关于印发吉林省交通运输厅2017年法制工作要点的通知

Seinfeld is one of my favorite shows.? The cast is always finding ways to make their lives interesting and through humor, are able to right the ship and maintain their friendships. My wife Lisa and I got into the habit of watching an episode each evening before bedtime since no matter what kind of mood we were in, we would always get a good laugh or feel-good moment from Kramer, Jerry, Elaine and George.

As IT professionals and Project Managers, we can sometimes dig ourselves into a deep hole or find that someone has dug a pretty deep hole for us.? Getting out of that situation takes a lot of mental toughness, stamina, and perseverance through adversity.? On top of that, we are charged with leading teams back into a happy place as well.

When I worked for Perot Systems, one of the founders, Rod Thompson, a seasoned EDS executive, was leading the implementation of one of our first projects automating a largely manual publishing process for one of the leading publishing houses based in New York City.? We were working a lot of hours and weekends getting our first deliverables into Production, so everyone was beat, mentally and physically.

I remember one particular Saturday evening when we were all sitting around monitoring batch jobs that were loading data, eating pizza and sucking down a lot of caffeine, when Rod showed up in the operations center.? The mood was dark as some of the jobs had to be restarted due to disc capacity issues and we were behind schedule.

Rod looked at us, laughed out loud, and asked what was going on that we were all in such a bad mood?

The big smile on his face instantly brightened the mood a bit, and we explained what was going on.

Rod, not missing a beat, said well at least no one is getting shot at, as he being a combat veteran made it clear things might be bad, but no one was going to get killed that evening.? We were all a bit shocked at first, and then suddenly we all burst out laughing.? Rod put things in perspective for us at that moment and we saw that things were bad, but they could be a lot worse.

The fact that Rod showed up on a Saturday evening to show his support was emblematic of his outstanding leadership. And for him to find a bit of humor in our situation showed his character.

So, wherever you and your team might find yourselves in a difficult situation, remember to find some humor and share it with your them to lighten the mood and put things into perspective.?

Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

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