20 June - entry 1

Today was the flight's "offsite teambuilding activity" which consisted of golf. I am not a golfer, i cannot golf well at all, but i can drive the hell the hell out of a golf cart, however, that is an entirely different story. It was a a chance to blow of some steam, laugh at yourself and each other, and more importantly get to know your people outside of work. The more i know about who works for me and who I'm working with, the more i know about what they want and what can movitave them.

I'm a computer science guy by lifestyle and education, and I tend to think in a very structured and orderly manner. Step 1 leads to step 2 and produces output A. The challange i have is not only in understanding what affects a person's preformance in duties they already know and comprehend, but also to present new task to a person in a manner that will motivate them to want to undertake it. Yes, I can order them to do it, but an order to do it will only produce exactly what they were ordered to produce, nothing more, and depending on how clearly the order was communicated, maybe something less. If you motivate them correctly though, they take a task in, internalize it, take pride in it, and by doing so they're naturally more inclined to look for ways in which they can improve the process, both the final product and the production of it.

Thats kind of my goal with my temp worker. In my observation of my A1C training him up, I noticed that she was starting to see some flaws in her processes. She's focused more on her upcomming A+ class, so she didn't focus too much on the flaws then, but i see an opportunity here. Let the temp get settled in for a few days, ask him what he sees as not making sense just to get him thinking, and then get him to make some suggestions to the A1C. After she get's her A+ certification out of the way, she'll probably be dying to get back to something she understands again, and that's when i get him to talk to her about what he was thinking, and that, combined with her renewed vigor after an absense from the job, could get some new ideas flowing. Its just a thought, we'll see how it pans out later.