Gravy

There's this line in Miller's Crossing that goes something like this ...

"Runnin' things ... it ain't all gravy!"

I used to write my blog as a vent ... a way of blowing off steam about what I thought should change in the organization in which I worked ... and then I changed jobs.

Now, I'm responsible for an organization ... and things have sort of shifted ... I can't just whine about how "those so-and-sos at the top need to change things" ... I'm the so-and-so, and I'm who my colleagues write about to blow off steam!

And so my blog has changed ... evolved ... it's now about the things we tried ... how they succeeded and failed, and what we learned from them. Hmmm ... I guess that's the equivalent of a blog in big-boy-pants ...

Maybe the quote should have been:

"Runnin' things ... it ain't about the gravy ... it's about how you spoon it on ..."

Decisions ... it's the business we're in

So ... I was reading (well, to be honest, I was listening to) Seth Godin rant in "Small is the New Big" ... and I don't know why exactly, but I suddenly realized that we're not in the answers business ... we're not in the information business ... we're not even in the library business ...

Nope ... we're in the decisions business.

Because of that, our jobs, our missions, our people need to be focused -- not on the stuff that fills the shelves or hard drives or iPods or Blackberries -- but instead on the decisions that people make ... we need to be advocates and champions for decisions that people make to better themselves, their friends and families, and their communities.

We need to be able to measure our contribution to their decisions ... we need to be able to measure the impact of those decisions ... 'til we can do that, we're just making noise in the barnyard with a brick and a bucket.

So, how do you measure your own decisions?