Tomorrow is the first working day of 2010, and I have double first-day jitters.

First, I’m starting swimming with the brand new Poulsbo masters’ swim team. For those of you who don’t know, masters’ swimming is adult competitive swimming. It supports multiple goals – regular swim meets, broken up by age groups; triathlons; and longer open water events. The latter is my gig.

While I’ve been swimming with many of these folks on an unstructured basis throughout the last year, this will be the first time I’ve actually done a formal workout with them under the guidance of a coach. I’m quite nervous about the whole thing, although tomorrow’s workout will be more evaluation and less exhaustion.

Second, I start a new job tomorrow. I’ve been a project manager in IT for nearly five years. We’re spinning off a subsidiary company as an external service provider, and I’m taking a role with the new subsidiary as a senior business analyst. It’s a little different than what I’ve been doing to date. While there’s about a 50% overlap, it’s more technical and detail oriented. I’m nervous about that change, too.

Maybe I could throw in a first date and first day at school tomorrow as well, just to make matters entertaining all around.

A friend (the wise and articulate proprietress of AK Minority Report) and I were talking last night about the subject of politics and communication in the workplace, and we decided we’d both write blog posts about it and see how our perspectives compare.

This is going to be a little difficult to write, as it’s a standing rule of mine not to write negatively or in inappropriate detail about my workplace or colleagues. Still, I’ll make a stab at it on general principles.

Am I affected by workplace politics? You bet. When I took my most recent IT project management position four years ago, I thought it was going to be managing straightforward implementation of bigger and sexier projects. Instead, it seemed to shift my job away from the nitty-gritty of project management and toward a very political, impact-and-influence oriented role – perhaps 75% of my time is spent on the latter.

When do I encounter politics? When do I not?!?!

• At project initiation, I work with multiple departments, reconcile wishes against strategic goals and favored vendors to scope a solution and develop a business case with a meaningful return on investment.

• During project planning & detailed requirements gathering, I fight for the resources necessary to accomplish my project and resolve requirements conflicts.
• During implementation, I work constantly behind the scenes to continue to have my resources’ full attention, and push the vendor as hard as possible to focus on our build and issues.
• Testing requires that I track down yet another set of resources to test, as well as push hard on vendors to resolve issues.
• Deployment requires getting the customer’s approval to go live, managing various change management processes, as well as high visibility internal and external communication.

I try and follow some simple, sensible rules for communication – these apply to basic human relations, not just my field of project management:

• Communicate frequently, often, and to the right people. Nobody likes surprises.
• Learn preferred channels of communication for different team members and customers and use them for best problem-solving.
• If you have a problem, go directly to the source of the problem.
• If you need to escalate, involve both the source of the problem and his/her manager in the discussions so there is no he said/she said conflicting stories.
• Practice Covey’s fifth habit – seek first to understand, then to be understood.
• Deliver praise and positive feedback in public; criticism in private. Always.
• Follow the golden rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.

It’s important to me, as project manager, to understand my role. Primarily, my focus is typically supportive/facilitative management; I’m there to handle all the logistics and issues so that the technical team can focus on the project. At times, I do need to shift into a more assertive taskmistress role and require extraordinary focus from my team, and I need to understand when to do this and how to most effectively make it happen. Still, at the end of the day, when the project is successful, it’s my team that has done the work, every line of code, piece of hardware and late night cutover; I’m the most dispensable person there, and I make sure the team knows their efforts are appreciated.

One final note on politics, management and communication: there is a continuum of behavior that ranges from total, obsequious yes-person to completely obstructionist obstacle. I am not a yes-person. My personal sense of integrity requires me to be honest, realistic and forthcoming, while still trying to remain positive and constructive. One of the best pieces of career advice I ever received , from PM consultant Neil Whitten, is to do your job as if you don’t care if you get fired. Do the right thing, work hard, satisfy your own work ethic and be a champion for your project and your people.

Monday is painful on a number of counts – sleep deprivation, return to work mode with an overflowing inbox, the weekend’s catastrophes lying in wait, and regret for lost weekend opportunities.

So how can we improve them? Besides the sensible things, like maintaining a consistent sleep pattern and cleaning up the desk Friday afternoons.

This morning I indulged in leftover dark chocolate pudding – for breakfast – along with my coffee. What other things could help make Mondays better?

• As above, dessert for breakfast!
• Schedule lunch with a friend.
• New shoes!
• Ditch the depressing news on the way to work; listen to NPR, comedy or an audiobook.
• Or, the Tania^TM method – resign.

I’m sure the rest of you have ideas, serious or tongue-in-cheek, please share!

This morning’s local news contained more of the same awful stuff: 10,000 layoffs at Boeing, 6,700 at Starbucks. This is in addition to last week’s 5,000 Microsoft employees and 5,000 Microsoft contractors, and this Tuesday’s grim national news of 40,000 jobs lost across the country.

In desperately sad news, remniscent of the original Black Monday of 1929, a once-eager Microsoft employee has plunged to his death in Bellevue; his death was ruled a suicide.

A new Microsoft Corp. employee, whose lifelong goal had been to work at the company, died after falling from the 28th floor of the Lincoln Square office complex in Bellevue, where the company’s sales force leases space.

A Bellevue Police Department spokesman, said the man landed on the roof near the complex’s movie theater Sunday night.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a suicide.

My heart goes out to the victim’s family, friends and colleagues.

Our workforce, our economy, our country desperately needs hope. Even the most miraculous leader could not fix this disastrous mess quickly; we all need to hang on through the rocky times that will most certainly lie ahead.

I have faith; together, with hard work and persistence, we will turn it around.

Still, sleep won’t come easily tonight.

Last year I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions. The year before that I made some non-resolutions. How’d I do with those, over the course of the last two years?

1. Go to the theater and see some good shows. It doesn’t have to be a Vegas-only experience!
   FAIL. Although Cats, Rent, Fiddler on the Roof and Wicked are all coming to Seattle next year, so I have lots of opportunity coming up.
    

2. Get a pedicure once a month even in winter – and splurge on the extended foot massage.
   FAIL.
    

3. Listen to new music every month.
   I did this, actually, with the help of iTunes and exposure to new stuff via Wii Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
    

4. Spend less time at work and more time with friends and family.
   Epic FAIL. Sigh. A couple of colleagues and I are supporting each other on this in 2009.
    

5. Do something creative every week just for the joy of it, e.g. make jewelry, write, paint, garden, do a home project, or a web project.
   FAIL. But I did complete NaNoWriMo again.
    

6. Take more naps.
   FAIL. I hardly took any naps last year, although I’ve done a bit more in the last month.

One out of six is 16%, not exactly stellar performance. Apparently even non-resolutions are not for me.

Happy New Year!