I’ve had the most unbelievably gruelling day today. I woke at 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep. My meeting ended at 6.45pm and a ‘cocktail reception’ was non-negotiable at 7pm. We were supposed to be going to a cookery school and cooking each other dinner. (There are 25 or so of us on this Leading Change course this week.) The school had the dates wrong so we’re going there tomorrow now. Instead, they laid on a magic demonstration.
What a hoot. We were divided into 4 teams and each team was taught a different trick. The teams had to perform the trick while acting out a challenge….ours was ‘too many chiefs’ (I wonder why??!!). I must say, this was a complete scream, not least because of the two Spaniards on the RHS of this photo (Juan Jose and Raphael) – complete stars the both….they should be in RADA!!!
We had to do a little skit about the topic and incorporate the trick. My team won, I like to think on artistic merit but probably in reality because the BOSS was in our team!
The company that did this for us provided fancy dress for all and I was amazed at how willing even the most straight-laced of my colleagues were to make complete arses of themselves to do this. Overall the evening was completely brilliant.
During the day things hadn’t been so good. We are a huge company (as I said yesterday) and recently have been through a big merger. The disparate bits of the Healthcare division have come together for the first time this week. There’s been a good deal of suspicion and mistrust. Not surprisingly really, we all have our own business interests to protect and all are targeted on our pre-merger revenue streams. It all makes for an uneasy alliance.
In fact though, we’ve been very successful at bringing in the business since the merger, we just seem to have developed a whispering culture around that. This week has been designed to sort that out.
We’ve been playing managerial games today and our team won, not because we were better than the rest or because we cheated but because of a misunderstanding.
Tonight’s magic has been a perfect antidote to the competitiveness of the daytime.
Over dinner afterwards, I have been chatting to people I didn’t know before this week about all sorts of stuff. Tonight, as is often the case, the subject of this diary came up and the number of visitors I have each day completely shocked some of my colleagues. They wish our corporate site did as well!!!
Today, the theme has been about the roles we play in the team. I recognised myself completely in my Belbin score (taken from the responses to a questionnaire I completed about myself a couple of weeks ago) – a Resource Instigator, Plant and Shaper – for those that don’t know what this means, I can summarise it like this….
· Resource Instigator – extrovert – mmm yep, that’s me, enthusiastic, communicative, explores opportunities, develops contacts…..well I think that’s me down to a tee!
· Plant – creative, imaginative, unorthadox, solves difficult problems, generates ideas – yep, me too!
· Shaper – dynamic, outgoing, highly strung, pressurises, finds ways around obstacles….sort of I suppose.
These aren’t my descriptions of myself, they’re the results of a statistically proven method.
Interestingly, I often feel isolated and ‘unloved’ at work. BUT – Belbin says I am to be valued (again) because I’ve got what the other people in the senior management group haven’t got – all that creativity. So, again I come away feeling recharged and motivated.
I’m tired though. I’m so jetlagged I can’t sleep either at the end of the day or the beginning and my nose has been constantly bleeding since I’ve been here. If I don’t get a night’s sleep soon, I’ll spend my weekend in NYC in bed while DM, the girls and MH go on the town.
My American experience remains small – not enough time to get out but at least I’m meeting some people. The people I meet are wonderfully warm and kind. They sympathise about my tiredness and offer solutions. There is some sort of weird paradox though. I saw a car parked in the employee bit of the carpark this morning while I was pacing around trying to get some fresh air and exercise at 7am. It had a plate on the front where the front licence plate would usually be saying ‘still saving lives’, obviously referring to Jesus (and with a crown of thorns etc – you really can’t imagine the message was about anyting else) while displaying stickers depicting naked, huge breasted women on the rear-view mirrors….how do those things go together?
One thing I’ve realised is that we use the same language but how different the execution is – I said today ‘we’ll have to talk about our holidays then’ and they looked at me blankly. Yesterday at dinner, we had a motivational speaker….you know someone who comes along to rally the troops. He was talking about pulling. He was referring to a Football manoeuvre (pointy American Football rather than soccer). We use the term ‘pulling’ to describe what happens on a Friday night in every pub in the land when a single person gets ‘on a promise’ if you see what I mean – not the same at all I think????!!!
This is my team shortly before we took to the stage to make our award winning performance!
BTW - will do better photograph wise tomorrow - I know they've been a bit crap for the last couple of days.
