Managing a group of people has been one of the greater experiences of my life.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be a nightmare akin to herding a bunch of feral cats.
But, when it works, it is simply a thing of beauty. That is why I have kept with it for all these years. I have been offered different positions but, I have always enjoyed leading people in a subtle but effective way. Just the dynamics of working in fairly close quarters day after day is challenging. I know that we recently had a situation over the HVAC setting in our office. We work in a large open space with cubicles and work stations for everyone. The only walls are for the conference room. It’s just common sense that a group of thirty people will have different ideas of HVAC comfort. There is only one thermostat in the office and it tends to be controlled by a group who like to keep it more warm than cool. This hasn’t really been a situation until lately. The warm group got a bit greedy and kept the thermostat setting particularly high during a terribly hot streak of weather. This became an immediate issue and I recognized that I needed to do something because neither side was budging. I didn’t want things to end up getting personal. So, I had the HVAC people come in to install a ductless HVAC unit on one side of the office. Then, I suggested that everyone could arrange their work areas around the HVAC setting preference. This has worked beautifully. The group who likes it warm are comfortable and there is now a much cooler zone in the office.