KOOKY: Mountains!

I thought I'd share this with you. I took this picture on Feb 21st, on my way back to my office from a meeting I had across campus. The gardens in the picture are the Rose Gardens, and while it's difficult to see in the picture, I saw green flowers shooting up in the soil, so Spring is slowly making it's way here.

I actually can see bits of mountains on campus on a good day, and that day it was glorious!

KOOKY: So not amused

This really gives me the rage!

Another UBC threat has put RCMP on alert

KOOKY: Some excitement today...

Police evacuate UBC building after lockdown

Not certain what happened yet, and although I was concerned for other people's lives -- and fortunately I heard that no one was hurt -- I was dealing with putting out my own fires and was more preoccupied with that.

KOOKY: I'm surrounded by a big sea of white...

Snow. That is.

We got about a foot of snow in a 9 hour period. By the time I was suppose to have gotten up and gotten ready for work, the radio was already telling me that two of the nearby public post-secondary institutions have closed because of the snow.

I checked our main website at 6.30 am to see what my fate was. Nothing.

7 am. Nothing.

Finally, just before 8 am, when I was suppose to be at work, the notice showed up: "Everything is opened. You must come to class. You must come to work."

Bah. I was so hoping for a snow day. I even told my underlings about the snow policy, and the years that I've been a student and staff member, this university has been notoriously the last ones to close, if they are benevolent to even do so, and they tend to wait until the last possible moment to tell you so.

I had had a terrible night of insomnia, and really wasn't feeling well, so had already decided to stay at home to work. Fortunate for me that I did. Transit was a nightmarish wreck. And while the streets were probably a little quieter than normal, the conditions at certain points were white-out. So not fun driving conditions.

I am so not looking forward to the drive in tomorrow. I know that my unplowed street will be completely iced over by morning. My only consolation is that someone will be feeding me free food for lunch. Oh wait, it's paid for by taxpayer's money. My tax money. So no free lunch for me. Sigh.

Okay, rant over...

KOOKY: Yet another...

Promotion!

As I had alluded to in an earlier post, I had some news that I couldn't share just yet. Well, the reason why was because my boss hadn't told everyone at work yet.

So I go from being Team Lead to being Manager. Ooooooohhhhh!!!!

What does this mean for me? A little more pay, not much more I think. The biggest change is that I do very little technical stuff now (or I shouldn't be doing any technical stuff any longer). And more strategic work on my part.

So that's the big news. Manager. Still very strange to me.

KOOKY: Time to celebrate!

Yesterday, our larger group had it's monthly Tea Party. Everyone is supposed to take turns hosting the party and this month, it was our turn. This is where everyone gets together to celebrate the birthdays for that month. What it really is, it's an excuse to take a 1/2 hour off work to cram bad-for-you food in your system and socialise.

Many times people have themes (eg Halloween). Sometimes we play really insipid parlour games. My group, we are so not into that. It was a huge pain trying to figure out what we were going to bring, never mind the fact that none of us had the inclination to think of an actual theme, we had better things to do. Okay, we kinda had a theme: bad food that you love to eat! Only someone even ruined that by bringing in veggies and dip (although I suppose that the dip's really not good for you).

My offerings were a couple of bottles of Orangina and Cheese Puffs (I was feeling orangey). If you've never had Orangina before, try hard to get your hands on some, this stuff is sooooo good. I had even gone to two different stores to find it, I was dead set on getting some. The first time I tried it, it was at a friend's house. Let me tell you, I will never go back to vile orange pop again, I was converted! Soooo yummy! Sooooo good! I was in heaven when we went to Paris, they sell this stuff all over Europe. I don't think those people even know what the yucky orange pop is like.

Anyways, despite the lack of theme, boring games, or even a real birthday cake (the closest thing was a cheesecake), the party was a smashing success.

***

Another thing that I had to share with you, I found out that I got a raise with my promotion. My promotion was effective as of May 1 this year, but I had stupidly failed to ask my boss if I was going to get a raise. I went through a performance review only 4 months prior, and they had given me a huge raise then. I was shocked that they had given me the promotion, so I suppose it was excusable not to have a brain at that point.

Anyways, I was in my boss's office the other day talking to him about something. Somehow we got talking about how he was pulling his hair out with HR, and my promotion didn't go through properly, hence the reason why I didn't see more money on my paycheques.

Quoi? (That's French for What? for you non-Francophone types)

It turns out that it was my manager's fault for not knowing that the Faculty had yet another step for finalising staff appointments, and he's been spending a good deal of time straightening the whole mess out (not just my appointment, but a whole whackload of them. He really hates HR even more now!) This interprets as some inefficient process was created eons ago and never removed, causing more red tape, needless paperwork, and ultimately, job security for someone. Sigh, working here is certainly never boring.

Anyhoo, once I print off the contract, sign it and return it to the proper channels, I will get a whopping $101.79 more per month. That's before taxes and other deductions. My boss did tell me that my raise wasn't much, but in the same breath, asked if I hadn't noticed anything in my paycheques. Really, after all the deductions, I'd be luck to have received an extra $20 in my wallet. (In fact, I'm certain once the government is done with me at income tax time, I'll probably be further back than if I hadn't received the raise, such is life).

But yay me! Raise! Whoo!

KOOKY: Six months later...

So it's been about six months since I've been put in a Team Lead role. In the six months:

• I've made mistakes and still do so
  
• I've had to deal with conflict
• I had to learn about office furniture
• I had to learn how HR deals with things
• I've hired 4 people
• I have less time to do more work (and consequently take more work home)
  
• I've taken leadership training
• I've micro-managed
  
• I've had to do a lot of mentoring
• I've probably sent out mixed signals to my underlings
• I've had to make executive decisions
  
• In short, I've learned that being a leader is hard, hard work
  

It's been hard so far, but a good learning experience for me. I certainly don't want to be one of those supervisors who people complain about. I want to be the person who everyone says that I was a great supervisor -- what can I say, I want people to like me. I know that I won't ever be perfect, but my main goal is to do whatever it takes to help my team do their job well and efficiently, while having fun in the process. That's not always easy as I need to figure out how to get there, and I generally don't get a lot of feedback, even when I ask for it. And it's certainly weird treating people who used to be my peers as subordinates.

Here's what I have learned/come to realise so far:

• Less is more.
• I won't always make popular decisions
• I sometimes have a too big of a mouth
• I like, and I want everyone to feel like they are a part of the process, that I don't always need to make the decisions, and have someone else take the initiative (with my blessings of course)
• I'm learning to not only juggle my time, but everyone whom I supervise
• I hate micro-managing, but sometimes it has to be done
• I can't be everyone's friend
• I don't like to deal with unpleasant things (who really does), but I have realized that I need to, and as much help as I may get from others, the buck does stop with me and I need to do something about it.
  
• That it's okay to say no.
  
• That it's okay to make executive decisions and not consult the team.
  
• That this is my area, and my people, and (within certain confines), I can pretty much do anything I want.
  

But there is so much more that I need to learn.

I've taken to reading leadership blogs, and I've just bought a few books on leadership; I'll put up reviews once I've had a chance to read them. I do feel like I'm struggling as I don't always feel like I know what I'm doing, and there are days when I feel a sense of impending doom (or that could be my PMS making me moody). So I'm training myself by reading what other people who have been in my position say. I'm also thinking about taking another course.

Of course, I may be over-preparing, over-thinking, over-doing it. After all, very few of us become good at what we do overnight. That's why they call it experience. I can't look for a silver bullet solution with detailed step-by-step instructions on what to do, that doesn't exist.

Man, this is hard.

KOOKY: In the hospital

I didn't land myself in the Emergency Room. My group has moved over into the hospital. Fourth move in 2.5 year, I may add.

My director had, a few months ago, approached me with some space that became free and asked if I wanted to move my team in there. Just like you can lure fish with bait, she baited me with a window.

And I ate it, hook, line and sinker.

Actually, the room isn't that bad. We have real cubical furniture, even though I had to scrounge for second hand furniture, and had a huge headache trying to get everything sorted and done.

I've discovered that new office furniture can cost a couple of grand just for one person, so it can cost about $10K or so for 6 people. I was also told that we had a budget, then I was told we had no money, then I was told we'll see how much money I could save with using used furniture.

The reason why the big run around was because the plan was to stick us in there "temporarily" for two years, so they didn't want to spend too much. Well, two years is a long time, and, as one of my co-workers commented, things that are "temporary" around here tend to become permanent. That's just how things work. I might as well make it as comfortable as possible for everyone.

I am a little worried about germs as we are in a hospital, and I've been told that there are patients on our floor, but probably on the other side of the building, as it looks like there are mainly offices where we are. Nonetheless, there will be a bottle of antiseptic living permanently in our room, as long as we're sojourned there.

Back to the room. It's nice to be working in a cube farm again. I know that people sometimes complain about working in cube farms, but for me, it's a luxury. The last 5.5 years, I've been working in open rooms, so there is absolutely no privacy. That normally doesn't bother me, but it does become a little inconvenient when I'm trying to speak with someone a little privately about something. Plus, everyone can hear everything where there are no walls, or even half-walls, so everyone is in everyone else's business. Even when we're all working, it's really distracting to hear other people talk; this is when I turn up my music.

And after being a bottom dweller for 2.5 years, it's really nice to see the sun again. And the rain.

KOOKY: Housecleaning

(I'm actually quite busy at work, but the busyness is pretty routine, and frankly, not worth mentioning.)

Today I cracked and cleaned the fridge and microwave.

Between 15 people, we all share a bar fridge and microwave. The fridge is in another room, while not so conveniently located, of late has spared me smelling the molding food that sat in the fridge for who knows how long. Unfortunately, every time I walked into the room, I could immediately smell the moldy food. What's worse is the fridge was waaaaay across the room, that's how bad the smell was.

Today I snapped.

I gave everyone until mid-afternoon to claim what was theirs. Then I went in, dumped pretty much everything, and gave the fridge and the microwave a good scrub. All during my lunch hour.

I'm much happier now.

KOOKY: Meet Errol

Today I got my Crackberry, it's the Curve model. I named my Crackberry Errol, after the Weasley family's pet owl in the Harry Potter books. Hey, it delivers me my mail (okay, my email).

I've been realizing since starting this Team Lead position that I've been dragged into more and more meetings. This means that I'm not at my desk putting out fires, er, dealing with issues as they come in. This week alone, I had one all day meeting, and another day with about 5-6 back to back meetings. This is becoming a too-common occurrence for me. So in order to feel like I'm at least I tiny bit on top of things, I caved and got Errol.

Errol makes me accessible to my email and calendar. Errol also makes me accessible to other people 24/7/365. And while I am told otherwise, there will always be an unwritten expectation that I will be answering the phone when it rings at 3 am. Sigh.

Oh well, off to go figure Errol out. He's my new best friend.

KOOKY: Leadership Training

Last Friday, I went to a professional development workshop on leadership that's put on by HR. It was aptly titled "Moving From Peer to Supervisor to Leader". The moment I was promoted, I wanted to take a leadership workshop to help train me to be a better leader. I already heard about this workshop, so I promptly asked my manager if I could sign up.

I've always felt that being a leader in the workplace isn't always an intuitive thing for many people. I got the promotion through my hard work as an IT person, but I understand computers, not people. Hence, understanding how to positively communicate, supervise and motivate people can be an elusive notion to many. I thought it would be a good idea to try to get some training before I made too many mistakes or started going down incorrect paths. After all, how many of us has complained, griped or resented decisions or actions that management makes? I know I have in the past.

One thing I was looking for was how to motivate people who were under me. I know that everyone has a different way of doing things that are not my way. However, I didn't know how to move beyond that point. I didn't know how to motivate people properly. What may motivate me may not motivate others in the same way. And I certainly didn't want to be a nagging mother to those whom I supervise.

Two ideas were presented to me:
1) Personal Coaching Styles Inventory - This is "a self-inventory where people designate how they want to give and receive feedback and advice". Basically, it's a tool that tells you what your communication style is. While I don't think any one person fits in to one particular style, most of us tend towards one or two particular styles more so than the others. We did a self-assessment to determine what our styles were, and did a presentation of each one (there are four).

The main style that I fell in, describes about 80% of how I communicate and think. And going through the other styles, I can definitely see where my manager falls as well as one of my subordinates. What was really nice was that there were people in the workshop who fell into each category. I got to see how they approach things, and learned to appreciate better their good points instead of just focusing on their weaknesses (which is something I tend to do, according to this tool). This definitely gave me a lot to think about.

2) Legacy Leadership - The image at the top is a basic summary of of the model. Our instructor said that most leadership/management books/models/theories out there will fall underneath at least one of the five Best Practices. You basically need all five to have a balanced leadership. There were discussions around these principles to illustrate how we can action each one out.

All in all, I felt that it was a very worthwhile workshop. Unfortunately, Friday was a bad time to take off from work (but when is it ever a good time to take off from work?). There is a part two to the workshop, which is in a couple of week. I'll let you know how that goes.

KOOKY: Golf!

Someone at work had arrange a golf outing for the people at work. So yesterday, we all trekked to the local public golf course and played golf.

I have to say that before yesterday, I was a golf virgin. I wasn't the only one; there were many others, and even one was in my group (he for some reason kept on hitting trees). The groups of 4 were arranged so that there was at least one person on each team who was deemed the "golf expert" and kept track of the score. We played a variation of Best Ball rules so that we'd continue to move along the course.

No one had showed me how to hold the golf club properly, so I ended up with a few scrapes and callouses and manged to take some skin off of my right thumb. But regardless, it was fun and the company was great.

Afterwards, we had a meal with the other groups and some more members of our team at work, so it was a real nice gathering, despite the less then stellar food and service. So a fun night all in all.

Some general odds-and-ends from yesterday:

• After observing how some others do it, I managed to sort of figure out how to grip the club (although I still don't think it's entirely correct) and managed some decent shots. Well, I managed to move the ball forward, so big achievement in my books
• My ball actually caught air once. I was chuffed about that
• My teammates were amazed that I hit straight most of the time. Go figure
• My best ball made it about 50-60 yards down the fairway.

Despite the fun, I don't think I'll ever take up golf as a hobby. It took us 4.5 hours to finish all 18 holes, and that was with cheating rules. It was warm and sunny out, and by the 14th hole or so, I wanted to just stop and go in, it was very fatiguing. I had to go pee, and I wasn't going to use the conveniently-placed Jiffy Johns. Plus, golf requires skill, and I have no patience nor talent for that sort of thing generally, which explains why I don't play sports.

KOOKY: Professional Development

For the past three days, I've been at the UBC downtown campus taking a Project Management course. The reasons why I decided to take this course were:

• I do a lot of small/medium/large-ish projects at work and I thought this would be a great way to learn how to do things properly
• Management expects that I take PD courses, after all, they put aside money for me to use, so I'd better use it!
• My boss strongly hinted that I should be taking PM courses

Needless to say, I really liked the course. My instructor, from my calculations, is in his early 70s. He's not retired by choice. He still teaches these courses several times a year, and he still does consulting work.

What really impressed me about him was that he's a very smart guy, his mind was still sharp, his memory is excellent, and most importantly, he's very tech savvy. He mentioned that he goes through a new laptop every couple of years, and during the course, he had a nice shiny black Mac Book that he used with no problems. He puts together his own power point slides, video and email are not stranger to him, and he Googles with practiced ease. He's more tech savvy than a lot of our users!

What I really liked about our instructor was that he's been in the PM field for close to 50 years, so he had a lot of experience to draw upon. When he taught the theory, he always had at least one or two stories from his past experience that he told to illustrate his point. I particularly like this as it showed me how the theory can be applied in real life practice and made the subject must less boring. I particularly liked his stories about the Sky Train project back in the 80s. He was the main PM for that project. That really blew me away!

Another nice thing about the course was that they fed us breakfast, lunch and lots of snack foods. At my last training course, I didn't get much of that. Granted, eating a lot of sugary and high-fat foods isn't always good for you, but it saved me from hunting down and paying for food, and that in itself is a bonus.

All in all, it was Faculty of Medicine's money well spent! =D Two thumbs up for my course!

(For those of you who know me in real life or through Internet-land, this guy also teaches this course at McGill and U of Toronto, so I can pass along his information if you're interested in taking the course.)

KOOKY: Promotion

So the big news I was alluding to is that, as of May 1st (that was this past Tuesday), I'm now "Weed, Team Lead and DBA, Web Team" (DBA == Database Administrator). Yup, I got promoted.

Not a lot of details really. My boss had been wanting for many months to have a team lead for my team so he can dump stuff off of that person instead of having to deal with the entire team. So on Monday, he sat me down and asked if I wanted to be Team Lead, and after asking him a few questions, I said "Yes!"

There isn't a lot of details to tell. I know that I get to move up a pay level (that doesn't mean I get a raise in pay, very complicated to explain, that). And he mumbled something about me doing performance reviews. Yikes! I'd never done actual supervisory stuff, well not at a paying job at any rate. So I'm going to start looking around for management courses. This will be interesting. In any case, I'm certain that I will hear more of what my boss expects of me in due time. That's me for not asking questions when I should have. Oh well.

The rest of my day was pretty much a waste. We now have 7 desks (not 8 as I first thought), in our room. And once one of the guys come back, we'll have 6 people squished in our room. It will be interesting in a couple of ways: 1) I finally have another female in the group, and even though she's not a techie, I need someone I can talk to girlie stuff to once in a blue moon. 2) Our room's become a little international. There's someone from Ireland, England and Australia. My co-op's from China, but he's been here since he was 11. Then there's me and my original co-worker. While I like the people who are in my room, at least two of them are very talkative (not to say that I'm not), but it's not always conducive to getting stuff done.

Someone commented in my last post that upper management should see how they like being squished in like sardines. While I appreciate the sentiment, my own Director has to share an office with someone else. You would think that someone at her level would have her own office, but no, that's not how things work around here. And trust me when I say she didn't have a choice.

KOOKY: Sardines

Yes, they are packing us in like sardines. In my room, we currently have 3 people (okay, 4, but one guy's away on a family emergency). Tomorrow they are adding three more desks into the room, and at least two new people will now be living with us. That's a total of six, but they plan to squeeze 8 people in all together. I've already asked if we could get portable dividers for the room, not so much for privacy, but to absorb the increase in noise in the room.

I will not get any privacy whatsoever. There will be one person facing me directly, and another person directly to my left. I really don't know how long this will last. There are a couple of rooms across the hallway that is empty 99% of the time, but apparently, someone has claim over them, even though they weren't suppose to in the first place. And because these people belong to a different unit, we can't share.

Office space is always at a premium for us at the university. Because of the intense decentralization, if something isn't your, you can't share. Yup, what's mine is mine and what isn't mine, isn't mine. Even though we both belong to the same organization. Craziness. Tomorrow should be interesting...

However, if you think my situation is bad, it's not as bad as some other people's situations. Oh the stories I can tell about that alone. Sigh.

(I also have some awesome news, but I need to wait another day before I can let the whole world know about it. Stay tuned...)

KOOKY: Multitasking

I noticed today that when my co-op student went to the loo, he brought his laptop with him. When I asked him about it, he said that he likes to "multitask" when sitting on the porcelain throne.

My co-op is a very strange boy.

KOOKY: New toys

New toy for work. A Lenovo T60 15.4" wide screen, duo core Pentium processor laptop, with a huge hard drive and 3 GB of RAM. This thing is sweet! What you don't see is the dual 20.1" monitors (yes, I have two external monitors), a new Logitech wireless mouse and a big ass top-of-the-line docking station that I also got. All compliments of work. I had some fun trying to rearrange my desk yesterday with all the new toys. Heh.

We had some money left over in the budget, so a few of us got new laptops. My boss said, "Get whatever hardware you need to do your job, because I rather you be more efficient with your job with the equipment you need than doing your job poorly because you're not properly equipped. So go forth and spend the money."

I'm not going to argue against that. Spend money he says, and so spend money we did.

KOOKY: The Adventures of Weed

I wrote a really long post, then upon reflection, felt that it was one of the lamest posts that I've written, so I decided to delete it and give you the shortened version instead.

The highlights of my day:
- I had to deal with dog-pee on our office room carpet (it's still there by the way)
- My co-op student's landlord is a 57-year old single man who doesn't do much except watch B-rated slasher movies into the wee-hours of the morning. Apparently, he has hundreds of VHS tapes of B-rated slasher movies in every nook and cranny in his apartment, including my co-op's bedroom. Oh, and he's noticed that my co-op owns a meat cleaver.

I think I'll leave the rest up to your imagination, heaven knows it's probably going to be more interesting than what I wrote originally. And I work in IT!

KOOKY: 2 out of 3...

Normally isn't so bad, except when the third one is the one that took the job and then took another job leaving us high and dry, and on the hunt for yet another person.

Yes, one of the people who we gave a job offer to decided to take another job. This happens all the time, and he has to do what he thinks is best for him. However, that means that the person that I was going to dump some work on next Monday won't be there. And we have start looking all over again. Sigh.

KOOKY: The interviews

I am now a resume expert. I am also an interview expert. After looking through many resumes and participating in five interviews in the space of three days, my brain has turned to mush.

We're hiring three new people to help with the overflowing workload. I've participated in interviews before (even interviewed my own boss), but this is sticking in my brain right now and I thought I'd put it down while I still remember them.

Some things that I've learned sitting on the other side of the table that I want to share with those looking for a job:

• Anything and everything on a resume (including history gaps) is fair game in an interview. You put it down, you should be able to explain why it's there or why it's not there. Those of you who are thinking about lying or stretching the truth, we'd actually picked through the resumes carefully and noticed inconsistencies. And asked about them.
  
• If you don't understand the question, please ask to have it clarified.
• It's actually okay sometimes to say that you don't know the answer to that question. It does pay to be honest, even though it may be a strike against you.
  
• Listen carefully to the question and make certain you answer it fully, especially two-parters.
  
• This is your chance to ask questions about the job/company/work environment/your boss. Because you're the one doing the asking, this actually tells a lot about you that the interview questions may have missed.
  
• As someone looking for a potential candidate, I actually like specific examples as opposed to vague generalizations. Specific examples help me get a better sense of who you really are and where you're coming from. Anyone can spew out vagueness.
• Look on the Internet for interview questions. There are a ton out there. I looked so I could generate some interview questions, I certainly am not creative enough to think of some on my own. And above all else, practice your answers.
• For those of you looking for techie positions, you will be asked techie questions. You may even have to demonstrate your skill through written tests, scripting, verbal answers, etc. If you say you can do something, be prepared to prove it. (The Internet is also great for this type of stuff.)