The Downtown Diner

Along with my co-facilitators Lucia Yip and Gerald Ng, I got to facilitate my second course for Sun managers last week - a class called "Experienced Manager Essentials." I covered the topics "Leading High Performance Teams" and "Rapid Decision Making." It was a great class, mostly because the students were very talkative and made jokes to keep the atmosphere light.

That was one thing I saw last week so clearly - a talkative, relaxed class can TOTALLY make or break the class for everybody, especially the facilitator. If people will raise their hands and contribute, give their own perspective, disagree with the facilitator, anything, it makes the whole thing so much more worthwhile. So if you're headed for a class any time soon please speak up during the class, your facilitator will thank you for it.

That scarf I'm wearing? Totally borrowed it from my 8-year-old.

I love the unplanned color coordination in this shot.

Stanley, Mark and Albert, looking so engrossed! Thank you guys for that!

Lucy, Winston and Guang trying to decide if they'll build a boat or stay on the island.

The week was insanely busy because I was tied up in class all day and then at night I was trying to catch up on emails and also prepare for the next day's class. I wasn't getting as much sleep as I like to and as you all know, I'm still caffeine-free so I couldn't even use coffee as a crutch.

The good thing about last week is that it forced me to use one of the skills we stress for managers in the course - delegation! I wouldn't have gotten through the week without the help and support from so many wonderful people.

- Thank you Jasper for running the Tech Days prep meeting.

- Thank you Susan for covering for me at the PAC meeting, and for being willing to cover for me at Staff.

- Thank you Jim for managing the printing of the books that we'll give away at Sun Tech Days in Taipei, Guangzhou and Beijing.

- Thank you Grace for scheduling 1,001 appointments for me this week and next.

- Thank you Jack for negotiating with the Labs team on behalf of AGC.

- Thank you Buddy for taking care of the kids and everything at home all last week. I know I was no help to you at all and you carried that whole load without complaining once. Okay once, but that was only when I had snapped at you. :)

I know I am sooo lucky to have solid people like you to delegate to. Thank you all for carrying me through last week!