7/19/2013–“The Seed” by Jon Gordon describes a young employee who has lost passion or his work. His results are poor and he doesn’t know if this is where he wants to be. His boss decides to ask him to take two weeks off to reflect and decide if this really is the job for him. The man finds guidance and realizes he needs a place to plant him;self (the seed) where he will thrive. He visits all the important locations from his past and reconnects with people he once knew. He aims to find where he was most happy and plant his seed there.
I’ve been a manager for one year, 7 days. I’ve been at two stores for five months and three stores for about a month each. My current store has lost about ten people since I got here. It’s tempting to think about what I could’ve done to “save” them, but they left because of career changes, family issues, or long distance relocation. It’s much more effective to determine what needs to be done to keep those we do have. Their needs will be much different than those who left. More specifically, I need to find out how to keep my stars.
This shift in staff has led me to 2 profound realizations. First, I enjoy recruiting, selecting, interviewing, and training people more than almost all other duties of my job. Second, when I have to spend an hour covering the night’s shift, and it affects my ability to schedule my day, I’m discouraged from scheduling my days in the future. What I learned from that, and other “shift-execution” tasks is that my current position is all about running perfect shifts. That’s my priority. I do process improvement only if there’s time. I develop and delegate and coach only if there’s time. I need to be somewhere that allows me to put time on my schedule for these things without risk of them getting pushed to the side. Problems that require long-term thinking are my high ROI areas. Urgent issues are not. I’ll be applying for an MBA in October. By then I should know fairly well if I should pursue partnership, a regional training position, or a non-restaurant job.
QOTW: “People leave bosses, not jobs.” – VP
?FNW: Do I speak to Chris? Not yet
10/14/2017 review: Jon Gordon has several great books for getting perspective. This one helped me to identify aspects of my position that I really enjoyed. These I’ll carry with me where I go. I was a little too sure that long-term projects were more my style. Since this, I’ve realized that you can’t necessarily do only long-term work and feel balanced. I do need periodic feedback, which can be designed into work process rather than requiring hard results (e.g. sales). What I know, though, is that I don’t thrive in an environment that is so oriented toward short-term results.