Budgets and Beer

Not sure what makes my head spin more

In those two lever arch files are approximately 1,280 pages containing 16 columns of numbers (12 months, 4 totals, 1 description and 1 general ledger referance) and a minimum of 30 lines per page, meaning I've spent the last 2 1/2 months generating, checking , referencing and dissecting at least 614,400 unique numbers along with hundreds of emails & phone calls, 20 or so presentations, 2 return flights to Sydney and back and more late nights that I care (or can) remember. It all culminated in a formal presentation lasting a shade under 12 hours.

Budget time is probably the key time of the year for me, where I display all I've learned about in the last year about the 10+ businesses I'm responsible for, wrangle the knowledge and experience of at least a dozen (unco-operative) others, and cobble it all together into an 18 month prognostication upon which I will be judged at some point in the future. All while making sure my staff and department are hitting their targets.

So, as you can imagine, it is a big deal. And having depression means one is often less capable dealing with the big deals.

Being a year older and wiser (and greyer) I was able to observe myself riding the rise and fall of the depression tide. There were moments of panic and rage along with antipathy and madness, anger and humor. What was different this year, was not necessarily the emotions, but the recognition of them and the control (at the good times) and the lack of fear (at the bad times).

I learnt that all of the things that come out of me are me, not something that's happening to me or me reacting to something. I owned every one of those feelings, and if someone let me down, then I was happy to acknowledge the disdain and disappointment. I wasn't '2BarRiff - angry feeling like he was at getting out of control'. I was '2BarRiff - mad at the prick who didn't do what I was counting on them doing'.

And the best thing is that I think others in the office appreciate me for it, judging by the openness and respect I've been shown lately. The others know I have their back because they've seen me taking the bullets (METAPHOR ALERT! METAPHOR ALERT!), for the last year I've been more quiet about it.

As a manager, I've learnt more about dealing with people than ever before. It's one thing to depend on someone, it's another to really, really, really count on them - the instructions need to be precise, the stakes clearly spelt out and the abilities of the person judged against what the task is ... can they already do it, can they grow with this task, what if they cock it up, is it better or easier to stay up an hour later and do it myself?

But finally, the beer's been drunk, and the red wine, and the celebratory scotch. The reruns have been rerun, numbers recast, reconciliations posted. Tomorrow will be the finish and I have 2 weeks of holidays coming up.

I rock. I really do.