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Welcome back and if you came by to make a comment some of my comments get moderated but I'll get it moderated within a day unless I'm on vacation.
I've got a new plugin that enables you to subscribe to comments to see if anybody comments on your comment. You'd hate for THEM to have the last word wouldn't you? I said to my parents once that if I won the lottery I would quit work and become a professional student and attend University. Talking to Rosa Say over on Talking Story about learning she talked about her love of learning and how that had led to the creation of her community “Joyful Jubilant Learning.” The conversation went on to possibilities of a future book she may be writing or starting… not sure if it’s a follow up to her Managing With Aloha or if it will be something different or along the same vein but for a different audience yet… it’s still too soon to tell.
The excitement is palpable though and the possibilities whip about like leaves in a gale.
Here’s the thing… what am I doing? Why do I not have that level of excitement and possibilities for myself and for what I’m doing? That seems like I’m doing something wrong here. Where’s my passion for what I’m doing? (Other than running and that’s sort of stalled right now because a) I’m ill and b) the treadmill that I have access to is nick-named “shin-killer.”)
So… my goal between now and Valentine’s Day is to find something I’m passionate about and start it. (Other than running… my next race is soon… 2/16/2010 (Fat Tuesday! WOOT!) I’ll keep you posted.
It may be online classes. I’ve thought about that recently and decided it may be a great option for someone who travels as much as I do.
It may be a sports car and a girlfriend half my age… OK. That’s not actually very likely come to think of it.
So… no pressure… what am I going to do with myself that I’m as excited about as I am about what other people are doing? Seems like I’m wasting the only life I have if I’m not excited about my own life as often as possible.
So, I’m an area manager with eleven stores that report to me. I’m responsible for 20% of the stores in the company I work for and how’d I get here? Really?
 Well, I was a manager of a store, not a very big store really. The store was frequently in the bottom 3 of the company when I took over and it worked it’s way up to bottom 4. Yeah. I know… glorious. But in that time I increased sales by quite a bit in the store and decreased turn-over. I was a good manager. I know that. I didn’t steal. I didn’t screw up too terribly ever, and my employees didn’t hate me any more than any other manager’s employees hate them when scheduling overlaps a holiday and it’s unavoidable that someone has to work it.
Then, one day the person over me transferred away. They didn’t promote up, they transferred. Nobody else would say “yes.” So… I wound up promoted. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. I was suddenly responsible for stores that did as much in a weekend as I had previously done in a week. I had managers working FOR me that had twice the experience I had and had turned down the job I’d accepted.
I’d like to imply that my bosses saw some secret spark in me that proved to them I’d be great for my job as an area manager but I sincerely believe what they saw was a good manager who would say “yes.” Well, they were right. I was a good store manager. I still think I’m a better store manager than I am an area manager and I want to go back to store manager so bad. I’ve asked for it a lot and been turned down for it.
I see it a lot in companies where we promote people away from where they were great to a place where they’re just good. Being good as a manager of a single location isn’t the same as being great as a manager of many locations at all.
When we area managers look around and wonder where the great store managers have gone we need only look around… we’ve promoted them out of where they were great to where they’re “good.” If we were to value store managers more we’d have an easier job of things as area managers. But we tend to not pay the store managers enough… and we act like store manager is a stepping stone to where the REAL money is… and it’s not the way things should be.
I would love to give a third of my pay to half my good managers because they work harder, longer, and do a better job of things than I do… they don’t need me and I’d be a fool to send them up to an area manager position because they’re so good where they are now… I wish store managers were valued more… not just because I want to be one again either. The part of my job I work hardest at now as an area manager isn’t the paperwork, checklists, or mechanics of the job it’s trying to make sure the managers under me have all the tools they need to more effectively do their job. I see my job now as more of a way to help the people under me be more effective than for me to top-down them into the ground like a hammer driving a nail.
To all you store managers out there reading this. You’re doing a great job! I hope your hard work is recognized by your boss. I’ve had your job and I loved it and miss it. If you do it and love it never leave it… promoting up for more money isn’t the right reason to promote up in my opinion. I did it and I’d trade with you in a minute. I miss the store manager job. I miss the customers. I miss the store.
In the past fifteen years I’ve trained a LOT of employees. One of my biggest pet peeves has always been people who stand there while I’m training them and just shut down, lose their eyes and say “I can’t do this.”
 It makes me want to scream. I will say something a hundred different ways to get someone who is trying to figure it out. But when they stand there and won’t listen or try… when they just stand there with clenched fists screaming “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!”
It makes me want to yell. Seriously. It’s so hard to work around that. I can work through them not having a skill set. I can’t work around more negative talk than positive or trying. You know that whole lead a horse to water but can’t hold his head under it thing? Yeah… it’s like that.
There’s something I need to mention though.
I do it too.
My room mate wanted me to ride motorcycles with him when we lived in Memphis but my first shot at riding motorcycles didn’t exactly go all that great really. I was going to take a class but I was scared I’d either fall and hurt myself, or embarrass myself… even with the class. He would say how fun riding was and I’d flash back to how scared I was of screwing up and lock up.
We were driving to a movie and he asked again when I was going to take the motorcycle riding coarse and I started yelling at him about how everything was easy for him. He’d been riding his whole life and I’d never done it before… “HE JUST DIDN’T UNDERSTAND!!!” He stopped nagging me about the class and a month later got it for me for my birthday. I could go or not but he didn’t talk about it any more. He found where and when and paid for it. He didn’t go watch. I did it and you know what? I love riding now.
I was scared to do something new and I was scared I’d be embarrassed in front of people. It helped that he wasn’t there to watch me learn how. I can totally understand people not wanting to be embarrassed in front of people they know. I try so hard to help encourage people when they’re wearing the shoes I was wearing that day… the day I was the one yelling “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” I’ve been there. I’ve been the irrational one insisting that they didn’t get it.
I don’t know why I do it… I wish I could say “DID” it but I’m told I’m not totally cured of it yet. On the plus side if I start stone-walling now my roommate wails at me, quite dramatically, “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!” That tends to help jerk me out of my stone-walling.
If any of you have tips on how to turn can’t into can I’d live to hear them and I promise… I DO UNDERSTAND!
I’ve been running a lot lately. I started running and training using the Couch to 5k training method back on Sept. 12, 2009. Up until that point I’d never really run all that much.
Work wasn’t worth a damn. It was a job but honestly, with the computer system as busted as it was (and when your automated re-order system doesn’t work and you’re in retail things go downhill fast), it wasn’t a career any more. It was a way to get paid for the first long time in years. Yes. There had been periods of ennui before, but this was new and appeared to be chronic.
I started running to run. I wasn’t consciously running away from work. I wasn’t running towards anything. I was just running. Today while I was running at the end of my mini-vacation I was thinking about going back to work. I got more tense with every step. I have a headache right now. I’m pretty sure it’s a tension headache about returning to work.
Honestly tomorrow I go back to work and I’d rather run. Not because  of the work but because of the weather. This is part of my job frustration this winter. I have to travel, by car, for work and I travel a LOT. Tomorrow I’m supposed to drive to Omaha… the weather forecast is for an ice-storm that lasts at least one day and maybe two.
It’s the first day back from vacation and I have to go to work. I get that… the problem is that I’m not going to be able to do the travelling I need to do and that will stress me. It will also stress my boss and that will stress me. Now, the obvious option is I telecommute. I can totally do my job from home a day or two safely and efficiently… and my boss will accuse me of ditching work and just wanting to stay home. That part stresses me too.
So. I get to go back to work. I’m tired of this winter. It’s an additional stress on top of an already stressful year. I’m just not in the mood. Winter has to get the heck out of here. It’s starting to stress me out.
Oh, and the running? It’s still going really well. I need to train FOR something and I haven’t nailed that down yet but I’m still going. No standing still.
Let that long tail wag! It started with TechCrunch then went to TalkingStory and then here. I’m pretty far out there so if you haven’t seen this topic covered already I’d be surprised. I’d also recommend you go read the source material that inspired this one.
I’ll break it down into Use Daily, Use Weekly, and Mean to Use But Forget. I almost included a “Can’t imagine a use for” or “Never use” but that just seemed mean. I’m going to include things I use for work and personally.
Daily:
- Android Phone – I switched from Blackberry to Android the day it came out for Verizon and was in love immediately. Personally and professionally it’s changed my work flow completely. The syncing with the Googleverse made using it immediately easy and seamless on and offline. I couldn’t imagine using a different phone. Just like TechCrunch‘ commented on it’s seamless integration with Google Voice was a huge plus. The transcription of voicemails to text messages and e-mails, even when not perfect, and it rarely is, is a huge time saver. Aiming it at whatever phone number I want to aim it at is a huge plus as well.
- Gmail – I really don’t understand how anybody would use anything other than Gmail for their mail. I use it to grab my work e-mail from the work servers and still act as if it were coming from our work domain when I send mail. My bosses don’t know I’m not using their godaddy web-interface, they just know that I can find any e-mail they’ve ever sent me in seconds. They believe I’m very organized. I just know how incredibly useful the search function is on Gmail. The huge mailbox size is also a huge help. While my work mailbox could fill up (It doesn’t due to Gmail gobbling the e-mail out of it) my Gmail box doesn’t. Co-workers get full e-mail boxes. I don’t.
 Kindle – Technically a kindle2, but that’s splitting hairs. The e-book reader from amazon has changed the way I read in the less than a year that I’ve had it. For one thing I read a lot more often now and a bigger variety of books. Now that they’ve added PDF support to it I have an even larger selection of reading material to choose from. I can carry enough books for months of reading in my backpack on a work trip. I can get more books while I’m in my hotel room without having to get out of bed. I can bookmark, annotate, search, highlight, and mark-up a book from within the kindle and nobody accuses me of tearing up a book. - iPod nano (and itunes)
 – I know I finally sold out completely and don’t just refer to it as an mp3 player. The features of the iPod and itunes together, and it’s the magic of the two of them together that I love mind you. One of the things I like personally about the iPod is that it works with the Nike+ site and the iPod doo-dad that helps me with my running. No other mp3 player does that for me. Audiobooks, audible.com, and podcasts are what I primarily use the iPod for. I have music on it, but I’m mostly a spoken word person and itunes is excellent at grabbing my podcasts and managing them for me on the iPod.
- Dropbox – This one is surprising to me when everybody doesn’t use it. It’s a small program that sits in my taskbar and syncs some folders I aim it at with a site on the web. I can then choose to make those folders on the site public, private, or share them with only certain people. The default is to make them private. I recently went from a Macbook Pro to a PC Laptop and it was the easiest transition I’ve ever made. I had all my work stuff in a folder in Dropbox already (called “Workrap” respectfully enough lol.) Now, imagine if you have multiple computers… you install Dropbox on all of them, log onto them with the same account and suddenly your “Workrap” folder is on all your computers and if you update a file at work it’s automatically updated on your home computer and on your laptop as soon as they get on the internet. If you update it while you’re offline, when you get online it’ll sync up just fine. Seriously changed my workflow. Using another person’s computer? Log onto dropbox online without installing anything and get the file you want to show them and you’re set.
- Evernote – My brain. I’m not exaggerating. I store everything on Evernote. It’s similar to Dropbox in that it’s “in the cloud” and I can keep things synced across multiple computers and my phone. I store all my information in there. Online, offline, on my phone. If I need to find Mom’s Gumbo recipe and I’m in the grocery store I fire up Evernote on my phone and grab it. If I’m on my laptop and someone calls I automatically open Evernote as my capture device.
- OpenOffice.org – I haven’t paid for Microsoft Office since the early 90s when I bought Works. I’ve used the free open source alternative for Word, Calc, and Presentations. I love OpenOffice, couldn’t be without it.
- Laptop – I use it every day but I don’t love it. I loved my Macbook Pro but it wasn’t working out for me at work. I found myself running in parallels all the time for stuff so I’m back to Windows. Now, I prefer Windows 7 to Vista, but it’s hard to come back to a PC after being a Mac user.
Weekly:
- Google Docs – I should use this one more than I do. I use it weekly to save work documents that I get e-mailed to me by my boss. I open them with Google Docs to make sure there’s a copy out there in the cloud as well. Since I’ve started using Dropbox I’ve used Google Docs less and less. I use it primarily when I’m on the net tracking something a lot and don’t want to wait for OpenOffice to open up. I track my fitness stuff on Google Docs but other than that and the one work document that’s about all I use it for.
- Wordpress & Blogger – I’d like to say I use these two blogging platforms more often than weekly, but I’ve been a little slow lately. I’m getting better, but I love my blogging and both platforms offer something that makes me keep them both.
- Digital Camera – I love my Canon Powershot. It’s not the biggest, fastest, most megapixels thing out there but it fits in my pocket and allows me to get the shots some of my friends with fancier cameras can’t or don’t get because their camera takes too long to prep for the shot. I enjoy taking pictures, and while I took fewer this year than previous years it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it as much as it was because I wasn’t as happy. Work was/is affecting my quality of life and one of the measures of how happy I am is how many pictures I take. The quiet months are unhappy months. I know, more than you wanted to know, but it’s an interesting observation nonetheless.
Mean to Use But Forget:
- Pandora – I love this music streaming service but I always forget it. Then I’ll remember it for a few days and then it falls off the radar again for another couple months.
- Stanza – I’ve gotten so hopped up on using the kindle that I really like reading e-books now but sometimes I have my laptop and not my kindle and I sort of stare at the wall wondering what to do next. It’s only later that I remember I have Stanza on my laptop which will allow me to read many e-book formats. (It also converts between formats so I can get some things on the kindle that I couldn’t before.)
- Windows Widgets – I keep meaning to turn them back on but I forget. Then I remember and turn them on for a while and then turn them back off. I want to like them but can’t find it in me to stick with them. I’ll try them every month or so.
So, what technology do you use to make your job/life easier.
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