Now, Is The Time!

The end of the year normally very busy, but not when it comes to work. Well, as soon as I publish this – my inbox will explode with busy work. Normally, folks love to take the weeks of Christmas and New Years off. For the past couple of years, I have found that this is a wonderful time to get work done. Real work! Get ahead of the game, work!

I went into the office on Monday, because I had a couple of meetings that I had to have. One was with a person that wanted to get active in the companies internal social computing capabilities. I am always into having discussion with folks to demonstrate the social capabilities, discuss potential opportunities, help out or just plain teach. The passion is real, I looked forward to coming into the office, when very few folks were going to be there. I always am on a high after these meetings. So, I scheduled another meeting, one that I am not a fan of – going over the changes needed to roadmap presentations. Boring and necessary topic. Start the day – in outstanding fashion, tackle the not so much fun subject next… Seemed to work for me.

What I really use the week for is – getting ahead on some of the work that is going to hit and hit hard:

• Yearly performance appraisal’s are going to be a big time sync over the January timeframe (getting ahead of that is all goodness)
• Budget 2010 should be finalized – and everyone and their brothers are going to want to know what is coming and when (hence the roadmap discussion). The amount of cycles that will be consumed will be large.
• Writing my rev 0 self-assessment for my boss. Since I manage a team, I need my folks to complete theirs to insure that I have not missed anything important.
• Preparing for the welcome to the new year fire drill. You know that topic that just keeps on giving that makes your head spin. This year is no different – centers on social computing again. 2009 for us, was a year of really starting to take shape. Now that some of the leaders have a better understanding (enough to be dangerous, but not enough to fully understand) – they want to see how we can save some bucks and maybe look to consolidate and integrate. Nobel efforts, but a bit too early, in my opinion.
• Setting up the overall groups expectations for 2010. Once everyone is back from their holidays, they will be recharged and ready to go. Time to have what expectations fully lined out. Budget is set, work on the roadmaps has started and we should start to have some vision of 2010.
• Lastly, celebrating 2009! Lots of good stuff happened in 2009, don’t forget that. Have fun and celebrate the wins. Celebrate the near wins… 2009 was rough in many ways, but I know that I had some wins to celebrate. I told my team to do the same thing!

It is nice to have some time to slow down and spend the cycles during the periods when the work force is limited (out enjoying the holidays). For me, it helps to kick of the new year with some work already in the can, or at the very least shaped up to complete on time.