Monday, February 25th

We're back at it! Today started off well, with what I thought was a fairly productive team meeting. As I was assigned as the leader for the meeting, I prepared an agenda and shared it with the rest of the Blue Team over the weekend. I also prepared a tentative timeline for week three, including deadlines. As far as I know, it was received well, since I haven't seen any suggestions for corrections or amendments yet. After the meeting, I went to the PD to start gathering information for this week's problem. While there, our group was very active, working within a shared google document to create our problem statement. Participation was excellent, with every team member providing input. Although I never consider myself very tech-savvy, I'm glad to say that I was able to help Shaun with a minor technical issue when working in google docs. I'm still not sure I have a great handle on this week's assignment. I'm hoping as the week moves forward, it becomes more clear. I think I might have been over-thinking some of the assignment.

How did the day's activities relate to your real-world work situation?
Today was not much like a typical work day for me. It's not often that I have to research statistics or financial data relating to the department. When I do have to research something, I can usually find what I'm looking for within departmental records or through an internet search. Today I had to obtain the information from my boss and from a clerk in the city Treasurer's office.

How will your real-world behavior change as a result of what you learned today?
I generally don't want to suggest much of a change to bosses, as sometimes I feel like that would be trying to tell them how to do their job. Working on this assignment, I looked up some other departments that publish their strategic plan. It's interesting to me that our department does not have an agency vision or core values published on our website or, at minimum, posted somewhere internally. It's a good lesson to me to not be afraid to make suggestions to the administration if I feel a change is necessary.

What could you have done differently that might have impacted your performance?
I thought initially that I was well-prepared to run the group meeting. I prepared the list of deadlines and a timeline to keep us on track throughout the week, and felt pretty good about providing the team with reminders of blog entries and check-in and check-out words. About an hour after the meeting, Jake reminded us all about our goal/achievement progress assignment. I was disappointed in myself for not mentioning that during the team meeting, but glad that Jake remembered.