sopkos

Stress Test

Annual physical, this year including a stress test and ECG.  As if life since June 2008 hasn't been the biggest stress test of all!

Did fine, it reminded me how much I used to love cycling - before travel and time made it impractical.  Now the travel has zeroed, and I have a lot more time - so I will be starting again this week.

Interesting conversations over the past few days.  Karen and I seem to inhabit that landscape of people who are bright and creative enough to get other people's visions, but also practical enough to put them in motion.  Doing this for ourselves feels, somehow, like cheating.  When we do it for other people, however, it seems to click better with who we are.

All of that put me in mind of our time in the SCA, back in college.  We were happy to be herald and chatelaine, non-nobility, the power behind the throne.  Found that carving our own niche in those roles was far more satisfying than ascending the power structure, because the higher you went, the more constrained your actions became.

Since then, we've both spent time at the top of power structures, and found that our view from the bottom wasn't just based on sour grapes, it was correct.

So, off to walk the Georgetown Dam with Karen.  The Dam offers views that may not be the prettiest in the US, but pretty by Texas in Winter standards...

2009 is Underway

Not everything about 2009 is going to go my way... but 2008 was the luckiest year of my life, ever.

Look for more frequent posting here, from Karen and me.  For the moment, I am working on 6 big projects, in descending order of their ability to generate short term revenue!

Just finished Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged - and now I know why 3 different, respected friends suggested I read it over the past few months.  Much to think about, and we are looking for that valley in Colorado!

Cheers,

Stephen

The Kaiser Problem

I just finished Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" finally I understand the Belgians. Just a word of advice, they'll share their beer but whatever you do keep off their lawn.

One comment struck me as very telling, in a description of the German army's strategic training for war, they played war games.  However the Kaiser insisted on playing and also insisted that his team always win, leading to big problems.

This is a key lesson leaders today can ponder. When setting up strategic thinking challenges, team builders, ropes courses, etc. we often set the leader up to win. Generally it is because they are footing the bill, but also because we want them to have a good time. Teams that let the leader win, or only bring good news, are weak in the area of objective reality. Very dangerous for a military group, surgical team or accounting auditors.

Make sure that as a leader your teams have rehearsed how to give you bad news, tell you that you are just plain wrong, and have seen you lose. This is not so much about building humility as it is about having eyes on the back of your head, increasing your field of vision. One of the great advantages of using games and simulations is to see cause and effect.

What you know and what you don't know become obvious in a game. Use this as an opportunity to test the big plan, work out new reactions, and fill in gaps.  If the Kaiser had been beaten by his own team, perhaps he would have avoided messing with the Belgians at all.

Fun Trumps Fear

What a great post by Seth Godin - Two Kinds of "Don't Know"

Man-o-man have I seen a lot of the fear based "Don't Know".

Best thing for it - fun. Specifically making the new material into a game. As kids we learn a lot of scary stuff in the form of a game, playground rules still apply. Games put things in perspective, let us sort out the important from the merely urgent.  In a game we see lots of different strategies, we try new things, we all fall down, we laugh, and we get back up again. 

Sometimes it's the people playing the game that's important, sometimes the game itself. It depends on what is causing the fear.  Say you have two teams merging into one team.  Say they don't particularly like one another. My suggestion play a game with lots of unexpected communication, like charades, or improv. These desensitize the group and break down stereotypes, we use Pitches & Products for these situations.

If it's new material or new situations that are causing the fear, put the material into the game and let the team play with it until it gets silly.

Remember fun trumps fear.

Weasel Words

I just had to laugh when I saw Seth Godin's advice on copy writing

But [most of the time] avoid using [carefully selected] weasel words that [sort of] dull your story.

His point being that, clear, unambiguous writing gets attention.

Funny story, back when I was writing telecom proposals, we had so much marketing boilerplate to cram into the technical document that I would leave room in the introductory sections for the ubiquitous marketing weasel words, the same stuff we used over and over again. For one especially complex RFP response I failed to delete one of my place markers, leaving the customer to roll on the floor laughing when they hit <insert commercial bull*hit here>.  I suppose if it had been less funny to them I would have had to find a new phrase such as <insert foot here>.

For technical documents where both the writers and the readers can be very, how to put it, picky about the choice of words.  Offer a compromise, make a statement then identify clarifiers for specific situations:

Client XYZ will benefit from Product 117X's End-to-End visibility of all network elements:

• Creates a directory of network connected devices
• Provides real-time visibility during scheduled scans
• Determines data critical for Asset Management verification

In my experience engineers and other detail oriented folks worry about the exceptions, marketers and sales try to communicate the desired outcome.  When you are trying to make both parties happy, use the main sentence to focus on the biggest benefit and use the modifies to place limits and extras into the customer's mind.  As a rule of thumb, avoid a clarifier that starts with "non" or "out" these are hooks for customers to assume that an area is not supported. 

On the other hand slimy marketing folks frustrate engineers by glossing over problem areas.  In the example above the product does not do Asset Management or link to asset management, it creates data for use by asset management.  From a reader's perspective it assumes they do asset management which is good, but does not try to insinuate that the product does more than assist them.

Here are some different approaches - the IBM Way,  the Dell way,  the Cisco way, all with their own spin and all effective.

Now as my friend Kevin Koym likes to quip - "Go Sell Something".