10 Thoughts/Questions about Stand-up meetings

Recently I’ve been invited to a regular series of stand-up meetings which I assume is another American corporate culture thing. Having never been to one of these before I’m a little curious as to what they are all about. Here are my thoughts and questions:

1. I assume that the reason that they’re called stand-up meetings is because people stay stood-up for the whole time and it’s not a meeting to practice stand-up comedy.
2. What is the average time a stand-up meeting should run for?
3. Is this not a form of discrimination to less able-bodied people and do they have to display their disabled badge to be exempted?
4. If everyone is stood up how does the minute-taker take notes – clipboard?
5. What is the punishment for anyone who sits down in a stand-up meeting?
6. If its a conference call meeting are people at either end of the call expected to stand? How do you know if they are or not anyway?
7. Do you need a conference room for a stand-up meeting or can you do it anywhere?
8. What is the standing layout style horseshoe, theatre, round table etc.
9. Is leaning against a wall allowed or do you have to stand-up fully?
10. 10. Does anyone ever threaten to sit-down in a stand-up meeting in protest at something they disagree with?

I’m so intrigued by this kind of meeting I’m going to try it out with my colleagues and see what happens.

Have you experienced these? Tell us about it.

Are you informed or over-informed?

I had to get this down in a post as its something that’s been on my mind the last few weeks. As I read through things posted by people who I’m following on twitter, google+, blogs etc I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of information coming my way. Now I’m a bit of an information junkie and have varied interests so for me to say that it really means something.

There is just so much stuff being shared around and it’s all about stuff that we’re told we need to know, some stuff we didn’t know we didn’t know, and some stuff we don’t even know if we need it or not. But is this a good thing or are we suffering from information overload? Should we be thankful to all of those people who are taking the time to make this information available to us? Or should we be looking to cut through all the noise and focus on a few trusted sources to provide us the information we need?

How do YOU determine what information you consume and don’t consume? If you are a content provider then what are you looking to achieve from sharing the information that you provide?

I don’t have the answers to these – I’m just trying to find the right balance between being informed and being over-informed.

10 Life Lessons from being trapped in the snow

After a long time I finally made it to the Regency Club for some nice food and chat with two of my cousins. While we were there it continued to snow outside which looked harmless but little did I realise the impact it was going to have on my journey home.

We parted ways and I tried to get my car out of the nearby car park and found I couldn’t reverse it out from the spot I was in.  I phoned by two cousins who luckily hadn’t got very far and they came to help. They put salt down near my tires and cleared some of the path in front of me and eventually I got some momentum going and I was off.

Things were fine until I reached my first hill and initially the sheer momentum was getting me up but I had to stop because there was a car ahead that was blocking the road and that was it for me – I was stuck! My tires just kept spinning and I just couldn’t get a grip to move forward. A guy with a shovel stopped to ask if I was ok and needed help and he cleared some snow from beneath my tires to allow me to get moving again but it didn’t help me much and he had to go.  Someone else tried to push my car but this didn’t help either and he left too.

After a long time of trying I decided maybe this route was not right for my car and I figured out an alternative which didn’t have too many steep hills to climb and it worked – hurrah!!  Before I knew it I well on my way towards the motorway.  But then I got hit with another problem - the A41 leading to the motorway entrance was full of stationary traffic so I had to slowly make my way forward with the rest of the traffic and I was moving along nicely so wasn’t too worried. A gritting lorry came past and it was one of those that cleared the snow in front of it as it moved which was a welcome relief to see but as it passed the snow it cleared got pushed under my tires and BAM I was stuck again. OH CRAP!!  Great now not only was I stuck but there were people behind me who were now stuck because of me!

A bit of backward and forward movements got me going again much to my relief (and likely the relief of the cars behind me) but then as I reached the entrance to the motorway I had a dilemma.  Should I join the motorway or stay on the A41? Although I figured the motorway would be a clearer route I was worried about the slip road since it had a steep slope whereas the A41 had modest slopes so I stayed on the A41 but once again I got caught behind a very slow moving car in front of me and the momentum I had moving forward stopped and then thinking that I’d got over the worse of my journey I now got really stuck when I had to stop. I couldn’t even move the car forward or backward like I had done before.  NOW WHAT??

Other cars would pass me by and none stopped to help – why would they since they were trying to get home themselves.   I spotted gritter truck about to come out of a side road – it looked like they’d stopped and were looking in my direction and could see I was stuck. YES!! They will come to help me and get me on my way right???? WRONG! They turned in the other direction and off they went. Fair enough – I thought – they need to get roads gritted so they can’t stop to help stranded cars all night.

Ahaaaaaa! I saw police car coming in the opposite direction. Now they will definitely stop to help me – they are the police and I’m the only car there and I have my hazard lights on and after all I pay my taxes so they owe me!!  They didn’t stop and just drove on by. Now I was really pissed off and for the first time in the journey I thought I was truly stranded.  I got out and tried to push the car myself – desperate to try anything even though in my mind I knew that I alone wasn’t going to get the car moving like that but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Frustrated and decided to stop and do nothing to calm down a little. Strange how you become philosophical in those situations and the idea for this blog post was born in my mind at that point.

I mustered up the conviction that I was not going to be beaten by this and I will get home. I reversed the car a little, then forward a bit, back a bit more and forward again. Eventually I hit a patch of road where again I was able to get a grip and I was off again.  FANFUCKINGTASTIC!!!

This time I got all the way home without getting stuck anywhere else thank God. Actually that’s not entirely true – I tried to get the car into my driveway but couldn’t because of the snow so by that time I’d had enough and left the car on the outside the neighbour’s house. The next day I cleared a path in front of my car and finished off my journey and got the car onto the drive-way.

So what are the life lessons from this experience? I realised that my journey epitomised life in general:

1. At the start you need people, usually your parents, to get you on your way. They clear the path for you to get going in life and their wish is for you to be successful.

2. In your early years you have so much confidence and you feel you can do anything and take on any challenge and succeed even though you’ve never actually taken on any yet. When you reach your first real challenge you come to realise that maybe it’s not as easy as you thought and you may need to choose a different path – one that is right for you.

3. Along the way you may be impacted by other people that disrupt things you on your life journey. Never mind – you just take the hit and don’t let it stop you from continuing.

4. You will at many stages of your life have to make a decision on the way forward for you. They may not always be obvious choices and so you need to weigh up the pros and cons and choose what the right choice is for you.

5. Whichever choice you make give it your best shot. Even if it turns out not to be the right choice deal with the challenges that you have to face and learn from them.

6. Don’t expect others to help you on your journey. Everyone, like you, is following their own path and don’t really have the time or the inclination to help others. Be self-sufficient as much as you can and be grateful to those people who do have the kindness to help.

7. Sometimes you need to just stop. Take a break – think and let your creativity flow. By constantly being in motion you may be just spinning your wheels and getting nowhere and a break can help you refocus your energies.

8. Never give up. Have the determination to succeed and set yourself goals that you want to achieve and then go after them.

9. Build on the momentum once you get going. Getting started is often the hardest part of doing anything but once you get going you will make progress because the momentum will carry you.

10. Be patient. You’re not going to always going to reach where you want in the way or in the time you’d like. You may need to continue to make progress towards your goals and even if you don’t succeed straight you must persevere. You may not get there today but you’ll get there eventually.

 

Breaking things down into manageable pieces

Reblogged from More than 140 chars:

Time and time again I am reminded of this basic principle that when you want to accomplish something you’ll have more chance of success if you break it down into manageable pieces. Today I was given another reminder in an unlikely situation. For some time I’ve been trying to get into the habit of drinking more water every day without much luck. I had some success when instead of trying to drink tap water I started buying 1 litre bottles of Evian. The softness of this water compared to the hard tap water I …

Timeless advice and since I wrote this over a year ago I thought I would reblog it as it’s just as relevant today and we always need to be reminded of this.

Maximise your pay rise

Thanks to @khandbapa I logged back into my Tumblr account and found this post that I wrote about a year ago. It’s still very relevant and probably even more so in the current economic climate so wanted to share it.

Maximise Your Pay Rise

I found an interesting article that I’ve summarised below. It providies some very useful advice to all employees on what they should and shouldn’t do as an employee which in my opinion can help lessen the natural conflict that takes place between Employee and Manager when it comes to performance and pay rises. Let’s face it – everyone thinks they are doing an Outstanding job and nobody wants to believe that they are Meeting Expectations. This article does a good job in providing the guidelines on employee behaviour and performance to earn a pay rise. The following is a summary of some key points I feel all employees should have close to hand to review in order to stay on track:

Do An Outstanding Job. The most important element effecting your performance review and your pay raise is your performance. You must do an outstanding job to get an outstanding pay raise.

Accomplish Your Goals. At any point in your career, you should have clear goals. If it means reading some books or learning a new process, do them. Having all your goals done makes it easy for your manager to give you a good raise. Not having them done makes it easy for your boss to give that good raise to someone else.

Toot Your Own Horn. When you do something exceptional, you need to make sure that your manager and peers know about it. Do not rely on your boss or word of mouth to spread your good work. You need to take an active role in selling your good deeds when you do them. Make sure to keep track of your accomplishments so that you can bring them up during your next review process.

Attitude. A positive attitude makes a big difference. No one wants a complainer on their staff. It means looking at things with the goal of fixing and improving them. If change is happening in your company, figure out how to make it work for you and how you can contribute to the company goal, instead of trying to block it.

Make Them Want To Reward You. If you are doing an outstanding job and you are adding value to the company and helping to keep morale positive and focused on the company’s goals, the company will want to reward you. They want employees like you, so they will make sure that everyone else sees that if they perform like you do, the company will reward them.

Hold Your Boss Accountable. Know when your performance review is supposed to take place and make sure it happens. You can help by getting your side of the review ready ahead of time and offering to set a date for when to sit down for the review.

Don’t Threaten To Quit. It makes your manager know that you are not loyal, and it makes you look unprofessional. Managers, like most people, do not react well to threats. The normal reaction is to strike back. The standard way to strike back is to get rid of you.

Focus On Value. If you bring a lot of value to the company, they will pay you more. If you bring marginal value to the company they will pay you less. The next time you are tempted to explain why you need a raise, switch it around. Focus on the value you bring to the company and the accomplishments you have made over the last year.

Patience Pays. If you are underpaid according to your compa-ratio, do not expect to be brought in line all at once. The best strategy is to be patient. As long as you are moving closer to the industry average (50% each step is the usual), forget about it and direct your energies to doing an outstanding job. If you are consistently at a low compa-ratio and not improving, you need to talk to your manager to find out why. Focus on what you can improve to merit an increase, not on finding out why you are being persecuted.

Do More Than Expected. If you do what is expected of you, you will get graded a 3 at best. To get the 4′s and 5′s you must do more than is expected. If you do just what is expected, then you will get paid just what you are getting paid now. Many employees mistakenly subscribe to the strategy of only doing so much because they aren’t getting paid enough to bother. When the company decides to pay them more, then they will do more. Why is this mistaken? Because the company will never promote you to do more until you prove that you can and will do more. You have to prove to them that you are worth the extra money, not the other way around.

http://www.hrwhatnot.com/articles/max-pay-raise.php