[mountain5]

This is going to be my other thread where I keep track of a major goal. Based on talking to my boss, and thinking about it on my own, I'm doing great at work, except I don't do a good job keeping communication open when I'm not directly working with someone. i.e. I need to have "broad" relationships as well as "deep" relationships. So my goal is to do a little bit of planning each night, and try to start at least 5 conversations every day. 95% of it will probably be at work to start with, and I don't expect to succeed every day, but I want to be persistent.

Here's how I started it out today:
I had a list of 5 possible conversations I could start, but I only went through with 2 of them, partly because I got into work late. I went to a coworker's office to give him a status update on a problem I was working on. Then I went to one of my team members and asked him for some help on a side project. He actually volunteered to take on more work than I expected him to.

I had a couple other contacts that day, but those were the two I initiated. I'll probably have to come up with more than 5 ideas for conversations before I come into work, so I can pick and choose based on the situation.

The List
2009/07/06 - 2 out of 5. Nothing special.
2009/07/07 - 2.5 out of 5
2009/07/08 - 4 out of 5
2009/07/09 - 3 out of 5

 

[Miss T]

This is really a great idea. I'm the new girl at work, so maybe I should try something like this to get to know my co-workers. Maybe I should approaching some one new daily.

 

[mountain5]

I say go for it, just use common sense and don't beat yourself up when you have a setback. You have a lot of questions about how things work, this is the perfect time to ask them, and I'm sure people feel good about themselves when they help you.

 

[mountain5]

Didn't get much done today...I started my day with pretty much no sleep and I was scatterbrained all day. My office mate came back from vacation and I tried to start some small talk about it, which lasted all of 10 seconds, so I counted it as half. I had a couple other attempts, pretty much like yesterday. When I got home I went right to sleep and slept through a monthly meeting for a volunteer group I was supposed to attend. I really screwed up today, no way around it.

 

[mountain5]

Today was a little better. I went out to lunch at a sub shop with a couple of my coworkers. I didn't talk much, but there wasn't much need to either. One of them left our department a couple years ago and they were catching up.

I visited a couple more offices and got into some technical discussions as I was trying to track down problems. I also contacted someone I don't talk with much and got permission to do some testing on "his" system, which helps me on my project a lot. I felt really crappy coming into work today, but it got better as the day went on.

It seems like I need to have a list of about 10 ideas to get 5 conversations out of it. Now obviously the idea is eventually I don't need a list at all, and everything will "just happen," but I have to start somewhere.

 

[mountain5]

Well, today was kind of a slow day. I didn't do any planning Wednesday night, and it showed. I had a few in depth technical conversations with people, but I didn't really initiate a whole lot of meaningful discussion, so I guess I'm counting today as a 3 out of 5.

 

[TorLin]

great goal you can do it !

 

[mountain5]

Well, I've had kind of hard time with this, to be honest. A bunch of people I work with are on vacation, so that doesn't make it any easier. I'm still going to pursue this as much as I can, but I probably won't be updating the thread unless I get into the swing of it more.