1.25 down and other news!

What a whirlwind of a day! I have all of these ideas to write about, which are all unrelated, yet helpful in their own way. Let me get started and see where this goes...

I attended the IS Manager's Meeting this morning to facilitate a workshop on motivating employees, with the end goal of actual agreed upon ideas to implement... yeah that went down hill! It's always fun when you plan your discussion with the key person who isn't going to be there, and have to rely on that key person informing everyone else what's happening. One person was just supposed to do a 5-10 minute recap of the employee recognition program, and he did 20 minutes trying to gain feedback and ask for ideas - and then shooting them down of why they wouldn't work. Hello - that's the whole reason I was there! To get ideas and lead the discussion!

I recovered and went on to share my interesting stats on what employees want from their jobs. There was a study conducted in the 1940s, 80s, and again in the 90s which all had the same findings - what employees want and what managers think employees want are two different things. The top 3 motivators for employees are what managers ranked as the bottom 3. This study intrigues me, because there is a large amount of buzz around the upcoming generational workforce and their needs, and the baby-boomers retiring. But, it looks like the 1940s worker and the 1990s worker want the same thing - to be valued and appreciated personally not generically.

I got back to the office to jump right into the changes for our upcoming catalog. This is not my project, but the project lead is on vacation, so I'm taking over the final editing process to ensure it gets completed on schedule. I usually have a lot of patience, but not for this. See, in my other life I was an eLearning instructional designer, so I spent a lot of time with SMEs designing online training. We would communicate via email/person to make changes to the modules. So, as I would edit, and delete a word, or move a paragraph, or whatever else, I'd automatically fix the "space" that was left over after the correction. For some reason our marketing department doesn't get this concept. They'll remove a whole sentence, and then leave a gaping hole in the middle of a paragraph - and send it to us as corrected. Ummmm... yeah....

The top of my desk was becoming scary so I just did a purge. I'm not a hippy tree hugger, but it still hurts me to see all of this paper that we print out, when we can just keep them electronically when needed. And to top it off, we have recycle boxes all over the building, but we are only allowed to use them for confidential items - I don't follow the logic on that either... but something about having to pay someone to come get them... I don't know.. I just sneak them in there anyway! hehe

MG, my coworker, gave me two articles from Oprah magazine yesterday that were really interesting. I apparently reminded her of the one young lady in the story who just said "yes" to change. The article was about a woman who was making a career for herself in acting, but someone caught her doing a happy dance and asked if she ever wanted to dance. She said "yes", and the next thing she knew, she's working with one of the best dance producers and they are working on a production that she will be in and traveling all over the world. All it takes is a willingness to try and reach for it!

The other article was about "self-talk" and how a lot of people spend a lot of time talking about what they want, but never doing anything about actually getting it. It reminded me of the exercise that I did with my career coach a few months back on identifying things that are standing in the way - tolerations - of being successful. Until those tolerations are cleared up, they'll just keep sopping our energy; which doesn't allow us to focus on what we really want.

In health related news, I did the weigh-in today and lost an additional 1.25 lbs - for a total of 13.25! WOOT! I've been trying to bust my ass to break my biking record and get over the barrier of 16.21 miles in 45 mins. I think I'm so worried about pacing myself to not waste my energy that I lose some precious mileage during the early stages of the time. I will do this! The people at the gym think I'm nuts when I start cheering for myself - but sometimes I just have to be my own cheerleader!

Well, it's 3pm and I haven't had lunch yet.... but I'm not really hungry. I just got involved with doing so much back at the office that it seems a waste to go out now. I had a handful of almonds, so they are appearing to hold me over to dinner at the bowling alley. Hopefully my game tonight is something to write about!