"Youth has a kingdom waiting for it." – Oscar Wilde
We always try to manage results at Old’s Cool, not methods, or our own madness.
Yes, we do have a certain way of doing things around here, but we think that the performance paradigm (think win/win) encourages and harnesses the most creative synergy. The best way to maximize effectiveness in our opinion, especially regarding our two new crazy, hungry chimpanzee interns, James and Evan, is to tee the ball up and then let them have at it.
Of course managing expectations is the key. Here are our five bullet points to get everyone on the same hole, so-to-speak.
First, we’ll define the desired results — what is to be done, by whom, and when.
Second, we’ll specify the guidelines and parameters for the specific task, including our way of doing business, acceptable practices, prior methods, etc.
Third, our resources are available to everyone — human, financial, and technical. We’re all in this together.
Fourth, we’ll also go over accountability and the standards of performance, as well as the timeframe/deadlines.
Fifth, the consequences will be specified — good and bad, natural and logical — and what will and will not happen as a result of the evaluation.
Game on, gents!
UPDATE: The insatiable and unstoppable simians continue to bring a hilarious enthusiasm and positive, beast-mode attitude to everything around here, and have transformed my beloved side hustle from a fun, creative hobby into a bold vision – now an impressively-infrastructured internet-based business – in only a few short weeks. I'm slightly warmed and intimidated, but still magnificently recalcitrant, outdated, un-updated.
T. S. Eliot comes to mind: "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." So I'm trying, not only to bare it, but to understand what theirs is all about, and why, and how 2020 actually works, since the fundamentals they somehow live by sometimes seem so fog-bound and anchored in air.
But the door swings both ways – they're eager to devour any nuggets of wisdom (and anything in the fridge) and hard-won crumbs on perspective and trust and competence from old-man me, too. My son, James, especially – at some point, outside of the internship, while thrusting himself up into a wider world, and maybe sooner than I think, will become the parent of his parent.