Yay, it's working!

The title works for this post. The weight watchers is working, and I'm going to talk about work.

I'm a down by 3 lbs (and it's a consistent 3 lbs, not a fluctuating one).

I cut out juice and soft drinks, and I'm drinking water instead. I reduced my portions, and I was trying to be active - until I started doing extreme overtime work.

So cool stuff at work - they called everyone into a meeting (including the new hires and the co-ops) and the owners gave all of us a $500 bonus for the good work we've done (the co-ops and PHd students also got the bonus, as did the people who only started working this past week) . Our revenue basically grew by 248% this past year so that was pretty crazy (and put us more than 5 years ahead of our original sales targets), and the owners basically want to signal to everyone that they value their employees and is looking for loyal dedicated people. I thought it was a nice gesture to give it to the co-ops and new hires, and the PHd students. So this is a new thing for the company, the sharing in profits, and I hope we can continue doing that.

Then they surprised us with a loyalty rewards program for the employees. So once you've worked here for 5 years, you get a real Montblanc pen with your name engraved in it. after 15 years, we get a choice of a Rolex, Breitling, or Omega. One employee worked here for 25 years and today, the owners surprised him with a $10,000 cheque (on top of the $500, the pen, and the watch) and he was in absolute shock and was speechless.

Frank told us we have to spend the money on our families and then report back at the company BBQ next week on how we spent it.

Started my new position as Production Manager. The owner that takes care of the production side of the company approached me and bsically asked me how I would feel about joining "The Dark Side" - at the time, he hadn't told his co-owner (my boss) that he was going to invite me to join his team. Luckily, my boss was supportive and said "As long as you think it's the right decision for you, then I will support you".

A few things that I considered:
-Will I get respect as a Production Manager from the people in production I have to look after (especially since I was in Sales and Marketing, and historically, production people hate sales because sales places unrealistic demands on production)
-compensation.... (I wasn't sure what I was getting into so I might as well be compensated for my troubles)
-female empowerment (rare to see a female production manager, especially in a male dominated industry. Even more rare is a young female minority as a production manager).
-how would it look on my resume (right now, my resume reads like a sales and marketing resume. I thought it would be a good opportunity to add some variety - in particular something in a totally different direction, therefore giving me an overview of running the company as a whole with the sales experience and production experience)
-my personality - does it suit the role? (I knew that i wasn't suited for sales, I dislike dealing with customers. I'm more of a sit-at-my-desk-spreadsheet type of girl)
-can I do the new job. I asked the owner of the company if he really believed that I can do the role and he responded that I'm the most capable person in the company to do the role and he has no doubt about it. However, I negotiated with him a 3 month probation in which I can try the role out for 3 months and if it doesn't work out (i don't like the role, or he doesn't think I'm doing a good job), I can go back to my old job.
-in changing the position, would it help the overall company move forward. A few days before this job offer, we had a sales meeting and in the meeting all of us salespeople were in agreement that we need "buy-in" from production to push orders through in order to meet on-time delivery. By changing positions, my old sales people now automatically have "buy-in" from production because I'm approaching production from a sales perspective. I told my sales boss that I think that helped soften the blow that I was leaving his team. I was like "Hey Tom, if you want buy-in from production, what better way than to have a former sales person take the role. It's better than hiring someone from the outside to take the production manager role in which sales people will have to suck up to the new person to get it out."

I accepted the job. So I've been working long days of 7:30/8:30 am to 8:30 pm, take an hour break to get home and eat dinner, and continue working from 9:30 pm to 12:30 am. Last night, I started working after work from 10 pm to 2:30 am, tried to go to sleep but I was stupid and had drank a chai tea latte at 10 pm so i was kept awake, and so i resumed work at 4:30 am to 7:am, drove to work and got there at 7:30 am and I decided to leave early today at 4:30 pm. When I got home, I was beat and fell immediately asleep. The funny thing is that I don't mind doing the overtime, it's my body that's making it difficult, the idea of the necessity of sleep).

One night, I got home and Dennis was working on his desktop and laptop computer (this is probably want we will be doing tonight on our Friday night). So I set up my laptop beside his and there we were, for the next 3-4 hours on a weeknight, working on our respective projects. We said to each other "we are the most boring people that we know because this is how we spend our worknights". It also helps that there is no good TV on right now, and we both enjoy our jobs.

After talking to Malina and Amanda, I realize how good I have it at my job. To have supportive boss(es), job security, and have the chance to have big responsibilities while still being young, is something that's pretty rare in today's market.

I have encountered one difficult in which apparently I'm overseeing someone who may have hoped to be the new Production Manager. So I was met with resistance when she was told by the owner that she would be reporting to me and she first had to go "take a walk" and a few days later she actually went into the owner's office and started crying - apparently she thought I was going to be an overbearing boss - there might be some truth to that. Malina confirmed with me today that I can be "direct" and that I tend to "get the point across" so I think that's something I need to work on. I prayed about the working together situation and this morning, things changed completely and we were working well together and laughing together. Praise the Lord!

I can smell change at work (the dismissing of some people, the hiring of other people). I think our owners are applying the Good to Great principle of getting the right people on the bus. I completely support it. As i told my boss recently when he wanted us to hire someone and myself and a few other people were against it, I said "We just dismissed some people. I don't want to replace them with mediocre. We have to hire only exceptional people". I hope he takes my advice.