Posts filed under 'New perspectives'
Dwayne (
), Bren (
Slacker Manager
), and Skip (
Random Thoughts from a CTO
) just launched a really interesting blog and Google group today, called
Never work alone
. Here’s how they explain it:
What’s Never Work Alone all about?
We’ve all been through “trial by fire” management situations, and have faced difficult management and leadership dilemmas at various points in our careers. As active participants in the brain trust on the internet, we also understand the tremendous power of Community. The goal of Never Work Alone is to provide a community for managers and leaders to share their experiences and challenges, help each other grapple with issues, learn from each other, and advance the state of the art in enlightened leadership.
Basically, once you have
join the Google group
, you can e-mail in any management dilemma with which you would like some help. Dwayne, Bren and Skip will select one e-mail per week and put it up for discussion on the Google group. Anyone in the group can respond with anything he or she thinks might be helpful and the bloggers will then summarise the group responses on the blog.
Years ago I read Tom Peters’
and in almost every chapter he suggests that getting together with kindred spirits is a great way to learn and develop. I really love the way Dwayne, Bren and Skip are providing online facilitation for that meeting of minds.
Unfortunately, the name also makes me think of the football (soccer to the Americans). So, with apologies to
Gerry and the Pacemakers
and the
Anfield kop
:
Work on
Work on
With hope in your heart
‘Cos you’ll never work alone
No, you’ll never work alone
Great project - good luck with it, guys.
October 10th, 2005
Was it the provocation from Louise that made me do it, or am I just an ass by nature? Let me recap:
I post that I think
CAPTCHA - a technique for stopping comment spam - is the devil’s work
, for it is not accessible to visually impaired users. Louise comments: it is spam that is the devil’s work, and I should put up - suggest practical CAPTCHA alternatives - or shut up. I respond with alternatives and Louise - rightly - calls one of those alternatives into question, for discriminating against another group of users. She says the other alternatives are too resource-hungry. She asks:
Just how many blind people are using the internet anyway? And how many spammers?
It is then that the red mist of battle takes over. I roll out my dogma cannon and FIRE!
Louise, your view seems to be “discrimination is OK in this instance, because I only discriminate against a small number of people. Being inclusive takes too much effort.”
I disagree with your view very strongly. No matter how few are disadvantaged, discrimination, in my view, is not OK.
Like I said: was it Louise made me do it, or am I just an ass?
Having slept on it, I began to get some fresh perspective on this. I live in a flat on the second floor. There are no ramps or lifts. Does that not discriminate against people in wheelchairs? I can just about get away with it, because:
-
Our flat is not a public space and no one, in a wheel chair or not, is
entitled
to enter without permission. In public spaces, there will be places a disabled person is entitled to go which are inaccessible to him or her.
- We do not own the stair well, so even if I did want to invite someone with a wheelchair to come up, I still cannot fit a lift or ramp.
- Even if we had permission to fit a lift, we couldn’t afford it
So is there a more workable principle: discrimination
in public spaces over which I have control, except when I don’t have the resources
is not OK? Am I finally letting some shades of grey dominate my previously black and white thinking? Yes, I think I am. But what about web accessibility? Are CAPTCHAs OK now?
No, they are not. We are not, after all, taking something which is already inaccessible and applying massive resources to provide access (like building a lift in a block of flats). We are talking about taking something which is accessible by nature (the web) and then deliberately denying access. Using a CAPTCHA is like ripping the lifts and ramps out of an accessible building and replacing them all with stairs, then justifying your actions by saying the ramps and lifts made it easy for thieves to come into the building.
The web is a public space. The website owner has control over his or her site. And the resources required for the various alternative anti-spam methods are, in most cases, not significantly more than those required to implement CAPTCHA, and in some cases less. CAPTCHAs, in my view, are still not OK, and I would like to see them consigned to the scrapheap.
No doubt Louise will disagree. That’s OK. If Louise has a blog and wants to take up the discussion there, I will happily link to it. Through all this, I have learnt something new about myself and about blogging, specifically about how I respond to comments. I intend to be less of an ass in future. But one thing is sure, I won’t be shutting up about web accessibility any time soon.
August 25th, 2005
Kathy Sierra at
Creating Passionate Users
posted
Build something cool in 24 hours
yesterday, based on an idea for total immersion / ultra-rapid game development from the wonderfully named game developer, Squirrel Eiserloh:
The notion is this: stick people in a house for 48 hours, with a goal to have something created at the end… participants may be collaborating (like building a game together) or working alone (musicians composing, writers writing, etc.). The key is the process - a process that forces you to supress the “inner judges” that stifle creativity, and gives you not just permission but an order to create as much as possible, as fast as possible… even if what you end up with is 97% crap.
The point is to learn something valuable from the experience… by working under the ad-hoc/jam constraints, you’re able to “improve your craft” and discover things about yourself and the work that you might never find in your traditional work environment… What could take weeks, months, or years to evolve suddenly happens in hours.
Great stuff - and just the kick in the pants I need to get one or two of my projects really moving again. It’s like a
vertical day
on steroids.
The thing is the team-working part of this reminded me of an incident that took place when I was a conference producer. I had put together a conference on manufacturing and, then as now, teams were a hot topic. The speaker I invited to talk about teams promised to be provocative and - bless him - he was (Note to all conference speakers: provocative is good).
Half way through his presentation he stops dead and says:
Let’s take a break. Together with the people at your table, design me a dog walking machine. You have five minutes from now. Go!
There were half a dozen people at each table, so we all turned to face one another and got to work. Or at least we thought we got to work. Afterwards, the speaker sketched the various machines on a board and made jokes about how
the consultants who were sponsoring the conference
had come up with an effective, but
very expensive
solution
, and we all had a laugh at the speaker’s suggested machine which included a roller skate and a large spike (sorry dog lovers).
Eventually someone asked the speaker: “Why the dog walking machines?” His reply was illuminating:
A bit of fun. And to prove a point. When I started the clock on your five minutes, how many of you got straight to work? And how many of you took a few seconds to overcome embarrassment? Then you had a round of introductions, which you should have done this morning when you first arrived, but you were too nervous, or because you had introduced yourselves this morning, but you’ve forgotten each others’ names. Then you passed round business cards. Then you didn’t say or contribute anything because you didn’t want the others to know that you
didn’t have the right answer
. Then, with probably thirty seconds to go,
one of you
sketched the first thing he could think of and showed it to the rest of you. You all thought “I could do better than that” but you all approved his design, because - uh oh - time’s up.
So please understand - working in teams is tough. You cannot just come to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people “I want you all to work in teams.”
We
are supposed to be at the top of our field, the best of the best. And if
we
can’t work together in a team on a simple, fun task, then how will
your people
take to being stuffed into a new way of working, for eight or more hours a day, with their livelihoods at stake?
I love the simplicity, the purity of Kathy’s idea - in fact I am inspired to jam solo on a web project this weekend - but when teams are involved, especially in a work context, things can get tricky. Some participants may be less committed to team working; some may be concerned that the boss will get credit and their good ideas will be glossed over. Some may have forceful personalities; others may have great ideas, but speak too softly to be heard. Some may even be determined to sabotage the process.
None of these things are insurmountable problems, especially not if there is good management and facilitation before, during and after the jam (think
Rosa Say
,
Lisa Haneberg
and
Johnnie Moore
for starters). But whatever you do, don’t just go to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people: “I want you all to build something cool in 24 hours.”
Jam sessions, then, may well be another one of those areas where
simplicity is hard work
.
August 25th, 2005
Phil Gerbyshak
pitched in with a super comment on
Make things better: aphorism or action item?
:
… it may be something that you’d really rather not do, or something that really doesn’t make things better…at least not in the moment. I think the key is to focus on the big picture and see how this fits overall in your life. If you can find a way to fit it in there, it’s often worth doing.
The other thing that I find that often helps is finding someone else you can energize, because it’s more her/his strength than yours… .
I think Phil’s comment is right on the money: “do X” can be reframed as “delegate the doing of X to the most appropriate person.”
For example, after each meeting of the
City of London Toastmasters Club
, I used to help our Sergeant-at-Arms rearrange the chairs, take down the club banner and generally reset the room. It’s a mundane, but vital thing, because if we leave the room untidy, we might well lose our venue. But this year, I am President of the club. Is it right that I roll up my sleeves and move chairs? Or should I be talking to our guests and signing up new members?
I took the view that my role now is to represent the club with professionalism and show our guests the warmest possible welcome, not snub them because I am busy with heavy lifting. But what an uncomfortable transition. Those chairs need shifting, after all.
In the end, I reframed: instead of shifting the chairs myself, I remind our members to assist the Sergeant at Arms, leaving the VPs and me to talk with our guests and sign up those who wish to join.
Sometimes, leadership focus is as simple as turning “do” into “delegate.”
August 19th, 2005
Great mind mapping trainer
Since
Cliff
,
Jason
and I all
posted / commented on mind mapping
, here’s a quick plug for my friend, client and fellow Toastmaster, Susan Percy. Susan is a Buzan qualified mind mapping instructor, and she can help you with your memory and speed reading too.
Now, you may be thinking “Mind mapping is a simple concept; I don’t need training” and that’s how I thought until I attended a workshop with Susan. Like a lot of people, I had been using mind maps simply to record information rather than as a thinking tool. Susan trains you how to break through that conventional thinking barrier. Now, when I am stuck on a project, I do a mind map and connections and new ideas just spring off the page. Interested?
Visit Susan’s website
(no blog yet, but I will persuade her).
Add comment
August 16th, 2005
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