the levels of success

My co-worker Jon and I work in digital music, which on the surface seems somewhat glorious what with the greatness of iTunes and all. But underneath it's really pretty chaotic, frantic, and in the words of many, the wild wild west of the music industry. The operational level especially involves a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo and general all around ridiculousness that few people outside of ourselves actually understand.

Given that we live in this constant state of confusion, with brief moments of glory, and the ever present threat of epic disaster, Jon and I developed a tongue-in-cheek "system" by which we denote our current status of success / failure on whatever project we're currently working on, which we dubbed the "Levels Of Success Chart".

We're particularly fond of the downward spiralic progression from Situation to Fiasco, and I'm proud to say that we've actually emerged relatively unscathed from weeks of deep and utter Pandemic. We have yet to achieve anything above a Meta-Solution, but oh, it's coming.

Sometimes the word "problem" just isn't enough... This will end up in a management book someday. Enjoy...


I know we're not the only ones living neck deep in the idiocy of the corporate world, so in the event that you might find this chart helpful, I've provided a link to a downloadable PDF version of the chart here.

Myself, I've got mine printed off and held up on the wall of my office with my Michael Scott magnet that I bought at Target for $.99.