If I was waiting to blog when I become less busy, it ain't gonna happen

OK,OK, you probably think I am a slacker. It's been super busy at work, in a good way. My team is getting to know our staffing leaders in our global development centers. There's a cascade of work that happens from there:

-Assessing their needs for leads, research and training

-Developing offerings that meet the needs of multiple development centers

-Creating a project calendar so that we don't over-burden ourselves and allow for time to do proactive, long-term research

-Figuring out how we measure our work (it's not about the numbers on my team) and developing surveys

-Writing SLAs for our work (on the agenda this week)

And you know, after that, we have to actually do the work (which we have already started quietly). Last week, my head was spinning and I was in super-productivity mode. Same goes for this week. And this all left little time for blogging. Oh well.

Another thing that kept me from blogging, believe it or not, has been the coverage of the political conventions. I bet they actually caused a lot of blogging for other people. I've had a very strong personal reaction. I'm straining to keep it to myself. I really don't want to lose readers that feel they can't identify with me because we have differing political beliefs (same goes for religion. Fashion? That's fair game). Holding this in has almost been like a clog in the blog drain. Nothing's getting past it. I'm gonna Drano that sucker out of there and get back to blogging.

I get so caught up in my "other" work, that I forget that blogging is part of my job as well. It doesn't feel like work.

Some blog posts to come: interesting profiles of people at Microsoft (I swear, they are really interesting...I am a tough audience and I liked them) and some info about the development centers we've got humming around the world.

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2008
  Hi Heather, Just reading your great blog again and curious on what do you mean by SLA's. I familiar with this term from an IT service/network perspective but how are you applying this at Microsoft from a HR staffing/marketing perspective? Thanks, William

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2008
  Good question WilliamM. My team is a research provider for staffing teams in our development centers. So when we do work, for example, developing a list of leads for a recruiting team, we need some assurance from them that they will be utilized and that the team will let us know results. Our end of the barigain will be around things like the time it takes to deliver. We kind of fortunate in that we don't have to work with anyone that doesn't work well with us. So it's helpful to have these expectations outlined up front. We wouldn't want to get to the place where we are telling a team that we won't develop any more leads for them because we never know what happens to the leads after we send them over. The SLA allows us to define that actions expected on both sides and provides justification when we are making decisions around who is a productive partner to us. Does that make sense? There's a lot of other work we deliver besides leads but I thought that was the simplest example. We have the kind of work that can float off into the ether if we don't ensure it is consumed and then we have nothing to show for our efforts.

• Anonymous
  September 14, 2008
  Hi Heather, Sorry for the delayed response but assigned to one of those special projects that eat up all your time during the week plus I had the weekend scheduled for a special kids camp with my family so no real internet access. Wow, I’m impressed and who would have guessed. I always loved learning about other groups and I believe everybody has a great story to tell if you take the time and listen. I really enjoyed you comment “We kind of fortunate in that we don't have to work with anyone that doesn't work well with us” and I wished we all could all have that luxury sometime. Best Regards, WilliamM