Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Gaither Reshuffle: Random is the New Order

There is reshuffle at the Gaither Road facilities of our CNSI office. We expanded our office space by acquiring our next door neighbor’s space. We all assumed it is going to be as convenient and as manageable as $ 99 Apple shuffle. But alas I woke from my day dream. The office planners had planned this for months, but then they re-planed with few weeks left ( they did not order the carpet ahead of time), and then they went into a crisis planning mode( they bought down a wall which now needs to be build up again) too. Alas they finally stopped planning when the work got underway. Anyway, all the planning for the future growth did not last very long since by the completion of this reshuffle project we run out of space (anticipated) Ironical! Well you decide that!
However, to the credit of the office planners, the project appears to be getting over on time unlike some of our IT projects which every time we look into it, we figure out that we have 6 more months to finish. Am I looking North East? Arghh! Back to the shuffle, oops, I mean the reshuffle.
Space is premium ladies and gentleman and individual offices are what people would fight for as if there was no tomorrow. Cubes are considered a step down. Sending emails, escalating to everyone (can you escalate to everyone, I need to figure that one out yet), making presentations to justify the need for the office are the flavor of the week. Hey come on we have to work in the environment for long extended periods, weekends too. (This project was an exception. No work was done during the weekends even though it meant outages in the regular work days.) So Brethern, all I can say is that the fight is justified! Damn! I have an office too and gosh it feels on top of the world. Close the doors and you are at home. The office planners worked to satisfy all kinds of forces for the office space, brainstormed ideas ( as if there were many) , discussed for long hours in meetings ( actually same thing repeated n times ). But time was spend like crazy ( for there was no other work to be done) and out came the guiding principles. Can those be shared? No, because for they are guiding principles, we are not supposed to follow them, just guide along them to walk into the exception world. Further they are baked fresh every day.

Finally the D day came and phase I of the project got completed on time! Infact ahead of time. Pandemonium!! We were supposed to move on Friday. OK! No! Wait we are supposed to move on Wednesday, since we cut down the networks, telephones from the old to the new already. Yikes!
Anwway, we all welcomed the randomeness since 'In Chaos lies Creativity", and we all eagerly wait for the next phase with great anticipation. So till next time welcome the random order and enjoy the reshuffle across the border !!!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

:-)