”

The answer is not long. I want to try the less is more approach and see how quickly I can extricate myself from this still with everything achieved.

It’s not been a great day. Two days left things in the hands of people who didn’t really focus on getting things done and the reason for the long hours of a few weeks ago has slipped back to the mess it was. It’s taken all day to unpick it and put it back on the rails.

I head back to the mass of email, but this time with an eye on the clock.

Night is the New Day ...

It’s nine o’clock at night and I’m trading emails with people at work. This can probably go on until ten, tomorrow at dawn there will be mail which will have come in over night.

I had a message today which said “pressure will increase” : given that I can do anything from a fifty to seventy hour week; I’ve been told I’m not a team player and had threats of physical violence I can’t wait to see what more pressure means.

I’m planning to take a few days off this week and I need to get some present shopping done. I need to get lost in a crowd and explore new streets.

I’ve just discovered Trusted Places so, as the mail arrives overnight, I’m going to start a list of new places to explore …

The Hours ...

Contracted Hours : 37
Actual Hours : 69

At last I’m home. It’s almost done and next week should just be the finishing off the final bits and pieces.

The last journey of this working week is up the road to the Chinese …

A Man Called Hesus ...

“If it works I’ll change my name ….” and amazingly it did.

Well work is a relative concept - completed is what we settled for.

One day drifts into another just as one hour slides past the previous. Slowly some routine is appearing. Up at 5:30, out for the early morning traffic. The phone call to decide what we can or should do as we drive in. The hours in the office. The walk across to get a sandwich and the hours drifting into the evening and then the night….

Football Imitates Work ...

BBC Sport : Lille chief denies walk-off claim

“It was not an attempt to get the game abandoned - it was an emotional moment,” said Seydoux.

Lille president Michel Seydoux said his players did not walk off the pitch in order to get their Champions League tie against Manchester United abandoned.

Not the only walk out I saw today …

The Meeting ...

A list of issues is never a bad thing to have. Working on them is even better. Getting solutions is the ideal.

Driving back down the M1 I wondered just why we hadn’t managed to get all three of these things achieved.

Perhaps having a list and agreement between us all is a good first step, but my view is that we could, and should have, aimed for more.

After all tomorrow we will just come back to the same issues with no answers….

The Short Walk to Chaos

One of the advantages of working from home is that my commute to work on the days I am here is just a minute along the landing from the bedroom to the office. The disadvantage of that is the trip home is the same length and walking away from some of the craziness which seems to be happening at the moment takes longer than 10 steps.

I turn on the laptop, login to work and check the mail that’s come in from the States overnight. I have an 08:00am conference call with Europe and about half an hour before that to check the internal knowledge sites and erooms, read the mail and check on the stats for my weblog. I watch the icon spin as the RSS reader scans my daily read of weblogs and feeds. Some are updated and I read a few and wonder if I will ever write as well as Francis, Tonya, Meg or Petite. Last in my list is the stats feed from my weblog and I look at the diminishing number of hits and wonder if it’s worth it.

The call starts slowly. We use Netmeeting sometimes to share documents and websites and it seems to take an age to get connected to Belgium and for the conference leaders desktop to be shared. We talk about the need for better knowledge based systems and I wonder if this year I’ll score better against this objective and how I can get the buy in of the people who want to branch away from the corporate products and install something new, sexy and costly. We have actually done better in some respects in using Sharepoint than what’s shown on the call and we part with me promising to send then the stuff I’ve written and for us to swap ideas from now on.

One call drifts into another. Europe, UK and then the quiet time at lunch when the American early risers arrive in chat at work and want to say hi and ask how the weather is here. I can see L is online and I know she has a stressy day ahead, I’m sure the last thing she needs is another conversation right now. As another meeting invite arrives tomorrow’s calender is full from 9:00 to 18:00 with no breaks.

The call I’m on is “listen only” one so I can surf around, do a little online shopping and talk to people in my teams. We all seem a little irate at the mail entitled “urgent urgent urgent” which is asking for names for a tender document the owner of which has missed her deadline and seems to be passing on her confusion and lack of organisation to everyone else on this mail. To be honest now few of these bizarre requests surprise me. We seem more than able to mess up on a consistent and grand scale every week.

Spring must be close :it’s 17:00 and still light out - the sky’s a little red. The call drifts into the next with the same people talking about almost the same thing. A couple of hours of work and calls and it will be time for the short walk back and then we can start all over again tomorrow.

Hungarians

Working in a global organisation you meet and talk to all sorts of people from many different countries.

Being English means you can be lazy and just accept the fact that everyone will speak the same language that you do; sometimes they speak it better.

Today I got a mail about The Project and some order we placed on it. Our purchasing is all done from Hungary and mostly it’s done online via one of our systems but occasionally you get a mail. The one I got today had a non-commital comment on money spent and reading the rest of the mail seemed the easiest way to put it into context.

Only the rest of the mail was in Hungarian. I was left scrolling past words like ‘endusernek’ (end user ?), ‘csoportnak’ (an East European fotball team ?) and ‘hibazenetet’ (a good score in Monopoly).

It’s time to pick up the phone and try the other English communication method : shouting and waving my arms about.

Refining

Another session refining the demo. Basically the technical side of it works now all we need to do is add in the “suit speak” which papers over the parts where nothing exciting is happening (something which to the technical eye happens a lot with this product despite all the excitement from management about leading edge glossiness).

I just know getting the right template, using the right font size and not overdoing the transitions is going to be more of a challenge than keeping the product up and running.

Stating the Obvious

I’ve just sat on a two hour conference call the gist of which was simple plain common sense.

With a second major project with my name on it I wonder now how many more of these calls I’ll have to sit through.

A Necessary Evil ...

With both of us working at home today this seems already like a long weekend.

Today was spent sorting things in Excel, working out bills of materials and getting ready for a New Project. Despite this being a new year there seems to be a general malaise about working for a large company and having little or no say over one’s destiny at work both inside the company and with suppliers.

I feel a little like this. It’s a necessary evil to work here at the moment. It provides money and some security but little job satisfaction. Maybe I need to find a new direction.

At least for now I can work from home and we have some furniture at the Ice Box.