Busy 2007

It has been a busy 2007 for me so far and I have been in Mexico every week since January 8th. Several quality issues warranted my presence in Mexico. Ah, the life of a salesperson!

This week I am in town only to deal with fiscal year closing. What amazes me the most is we all know when closing is (it comes the same time every year) and it seems every year we are not ready for it! I even tried to push my various teams to get things done ahead of time so it would leave 3-4 days of dealing with "oh, I missed that" or "oh, I forgot about that". But instead everyone told me not to worry that all open issues would be resolved. So for 2 days straight I did not ask for a progress report, knowing this would irritate my team members. It did take us to the 11th hour on the eve of closing to put the finishing touches on our open issues, but as my team reminded me "we got it done!". And yes, it got done and did a pretty good job getting it done. I am not a last minute person because I know mistakes can happen so time is needed to correct those mistakes. Next year I plan to start working on fiscal year end at least 3 months earlier and I hope to convince my team to do so also. I want to sit back and enjoy "fiscal week" and watch everyone else panic!