We’re in that time of year foisted by corporations upon their employees: The Annual Review. Most of the time at the company where I work, the review period is followed by salary adjustments or merit increases. Not this year. For the second year in a row, there will be no merit increases and that policy won’t be reviewed until sometime no earlier than the third quarter. However, whether form should follow function or not, we are in the annual review season. Everyone must be classified into one of three categories: an outstanding performer (no more than 15% of the population can be in this category), successful performers, and those requiring development (5% of the population must fall into this category). The unfortunate in the latter class either have to clean up their act or get managed out of the company.

The timetable requires employees to write a self assessment by the end of December. The manager then has to write a review by the end of January. Then there’s a few weeks of jockeying around to meet the quotas. The Human Resource Department has to give their OK on the ratings and bless the reviews being given to those requiring development. Finally around the end of February, we have the Annual Employee Review which is a one-on-one meeting with the employee’s manager.

I’ve yet to figure out how this process really works to anyone’s benefit other than keeping the Human Resource people gainfully employed. In the employee’s eyes it becomes even almost a joke. Further, in an era of "Shut Up, Sit Down, and Be Happy You Still Have a Paycheck," it’s no wonder that cynicism reigns.

Of course, some of this rant comes because of my own review. It is less than sterling … despite a very, very good year. To read the review you would get the opinion that I’m barely one step away from being managed out of the company. I shouldn’t let it bother me very much — the man I work for is just that way. I don’t think he is capable of writing a review in any other tone. It’s impossible to do any job and have it done correctly from his viewpoint. He would have done it differently. And, of course, doing the job isn’t sufficient, it has to be done precisely in the way he would have done it.

So, what kind of job did I do last year? In January, faced with a very bad financial picture, the company determined to reduce headcount by 20%. In the Information Technology Department, we went one better reducing staffing by just over 30%. The cuts were deep and painful. It left me one person deep at every skill position. If anyone were to quit, go on disability, or even go on a vacation, we would be very short staffed. Beyond that, I was to decrease my spending by another 15%. With that backdrop, we aggressively re-negotiated contracts taking advantage of our supplier’s equally difficult positions. We reduced maintenance coverage. We stopped travelling and put all training on hold. We achieved a 19% percent reduction when the target was 15%.

A major concern was staff burnout coupled with judgment errors since there wasn’t any ability any more to do peer reviews on proposed work (the peers were all gone!), much of the staff were on call every night and weekend, and the workload didn’t decrease even though the staffing had been reduced by a third. I personally felt that the company had to plan for one major system outage each quarter that would last eight hours or longer and so informed management.

To counter that, I implemented plans to recognize the good things that my staff did. We still had a small amount of discretionary money for small awards, such as a dinner for two, or a check for $500 or $1000 (before taxes, of course). Good work and good thinking would be seen by their management and appropriately recognized. We took a hard look at the on-call policies and shifted the workload around as much as possible to have as few people as possible chained to the office. A Microsoft systems adminstrator could be the first line of defense for both Microsoft and Unix systems and vice versa. We encouraged people to take their vacations and release workplace stress. The results were excellent. We had one system outage in SAP that lasted for a half hour and that was due to a hardware failure. The Oracle ERP system had two short outages in the year, both due to hardware. Uptime and reliability improved significantly over the previous year. No one quit, no one went "postal," and no one switched over to apathy mode. We have some personnel issues, but nothing beyond what would be expected in any normal IT shop.

We also accomplished several other very important projects despite severely constrained spending. We implemented wireless access inside all our major locations (which has been very well received) and had an outside firm audit it to verify its security. We built a disaster recovery site for both SAP and Oracle ERP using available hardware and did two successful failover tests. We put in place the ability for employees to access their e-mail and calendars through any internet-connected web browser. We brought up almost twenty new servers in the data center supporting collaboration, intranet search (the "Google" of the company, content management, product line management, and an employee portal. We acquired two more small companies and integrated them into our infrastructure. And we revamped our entire data network as part of renegotiating contracts to take advantage of the latest in wide area network capability.

All of that was well and good — I guess it was what was expected. However, according to my review, my fuse is sometimes too short. I don’t check the information given to me by my staff thoroughly enough before giving it to my boss. There are a couple of other things equally as dastardly.

So, I’ve been reviewed and found, well, somewhat wanting. At least I know that I haven’t reached perfection, yet. I have yet another year to work on it. I also got something to rant about…! But pardon me for a few minutes while I go be a bit cynical about The Reviewing Season.

Today I turned in all the reviews for all the folks who work for me as well as the folks that work for them. The employee one-on-one meetings have all been held. The season is over for another year. Something else to be thankful for, me thinks.

We’ve got about seven or eight inches of snow outside and it’s supposed to snow the rest of the night. This is the first snow of any significance in almost two years. It is very beautiful outside. I think I’ll try to do some camera work tomorrow morning and see what develops. There will be no shortage of subjects, particularly if it’s at all bright or sunny. The drive back from the Denver Temple was slow tonight, with lots of traffic most of the way. The Interstate was fairly slick and slush covered most of the way. I’m quite happy to be home, in my sweats, and able to take it very easy for the rest of the night.

Thursday was a difficult day. It started with a visit to the dentist which was punctuated with three or four telephone calls while the hygenist was trying to clean my teeth. In fact, I didn’t even make it in the door before the phone calls started. The company I work for was doing a "small reorganization" which was resulting in more than two hundred people loosing their job. My department is responsible for turning off remote access, forwarding phones and e-mail, and doing other cleanup work in the aftermath. As I was in the chair going through all of this, the hygenist remarked that this time in her chair just might be the highlight of the day. Now that was a very distressing thought!

The Shift Coordinator for our Saturday afternoon shift at the temple is either working or out of town today and the next two or three weeks. That makes me the Acting Shift Coordinator. The job isn’t particularly difficult, just needs reasonable amount of experience working at the Temple. The job involves the following:

• Somewhere around Thursday having the temple fax me the ordinance schedules for Saturday along with any family file work planned. The ordinance schedule includes weddings, sealings, and own endowments, the time that these events are scheduled, and any other parameters surrounding the events. The family file schedule indicates those people bringing family file work into the temple for baptisms or initiatory ordinances.
• Thursday night calling all the irregular temple workers to determine if they’ll be at the Temple on Saturday afternoon. We have about fifteen ordinance workers who are at the temple every week and another twenty-five workers that are scheduled one or two Saturdays a month. Based on these phone calls, I then know pretty well who will be available on Saturday.
• On Friday I make up the preliminary schedule. We conduct seven endowment sessions on Saturday afternoon and each session needs one or two brethren assigned depending on whether or not an own endowment is planned for that session. We also conduct two initiatory sessions and four brethren are assigned to each session. The rest of the brethren act as Own Endowment or Sealing Guides, and as presenters or receivers at the veil.
• On Friday evening I send a copy of the schedule to the Veil Coordinator for my shift. From that he makes up the veil plans.
• On Saturday morning I have the Temple fax me the latest revisions to their schedules. From that I make up the final schedule, make enough photo copies for each of the brethren on the shift, and the head for the temple.
• The day at the temple starts with a prayer meeting at 12:05 p.m. in the chapel. This meeting needs an opening prayer and a person to give a short spiritual talk. On some Saturdays, I assign these activities. On other Saturdays, the Sister Coordinator assigns sister ordinance workers.
• Following the prayer meeting we have a short training meeting followed by a look at the schedule. I then hand out the work schedule to all the brothers present (after making changes for people who didn’t show up and for people who were there unexpectedly).
• The rest of the day is spent handling scheduling and other issues that occur during the shift. Today we had plenty of help and a very light patron load, so there weren’t many issues and none of any import.
• Finally, I close up the back end of the temple, turn off the lights, check the closets and ordinance rooms, and make sure that everyone has left the back part of the temple. Then it’s off to home.

By then, I’m plenty tired and my feet are very happy for me to be sitting in the car for the hour’s drive home. Bradica (the dog) is also very happy to see us when we finally arrive home, but mostly so she can get outside to do her business and then get something to eat.

So that’s my end of the week. A downer day on Thursday, cleanup from that on Friday, followed by a very pleasant afternoon in the Denver Temple. The day was capped by coming home to find more than seven inches of snow! Only bad part is, because of the snow I’ll have to be at Church at 7:15 a.m. to help shovel the sidewalks. Ugh.

Today I received the following e-mail from World Gym in response to my rant about yet another number to have to remember and use. The e-mail has been edited somewhat to protect privacy of the sender and other information:

Dear Mr. Smith,

Thank you so much for your letter today explaining your frustrations with
the World Gym check in procedure. On June 1, 2002 all World Gym locations
in the Colorado Springs area were acquired by Excel Fitness Colorado, LLC
and now operate under new ownership. All your records and membership
information has been transfered from the previous ownership into the Excel
Fitness Colorado database. Unfortunately one of the drawbacks to our system
is that if you try to utilize a location other than the one that you joined
at, your membership info cannot be found without utilizing the membership
number. (Each membership number is coded to be club specific) We know that
change is difficult, so we have been gradually changing the check in
procedure over the last 8 months and posted those changes at each location.
I apologize for any inconvienance the new program causes you, I assure you
that was never our intent. We appreciate your business and thank you for
your continued support. To show my appreciation, I have lowered your
monthly dues to $(deleted) per month, which will be reflected on your March
statement. Excel Fitness Colorado LLC has been a leader in the fitness
industry for over 15 years, operating the largest World Gym franchise in the
nation. We have many exciting things planned for the Colorado Springs area
and hope that you will stick with us during some of these difficult changes.
Thank you again for your comments. Should any additional issues arise in
the future that you would like to comment on, please don’t hesitate to
contact me directly. I will do what ever I can to rectify the situation.

Thanks Again,

(name deleted)

VP / Operations

My Response:

Dear (Name Deleted):

Thanks for your response and particularly the change in dues! I really don’t have a huge problem with using a membership number, but hopefully you understood the real intent of the letter….

In my day job I’m the responsible for Information Technology for a large semiconductor manufacturer. One of the major problems we have in business is the overwhelming number of ways that our employees and customers (the politically correct phrase these days is “business partners” rather than customers) are identified. It seems that literally every computer system requires it’s own unique method of identifying and authenticating the system user. Getting that under control has been a major project at my company. The rule has become: Use a method of identification that the system user already knows or has. About a year ago we instituted a policy that we will not deploy any computer system that does not make use of our standard, already-in-place identification and authentication process. We have standardized on either the user’s name or an ID of their own choosing. We do have system users with the same name, but the identification system is required to handle that issue through the authentication process.

While this is probably more detail than you’re interested in, the point is to make it "falling off a log" easy for people to do business with us and interface with our computer systems, kind of like Amazon.com’s 1-click buying process.

Please feel free to pass this along to those who are responsible for your computer systems. With only a little effort, they can do the same thing for Excel Fitness Colorado LLC!

Meanwhile, thanks again for your response. Many companies either ignore letters like the one I sent to you, or don’t have the sense to put in place a process to promptly respond. I’m impressed. I’ve also put your response (with some editing to protect pricing and your privacy) on the web at https://www.rnsmith.com/

Thanks!

Roland Smith

Yesterday morning when I went to the World Gym for the daily ritual, the guy at the front desk (a less-than-2%-Body-Fat kind of a guy) looked me up on their computer and then gave me a card with a membership number. I’m now supposed to give them the number when I come in each morning rather than my name!

Yet another number to identify me. I’ve got a social security number, a drivers license number, several bank account numbers, pin numbers, user ids and passwords for computer programs, license plate numbers, frequent flier numbers, Safeway Savings Card number, Avis Wizard Number…. In fact, there are so many of these numbers that I have most of them entered into my PalmPilot PDA that I carry with me almost everywhere so that I can remember the number I’m supposed to use for each situation.

I asked the guy at the desk why I now needed a number. I’ve been going to this gym for more than three years and until Thursday, my name was sufficient. He told me it was so they could "be more efficient."

Now that’s a not-so-novel concept: Inconvenience the paying customer so that the goods and services provider is slightly less inconvenienced! I’m sure this makes the Dale Carnagie How to Win Friends and Influence People top ten list. But even more intriguing is why World Gym needs to have a different identifier for me than my name. I’m certainly not the only Roland K. Smith in the world. In fact, there are probably a couple hundred other people in the U.S. who use the name Roland K. Smith. Despite that situation, however, the Post Office manages every day to deliver the mail destined for me to my house and has never yet in my almost-sixty-years of living, sent some other Roland K. Smith’s mail to me. There aren’t any other Roland K. Smiths in Colorado Springs. In fact, there aren’t any other Roland Smiths in the city, either. So uniqueness in a somewhat common name can’t be the driving issue for the gym.

Sometimes I think that computers assign numbers as primary identification just because it’s so much easier for the person writing the computer program. Programmers like numbers. They work better in the computer than letters. Comparing two numbers, for instance, is much easier than comparing two names. The computer can easily determine that 140 is different than 2500. But the computer just as easily decides that "Smith" is different than " Smith" unless the programmer goes to a bunch of extra effort to write a comparison routine that accommodates spaces in names as well as the length of names.

Although my name is fairly common — particularly when using just the first initial and last name — I do like it and would prefer to be identified by my name. I suspect that the computer didn’t agonize over my number like my mother did over my name. It probably took the computer a few nanoseconds to assign the number unlike me coming home from the hospital unnamed because just exactly the right name hadn’t been decided, yet (compounded by the fact that I was supposed to be a girl and just the right girl’s name had already been picked, but surprise, I was not a girl and so a new, more gender appropriate name, had to be chosen).

United Airlines knows me by my name, even though one of the numbers I have assigned to me is a United Airlines Frequent Flier Number, which I’m supposed to hold confidential and only use in appropriate places. When I call United Airlines and say something like, "Hello, my name is Roland Smith and I’m flying from Colorado Springs to San Jose next Thursday…." The nice person at United Airlines invariably answers, "I’ve got your record, Mr. Smith. How can I help you today?" Even though the record that the reservation agent is looking at is filed in the computer under a record locator number, and my travel agent sends me the flight itinerary in e-mail with the record locator number as the prominent information on the page, United Airlines never asks for that number. It’s almost like the locator number is an inconvenience for them. All they want is my name and any flight information I may have. They’ve even found the necessary data by just using my name. Now that’s a system where the programmer did the complete job. On the other hand, United Airlines is currently having lots of trouble with numbers, in particular the revenue versus expense numbers. Perhaps that’s why they prefer using names instead than numbers?

The guy behind the counter at World Gym said this morning when I came in, "Good Morning, Mr. Smith. Have a good workout." I told him I was now supposed to give him my membership number and not my name, even though I hadn’t said anything to him yet. He allowed as how he was supposed to ask for the membership number, but that since he knew who I was he didn’t need for me to give him my number, as long as his lady boss wasn’t there!She’s apparently the enforcer!

"Well," I told him, "I’ll still just use my name. It’s too early in the morning to try and remember yet another number." As I started my forty-minute-treadmill jaunt, I was watching CNN and the latest news from Iraq and the impending war and thought about how we’re living in a place that we fairly reverently call the home of the free where people have names and convicts have numbers. I think that I’m much more than a number and I plan to somehow forget my new World Gym Membership Number.

By the way, I took several hundred digital pictures in Maui. Slowly but surely the best of the crop (but close to a couple hundred pictures) are being posted on the web. Click on the pictures link to left, select Maui, and enjoy the pictures.

Turns out that someone (or maybe someones) are actually reading this journal from time to time. So, I need to become much more diligent about actually clicking on this link, logging in, and writing. The previous post came while we were still in Maui, several weeks ago.

We’ve finally had some snow. Not much, just about four inches, but enough to be called snow. The weather has also turned quite cold as well. The front walk needs to be shoveled — even though it’s a south-facing sidewalk, the sun hasn’t become warm enough to melt the snow. City ordinance says we have twenty-four hours after the end of the storm to shovel the walks. I’m in violation!

Maui was a great experience. I’d highly recommend a week or two on the island for anyone. Don’t plan on it being a relaxing vacation, however. There’s so much to do that one week isn’t enough. Next trip we’ll put Sunday in the middle of the trip so we can have an automatically slower day to rest up from the previous few days. I’ve thought about what I liked most about Maui. The sights were beautiful, the weather was lovely, the ocean was pleasant. But, overall I think it was that Maui was much different than I had expected. I was thinking we’d be in a jungle, kind of like the Philippines, that it’d be hot, and that the mosquitos and bugs would be out in abundance. None of those preconceptions were valid. I don’t think the weather got about 85 degrees while we were there, and there was always a breeze to keep things cool. The air was not very humid. The western side of the island, where we spent most of our time, was actually quite arid — no jungle here! And finally, we had a great time. We’ll definitely return. I’d be quite happy to spend a fair amount of time on Maui.

In the meantime, after returning from Maui, I made a quick trip to California on business. I convened all of my managers as well as their managers and supervisors in California for a planning / goal setting / motivational meeting. The economic climate is not improving with any speed, so the next six to twelve months will continue to be very tight. Helping them to understand how tight things really are was an important part of the offsite. To emphasize that, we didn’t even go offsite for the offsite meeting! It was held in a conference room at the facility in Milpitas, California. We had a good time, however, and the time together seemed to be very well spent. Best part of that trip, however, is that I’m staying home for all of February! No travelling anywhere in February. While that doesn’t help rack up frequent flier miles or flight segments, I’m quite happy to spend a month at home.

We decided today was a no alarm clock day. I slept into the glorious hour of 7:11. Nina was, of course, already up. Perry was up about ten minutes later. Chris hopefully will be able to do what all the rest of us could not do … sleep.

Snorkeling in Molokini was quite fun. The boat left at 8 a.m. and cruised past a couple of whale pods on the way out. We were there about an hour. The water was cool and a bit rough, but we had a lot of fun. I think that the snorkeling in the Caribbean is better, however (and the water is warmer!). We then cruised back towards Maui south of where we are staying in Kihei where we went back into the water to swim with the turtles. I saw several and Nina had one swim alongside for a few minutes. They were pretty, large, and more plentiful than I had expected.

Then we came back to the apartment, packed things up, and went to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. The water was still pretty rough — there’s weather coming in sometime — but we still had a great time. Chris literally lived in the water the entire afternoon. We watched the sunset (and took lots of pictures) and then came back to the apartment to shower and clean up. Dinner at Tony Roma’s consumed the rest of the night.

Whale watching may be on the agenda today…. We’ll see!

We’ve now been here in Kihei, Maui, for three full days and are exhausted. This is a beautiful place and far different than I had imagined. We’ve shopped, driven to the top of a volcano for sunrise, and survived the Hana Road. But, other than to stand and look, we’ve not been to a beach. I’m certain that’s on the agenda for tomorrow!

The flight here was very long. We left Houston on time at about 11 a.m. and flew for over eight hours westward to Maui, landing in Kahului. We were dang glad to get off the airplane even though our seats were actually pretty good. We were able to make some changes so that we had the two aisle seats on the last row in the airplane with an empty middle seat between us. There appeared to be two open seats on the airplane and we had one of them next to us! We then waited a couple of hours for my brother Perry and his wife Chris to arrive from Los Angeles. Our daughter Jaelene and her husband Scott are also vacationing here at the same time in a different place, so they met us at the airport as well. We planned the week and headed for bed!

Tuesday was a shopping day. We spent the entire day in Lahaina. We met Jaelene and Scott, bought tickets to a Luau and snorkeling, and then walked Front street. Lots of T-Shirt places, lots of trinket shops. Not nearly as commercialized as St. Thomas or Ocho Rios, but very much for tourists. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with some friends that my folks made while they were here on a mission about twenty years ago, Virgil and Bonnie. He’s also a cousin. They were a lot of fun and we had a great dinner.

Wednesday was volcano day. We got up at 4 a.m., left at 4:50 a.m., and drove to the summit of Haleakala some 10,000 feet above sea level. We arrived about 45 minutes before sunrise and were quite cold by the time the sun peaked over the clouds below us. We were there with about 200 other hardy souls and drove back down shortly after sunrise. We stopped at Paia on the drive back and watched the surfers. The waves were pretty big and there were a lot of foolhardy surfers out in the ocean catching waves. It was quite a sight! We then drove the coast along western Maui past Lahaina, Kaanapali, up to Hanolua Bay. We were at the Hyatt Regency at 4:30 p.m. for a Luau where we met up with Jaelene and Scott. The seats were directly in front of the stage. The food was reasonably good and plentiful. The show was excellent. We’ve now done that and don’t need to go again.

Today was the drive to Hana — clockwise around the Haleakala volcano. The total trip is about 110 miles but it took us a good eleven hours. We stopped at several waterfalls, some of which were lovely, many of which were very sparse. They haven’t had much rain this winter and consequently, the area is very much in a drought. Hana itself is a very quaint, lovely town and it’d be fun to spend a few days there (if we didn’t have to do the very long drive again). Just before Hana we stopped at Nahiku where George Harrison once had a house. Spectacular drive, stunning coastline, great place to have lunch. Past Hana we stopped at the Seven Sacred Pools — which were down to a couple of almost dry pools due to the drought and then stopped at the Charles Lindbergh grave. The drive from there back to Kahului was over some pretty rough road which was also quite spectacular in places. We ordered delivery Chinese food and I spent a few minutes in the hot tub. Sure did feel good on the feet!

So, is Maui almost paradise? It sure is a wonderful place. It’s expensive. Everything is expensive. The lady at the rental car counter said that everyone has to work two jobs to make ends meet. I asked her what here second job was and she said, “A boyfriend.” The traffic is lousy. Life runs at a little slower pace along with pretty poor service. Parts of the island are stunningly beautiful. The Humpback Whales are here…. So, Maui definitely isn’t a parking lot nor dashboard lights — and could be considered to be almost paradise.