Cardinal Rules

I broke my cardinal rule about bringing work home.

Hiding in a red file folder in between the folder for items related to my callings and my soccer notebooks are note cards and a printout.

Let me give some background.

My company started a new program, it's called the Four Disciplines of Excellence, from Franklin Covey. The idea is good but what it boils down to you is you have one Wildly Important Goal (WIG). The definition of this goal is that if you fail at achieving at it no other achievement matters.

Well this got rolled out the week I started in this position. This has somehow resulted in me managing the project for my team. My manager says it shows what trust he has in my abilities. I think I just happen to be the only one without 60 things needing to be done NOW every minute.

My manager scheduled a meeting with our director and our vice president for last Friday (yesterday). This got rescheduled to Monday. Previous to yesterday I was going to be a technical resource. But then everything changed.

Halfway through our planning meeting my manager announces that I'm leading the presentation. "But don't worry," he throws out, " if you start to falter I'll step in." Oh geez, what, um, confidence you have in me.

I went to lunch and then rearranged my schedule to brainstorm, practice and finalize the documents and flow.

As I was preparing the handouts my manager brings me a nice presentation folder to put the papers in. We'd been trying to find some earlier in the supply closet but couldn't find anything really nice. I was planning to just put them in colored file folders.

I start to thank my manager for finding the folder when he starts saying "OK, so you open it up like this, you'll punch holes in the papers, put them on the prongs, fold this over, push down the prongs and...."

"Um, yeah, I know how to use one of those."

**long pause**

He chuckles. "Of course you do."

Really?!? You trust me to present to the vice president on last minute notice but not to know how to use a presentation folder? Oh boy...