Skip to main content

Been a While

Today the entire team was in the same room for the first time in almost three years. They came from Osaka, Tokyo, and even Pusan in Korea, and gathered at our company headquarters for a meeting that was quite a long time in the making.


I have embraced working from home fully. The benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, the huge one for me being able to maximize my time with Eri and the boys. There's no commuting and barely any business trips any more.


But I miss being around these people every day. In particular this little group that I lead/manage. We see each other almost every day online, but today, with the amazing weather and the deluxe beef tongue lunch boxes and the excitement in the air of all the announcements that were being made by the various teams, it was apparent to me and I think to everyone that we sorely need to meet in person as often as we can. 


I have got to be one the luckiest people in the world to get to work with this special group of people. They are technically in my charge as co-workers because I'm the boss. However, we are also all friends. Showing up to work every day with friends who share the same values, goals, and ideals is a dream come true.


I walked down to Izumi Chuo to catch the subway downtown as the sun was setting and the Friday evening traffic was clogging up the narrow streets. My mind was buzzing and my body was still a little shaky from all the excitement, and probably all the coffee. Going to the company usually means I partake liberally of the coffee machine. I also had a presentation before lunch that I was nervous about. 

The other managers do their team update presentations very traditionally and "normally" with PowerPoint slides and graphs and charts and whatnot. They're very professional. That's not my style. I only use PowerPoint if absolutely necessary, and I didn't think today was necessary. I am fond of saying to anyone who will listen, "Nobody has ever been inspired by a PowerPoint presentation." And my goal when I stand up in front of people to talk is to inspire. 

Yes, I had to do a team status update in front of our entire department of 25 people, including my boss who happens to be the CEO of the company, but I couldn't waste the chance of having everyone in the same room for the first time in forever all sitting politely and facing toward me for twenty minutes. I had some things I wanted to say.

I worked in some data and percentages, but I also told a story. It was a story about Kenzo asking me what my job is and how I interpreted that question to really mean, "What is important to you?" I talked about what our mission is and why what we do matters. 

Most of the people in the room know me and my style. And surely when I wasn't looking there were a few eye rolls.


Later our team met up for yakiniku downtown. We laughed and commiserated and drank beer and enjoyed each other's company, all six of us for the first time in a while. When it was time to part there were hugs and knowing nods.

I do not take for granted how blessed I am to work with people I not only care for as their manager, but also respect and love as friends.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

lookin tired/feelin good

I can't even read the clock right. Eri: "You're going to soccer, right? Aren't you a bit early?" Me: "Yeah! We usually leave at this time and get there right on time. We gotta go! Let's go guys!" Soccer club starts at 10 a.m. The boys know that when the long hand on the clock gets to the 8 (9:40) it's time to go to the bathroom and get our socks and shoes on and head down to the car. The big hand was on 8. The problem that Eri saw was the short hand. It was 8:40, not 9:40. I'm going nuts. Slowly . Rapidly. An hour later, after I slowly enjoyed my coffee and disposed of the last beetle (yes, all four beetles have now gone back to the earth) and cleaned his bug box to make room for new bug acquisitions and the boys chilled out on the sofa watching TV, we set off. While the boys played soccer I headed across the parking lot to grab them some juice boxes for a job well done. This is not standard procedure, but Kenzo made his comeback today after ...
1 comment
Read more

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Friends and Co-workers

Taking a random Wednesday off from work means Thursday is going to be extra busy, and today was that. I was in meetings for a little over five hours and just barely managed to reply to emails that needed attention and attend to tasks that require daily steps forward. I have it so good because the people I work with are my friends. We even talked about this today in a meeting about our team culture. We do a solid amount of professional development and core values driven discussions. Officially, I am the manager, so my position has a certain nuance. For example, I know I'm not part of conversations that team members have amongst each other. And that's fine. It's natural. I trust everyone, as I would trust any friend, that they all have the best interests of each other and our organization at heart. They never let me down. The first meeting of the day was a two hour book study session. My team is passionate about growth, so we choose a book regularly, make a schedule, and meet...
1 comment
Read more