I am wrapping up a project at work that has kind of consumed my life for the past few months (hence the super-sporadic posting). I have been a bit manic about when/how/what I post. Hence there have been a few weeks where I got stuff scheduled the weekend before or managed to keep up with the occasional night-writing and the past two or three weeks have been deathly silent.
But now I am working on the reviews for my project-team. Because I think it’s important to give them feedback (the good, the bad and the ugly). And it’s hard because reviewing-up is stressful (especially since I can’t be anonymous). Reviewing peers isn’t as bad, my workplace DOES have a good culture about constructive reviews. ASKING for reviews is also hard because as much as my company has a culture to encourage constructive reviews – I don’t feel like everyone does it.
I have 2-5 managers I love working with because they give me AWESOME feedback (“the audio was kind of scratchy” or “I wish the examples had been more department-specific” or the like) where not only do they tell me something was wrong, they tell me what would make it better (even when I then roll my eyes in my brain and go “yeah…. not with OUR time constraints” or the like).
I like constructive feedback. I LIKE it. I crave it as an employee. I want to be better. I promise, I’m not trying to do something less than awesome and if it’s less than awesome I either didn’t know/realize or HAD to compromise because of time/money constraints. That old time-money-quality triangle is something I balance in my head A LOT. Probably more than I should. But if no one mentions it, I might not realize I missed awesome (’cause that was my AIM).
So as I come to the end of this project I am trying to think of some way(s) I can get the constructive critique I want. I know at least one person on the project I am going to ask to get lunch with me and have a very frank conversation (a – I think he’ll be super-honest and b- he’s been extremely involved in several pieces of the project that were the pieces that went a little sideways). For most of them, I think I am going to give them constructive critiques (most of them highly positive) and just send them a quick email asking them for the same.
Hopefully, this also means I can get back to writing here on the regular instead of the manic sporadic writing I’ve BEEN getting in. I have a character fluttering in my brain begging me to write her story but I’m soooo mentally tired every night.
Dream by Day 