Summa Bonum

Friday has slipped to a close. I am going to celebrate that closure
with a nap. All in all the day was not bad. It was fairly quiet at
work. We are deploying a reporting module to one of our programs next
week, so the day was mostly spent in test and test review meetings. We
still have a ways to go, at least one more cycle of build and deploy,
so it will most likely carry into next week.

I went to lunch at the Grand Buffet (Indian) on Lawrence Expressway. I
had chicken Marsala, potato curry, bismati rice and cucumbers in
yogurt. Very tasty.

The afternoon was not so pleasant. We are entering our review season
and our company uses a distributed ranking system - and unfortunately
it often results in a forced ranking system. I run a small group of
overachievers so fitting them into the distribution and meeting my own
sense of fairness is always a struggle with my management and HR. I
spent the last two hours of the day in that discussion. We settled it
- I won some and I lost some. I didn't like it one bit, but it is done.

Performance appraisals and rankings are one of my key philosophical
differences with my company. It is a battle I fight every year.
Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose.

I console myself with the knowledge of two things. My units morale is
high and my analysts understand that sometimes I fight the dragon and
the dragon wins. The second is the classic summa bonum - the greater
good - sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and as long as you win
the right ones, the greater good is achieved. Doesn't mean I like it
and it doesn't mean I will stop fighting. It just is what it is.

Going to head out to the Chinese buffet shortly for dinner with Tom
and Tony. Seems to be a buffet kind of day now that I think about it.
Pick the best you can from the buffet.

Summa bonum.

Sent from my iPhone