The Hummingbird

I call my boss The Hummingbird. She's tiny, hyperactive, sleeps four hours a night and lives off of microwave popcorn. She has the attention span of a bird who has slurped the last bit of nectar from a flower and has another thousand flowers to get through before she can get in her SUV and go to yoga class.

Her highest priority is always the idea she had three minutes ago. Everything else must be dropped in order to make real this amazing new idea. Never mind that it will take months, thousands of dollars, careful planning, and delicate coordination with several other departments. She wants it done now and damn it, why didn't we think if it yesterday?

Well, because yesterday there was another burning priority, and the day before that yet another one, and the day before that another super nova idea of business genius, which flamed out as soon as she got to work the next day.

She's painfully bored with any current project ("Isn't that done yet? Can't we get this off our plate so we can get to this new thing?"), and can't tolerate actually executing and completing projects ("I don't care about all the details. Just get it done! I'm tired of hearing about it!").

She loves thinking of and starting projects, and her favorite meetings are brainstorm meetings, where she serves chips and coke and cup cakes like a second grade Valentine's Day party.

"There are no bad ideas in this room," she scolds us when someone mentions that a particular idea might be impractical or impossible without divine assistance.

The problem is that with her, there are no bad ideas outside of that room. If an idea is less than 48 hours old, it's still good, and will perch atop our priority list. Once past its "good idea" expiration date, it will fade away, dead before its time, before it might have come to fruition and actually benefited somebody.

But don't fret about the good ideas withering from inattention. There are plenty of new ideas to think of tomorrow.