Ah, Christie King. That name brings back some memories, not all of them great, if I’m being honest. It takes me back to a job I had maybe, what, five or six years ago?
The Big Shake-Up
So, picture this: everything was running okay, not perfect, but we knew how things worked. Then one Monday, the big boss calls an all-hands meeting. He introduces this new initiative, this new way of working, supposedly inspired by some guru or consultant named Christie King. I don’t know if that was her actual name or just what they called the program, but ‘Christie King’ was plastered everywhere.
The whole idea was about ‘synergy’ and ‘proactive engagement’ – lots of buzzwords. What it meant for us on the ground floor was a whole lot of changes, fast.
First Steps: The Training
First, we got pulled into these mandatory workshops. Days of PowerPoints. Honestly, most of it went over my head. It felt very theoretical, very disconnected from the actual tasks I did every day. We had to do role-playing, which was just awkward. I remember trying to explain how this applied to fixing a bug in the legacy code. The facilitator just smiled and nodded.
The New Routine
Then came the new routine. We had to:
- Start each day with a ‘check-in’ meeting. 15 minutes that often stretched to 30.
- Fill out detailed daily logs of our activities, categorized according to the ‘Christie King’ framework. This took ages.
- Use this new project management software. It was clunky and kept crashing.
- Attend weekly ‘alignment’ sessions. More meetings.
My actual work, the stuff that paid the bills, felt like it was getting squeezed into the gaps between all this new process stuff. I used to just grab a coffee, sit down, and code or troubleshoot. Now, it was like wading through treacle just to get started.
Did It Work?
Well, management seemed happy for a while. They had charts! Lots of charts showing ‘engagement metrics’ and ‘process adherence’. But ask anyone on the team? Productivity felt like it went down. We were busy, sure, but busy doing the process, not necessarily the work.
I remember Dave from the design team saying he spent more time documenting his creative process than actually designing anything. It became a running joke, but also kind of sad.
The Quiet Fade-Out
After maybe six or eight months, things started to quietly revert. The daily check-ins became less frequent. The clunky software was unofficially abandoned for the old tools. The ‘Christie King’ posters started disappearing from the walls. Nobody announced it was over; it just sort of fizzled out.
Looking back, it was a classic case of trying to impose a one-size-fits-all system without really understanding the work or the people. It wasn’t all bad – maybe it forced us to communicate a bit more, briefly. But mostly, it felt like a distraction.
So yeah, Christie King. For me, it’s a reminder that fancy names and processes don’t automatically mean better results. Sometimes, you just need to let people get on with their jobs. Simple as that.
