This week I have been
Reading
The 2011 Tour de France race guide.
Watching
An Idiot Abroad
Listening to
The xx
Discovering
(Or rediscovering) Hamlet - Nicki Greenberg's beautiful new version, thanks to the fabulous Snarkattack, who invited me along to see Nicki talk about the creative process behind the book.
Eating
- An enormous serve of bangers'n'mash and a nourishing pint of Kilkenny at the Town Hall one dismal Tuesday evening.
- A "Chachi" - chianina meatball sandwich - another brioche donut and some amazing chocolate tart at Beatrix, which Essjay has reviewed.
- A lazy Sunday lunch at The Crimean. The Polish hunter's stew (bigos) was just the thing to revive me after a chilly bike ride.
- Generous piles of fried food with oodles of chillies and sichuan peppercorns at Sichuan House
- Succulent suckling pig at Liberteene.
- An array of bright, zesty flavours at Chin Chin, where the only problem was having to choose only some of the items from what looks to be a menu that is all hits, no filler.
erformance Review. To celebrate the end-of-cycle review meeting, teams were asked to complete a review of the performance review process. I’m sure that once all these have been collated, we’ll be called together to review the reviews of the performance review process.
Oh Dear
you are getting inside my head, as I have been asked by my board to carry out this task on the poor clods that work for/with me. It’s a pet hate of mine as one can never be totally honest and even then there’s always someone who is dissatisfied!
Anyhoo, my board has a sense of humor, as they asked me to investigate a system whereby THEY can be performance reviewed. what fun that will be.
Aaah the joys of the modern americanized office. In the good old days it was all so simple. You had your “death list” (seniority system)and promotions were based on that. Everyone knew where they stood and toadying did not exist. Worked fine in the public service for years, but now???????????
Maybe another year off is not such a bad idea…I’ll have to review that decision and get back to you.
Sometimes I think management does this to justify their positions. I suppose you had to show some restraint when you did your review.
restraint is a useful euphemism, but with a small group of people and a very large workload, i have to keep everyone as jollied as possible within the constraints of the regulations. 90 % of the time it works. dont ask about the other 10%, that’s prtly how I became sour
RR – Our review system is bizarre – we thought we’d agreed to one approach and then suddenly we were told that our team reports were not going to cut it and we’d still have to present evidence to the boss. Seemed to undermine the basis of the new system, so we’re going to try a little bit of (civil?) disobedience: nobody will present evidence with their report and the boss will have to justify wanting to see it. I hope we maintain a united front!
This is what happens when the review system is so cumbersome that it leaves little room for actual “performance”…
Sourkraut, in a past life our public service bosses started to get into the then buzzword: 360 degree feedback. No wonder they were so dizzy.
Injera
They only got dizzy when this americanisation started.
In the old days engineers ran the public service and things actually got built (railways,roads dams snowy scheme etc etc etc. Unfortunately they were not prepared to fight the “bright young things” with MBAs straight out of a wheaties packet. As a result the P S was taken over by a bunch of know nothing burkes whose only talent was for “shamblesization”. In my career I have survived 7 reorganizatios and 6 physical moves in the last 15 years. before that there were none!
So how much better off are we now? look at our roads rails hospitals schools water supply and the answer is easy!
BRING BACK THE GOOD OLD DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!