When Holidays fall on aThursday

it feels…

Weird

I know that in corporateAmerica, a lot of people have to work on the Friday after a mid-weekholiday

But having done so myself formore than a few years

I can say with totalconfidence that productivity on those days is almost too low tomeasure

Unless…

You work for yourself

Then you get to be asproductive as you like

Or define it how you like

I remember going into theoffice once and having a meeting with the V-P and other C-suite execs

Who were delighted that theyallowed employees to wear blue jeans on Friday after a holiday

And wondered why none of“them” felt grateful for it

Which is an attitude Iencountered a lot

“They” should be grateful,“They” should work harder, “They” should do more

So on a day just like today,we were told to measure the analytics

with constant monitoring toensure each person made at least 100 attempts to reach out

Which doesn’t sound likemuch in the grand scheme

It’s literally trying 25times an hour

Which is how the C-Suite sawit

But it’s trying to reachepople who were on vacation mode themselves or on duty or on leave

and didn’t want to bebothered

Or worse didn’t want tobother with anyone who disrespected their time like that

So I said to my team at thetime to try an email

Send as many as you like witha goal to try to talk to four people

And if you didn’t get to the“talk business” part, at least you made a connection and set up atime to call back

The how of it

But that instruction got mecalled into an office the next week

I got a reprimand for “failingto follow protocol”

And an instruction to documentit for others to use, because the method generated the best metricsof any team that day

Which included the only metricthat mattered

Helping people

Which defined my entirecorporate experience

Always getting into troublefor ignoring the rules

Always getting what I didturned into new policy

Which I think is why I was letgo

Because I didn’t think beingbusy meant being productive

Especially on the day after aholiday

Isn’t that weird