#and then I got my appraisal and sure enough. 3 ‘needs improvement’ out of 15 areas of evaluation. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thewritewolf · 5 years

Text

Eating Habits Chapter 7: Surprise Visit

Marinette is starving in class, but thankfully Adrien isn’t about to let that slide.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 (Final)

Enjoy!

Read on Ao3

Marinette was feeling stretched thin, between hunger and lack of sleep and heaps of work. It was ironic, then, that she was ignoring all that by spending the class period working on an entirely different piece. Maybe it was because this time she wasn’t toiling away in solitude at her apartment but rather standing in the classroom with a half dozen other students while her professor prowled between them.

It was mid-October, which meant that it was just over halfway through the semester. Things had begun mellowing out as she hit a stride with her various activities and class work. Maybe joining all those clubs wasn’t a good idea after all, but she had promised herself she’d at least stick with it for the rest of the semester. Besides, it was all moving smoothly now... even if it came at the cost of non-vending machine food and extra sleep.

She shook her head to focus back on the long winter coat in front of her. The student’s winter show wasn’t nearly as anticipated or important as the spring show, but it was still a good idea to make a strong first impression. And besides, she wanted to make sure that every piece that had her name attached to it was quality work. ‘Start as you mean to go on’, as her maman loved to say.

Hunger pangs made her freeze midway through her measuring. One hand gripped her desk while the other covered her stomach. She closed her eyes and waited for the pain to pass. When she opened them again, she quickly glanced around to make sure no one had caught that. She’d had enough concerned looks to last her the rest of the semester.

The door opened and she risked a glance up to see what poor student was arriving this late into the period. Her eyes widened she realized it was Adrien, looking around the room with a frown as he stood in the doorway. Their eyes locked and his face immediately brightened.

He was about to call out when her professor quickly crossed the room to stand in front of him. “Is there something I can help you with, young man?”

Adrien held up a plastic bag that had a few tupperware containers inside of it. “So sorry, Madam Professor, but my delightful girlfriend hasn’t had a decent meal in two days and she is determined to worry me sick.” He narrowed his eyes at Marinette, but she could still see the twinkle of mischief in them even from this distance. “I promise I won’t disrupt your class for long.”

There were a few scattered giggles from her classmates and Marinette blushed, mortified at her boyfriend’s arrival. Irritation flared as she belated realized he’d just called her out in front of the whole class.

“Good. We’ve all been a little worried about her,” her professor said with a nod and a faint smile, making Marinette blush spread even further. Had it really been that obvious? While she returned to her desk, she added, “Just don’t get too comfortable. This is work time, not flirt time.”

He flashed her a boyish grin and said, “Don’t worry, I’m excellent at multitasking.”

Marinette crossed her arms and glared at him as he walked towards her. When he caught the way she was looking at him, he rolled his eyes.

“Lovebug, you really have no one to blame but yourself here.” He spoke quietly, mindful of the other students still working in the room.

Her hands shifted to her hips. “You barge into my classes-”

“-and feed you after you starve yourself for at least two days, yes. Unless you are about to admit that you’ve been ignoring the lunches I make for you to take to university?”

Her glare intensified and she took a deep breath to argue, but then another wave of hunger pangs struck. Her stomach growled, likely sensing the food so close as hand. A couple of the students closest to her glanced in her direction, turning her face scarlet again.

She clenched her jaw in defeat and looked up at his eyes, expecting him to be smug. Instead, he was frowning, his eyes regarding her sadly. It sent a spear of hurt through her heart. After a few more moments of silence, she sighed.

“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”

“And I think you know that I did have to,” Adrien replied without missing a beat. He set the bag on her desk and walked over to stand next to her. His eyes roamed her coat. “I see this is coming along well. How are you feeling about it?”

She gratefully accepted the change in topic and talked fashion with him for a few minutes. While Adrien had never been huge into fashion, his perspective from the modeling side of things was often indispensable. Not to mention the things he’d absorbed just by being surrounded by high fashion from a very young age.

Still, there was a lot more that she needed to do and her professor was starting to look annoyed.

“Okay, Adrien. Time for you to go,” she said, gently nudging him away.

“Are you sure?” He spoke with the teasing tone of voice that never failed to annoy her to pieces. “Maybe I should stay for a little while longer. Make sure you actually eat the food I made this time, hm?” He smirked at her as she scowled.

“Get out of here, centerfold. I’ve got work to do and you’re being a menace.”

“Oh, alright.” He put a hand on her head as he kissed her temple. “See you soon, lovebug.”

She maintained her scowl even after he left. All the way until her stomach growled again and curiosity overcame her work ethic. She set down her tools and pulled a tupperware container out of the plastic bag. Her scowl melted away the moment she took off the lid and the delicious smell of chicken stirfry hit her nose.

Maybe Adrien had a point, Marinette thought as she nearly fell over thanks to the smell of sauteed veggies and mixed spices. If this was her reaction to an actual meal, perhaps she had been overdoing it on the vending machine crackers. And if her boyfriend was determined to cook for her...well, she couldn't let it go to waste, could she?

------------

“Sorry I’m late guys,” Adrien said as he took a seat at the cafe. “I had to make a stop at the university.”

Alya and Chloe took a break from their glaring at each other to glance at him.

“Why does she need to be here, Adrien?” Alya asked. Her eyes narrowed at Chloe. “Hard to see her caring much about us common people.”

“While it is true that you all are very common...” Chloe began.

“Chlo…” Adrien said in a chastising tone.

“...I want my friends to be happy.”

“Oh, so we’re friends now?” Alya drummed her fingers against the table in an irritated tempo.

“Well, it has been years since I’ve even mocked you and your ridiculous fashion sense.”

“It’s been years since we’ve talked!”

“Hm… you’ve got a point there.” Chloe looked Alya up and down with an appraising eye. “Well, you’ve certainly gotten better with makeup, though I could still give you a few pointers. And your taste in shoes is improving.”

Alya rolled her eyes. “Still the vain, egotistic-”

“Thankfully you make up for it in your journalistic skills. Like when you brought that corruption issue to light last month.”

“You… read my articles?” Alya spoke slowly, wary surprise evident in her voice.

“Of course. I started back when…” Chloe glanced at Adrien and coughed lightly. “Well, after you saved Adrien from the angry mob, I figured you might be worth another look.” She sniffed haughtily. “I suppose I got you all wrong from the start. I’m-” Chloe made a face as if she had bite into a lemon. “I’m sorry. There?”

Alya blinked at Chloe while Adrien sat back and watched it all unfold. While he wasn’t certain that things would pan out like this, he knew that Chloe had at least wanted a chance to make things right with the gang. Marinette and Nino had big hearts and were more than willing to forgive, but Alya wasn’t nearly as trusting. A helpful trait for a reporter, less so when it came to stuff like this. But if she was willing to give it a shot…

“Ugh.” Alya pinched the bridge of her nose. “Alright, fine. We’re cool for now, but you’re on thin ice, missy.” Before Chloe could reply, Alya turned to Adrien. “Anyway - you stopping at the university. I take it that was for our main girl, sunshine?” At his hum of approval, Alya nodded. “Good, I’ll feel better knowing she had something to eat today. Girl has been scaring me.”

“Something up with miss goody-goody pigtails?” Chloe said with a sip of her latte.

“Marinette, my beloved girlfriend,” Adrien said pointedly, looking Chloe in the eye, “is working herself into the ground. We’re here to figure out how to stop her from doing that.”

“I think we’re getting through to her. She’s at least not getting worse, ya know?” Alya took a bite out of her croissant. “With how busy we all are, that might be the best we can do until winter break.”

“So… just keep holding steady and hope she starts listening?”

“Definitely. We don’t want her to feel smothered by us, that’ll just make her double down out of… well, I’d say ‘spite’, but I don’t think that girl has a gram of spite in her. Too much raw sugar and strawberry filling.”

Adrien nodded slowly. That made a certain amount of sense.

“Are you two for real?” Chloe raised her eyebrow. “That is the most ridiculous, non-plan I’ve ever heard of.”

“You don’t know Marinette like we do, girl,” Alya said, narrowing her eyes. “Let us handle our friend.”

“Listen, Adrikins,” Chloe said, leaning forward to put her elbow on the table as she gave her full attention to Adrien. “All this padding around the problem isn’t gonna solve it. You both know Marinette - is she the kind of person to stop throwing herself into her work?”

Alya exchanged a look with Adrien.

“Right,” Chloe continued. “Something bigger needs to be done if you want her to start taking care of herself again.”

“Any ideas about this ‘something bigger’, Chlo?” Adrien asked.

Chloe peered over her sunglasses with a raised eyebrow. “Like you two said, you know her so well. I’m sure you can figure something out. Just be firm with her. It’ll snap her out of this trance she’s probably worked herself into.”

With two wildly different pieces of advice to consider, Adrien turned the conversation to different topics. At least he had achieved the impossible of getting Alya and Chloe to act somewhat civilly with each other. If he could accomplish that, then helping Marinette ought to be a piece of cake.

Right?

#Miraculous Ladybug #Adrien Agreste #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Adrienette #alya cesaire #Chloe Bourgeois #ml fanfiction #my writing #Eating Habits #The Lucky One series

33 notes · View notes

dxmedstudent · 7 years

Note

Hi dxmedstudent ... I adore 😍 your blog. You're so helpful with the info and stories you share. Makes me look forward to life as a doc. Im hoping you could help me. Im a 5th year med student, my final year is equivalent to FY1. I want to apply to FY2 when I come back to bg (study in europe). Can you please give me any tips on how to improve my chance, what clinical skills are expected? I heard about LAS/LAT positions. Anything you can tell me would be appreciated :) ... thank you so so much x

Hello! and Thank you! I try my best :) Congratulations on getting this far, I think everyone nearing the end of med school deserves a pat on the back for making it this far.

In terms of the technicalities of what you may need to do, the GMC has lots of helpful advice for international graduates. Including guidance about acceptable overseas qualifications. Their website is particularly useful. I actually don’t think you’d have a huge problem getting in. You might be expected to do the SJT exam, look it up and see if international grads are expected to do it (there are books to help you prepare, if you do), but otherwise I imagine your applications might be based on a points-based system like FPAS or core/speciality applications. Basically, any prizes you’ve won, any publications or poster presentations are good, though not strictly necessary. Previous degrees are useful. Extracurricular achievements can also add flair. Many people don’t have much in this department, and lots of people still get in. You might be lucky and get something in the next few months, but there’s not really much you can do to drastically change your odds in a short space of time. So I don’t think it’s worth worrying too much about revolutionising your application. Just do your best. In terms of the technicalities, the 15 core clinical skills expected of FY1s are:

Venepuncture

IV cannulation

Prepare and administer IV medications and injections

Arterial puncture in an adult

Blood culture from peripheral sites

Intravenous infusion including the prescription of fluids

Intravenous infusion of blood and blood products

Injection of local anaesthetic to skin

Injection – subcutaneous (eg insulin or LMW heparin)

Injection – intramuscular

Perform and interpret an ECG

Perform and interpret peak flow

Urethral catheterisation (male)

Urethral catheterisation (female)

Airway care including simple adjuncts (eg Guedel airway or laryngeal masks).

I didn’t remember them off by heart, I’ve lifted them from the GMC website, in case you thought this was a new level of nerdery. These are practical things we are expected to get signed off under supervision,during the course of FY1, in order to gain full registration with the GMC. Although that’s not the only thing we’re expected to do, the curriculum is on the GMC website in the section on foundation training. On top of that, we’re expected to be able to take a history, complete an examination, and start treatment. I’d recommend getting pretty comfortable with the above things, because as an FY2 you’d be expected to be able to do them. Coincidentally, it’s where I’ve seen straight-to-FY2 international docs really struggle, because they had relatively little patient contact during their med school years, and didn’t really feel comfortable with this aspect. FY1 is partly about gaining competency in these skills, altough we do some of them a lot more than others. It doesn’t mean you have to be perfect, or ‘get it’ each time, there will still be times when we struggle. But practice is so important; the more we practice in med school, the better we will be when we hit the wards as doctors. I find it really interesting that many of the 6 year universities in Europe technically qualify you to become a baby SHO in the UK straight off, with all the responsibilities and expectations of someone who’s already been doctoring for a year. It makes sense in terms of the number of years we’ve studied, but not in terms of most people’s experience? I don’t think that another year in med school is necessarily comparable to a year as a doctor; not in terms of theoretical knowledge (I’m sure many European graduates might kick a UK FY1′s butt in terms of theoretical knowledge), but in terms of practical experience. For the reason that a lot of the schools in Europe (generalising based on the students I’ve talked to, sorry!) often focus more heavily on theory over practice, compared to UK med schools. UK med schools have increasingly moved away from bogging us down with technical detail or anatomy, to getting you practically ready to hit the wards as an FY1. We spend year 3, 4, and 5 basically mostly on the wards seeing patients, with year 5 basically being shadowing FY1 doctors. There’s always an added challenge facing graduates is that each medical school system prepares you best for the system in that country, but not necessarily for another country. What’s expected of new docs in each country can be a little different; for example, in the UK there’s a heavy emphasis on practical procedures like the ones above; in many countries a doctor wouldn’t even be expected to do most of these! But in the UK a junior doctor is often expected to. I was adequately prepared to be an FY1 here when I graduated, but I’m sure if I moved over to the US for intern year I would have struggled, because the expectations there are a bit different. I’m particularly in awe of people who choose to go abroad to start working, because it adds an extra layer of scary and difficult (though, let’s be honest, it’s always going to be scary, and regardless of that, you’ll get through OK). An FY2 year is a training year, in which you’d be treated exactly the same as ‘homegrown’ FY2s, and would prepare you for the next step (core or speciality training), so I’d advise on picking an FY2 job over a locum or trust grade job, if you can. I wouldn’t personally advise starting your career on a locum or non-training job, any more than I’d advise taking a locum position in a speciality you haven’t yet worked in. Because locums are paid more, people basically expect you to already be competent, not need much direction, and get on with things; there’s no emphasis on teaching you. These jobs are usually picked up by people who’ve worked in that speciality but want to take a little time out of training. That’s because those kinds of job usually entail less support and teaching than training jobs. You’d also be expected to navigate appraisal by yourself. I’ve met people who’ve done it, so it can be done if you have to, but it always seems like an unnecessarily stressful choice. They advised me against trust grade jobs because of the lack of support, so I’m passing on that tip. Especially if you’re new to the NHS, I’d recommend going for the most supported job you can find.

When I’ve talked to Brits graduating in Europe who want to come back to the UK to work, they’ve often been quite keen to apply for an FY1 to start with, rather than going in at FY2 like they could. Which, once I thought about it, seemed quite sensible. Firstly, there are much fewer unpaired solitary FY2 placements available; you’ll probably be stuck applying to places where an FY1 has dropped out of training. Whereas there are lots of FY1 jobs by comparison. So you might get more choice in terms of where you can apply. FY1 jobs also tend to be a bit more protected; they expect new docs to need more supervision. FY1 jobs in high-pressure specialities like paeds or obs and gynae tend to be supernumerary (no on-calls, and always with SHO supervision), and in many hospitals FY1s don’t work nights, or do less clerking, and usually have SHOs to ask for support. Whereas FY2 can see you seeing sick patients in A&E, paeds, gynae, GP or psych and you may be the only SHO around, with only a stretched registrar for advice. On top of that, you might have FY1s coming to you for advice! You might not have any of those specialities in your FY2 placement, but I personally feel they are stressful enough as an FY2 when you have experience; I certainly wouldn’t have volunteered myself to do them straight out of med school, no matter if I had one more year of theory under my belt. In general, FY2 jobs tend to be more isolated; you’re often either working a busy rota or else on a more specialised placement where you may be the only FY or SHO doctor, so there’s generally less support or community. Fy1s tend to be more social and there’s a cameraderie amongst FY1s bonding over the terror of hitting the wards for the first time that you just don’t get at any other time. FY1 jobs tend to either have another FY1 on your ward, or an SHO who can support you. More importantly, if you start as an FY1, you’ll be treated on par with everyone else who is a new doctor; people might not know that you’re actually a new doc, because they’ll expect someone who’s already got a year of experience. Most people are nice, but people can be impatient if they don’t understand the level you are working at, so if you go for the FY2 route, you should be honest that you’re only just starting out as a doc, despite your grade. Make sure people know what you feel comfortable doing, and don’t let people pressure you into doing something you don’t feel competent to do. The main drawbacks are that your first year will be paid less as an FY1 than FY2, though I believe that’s probably less pronounced now on the new contract. And of course, it would mean one more year of training. But that can sometimes be a good thing; you actually apply for core or specality training a few months into FY2, which would be really soon if you only just started working as a doctor a few months ago! The best thing about FY1 and FY2 for me were doing lots of rotations in different specialities, so that I could get a better idea of which ones I liked, and I think a lot of people would benefit from having that opportunity before picking for good. Though I can understand the draw in skipping a year and going for FY2, particularly when it’s better paid. I’m sure that starting straight as an FY2 might be the best option for some people, and since there are a lot of different med schools out there, perhaps some people from across the continent feel adequately prepared to follow that path. So I’m not about to judge anyone who decides this is the best option for them, given that they are technically entitled to make that choice. (albeit, allowed by a system that cares relatively little for our welfare or training) But having talked to people who’ve studied in a few places, if it were me, unless my med school had quite a big emphasis on seeing patients and doing simple procedures, I’d still start at FY1 if I had the choice. LAS and LAT jobs are basically similar to trust grade jobs or clinical fellowships, which can sometimes be used to count towards your training time, however they are basically long-term locum jobs in a department where there is a vacancy because they haven’t managed to get a training doctor to fill the gap. Many departments offer non-training jobs (trust grade SHO jobs), LAT or LAS jobs tend to be fewer, because departments probably prefer to get by with less responsibility for their employees. Training people is more difficult and requires more supervision, after all. Always remember that hospitals are employers: whilst they are not out to get you, they also aren’t there to do you any more favours than they have to. So look out for yourself and your wellbeing, and think hard about whether any jobs you apply to are suited for you. Hospitals just want someone to fill their job vacancies and get on with service provision. Look after yourself, and make the choice that you feel would be best for you, because the system isn’t set up to put us first. So you have to do that. Whatever and wherever you choose, do it because you feel it’s right for you, not because the opportunity exists; not every job and not every opportunity we have in medicine is in our favour. For example, some FY1 or FY2 jobs have 2 relatively low stress jobs and 1 high stress job. Whereas some offer jobs that have 3 stressful jobs in a row with a high number of on-calls. The fact that the burnout rates for those placements are higher doesn’t seem to matter to the deaneries that keep offering those rotations. So my ranking, in terms of how protected/supported jobs are is FY1 > FY2 > LAS/LAT > Trust grade or clinical fellow > Locum. If you don’t want to do an FY1 year, then starting from FY2 is more supported than going fora LAS/LAT which is mroe supported than trust grade or short term locums. My advice would be, if you have an opportunity for work experience or electives, try to do an elective in the UK to get a feel for what it’s like, and how ready you feel you’d be. Even if it’s just a few weeks over the summer, it might be worth it if it could put you mind at ease. No matter what you choose, I hope it makes you happy, and good luck for the coming years. I look forward to you joining the team :)

#askdx #ask dx #ukmedschoolfaq #tips for new docs #tips for new fy1s

15 notes · View notes

cyberkevvideo · 4 years

Text

Throne of Night Theory Builds Part 24: The Deep Dragon Queen of Book 3

Tonight’s entry is definitely a different one. Namely, I was going to make this dead last. Literally as absolutely last as possible. Mostly because I don’t have a proper picture for this one. Just a stock photo, and a picture that technically goes along with it.

But, beggars can’t be choosers, and this entry is entirely based around opportunity knocking/circumstances being what they are. I’ll get into that though in the next half.

As always, for space reasons, I’ll be cropping the encounter build.

All images shared here were done by the forever fantastic and amazingly talented Michael D. Clarke, aka SpiralMagus

Because it got brought up, I do not have a Patreon or a Kickstarter, but I do have a Ko-Fi page (linked) for those who are looking to support me. No pressure though. The economy isn’t the greatest at the moment, so some belts are being tightened more than usual.

Finally, before get to it, I hope everyone’s staying safe right now.

So tonight I came across old, old notes that gave a synopsis of Book 3, and it’s actually different/more detailed than the last update I’d read that gave you the rundown of Books 3-6. This is information I absolutely needed to know back when I did the undead dwarf king. Needless to say that this update is actually completely different than what I had originally intended because I had wanted my readers to know that the Golem Wielder entry had been given a massive update. Had to completely remove a bunch of feats in exchange of others, and revise the magic items, land speed, AC, etc. At least it wasn’t a complete re-write, which was what I was originally afraid I was going to have to do.

But that’s really about it. A dwarf doesn’t want to die, it uses dark pacts and forbidden magic, and it meets up with a deep dragon that can help with all of that. On top of that, this same dragon has the ability to corrupt and help give people their grandest desires. There is a lot to unpack here.

I’m now going to explain how I came up with this specific build. 1) It had to be a dragon. Namely, a deep dragon. Thankfully there’s a template for that. 2) It specifically had to be dragon that could shape change. Okay. Less options, but maybe there’s a way around it. 3) It has to be able to corrupt and grant the desires of others. Hmm. Again, difficult, but not impossible. Thankfully there’s a template for that too. 4) This dragon may or not be the reason why the “dark fire/black fire” existed and wiped out so many of the dwarves, causing ghosts to come up their graves and curse the mountain to be inescapable. Hellfire likely works for this one. Again, a lot to unpack. I will say that my build is likely very wrong as Book 3 of Throne of Night was supposed to come out in 2015, and Pathfinder Bestiary 6 came out in 2017. That said, this works way better than I had hoped. And with only adding a single hit die, it’s most definitely a CR 15 encounter. So glad I didn’t have to make it Young and add 2 class levels. I was so afraid I’d have to.

Not gonna lie. After talking to a lot of different users on the Kickstarter comments and the Paizo forums, the conclusion a few of us came to was the black flame was a result of either the prestige class that’s absolutely not OGL or radiation. If that was the case, I was leaning towards a solar dragon, but that doesn’t get channel radiation until way, way later, and there’s no way something that powerful would be in Book 3. Even if you added the Young template numerous times, that wouldn’t help, and would just get stupid. So this is where we stand.

Of course the real question is “how does an undead have progeny?” Well, when wishes are involved, you make sure to word it in just the right way. There were spells and items back in D&D 3.5e that helped with such things. There’s no reason a work-around couldn’t be in here too. I mean, dhampirs exist and it’s not all because a pregnant woman was bitten.

Also, anyone wondering, the shape change ability would default to looking like a female dwarf. When things go down, she’ll revert to her true form. And it’s preferable to not have her fight alongside her undead partner and the cannon golem. That might end up being an epic encounter for a 13th level party. Adding it all up together, it’s not quite an EL 18 encounter, but it’s definitely more than EL 17. The graveknight’s tactics are for it being paired with the cannon golem, but there’s no reason it can’t fight them separately, and the graveknight fight alongside his dragon queen.

As for the progeny and them having dark fire access too, Gary already released aid regarding that. “Way of the Wicked” Book 6 has the hellfire spell. It’s available to the magus, sorcerer/wizard, summoner, and witch. That’s still enough for the half-dragon children who are likely eldritch scion draconic bloodline and sorcerer draconic bloodline. Depending on the campaign, access to certain feats, wishes, etc, there might be other ways to get that or other variants of the spell. There’s definitely a 3rd party hellfire weapon property. Lots of possible options available.

And just before we get to it, the pronunciation for her name is, sin-dra-xy-ohs. Also, the dragon art is directly from Paizo’s Bestiary 6. This is what it looks like normally, but picture it without wings. Deep dragons lose their ability to fly and have a burrow speed instead.

DRAGON QUEEN CIDRAXIOS (CR 15; 51,200 XP) Female unique corruptor young infernal deep dragon LE Large dragon (evil, extraplanar, lawful) Init +6; Senses dragon senses; Perception +21 DEFENSE AC 32, touch 13, flat-footed 30 (+2 armor, +2 deflection, +2 Dex, +17 natural, –1 size) hp 217 (15d12+120) Fort +19, Ref +13, Will +16; +3 vs. divination Defensive Abilities false mind, fiery acid blood (R-DC 25, 3d6), inscrutable +3; DR 15/adamantine; Immune acid, fire, hellfire, mind-affecting effects, paralysis, sleep Weaknesses light blindness OFFENSE Speed 60 ft., burrow 30 ft., earth glide Melee bite +25 (2d6+14 plus 3d6 acid and fire/19–20), 2 claws +25 (2d6+10/19–20), tail slap +19 (1d8+14), 2 wings +19 (1d6+5) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. (15 ft. with bite) Special Attacks breath weapon (80-ft. line, 7d10 hellfire damage, R-DC 25 half), deep gaze (W-DC 24), fiery acidic spittle, mark of vice (W-DC 24), oppressive heat, shredding stone Spell-like Abilities (CL 15th; concentration +22) At will—atonement (temptation only) 3/day—detect good, geas, helping hand, lesser geas, make whole, major creation, minor creation 1/day—sympathy (W-DC 25), wish (granted to a nonevil aligned mortal only) Oracle Spells Known (CL 1st; concentration +8) 1st (4/day)—bane (W-DC 18), command (W-DC 18) 0 (at will)—detect magic, guidance, read magic, spark (R-DC 17) STATISTICS Str 28, Dex 14, Con 27, Int 20, Wis 17, Cha 24 Base Atk +15; CMB +25; CMD 39 (43 vs. trip) Feats Blind-Fight, Combat Expertise, Improved Critical (bite), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack, Weapon Focus (bite, claw) Skills Appraise +22, Bluff +27, Climb +20, Craft (all) +13, Diplomacy +35, Knowledge (arcana) +18, Knowledge (history, local, planes) +20, Linguistics +22, Perception +21, Sense Motive +28, Spellcraft +20, Use Magic Device +25; Racial Modifiers +8 Craft (all), +8 Diplomacy, +8 Sense Motive; +3 to all Charisma-based checks. Languages Abyssal, Common, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Infernal, Skis’raal, Undercommon plus any 8 others SQ change shape 3/day (any animal or humanoid), compression, corruptor’s boon, imbue with ability, serpentine reach, what do you covet Gear amulet of mighty fists +1, bracers of armor +2, cloak of resistance +2, headband of alluring charisma +2, ring of protection +2, tome of leadership and influence +1 (read), Mithral Crown of Leadership (acts as a circlet of persuasion), treasure horde (gems, gold and silver pieces, mithral bars, and carved art objects made from various types of stone; total worth of 5,500 gp) SPECIAL ABILITIES Corruptor’s Boon (Su) Once per day, a corruptor can grant a touched creature a +4 profane bonus to one ability score for 24 hours. When the duration ends, the creature suffers a –4 profane penalty to the same ability score for the next 24 hours. Another application not only negates the penalty, but also restores the full bonus. Deep Gaze (Su) Buried suggestion (see below) 30 ft., Will negates (special). As suggestion, except the target need not understand the deep dragon creature and the effect is permanent until discharged. The dragon telepathically implants the suggestion into the subject. The suggestion planted must not take place immediately. When it occurs it must be based on an event or an amount of time going by. At least three days must pass before the suggestion compels the subject. During the period while the suggestion is buried, neither divination spells nor Sense Motive will reveal that the subject is under the effect of an enchantment. The subject does not attempt his saving throw until the triggering event occurs. The death of the dragon does not end this effect. Dragon Senses (Ex) Dragons have darkvision 120 ft. and blindsense 60 ft. They see four times as well as a human in dim light and twice as well in normal light. Earth Glide (Su) A young or older deep true dragon creature glides through stone, dirt, or any sort of earth except metal as easily as a fish swims through water. Its burrowing leaves behind no tunnel or hole, nor does it create any ripple or other signs of its presence. Move earth cast on an area containing an earth gliding deep dragon creature flings the dragon back 30 ft., stunning the creature for 1 round unless it succeeds on a DC 15 Fortitude save. False Mind (Su) This ability offers the corruptor the benefits of a mind blank spell. When an attempt is made to detect his alignment or read his thoughts, the corruptor can cause the magic to reveal any alignment or thoughts the corruptor creature chooses, even if he is not initially aware of the attempt. Fiery Acidic Blood (Su) Any creature that damages a deep dragon with a piercing or slashing melee weapon must make a Reflex save or be subject to the damage equal to Deep dragon’s spittle (see below) as it is sprayed with blood. Melee weapons with reach don’t endanger their users in this way. Fiery Acidic Spittle (Su) All deep dragon creatures have a thick, gooey spittle that is hot enough and acidic enough to sear and corrode both flesh and rock. Normally, as they tunnel through the earth they secret this fluid to soften stone. In battle, the deep dragon adds this additional amount of damage to their natural attacks. Half the damage is acid the other half fire. Hellfire (Su) Half of the damage from hellfire is fire damage, and half is unholy energy that bypasses fire resistance and immunity. Hellproof (Ex) The infernal dragon is immune to fire, hellfire, and mind-affecting effects. Imbue with Ability (Su) Once per day as a standard action the corruptor creature can grant a creature it touches one of its spells, spell-like abilities, extraordinary abilities or even one of its supernatural abilities in a manner similar to imbue with spell ability (no save). It loses access to that ability during this time; it can dismiss this benefit as a free action regaining the use of one or more of its abilities. Inscrutable (Ex) An infernal dragon gains a bonus on saves against divination spells and effects equal to its age category number. Mark of Vice (Su) This ability works like a mark of justice (Will save negates) but it is only triggered if the creature attempts to find a redemption to its corruption (subject to GM adjudication). The mark is also invisible and is always placed over the victim’s heart. Oppressive Heat (Su) A creature that fails its save against an infernal dragon’s breath weapon can’t benefit from morale bonuses for 1 minute. If the creature fails another save against the breath weapon during this time, it is staggered for 1 round. Shredding Stone (Su) A Deep dragon creature gains a +4 bonus to confirm critical hits with its claws. What Do You Covet (Su) Once per day as a standard action a corruptor can grant a wish to a nonevil aligned mortal (cannot be an elemental, fey, outsider, or nonliving creature).

------------------------------------ Sources: Corruptor creature - http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/corruptor-creature Deep dragon creature - http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/deep-dragon-creature

0 notes

fuck-customers · 8 years

Text

Tl;dr at the bottom, this is long sorry ^^;

Straight up fuck my old store manager (and a few other coworkers). I used to work for the Orange Home Improvement store. I’ve submitted plenty of posts before now about this horrible store (apparently it was just my particular store and store manager…) anyway, let me step back. I had decided to take a break from college to try and get myself a good, stable job. In the mean time, I needed a job that would pay for my needs and wants, so I applied to a bunch of places and got hired on the spot at this home improvement place. I thought it was going to be fantastic, and it was! By the end of the first month, I had decided that I REALLY liked it there and genuinely would not mind STAYING there for a long time. Sure I had bad customers, especially since I worked the customer service desk, but my supervisor and most of the managers always backed me the fuck up so it was nbd.

Flash forward another month and I was discussing my life plans with another coworker. One of those plans involved me purchasing a car within the year and a house within the next 4 years. There’s no reason for that to not be a possibility for me, but because I’m young, baby-boomers have made it a point to try and shoot me down strictly because of my age and pretend like they know how much money I have in savings and like they know what my credit score is. My baby-boomer store manager, who I had worked around and seen for a collective 10 minutes (not even that long) in the 2 months I had worked there, eavesdropped on the conversation and told me that wasn’t possible to do. I know she said this because, at the time, I was only 20 years old and that was reason enough for her to believe I wouldn’t manage to be successful. I ignored her and kept talking to my coworker. SM decided to join us at our table and join in the convo. She kept saying things to passive aggressively turn me down (comparing me to her failures basically), yadda-yadda. Basically being a straight up bitch for no reason.

Flash forward one more month (3 months working there now) and I get a customer complaint. I think this was my first one, actually. Keep in mind I have 100’s across the board and have kept 100’s since my first day regarding my customer service scores. I think I had like one 99, but that was it. If I was a cashier, I would have wiped the floor with the other cashiers and been cashier of the month every month. A contractor came in on a Saturday (this was before the company decided to keep the contractor desk open on the weekends) and they wanted an install on their account to be edited. They were already pissed because the contractor desk was closed and they were “running late” like these types of customers always tend to be. I politely informed them that the contractor desk is always closed on weekends, always has been, and that I had never been trained on how to edit installs. Our store system is fairly complicated, so it would be hard for me to make guesses without risking screwing something up so I told them I’d call a manager up. I called the only manager on duty, but he was busy. I told the contractor that and said I’d take a look to see if this particular thing happened to be straight forward because some of these process were straight forward, others were as complicated as they could get. Anyway, they could see my computer screen, so they could see what I was doing and that I was trying to fix this for them. After about 5 minutes, I called the manager back. He had run into a bigger problem and would be even longer now. I told the contractor and said “Let me see if I can get a hold of someone from that department, maybe they know how to edit installs” to at least try and dump these assholes on someone else. I called that department several times and paged several times and received no answer. I also called the head cashier to see if she had any idea how to do this (she didn’t). I apologized, said the manager was extremely busy but he’d be up here a.s.a.p., and said “Let me take another look at your order to see if I missed something”. I kept my cool on the outside. Anyway, you know how this ends. I tried my damndest to help, but it wasn’t enough because they were “in a hurry” and don’t know how to manage their time and that’s obviously my fault too. It’s also my fault that it took the manager 15 minutes to get to us. When they complained to corporate they even lied and said I just stood there and did nothing. Another customer a few days later decided that me standing at the counter late at night after finishing all my closing duties just prior to the store closing was me “Being bored and not wanting my job”, so THEY complained too, saying “I just don’t feel like she wants her job” like ????? Fuck off???? Store manager pulled me in her office and put me on final warning over those two things. I received no warning beforehand, I was basically put on the chopping block. All that would have needed to happen to get me fired was an old lady coming in and complaining about me not selling her a cookie even though we are a hardware store and don’t sell cookies. Part of her decision to put me on final warning was also because “Every time I’ve worked with you, you just seem off or upset or like you don’t enjoy your job”. Every time she worked with me, which was a whopping total of about 15 minutes in a 3 month period, I basically just acted casual. I’m an unfortunate sufferer of R.B.F., so I guess that’s my bad for assuming my manager would know that I’m a-okay and just dropping my fake af customer service persona and know that I’m not actually pissed off or bored or upset or whatever someone feels like reading my relaxed expression as that day, that’s just what my face looks like when I’m relaxed. One of those times she was with me, I was suffering from side effects from my medication and was feeling VERY nauseous and I had told her what was going on, but whatever. I’m supposed to be a robot, incapable of needing medicine or getting sick, so that’s my fault.

Another thing that got to me was one day when it was SUPER hot and humid outside, the HR manager asked the front end people (she asked all of us, but it ended up being only me doing all the work) to get some big displays ready for a set up. I’m talking like, big pieces of lumber, heavy sheets of plywood, all moved, painted, and generally set up. This all fell on me because tbh our one cashier that day was kind of prissy, but that’s fine. If construction isn’t your thing, that’s fine. Keep your nails and makeup pretty, I’ll do the dirty work. Just hand me something I need every now and then when I ask (and she did, she was one of my favorite coworkers). I love construction type work and I’m very good at it (minus the heavy lifting, I’m 5’4” and 120 pounds, there’s only so much weight I can lift). So on top of being on the side of the store with the only non-functioning a/c unit, it being over 100 farenheit outside, and the humidity being ridiculous because it’s Tennessee, I had to do all of this work. It didn’t help that our box fans had been taken away by the store manager, I guess because some customer complained. Needless to say I didn’t smell like flowers after I was done. HR manager decided to pull me into her office about 2 hours later and said “People are complaining about your…how do I put this gently…smell…” like no shit bitch, I know I smell bad, you don’t have to fucking sugar coat it. This is a home improvement store during a Tennessee summer, the contractors alone are enough to make you want to break your nose so it won’t smell anymore, but I get it because they are out working and they don’t have much of an option, short of getting in trouble and not getting paid. She just kinda put this dumb face on when I responded with “Well, I was the only person working on that display that we’re trying to set up and you do know that the a/c unit over that part of the store does not work. It’s also really hot outside and our box fans are missing (can’t accuse the managers of taking our fans even though we know that’s what happened, that’s a no no). There’s only so much my deodorant and perfume can do, I’m really sorry. But I got the display done for you!” Like, tell it to someone who cares. Either do this shit yourself or leave me alone when I break a sweat because our new cashier doesn’t want to break her nails or get a splinter and you haven’t gotten someone out to fix the a/c yet. (We got our fans back the next day btw.)

Needless to say, I fucking hated this place at this point in time. I loved most of the coworkers and would have loved staying, but I would not be able to survive or manage with such a shitty store manager and, hell I don’t even have a word for the HR manager. She’s just majored in idiocy I guess. I started applying everywhere I could and, 2 months later, landed a job working for my state government (which is where I still work over a year later and I LOVE it so much). I noped the hell out of the hardware store, gave them a notice, left in good terms, etc (the HR manager tried to guilt me into staying, but I straight up shot her down. I had been trying to change departments since I got put on final warning and I coincidentally did not receive a legitimate offer to swap until I turned in my 2 weeks notice ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Anyway, it’s been barely over a year since I left that hell-hole and not only do I love my job and have a really nice, new car now, but I’m buying a house at the age of 21. We close on January 10th (for those unfamiliar with housing terms, Closing means that we sign the final paperwork, pay our realtors, and I get the keys to my house and I get to move in the next day). It’s not even like I had to get a hovel of a house. Im going into this purchase with $30k in equity (this house was appraised $30k higher than what I’m paying), this house is younger than me, has 3 bed rooms and 2 full baths, is in a SUPER nice neighborhood, is within walking distance to so much stuff, and the worst thing about it is that it’s a little bit of a commute and it’s just a bit outdated on the inside, so I will definitely have to do some renovations. Guess who has a new, super fuel efficient car and loves construction work, though :)

Fun little tid-bit, the store manager and HR manager both fill in as paint mixers when the other guys aren’t there and they aren’t there a lot. I’m 100% planning on being a petty asshole and going out of my way to that store just so they can mix my paint for me. I’ve got nothing against the store, they still get my business for sure. I just want to be a bitch and let the store and HR managers know just how much better off I am now, to the point that I’m willing to go out of my way to go to this particular store. I’ve already talked up and down about how nice my new car is (I went from a ’99 chevy tahoe to a 2014 chevy spark, so it was a pretty awesome change for me. My car is actually me-sized now)

TL;DR : I took a break from college to get a good job, landed one at the orange home improvement place, ended up loving it and wanting to stay there. The store manager eavesdropped on my convo with a coworker and told me that my plans to buy a new car within the year and a house within 4 years were horse shit (most likely only on the basis that I am young), treated me like shit while I worked there, tried to fire me because of some REALLY horse shit reasons (typical customer hearsay vs my word) despite the fact that I was the best performing front end person, even better than the head cashiers. The HR manager didn’t make it any better, so I got a new job that I still currently love and work at over a year later and now I have a really nice, new car and I’m about to close on a really nice house…All within a 2 year span. Now I’m going to be a petty jerk and make those two mix the paint for my walls and listen to me relentlessly talk about how excited I am to own my own house and renovate my own place because I’m still pissed.

#submissions #happy ending #fuck coworkers #submission

162 notes · View notes

aimitcrabtree · 6 years

Text

What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach?

In an evolving workplace, there is a growing trend suggesting end-of-year performance reviews are no longer effective. To remedy this, some companies have decided to utilize software to improve their process. Other companies have elected to eliminate reviews altogether. What is the most effective performance management approach?

Sarah Haynes

Performance reviews are often the subject of much scorn and mockery in the corporate world. In my 15 years of consulting with dozens of clients, I’ve only encountered ONE that actually considered their performance management process to be integral to employee development, and truly valuable to their company. For the rest, it was a forced exercise that did not appear to be linked to results, aside from bitterness and regret. According to a Deloitte Insights survey, 58% of the companies polled reported that they view their current performance management process as not being an effective use of time and only 8% reported that their process drives high levels of value. Why is this?

Performance reviews are almost always linked to compensation.

Reviewees are motivated to score themselves as highly as possible in order to secure the best possible raise for themselves. Reviewers (the managers) are pushed by the company to average out the performance rating across all individuals in a given cost center. So, for every employee considered “exceptional”, there must be one considered “underperforming”. It’s a terrible trade-off, and one that often pits managers against staff. I’ve actually had a boss ask me if I’d be OK with a sub-par rating, because he really needed to give a large raise to my co-worker in order to keep him from quitting.

In order to make performance reviews effective, the direct link between reviews and compensation must be broken. This is the only way to create an environment for an honest conversation, where employees do not have to feel like they’re fighting for dollars and cents. Secondly, managers should be coached on how to provide effective feedback to employees. It’s not easy, and many managers will do anything to avoid an awkward conversation. Lastly, performance feedback should be provided on a regular basis, at least once per quarter. If you wait until the end of year to provide feedback on annual objectives, it’s way too late to correct course.

Only one of my bosses throughout my career actually cared enough to provide me with constructive feedback, during performance reviews, that I could use to improve my performance. I truly valued the insightful feedback he provided. Of the others, some were not involved enough with my work to be able to provide feedback, and the rest – well, I guess they just didn’t want to get into it. I know I would have appreciated it and felt more valued as an employee, if they had.

James Lawther

Fortunately, I am a deeply experienced manager with a track record of motivating and developing difficult employees. I know exactly how to create a team of world-class employees with outstanding engagement scores. So learning from the workplace I have put in place an annual performance review at home.

I love my wife very much, she is funny, clever, tolerant and — if I say so myself — very pretty. But when it comes down to domestic chores there are a few things she really could do better at, things that would dramatically improve her output and also increase her sense of work life balance.

It was important that I did this properly, I spent many hours researching my wife’s performance and crafting a review. My relationship is important to me, so I have done it by the book, I:

Sought out 360 degree feedback, consulting neighbours and children

Made sure the evidence I used was specific and to the point

Catalogued her strengths (of which there are many) first

Captured a few clear weaknesses development areas for her to work on

Her review reads like this:

Annual Performance Appraisal Manager: James Lawther Employee: Christine Lawther Role: Wife Key Skills and Competencies 1. Focus on Results: Below Average Strength – Action focus: Proven capability to cook amazing meals during visits from your parents. B. this strength could be leveraged by cooking amazing meals when your parents are not visiting. Development – Attention to Detail: On 3 separate occasions in the last week I have had to empty the washing machine and load the tumble dryer. This is a task for which I am not responsible as it is contained within your job description (wife). Development – Completing and Finishing: Constantly distracted by fighting children whilst trying to complete simple jobs e.g. ironing. You need to develop your multitasking ability. 2. Influencing Ability: Good Strength – Presentation: Very good at assuring me of the business case behind an investment in an expensive skiing holiday Development – Influencing Junior Staff: Repeatedly have to shout at children in an effort to get them out of the house in time to get to school. This is a particular problem with the 15-year-old daughter. 3. Communication Skills: Below Average Strength – Feedback: Ability to provide strong and timely feedback to me about my personal habits, specifically in relation to nocturnal activity and time keeping. N.B. there is a risk that this strength could become overplayed. Development – Instruction: Your map reading ability is less than perfect. We have repeatedly found ourselves lost in large cities because of your inability to communicate clearly and concisely. Unfortunately last year’s investment in satellite navigation technology this has not improved performance. Overall Rating: Below Standard The Performance Conversation The meeting I arranged with my wife to discuss her performance didn’t go nearly as well as I had hoped. My wife was withdrawn and I don’t believe she was really listening. She was very focused on the overall rating and we didn’t have a value adding conversation about the developmental feedback I had collated. My “active listening techniques” fell on deaf ears. Her demeanor was downright chilly until we discussed her annual pay rise. Then she warmed up quite dramatically. Pay for Performance I’m a big believer in linking performance appraisals to performance pay, nothing focuses attention in quite the same way as money. As I want my wife to be motivated to improve she needs to understand the consequences of poor performance. As evidenced in her appraisal her performance was below standard, so I had little choice but to hold her house keeping money at a constant level. If I had increased it I would have been accused of favoritism. When I explained this to her, my wife had the audacity to suggest that many of the things I discussed were outside of her control. She then become quite defensive and told me that I was equally accountable for household performance. A Waste of Time I won’t try another appraisal round next year. My wife wasn’t remotely grateful for all the time and effort I put into it. Instead I think we might just have a chat every now and then about the children. It might be more productive.

A Simple Question

If performance appraisals go badly at home, why on earth do we think they will go well at work?

Ted Hessing

The Science of Encouraging High Performance

We humans are funny creatures. We don’t always act in our own best self-interest. And when we get into groups we don’t always make better decisions. Sometimes we build entire organizational practices that are nonsensical, counterproductive, anachronistic, and/or that we ourselves would not want to be subject to. Case in Point; Performance Management.

let’s take a user perspective rather than a managerial perspective. After all, they should be the same thing, right? It’s always a good idea to start with the client in mind and, under this perspective, the contributors we are seeking to encourage to high performance would be our clients. This perspective can be best understood by the concepts of Servant Leadership. Here’s an overview of servant leadership if this term is new to you.

What’s My Motivation?

Most performance management techniques revolve around 2 axis; rewards or penalties. On the rewards side we can call it salary, bonus, compensation, or whatever. But generally people are incentivized to high productivity via rewards. The flip side are penalties which could range from reduction or absence of rewards to reduced or eliminated security, status, and stability.

But is that carrot and stick approach the best system to use? Turns out the science says ‘no.’

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

In Daniel Pinks excellent book Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (and eponymous TED Talks), he reveals that the research say unequivocally no. Rather than re-state Pink’s message (see above 10 min video for a great overview); Rewards don’t work the way you’d expect them to.

It turns out that after a certain amount of compensation, rewards are actually counter-productive in terms of increasing performance in any endeavor requiring a modicum of cognitive skill. After that magic level of compensation, people require other attributes to be present in order to Got that?

In other words, if you want higher performance, you have to pay people enough where they aren’t worried about money but then you have to enable 3 other key attributes; autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Thus,the overwhelmingly most popular way of incentivizing performance, reward vs penalty, is wrong. if you want to maximize performance, it turns out that you must optimize for motivation.

So, how does one do that? What’s the right way to handle performance management? If rewards are wrong (or at least only part of the story), then it seems we’d best change our performance management process to the other key factors Pink identifies; Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

Let’s take each one step by step.

Purpose

Per Pink, Purpose is each team member being able to say “I know why I am here and what I contribute with (as an individual or as a team)” How do we maximize a sense of purpose? So, as managers with a strong background in quality and strategic deployment techniques seeking to maximize performance, how do we maximize a sense of purpose?

I like Simon Sinek’s approach of ‘Start with the Why. Again, if you haven’t seen this Ted talk, you’re missing out.

To my mind, conveying Why is all about alignment. Alignment between the strategic direction of the company and the front-line personnel executing the vision. Some techniques quality leaders can use that we can use to achieve, communicate and measure that alignment are:

Hoshin Kanri

Value Stream Mapping

Critical to Quality Mapping

Quality Functional Deployment

If we want to maximize performance management, it behooves us to make the alignment of why behind what people are being asked to do explicitly clear.

Often, when we make that alignment clear we find that much of the resources of time, talent, and energy that people are currently expending

are in pursuit of things that don’t matter or don’t matter as much as other goals they could be working towards. And that is clearly a waste.

Mastery

If the next attribute in results is Mastery, then it makes sense to incorporate this into our performance management techniques. How can we best help people pursue and achieve mastery of their professions?

Some tools we can use to monitor and maximize mastery are visual management principles and gauge R&R techniques. Perhaps the two that I like best are Skill Matrix boards – an excellent

visual management of team skill mastery and credibility as described by Ray Dalio in Principles. However, there are countless adaptations of each that we can apply to skill acquisition.

Also, it is helpful to recognize that every member of a company has a profession (what they do) and an industry they perform it in (where they do it.) It makes sense from a performance management standpoint to help contributors to develop a strong understanding of both the skills and context for their role and their industry at large. T shaped employee management is an excellent framework for this/

Autonomy

Now that we’ve addressed how to manage clear alignment and skill acquisition – the why’s and what’s of a role – let’s move on the how’s.

Again Pink helped us by illustrating how autonomy and empowerment are crucial pieces of the performance management puzzle. And we helped ourselves by showing the alignment of the highest strategic goals of the company

Now, autonomy is scary for many managers. To overcome this hurdle we could use a ‘trust but verify’ model of cascading dashboards and assigning responsible parties for work streams. And the autocratic manager will be happy with this. But autocratic leadership has it’s limits.

Sources: Business Case Studies and Cleverism

Perhaps the best way to encourage autonomy to meet our desired performance management goals is to favor the empowerment of a Team of Teams model such as the ones favored by General Stanley McChrystal (and others) in his book Team of Teams.

Autonomy is best served by employee empowerment. There is a link between employee desire to participate on autonomous teams and having a significant sense of ownership in team outcomes. Simply put, members of autonomous teams desire the ability to make decisions in an entrepreneurial climate without too much managerial interference. And arguably employee empowerment is best achieved through managers leading by illustrating a clear vision and then getting out of their way.

Bringing it All Together

As leaders it is important for us to recognize that performance management is itself a process. It’s subject to an equation Y=f(x) where f(x) is often more complex than we think. But fortunately, like any other process, it can be measured, faults found, and hypotheses tried, tested, and improved upon.

Robert Mitchell

As a Baldrige Examiner, I like to begin my roundtable discussions with a review of the Baldrige Criteria. Category 5 of the Criteria focuses on the Workforce. The Workforce category asks how the organization assesses Workforce Capability and Capacity needs and builds a workforce environment conducive to Engagement and High Performance. The Baldrige Criteria defines High Performance as ever-higher levels of overall organizational and individual performance, including quality, productivity, innovation rate and cycle time.

High performance results in improved service and value for customers and other stakeholders. High performance stems from and enhances workforce engagement. Some characteristics about workforce high performance:

It involves cooperation between management and the workforce; cooperation among work groups and teams; empowerment of employees and building personal accountability.

It may involve learning to build individual and organizational skills; creating flexible job design; decentralized decision making and making decisions closest to the front line.

My career experience, and observations of applicants to state and national quality programs using the Baldrige Criteria has revealed six key processes necessary to effectively encourage high performance:

A Formal on-boarding as part of the New Employee Orientation process

Providing immediate, open and honest feedback

Regular, periodic “pulse” surveys to measure employee satisfaction and engagement

Frank, two-way skip-level meetings between management and its people

A Career Pathing process to manage employee progression

A Learning & Development System that supports organizational needs and employee development

Systems & Structures supporting compensation, benefits and policies, rewards, recognition, as well as incentives to encourage continuous improvement, intelligent risk-taking, innovation and customer focus.

For more information about these key business and workforce processes, I highly recommend learning about the Baldrige Excellence Framework and attending Baldrige Evaluator training.

The post What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach? appeared first on Quality in Mind.

from Quality in Mind http://asq.org/blog/2018/12/what-is-the-most-effective-performance-management-approach/

#IFTTT #Quality in Mind

0 notes

eltonjhays · 6 years

Text

What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach?

Sarah Haynes

Performance reviews are almost always linked to compensation.

James Lawther

It was important that I did this properly, I spent many hours researching my wife’s performance and crafting a review. My relationship is important to me, so I have done it by the book, I:

Sought out 360 degree feedback, consulting neighbours and children

Made sure the evidence I used was specific and to the point

Catalogued her strengths (of which there are many) first

Captured a few clear weaknesses development areas for her to work on

Her review reads like this:

A Simple Question

If performance appraisals go badly at home, why on earth do we think they will go well at work?

Ted Hessing

The Science of Encouraging High Performance

What’s My Motivation?

But is that carrot and stick approach the best system to use? Turns out the science says ‘no.’

Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Thus,the overwhelmingly most popular way of incentivizing performance, reward vs penalty, is wrong. if you want to maximize performance, it turns out that you must optimize for motivation.

Let’s take each one step by step.

Purpose

I like Simon Sinek’s approach of ‘Start with the Why. Again, if you haven’t seen this Ted talk, you’re missing out.

Hoshin Kanri

Value Stream Mapping

Critical to Quality Mapping

Quality Functional Deployment

If we want to maximize performance management, it behooves us to make the alignment of why behind what people are being asked to do explicitly clear.

Often, when we make that alignment clear we find that much of the resources of time, talent, and energy that people are currently expending

are in pursuit of things that don’t matter or don’t matter as much as other goals they could be working towards. And that is clearly a waste.

Mastery

Some tools we can use to monitor and maximize mastery are visual management principles and gauge R&R techniques. Perhaps the two that I like best are Skill Matrix boards – an excellent

visual management of team skill mastery and credibility as described by Ray Dalio in Principles. However, there are countless adaptations of each that we can apply to skill acquisition.

Autonomy

Now that we’ve addressed how to manage clear alignment and skill acquisition – the why’s and what’s of a role – let’s move on the how’s.

Sources: Business Case Studies and Cleverism

Bringing it All Together

Robert Mitchell

It involves cooperation between management and the workforce; cooperation among work groups and teams; empowerment of employees and building personal accountability.

It may involve learning to build individual and organizational skills; creating flexible job design; decentralized decision making and making decisions closest to the front line.

A Formal on-boarding as part of the New Employee Orientation process

Providing immediate, open and honest feedback

Regular, periodic “pulse” surveys to measure employee satisfaction and engagement

Frank, two-way skip-level meetings between management and its people

A Career Pathing process to manage employee progression

A Learning & Development System that supports organizational needs and employee development

For more information about these key business and workforce processes, I highly recommend learning about the Baldrige Excellence Framework and attending Baldrige Evaluator training.

The post What is the Most Effective Performance Management Approach? appeared first on Quality in Mind.

from Quality in Mind http://asq.org/blog/2018/12/what-is-the-most-effective-performance-management-approach/

0 notes

recentnews18-blog · 6 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/jonah-hill-joins-the-five-timers-club-on-a-uniformly-funny-saturday-night-live/

Jonah Hill joins the Five-Timers Club on a uniformly funny Saturday Night Live

Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, Candice Bergen, Drew BarrymoreScreenshot: Saturday Night Live

“I guess the worst part of the play was their confidence in it.”

“I’m not an actor, I’m a [movie, Netflix, directing] star!

It’s be nice to think that Jonah Hill has fully stepped out of his pigeonhole at this point. A couple of Oscar nominations, co-lead in an hit Netflix series, writer-director of a promising new coming-of-age movie, Hill has emerged from the Apatow star factory still straddling the line between serious artist and broad comedy movie star. (Sort of like James Franco, except that people actually seem to like Hill’s directorial debut and no one—as of this writing—has accused Hill of being a sex creep.)

That dichotomy showed up in Hill’s monologue, as SNL legend Tina Fey ushered new Five-Timers Club member Hill into the selective lounge set, where fellow FTC members Candice Bergen and Drew Barrymore celebrated his entry by showing an old sketch where Hill’s character admits to doing some serious damage to a toilet. Protesting that he does more than toilet humor now (“But that’s where you shined!,” enthuses Bergen), the disappointed Hill can only endure an all-ladies Five-Timers welcome, since, according to Fey, Bergen, and Barrymore, all the male members have turned out to be, well, sex creeps. (Steve Martin will just play his banjo “without consent.”)

Saturday Night LiveSeason 44

Fitted with the coveted FTC smoking jacket, Hill is disappointed to find that the new female leadership has refashioned it into something like a kicky boldero number. It’s a neat little way to incorporate Hill’s evolving comic persona while still trading on the downtrodden victim vibe he carries with him, especially once Kenan pops in to remind everyone that his record-breaking seniority carries its own privileges. “This is my show. I let you in here sometimes,” he responds to Hill questioning his presence in the Five-Timers lounge.

Over at Vulture, AV Clubber Jesse Hassenger recently did a ranking of the relatively rare phenomenon of SNL hosts’ recurring characters, and placed Hill’s Borscht Belt six-year-old Adam Grossman near the top. I get it. For one, the field isn’t exactly littered with gold (glad I’m not the only one sick of the Omletteville guy), with most of the bits weathering even faster than those done by the actual cast. But Grossman keeps working as well as he does because of a character throughline, as the garrulous little guy keeps tossing out his inexplicable Catskills schtick to his unlikely Benihana co-diners alongside a series of guardians indicating the unstable family life that’s somehow spawned such a weird creature. Here it’s forbearing nanny Leslie Jones, sighing deeply as she weathers Adam’s insult comic “I’m just kidding” one-liners as Grossman attempts to puncture any tension his borderline racist material generates by proclaiming his age (complete with specific and funny awkward hand gestures). It’s never been my favorite sketch, but Hill (who created the bit alongside Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, based on a bafflingly tracksuited child diner Hader once sat with) is into it, and he suggests the merest hints of the defensive mechanisms that are powering Adam’s transformation into a hacky joke machine, which always lends just enough shadings to the idea. Leslie kept breaking, but, then again, so did I.

Weekend Update update

There was a certain elegance to the way SNL kept weaving themes through its political material tonight, with jokes about Trump’s “caravan of scary brown people” terror tactics, and the importance of voting on Tuesday reinforcing each other throughout. Jost and Che were on, each landing their material confidently. On the caravan (of desperate asylum seekers that are a thousand miles away), Jost noted how Trump’s sweatily named “Operation Faithful Patriot” (where American troops are needlessly stringing barbed wire for a piece of election eve fear-mongering theater) sounds like a company that makes “reverse mortgages and catheters.” (Fox News commercial viewers get that.) Che followed up on the race-baiting scare tactics by urging that the old white people being hyped about the looming but nonexistent threat should be more worried about the less-easily-scapegoated specter of their grandkids stealing their pain pills.

On the election front, Che continued his role as Update’s resident “slow your roll” skeptic, confessing that, while he does intend to vote (on Tuesday, November 6, kids), he’s not going to buy into any “final notice for democracy” panic. Joking that, if final notices were actually final, his college debts would actually be paid, Che, as ever, positions himself for the long view, an edgy place to be in a time of national crisis (see, there’s that panic), but one consistent with his stance as a (black) guy who’s been living in a dangerous situation his entire life. For Jost (white guy), the jokes were less pointed, but not bad, as he noted that things are pretty dire when ice cream is taking a side, and that it has to be a complicated feeling when Oprah knocks on your door, only to present you with a pamphlet about Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams instead of a new car.

Pete Davidson has become such a strange star on SNL, his very public statements about his battles with mental health and substance abuse and the recent ongoing saga of his tabloid-fodder relationship with now-ex Ariana Grande have made Davidson more of a personality star than anyone I can think of in SNL history. Pete’s never been the most polished sketch guy (although he’s improved), and his Update pieces as himself have always been his best showcase, especially since he’s sharpened up his material beyond the adorable stoner little brother schtick he started out with. Here, with newly-dyed hair and the elephant of his recent, much-publicized breakup hanging over his head, Davidson delivered a solid series of political takedowns in advance of the Tuesday midterm elections. Sure, they were all cheeky appearance smack (NY Republican Peter King looks like “a cigar came to life,” Florida candidate Rick Scott looks like “if someone tried to whittle Bruce Willis out of a penis”), but, for a young comic staking out political material for the first time in his life, it’s funny stuff. And since SNL has made hay all season long about Davidson’s rising media profile, his genuinely sweet and decent-sounding appraisal of ex Grande was both de rigeur and unexpectedly touching.

Melissa Villaseñor made the leap to the main cast this year, but hasn’t had much opportunity to show off her mimicry skills or her comic chops much on the young season. So, taking a page out of Heidi Gardner’s playbook, she debuted a specifically targeted character piece on Update, with her “Every Teen Girl Murder Suspect on Law & Order.” Honestly, it’s such a specific Gardner niche at this point that I was surprised to see Villaseñor in the chair, but Melissa did fine, as her Brittany—ostensibly there to talk about young adult literature—squirmed and equivocated about what happened to her friend Logan at that “big alcohol party.” Not to harp on the comparison, but Brittany wasn’t as immediately memorable as any of Gardner’s similar turns, even if Villaseñor delivered on the premise with a uniformly strong performance.

Just when I think I’m tired of Kenan Thompson’s Big Papi, he pulls me back in. It helps that there’s a reason for his appearance tonight, as, you know, the Red Sox won the World Series again. (That’s, like, what, four in 15 years, right? Huh. Cool.) Petty sports partisanship aside, Kenan’s performance as retired and beloved Boston slugger David Ortiz has never been the problem. Kenan’s Ortiz, with his nonsensical endorsements, gap-toothed ebullience, and food obsession, is an all-time belly laugh, his infectious enthusiasm for baseball, food, his spokesman deal for the concept of spokes, and simply being Big Papi is impossible to hate. (Presumably even for Yankees fans, whose team got clobbered in the ALDS 3-1, including a humiliating 61-1 loss on their home diamond.) But the jokes don’t change much (as in, at all). Thankfully, it’s been a while, the Sox won the series, and it was nice to see the big lug again. Mofongo all around.

Best/worst sketch of the night

Look, some of you are going to clamor for a “worst” tag on Kate McKinnon’s teacher sketch. You’ll point to both its unexplained weirdness and its languorous pace, and how it never quite announces its authority as something that should appear as early in the show as it did. Well, shush. This was great stuff, not as much for the sketch itself (it really could have used more writing punch to match McKinnon’s performance), as for how it represents the sort of oddball conceptual idea Saturday Night Live desperately needs to encourage. The premise of someone acting weird while other people comment on it is hardly new SNL territory, but, as McKinnon’s overly dramatic drivers ed teacher sprawls on the classroom floor and rambles on about her predicament and its meaning, it was like a cool drink to realize that the sketch wasn’t going to go out of its way to hammer the premise home with explanations for the slowest possible viewer. It was just weird for weird’s sake, and McKinnon, accusing her charges at laughing at her “like this was some episode of Friend,” worked within the framework of the sketch to craft an enigmatically loopy character whose comic integrity isn’t over-explained. There is room on SNL for a lot more shades of humor than its current template generally allows.

This week’s branded content sketch, on the other hand, was pretty unnecessary, even if some of the performances livened it up a little, as another NBC property got some free advertising. Not watching interminably long-running televised talent shows as a rule, I’m not particularly invested in how the celebrity judges were impersonated here (although Kyle Mooney’s perpetually amazed Howie Mandel got a laugh). But at least the joke that there are only a very few possible narratives to every contestant’s journey on such shows took the piss a bit, and Cecily Strong, Kenan and Leslie, and Jonah Hill all sang their hearts out as the contestants who are probably terrible—but then are shockingly not terrible!

Also not terrible but not that surprising was the newscast sketch, where Cecily Strong’s weatherperson is nonplussed by boyfriend Hill’s decidedly unwelcome on-air proposal. Hill manages to create a nicely realized character is his unimpressive suitor, unwisely wearing a green shirt in front of Strong’s green screen and even more unwisely busting out a proposal rap. And the bit even has a decent turn, when Strong reveals that her refusal was only because she’d planned an elaborate on-air proposal of her own. I kept waiting for the reveal that Strong’s too-perfect twist was only in the downtrodden Hill’s head, but the sketch decided to let the improbable duo have their happy ending, so that’s nice.

“What do you call that act?” “The Californians!”—Recurring sketch report

Adam Grossman, Big Papi.

“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report

With SNL’s resident guest Trump Alec Baldwin otherwise occupied (and pointedly joked about), the show opened with the always more-profitable tack of doing Trump without Trump. With Kate McKinnon adding Fox News talking head and smirking white supremacist Laura Ingraham’s glint-eyed provocation to her long list of current right-wing a-holes (“No, you’re an a-hole,” McKinnon’s Ingraham responds to her viewer mail), the sketch ran through the usual roster of weekly outrages. Finding ways to satirize the news at this point is a thankless task since reality is so far beyond satire that our pals at The Onion can essentially just transcribe stuff. Here, the jokes leant on hyperbole to make comedy out of Fox and friends’ (and Fox And Friends’) daily klaxon blare of racist bullshit designed to make white parents vote against their self-interest. Like Trump’s ginned-up, racist, Hail Mary, pre-midterms caravan, which Cecily Strong’s appropriately wild-eyed Jeanine Pirro’s claims contains such terrifying, non-white figures as “Guatemalans, Mexicans, the Menendez brothers, the 1990 Detroit Pistons, Thanos, and several Babadooks.” Similarly, Kenan Thompson’s cowboy-hat-wearing disgraced former Sheriff David Clarke showed footage of the caravan in the form of a swarm of migrating crabs. “And those are humans?,” gently presses McKinnon’s Ingraham, to which Clarke replies, “Basically, yeah.”

Unlike Baldwin’s uninspired Trump, which serves as a crutch for some very one-dimensional writing as a rule, the satire here is more layered. There are the performances, which are uniformly great. (McKinnon and Strong don’t need more praise at this point, but they are both outstanding, nuanced comic actresses). And the sketch casts a wider net, encompassing Ingraham’s fleeing sponsors (and the reason why), leaving her thanking warm ice cream, nurse’s sneakers, and White Castle. (“A castle for whites? Yes please.”) And, divorced for now by Baldwin/Trump’s absence, the cold open works to lay the groundwork for some recurring satirical themes for the rest of the show. There’s GOP voter suppression, here prodded along by Ingraham giving non-white voters the wrong advice. There’s Fox’s feverish efforts to mock the very idea that Donald Trump is a bigot. (“Except for his words and actions throughout his life how is he racist?”) And there’s the transparent propaganda of Trump’s latest “brown people are coming at you from below” propaganda, with McKinnon claiming that Trump’s try-hard gung-ho operation is actually named “Operation Eagle With A Huge Dong” and bragging that there will be “five armed soldiers for every shoeless immigrant child.”

Hey, there’s a midterm election coming up on Tuesday, so vote in that. Pete Davidson ended his amiably goofy Update stint by urging everyone to vote, as did musical guest Maggie Rogers (via T-shirt), and, in the Vote Blue campaign ad, so did a roster of very fucking nervous Democrats. While polling shows that maybe, perhaps, enough Americans are motivated, pissed, and goddamned terrified enough to actually go out and vote on Tuesday (yes, this coming Tuesday, you) to put some checks in place against Donald Trump and his GOP accomplices in dismantling democratic norms, environmental regulations, and civil rights of any kind, well, we’ve seen sweaty Democratic overconfidence explode in our faces before. That’s the message here, as the person-on-the-street interviews parroting optimistic election messages all veer into a series of forced grins, shaking hands, binge-drinking, eyes-averted mumbling, and, in the case of Heidi Gardner’s tremble-voiced suburban mom, hair-trigger panic. “Get inside until Tuesday!,” she snaps at her frolicking children, while Hill’s anxious doctor tries to take comfort in the fact that Nancy Pelosi predicted a big victory on Colbert, and Leslie Jones grits her teeth in her stated faith that “white women are going to the right thing this time.” Pitch perfect stuff, right down to Aidy Bryant hauling off to slap teenaged son Pete Davidson when he jokes about forgetting when Election Day is. (It’s Tuesday. November 6. Check here for all the necessary info you need to vote. On Tuesday.)

“HuckaPM” continued SNL’s baffling comedy position that literally every woman involved in the Trump administration is secretly ashamed of her role in, well, every shitty thing Trump and the Republican Party does. You know, despite the fact that there is no evidence to that in the public or private actions of any of them, including (or especially) the sketch’s target, White House Press Secretary and sneering daily mouthpiece for whatever bigoted nonsense dribbles out of Trump’s Twitter account in the middle of the night, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Still, this sketch works because of Aidy. Good god, is Aidy Bryant great at physical comedy. Even if one can’t follow the show’s premise that there is some glimmer of humanity in Sanders’ soul somewhere, Aidy sells the hell out of the idea that only a sleeping pill loaded with quaaludes and “what Michael Jackson’s doctor called ‘one-and-dones’” can knock Sanders out after a day of claiming that “CNN spelled backward is ISIS” and that Trump’s caravan boogeymen includes ravenous chupacabras with a trio of outstandingly timed and committed falls. Sometimes performance overcomes everything else.

The off-Broadway show short film trafficked in a sort of joke that never doesn’t work on me, so I’m going to allow myself to be pandered to. The main joke—that an actor-written topical revue is not very well written—is fine. (I loved how at least two of the numbers shamelessly aped Hamilton). But I’m just a sucker for jokes where scathing review blurbs are read out as if they’re raves by an enthusiastic voice-over guy, and these had me laughing. “This is helping no one,” and “Whose parents paid for this?” were good, but the New York Times critic’s economical “Jesus Christ!” got me out loud.

I am hip to the musics of today

Maggie Rogers came out flat in her SNL debut. Like, vocally, very flat for her first song of lilting, pretty pop. It was the sort of wobbly beginning that could knock a fledgeling performer right off her pins, but, to her credit, Rogers came back stronger in the second number. It helped that that song was more uptempo and didn’t highlight a delicate introductory vocal, but, still, props to Rogers for pulling it together. As Adam Grossman might bellow, “Redemption song!”

Most/Least Valuable (Not Ready For Prime Time) Player

Ego Nwodim got a line. Keep plugging, new kid.

Otherwise, in an exceptionally strong night for the female cast, Kate wins it by a whisker, edging out Cecily and Aidy.

“What the hell is that thing?”—The Ten-To-Oneland Report

While it’s no “Whiskers R We,” “Wigs For Pugs” ably carried on the ten-to-one tradition of doing adorably weird stuff with animals, as Hill and Cecily Strong played a couple of clearly mobbed-up entrepreneurs whose pug toupee business is in no way “a front for something.” Mainly, it’s just pugs in wigs, with a succession of very chill pugs getting carried out in their hairy finery, but sometimes that’s enough. And Hill, Strong, Aidy, Mooney, and Kenan (as a guy making pug beards) are thoroughly committed to their characters in a broad yet deadpan way that adds another level to the premise. Pugs in wigs. What more do you need, people?

Stray observations

Kenan’s Clarke cites his caravan sources as “the crows from Dumbo,” echoing Clarke’s description of his current state as “unpopular with my own people.”

McKinnon’s Ingraham refers to Baldwin as “disgraced former actor Alec Baldwin” and shows a clip from “Canteen Boy” to explain.

Che claims that the country would be doing better if red state parents would stop “sending all their liberal kids to coastal cities to do improv.”

Pete Davidson, addressing his new blue hair, claims he looks like “a guy who makes vape juice in a bathtub,” and “a Dr. Seuss character who went to prison.”

Melissa Villaseñor’s teen suspect finally breaks down, telling Jost that she only stabbed her dead friend as a joke, “but Logan took it the wrong way and started bleeding.”

Big Papi for Apple Watch: “You gotta watch your apples or a monkey’s gonna steal them, man!”

Vote on Tuesday.

The Red Sox won the World Series.

Source: https://tv.avclub.com/jonah-hill-joins-the-five-timers-club-on-a-uniformly-fu-1830206395

0 notes