This week has again proven to me, not that it needed to be proven, that working with folks that are smart and sharp as tack is oh such a wonderful thing. Personally, I find it is a treat to work with folks that love to share their knowledge and their ideas without inhibition or a hindrance of any kind.
The above comments are specific to two different set of events that occurred this past week:
The first involves the ongoing support and skills that Christine Kelley has brought to the project. Any outside observer would quickly state that Christine willingly, maybe not with full knowledge, walked into a hurricane. Once into the storm, she has hit the ground running and never looked back.....or at the very least any peak over the shoulder was unkown to anyone else!
Christine's support, productivity, and ability to be a thought partner has far exceeded my expectations. She has transitioned into the position and become a full active team member, faster and more smoothly than I could have ever imagined. Christine has mastered the delicate are of "knowing a lot" or "being an expert" with out being a Know-All. It can sometimes be a hard dance to master: giving critical feedback without appearing to be all knowing. I think that specific strength centers around the ability to be very self confident in your own abilities without being affraid of being wrong or of making a mistake.
The second episode of wonderful shared learning occurred today. For 4 hrs Christine, myself and two analysts from the MOMS Team, Darian Allen and Sarah Jane Satre, met to lay the foundations for a CHF Scratch Area. This database will be used to store all the findings and lab data from the CHF registry. While the main purpose of this dB will be for the reporting needs of P2 it is hoped that we can lay the foundation so that other regions may use it once they get their respective CHF registries up and rolling.
Anyway, it was just a great experience sitting in a room with 3 other folks concentrating on 1 task. No email, No phone, No interuptions! Thanks to Sarah Donelson for planting the seed in my head for how to bring together a group and quickly start and complete a project. Although we did not complete the Scratch Area we made a huge amount of progress and should be able to complete it as soon as Christine or I can set 4-5 additional hours away to concentrate on it.
Like I said in the title: working and being surrounded by smart folks is a good thing!
