Mission statements

Yesterday morning, I attended a big HR shindig with my entire new division (third iteration of my division since I started here two years ago--it's been a restructuring bonanza!). We, as the new College Relations group, are getting ready to go through our yearly evaluation process. The college came up with this revamped process about four years ago. It has a silly name, special forms, facilitators, and everything. I think the big thing is that it's not supposed to be tied to salary increases (true, b/c as far as I can tell you get cost of living increases and nothing else, unless you have an actual promotion in job title).

So, part of our preparation was to come up with our divisional "mission statement" and "success factors." There are so many obvious Dilbertisms here. As part of the department that markets and writes the messages for the college, I found it amusing that we had to be "facilitated" into creating our own mission statement. Couldn't help thinking, if they had just assigned this to us, we could have had it done in no time. But that would've defeated the whole team-building exercise, I guess. Can you imagine the nightmare of that many cooks in a kitchen, when probably 75% of the people in the division are professional writers?

But, we got through it. Now we'll have individual meetings with our boss, which will go fine. I have a great relationship with my boss and she lets me know how I'm doing regularly. One of the most bogus parts of the process (not counting the mission statement) is that you're supposed to identify "other sources of feedback" and appeal to them regularly, but there's no formal process for it. You're just supposed to say, I'm going to talk to these people every so often about how I'm doing and then I'll mention it to my boss. I sound like the bureaucrat from hell, but come on--shouldn't this be documented better?

OH WELL. There are more important things to worry about. Insurance finally called this morning and gave the go-ahead for the mold people to come do their thing. They're coming tomorrow to start tearing up my kitchen. Hooray!