Mayhem Meltdown

Just between you and me, last Saturday at PJP Buttonwood was a HOT MESS...

Honestly, we were completely ripe for a day of disaster.  We were both tired, we hadn't stayed on task Friday because we had visions of the Cornucopia KN550 dancing in our heads, and we had A LOT of things (too many) scheduled for Saturday between 9 and 1.  In short, it was like measuring out all the perfect ingredients for a PJP implosion.

The very worst part of a bad day at PJP is that we both tend to just crumble.  I'll inevitably cry (and probably yell) and be completely convinced that we will never succeed long-term.  And Jeanne, in effort to avoid everything...but most likely me, will retreat to our three-vat sink and wash dishes like her life depends on it.  (I would bet you that she is the only person in the world that takes refuge and seeks solace in a vat of hot and soapy water.)  And in the end, no one is leading the PJP ship.  There is just mayhem and panic aboard.  And it is awesome...said no one ever.

And in effort to actually mature into successful entrepreneurs, we spent some time today discussing all the elements needed to make us meltdown and just how the $#$& to make it stop happening, especially as we head into our busiest time of the year.  And this problem of not really leading our staff when it gets crazy is something we both noted as NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.  It is an embarrassing admission to make, but we are friends here, right?

In that vein, if we know that total meltdown equals total mayhem, then the key is to avoid total meltdowns.  And if only it were as simple as typing that sentence.

After some discussion, we realized that one major gap in how we handle our ship is that the people who work for us have no true set of standards for our expectations.  And perhaps if we could identify what each position was responsible for, then perhaps it might tone down the angst when everyone is feeling a bit on edge.  So we wrote some job descriptions and a set of standards for each position.  And if you are thinking "huh, they should have done that 15 months ago", you would be totally correct.  We like to generally work behind the curve, thank you very much.

I have no idea if writing and sharing the set of expectations with each of our employees will actually help meltdown mayhem.  I hope so.  It does give a small notion of reigning in all feelings of being out of control, which is nice.  And hopefully, on the employee end, it provides a little guidance regarding what we want, so when we are teetering on the edge of losing it, a wee bit of planned efficiency kicks in to steady the course.

This is only a small piece of the puzzle, of course.  Add in sleep deprivation, overbooked schedules, our admittedly controlling personalities, saying yes when we mean no, and a few other issues and we have our "NO MELTDOWN" long-term plan left with a lot of work to do.  But  for just tonight, I'm going to take my solace in the fact that we made one small positive change today.  I bet you at her house, Jeanne is doing dishes right now...