In Transit

I'm off to a conference in CA for about 10 days. Actually, only 7 days, because I will spend the first several days at a silent retreat. Where I can't talk. Or blog.

I expect to return completely refreshed and enlightened from this so stay tuned for the new me.

Two perspective on talent management

Perspective 1:

Perspective 2: How do you roll?

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

We're goin' back to Cali, to Cali, to Cali.

We're goin' back to Cali.

I don't think so.

Remember that song? Great song. I've always felt it was written especially for me.

I've been holding out on you just a little about living in Germany. The truth is that since moving back to Germany last September I've been determined to spend summers in California. My reasons are thus: 1) I want my kids to be half American; 2) I want to spend face time with my colleagues, instead of being on the phone every night; and 3) I want to shop on Sundays, dammit!*

* The Germans, who treat smoking everywhere, even delivery rooms** as an inalienable, God-given right, have managed to make it illegal to smoke in restaurants but still hold firm on the concept: 'And on the 7th day He rested.'***

** OK, I said that for effect, I don't think even the Germans smoke in delivery rooms.

***If monks had been women it would have been, 'And on the 7th day She shopped' and Germany would be a vastly different place because of that one little word change.

But going back to Cali is not so simple. For one thing, the company we work for, after spending quite a bit to move us back to Germany and rent office space for us here, is understandably reluctant to finance our trip to California.

For another thing, the friend who was going to let us have her house in July made some dramatic life changes and is now moving abroad and renting out the house, so instead we'll be imposing on a mixed bag of colleagues and friends and moving around frequently in a borrowed car with 2 small children and enough personal effects to get us through seven weeks.

Which, as Sara kindly pointed out, could put a damper on the shopping.

Added to this, the theme du jour seems to be, 'You shouldn't have moved to Germany, mwa ha ha ha ha....' Which is good because a huge welcome would have been so embarassing.

There is also an emotional price to pay. Our 17 year old cat is clearly depressed by our pending departure. A friend of ours will be staying in our house while we're gone to look after him but he knows. He's a loving fellow and a dear old friend who values routine and having his family around him. He's been a little under the weather lately and I am not without worries on his account. May he please be well until we get back.

And finally, the piece de resistance, if you will, is our vacation. The money we might have spent on plane tickets to Hawaii will instead be spent on short-term daycare. Normally budget constraints would have forced us to forget about Hawaii and drive down to San Diego instead. However, my mother works for Hawaiian Airlines so the four of us are going to attempt to fly standby to Honolulu out of LA, where we will be visiting the rest of my family. And it gets better because hotel cancellation policies in Hawaii make it impractical to book a hotel in advance, since we may not make it to Hawaii at all.

I leave to your imagination a family of four with too much luggage and fairly uptight, control freak parents trying to fly standby out of LAX with no hotel reservation on the other side.

I know I seem incredibly easy going but I'm not at all about travel.

Suffice it to say that this summer will be something new for us. Everything will not be planned to the nines and there will be multiple logistical and professional challenges to work through. But our friends have really pulled through on accommodating us and our family and friends - not to mention Target, Pottery Barn and Whole Foods -are so excited to see us that we're going to try to make the best of it, have fun and do our part to generate much-needed business revenue in bankrupt California.

Anyway, that's the update on my end. If I'm quieter than usual for a bit, never fear.

I'm just in transit.

A busy day

Monday. Munich setting a poor example for global warming. Gray, cold, drizzly. Yoga in the morning, work through lunch, customer demo in the afternoon, pick up the kids from playdate, drive Ralf to the airport, drive home in the pouring rain and put the kids to bed.

The product demo went well although Ralf claims that at one point I banged the table and bellowed the German equivalent of, 'Dude, we can totally do that!'

I have no recollection of this. I think he's screwing with me.

The meeting ran an hour late so we were late picking up our kids. I was too chicken to phone the mommy who had collected our kids from Kindergarten, taken them to gymnastics and home again, and to whom I had solemnly sworn we would be there by 5:30.

I mean, sure, sometimes people get held up but with our two kids she looked after five kids for four hours and walked them from school to gymnastics and home again and we were, like, an hour late with no message.

Basically, I just couldn't face the music when I had a big chunk of German fall guy sitting right there next to me.

Er. What I mean is that male charm was clearly in order so I made Ralf call her to explain and appologize.

From my end the conversation sounded like this:

Ralf: 'Katja, hi, it's Ralf. . . I know, I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry. What? I know, I'm sorry. I can't say sorry enough times. We just couldn't get out of our meeting, they nailed us to the. . . what? I know, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. Yes, totally our bad. We're on our way now, we'll be there in. . . what? Yes, I know, I'm sorry. I know, you're right, we're really sorry. We'll be there in 20 minutes. Right. Right. Thanks. I know. Sorry. Bye!'

Hanging up the phone Ralf shrugged and made a vaguely Meditarranean hand gesture. 'See? No problem. She said it's totally fine.'

It must be so great to be a guy.

Grand Design

To answer the Maven's question about where I was yesterday: The software company I work for has an uncommonly short release cycle. We only have eight weeks of development to put out a new version. Since my product is fairly in demand, this means I write a lot of designs at pretty frequent pace.

This work is subject to phases, which are magnified by the compressed release cycle.

Phase I: I just finished the designs for the current update and it's time to start thinking about the next update but I'm not quite ready yet. I hover between two updates and poke at a few things but it's hard to drop the topics that have claimed my attention for the last eight weeks and get started. I tend to be a little bit depressed and out of sorts during this phase, unconnected and drifting. Maybe even a little bit burned out. The clock is ticking and I'm not in the mood. I'd rather write articles and fold laundry. Fortunately, this phase tends to be short.

Phase II: I've started the designs for the next update but there are some questions from development and other groups around the current update so my attention is divided. I force myself to make steady progress but haven't really hit my stride yet. I don't yet have a stake in the current design beyond the obvious one that someone pays me to work on it. This is a restless, slightly irritable phase but reasonably productive.

Phase III: Something clicks and suddenly the design owns me. Maybe it's something someone said, or maybe the design has just reached a critical mass, but the different design threads pull at me all the time, insisting that I resolve them into a cohesive pattern. It's not enough to just design a business process, you have to be the person using it and know - really know - what they will do and what mistakes they are likely to make and your design has to help them not make these mistakes. Expertise is important but will only take you so far - you also need empathy. Empathy makes me grumpy and hungry so I'm more likely to butt heads with anyone who questions my design and eat cookies during this phase. When I'm in the throes of design I may not post anything for several days at a time because most of my creative energy is channeled into this relentless chattering monkey on my back.

Phase IV: I'm 95-98% done. I've crossed some sort of design threshhold where the pattern has integrity and holds together but that last 2-5% still needs to be done. It's usually pretty boring. Around this time the current release is ready for testing and that's boring, too, because computers take so long to catch up with thoughts, but also satisfying because this is where a design comes to life. This last phase usually only requires a small part of my attention so my mind starts focusing on other topics again. Unless I feel that the overall design is threatened, the snarling diva within keeps her head down and I am ready to make compromises like a rational adult.

So, generally speaking, when I don't post I either have nothing to say (on those rare days when the Germans don't do anything weird or funny at all) or I'm in Phase III.

Busy days

You'll all be happy to hear that L has been found. I got a new picture of her yesterday so Ralf isn't just making it up.

I also went shopping galore and finished off the evening with a good friend, her lovely daughters and a bottle of wine. Not a bad way to spend an evening. I discovered that advanced HS classes in the US require students to watch Saving Private Ryan and read. . . oh, heck, what was it? Something way too advanced for me, I can't even remember the title.

Today I have various meetings with customers and colleagues but as far as I know, none of these meetings will involve any of your husbands.

This post is really just an excuse to tell you all that I got CARDED yesterday at Target. I think it's part of their new policy to improve sales. It worked for me, I threw in an extra pack of gum out of sheer gratitude. And I didn't just show my driver's license to the cashier, I also generously showed it to the people behind me. They were very grateful.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, this never happens in Germany, where the legal drinking age is something like 14.

One more important milestone

I have one more important milestone to report: WD Germany has a new office! So anyone who wants to visit us in Germany doesn't even need to take vacation days.

Honeypiemama

Ralf’s in Dublin. That means I’m on my own in the morning with the kids. K is thrilled because she gets to sleep in our bed and of course L comes at 5AM and we all snuggle together like a pack of wild dogs in a cave. Then the cat comes to respectfully request to be let outdoors. As punishment for the early hour I pick him up (gently), pet him (he’s very soft) and lock him in the pantry with his litter box. Later I wish I’d let him out.

It’s still pretty early (6:30 AM) so there’s time for a bit of play before school. I attempt to check email and fire off a bunch of quickly composed, terse replies that I hope don’t offend anyone.

Then it’s time to go to school. K can ride a bike now, better that me in fact, and wants to do this all the time now. Unfortunately it is raining so we compromise on the bike attachment where the girls can sit in comfort while I freeze and get wet. We get to the school without incident – actually that’s not quite true as the bike falls over on someone’s dog when the girls climb out but no injuries - and I attempt to dry off my glasses before heading home again.

The rain has just been toying with me up until this point and really lets go on my way home. I am wet, frazzled, frumpy (dressed for the gym later) and my hair is pushed up on my head because my ear warmers are riding up. I pass a couple of smartly dressed business people, who eye me without interest and maybe just a glimmer of pity. I wonder if they realize that here goes one of the great HCM strategic thinkers of our time. I want to go back and tell them but they won’t believe me and anyway, they probably don’t even know what HCM is.

This train of thought leads me to wonder how many of the schlumpy - albeit not so schlumpy as me - moms I see when I drop off the girls also hold down jobs and occasionally even clean up respectably.

I arrive home, again dry off my glasses, and get back to work.

Remote working mom seeks sanity

A lot of people have asked me how I’ve adjusted to working remotely from Munich. Professionally I make it work by being available during the overlap hours, which is after 8PM here. From a family perspective I make it work by picking my kids up at 3 and spending the afternoon with them until it’s time for bed. But personally, I have to say that working from home in a different time zone isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds. Sure, you can lounge around in PJs until noon and work without interruptions but it’s a lonely business. I’m pathetically grateful when I see one of my colleagues working late on Skype or when I get an email message during my normal working hours. And sometimes I worry that I’ll wind up doing some geeky chair dance on my web cam and posting it to YouTube.

But I can’t complain. After all, I married a German. There was always that chance we’d live in Germany.

Let me take you on a quick tour of a typical day:

Sometime between 4-6 AM one of our daughters climbs into bed with us and it's a crap shoot whether more sleeping is to be had after that. If everyone isn't already awake by 7 the cat starts meowing, which gets the household into motion. Ralf makes coffee (that’s his job since I watch the kids every afternoon while he works) and at some point we remember that the kids need to be at school before 8:30 - this somehow catches us off guard every morning - and the rush to make breakfast, pack lunches and get everyone dressed (warmly) ensues. Once the kids are out of the house I sit in front of my computer with a second cup of coffee and peruse my email, wincing (we’re in the middles of system testing our latest release so emails usually involve more work than a 2-liner) and, I'm afraid, muttering to myself.

At some point I either drive to the gym or blow it off and get dressed. Or, if it’s Monday, I go shopping at Tengelmann’s, an experience that has merited it's own posting. Then I get to work in earnest, either writing detailed design documents or testing or preparing presentations for various events and customer meetings or researching the state of the talent management market. Although I’m a Human Capital Management generalist, I feel a special affinity for compensation because it: 1) involves math; and 2) it isn't as hard as payroll, benefits and general ledger.

At 2:30 I shut down my computer and pick up the kids. Then we play a bit in the playground outside our house and do various things of that kind until it’s time for dinner, a half hour of TV, a story and bed. Then I start my calls. . .

Sometimes I have a call before the kids go to bed and that gets really interesting. If one were to eavesdrop on various conversations it might sound something like this:

‘. . . Well, sure, but that’s just a me, too story. The real differentiator is. . . no, darling, not until after dinner. . .sorry, the real differentiator is the combination of Core HR and best of breed talent management modules like Compensation. Exactly. Stop hitting your sister! No, not you, sorry. What? Right, OK, so the point isn’t that it’s talent management, the point is that it’s Core. Drop it! What? No, not you, sorry.'

‘. . . I think that as long as we’re consistently behind two weeks on the overall release cycle it’s unrealistic to try to stop development in Drop 8. I mean. . . yes, Little Baboo, that’s very good, go play now, go play. . . Sorry. What? No, I don’t think the problem is necessarily the designs, although we could definitely use a catch up release. No, I don’t think using Confluence would. . . Bubi, mommy’s on the phone, not right now, OK, sweetie?. . . sorry. I don’t think using Confluence to write FDDs would help that much, Word is still the way friendlier documentation tool. PMs are backlogged enough without moving to a tool that wasn’t designed for functional users to do this type of work. No! No knives! No, not you, sorry. What I’m saying is that. . . '

‘. . . They’ll have to set up two sets of rules? That’s crazy. Lisa’s OK with it? Well. . . I guess she oughta know. But why? I mean, why two? But that's totally the same thing. Uh huh. I see. Sort of. Are you sure Lisa wants it? What about. . . ? Len-Len, you can go potty by yourself. No, not you, sorry. Yes you can, sweet pumpkin. . .’ ' ‘Y’know. I think I need to get off now. I’m really sorry. Let’s hook up later or tomorrow. Rightsorrybye!’