For the first time in many years, I had a professional job performance review with one of the company’s four owners today. It went very well. A 90-minute meeting turned out to take nearly twice that. Not because of my performance or that I’m a trouble-maker amongst the ranks, we actually had a productive, informative, frank, enjoyable conversation. For anyone that wonders (or cares), I was encouraged to continue the good work happening in the office and was given additional assignments and questions to ponder and for comment.

 

The point of this posting you might ask? The annual evaluation process with “The Company” involves employees filling out a self-evaluation. This evaluation has a rotating series of questions (the next guy will most likely not get the same set of questions) for response. Of the 15± questions, one answer in particular took a significant amount of my time. It was one that I’ve never really thought about and it caused several late nights of thinking, writing, and editing leading up to the appointment. (As far as I know, spelling and grammar did not count against me.)

 

How would you respond to this question?

 

If You Were Stranded on a Deserted Island But Could Have Any 3 Things…What 3 Things Would You Choose?

 

Give that a thunking would you. I tried to not state the obvious – cell phone, water, shelter, voluptuous scantily-clad beauty fanning me with a palm leaf, etc. – and think as an aspiring upper-management-with-this-company type of guy.

 

Here was my official personnel file response: Continue reading “What you need when stranded”