When Holidays fall on aThursday
it feels…
Weird
I know that in corporateAmerica, a lot of people have to work on the Friday after a mid-weekholiday
But having done so myself formore than a few years
I can say with totalconfidence that productivity on those days is almost too low tomeasure
Unless…
You work for yourself
Then you get to be asproductive as you like
Or define it how you like
I remember going into theoffice once and having a meeting with the V-P and other C-suite execs
Who were delighted that theyallowed employees to wear blue jeans on Friday after a holiday
And wondered why none of“them” felt grateful for it
Which is an attitude Iencountered a lot
“They” should be grateful,“They” should work harder, “They” should do more
So on a day just like today,we were told to measure the analytics
with constant monitoring toensure each person made at least 100 attempts to reach out
Which doesn’t sound likemuch in the grand scheme
It’s literally trying 25times an hour
Which is how the C-Suite sawit
But it’s trying to reachepople who were on vacation mode themselves or on duty or on leave
and didn’t want to bebothered
Or worse didn’t want tobother with anyone who disrespected their time like that
So I said to my team at thetime to try an email
Send as many as you like witha goal to try to talk to four people
And if you didn’t get to the“talk business” part, at least you made a connection and set up atime to call back
The how of it
But that instruction got mecalled into an office the next week
I got a reprimand for “failingto follow protocol”
And an instruction to documentit for others to use, because the method generated the best metricsof any team that day
Which included the only metricthat mattered
Helping people
Which defined my entirecorporate experience
Always getting into troublefor ignoring the rules
Always getting what I didturned into new policy
Which I think is why I was letgo
Because I didn’t think beingbusy meant being productive
Especially on the day after aholiday
Isn’t that weird
