My boss works for me!?

I've started to take slightly different view of Seth Godwin in the last couple of months (from apt attention to a more casual interest, the shift is complicated). My opinion is more about his lizard brain, linchpin, find your own way type of stuff being a little derivative. His latest post, drawn from his own experience, has found me at the perfect time. My feelings about recent changes at work have been discussed. My feeling shift from optimism to utter dejection, but I'm trying to keep an open mind and not let it impact the quality of my work. Seth's opinion about the relationship between boss and subordinate addresses my major concern with the new structure. I want to keep delivering the kind of results that I've delivered over the last 3 years. I'm just not sure I'll be able to keep doing it in the new organization.

The Office Politic

I think I got myself into an office politics campaign today. My new mega-group got together today to discuss our on-going projects. It was just the scientists. Our new manager and the more senior members of the group were not present. After an uneasy 15 to 20 minutes of laying out our current project related responsibilities, we started talking about potential directions for the group. I have been planning on sharing my ideas with our manager in his office, just the two of us, but my passions got the better of me in the meeting. I contributed far more to the discussion than I planned.

After a lively exchange of ideas, suggestions, and opinions, the group member who organized the meeting said that he would take the suggestions to our manager. He closed his book and said a few comments that signal the end of a meeting. Hey now, I thought, just what is he going to say happened in this meeting? I know this guy pretty well so I had no trouble asking him if he could go over what he had written down so we could all agree that he had captured the spirit of the group. He complied, we added a few things that he had missed, and proposed different ways to get this information to The Big Cheese (I can't keep writing "our new manager"). This time the meeting came to a close.

After the meeting, a couple people told me that they were glad that I had asked to have the group's suggestions to be read back. I would like to say that my motives were pure, that I was just making sure that The Big Cheese got the best info possible, but I was trying to mess up this guy's power play. He was in The Big Cheese's group prior to the reorg so he has a solid relationship with The Big Cheese. He also has a bit of a reputation as a gamer. You know the type, the kind of guy that works harder at positioning himself to benefit from the work of others than actually working himself. I was not about to let him take the group's ideas and spin it to his advantage. I don't want to play a politcal game with him to see who can have a greater influence of The Big Cheese. I'm also not going to passively observe the growth of the new group when the opportunity to help shape it is just sitting there waiting for somebody to act.

My career is at a critical juncture. I do not want to be stuck in a muddle of a group that struggles to deliver basic and routine data. I need to be in a group that will give me the opportunity to demostrate my ability to handle complex tasks and solve difficult problems. I need to be in a group that defines itself rather than waiting to be defined by other groups. I need to be in a group that uses its extra capacity to improve our methods or investigate long standing problems rather than asking other groups for projects. I want to be in the group that the company points to when they talk about how they want things to get done.

I have expressed my views and ideas about how I would like to see the new group function. I get the impression that I am saying things that other people think too but do not have the courage to express. This is a new place for me. I have never been reluctant to speak up about technical issues, but this is the first time that I have taken a firm position on an organizational/leadership issue. I am taking a risk, but I feel like this is the right place to shift into a vocal role about the direction of the group. I would have preferred to do this without the complication of manuevering around The Mini-Cheese, but if that's the way things are meant to play out, so be it.

Why do I read?

I am jealous of my wife's garden. Well, not really the garden per se, but the pleasure that she gets out of working in the yard. When I told her that about my feelings she replied that I read books. I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. I have never really thought of reading as a hobby. It's something that I have to do, like eating or sleeping. She's right in that I get pleasure in reading, but is that all that I'm getting when I stay up late to finish just one more page? What's the point of spending so much time with a book when I could be doing something a little more, uh, active (or at least working on getting my waist smaller)?

I have not been able to identify a specific instance when I pulled some little nugget from Linchpin or some other book that gave me the solution to a tricky problem. I have been entranced by Scientific Genius, but that has more to do with comparing my research experiences to the descriptions of the discovery process described in the book. Nobody could read Flow without thinking about their own life and having the contents of the book color their experience for a few weeks afterword.

Thinking about what will happen after the initial impact of Flow wears off helped me figure of what I get from all of my reading. The effect isn't something as direct as applying this fact to this situation. It's more of a layering of different insights, experiences, perspectives, facts, thoughts, and biases over and into the experience of my daily life. Everything I read changes the way I think about and experience the events of my life. The impact of each book is complex. Every book's impact will vary, but every one of those pages that I stay up to read gives me something back for my time. Some people converse, some people go for long runs, some people grow flowers and vegetables. I read.

Sucker Punch

I was expecting to take a role that would give me an opportunity to lead a team or drive the development of a new product. More responsibility, more leadership, the kinds of things that I will need to get better at as I work toward a leadership position in the pharmaceutical industry. Instead, I get chucked into a 21 person group that has no mission, vision, or leadership. Rather than being part of a team working to develop innovative answers to the challenges that come up during the development of a new medicine, all of us who work in the analytical labs have been relegated to providing our product design colleagues with analytical "services." Instead of collaborators, they are now our "customers."

This situation could actually be positive if the right leaders were in place, but the people that have been selected to figure out how we are going to execute our brave new leaders vision are woefully inadequate. A 21 person group with no mission or vision could actually be a good thing. In the right hands, it could become what we want it to be rather than taking the form desired by some manager in our corporate office who has never worked in a lab. That's not what will happen with this new group. Rather than letting us figure out what works best, our new management will install all kinds of crazy controls and procedures to give them some sense that they are in control. Anything innovative or new will be summarily rejected before it even has a chance to prove its worth. Our only metric will be testing samples. Developing faster methods, implementing new analysis techniques, exploring different approaches to how we handle samples will be side activities buried under a never ending pile of inane and utterly useless tasks.

I have not decided how I am going to respond to this new arrangement. When I learned that I would be staying in the analytical labs, I could only wonder why I wasn't moved to formulations. A 15 minute chat with one of my former managers cleared that up. Once I recovered from the shock of still being an analyst (I was almost certain I would moving to formulations), I immediately noticed that the comfortable autonomy that I have felt since I rejoined the company was much less comfortable. While I have no idea what will actually happen, I do know that the implicit permission to do what I think is best is gone. My new manager will not be content to let me do things as I see fit. What will I do the first time that I am confronted with an explicit instruction to do something counter to what I think is the best course?

Do I even wait until this confrontation is explicit? I want to get it out there that I want to make our group focused on getting better. The status quo, the way things have been for the last 10 years, needs to be abandoned. Let's not wait to see what our brave new leader wants, let's show him something and see if he likes it. If he doesn't like how we work, we can change. I plan on doing things the way that I have always done them. Do I come right out and tell him this in the next couple of days or should I wait until he has fleshed out the workings of the group a little bit better? I have decided that I will not simply accept an order. If I do not agree with one of his instructions, I will challenge him. I'm just trying to figure out if I should make the first move or wait until something happens.

While I work on resolving these issues, I have a few concrete steps in mind. I want to talk to some more senior scientists about what they think of the new arrangement. I would much rather align myself with a senior scientist who wants to make things better than toe the company line and dutifully follow instructions. I am going to plan a few questions for our first group meeting on Friday. Most people are concerned with the hows of the new organization. I want to focus on the vision and overall purpose of the group and how that will be reflected in our operation. I am also going to write a very ambitious development plan. I should have a chance to discuss this with my new manager directly. I think that will give me a chance to put my thoughts in front of him without being overly confrontational.

Where I stand

I bought two books on Friday (they were 50% off and I got an additional 10% off with my Barnes and Noble membership). They were the 8th and 9th books that I have bought this year. That means that I have failed my first resolution of the year. I have to question why I picked such a low number (I wouldn't even recover the cost of my B&N membership at 8 books), but what has been done is done. My failure prompted me to check up of the status of my other resolutions. The results are mixed.

I've accomplished 2. The Spartacus Challenge pictures were submitted. I did that one to motivate myself to workout. It's too bad the challenge ended in March. I could have used the motivation a little deeper into the year. The end of the challenge and the onset of a minor medical thing has derailed my workout intensity since the middle of March. I need to pick up the pace if I'm going to get my waist size down. My weight has gone down by 10 pounds or so over the course of the year, but I don't know how much of that weight has been from my gut. I also got accepted into law school. I was actually accepted into two law programs in 2010 (with a few more in 2009). Despite an offer to attend the University of Richmond part-time (that's something that they only offer to one or two students every couple of years), I think I am going to pass on the law school thing. The application process was enjoyable, but the prospect of juggling my career, family, and law school for 5 years is not at all appealing. I'm not really sure how I could get to where I want to go through that route either. It's a heavy investment for a less than certain return.

I'm a little ahead of the pace needed to read 16 books this year. Since I read that post about reading a book a week, I've noticed that I can make it through a 250 or so page book in a week. Most popular business books are about this length. I've always thought that I was a bit of a fast reader, but seeing that my reading rate is about right to read one business book a week, I wonder if I'm at some kind of mean for the rate of getting through a book. Sorry, just some idle speculation brought on by writing. My recent reads (Flow, which I've finished, The Rise of the Creative Class, which I'm reading, and Scientific Genius, which I read in spare moments at work (hey, it's a book about becoming a better scientist, that's good use of my time)) delve deeply into issues that I deal with in what I want to do with my life, how to get there, and things that I can do to make my life better. I would like to go into in more detail about my thinking here, but there's that issue of going to bed earlier...

I've done better in that I haven't been staying up until 1 or later, but I don't know if I would give myself a done on that resolution this year. This whole going to bed earlier thing is one of a couple of issues that I struggle with that are very related to this blog. I like to use this venue to work through issues that I struggle with about my life, but making my life better means putting more of my energy into my family, career (that includes reading books), and health (working out and going to bed). I haven't quite figured out where this blog fits into those priorities. I have things that I am burning to write about, but when it comes to choosing whether I should work out, finish the last few pages of a chapter, or write a blog post, the blog post is usually the odd man out.

To this end, I am going to plagirize my book a month guy and do a 30 day experiment. Two blog posts a week for 30 days. It's May 1st so the date is convenient. This does not count as one blog post.

Alright, now that I've finished my update, I'm going to find the thinnest Dickens book on my shelf...

How I spend my time at work

My job is boring. Well, my job isn't boring, but I am frequently bored at work. That's what I learned by trying to cut back on my electronic distractions. I don't turn to email, Google Reader, and sites like changethis.com because I'm avoiding work. I check those things out because I don't have anything else to do! This is likely a temporary situation, the work tends to come in ebbs and flows, but with the big reorg announcement coming any day now, I really don't know what my day will be like once all of the changes have been implemented.

I actually hope that I still have this empty time in my day. I try to use it constructively (as opposed to spending all day idling reading news stories or chatting with other bored co-workers). My free time gives me a chance to look for answers to interesting problems that come up in our development projects or pursue some "personal development" activities. I used some of my empty time this afternoon to read a few pages from my latest book acquisition, Scientific Genius. The book is a lengthy discussion of Simonton's chance configuration theory of scientific insights. I was attracted to this theory for two reasons 1) I am looking for ways to foster a more innovative environment at work, and 2) the theory justifies my decision to follow my curiosity where ever it may lead. I have read several papers, articles, and book chapters about innovative thinkers. Intellectual curiosity is a prominent theme in all of them. I think finding a way to be a little more innovative in my thinking is a good way to spend an hour or so of my work day.

Chemistry Research=Design

In reading Notes on the Synthesis of Form (I feel like I should add a reference to a statement, which is a link in this venue, when the situation warrants), I kept coming on tools being proposed to solve a design problem that I have used to solve problems in my research. Alexander touts the importance of a "productive diagram" to get to the heart of a design problem. A good form will almost suggest itself if a diagram effectively captures the most pressing needs of the problem. I have struggled to understand a set of experimental results only to see the answer emerge when I changed the way I was looking at the data. A second idea, using misfits to determine a good fit for a particular design, mirrors a process that I use to evaluate my thinking. Is there some data or known fact of the system that contradicts my explanation for a particular observation? Seeing my own approach to problem solving discussed in the context of a much different problem has put a new wrinkle in my problem solving strategies.

Being trained to solve science problems and not to design new forms, I have never thought about solving complex problems with many interacting factors in the terms discussed by Alexander. My colleagues and I seem to circle issues that demand scientific knowledge, which we all have, but also require the ability to resolve contradicting demands in a single form. Based on what I just read in Alexander's book, the discipline of design strives to find solutions to these kinds of problems. Having gained a little insight into a designers perspective on design issues, I have no doubt that my own approach to what I used to think of in purely science terms will take on a little design perspective.

So this book that I learned about from the 37Signals blog and read because I may be joining the new "product design" group has 1)shown me a new way to use some of my problem solving skills and 2)given me a new way to look at problems that I routinely encounter at work. Assuming this book changes the way I approach my work, it may become a great book. I'll let you know how the 7th book I've read this year ends up changing how I do my job.