Trained to Feel Joy Part 2

The orange frog training completed on Tuesday. I know I said that I would write a blog post for you immediately afterwards. However, that was impossible. I could not decide if it was a good or bad experience.

I’m still confused, but here are my thoughts.

The good:

1.       It was nice to break from routine.
2.        It was fun joking around and talking to my co-workers. 
3.       .     I got to know a couple of managers a bit better.
4.            Some of the training techniques seemed like they could be useful
1.       .   Such as listing different things you are thankful for daily.
2.       Also, writing a small paragraph of something good that happens to you daily.

      5.       The breakfast and lunch for both days was excellent and free.

The bad:

      1.   All day training two days before quarter end just overloaded my list of critical things to get                         done on 9/30.

      2.   The training was either rehashed Agile principles or “in an ideal world” type scenarios.

1.      I un-ironically got to use the “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” line during training. I will now credit Michael Scott who quoted Wayne Gretski.

       3.  The complete lack of seriousness with which we treated the training seriously limited its                              effectiveness.

             4.  It revealed the animosity that some people in our build lines have toward the company’s                              direction.

             5.       Everyone, not just me, resented the way the training was introduced.

It was clear that had we only been given a choice and clear incentive to join the training then it would have been more effective. As it was, it became a platform for complaining about the state of our application and its inevitable replacement by the next shiny thing.

One thing the training got right was the element of choice. “You get out of this what you put into it.” They said. This was absolutely true. I picked out the pieces that I thought were useful – but there was an element of incredulity that nullified a significant chunk of the training.

How can we trust a management team that seems to never acknowledge the problems we face together? When our legitimate concerns about keeping the promises of our company are met with big smiles and helpless shrugs? And now we are told “Just be positive.” It’s an attitude of “More woohoo less boohoo” within a management team that I have witnessed before.

When I was a financial analyst on the annuity side of our business we were facing a serious crises in morale as a result of outsourcing and the general shaking up of our teams as well as a blending of departments. We were greeted with the same sorts of managerial indecision. At the time, I was not very charitable and I labeled it as cowardice.

I was wrong. Management acted that way because they were helpless to do otherwise. Positive changes were being promoted, but change occurs slowly. Across the department, everything improved. People grew and that growth was recognized.

So now, we have Orange Frog. Be positive, because we don’t know what will happen. We can face this more easily with smiles than by mourning for something that must change. I find it difficult to argue with that message.

It says a lot about a company, when they invest such a large chunk of resources toward trying to promote happiness within their employees. Make no mistake, this was a very costly training. The lost production, the speaker fees and the course fees probably resulted in a total expenditure in the tens of thousands.

Our executives, at least some of them, appear to really care about what we think and whether we are happy. I find that, at least, encouraging.