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Yesterday, I read Anne Zelenka’s post on ROWE at Best Buy. I was heartened to see that this idea was getting mentioned again, and that it was getting front-page interest from Big Media.

On a lark, I forwarded the post to my director and VP. Their responses frightened me. They were written in management-ese, and indicated that timesheets are soon to be added to my daily routine.

Hugh Mcleod — Sheep/Wolf

I can help cure the first, starting with Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, and George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

The second plague, timesheets, I see as more odious. It goes along with the new measurement-focused management culture in our company. Sometimes, I wonder what’s more important to the managers and executives: measurements or results.

As a person who is difficult enough to manage due to my bipolar, and my deep-rooted desire to do things that have meaning, timesheets are a problem for me. I don’t work to timesheets; I work to goals.

Structured environments have always been a serious problem for me. They trigger a deep resentment, some deep rooted need in my soul not to conform. I know that they serve a purpose, and that some people take a great deal of comfort in the process of knowing how they spent their day. My comfort comes from delivering meaningful results, not in worshipping the almighty bureaucracy.

I suppose that as the company I work for grows and has more people to manage, timesheets are inevitable. However, it’s about the time that timesheets appear that I feel the need to find more results-oriented, dynamic organizations.

Timesheets are a sign of corporate doublespeak, freeing people from the need to excel.

Technorati Tags: work, management, timesheets, bipolar, sheep/wolf, gapingvoid, Web+Worker+Daily, Anne+Zelenka

Dear Skype:

I love the software. I am using it more for personal and work calls.

But I need to know when I have a voicemail. Now, not 24 hours from now.

I know you know about the problem. But it’s been over a month. I assume the voicemail notification wasn’t a problem before. So you know how to fix the problem, right?

Are you working on it?

Is anyone out there?

Technorati Tags: Skype, voicemail, Skype+voicemail

This is good to know. I have been spending years trying to make my speech sound as non-descript as possible. It was interesting this summer to go home and talk to my family. They have a uniquely Southeastern BC/Southwestern Alberta accent. Hey, even Canada has unique accents.

You don’t think so? Well, the stereotypical “Canadian” accent that is portrayed in the US popular media is actually a Southern Ontario / Toronto Area accent. It is easily recognizable and immediately pegs you in the rest of Canada as someone who should be distrusted as a likely carpetbagger.

The only spoken/written giveaways I have retained are:

– “a- bowt” and “owt”
– “prawcess”
– “sheduel”, although I do alternate this with “skeduel”
– I spell “theatre”, “centre”, “colour”, etc. correctly

However, if you call me American, I will be very quick to correct you.

Well, for some reason that I can’t determine, FeedBurner and my WordPress.com feed stopped playing nicely this afternoon. And they won’t reload, because WordPress.com wants to send all 1400+ articles in the database back to FeedBurner.

Sorry to do this to you all, but the FeedBurner feed is removed. Deleted.

Hope y’all switch to the WordPress.com feed.

UPDATE: The FeedBurner Feed is back.

Joe Kottke of FeedBurner sent me an e-mail to tell me that the measurement of my feed was throwing off their GrabPERF Stats.

Guess what? FeedBurner can’t find the WordPress feeds at http://crazycanuck.wordpress.com/feed/, hence the disruption.

Likely you won’t read this until it’s fixed, if it’s fixed.

I love Fridays.