seen those new hammer drills?
Wound up in a Dockers brand meeting last week while eating box lunch from Specialties at the installation site. Took some notes. They were gearing up for a cross functional walkthrough and then splitting up into regional work sessions. Wrapping it up with hindsight meetings to assess which stretch goals were met and which were not, and why.
Did you make it through the meeting without laughing? Sounds like all they were missing is TPS reports.
Comment by Lyle_S — August 12, 2009 @ 5:52 pm
What’s a TPS report? I don’t laugh too much, every industry has that kind of talk. More fascinated.
Comment by Rolston — August 13, 2009 @ 12:23 pm
Yeah but that sounds like some straight up bullshit. Sounds like all meetings and no actual work product.
TPS report is from Office Space movie. I found that movie to be very funny. You may find it fascinating.
Comment by Lyle_s — August 13, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
That was a half hour meeting’s catchwords condensed into two sentences! I saw Office Space for the first time about a month ago. I’d never bothered with it because it didn’t seem to have anything to do with my world, but so many people talk about it, I finally watched it. I was shocked to see it’s message was basically, “Go work construction”. In the end it was a movie that validated my life choice. So when I hate getting up and going to work and all the crap working with your hands involves, I can think about OS and push on.
Comment by Rolston — August 13, 2009 @ 1:21 pm
I enjoy the stability of working in an office. From the other kinds of work that I’ve done, it seems that each workplace has it’s own jargon and “escape” from the hell of whatever work seems it’s opposite. That said, you might enjoy this article…http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?scp=2&sq=honda%20motorcycle%20masters%20degree&st=cse
Comment by n.d.p. — August 13, 2009 @ 11:00 pm
i enjoy the stability of working in an office as a fantasy.
Comment by don lawn — August 14, 2009 @ 7:09 am
wearing an occasional tie or carrying a briefcase to do a move or paint a playhouse is as close as i can get.
drives my wife to exhaustion sometimes, but i’m not qualified for that kind of work. what can i do? she married a blue collar tie wearer.
Comment by don lawn — August 14, 2009 @ 7:14 am
That was a great article. The point about managers learning to not speak directly and not be fully behind an idea because they have no control of wether it gets axed or reconfigured really stands out as the difference between the two worlds for me. If there’s one thing irritating about corporate life is that people can’t come clean. On a construction site you often get the opposite, people who’ve never learned any diplomacy or self restraint spouting off before they fully understand the whole situation. Coming into corporate meetings I’ve realized to some degree it’s nice that people understand the other person doesn’t want to hear, “That idea is stupid,” but it takes a while to remember I have to decode the praise that may just be criticism.
Comment by Rolston — August 14, 2009 @ 10:40 am