It's That Simple

Mr. Eludius has been stressing at work at lot lately. Not only has the workload increased significantly, which normally in a bad economy would be a good thing, but I've also been put in charge of a project run under the Lean Agile methodology, which I am not that familiar.

Things here at American Amalgamated Corrugated Conglomerates of America are tight, just like everywhere else. In fact, there's been a lot of talk of laying off some amalgamaters, some corrugaters, and even some conglomerators. Yes, it's that bad.

My one project to work on the dehumidifier or Corrugator #2 was to last throughout the year. I'm now being told that it has to be done by May. Additionally, the budget for the amalgamating department was cut by $1 million last week. No one is supposed to know about it, but I heard it from everyone.

With these uncertain economic times, you'd think that everyone would be buckling down trying to stay busy. That is not always the case. I still see engineers surfing the Internet, spending lots of time on Corrugatorbook.com, that social networking website for cardboard box engineers.

Anyway, I had this big 2 hour meeting yesterday that was to gather steps needed to complete each step of this new dehumidifying process. I gathered about 10 analysts, developers, and project leads to go through every step of the process.

I was very nervous about this meeting because I don't know many of them and I am now reporting to a new supervisor, one which I have little or no rapport. On Wednesday my wife asked me what was wrong. She said I looked anxious and worried. I said that I was anxious about the meeting because I felt like I had to give a good impression and I was not very comfortable with the material. You see - I normally work with humidifiers, not dehumidifiers. This totally threw me off of my game. After telling her this, my 9-year old daughters says, "Papa, if you can coach a soccer game you can coach a meeting."

How profound is that? Let's keep everything in perspective. I knew little about soccer, didn't know the players, coaches, and parents, yet I was able to bring them all together, coach the soccer games, and have a good time.

So the lesson from the 4th grader is - "Don't perceive life as being that complicated. Put it into simpler terms and it will be okay." I thought about this throughout the day leading up to the meeting, thought about it during the meeting, and I got through it just fine. I was even told by the project lead that I did a really good job.

When I got home I thanked my daughter for making my meeting so much easier.