THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK

I worked with my company's Field Service Director this week. He's my immediate supervisor. I also worked with my colleague, the guy who does in the eastern US what I do in the western US. We've instituted a program that brings both of them to my part of the country one quarter and the Director and me to his part of the country during the next quarter. We visited Los Angeles, CA this week. In about 3 months, we'll meet either in Washington D.C. or Atlanta, GA, the two cities that I said I'd like to visit.

I learned some things and had some things refreshed in my memory as I worked this week. Here are just a few of those things:

• I was reminded that it's very important to me that I'm the best at what I do. I felt like I was holding my breath all week as we toured the stores in the L.A. Market and the other two gentlemen audited and analyzed our store sets and the overall work that we do. We chose L.A. because there's a substantial inner city area that the others wanted to see. They wanted to compare my inner city stores with those in the large cities in the east. I'm proud to say that we compared very favorably to the stores in the east. In fact, it was apparent from the comments that our inner city stores look much better than those in the eastern cities.

• I learned that I'm very comfortable with criticism, when it's warranted, but not very patient with it when it's petty. When the Director pointed out areas where we (in the west) excel and the eastern Region Manager's stores come up short, the eastern Region Manager became petty and picky with his criticism. I told him he was being petty and that if he mainly critiqued those areas where there was some real deficiencies that we could correct, it would provide me with some areas and ideas for improving our work. He had very few areas that he could seriously question after that, but when he did, I took his criticism with grace and aplomb.

• I learned that even though I'm getting older, I still want to learn. There were a number of things discussed amongst the three of us, about which I know nothing. These weren't all work-related topics. For example, when I was younger, even though I wasn't a fan of professional football, I knew enough about it that I could carry on an intelligent conversation. When these two guys started talking about the NFL, I was lost. I made a quiet vow that I want to continue to learn and gain intelligence. I'm not dead quite yet. This vow relates to work, general knowledge, and church topics.

Well, that's about all. Three main things: (1) I'm still competitive. (2) I can take criticism when it's justified, but I can't when it's not. (3) I still have a desire to learn.

It was a fun week.