It was subtle. I didn’t really see it at first. But once I figured out what was happening I decided to put a stop to it right there.
You play computer games. Of course you do. You are reading an online blog about technology and leadership. You have a smartphone and a computer and probably a tablet. And all of them came with some games.
Some of you are hard core. You play World of Warcraft. You build custom gaming machines. You have killed more enemies in Call of Duty than actually fought in WWII.
So, what’s the problem? How are computer games destroying self esteem? They are mindless entertainment right?
First, I also have a smartphone a bunch of computers and a tablet. I’ve stripped the games off everything except the iPad. And even then, I just have a couple simple games. I don’t play World of Warcraft for the same reason I don’t try crack cocaine: I’m afraid I might like it too much.
And I have a long history of computer games. I’m old enough to have bummed a ride down to the arcade and pumped quarters into Pacman, Galaga, Pole Position and a number of other first generation arcade games.
So, don’t think I’m anti-games. I’m really not. But, I came to a worrisome realization the other day. My iPad gets a copy of every game my kids download. I force them to use my AppleID as a way to keep track of what they are playing. I will generally try a game for a day or two and then clear it off. I’ve kept two, and they both illustrate the dangers to self esteem.
Rope’n’Fly
First is Rope’n’Fly. You are a spiderman like character swinging through a two dimensional city. The challenges are that you can attempt maximum distance in a set amount of time. Or you can attempt maximum distance with a limited number of ropes. There are a couple other variations. The UI is actually kind of soothing as your avatar goes swinging through the city, effortlessly switching ropes from one building to the next until the number of ropes or the time runs out at which point you die. Every.single.time. You die. That’s how the game ends.
There’s an option where you can turn on blood and then you don’t just die, you splat. Every.single.time. There is no escape.
2048
2048 is a tile game. You have a 4×4 grid and numbers appear, either a 2 or a 4. You combine like numbers to create bigger numbers. Two “2’s” will become a 4. You can combine two 4’s to get an 8 and so on. The object is to get two 1024 tiles and combine them into a 2048 tile.
It’s a nice computer geek game. It’s mindless enough that I can do it while on a really boring conference call, or while waiting for a bus. Simple. But, still it’s complex enough to be engaging. And it has the benefit of using the numbers dear to a geek’s heart. Who wants 1000 when you can have 1024? I eventually got to the point where I beat it. And that’s when I noticed the problem.
So, what’s the problem?
Look carefully at that screen. I just “won” the game. I got the 2048 tile.
Yes, it says, “Your next goal is to get to the 4096 tile.” And what do you want to bet that if I managed to get the 4096 tile it would challenge me to get the 8192 tile? Eventually, I’d get to the point where I couldn’t go any further. In other words, the only possible outcome is that I’m going to fail. If not at 4096, then at the next level.
I started thinking about the games I’ve played. How do you “win?” Many of them don’t ever let you win. And from a designers standpoint, I get that. But, from a personal feeling of accomplishment, I don’t like it.
When I was a kid in those video arcades one day a new game showed up. It was called “Dragon’s Lair.” You were Dirk the Daring trying to rescue Princess Daphne. What made the game exciting was that depending on what you chose to do the “story” would change. It had awesome graphics (for 1983.) Of course, it was $0.50 instead of a quarter and you could keep pumping in quarters to continue the adventure. I was never rich enough to beat the game but I remember the first time I watched someone else win. Several of us gathered around as the kid faced the dragon. He was doing really well. In fact, it only took a couple bucks more and finally, he did something none of us had been able to do. He beat the dragon and rescued the princess! And then it ended.
Now what’s it do?
I don’t know. I think that’s the end.
How can it be the end? You just put more quarters in?
Yeah, I think when you win it’s over
It made no sense to us. The idea of scenario games is a stable of the console games today. You can “win” Halo if you play long enough, but at that point we felt just a little cheated.
But, most arcade style games don’t have that satisfying finality. Flappy birds? Candy Crush? They keep turning up the difficulty until you reach the limits of what’s even possible. And then you die. Or you fail. But, either way, you lose.
I still play 2048. But, I decided that I don’t want to end on a loss. The game is called 2048. I try to get the 2048 tile. Sometimes I don’t. But sometimes I do. When I finally get the 2048 tile, I win. I simply stop playing. Just because the game designers set it up for me to fail, doesn’t mean I have to play along.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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When it all goes South, what do you do?
Here are five steps to help you master nearly any crisis.
1: Identify Stakeholders
A crisis that no one cares about isn’t a crisis. My messaging team used to maintain a pager gateway. If it was 1988, that was cutting edge. But, this was 2008. One evening we got a notice that the gateway was offline. My engineers were trained to respond to outages. But, they couldn’t get into the locked closet where the gateway computer was located. They called me. I called the owner of the pager service.
Hi, this is Bob.
Bob, this is Rodney Bliss. We maintain your pager gateway and it just crashed. We need someone to unlock the closet so we can get in and restart it.
Can it wait until Monday?
Excuse me?
All my guys are off shift and I’d hate to call someone back just to unlock a door. Can you guys wait on it until Monday morning?
Sure. If you’re fine with waiting, we are fine with waiting.
It was not really a crisis if no one cared.
First step in crisis management is figure out who cares. And not only that, figure out how high up the totem pole they sit. You’re going to need that person’s backing to get resources to help fix this.
There will be people who want to be one of your stakeholders. But, avoid lining up too many sponsors. Fewer is better. Because at some point you will have to start making compromises to get this thing fixed. The fewer people you have to convince to sign off on your compromise the better.
Once you’ve identified your stakeholder. Let them know that you are working on the issue. They are going to get asked and you want to provide them with information to give out to their peers.
2: Figure Out The Cost
Many people will suggest that “Step 3: Identify What Success Looks Like” should come before cost. I understand why they think that. However, as a crisis manager you are going to be making up a lot of your operational parameters yourself. It’s okay to have a vague idea of what you want to accomplish at this point. You can nail down the particulars when you’ve figured out what resources you have available.
You have three sources you can draw on to resolve a crisis: Stored up political capital, people resources and Stakeholder influence. The third one is the least effective. I call it “air cover.” It’s vital to have the air cover, but you really don’t want to use it if you don’t have to. Executives don’t solve Operational problems. They’ve got you for that.
What engineers/developers do you have access to? That’s going to determine how much effort you can put into your solution. I once had to get a SQL database installed in 8 hours. That wouldn’t have been an issue except the team that was responsible for installing SQL databases didn’t want to install it for me. I had the resources on my own team, the messaging and Sharepoint team to install it myself if needed. And I might have gone that direction if my stakeholder hadn’t nixed it.
The political fallout would be too great. You have to figure out how to get the SQL team to do it.
And that points out the third source of influence. You will have to decide how much political capital to spend on fixing this issue. For my SQL database need I went to the manager over the SQL team and called in a favor. But, it cost me.
3: Figure Out What Success Looks Like
Once you know what resources you have to work with you can figure out what success looks like?
Is your crisis a server is down? Success might be a functioning server.
This might seem pretty obvious. But, it’s not really. Our servers are typically redundant. Every server I stand up has a twin. We do it so that if one dies we don’t lose connectivity. In the down server crisis can you get away with a single non-redundant server? Will that satisfy your stakeholder? (Hint: Ask him.) If your servers are virtual and you have access to the Virtualization engineers maybe success looks like a fully redundant setup. This is why I suggest you identify resources first and then decide what you can do with the team you have available.
4: Identify Obstacles
This step is a moving target, and it’s why you as a crisis manager add value even if you can’t do any of the engineering. The server is down? Okay. Where is it? Do the engineers need direct access to the datacenter or can they manage it over the network? Do they have the access they need to get to the affected systems? If not, who do you need to go get it from? Do they need to short circuit some of your processes in the interest of getting the system up quicker? It’s your job to identify as many potential obstacles as possible and then clear them out of the way. Use your Stakeholder. This is why you identified him or her early.
Jill, my engineers need access to the datacenter, but we don’t have time to run them through an entire background check. I need you to grant them permission to get through the doors.
Realize that as you go along, more obstacles are going to crop up. This is also why you don’t want multiple stakeholders. In my example of the SQL database, I not only needed a rush install on the database, I needed 1 terabyte of storage space that the SQL team was supposed to provide. It took a week to get 1TB of storage. Another favor called in as I went to the storage manager and asked for some of his surplus with a promise that I’d put in the paperwork as soon as possible. This step is where many projects and crisis flounder. As a crisis manager you have to avoid getting bogged down in any of the obstacles. I like to envision myself in a tank and the obstacles are someone’s flowerbed that are standing between me and my objective. Yes, I’m going to leave tank treads in their daisies. But, that’s a problem I’ll deal with after the crisis is over.
5: The Clock Is Ticking
Often what separates a crisis from a non-crisis is the schedule. Using my SQL example again, I had to have the database that day. I had a Microsoft resource that would take me 3 months to reschedule. If I got the database we could complete the work. If the database took even one extra day I couldn’t have my tools installed for at least 90 days. It was worth a lot to me to avoid that 90 day delay.
A tight schedule is also your friend. As you go driving your tank through people’s backyards, they are going to be yelling at you to slow down, or even stop. If you are truly trying to solve a crisis, and if you have the proper air cover by identifying your key stakeholder and keeping her informed, you can use your schedule as a way to remove those who want to hold a meeting and talk it over. If you don’t have time for that, then the schedule is your friend.
At this point some of you are questioning my decision making. Go ahead, admit it. You’re thinking
Rodney is crazy. No one can work like that. You’ll step on so many toes that you’ll get fired.
You are correct, that working like this on a daily basis will get you bounced out of just about any company in the world. However, that’s why this is called “Crisis Management.” If you are in crisis management every day, you need to get better at planning and become more proactive.
This tactics are for when something really, really, REALLY has to be done. And it has to be done right now. Trust me, if you become “the guy” or “the woman” who keeps her head while all around you people are losing theirs, you will be seen as a vital member of the team. You’ll be seen as someone who “gets stuff done.”
Fortunately being seen as a miracle worker is as much about having a process as it is about knowing how to fix stuff.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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The airline totally played me. They manipulated me. And I caught them at it. And I let them do it anyway.
A couple of weeks ago I went to Olympia, WA for a friend’s wedding. It was a beautiful wedding. My friend and his bride and I were all in the same 6th grade classroom 37 years ago. The groom and I were best friends in high school. We stayed in contact over the years. When he decided to get married he asked me to stand up with him.
I’d never been asked to be a best man before. It was a lot of fun and I’ll probably touch on it more in a future post.
I flew to Sea-Tac airport on Thursday. Friday was the rehearsal. They got married on Saturday and I flew home on Sunday. Like most flights I’ve been on over the past two or three months it was very crowded.
I was scheduled to be in boarding group 3. I was in seat 32A. I really try to travel without checking any bags. Especially for a short 3 day trip, I packed everything into a carry on and “a small personal bag.” (Yeah, it’s a man-purse, or a “messenger bag” if you prefer.)
In the hour leading up to starting boarding the gate agents begged us to check our bags. I assumed that with as full as the flight was, I assumed most of the overhead space would be full. I got in line with about 50 other people and let them stick a baggage claim tag on my bag.
At this point I wasn’t too worried about boarding early. I had a guaranteed seat and my man-purse would fit easily under the seat in front of me. I got a shock when I arrived at the gate. I scanned my smart phone and a piece of paper popped up from the reader.
New seat assignment!
I wasn’t happy as I took the slip of paper and headed down the jetway.
I had done everything right and now Delta sprang a seat change on me at literally the last minute. I had no chance to argue.
Halfway down the jetway I realized I didn’t need to talk to anyone about switching my seat.
As I settled into my seat in First Class the woman next to me struck up a conversation.
Did you get bumped up too?
Yeah. Right at the gate.
Us too. My husband and my daughter are 2A and 2B. I wonder why?
Maybe because we checked our bags?
But, a lot of people checked bags. Maybe it’s just our lucky day.
Two days later I figured it out.
To: Rodney Bliss
From: Delta Airlines Customer Care
Subject: Tell Us How We Did On Your Flight From SEA to SLC
Brilliant. Give a customer a free First Class upgrade and then ask him what he thought of the flight.
What would you do?
I gave them Excellent marks all across the board. Why wouldn’t I? Was I a satisfied customer? Absolutely!
I felt a little bad about being so easily manipulated. But, actually, I was so impressed with their marketing strategy that I gave them the benefit of the doubt for anything that might have been less than excellent. And besides, it’s a 90 minute flight. There’s not much you can screw up on an hour and a half flight.
Do you think my survey results are anonymous?
Personally, I’m not sure. I doubt it. And if Delta is willing to buy a good review for the price of a First Class upgrade, I’m kind of hoping they pay attention to my survey answers.
Afterall, I have some cross country trips coming up.
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Before reading this book I thought Colin Powell would have been a good president. After reading, I’m convinced he would have been not just good, but great.
This book review is a departure in several ways from my previous reviews. First, I actually read this book. I’ve been using my commute time over the past several months to listen to what I continue to think of as “Books on Tape.” Of course they are on CD or on my iPad.
My American Journey was a gift. I collect autographed books and this one was signed by General Powell.
At 617 pages it’s not a short read. It was funny to me that in the forward General Powell promises not to write “a ‘doorstopper’ of the kind I was warned about by one of my media friend.”
The doors at Powell’s house must be large indeed if this tome won’t hold them open. That’s not to say that I didn’t like the book. I did. I liked it a lot and was somewhat disappointed when I reached the end.
What I Liked
But first, the parts I liked. Powell is upfront about the fact that he wrote this book with Joseph E. Persico. Both names appear prominently on the cover. I don’t know how much of the tone was Persico and how much was Powell, but the voice is very natural sounding. I imagined sitting down for an afternoon and listening to Powell tell stories.
And the stories were fascinating. I learned what those “advisors” in Vietnam were doing. I thought it was a clever way of saying, “We have soldiers fighting, but we’d rather not acknowledge that.” Instead, Powell takes us through what an advisor did and why their role was critical. But, they were different than having our own soldiers fighting.
I’m a lover of history and follow politics as a spectator sport. Powell served three presidents, Reagan, Bush Sr and Clinton. It was fascinating to go inside and hear how some of the events that shaped our lives in the 80’s and 90’s transpired. His retelling of the Iran/Contra events were riveting even 30 years later.
General Powell was the first black man to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He worked his way up from an ROTC cadet to become a 4-star general. I have children in the Army and I have black children. Powell gave me an education about both that I don’t think I could have gotten any other way.
What I Didn’t
My American Journey suffered from three problems for me. First, while Powell tried to avoid the “. . .and then I went to lunch with” passages, often the narrative of the story was interrupted by a roll call. From a historical perspective these references might be important. And I can say from personal experience that friends love to see their names in print. Powell seems to have attempted to credit each person who was part of a memorable or momentous event. That’s a laudable goal, but makes for a choppy story at times.
The second issue I had with the book was that it was written while Powell was considering a run for president. While the general himself avoids any direct reference to his future political ambitions, his editors were not so circumspect. In the flyleaf they describe him as “the man the country would most like to draft as president.”
I was one of those people. But, because the book was written against a backdrop of a potential presidential bid, at times it comes across as more of a campaign flyer than a story of the most successful African-American to ever put on the uniform of the United States Army. Parts appear sanitized for general consumption and other parts seem written to highlight a particular “presidential” trait.
My final criticism of the book, and it really isn’t Colin Powell’s fault, was that it ended in the mid-1990’s. Obviously Powell never ran for president, but his story was so engaging and pulled me into his life so thoroughly that it made me curious what the ensuing 20 years have brought. And that’s hardly a criticism at all.
What It Means For You
Powell teaches a lot about leadership and decision making in his storytelling, even though that’s not the point of the book. If you are a student of modern American history, his perspective is refreshingly non-partisan. He served with equal devotion under a Democratic president as he did under Republican ones.
His insights on presidential decision making are extremely useful since he brings an outsider’s perspective. He often was the proverbial “fly on the wall” during some of the most important meetings of the last two decades of the 20th century.
I enjoyed My American Journey very much. I’m grateful to General Powell for his service to our country and grateful he wrote about it, so that I could vicariously tag along for the ride.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars (And yes, the pun is deliberate)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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The most popular post for 2014 is probably not a surprise. It was posted about 6 weeks ago and still managed to garner the most views for the year. Howard Tayler was gracious enough to not only proofread it for me but also signal boosted it.
Before I talk about Schlock Mercenary (again,) I wanted to wish all the readers of this blog a Happy New Year and thank you all sincerely for the past year. I’m continually amazed that people find value in what I have to say. I’m excited for 2015 and am grateful for your support.
Now, on to the top post.
One of the ways I come up with ideas for blog entries is that I tend to jot down lots of things. They are not exactly full blown ideas. They are just something I find interesting. I always found it interesting that my friend Howard left his job at Novell to pursue his hobby of cartooning. And yet, not too long after embracing his hobby as his job he started a new hobby.
It was one of those, “Huh, that’s interesting” idea. I jotted it down and filed it away. Then, I was reading the book Influencer and came across the idea of the Over Justification Hypothesis. Essentially it says that when you get paid to do something you used to do for fun, it takes the fun out of it. Yes, that’s an oversimplification, but it explains why Howard needed to find a new hobby after he quit his job to pursue his passion.
Here’s the #1 Post from the year 2014, Howard Needed A New Hobby.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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The second most popular blog post from 2014 was a follow up post to an earlier story called The Pedophile, The Comedian and The Englishman. I tell the sad tale of Scotty Lee a Salt Lake comic who tried unsuccessfully to hide his past.
After writing about Scotty, I assumed that was the end of the story. He was basically run off the internet and run out of Salt Lake by the other comedians.
Several months later I got an email from a reader.
Hey, did you know your friend Scotty Lee is back online?
The writer included a link to a story about a photographer, Chaz Ahlstrom who was stealing the work of other more talented photographers and passing it off as his own.
Yup, Scott Lee was back. And the photographers weren’t any happier about it than the comedians had been.
The second most popular blog entry from 2014 was, The Bad Penny.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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Back in February, I posted about one of my favorite topics, my friend Howard Tayler, creator of the award winning web comic Schlock Mercenary. I have to admit, I enjoy writing about Howard for a couple of reasons.
First, he has devoted fans and they love to read about him.
Second, he’s an inspiration, especially for IT geeks who have a creative side. Howard started as an IT Manager and later made the jump to full time cartooning. He’s an inspiration for many artists, musicians and those like me who are writers.
This particular post was special. It marked the 5000th Schlock Mercenary strip. Howard started on June 12, 2000 and last February 18th, he completed a 5K. In February 2015 I will upload the 500th post to this blog. It’s taken over two years. I only have another 20 years at that rate to match him.
Here’s the original post, Can You Be Funny? Everyday? For More Than 13 Years?
By the way, there’s another Howard Tayler post still to come in our year in review. Check back in the next couple of days to see if Howard finished 2nd and 3rd or took the top spot.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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It’s time to look back on which posts you thought were the most popular this year. Some posts from 2013 continue to have legs including How Many Of You Think Microsoft Is An Evil Company and The Pedophile The Comedian And The Englishman.
But, of the posts new to 2014, the fourth most popular was about an experience at Life a The Universe and Everything. Orson Scott Card was the guest of honor and arrived a day late. He then went long on his keynote address and the ushers tried to shut him down. Thats A Fight You Are Never Going To Win.
This column generated a long discussion on Facebook in the convention group with some people taking the side of the convention ushers and others taking the side of OSC.
I had to resist going a bit fanboy the whole time Scott was there. I never did get an autograph.
Heres the post. Thats A Fight You Are Never Going To Win.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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I didn’t like this book the first time I tried to read it. I didn’t like it the second time I tried to read it. I say “tried” because the first two times I couldn’t get through it. I got about 20 pages end and felt like I was still looking for the beginning.
This review is based on the third time I “read” it. And like the last couple reviews (Influencer, Primal Leadership) I listened to Seven Habits. I made it through and figured out why I struggled with it so much the first couple of times.
Here are the 7 Habits:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win-Win
Habit 5: Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen The Saw
First though, the stuff I liked.
I purchased the version of the book that Stephen Covey read. I’m happy I did. Much of the book is personal stories that Covey tells about his family and his kids. It would have been jarring, I think to hear someone saying, “I did this” and have it not be Stephen Covey saying it. Eventually, it felt more like he was simply telling old family stories, rather than reading his book.
Much of the material in the 7 Habits matched my own philosophy. For example, Covey explains that once basic needs are met the no longer make an effective motivator. I’ve written before about how Money is a Lousy Motivator. But, money is only a lousy motivator if you already have enough. I found very little in the 7 Habits that was new or that I disagreed with. And that added tremendously to the book. Covey offered a unique and new perspective on things I already believed.
Finally, I very much enjoyed the Quotes, quotes and more quotes. Covey tried to convey the universalness of the 7 Habits. That was greatly enhanced by the many quotes from other teachers, philosophers and business leaders. On more than one occasion, he quoted someone or something that I had already read. Again, it helped make the book much more relatable.
What I Didn’t
It took me listening for two and a half hours before I figured out why I struggled with the 7 Habits. That was the point at which Covey introduced the first habit. The entire book was about thirteen hours, so it was almost a quarter of the way through the book before we got to the topic of the book.
Covey talks about the difference between the right-brained non-linear thinker and the left-brained list-maker. And then he publishes a book that has a number in the title and doesn’t give you the list for dozens of pages. My left-brain was going like crazy trying to find the beginning of the list for the first couple of hours. He could have solved it, for me, anyway, by putting the list in the introduction and then launching into the background information.
The voice work was excellent with one exception. When he introduced Habit 5, his voice changed dramatically. I wondered if it was the same person. The voice was similar but vastly different. It was probably that at the end of one section he was tired and his voice was soar and at the beginning of the next section he was fresh. What ever it was, it was enough to throw me out of the book for about five minutes.
The only real criticism I had with the content, was toward the end of the book Covey attempts to pull it all together. As he’s doing that, he touches on other conflict resolution methods. And they don’t come off particularly well by comparison. He’s hugely dismissive of reflective listening, or really anything except his own methods. Having dealt with major conflict in my life and can tell you that sometimes you goal isn’t win-win. Sometimes your goal is to avoid lose-lose. As a result you work to keep yourself in the “civil discussion” zone. Reflective listening has been very helpful for me in these cases. It keeps us in the room until we can master our emotions and get into a position for win-win. The 7 Habits are very powerful, but they are not the only way to be effective. It was disappointing to hear Covey dismissing other methods. Earlier in the book he even points out that the enemy of the good is often the great. Don’t dismiss the good just because you think you have something great.
What It Means For You
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People will give you the tools you need to be effective. It does exactly what it says it will. Even if you only pick one or two habits to start on, following Covey’s advice will have an instant positive impact on your life.
Rating: 4 out of 5 starts
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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My daughter was having a conversation with her new husband about Christmas lists.
What are you doing?
Making a Christmas list.
What is a Christmas list?
It’s a list of gifts I would like to get for Christmas.
That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of.
As she said, a Christmas list is a list of gifts that you want. Our family does the same thing for birthdays. It’s a plan that works well and you should adopt it for work.
I don’t mean ask people you work with what they want for Christmas. I mean that you should have them make a work list. In fact there are several that people can make.
What Do You Want Out Of This Job?
Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly what your boss expects of you? To not have to guess what the last random email was about?
Ask.
If you don’t ask, don’t be surprised when you don’t get an answer. I talked about this in some length in Bring Me A Rock.
What Do You Need To Be Successful?
We are a very adaptive species. We figure out how to make do. And lots of employees are quite accomplished at speaking up when they need something. But, not all are. I’ve had jobs where I assumed there was no travel budget, for example. Turns out there was budget but no one typically used it.
In my current role, I asked for a office supplies when I first started. Turns out that office supplies were difficult to get. I ended up taking a bunch from home.
My son-in-law doesn’t understand Christmas lists at all. A Christmas list doesn’t mean you expect to get everything on your list. It’s simply a list of suggestions.
We also draw names in our family. My name might have been drawn by a 12 year old, a teenager or even my wife. My list reflects that. It includes things like a homemade apple pie. . . something that anyone could do, as well as a karaoke machine. . . something that my wife or an older kid might get me. It also includes a range of gifts in between. There are service gifts like a car wash, or homecooked meal, to accommodate kids who might have more time than money.
In addition to knowing that I will get something that I would want, Christmas lists ensure that I know how to shop for a 13 year old girl, or a 15 year old boy, or most importantly, my spouse.
Christmas lists are valuable, and are something you should consider for your employees.
Merry Christmas.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and one grandchild.
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