First 50 Days

Today was a little self-indulgent.  I bought a lot of shelving and Ryan (ensemble member and guy helping out Sunday mornings) and I set it up all over the theater and offices.  I know, this is pretty micro for a guy with my title, but it was very therapeutic.

In an organization with no maintenance/janitorial person (yet!) the place can get pretty grimey and cluttered.  I have a big tolerance for that, but I also know that people in a professional environment where they can always find what they need are more likely to be productive.  So, emboldened by having someone else here on a Sunday morning, I trotted off to the Home Depot and went at it. 

I am now the proud owner of a Home Depot credit card.  As soon as we beat our goals, I'm turning in some serious receipts!  (I currently only turn in humorous receipts, like from Uncle Fun, etc.)

Anyway, in case it is of any use to you, here's the formula I scratched out to get back control of our professional environment.  These are designed to fit a busy workplace, where execution of any given step may be weeks apart from the chance to handle the following step.  An important issue was to make sure that between the steps work could continue without much interruption.  Also, from a morale standpoint, I'm trying to make sure that every step always feels like progress.  There's nothing more soul-killing than having people say, "now it's worse than before!"

Step 1:  Accomplish basic cleaning / janitorial
Step 2:  Add storage capacity
Step 3:  Get everything up off the floor – put it anywhere
Step 4:  Pull together like things / similarly purposed things.
Step 5:  Make decisions as to whether to repair, repurpose or remove currently un-useful things.
Step 6:  Start putting things in smart, meaningful locations.
Step 7:  Label, Label, Label
Step 8:  Leave growing room.
Step 9:  Create and maintain systems of organization.