M&M's

I've been swimming through a sea of electronic employee evaluations lately, toiling on my laptop, from under my new heated throw, in the glow of the Christmas tree, with mindless Christmas fodder on nearly silent in the background. Movies such as "Home Alone," "Christmas Vacation," and "Elf" work best for this type of activity. You know, where you can look up at any time and know exactly what's going. The ultimate bubble gum of entertainment.

"Polar Express" requires too much thought and I still get sucked into the subliminal messages it sends. I believe!

Anyway, I finished my last evaluation today. I'm thrilled. The monkey is off my back!

I love giving people evaluations. Well, I love AND hate it. On one hand, it forces you to make judgment calls on peoples' behavior and work performances. On the other, evals afford you a chance to give people things to work on. Ways to grow. Stretch assignments.

Except that I totally flubbed up on this last year. We spent all this time figuring out what goals to shoot for and what to achieve this year. And I didn't keep those goals in front of their faces very well. Some are driven and met their goals anyway. Others needed prompting, but seriously, if they don't achieve their goals and I mistakenly shoved them on a bookcase all year and produced them again in December, whose fault is it? Mine.

So my plan is to create Goal tabulation sheets for each manager. And as part of THEIR goals, they will be expected to do the same for their staff. Cascading goals, baby!

In fact, when I met with my managers for our team meeting yesterday, I gave them samples of what I'm looking for on these goal sheets....goals need to be specific and quantitative, but some of the issues they're dealing with are "softer." I needed a quick way to keep track of their progress. I thought it was pretty funny myself:


Nurse Ratchett
2012 Goals
Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4
Discussed_____________

1. Read one book about the history of M&M’s.

2. Track the amount of M&M’s ingested by department employees between 2:30-3:00pm; your goal is 100 per day.

3. Update department policy regarding expectations for consumption of M&M’s by April 1, 2012.

4. Engage staff to create one process improvement regarding stocking of M&M’s.

5. On a continually basis, help employees understand that the M&M characters on television are not real and when we eat M&M’s, we are not eating their family members. Recommend EAP/counseling to employees particularly struggling with this fact.

When I unlocked my office this morning, there were TWO bags of M&M's jammed under my door!

So not only is the monkey off my back, but my addiction has been fed another few days!