So it begins

I am sitting on cloud 9.  I believe it!  I sit much too much these days, and things are going to get worse.   One of my daughters bought me a Snuggie.  It’s nice and warm but it kind of gets in the way if you're moving around too much.  The advertising for the thing is most inane. 



 I was sitting in my work chair one night (at home) with the Snuggie wrapped around me (not really on) and I pushed my chair back from the table. My chair has castors and the Snuggie rolled up into the castor/wheel mechanism and broke the wheel. This was a $75 office chair, two years old…decent, and I sat in it at least 35 hours a week for the past 2+ years. It’s still usable if one is careful to distribute weight so as to be mindful of the missing wheel. Anyway, I bought new chair and it’s AWSOME!  

I selected the new chair from a showroom, but it was out of stock. No problem, they gave me the sale price, ordered it, and had it shipped to my house. The box arrived while I was out of town...of course. So, the chair project was my goal for the evening. Many pieces, and as I was pulling parts from the box, my brain was thinking the store assembly fee was probably reasonable after all. I found an instruction pamphlet inserted in the pastic bag covering the seat back. The small hardware was all bolts and included an allen wrench. No other tools needed. I looked at step 1 and step 2 – my brain said, “oh, you can do this!” Steps 1 and 2, piece of cake. Turn the page….oh shit! Never fear, I got it BUT if I were developing those instructions, I would have named holes with letters and bolts with numbers, or I would have numbered everthing in order of assembly and prefaced with a code of B for bolt or H for hole. It went together very well, took me about 50 minutes, and it feels GREAT. The new dissertational throne is ready for action.

So, good news about my dissertation. My mentor says my new topic is acceptable and actionable. It’s still not fully defined, but I’ve got a few hypotheses. In no particular order… There is a correlation between perceived leadership style and workers’ intent to report near miss incidents in industrial facilities. Perceived leadership style should be pretty easy to measure (I found an affordable instrument). How do I measure intent to report? That needs some thought and research. I expect intent to report will correlate positively to workers’ trust that reports will be anonymous or confidential. Note to self, go back and review 9 dimensions of safety culture. There were two related specifically to leader-member – this needs to use one of those dimensions. I can’t wait to get ON IT. Like, crank out a proposal now in like six to eight weeks – my self-imposed deadline is March 31st. This weekend is serious business!!