Will these be the metrics I use to guide my team?

Problems Solved, Questions Answered, and Opportunities Identified feel like clunky metrics, but I can't come up with any better measures for my team's performance at the moment. I want something to measure our progress and keep everybody pulling in the same direction, but there is no single output that is a good proxy for gauging our productivity. We don't generate revenues and there is no easily identified dollar value assigned to what we do. I've never even heard of any real monetary value allocated to our activity in the seven plus years that I've been working in the labs. That means I have to come up with something novel.

While awkward, I feel like these categories capture the essence of what my team is trying to accomplish. We tend to think about our activities in terms of the process needed to complete the task rather than the underlying purpose of doing the task in the first place. That orientation biases us towards the mechanics of the task. We worry about the steps that need to be taken rather The process generates data, but to complete the task we need to understand the data.  My categories are intended to remind people that we're not generating data. We're generating knowledge.

And not Or

The answer to my question about whether I'll be judged on project progression or people performance missed the mark. Well, maybe not entirely, but it was far enough off that I feel like I need to redirect myself on this point. This is not an either or question. I'll be judged on BOTH projects and people. It took me reading this to see that obvious truth. No amount of people development will make up for missing a deadline on a project. On the other hand, stellar project performance will likely eclipse poor leadership. While I may not see this as the best way for the organization to proceed, I need to recognize that this is the reality of my situation and adjust my focus accordingly.

I have come up with a way to address the needs of the projects in a way that respects every task that my team will need to perform. I don't care if the organization doesn't put much stock in leadership. I am going to lead my team in a manner that I feel will allow everybody to maximize their contribution to our efforts. They'll do more to progress projects if they see the value rather than needing me to push them all the time. There is a history in the organization of the more routine tasks being of lesser value than solving problems or developing new capabilities. I finally found a way to discuss these activities in a way that emphasizes the value of both without making one task subservient or less valuable than the other. The point of my struggle was to get everybody on my team to see that they add value. Every task is important. I want my language and approach to leading the team to reflect that view. I have that in hand.

Fighting against "his old stuff was better"

I loved OK Computer. Hell, I still love that album. I hated Kid A, at least the first time I listened to it. I wanted another OK Computer, not this electronic garbage. Why did this genius bad have to go and screw up their sound? I tried a couple more times, but I only got more annoyed with the experimentation. (I had spent the money on the CD after all, I didn't just want to ditch the damn thing). Before sticking the CD in my case and just leaving it there, I decide to set aside my prejudice and just listen to it without projecting my expectations into the experience. Take the music on its merit, I told myself. Don't look for OK Computer. Pretend you've never heard of Radiohead. I was blown away. Could this be better than OK Computer? (The critics are wrong, The Bends is not the best Radiohead album, it's good, but it's not the best.) Amnesiac was never in danger of being exiled to the CD case.

I'm in the midst of a similar shift. I made my mark doing one thing at work, but to go forward I need to do things differently. My new role requires a fresh approach. People who worked with me before may want to see more of the old me, but it's critical that I make it clear that I'm not going to be doing the same things. The real trick will be performing at a high enough level that people see this shift as an improvement over my old work.

Seek and destroy

There should be a bit of a rebel in every leader. Or maybe it's better to say that there is a touch of rebellion in the actions of a leader. I'm probably just reacting to the overly aggressive actions of Bryan. Bryan, like me, has recently been promoted to a manager position. I've heard that he has already concocted plans that he thinks will get him in good favor with our boss. I can already sense that I may have to counter some of those plans. His schemes will not limit my ability to lead my team.

While some of Bryan's plans may make things more complicated for me (those ever present office politics), it's interesting to see how somebody who has clearly decided to focus on projects is pursuing power and status. For him, controlling the group's approach to projects is the key to winning our boss's favor. He has taken the initiative to make a list of all the projects in the different groups. I'm sure the next step will be to decide which projects will be handled by which team. (I'm sure he'll call them groups, but I will just keep referring to my group as my team.) He's just trying to fit the old system into the new organization. Its just part of his plan to fit himself into whatever mold will get him promoted again.

Refusing to accept that mold and finding a new way to lead our teams, a way that our boss hasn't thought of, is how I intend to keep progressing in the organization. I think out boss wants to see how we'll operate on our own. I've thought about going to him to get a sense for what he expects and what he wants, but he wasn't very forthcoming when I tried to get him to address that subject in our first couple of conversations. I was confused by that for a bit, but then I realized that he wants to see what I'll do on my own. That's a comforting insight. There is no pressure to conform. There is freedom for me to figure out the best way for me to move forward in the manner that feels best for me. I have no interest in perpetuating the old way of working. My mantra going forward will be does it have to be this way? I intend to get my team to question as many of their assumptions as I can. It's not about being confrontational or nihilistic. It's about getting people to see old things in a new way. I just want them to see possibilities where they currently see limitations. They shouldn't just accept the system, but seek it's gradual destruction.

Performance standards derived from performance focus

Will my performance be judged on project progression or people performance?

I thought that was a question for my boss when I jotted it down in my group leader notebook. Today I realized that it was a question that I have to answer. It's not a matter of answering in words. Simply writing, or saying, that I will be judged on people performance is not adequate. It's about the actions I take and the decisions that I make.

The projects will be progressed. That is the number one thing that I must ensure gets done. As long as my group gets samples tested in a timely manner, all will be well. Getting samples tested is not why I took this job. I took this job to influence the organization, and I want to develop as a leader. Influence and leading are all about my impact on people. Focusing on projects is not enough.

Make something

It's always nice to see your thoughts being expressed out in the wider world. I would rather that I be the one getting the notice, but I'm not willing to put in the effort to make that happen. I have other things to work on.  I could be making more blog posts or trying harder to get those posts noticed, but that's not where I'm choosing to exert my time and energies. I'm working on making something else.

When I was exhorting job seekers to show me more than what they think I want to see, I was begging them to show me what they've made.  Making something is more than coming up with a gadget that people can hold in their hands. It's an accomplishment. It's a goal that's been realized. People focus too much on what they do. They see executing the process as progress. No, the process is just a step towards something concrete. Something that you can point to and say that you made that. It's just evidence that you can finish something. It's also evidence that you can go face all the challenges that come with making something and keep going when things get a little sticky.

This notion of making seems like another element in some kind of guide to finding that one big thing that I must do. Push it to The Edge. Make something. These notions aren't limited to professional aspirations. Overcoming challenges is more than being physically uncomfortable. There are all kinds of Edges in our relationships. We work hard with the important people in our life to define a nice comfortable space for our interactions. We find that space and don't work too hard to expand it. I spent too much of my relationship with my wife focused on what I was feeling. I was ignoring how I was making her feel.

The something that you make doesn't have to be tactile. It can be a mood, a feeling, or an impression. What we make is our impression on the world. We can let circumstances mold us, let the world make an impression on us, or we can figure out what we want to make and change one little something in our life, in our world.

The carrot...

I can always find the energy to get my school work done. I definitely don't always want to do it, but that lack of desire doesn't prevent me from buckling down and just doing what needs to get done. I manage to find time to get plenty of reading in. A few minutes here and there, whatever I can find to get a few more pages read everyday. A few minutes in the morning after everybody's gone, bathroom breaks, during my kids video time, I manage to squeeze it in. I usually commit to big chunks of time for working out. I can drag myself out of bed one morning a week to run. I'm usually good for a couple of workouts on the weekend.

I'm not good at grabbing a few minutes to do some ab work or grab a few push-ups. When my rowing machine was new, I would go out in my garage and row for 10 minutes or so, just to get a few thousand meters closer to a million. Now I don't go out there unless I'm going to do 5000 or so meters. I tell myself that I want to lose my gut before I get too old and start getting that old man body, but I haven't committed to really cutting out the calories required to really make a difference.

I can find time to do the things that I want. I guess the question for me is what is it about the things that I can find the time to do that makes it worth my time while I'm not able to do the same thing with other goals. This guy would say that I'm not willing to take the pain required to make those incremental improvements in my fitness. I manage to read who books by reading a bit here and a bit there. I could realize real fitness gains if I could do a few small things everyday for a couple of months. The fact that I don't do it implies that I don't want to be in shape all that badly.

The real story is that I haven't found the motivational hook that would get me doing it. Getting to 1,000,000 meters by the end of the year was a big motivator for me with the rowing machine last year. Finishing a book and adding it to my list is a good motivator too. I pursue trophies. I just need to find some kind of trophy associated with eating less crap and doing small things to get in better shape everyday. When I first thought about the whole trophy thing, I thought about it in a negative way, that I was only interested in collecting symbols that reflect some kind of accomplishment. Those accomplishments are evidence that I'm capable of something that I deem significant in one way or another. Well, why not twist that around and use it as a way to motivate myself? We'll see if it gets me anywhere (assuming I can figure out just what my trophy will be).

No plans = No commitments

I've taken a little pride in disregarding plans in favor of reacting to opportunities as they present themselves. Given this self-satisfaction, it should come as no surprise that I reacted very favorably to this little piece about a class in Chinese philosophy. My approach to planning is nothing new. The ancient Chinese also felt that you can respond better to potentially fruitful opportunities when you aren't intent on advancing to the next stage of your plan.

Despite validation by thinkers who lived thousands of years ago, I've been cooling on my zest for staying in the moment. It's one thing to consciously choose to observe what's going on in your environment and react accordingly, but it's something altogether different to avoid making plans in an effort to remain uncommitted to a goal. Developing a plan requires the explicit statement of a target, of making it very clear to yourself and everybody else that you want a particular thing. You must express intent. I have a pattern of avoiding clear statements of desires, wants, and needs. Expressing a subjective opinion makes you susceptible to judgement. Judgement may come with ridicule.

I've been too embarrassed to express my desires for a good chunk of my life. It's ok to talk about things that are universally accepted as worthwhile.. Pursuing more education, working for a recognized company, staying fit. Nobody will make fun of you for those things. Going against the grain and liking something that others may find less appealing, that's a little more challenging. Hiding you desires allows you to build up some pretty good defensive skills. I've only recently realized that I frequently dual with my wife emotionally. I've viewed our big arguments as a contest to see if I could get her to see things my way. Listening to her and using what she told me as a way to improve our relationship was the furthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to figure out a way to show her that I was acting reasonably in the moment and that there is no reason she should be mad at me.

Avoiding plans was just another weapon I used to keep others from seeing what I'm really all about. You can't stay hidden if you tell your boss that you eventually want his job (or his boss's job) or share your hottest fantasy with your significant other. The boss can't say you don't have the skills to get to that job and nobody will think your twisted if you just keep those things to yourself. You can slide and adjust and change your story if you never let anybody know what you really have planned. You can also keep believing whatever crazy rationalizations your relying on to justify not pursuing some worthy goal. It's easier to play Tetris in the dorm than to actually experience what the world has to offer.

I'm a manager, now what?

I walked out of my soon to be bosses office on Friday reeling from our five minute conversation. All the tension, apathy, and funkiness of the last couple months was gone. It's been replaced by a chaotic mix of emotions that I'm only beginning to get a handle on. That management position that I talked myself into pursuing is mine. I'll have a group of people reporting to me in a few weeks. The reality and gravity of that statement is still sinking in. It's so much easier to plot and plan about what I would do as a leader when that's just a concept. Now I legitimately have to start making some plans for how I want to approach this role.

My first inclination is to get all crazy and try to throw everything that I've been thinking about over the last couple of years out on the table. I feel like I'll be expected to be different, but I need to remember that the way I've been working is what got me in a position to be a manager in the first place. A totally renovation of my work persona will fail. I need to stay true to myself. Rather than trying to introduce a dozen new ideas to my still to be decided team all at once, I need to pick the thing that I need to implement in order to get my team to start thinking about their job just a little differently. I need to keep this thing contained so I have a chance to grow as a leader rather than trying to do too much at once.

Focusing on a few important things rather than just going after everything all at once has been on my mind quite a bit in the last month or so. I've been looking at my life and recognizing that I'm too diffuse. I do a decent job on a variety of things rather than doing an outstanding job on just a few things. I need to really think about my new role and how that job fits into the larger organization, figure out what kind of things I would like to do with my team, suggest an organization that will allow me to do those things, and develop a plan to ensure that I get the people that I want. I'll have to spend too much time on my class to devote the right kind of energy on that task. (You could say that writing this post is a waste of time as well, but I typically use these posts as a way to clarify my thinking. Getting my thoughts into a form where a few other people can read them forces me to clarify plans that are ephemeral when they're trapped in my head. This is a useful function so I don't consider the blog a waste of time.)

I'm working on redirecting the emotional energy that I spend on frivolous things like fantasy football to the really meaningful parts of my life where I actually have a tremendous amount of influence on how things turn out. I'm working hard at solidifying my relationship with my wife. It has suffered from my pursuit of activities that satisfied a deep but unhealthy emotional need. Everything in my life starts with her. She deserves the best that I can give her. Everything else can wait. And that's why I'm going to cut this post short (and not add links) so I can get to bed.

Nerves

I've felt a little off all night. I thought I was just recovering from a very busy day at work followed by an unplanned detour to pick up dinner, but that's all behind me and I'm still not right. Part of if may be that I've been trying to get a project to work for a week with progress but no success. I thought I had it licked, but I just checked on its progress and I'm still one small step from having it finished. I'm making a Hail Mary move tonight. Hopefully there will be good news when I get up tomorrow morning. That may be contributing to my funk, but that's not the whole story.

There's only one explanation. I'm nervous about my interview tomorrow. That may not seem like such a big reveal, but identifying and acknowledging my feelings is a relatively new experience for me. My standard approach is to play it cool and act like I'm not bothered by the situation. I know what I have to offer so why should I be nervous? That false bravado is just a way to hide from my feelings. Push those uncomfortable feelings aside and pretend that all is well. I've done that for most of my life. It's time for something new. It's not like I've never been nervous before. The most nerves that I've ever felt in my entire life was sitting in my car getting ready to go up for my interview with Solgar. I got that job. It was that interview that got put me in a position to have my current job. There were big stakes on the line at that interview. I can't help but feel that the stakes for this interview are just as big.

This is what I've been working toward since I rejoined the organization in 2006. I was being honest with myself when I admitted that I'm nervous about my interview tomorrow. I should also be honest with myself and acknowledge that I want to run things. I have a horrible time sitting back and simply doing as I've been told. I like to build something all my own. I've been able to do that with ideas and concepts, but I've never done it with a team. I can do my thing, but I want to scale that up to the team level. That's an entirely new challenge. I feel stagnant. That stalling isn't a consequence of projects or other job assignments. It's boredom with doing more of the same. I'm tired of technical challenges. I want something new. I'm desperate for something new. No wonder I'm nervous.

A deliberate step

I have another job interview on Friday. No trips to other cities for this one. I just have to walk down the hall from my desk at work. After being buried in a flat organization for the last two and half years, I finally have a chance to move up the hierarchy. It's me and one other guy. My instincts tell me that the other guy is the preferred candidate going into the interview panel, but I suspect that I have a better story to tell. I have the better story because I want the job more than he does. 

I had to talk myself into applying for this position, but I need to take this active step towards something different in my life. I know that in one of my previous posts I noted that my efforts to improve my position, law school applications, interviews at companies in other cities, even my MBA classes, don't come with any real risk. I was never going to go to law school or move to Boston. My MBA doesn't challenge my comfort zone. All these things that I do to convince myself that I'm doing something (all while looking for ways that people can notice me and give me some praise) are all for show. There is no risk of failure, and as such there is real opportunity to succeed. 

I'm a little scared about the prospect of getting this job. I don't fully know what to expect. That's the reason why I need it. It makes me uncomfortable. It's also not something that I'm drifting into. Sure, there could be other opportunities in a month or two that are more aligned with my inherent drives, but this is the point where I need to do something unexpected. Doing what fits with my current path will juts be more of what I'm doing now. I don't want more pie. I want to try something that I might not be any good at. Or maybe I'll excel. I don't know which is more likely and that's why I want to take a crack at being a manager. 

What held me back then and still holds me back today

I took my son to the local high school football game tonight. I had a great time with him. It was fun to see him react to everything that was going on, to answer his questions, and to just spend some time with him without his sister making things crazy. It's nice to have a new association with a high school football game.

Twenty years ago, I was the one out on the field. Rather than basking in warm feelings about those good old days, I couldn't help but focus on how messed I was in high school (well, my whole youth really). Those Friday nights held way too much significance and importance to my teenage life. Being out on the field rather than up in the stands defined so much of who I was. Well, it was really more about what I was not than what I was. Being a football player made me feel important. I was too scared to really explore life in high school. Football gave me something to hide behind. I never had to assert my identity in the social morass of a high school hallway. I let my status as a member of the football team do that for me. I worked so hard at keeping myself separate and distinct. I never sought to find something in common with other kids and build relationships up from that. I found ways to draw distinctions between me and everybody else. All alone in my fragile little world, I never had to open up or show anybody anything about myself. I wouldn't be opened to negative judgments, and rejections, by people who might like to be my friend.

Not that there was really all that much to me other than football, grades, and the desire to get into a fancy school (yet another way that I could distinguish myself from everybody else). I don't really know what the 17 year old version of me would think of what he's become. I never really thought about my life much past college. I didn't have a vision of who I wanted to be or what I wanted to achieve once I started my professional life. Goals and aspirations suggest a preference. You have to have an opinion and make a choice if you're going to have a real aspiration. I didn't make choices in high school. I just did what was expected of me. I was really nothing more than the reflection of what I thought others wanted to see.

My life was controlled by fear. But what was I afraid of? I was afraid that people would think my preferences, my choices, what I wanted, liked and desired, were wrong. I stuck to the safe, status quo stuff that didn't require any effort or risk of judgement. I had so little faith and confidence in my wants that I never asserted them for fear of being found deficient. I never pursued a girlfriend because I couldn't let a girl know that I liked her. Expressing a desire for a relationship with somebody was fraught with too much risk. I couldn't handle the potential for rejection. I had so little confidence and self-assurance that I relied on external approval to feel good about being me. Disapproval of any kind was not acceptable.

I keep writing this stuff in the past tense, like I'm well beyond these things. In some ways I am, but in many ways these fears still have a powerful hold on me. Look at the title I've given this blog. I'm still trying to do things that make me feel distinct from other people. My relationship struggles have their roots in my inability to share my wants, needs, and desires with the one person in this world who I know loves me without condition. It's hard for your wife to feel wanted when you've spent your whole life perfecting the art of keeping other people in the dark about what you want. I experienced my old fears while doing some consumer testing at work this week. This is the first time I've ever done one of these things. I was sitting there, recording what I thought about a prototype, and I was afraid that the the person running the test would think my preferences were wrong. I was afraid that preferring A over B was wrong and that other person would castigate me for that preference. I immediately recognized that those thoughts were absolutely crazy, but they were still so strong that I had to tell myself that I was not being judged. Picking out a ring for my wife on our anniversary was very challenging because I had to go in and express a desire for something and make a decision in front of another person.

Twenty years these things have been controlling me. I feel like I'm getting some kind of control, finally, but I still have a long way to go...

Poke, poke, poke

I've been suffering from a general level of apathy for my professional pursuits for the last couple of months. It's boredom with my assignments (which are keeping me from pursuing more interesting side projects) and fatigue with the tedium and arbitrariness of my MBA studies. I'm just not interested in what I'm doing right now. Even a breakthrough in a problem that I've been dealing with for over a year has done little to assuage my ennui. I'm feeling stagnant.

I'm not particularly motivated to workout (but that doesn't keep me from hitting the gym or going on runs). I don't even have a very strong inclination to write this blog post. I'm writing to fight back against this blah that has been gradually dragging me down. Pursuits that I once found valuable have lost a bit of their luster.

I've learned that these low phases are just part of a cycle. There are better times ahead if I can just keep moving. Moving makes things possible, introduces a bit of disorder and chaos into things. The best stuff rarely comes from where we expect. It's those minor things that spawn the most satisfying parts of our life. If I don't keep poking around, they're not going to show up.

Going Deep

I've spent a great deal of my life being abundantly aware of what I thought of myself, but largely ignorant of what other people thought about me. I'm always aware of my intentions, preferences, and desires. The people I interact with should be aware of these things as well, implicitly, without any real input or communication from me. That perspective has been my unspoken (and largely unacknowledged) guide to personal relationships. My life is arid and desolate when it comes to me telling people what I think about them in either word or deeds. My likes and dislikes, needs and desires have been a closely held secret. I never let people know what I thought about them, that I found them interesting or liked to spend time with them. I never expressed affection. It was so much easier to remain aloof.

The rational bent of most of my posts here echo this predilection. Thoughts, thinking, ideas, are so much easier to discuss than feelings and opinions. Even all this business school stuff is about analyzing numbers and basing decisions on a careful analysis of the facts. I can't help but look at this business data and make parallels to the data I generate in the lab. Conventionally sound management is rooted in facts because facts are assumed to accurately reflect the environment. Facts are facts, but the environment contains the facts and all the assumptions and underlying behavior that went into generating that fact. There's also an entirely separate body of unseen and unaccounted for stuff that is the basis of some fact. My research in the lab is all about figuring out what's the unseen and unaccounted for stuff that is the basis of some observation. Business facts just seem to be taken for granted without too much thought about what it all means.

I think I've gone about as far as I can go with my highly rational approach to life. The next step in my career demands more. The next step in my life demands more from me on a deeply emotional level. What's going on behind the scenes, the real motivation for people's behavior, is far more important than what we see at the surface.

If you're edgy, shouldn't you have something to say?

I was in line for a slide at a water park this morning when I heard the people behind me talking about telling one of their friends that she is bourgeois. They were laughing that she didn't know what it meant and she thought it was an insult. I'd be insulted if something told me I was bourgeois. I don't think of myself as conventional, but when I look at my life, it's hard to argue with that assessment. I live in the suburbs, work for a giant corporation, I'm working on an MBA, and I'm married with two kids. Why should I be insulted? I love my life. My wife is gorgeous, my kids are fun (most of the time), and for all that I bitch and moan about my job, I find it largely rewarding on most days. So some hipster from Williamsburg or Austin might not find my life appealing, but I derive a great deal of pleasure from the live my wife and I built out here in the suburbs.

The label of bourgeois is insulting because it implies that my life emerged from the passive acceptance of what my socioeconomic position offered in a particular moment rather than an active pursuit of something that appeals to and fits my desires. A passive acceptance of my life's circumstances would have landed me in the military. That's the path that my family has traditionally taken. That's the life that I knew as a kid. I have tremendous respect for the military, but I knew that was not my path. I made the decision to pursue something different than other people in my life. 

So I decided to pursue a conventional career in a well established company in a mature industry. Well, I may work for a giant corporation, but I would argue vehemently that my career is conventional. So much of my career angst is rooted in my aversion for the conventional career path. I can see that path and what it has to offer. It's a nice clear trail that's served plenty of people well over the years. I just can't bring myself to take it. I've recognized the expediency of heeding the precedent of that path, but I've sought a way to take that path in a manner that feels right for me. The opportunity that is sitting there just waiting for somebody to grasp it would be considered highly conventional to anybody in my company, but I think the secret to success in that role is to take a highly unconventional approach. That's taking advantage of an opportunity. That's not embracing the accepted standards and holding them as your own. 

So I'm married. I've been with my wife since we were 19. I'm not exactly pushing the edge when it comes to the primary relationship in my life. Hell, I've been seeing a therapist for the last 6 months to help me be a better husband, to in essence make me better at serving the role that traditional society expects a man to fulfill. Ah, here we get back to that idea of accepting versus choosing. I have had plenty of opportunities to make a different choice. My desire to deepen my relationship with my wife has nothing to do with any societal expectation that I be a good husband. I WANT to have a deeper relationship with my wife. This is an expectation that I put on myself. It's a choice that I make. It's a choice that I make everyday. I got a salad at lunch today to show my wife that I understand and appreciate her struggle. I've made the choice to do what is best for her rather than what is best for me. I did that for her. I could care less what conventional norms dictate. 

Maybe I don't visibly reject societal expectations. Maybe I choose to have a comfortable life in a place where my kids can thrive. So be it. That's the choice that I've made. It's a choice. I have not simply accepted what was expected of me. My choices are my own. Say what you will. 

Which path?

A long awaited opportunity to move up a level or two in my organization has finally presented itself. At first glance, the opportunity feels entirely wrong for me. It's not the position that I've been waiting for. It's a role firmly rooted in what people know needs to get done. The job description is entirely conventional, corporate, and uninspired. It just reaffirms my expectation that the job will be conventional, corporate, and uninspired. But why do I feel that way? I'm extending how I see current managers running their groups and assume that my task would be to emulate their approach. For whatever reason I assume that the current practice is optimal and my approach to routine tasks will pretty much match what's being done now.

Would that really be the case? I expect that I would be free to lead my group as I see fit. There is no reason why I would need to follow the protocol established by my predecessors. This is the approach that I've found so chafing and limited. The lack of exploration in solving the challenges of how the lab operates, the failure to foster a sense of teamwork and shared responsibility, a culture driven more by a fear of failure than a desire to excel are the things that I've wanted to change for the last couple years. This could be my opportunity to finally influence the shape and culture of the labs. I can't help but think that I shouldn't let this opportunity pass me by simply because it's not the ideal role that I've imagined myself taking. This opportunity is here. I need to start asking myself what I would make of it rather than simply assuming it's not the right place for me. That right place may fail to materialize.

What does my frog look like?

A popular productivity tip that I've come across in numerous places is to do your most important task before you take on anything else in your day. Makes sense. Energy levels (and enthusiasm?) are high, you get it out of the way and don't have to worry about it all day, and you make it that much more likely that you'll have a little win to make you feel good about your progress. But what is the most important task? Well, the promoter of this habit might say, it's the task that makes the most progress towards achieving your biggest goal. Well, what's my biggest goal?

I don't aspire to a particular role, at least not a role that currently exists. While I have some notion that I want to be a leader in the organization, the pursuit of a senior management role requires conforming to what the rest of the organization thinks a senior leader should be. Hiring is risky so most people take the candidate that is the least likely to fail spectacularly. That person is usually the one who has done the best job of following the established leadership track. I've dipped my toe in that pool. I work with a guy who's eagerly jumped into the deep end. I would suffer considerably in the role that he's carving out. That's not for me.

I'm drawn to the dirty work that nobody really wants to notice. I like to pursue those problems that other people wish would just go away. They mess up timelines, add risk, and dilute the power of people who want to take the conventional path to leadership, I'm working on an MBA so I can translate the value of getting those problems solved into terms that the business will embrace. There's competitive advantage in being able to solve problems that other companies chose to ignore.

I guess that's my most important task, do that which others would choose to ignore. Find value where others see complications. Become the freak in the organization that does what nobody else can do. That's what comes first. All that bureaucratic crap can wait until after lunch...

Contextually Speaking

Reading is simply the fuel of thought. We eat to get energy for life. We read to get energy for thinking. Of at least to have something to think about. I just finished reading Signal and the Noise. Prediction. I have often noticed that fantasy football or simply trying to pick the winners of the games offers some pretty good insights into trying to figure out what's going to happen next in all kinds of different arenas. That book is a very big expansion on the idea that looking at how predictions work in very select cases offer general insights into making other kinds of predictions.

While reading this book, I realized that a good chunk of what I do professionally is about prediction. We expend all kinds of resources to develop a process that can produce something with very predictable behavior. Nate Silver is a big proponent of Bayesian thinking. My self-definition of this idea is that data has context. Abstracting a series of observations as some small sample of a much larger series and drawing predictions from that information, the standard statistical approach taught in the typical statistics class, robs data of meaning. In Bayesian thinking, the more you understand the context of your data, the better your prediction.

In thinking about making predictions, I thought about what kind of things I could do to train myself to think more probablistically. I looked in a statistics textbook that I have from one of my MBA classes. The discussion of the Bayesian theorem and conditional statistics in general was about 5 pages. I'm not surprised. That textbook was a piece of highly conventional crap (which reminds me of another post I mean to write about whether more education makes you more conventional in your thinking) so I'm not surprised that it's pretty free of discussion of anything interesting. But as I was looking through this book, I realized that I'm already pretty good at making predictions in the context of existing information.

One of the biggest decisions that I've made in my career over the last couple of years was to lead the development of a few new products. I made this decision after participating in one of the first conversations that we had with a potential partner company. Having been part of the team that dealt with the company that we were looking to replace, I had a good understanding of the risks involved in this type of project. When I asked myself if the situation was likely to repeat itself with this new company, I estimated that the probability of that would be pretty low. I was warned about the risks of taking on this project, but I trusted my assessment of the situation (a situation where I had better information than the people giving me advice).

Pushing back against 20 years of stagnation

I managed to finish that career plan that had been giving me trouble. Right before sending it on to my manager, I removed those couple of paragraphs where I proposed that I lead a group that is contrarian by design. That was my surrender to staying within the safety limits of my organization. I felt that it was particularly pertinent to do that at this phase as my manager is one of the most conventional people in the organization. He cautioned me against taking on a moderately risky project (where most of the risk was really in the visibility of the project, a failure in this case would have been more costly than a failure on a similar by lower profile project). I'll need his support going forward. I didn't see the value in threatening that support for no real benefit.

I'll need to take some other steps to firm up his support tomorrow. He sent me an email asking about the status of one of my (very minor) projects. He's scared that we might get noticed. Rapidly responding to unreasonable demands is often viewed as a desirable trait in my group. Let other people set the priorities. i know that his fears are unfounded because I actually asked about the project timing. We're nowhere close to  being on the critical path for this project. He doesn't know that because he's relying on second hand information that is pretty incomplete.

I'm trying out this plan where I force myself to notice my assumptions. Asking about the project timing is one way that I have broken out of some common group think (just rely on the information handed to you from the person making the request without asking any follow-up questions). My manager's been doing this kind of thing for something like 20 years. Who am I to challenge all that experience. But he's probably been doing his job pretty much the same way for 20 something years. He found a way that gets the job done and he hasn't done anything to change that approach in all of those years. He has 20 years experience doing his job one way. He never notices his assumptions. He doesn't notice that's he's not seeing the whole picture.

Time to go All in

I've spent the last couple of nights trying to answer a few questions that will guide conversations with my leadership about where I want to go in my career. I seem to view this opportunity to talk about my career plans as an opportunity to lay out my vision for a new function in the organization and the steps that I would take to make that vision a reality. That's too big of a bite at this point. The first step is to get a leadership position. I want a role where I can influence the organization by developing our science, our scientists, and a culture that embraces exploration and discovery as critical components of the product development process. I strive to make that impact in my current role, but my effect on these areas is limited by other responsibilities. I want a role where my focus is on enhancing our scientific capabilities by gaining greater insight into our products and methodologies while developing the research capabilities of other scientists.

The shift in emphasis is where I see the biggest evolution in my role. I want the things I do on the side in my current job to be my primary responsibility. Big organizations are rife with group think. Somebody states what's going on and everybody just follows along. I want to lead a group whose purpose is to root out these limits on our thinking before they lead us into trouble. Did you try this? What would happen if you did it this way instead? Why did you do it that way? Finding these holes in the development of new products would be our gateway to mini-research projects. These would be the leads that we need to build our knowledge, knowledge that we could use to come up with the Next Big Thing.

My trouble has clearly come about because I'm reading the question as an opportunity to write the job description of the job that I would like to have. Forget picking a role that already exists. I'm going after what I want. In rereading what I wrote above, I did a pretty good job of laying out the broad outlines of that vision. My concern going into this meeting with my manager and his boss is that I may be too ambitious for this stage of my career. Linking what I want to do with what I've already done may help my leadership see that what I'm proposing is the natural progression from where I am now. There's also the concern that it just may be too different from what is already in our organization.

I can see why big organizations develop a certain character and retain that character for as long as the company sticks around. The early leaders set the tone and culture. People who want to progress in the organization seek to become like their leaders because people like people who are like them.  New hires tend to have similar characteristics as the people in charge of hiring. Hiring is done by managers who have internalized the organization's norms. People who are predisposed to shake things up, those who see things a little differently, typically fail to reach a position where they can shift the organization because they either get fed up with status quo and take off (which was a place that I was very close to a couple of years ago) or are passed over for leadership roles because they're too different from the people who are above them.

This fear of being passed over for being too different is a very real fear for me at the moment. To quote a director that I spoke to earlier this week, my stock is high. Is this the time for me to throttle back and stick closer to the party line as I pursue a management role (new opens being posted soon, or so we've been told)? But my stock got high in the first place because I tend to deviate from expectations. Being a bit of a maverick (who makes an effort to present his outside perspective in a way that is friendly and not threatening) got to where I have a shot at making the move to management (which I'm convinced is where I need to go to do the things that I want to do). Will it keep me from taking that next step? I must not fear that possibility too much. I pretty much proposed developing a group that is intentionally counter-culture and oppositional in my little spiel above. If it's been working, why stop now? Must be a sign that it's time to go all in.

Doing to do or doing to improve?

Struggling implies improvement. You don't struggle with something to maintain your abilities. You have to struggle to get better. Using my organization as representative of most complex, bureaucratic organizations, organizational rewards are not reliably the result of a big struggle. Organizational rewards come from getting things done. I got something done today. It's the kind of thing that I'll note on my annual review. It wasn't a struggle. It was aggravating and frustrating, no doubt, but there was no meaningful expansion of my skills and abilities. It's something that needs to get done and I got it done. That's what my organization wants me to do.

I shouldn't be rewarded for simply getting things done. That's not enough. I should be rewarded for making the organization smarter and more capable. That will allow us to get new things done, things that we can't do now. We shouldn't be satisfied with simply cranking out the same things using the same approach over and over again. My annual review shouldn't be a list of things that I got done for the year. It should be a list of what I've done to expand our capabilities. Right now, I have to couch things that I do to improve our capabilities in the context of getting something done in order for them to really count on my review. Shouldn't their value be recognized outside of the project context? My manager is almost exclusively focused on meeting project milestones. That's a valid way to manage the group, but that's a poor way to the lead the group. We'll never get better focusing on meeting other's expectations. Some fraction of our effort must be towards getting better.

Simply getting things done is too passive. The order comes in and you execute it. Don't question, challenge, or demand to know why your doing something. That's not your job. Just do it for crying out loud! This is why I hate project management. Breaking complex tasks down into more manageable chunks is great for efficiency, but it robs the process of meaning. It takes the individual out of the process. You don't need to bring your heart and soul to work when you're simply cranking through tasks. The project gets done, but nobody involved is much improved by their effort. We should never be satisfied by a project that has no impact on the quality of the organization, regardless of its impact on the bottom line.

Struggle and Meaning

We've been looking for somebody to take a central role in a new group. The search has been going on for over 6 months. A good chunk of the discussion around each candidate has focused on whether or not they had a well-developed leadership philosophy. None of them have. What's been even more bothersome to the hiring manager for this position is the lack of evidence that these people spent time thinking about what they want to accomplish as a leader. We've yet to talk to anybody with a vision and a plan for making that vision a reality.

My insight that I really just want to do those things that I find meaningful (or at least find ways to make what I need to do more meaningful) holds the seed for my leadership vision. I want to free people to get more meaning from their time in the lab. Everybody I work with has good ideas, they're just afraid to pursue those ideas. They think they need permission or choose not to act on their notion for fear that something bad will happen if everything doesn't go right the first time. There is far more meaning in working on your own ideas and solving a problem on your own than simply doing what somebody else has told you to do. Too many of the people I work with think of themselves as somebody else's hands. I want to get people working on their own ideas.

Working on your own ideas, even if it's just spending a few hours working through a minor issue, is the first step toward making a discovery. Trying something that may not work just as you would like is a small exploration. Embracing exploration requires embracing ambiguity. There is nobody around who knows the answer just waiting to bail you out. Getting comfortable with working on something when you don't know how it will turn out is very unsettling for most of us. Getting comfortable with that feeling of not knowing how things will turn out is an essential skill in my business. You have to be willing to accept what the data tell you and move on from there. You have to remove your ego from the process and simply follow the clues where they lead.

I want to make it safe for people to struggle. Better yet, I want to make people struggle. Every worthy research project will require some struggle. The struggle gives the work meaning. You have to pull from your own resources to resolve an ambiguous situation with no easy answer. It takes some practice to get comfortable with trying something, seeing how it works, taking what you can from that experience, and trying again. The only person you have to rely on is yourself. Every small step towards resolution of the problem is a meaning gusher. Every problem solved is the foundation for solving the next problem.

The solving cycle is where the organization benefits. Working on safe struggles, little side projects with no direct impact on a product launch, gets you ready for solving the problem that does have a direct impact on a product launch. The more you struggle, the more you want to struggle. The more you push back The Edge, the more you want to see how far back you can push it.The more you push, the better you get at pushing. The opportunity to struggle supplies meaning. Learning how to deal with the struggle provides value. 

What do I mean when I said "working for myself" in the previous post? I want to find challenges and problems that give me a chance to struggle. I volunteered to lead a development project that had the right mix of challenges that make it appealing. One of the biggest aspects of this project was the fact that there were people who didn't think it could be done. That doubt of whether we could deliver was the most meaningful bit for me.

Rejecting expectations

How do I work for myself while working for a massive company?

After years of struggling to figure out how to balance my desire to do my own thing in the context of a large enterprise, that may be the closest I've ever come to putting my finger on a plan. The wrinkle in that statement is what I mean by "working for myself." That small phrase represents an effort to make my work meaningful. That means that I have to define my role and contribution (to reject the expectations and role that others in the organization want to give me) and pursue every possible opportunity to realize that role. It's not about pursuing organizational rewards. Sure, I could probably get a job in that new group that's going to get all the attention, but I won't be able to do meaningful work (at least the kind of work that I find meaningful) in that role.

This is how I start finding time. This is my trial run for getting up at 5:15 one morning a week. I'm not ready to commit to this early rising just yet so I'm taking this early morning as a chance to experiment with how well I operate first thing in the morning. The vast majority of my optional activities, things like writing these posts, occur after 10 pm. Who knows how much the accumulated stress and debris of the day impact my ability to think and write clearly. I usually just sit and stare the screen before writing one of these things. That didn't happen this morning. Maybe that's progress.

Getting up early is one way for me to go beyond what is required of me (getting up early enough to make sure that my kid is on the bus) and taking another step closer to The Edge. It feels a little ponderous to use that capitalized The Edge, but I put that there to mark another of the limits that define my life. It's easy to accept the current routine, the prevailing status quo, as simply given and find ways to operate inside of that normalcy. That's a great way to ensure that you're acting very reasonably. Achieving something noteworthy in whatever world you occupy means going beyond the limits imposed on you by that world. It's about doing more that what is required and pushing the limits. It's about ignoring the limits and restrictions that people in that world place on themselves to find new ways to achieve. Finding a new direction, discovering something, requires acting different, breaking out of the prevailing and accepted to see the world in a new way.

It's more like following than leading...

My wife tells me I think too much. After thinking about that for a bit, it's not thinking that goes on in my head most of the time. A good deal of the things that come through my mind (and occasionally end up here) just pop in there on their own accord. these random thoughts are usually echoes of whatever I happen to be reading at the time. To illustrate what I mean, here's the course of my neural pyrotechnics over the last hour or so.

I've been reading a novel, Red Mars, that uses the colonization of Mars to explore human nature. While reading this book, it occurred to me that pushing against systems that want to return to some kind of equilibrium in order to prevent catastrophe will only result in greater catastrophe. It's kind of funny that I'm reading a book that is set in the future seeing that I read a review of a book that attempts to predict the future in a free issue of Science that was sent to my house with some marketing to join the AAAS. The book, 2052, is built on the expertise of all kinds of insiders and intellectual movers and shakers. That expert insight is supposed to make the book more credible or some such thing.

Having just read Antifragile, a book premised on the fact that prediction is pure fiction, I am primed to see this 2052 book as something comparable to Red Mars. Both books are works of fiction built on credible science and well within the bounds of reasonable thinking. Connecting one train of thought with Antifragile reminds me that fragile systems, according to Taleb, fail against the relentless grind of time. Fragile systems breakdown as the circumstances that led to their optimum state for growth and proliferation pass and new systems that are a better fit to the current arrangement of economic/social/political factors emerge. (We typically attribute this matching between circumstance and a particular business model to the visionary insight of one or two key managers, but it's usually just luck. That thought may be mine, or I could just be stealing from Taleb, although I sometimes felt like he was stealing from me.) Big bureaucratic systems with rigid rules and the big wigs at the top calling the shots fail quickly. Centralization is a predecessor for failure.

Where does this take me? If you want to predict the future, look for things that are emerging through the collected actions of a few loosely associated individuals. The fact that I can share my thoughts with the rest of world by writing a blog was not one person's vision. This platform emerged from the furious actions of a community racing to see what they could do with powerful new networks and users pushing the limits and boundaries of those networks. The visionary leaders, the idea that one person had an idea or could see where the future is going is simply post-action narrative built to make people feel like they have some kind of power over the randomness of our world.

I didn't sit down and try to arrive at this conclusion. It's just the random connecting of one thought with another. That actually reminds me of something that I read about in this book...

How to do Anything you want in one easy step!!

Plans for training for a half-marathon (or 5K, 10K, marathon) are all over the place. The allure of these guides to simplify what sounds so daunting, getting to a point where you can run for a couple of hours, brings to mind other guides with the allure of simplifying the complex. How to be creative, how to be a better leader, how to change your habits, how to lose weight, be a better lover, a better parent, cook like a gourmet, all in a few easy to follow steps. The simple steps offer reassurance that you too can master the complex and become an expert at some skill, all in a matter of a few days, a week or two tops.

All of these guides offer shortcuts, keys, plans, easy to follow instructions (or at least the illusion of easy to follow) to attain skills that can only be obtained through the consistent application of effort. With that in mind, here's my guide to mastering the skill that you want to have now:

1. Apply sustained effort. The more effort, the better. The more focused and conscious the effort, the better.

A 12 week plan to get in shape for a long run looks so inviting. A list of suggestions for how to improve your creativity has such intuitive appeal. Leadership and management feel so comfortable when summarized by a few bullet points. The easy presentation hides the hours and hours of sustained effort, the agony, setbacks, frustration, pain, irritation, sacrifice, required to turn those plans into real results.

Everyday. There is no shortcut.

Finding time

I ran the big Monument Avenue 10K today. This is the second year that I've run this massive race. My goal was to run it in less than 50 minutes, but I had a hunch that my fitness level just wasn't up to that pace. Rowing has been my primary workout for the last several months. Rowing has been great for my cardio fitness, but it does nothing to help me get stronger at running up hills. Even the slightest incline slows me way down. I ended up running the race 50 seconds slower than I ran it last year (51:54 this year, 51:04 last year). That puts me in the same wave that I was supposed to be in this year (I got to the race a little late due to some trouble finding a place to park). Assuming that I don't run faster in a different 10K at some point later this year, of course.

I'm running another 10K in a couple of weeks. This race, up in Ashland, has more challenging terrain, but the number of runners is much, much less. I ran both races in about the same time last year. We'll see how things turn out this year. I had big plans to really increase my running last year after these two races, but a case of plantar fascitis put the kibosh on that. My feet aren't bothering me anymore, but other things have prevented me from running as frequently as I was towards the end of last year. I haven't worked out during lunch for months. Other than Friday afternoons and the weekends, I don't really have any other time to run, unless I try to get my wife to give up a morning so I can run before my kids get up. I don't really relish that idea, but I want to become a stronger runner and improve my times. The only way I'm going to get that to happen is to get out and run as frequently as I possible can.

This isn't so much a question of having time to run, but making time to run. Time just isn't going to present itself. I have to find it. I want to find it because I'm tired of being stuck in the same place when it comes to my fitness. The rowing is making a difference, but I'm not lifting and I'm not running. I want to do more of those things. I want to maximize my ability to run fast now, while I still have time to improve. I'll never be as strong as I was in college. I'm never going to be able to lift as frequently as I did 15 years ago, but I can become a better runner. It's a challenge that I want to pursue. I just need to find the time...

Don't Fear the Fear

The root of my annoyance with different people, attitudes, and projects at work is fear. There's a time to play it safe, and there's a time to take a chance and do something a little different. I heard a high ranking person in my building say that our company's position is that we will not accept any risk. The possibility of failure must be zero or we will not proceed. He was referring to a very specific set of circumstances, but he might as well have been talking about the vast majority of the site. 

Fear of failure permeates the organization. At the first signs that a project may not turn out as planned, people start to find ways to cover their ass. We're a research organization. Research is a risky field. It's intellectual risk, nobody is putting their body on the line, but the psychological impact of trying something that could not work out as expected is not any less. 

New Role

I finally have the leadership role that I've been coveting for, well, I'm not really sure how long. The situation is a little more complicated than I would have liked for my first real crack at leading something bigger than a small project. I'm co-leading with a scientist from another group, a former manager is part of the team, and I'm working with a system that I understand from a distance but have never really had to delve into the details. A couple of important people in my building have a put their reputation, as well as the reputation of the site, on the line with this project. Failure is not an option.

There is no reason why we should fail. The science is new to us but it's a well-established field. There are publications galore about several important aspects of the technology. We just have to find a way to manage the complexity and make sure we stay focused on making progress and not get lost in all kinds of academic weeds. I see my role as shaping how the group thinks about the project. We constantly fall into a template for how work is expected to get done in the building. We need to stay out of that trap. We need to recognize when we have important observations and using all that established science to solve our problems. It's about making meaningful progress by thinking and using data rather than just running full speed ahead in hopes that something will work.

Keeping options open

My reactor stance is really all about keeping options open. Sticking to a highly detailed plan puts emphasis on where you are in relation to the plan rather than paying attention to the signals that your environment is sending to you. Every action prompts some kind of reaction. Watching those reactions is the best way to progress against a really challenging problem. Every reaction provides a little more information about what you're dealing with. The solution can usually be found in the accumulation of those little clues.

The underlying basis for this stance is my conviction that we don't really know all that much about what we're  dealing with in pretty much every area of modern life. My experience as a chemistry graduate student convinced me that our knowledge and understanding of the world is a faint shadow of what's really going on. We can never be sure of what's going on, so it's best to progress in a manner that maximizes your ability to respond to new information. Of course this has to be done in an aggressive enough manner that you actually prod whatever system you're working on reveal something about itself.

Reactor vs. Anticipator

I noticed a pattern in my life that gets at one of my fundamental algorithms. I pounce on opportunities as they present themselves. I don't expend much effort on trying to stay a few steps ahead of the situation. I react when the situation demands it. This approach has its advantages. I spend most of my time working on things that have a good chance of turning out well. On the other side, my propensity to react rather than anticipating may come off as passive and uninterested. I need to force myself to take the initiative.

My wait and see approach is particularly irksome to somebody who has the opposite tendency. While I tend to watch things evolve and react accordingly, my wife is always working hard to stay one step ahead of the game. Her mind is always racing ahead to figure out what needs to happen next. She'll make preparations and then proceed. I will proceed and figure out how to make everything work later. 

This situation has the potential to create some serious misunderstandings. My time horizon is pretty short. Long term planning is not my bag. This can be very irksome when your spouse wants to know what's going on well in advance so she can anticipate and plan. She wants to be aware of something as soon as possible so she can plan around it. 

I may do things that are considered hasty in her estimation. She's usually flabbergasted when I confess that I haven't thought something through all the way before I take action. I prefer to improvise rather than plot and plan. Admittedly, this is not always the best way to go about things when you have a family and other responsibilities, but it's a big challenge to shift how you approach and think about the world.  

Release

I was struggling a bit during my run today. I was pushing it, trying to run my planned pace for a 10K that is three weeks away. I was trying to get a feel for where I am physically (and mentally). I was about 4 miles in when I reminded myself to just let go of the effort and the pushing and trying that I was doing and just surrender.

Rather than telling myself to hang tough or focusing on how far I've gone or trying to distract myself with music, I imagine myself drawing energy from the sun or the friction of the air against my skin. Freeing myself from the responsibility to keep pushing makes it easier to just plod along. When I did this today, I felt better after a few minutes and finished my run at race pace.

It's like just letting go while struggling with a complicated problem. Sometimes the best ideas come when you stop trying to force it. Trying harder can hurt your performance.

Do what it takes

I've been going over a clash that I had this morning for the last couple of hours. It wasn't a screaming and yelling kind of thing. It was much more subtle than that. It was the collision of two very different orientations towards learning in a corporate environment.

I stand for doing what needs to be done to make the project a success. I favor a proactive stance, picking a simple system that we can understand in minute detail and build further capabilities onto that knowledge. The first thing we make may not be a product that other parts of the organization feels is ready for the market, but this is our project. We should pick a system that we feel we can manage. We're not driving the project if we let somebody else tell us what we should do. The stakes are high. Why should we leave the success of our venture in the hands of another entity?

My standoff was against a colleague who seeks the path favored by our managers. His sole intention is to do what they think should be done in the manner that they feel it should be done. The answer to every question requires looking at the problem from the perspective of whoever has responsibility for this project at a more senior level. Any proposal must pass the muster of the manager's expectations. Possible objections are the end of the discussion. Nothing risky is allowed. Stick with what's safe and expected. Deviations are the quickest route to failure.

Every point that I raised today was refuted with some variation on the theme of "because the manager's said so." What if they're wrong? That was my point. Why should we go off and do something just because they said to do it that way? If we recognize a significant problem in the approach, isn't it our responsibility to raise those concerns? We're the ones in the thick of the problems. We're going to see trouble long before the managers will. They're relying on us to deliver a totally new capability. Part of delivering that capability is ensuring that we can perform every step of the process.

Metamorphosis

I was listening to Aemina last night. That album, with OK Computer, was the core of my college sound track. It still resonants with me today. I bought the CD on the day it was released. I can remember flipping through the CD booklet while waiting for a class I took about the Reformation to get started. This was 1996. Seventeen years ago. What's changed in all of those years? Marriage, kids, degrees, jobs, houses, yes, all the stuff is different. But what's different in how I relate to the world? Aside from adjusting to the changes in our circumstances, what's different in how I relate to and interact with my wife (who I was dating back in 1996)? How have I changed?

I look to my relationship with my wife to see how I've grown (or failed to grow) over the years. My emotional state hasn't matured much since I was an awkward 20 year old. We kind of built the borders of our relationship in those early days of our life together and I haven't done much to really expand from that. I just haven't had any sense of what needed to be done. At least I haven't had a sense of how to do the things that I thought needed to be done.

Things feel different now. We've been struggling the last few weeks. I'm trying to view the pain that I've experienced as the death throes of old ways, but I know that those pains are just the beginning of what will come in the next several months. I've decided to figure a few things out about myself. I work hard to keep my emotions down. I don't know why I do that. I'd like to know. I'm setting out for The Edge in a whole new area of my life.

Leaping over The Edge

Sometimes it's the right thing to do. The Edge is really just a boundary. If you want to explore new ground and expand your experience to enhance your life, you have to break out of your self-imposed limits.

It's easier if you hold someone else's hand and you jump together...

Where's my Yoda?

I need somebody to guide me in the ways of leadership. I need a master who will help me gather the insights and experiences that will enable me to extract the best from the people I work with. But there is nobody in my organization whose leadership skills I admire and seek to emulate. At least I don't know of anybody who has the skills that I would like to have. 

I'm skipping ahead. Why do I need a leadership mentor? The only way to develop leadership skills is to lead. Leadership requires influencing other people. There is no way to do that other than to actually go out and influence other people. The more I lead, the better leader I'll become. The real trick is figuring out how to select leadership roles that will allow me to push my skills without going beyond my capabilities. I think a mentor could help with that. There's also looking back over a particular experience and figuring out what I did well and what I can do better. The only way this will happen is to talk over my experiences with an experienced leader.

Where should I find my mentor? I need somebody in my company. I've been told that I should start building my network in the organization. This mentor thing sounds like a good way to do that. There are formal programs for finding a mentor, but they're passive and overly bureaucratic. I'm going to go about it the old fashioned way. (I'm going to ask somebody. There's an opportunity to practice my influencing skills.) As the best mentors are probably in a different site, I'll need to consult with somebody who has some insight into who works up there to help me find a mentor. I have a meeting with somebody to discuss some training that I took a couple of weeks ago. She knows people up there. That could be my chance to start the search...

Defining leadership

I heard an interview with Seth Godin where he said that education should be about two things: leadership and decision making. I am in the active pursuit of a degree that has classes designed to address those two issues. Management is all about leading and making decisions. Too bad my classes don't really touch either of those topics. That's not a failure of Marist. I'm sure every other MBA program fails at effectively teaching those skills as well. Business classes are great at describing what businesses do, but no class can teach you how to lead or how to make a decision.

Leading requires action. You can't learn how to lead by reading a book. You have to see an opportunity and act on that opportunity. There is no room for passivity or sitting back to see how things shake out when you're the one responsible for getting things done. Acts of leadership emerge from a deep sense of who you are and what you want to accomplish. Leaders know what they're trying to accomplish. At the bottom of it, leadership is really just rallying people around your cause. To rally people around a cause, you must first share that cause. You can't share that cause until you have identified that cause.

You're never going to find that one thing that stirs your soul sitting in a classroom. All you learn in a classroom is what the teacher thinks about something. Discovery requires action. Doing. School is just an illusion of doing. School informs experience. It does not create experience.

Making decisions is easy when you have a mission. Your objectives are clear. The principles are well-defined. Stating and sharing a vision requires that you take a stand. That stand clarifies choices. Making decisions is easy when you've decided what you're trying to accomplish. Of course most people and most organizations have no sense of purpose. Rules and procedures replace a stirring vision. Control dominates while inspiration withers.

Practice what you preach

When I'm not sitting in front of my computer, I'm pretty fluent in generating ideas for blog posts. I can come to my computer with a good idea laid out only to see it wither away as soon as the blank post page loads up. Those sentences that sounded so good in my head lose their allure. Insights that held some heft lose their punch. Is this rapid evacuation of meaning the consequence of shining the harsh light of external consideration onto internal thoughts or is it just a way for me to spare myself judgement?

All too often I close my computer before I've written anything. The posts that make it our of the draft stage are those that come easily. I get going and the ideas flow. The two posts that I wrote around the election were like that. I sat down, wrote, and published. A few others came about just to get something out there. Just produce something. Rather than consume, consume, consume, produce something. Maybe its a touch banal or trite, but getting something out there is a choice. It's taking action rather than sitting back and letting events and circumstance make my decision for me.

Fill the bucket

Mastery is not skill acquisition. Mastery is knowing certain skills, but it's also about knowing how to build on and refine those skills. It's not seeing which existing option fits best, but being able to see a novel solution to an original problem. 

Mastery allows you to see every dimension of your art. What's strong, what's weak, and what to do about those weak points. It's seeing something that nobody else has ever seen before. That body of skills, knowledge, and experience shifts from something external that you seek to comprehend to something internal that you apply effortlessly. Your mind, body, every bit of you is transformed by your mastery. 

There is no way to hack mastery. You have to fill the bucket, drop by drop.

Drip, drip, drip...