The first really smooth, feel-like-I-belong-here day at Knoll wrapped up today. We got great input from advisors, got good insight from employees, got gobs of data from IT, and got to a place where it suddenly feels like we can do this. As with MAP, the stages are known but not demarcated; there's no timeline to move from "we'll never be able to do this" to "we can do this" but less than a week is solid.
Outside of work, there was cycling on Tuesday evening (some 15 miles total, to Emmaus and back and then a bit of a vertical lariat to really build the conditioning) and a dinner with the site VPs and GMs of Knoll at a local tavern on Wednesday. I think the welcoming demeanor and pleasant atmosphere last night really contributed to the positive feeling today at work. A really excellent chicken cordon bleu and a table of business men not afraid to order wings while wearing business clothes helped, too.
'Pleasant' is my current favorite word. So much of our lives is spent hovering somewhere below this point that I think it's worth being stoked when things go well enough to be pleasant. It is simple, uncontrived, and meaningful... in a word, pleasant. Excitement is good for a person and contagious, and I think that expressing your pleasure over something being pleasant falls into this category without the necessity of irrational exuberance that is so taboo in these post-Greenspan times.
Thursday, May 11, 2006