Post ER goals?

Nodak said:
You guys are bringing back memories of the Air Force's fascination with Total Quality Management back in the late 80s and early 90s. What a huge waste of time that was. I'll admit to napping in those meetings a couple of times.
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Same idea is prevalent throughout DoD today. All three branches of the military, and the Air Force, are hooked on Lean/Six-Sigma.
 
Perhaps if ER.org hired a group of management consultants, they might suggest this as a way to improve our "productivity":

Dudeism - Ordination by the Religion of Lebowski

Can't take credit. Saw it on another tread round here somewhere. I'm too lazy to search and find the link for y'all. This is the tao of the dude.

The Dude Abides. Nuff said.

YouTube - The Dude Abides
 
HawkeyeNFO said:
Same idea is prevalent throughout DoD today. All three branches of the military, and the Air Force, are hooked on Lean/Six-Sigma.
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That must have come in since I retired in 2007. Either that or we were so far out in the boonies that they never told us about it.
 
One year the hospital that I worked at in NJ had this great idea to motivate the staff . It was called "Spirit of Ideas " and we all formed teams and worked on ides to save money and according to how much money our idea would save we got points and a book with prizes in it ( Big screen TV's , Bedroom sets , appliances , etc. ) . Well my co - workers formed a team and we were the winners . We easily came up with simple ideas that saved the hospital a bundle . We all got huge prizes . I got a bedroom set and a grandfather clock and an appliance . The hospital of course procrastinated on implementing the ideas and lost money in the process but we all got our prizes and had about 50 "Spirit Of ideas " mugs for our coffee room.
 
Moemg said:
One year the hospital that I worked at in NJ had this great idea to motivate the staff . It was called "Spirit of Ideas " and we all formed teams and worked on ides to save money and according to how much money our idea would save we got points and a book with prizes in it ( Big screen TV's , Bedroom sets , appliances , etc. ) . Well my co - workers formed a team and we were the winners . We easily came up with simple ideas that saved the hospital a bundle . We all got huge prizes . I got a bedroom set and a grandfather clock and an appliance . The hospital of course procrastinated on implementing the ideas and lost money in the process but we all got our prizes and had about 50 "Spirit Of ideas " mugs for our coffee room.
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They gave us the opportunity to buy mugs that said: "Software Factory" w/ a picture of smokestacks. I sure regret not buying one.
 
I have two "customer service" mugs I got. Wierd since I was a financial regulator. Seems like in my line of work, mugs should have been given out for pi$$ing people off. Needless to say, I was embarassed to show them to my co-workers.
 
Moemg said:
Maybe we should have a thread for stupid ideas our companies came up with ?
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This is a great idea Moe. There is a certain "cleansing" in discussing the absurdity of work. Plus it's a reminder of why we're here and not there.

Isn't this the basis for the very successful "Dilbert" cartoons? I read somewhere Scott Adams used many real life situations people sent him. The truth was far more bizarre than anything he could ever imagine. I think many of us spent far too many years in that alternate universe.
 
Purron said:
Isn't this the basis for the very successful "Dilbert" cartoons? I read somewhere Scott Adams used many real life situations people sent him. The truth was far more bizarre than anything he could ever imagine. I think many of us spent far too many years in that alternate universe.
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A few years ago Scott Adams wrote that he has the best job in the world. His original cartoons were based on his own experiences in the working world, but now he just sits at home and people e-mail him stories of all the stupid things that happen at work and he simply puts them into Dilbert strips.
 
Khan said:
My retirement was a "run screaming into the night sort of thing". Very little planning (beyond financial realizations) and no plans/goals at all other then getting out of there.
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Yup. That's about where I was. Now it's just cruisin' along, one day at a time, most days the major decision is what to eat for lunch.

It's interesting to watch people at work now, because I have this sort of bemused detachment from it, but then I'm not in a position that I need the income or have any emotional stake in it. People get their undies in a bunch and wrapped around the axle about such trivial stuff.

One guy was fretting about possibly losing his job because he'd charged a $3k sailboat cruise in New York Harbor (are you nuts?) and then needed the hours at work to pay for it. Why do that to yourself? I just don't get it.

Or all the whining about who was not nice to someone else, perceived slights, pecking orders, and all the rest of that nonsense. Sometimes it's like I'm the "fly on the wall" watching all these ego battles going on and I just don't care about it.
 
:nonono: I guess since I never worked in megacorpland I didn't know the word goal was such a dirty word and could morph into something so over-consulted. After reading all the real life goal-abuse you folks had to put up with I think I understand how in ER you would not want to have to deal with g**ls again.

I still think some folks (me) need some kind of personal goals so they have something to work towards and don't just go sideways through life. That's what I was getting at with my original post.
 
Nodak said:
You guys are bringing back memories of the Air Force's fascination with Total Quality Management back in the late 80s and early 90s. What a huge waste of time that was. I'll admit to napping in those meetings a couple of times.
Click to expand...
TQM was a fad that actually seemed to work in a few of our divisions but was a huge time sink in most. A couple of successful groups continued to use it right through a couple of other fads but it seemed to have died out everywhere by the mid oughts. Does anyone use TQM anymore?
 
donheff said:
TQM was a fad that actually seemed to work in a few of our divisions but was a huge time sink in most. A couple of successful groups continued to use it right through a couple of other fads but it seemed to have died out everywhere by the mid oughts. Does anyone use TQM anymore?
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I haven't heard the term lately but I endured many hours of meetings to turn us into empowered teams - at one, we had to yell "YAHOO!" periodically. Scary thing is, some people actually enjoyed it.

My personal favorite story was at a company that did TQM meetings. Afterward, some dimwit employee got up at a company meeting (not TQM) and said how empowered she felt - she was practically crying with emotion. They laid off 200 people within a year of that, and the company went out of business eventually. I was one of the 200....
 
thinker25 said:
I haven't heard the term lately but I endured many hours of meetings to turn us into empowered teams - at one, we had to yell "YAHOO!" periodically. Scary thing is, some people actually enjoyed it.
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Ah, that reminds me of of a typical dumb episode. During the height of the TQM binge we started doing annual TQM progress surveys. We were also involved in a "partnership" effort with our unions. Organizations were measured on a bunch of factors one of which was empowerment. My organization did pretty well comparatively but our lowest factor was the empowerment scale. The then uber-boss held meetings to brainstorm how we could improve empowerment. Naturally, everyone made suggestions that reflected their subjective views about what "empowerment" means. About midway through the day long meeting I looked at the underlying questions that determined the empowerment score and noted that there were only three questions and they focused on whether the taker perceived that the unions were actively engaged in determining the direction we were going. I tried to point out that none of the interventions we were considering would have any effect of our score since none of them addressed the factors measured. But we went ahead and adopted a bunch of initiatives that had everything to do with "what does empowerment mean to me" and nothing to do with the survey results we were supposedly trying to improve.
 
cardude said:
:nonono: I guess since I never worked in megacorpland I didn't know the word goal was such a dirty word and could morph into something so over-consulted. After reading all the real life goal-abuse you folks had to put up with I think I understand how in ER you would not want to have to deal with g**ls again.

I still think some folks (me) need some kind of personal goals so they have something to work towards and don't just go sideways through life. That's what I was getting at with my original post.
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Don't feel too bad it, I think goals are a good thing to have :greetings10:

It's just that in the corporate world they beat the living daylights out of us with goals, planning, mission statements etc. :LOL:
 
Khan said:
TQM ?
Are you old enough to recall Zero Defects?
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Oh, my. Been there, got the T-shirt. It's in the drawer next to the Total Quality Management shirt, under the ISO-9000 shirt.

NeXT Computer (Remember them? It's OK, nobody else does, either.) had a TQM program for their factory, the one that ran a couple days a month. We also had a Director of ISO-9000 Compliance, gone after a year or so along with the hardware division.
 
My current major goals are:

1. Go on another 18-month church mission to Spain or Latin America with my wife.
2. Qualify for, and run (again), the Boston Marathon. (I am registered for three other marathons between now and April 2011.)
3. Compete in (again) the Spudman Triathlon (Olympic length, in Burley, Idaho)
4. Travel (DW and I are going to Europe, including Oberammergau, in Aug/Sept.)
5. Study Spanish grammar and read Spanish books. My goal is 12 books/year.
6. Continue my quest to visit as many National Parks as possible.
7. Continue humanitarian service work through Rotary International and other organizations.
 
ScottFromUtah said:
My current major goals are:

1. Go on another 18-month church mission to Spain or Latin America with my wife.
2. Qualify for, and run (again), the Boston Marathon. (I am registered for three other marathons between now and April 2011.)
3. Compete in (again) the Spudman Triathlon (Olympic length, in Burley, Idaho)
4. Travel (DW and I are going to Europe, including Oberammergau, in Aug/Sept.)
5. Study Spanish grammar and read Spanish books. My goal is 12 books/year.
6. Continue my quest to visit as many National Parks as possible.
7. Continue humanitarian service work through Rotary International and other organizations.
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Mighty fine goals IMHO.
 
REWahoo said:
In no particular order:

1. Enjoy life
2. Enjoy life
3. Enjoy life
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Ya, that about sums it up. I mean I have very specific goals (go to Europe, practice my guitar, etc) and short term stuff (rebuild my front deck, fix up the back yard), but nothing long term or really big. Just do what I want and go with the flow. We have some wants and some ideas, but we will make those decisions as they present themselves (living in and RV, moving to another state).
 
SecondCor521 said:
Why not this one instead? It's closer to Utah and better :)

2Cor521
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It looks like a good one. I didn't register for it because (a) I had never heard of it before, (b) the swim (my weakest part) isn't down a fast-moving river (!), (c) there are several triathlons right here in Utah at that same timeframe, and (d) my son is a big fan of Spudman, and I'm doing it with him.
 
I feel like I'm in a desperate race to become a better piano player before my joints or my mind give out. Each 2-3 months I write down about six short-term goals towards that end, and work on them each day. Other than that, no goals.
 
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