Wednesday 9 March 2011

Life, Work......Oh Sod It!

I was having a good day. Turned round a deteriorating situation at work where everyone was getting their arses kicked, through standing my ground in a meeting with senior management. I countered every attempt to put the brakes on resolving the corporate priority with carefully constructed argument, backed by fact, all put together in the last 24 hours.

Finally I got a grudging acceptance. The parting shot from the most senior executive was "well you'll need to get go ahead from my team" to which I was able to reply with confidence - "As key stakeholders I spoke to them this morning, walked them through my draft strategy and they were behind it." Nothing left to be said. Result!

And subsequently tomorrow starts with a 7.30am meeting, another at 8.30....... but I'm happy that I managed to drive through such a positive outcome for the organisation, and at the end of the day, one for me too on a personal level.

Got home this evening to find that my laptop has been turned into a pile of scrap by the latest Microsoft update. Have wasted an entire evening unsuccessfully trying to solve the problem. Luckily though, bit by bit, each time it restarted I managed to save my data onto the E: drive before it froze again. Grrrr! Time to rebuild anyway but just don't need it.

Cheers
Mark

10 comments:

  1. I feel your pain.

    The company I went through laid off a bunch of people this week, including my immediate supervisor who I really, truly liked and respected. To add to the fun, I have three very complex, very LONG proposals due at the same time that I'm trying to get through the roughs for one of our Osprey books. I'm on my third week of seven day/14 hour days, my wrists are killing me from typing, and my eyes are about to burn out of my head from looking at computer monitors. On top of that, I'm concerned I may have lost a friend.

    I hope both our weeks get better, buddy.

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  2. That first line should read, "The company I work for . . . " Add inability to type coherently to the week's ills. Always a great thing for a so-called "professional communicator." ;)

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  3. Cheers Shawn.

    Hope you get a laugh from the email I've sent you!

    Cheers
    Mark

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  4. You guys are real troopers. I cannot imagine being in your positions.

    -Eli

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  5. In my case, the occasional whine followed by wine helps, Eli. ;)

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  6. I hear you guys. My mother is going through spinal fusion surgery and will be coming to live with us. I am ok with this and even excited but it does add stress. I also got some mixed reviews about my game though porky did a nice one on his blog. I need artists!

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  7. They're hard to find, Rob! I'll help if I can, though!

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  8. As a person who works, for a large Pharma company I know what you mean. Next as I also work in the IT dept, you need to get you self a copy of LINUX,such as Ubuntu. Burn it to cd and when M$ gives you an issue, boot with LINUX and recover ALL you data. http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

    Noel

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  9. I feel your pain in the office. I left my last job due to issues with illogical executive hidden agendas "IEHA". I am beginning to think that the red under the bed is me.

    Windows can be unreliable but I defected to Apple a few years back so most of my major IT difficulties are at work - my home kit keeps working. I have a Macbook Pro from 2001 and it is still going strong, I have never had to do a rebuild due to failure. A laptop with great longevity.

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  10. You know Mark; every time I read posts like this, you remind me why I chose a life of creative poverty over the corporate slave :)

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