Walking into work on Friday morning I knew I'd be pitching a complete game, so to speak - appointments lined up from 8:00 straight through to 4:00. Little did I know that it'd turn out to be a perfect game, the finest performance of the year.
8:00 - Highly anticipated meeting about a stressful topic... a complicated tax feature of a product we're launching next August. The product launch is major enough to demand that system specs be finished by December 15 so that the programmers can get started. My week was crammed with other meetings so there had been little time for development (in part because we're in the midst of two other large-scale product launches with similar deadlines in the next month. Fortunately there had been just enough time so that I could walk in and, unrehearsed, deliver a smooth and cohesive explanation of some significant progress that put the team's mind at ease. In fact, there was an extra half hour available to launch into answering several new questions.
9:00 - The department is swamped, and my boss and I have been unable to connect our schedules for a 1-on-1 in nearly a month. Today was the day. I had a store of four key topics and we nailed them.
9:45 - An e-mail came in from one of the higher-ups. I'd stayed in the office until 9:30 the other night putting together an analysis, and the following day called an industry contact of mine to get a read on what the competition was doing. The e-mail favored my recommendation and cleared the way for a product launch that will be faster, simpler, less expensive, and I believe more customer-friendly.
10:00 - 1-on-1 with Betty. She brought in a variety of questions that had accumulated, and we got through them quickly enough that we ended early. Which was good because...
10:45 - Meanwhile, Jennifer had been pressured to deliver some factors required for our filing in order to gain state approval to sell the new product. We were able to review her work and it was in good order. She got it delivered on time.
11:00 - Met with our process improvement team. On the horizon is a knowledge database that will ideally help eliminate doing redundant research and accelerate training.
12:00 - Used the lunch break to get in a quick weight lifting workout. Arm curl 105 lbs, shoulder press 122.5, leg press 260, chest press 175, leg curl 110, calf raise 300.
1:00 - 1-on-1 with Paulette. Discussed a couple new projects to expand her development.
2:00 - Met with tax department employees and attorneys. Discussions got heated, and I was able to mediate to gain agreement on a contentious issue.
2:30 - Met with our intranet liaison and a product support co-worker. Problem: How to create a repository for old announcements about product changes? Answer: Capitalize on the web page being developed by our process improvement team. Create a sub site that lists historical announcements way back. The employees were thrilled, especially that we solved it within 15 minutes.
3:00 - Met with Jennifer and walked through a series of questions posed by our programmers about the new product launch.
4:15 - Off for a full evening of hoops coaching. Which, in the spirit of the day, turned out to be a two-game sweep of victory.
Slept like a baby that night!
Sometimes God gives a bounty when we least expect it. The price? Ongoing gratefulness in every result.
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