Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Who delegates the best?

So I came across this blog that was discussing delegating - and said that the Boomers are the "masters" of delegating. This has not been my experience, but then again, it is possible that my experience is unique. A lot of the Boomers I've worked with have had a hard time letting go of things, because they want the process to be a certain way and - even if you come to desired result.

While I'm writing this, the blogger in question has not yet chimed in on how Xers and Millennials delegate, but I'm assuming she will say that we're not as good as the Boomers (which is fine for her to say, because blogs are about our opinions).

My experience, however, has been that Xers are willing to let go of tasks, but don't always give enough direction to those they're delegating to (unless it's another Xer). That's because, as my husband would say, the Xer mantra is "f*$#ing figure it out." My experience with Millennials (which has been mostly in the classroom as an instructor) is that they're great at delegating and dividing up the work, because they've spent so much of their youth working in teams.

But, again, I don't have any empirical data on any of this. So I figured that I ask you all. Below is a poll. Feel free to comment, too, if you like.




Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Why I won't be seing Where the Wild Things Are


So I guess you could say I'm more than a little pissed off that they've turned the children's book Where The Wild Things Are into a movie. I posted something to my Facebook page about it this morning - and I got nine comments. I was really surprised that of those comments only my husband and my friend Kathy agreed with me.

There were two main reasons my Facebook friends thought making the movie is okay - 1) Maurice Sendak approved of the project and 2) We should embrace other people's interpretations of books through the medium of film.

Those are legitimate reasons. However, nobody will ever change my mind. Here's why: I am sick of everything being over-exposed, over-commercialized, and made into toys for Happy Meals. In a world where it's perfectly okay to market your products to children, Where The Wild Things Are was a gem that stood the test of time and hadn't been feed to the marketing machine - until now.

Remember when The Beatles song Revolution was used to sell Nikes? (That one's for you Boomer readers, because I really don't care about The Beatles).

Remember when Preparation H tried to buy the rights to Johnny Cash's Burning Ring of Fire?

Remember when JC Penney bastardized The Breakfast Club in a commercial last year?

I could go on and on about this - and I encourage you to add examples in the comments section. But my point is that everything doesn't need a Hollywood slant. Everything doesn't need to be made into a movie. And I don't give a shit about Spike Jonze's interpretation of Where The Wild Things Are.

I know some of my readers will think I'm the one who's full of shit, to which my response is "Let the wild rumpus start!"