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merry christmas!
Dec. 25th, 2023 12:52 pmlast christmas I was still working in customer service. we never had the holidays off, but I'm kind of nostalgic about it now. we'd send around a sheet before thanksgiving and everybody would fill in what days they could take and could not take. there was something comforting about being one of the few people on the phones on say, christmas eve, or new years eve. in fact I almost always took new years eve because it's really nothing of a holiday to me. we did shut down on christmas DAY and had an on-call-only person for big crisis, but they usually weren't disturbed too often.
anyway, there's something nice about telling everyone, "you all take off, I've got this." and being one of a few people holding it all down on a holiday. you know that you will get a day off, you'll be covered, it's just not *that* day and it's alright.
this depends on a team that will cover for you when you DO take your time away. but we were set up for that. my boss had great respect for vacations and days off. "you're no use to anybody if you're burnt out," he'd say. like me, he also despised "single points of failure"... which is an aviation term from safety analysis processes, but it applies organizationally too. People DO get burnt out. or the retire, switch jobs, win the lottery and tell us all to stick it, or heaven forbid there is a tragic accident but I do not speak about that. I'd always use the lottery example for my team. "Some day you could win the lottery and run from this place, and then we'd have to function without you. So WRITE YOUR STUFF DOWN and teach the new guy about that component you're troubleshooting, please? We've failed as an organization if it all depends on YOU."
as far as we were concerned, vacations were a litmus test for that.
which brings me to a movie I watched last night, "It's A Wonderful Life". Marc had never seen it! I've seen it a million times, I thought everyone had? But it hits differently for me now as a manager. My gosh the main character resents EVERYTHING! His town, his family, his life... but he's got people working for him at that savings and loan! NOBODY is competent enough to hold it down so he can travel a little? Of course, he was too busy running the place to go to college, maybe that's the problem, a little leadership coaching would have gone a long way. george's father couldn't teach anybody else to run that place, so nobody could do it except his son who clearly didn't want it? and then it takes heroes and fundraising to save him from imprisonment at the end, but there's no root cause corrective action to figure out how they lost $8,000? inflation calculator... that's $100,000 today!
well I'm glad Clarence got his wings but I hope he didn't leave without an organizational intervention at the building and loan. probably wouldn't make for a heartwarming christmas tale, but everyone would be a lot better off.
anyway, there's something nice about telling everyone, "you all take off, I've got this." and being one of a few people holding it all down on a holiday. you know that you will get a day off, you'll be covered, it's just not *that* day and it's alright.
this depends on a team that will cover for you when you DO take your time away. but we were set up for that. my boss had great respect for vacations and days off. "you're no use to anybody if you're burnt out," he'd say. like me, he also despised "single points of failure"... which is an aviation term from safety analysis processes, but it applies organizationally too. People DO get burnt out. or the retire, switch jobs, win the lottery and tell us all to stick it, or heaven forbid there is a tragic accident but I do not speak about that. I'd always use the lottery example for my team. "Some day you could win the lottery and run from this place, and then we'd have to function without you. So WRITE YOUR STUFF DOWN and teach the new guy about that component you're troubleshooting, please? We've failed as an organization if it all depends on YOU."
as far as we were concerned, vacations were a litmus test for that.
which brings me to a movie I watched last night, "It's A Wonderful Life". Marc had never seen it! I've seen it a million times, I thought everyone had? But it hits differently for me now as a manager. My gosh the main character resents EVERYTHING! His town, his family, his life... but he's got people working for him at that savings and loan! NOBODY is competent enough to hold it down so he can travel a little? Of course, he was too busy running the place to go to college, maybe that's the problem, a little leadership coaching would have gone a long way. george's father couldn't teach anybody else to run that place, so nobody could do it except his son who clearly didn't want it? and then it takes heroes and fundraising to save him from imprisonment at the end, but there's no root cause corrective action to figure out how they lost $8,000? inflation calculator... that's $100,000 today!
well I'm glad Clarence got his wings but I hope he didn't leave without an organizational intervention at the building and loan. probably wouldn't make for a heartwarming christmas tale, but everyone would be a lot better off.
