...and they're PAYING me to work here!

On my first day at The Culinary, the President gave his annual State of the Institute address. It was a wonderful recap of the year just completed as well as a view into future plans. There's a 5-year capital improvement plan that includes a 750-seat auditorium, new classroom buildings, new kitchens, new dormitories, and a world-class hotel (Hyatt got the nod on that one). We celebrated service anniversaries and applauded the Faculty Member and Staff Member of the year. A wild slide show with great music accompanied all of it.

Following that, all the employees went to the Student Rec Center where the gym had been transformed into a banquet room with wonderful food stations located all around the edges. For entertainment, a Beatles look-alike band had been engaged to play for an hour after lunch and dancing was encouraged. Lots of fun all around. It felt like they'd thrown a welcome party just for me!

There were no students around and I discovered that every third Monday for most of the year is a "down day." This means that the prior class had commencement exercises the Friday before, and the new class starts on Tuesday. A cohort of 80-100students begins every three weeks. The staff has one day to breath a sigh of relief and get ready to start it all again! Of course, since the programs are a full 2-year or 4-year degree program, there are over 2000 students on campus at any one time. Down days, however, are a break for everyone.


Every day starts with a trip to the dining hall for breakfast. I'm trying to stick to my fruit only plan, but occasionally the oatmeal is just too tempting - so rich and creamy. Lunch is a crap shoot, but in a very nice way. I take a tour of the different kitchens to see what's cooking and then go stand outside the kitchen that has what I want. They swipe my staff ID card and hand me tray filled with wonderful food. Yesterday I had the best swordfish I've ever tasted. There is a window of opportunity though, so if I miss it, I just head over to the salad bar. The students have been practicing their knife skills, so it's fun to see all the beautifully chopped vegetables. Every once in a while, the chef from the baking and pastry program sends out an email that plated desserts are being served - no swipe needed. I'm SO GLAD they're in another building, so the temptation doesn't catch me!

I've met dozens of people and spent hours listening to them describe their roles and their challenges. Of course you know how much I hate doing that, NOT! Everyone has been so kind to me, but more importantly, they really want me here - they want what I have to offer. I suspect there's so much to do I'll have to start prioritizing, but at this point, possibilities seems endless.

The radiator (it's a VERY old building) in my office broke on the first day, so I'd been sitting in a conference room with a borrowed computer. It didn't matter for the first week, since I was visiting other people's offices to meet them. Finally, on Wednesday of this week, I moved back in to my office. It's comfortable but it wants my pictures and decorations. Guess I'll have to wait until my boxes arrive to do that. I do however have a lovely orchid plant courtesy of my friend Joanne. She sent it to arrive on my second day of work - just the touch needed to make it feel like home.

Today was my coming-out party, as Dave, the VP HR, called it. We'd been working on a presentation with recommendations to attack the "communication problem" identified in the annual employee survey. I recommended taking an inventory and doing an assessment of current communication at the Institute-wide level as well as the division and department levels. Once that was done, I felt we could develop a more coherent plan that would get the organization aligned from top to bottom and ensure that nothing was falling through the cracks.

Dave decided I should attend the Cabinet meeting today and assist him with the presentation. I'd also developed an example of what a "key messages" document could look like that would present talking points on important topics that could be used by all leaders in the organization so they were all "singing from the same songbook" as the saying goes. There were a few Cabinet members we'd met with ahead of time to vet the ideas, so we were pretty confident going in. It was well received, and we got the green light to begin the inventory and assessment process. The President was especially impressed with the key messages document (clever me, I'd taken some of his points from the State of the Institute address and expanded on them).

Now some of you may be wondering what this has to do with Training & Development, but a lot of what I do is subtle coaching and providing tools and resources to help leaders do a better job. Not much of what I do actually takes place in a classroom anymore. I've been invited to the quarterly management update meeting (150 leaders) to give a session on "Meetings 101" - to help leaders hold more effective meetings. I'll put together a 2-hour session that gets them talking about best practices and looking at various agenda templates to make sure sufficient planning happens before a meeting takes place. It's actually these little things that begin to move the needle on leader behavior. I LOVE it, and I'm feeling pretty useful already.

On the downside, if it can be seen as that, Dave announced his pending retirement today. He had mentioned to me when he made the job offer that he was considering retirement - thought I ought to know before accepting. He'll probably be here through summer, and he'll be conducting a national search for his replacement in the meantime. I'm disappointed not to be able to work with him. His 30 years at Disney gave him a lot of world-class leadership practices that I was looking forward to learning about. He was The Culinary's first VP level HR guy, so he's laid a lot of groundwork over the past 6 years. They've had a fair amount of employee relations issues lately and I think they're leaning towards a lawyer type, with academic background, who understands hospitality industry. Yeah, good luck with that! I just hope they find someone who gets employee engagement and organization effectiveness. I'd hate to have to break in someone who doesn't get it!

Excitement is building on campus for the Bocuse D'Or, which is being held here on Friday and Saturday. This is the competition to select the US team that will go to France next year for the International competition. It's a really big deal, and top chefs from all over the country are coming to judge, give demonstrations, and sign their books. Free and open to the public - so I hope to get down to the Rec Center to see some of it. I'll be spending the majority of my weekend househunting, but that's another story....

Ciao for now! Bon appetit!!