Pleasant Surprise

My first meeting at work was a one-on-one with Chris. (For those that don't know, that's time where you and your manager, or in this case my "skip-level manager," get together to talk about things like career. With Michael, I meet weekly.) We have one scheduled for a half-hour every three months. That's two whole hours a year! Hmm. Sounds a little light, now that I mention it.

Anyway, Chris was a few minutes late and I was thinking that's kind of, well, lame, considering that we only get two hours a year and five minutes is just over 4% of that time. Yes, I actually did the math in my head while I waited in the hallway, which is why I didn't see his email saying he'd be late.

Then he shows up, we sit down in his office, and he says, "Hey, have you had breakfast? How about we go to the diner, 'cause I'm really hungry." He drove, we stopped at a bank so he could get cash, then we had breakfast. He paid for mine and took the time to talk through the biggest issue I face these days in my current job. The half-hour ended up being a catered hour-and-a-half. So my attribution of "lame" was completely misplaced. What a pleasant surprise. Seriously.

What I've really learned is that I need to make sure not to do that kind of attribution or pre-judgment in the future, but let the aggravation only happen after I know the whole story and determine that aggravation is truly warranted. Then, deal with it like an adult, not a petulant child. Sound like a plan?

New Guitar

I've started up my guitar lessons again after a hiatus of over a year, and I'm very excited about it. In the first lesson, my instructor, Colt Valenti, started me on some techniques for blues guitar. I can tell the difference in my playing after only one lesson.

I've also bought a new guitar, a Schecter Diamond Series, CSH-1, pictured to the right. The manufacturers website has all the specifications. I already had a very basic Fender acoustic and a Fernades electric. I think it's a Fernandes Revolver. At least after a look at their website, that's what seems to match it closest. It is about 15 years old now, so the minor differences are probably just the evolution of the product. Mine is also a purple color that is apparently no longer available in the new ones.

What's compelling to me about this particular guitar includes price (only $600 on sale at Guitar Center, which makes it on the inexpensive side,) the hollow body with F-cuts, and the lack of a floating tremolo. My Fernandes has the floating tremolo, which means it also has a locking nut. That means that to make more than minor adjustments to the tuning, you have to use an Allen wrench to unlock the strings. Some of the music Colt has tried to teach me involves doing stuff like dropping the bass E string to a D, like when playing music by Soundgarden. That's a five minute operation with a floating tremolo and really cuts into lesson time.

Having a second guitar also means I can have one at home and one at my office. Having a guitar at the office may seem really strange, but by keeping my Fernandes there the last month or so, I've actually practiced more. Sometimes I have ten minutes between finishing a task and an upcoming meeting, and I practice my guitar during that time. I'll also sometimes play when I get to the office early or stay late. All these things happen enough that I was actually getting better even without lessons, but the progress was way too slow.

Lessons, however, are a necessity. If you're thinking of learning to play an instrument, take lessons! You'll waste enormous amount of time trying to figure it out yourself from books or CDs when an instructor-led lesson will accelerate the learning process 100 times.

Attack of the Yellowjackets

Today, my kids were playing outside the house (this is in Maryland) and managed to kick up a ruckus on the part of some yellowjackets. There was a lot of screaming and stinging and tiny things chasing much bigger things which ran away. Fleeing to the house brought some of the little critters inside, which induced more screaming and flailing about. Paramedics were called, but everyone seems okay.

As usual, Katerina took the worst of it, getting nailed something like ten times. Katerina seems always to be the one getting hurt. She's the one that managed to find out which slats in the porch railing were rotted through by falling through them to the concrete six feet below (lots of screaming that time, too, mostly by people other than Katerina.) Despite nothing more than scrapes that time, Katerina ended up with a broken arm after being pushed to the blacktop in school by a neighborhood boy (that liked her a lot and felt really bad about it afterwards.) She also got so excited about Christmas morning one year that she wouldn't eat and when Olympia and I arrived to announce it was time to open some presents, she passed out, scaring the heck out of everyone else (a bunch more screaming - there's a lot of that around her.)

She takes it well, though. When I called today, she answered the phone and said, "Fine," when I asked her how she was - never mentioning she'd been stung repeatedly. She also cried as much when the doctor took her cast off her arm as when it was broken. She said her cast had become her friend and didn't want to see it go. What a trooper!

I think they've figured out to stay away from the far back corner of the yard now.

How My Shoes Got Wet

OK, between comments and email, apparently people want to know how I got my shoes so wet last night. Here it goes:

I went to get some dinner fairly late at TGI Friday's in Kirkland. (I actually wanted chicken wings from Wing Dome, but got there just minutes too late.) In front of the restaurant is a fountain and around the fountain are a bunch of bronze statues of people. One is of a little kid, pointing, who's standing right on the edge of the fountain.

I was walking around the fountain and didn't notice the kid statue until I suddenly thought there was someone there. I spun around to see who had snuck up behind me and whacked my side on hand of the statue. That hurt a lot (I have a bruise today) and I jumped back - directly into the fountain.

As I waded my way out, a woman walking by was laughing at me, which was okay, because I thought it was pretty funny, too. I told her, "Did you see that? That statue pushed me in! What a jerk!"

Mess with Their Heads

I got my sneakers really wet last night, so I needed to wear different shoes today. I wore dress shoes. Since I was going to wear dress shoes and a long-sleeved shirt anyway, I went ahead and wore dressier pants, too, instead of my usual jeans.

That really messes with the heads of your managers. They have to be thinking, "Is he interviewing? Is he planning to leave?" I think it might even make them treat you just a bit better in the hopes that it will distract you from aspects of work that you find less than pleasant.

I also picked up the book "Difficult Conversations" today at Kevin's recommendation. It's subtitled, "How to Discuss What Matters Most." It occurs to me that even if I never read it or read it and learned nothing, just having it conspicuously on my desk could improve the tenor of conversations I have with co-workers because it at least looks like I'm trying to figure out how to work with them better.

I didn't set out to mess with their heads, but it's so easy I can't help but do it without trying.

At Work Today

Something overheard at work today: "You know, I come in before him and leave after him, and I'm not even working all that hard."

Book Title

I was talking with Elizabeth about the topic of rewards versus efforts, which is one of the topics I'm thinking to include in a slowly forming book concept. I mentioned to her that I was thinking to put this into a book and she asked what the title might be.

I don't know what it'll be, but I bet it'll follow the formula and be called something like "Thing: A long phrase describing the contents."

Better Attitude About Review

It took me much less time to get past what I always see as terrible news with my annual review this year. That's surprising, because I was very disappointed with my final score at first. But then, I realized that getting a score that translates as "exceeded expectations" instead of "greatly exceeded expectations" really isn't so bad, especially when I work at one of the top software companies (and arguably one of the top companies period) in the world.

I've also received bonuses this year that exceed the U.S. poverty line for a family of three beyond my base pay, and a larger family than that if you include stock awards. I also received a raise that exceeded the estimated inflation rate for 2004. What is there in that such that complaining about it makes sense?

My manager's feedback on the review boils down to, "Dude, you are the awesome, but you really should learn to play nicer with others even when they annoy you, heck, even if they deserve it." It would be so cool if he just included that as a synopsis. I'm going to ask him to do so.

That's what I'll work on this coming year. Even if I personally produce less, I'll focus on getting less stressed out and making sure that those around me are more successful. An interesting side effect is that if I'm asked to cancel my plans and work some weekend, I'll be able to say, "No, that will make me very cranky and I don't get along with my peers as well when I'm cranky. I think I need to limit stuff like that."

*Cough, cough*, Dad?

I just got off the phone with my dad. Just after I hung up, I coughed twice. These two events, talking with Dad and coughing, in such time proximity to one another reminds me of how as an adult, I now cough exactly like my dad does. So does my brother, Adam. In fact, I pointed this out to Adam once and he said, "Yeah, I've noticed, too. When I do cough, it's always, *cough, cough*, Dad? Is that you?"

Eerie. I guess we do all become our parents eventually, in so many ways.

Reviews

It is currently review time at Microsoft. We're actually at the tail end of that time because as of September 15th, if your manager hasn't given you your review, you'll find out what "your numbers" are anyway, as you'll get a paycheck that reflects the changes. The "numbers" consists of a review score, a stock award, a raise, a bonus, and perhaps a promotion. Review scores run from 2.5 to 5.0: 2.5 if you're about to be fired, 3.0 if you are considered a weak performer (although there are exceptions, like for people who just joined a team and despite HR discouragement of such a policy often get a 3.0,) 3.5 for reasonable good performance, 4.0 for great performance, and 4.5 or 5.0 if you had great performance and get lucky (or something.)

My group is running late. No one on my team knows their numbers yet, and that's kind of exasperating because we're two months into the next review cycle and don't have a clear idea of the rewards for the past review cycle. I should get mine tomorrow, though, and that will be at least one huge relief because I really don't need additional areas of uncertainty in my life right now - I have more than enough of those already.

Reviews also include a sort of essay by your manager about your performance was over the year. This may or may not correspond to the actual review score since usually your manager doesn't have any direct control over the score you get. For example, my last review reads like a 4.0 review, but I actually received a 3.5. In my experience, reviews, even good ones like my "tracking to 4.0" review mid-year (where some groups give a "tracking to" score that may or may not mean anything during the actual yearly review) are basically demoralizing. Such reviews usually include a basic statement of the good things you did, without going very deep on the subject, followed by a detailed and excruciating picking apart of what could have gone better. As such, I generally dislike the review process, despite getting continually better reviews since I started at Microsoft.

If I were to go back to my small business and have employees again, this is not how I would handle reviews. I would fall back on Peter Drucker's suggestions to keep reviews positive and save the negative stuff for coaching sessions along the way. Peter Drucker is one of the world's foremost experts on management and I trust his opinions on things of this nature.

One last thing I'll add is something Trevor said to me and others about writing reviews, gleaned from some study he's done on writing good reviews, something that makes darn good sense: "When writing a review, you should try to include words like 'expectations.' You should avoid using words like 'idiot.'"