In the Good News Department…
Posted Mar 18, 2009 Rewarding Performance
∞ Having gone over horror stories last week, and having been absolutely floored with a fantastic surprise today, I’d like to ask now what your pleasant office surprises have been.
I asked one of my management team to give me a new hire for a project today. I needed basic information so I could interpret it and give it back to our client, possibly after wrapping in last year’s Christmas paper and slapping a pretty red bow on top. I take new hires for this kind of thing all the time. It gives them some additional exposure to our business, and hopefully some insight into why we do what we do as well.
So, I explained to this new hire - who’s about two months into his job - what I needed, and gave him a basic rundown of why I needed it. Since I turn these things into training exercises, I told him I wanted to see him about half an hour before he left, so I could go into detail about the underlying issue and why the project was important.
I should point out here that I don’t expect anything approaching proficiency at the work this particular department does until someone’s been working with it for five or six months. It’s moderately difficult, extremely layered, and overall very complex.
Imagine my surprise, then, when Mr. Hotshot showed up for the “training session” and handed me his results all wrapped up - including the proverbial pretty red bow. As it turns out, he had figured out for himself the core issue, the needed fix, and in the process, he had picked out another issue that needs some relatively urgent attention. I’d have found it myself while going through the data he pulled, but hey - now I don’t have to. Instead of bringing a pen and paper to take notes on the process when he came to talk to me, he instead gave me a written report that I fully intend to give - without edits - to our client.
I did make him a bit nervous, I think, with the amount of time my jaw spent on the floor after he handed this to me. I was shocked, and unable to hide it. His accomplishment should be impossible, but there we were. He broke first, asking, “It’s okay that I did that, right?” Well, his only experience with me so far has been all business, and I tend to be more on the efficient, give-me-only-what-I-need end of the spectrum when I show up needing something from his boss.
Being me, of course I had to call his boss and, in my best evil voice, summon her into my presence. I ran through the whole thing, and asked her, “can you believe he did this?” She broke the tension when she said, “Yeah, I did good hiring him, didn’t I? Told you I’d found a good one.”
… What? I am the Sadistic Manager, after all… ∞
