We close each day with a reflection - we examine the day and gauge various aspects of our day using the “thumb-o-meter”: thumbs-up for a job well done, thumbs-down for something that could use improvement. We noticed a trend last week when it came to the question of treating others with kindness and respect. Each day, we had more thumbs-down than up, and it wasn’t changing. Everyone agreed that it was becoming a problem, so I challenged them to come up with a solution that could help bring those thumbs back up. Electing a “peacekeeper” was proposed at the end of the meeting, but we unfortunately ran out of time before we were able to flesh out the details of what that would look like.
After a long weekend, we jumped into this week with a tour of the Avista hydroelectric dam in Post Falls. We got a tour from the operator, getting to see many of the things that we have been working on during our Edison’s Lab quest in action. We walked between huge turbines turning copper coils and spent time in the control room full of dials and gauges to help monitor every part of the highly dynamic system. It was an exciting trip for sure, but it did delay our previous discussion and we were heading back into the studio without a solution to our ongoing problem.
Upon returning today, we revisited our “peacekeeper” discussion from last week. Someone pitched in that they thought we needed to elect someone to be responsible for different parts of the day, making sure others were talking with kindness and respect, not distracting people from important work, and helping stop potential problems before they really become problems. “Oh!” someone chimed in, “like an operator! That’s kind of what Laroy does at the Avista dam. He had to keep track of all different things to make sure everything worked right and that people were doing the things they needed to.”
The parallel was perfect. The Eagles LOVED the idea and decided that they needed someone to be elected the “Studio Operator” to help oversee the flow of
the studio. After a short discussion on what responsibilities this person would have, the job description was finalized.
Studio Operator: Someone who watches and helps manage the input (actions) and output (potential results) in the studio. They have a larger responsibility to notice and help resolve problems like distraction and unkind talk before they become bigger problems!
I’m excited to see how their new elected position works. While they all still have a responsibility to uphold their promises to each other, they felt the need to have a "point person" with more of a focus on the big picture rather than getting bogged down in the details. So proud of these Heroes for identifying the problem and coming up with a creative solution to solve it!
