The "Influence Line". And Shellfish.

Imagine you are at work and have been working with a project team for two months. It is a pretty big group with twelve people and you have had full-day meetings every week. Some of those people are your friends and with some you only have a professional work relationship. Sounds familiar?

Well, now image that one day your boss comes to one of the meetings and announces to the group that every member has to create an influence ranking. To be more precise, every team member has to rank every other member as well as oneself. according to how much influence they have had on the group (And then, what actually constitutes influence?). A ranking then looks like this:

1. Jack
2. Karen
3. Chris
4. Deb
5. Joe
.
.
12. Jim

That doesn't sound so familiar to most of us.

Ok, and now image that after everyone has created their ranking you are back in your project room and and everyone is standing in the middle. One person takes his list and starts lining up the people from most influential to least influential according to his own ranking. All of this is done without talking.

Picture the process: "Joe points at Lilly and then points towards the end of the line."

After everyone has made their influence line the group comes together in a circle and talks about the experience.

That basically describes last Tuesday for me as the "Influence Line" is part of Touchy Feely. It gives fairly unbiased feedback about how others perceive me, whether my influence judgement overlaps with the others or whether everyone sees the group totally different.

This is just a snapshot of what Touchy Feely is like. It is very different from anything I have done so far. And still, I am not sure whether I like it. Also, I am not sure whether I have to like it. Maybe I can draw value from it without liking it.

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But there are other external influences (see, there is coherence in my post) that currently impact my life. Mainly the sun and the knowledge that our first MBA year is almost over. To make use of both of these things we regularly come together again in the Schwab East courtyard. In order to justify those gatherings several clubs and individuals find reasons to bring everyone together. Somehow those reasons have all been connected to shellfish recently. I like it.

Cheers + bis bald,
TIM

GSB Lobster Bake

GSB Crawfish Boil