Monday, June 21, 2004
Stratigic Planing
Today I spent six hours in the second of three departmental planning meetings. We had a working lunch, working snacks, and got working toys to fiddle with while our brains were ostensibly otherwise occupied (space alien potatoheads). But, let’s not focus on the sandwiches and cookies and toys, shall we? Let’s focus on the petty aggravations that make us feel superior to others.
So: we’re in small working groups. I’m with a department manager and two support staffers. We’ve all been assigned to prepare ten cards with brief statements on them representing “ways to overcome obstacles” that we’ve identified. For some reason two of my teammates ask the third, one of the support staffers, to write up the cards for us. I suspected it was a case of misplaced confidence, but I had no idea how misplaced.
This particular woman has been with the company for longer than any other non-management employee - almost 40 years. She’s still at the staff level of “administrative assistant.” I know that job takes a lot of work; I’ve done it myself and I respect those who do it well. But after 40 years, don’t you think someone might have moved up the ladder a little? Well, maybe she found her niche. Then again, maybe she lost her niche and everything that she’d kept in it. Or maybe she was born nicheless and no one had the heart to tell her.
I won’t tell you my conclusions on this score. But I will provide a little quiz to see if you come to the same conclusion as I did. When we asked this very sweet and generous woman to prepare notecards for us, which of the following words was she unable to spell without assistance?
Sensitivity
Receive
Urgent
Focus
Right, all of them—and those are just the ones I remembered off the top of my little head; there were a lot of others, too. I suppose that it is urgent that I receive sensitivity focus, because I should not be riding this poor woman’s ass about this. But really, it’s hard for me to take advice on strategic goals and planning from someone who has clearly steered well clear of all such matters for the past two-score years.
On a lighter note, two strategic epigrams which we decided not to use at the meeting, but which I deem sufficiently worthwhile to cast them to the four winds in the hope that someone somewhere takes them up and makes better use of them than I could, are listed here:
Accept mediocrity
Quasi-good enough for quasi-government work
Oh don’t grouse like that. Your tax dollars didn’t pay for any of it. And if you give me a hard time about it I’ll have my space alien potatohead beat you up.
