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...