Year: 2008

no strings attached: lost and found

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

She looks right and then left as soon as she steps out of the office building. Out of the corner of her eye she spots smoke. She knows she has found him.

“I’ve been looking for you all over the place, where have you been?” exasperated, she catches her breath.

“Here,” he says nonchalantly.

“Smoking will kill you and it gives you bad breath,” she knows her advice is unsolicited and will probably be ignored.

“Okay, thanks for the unsolicited advice.”

“Fine, at the very least don’t throw the butt on the ground. It’s disgusting enough that you smoke. Throw it in a garbage bin.”

“Okay.”

“You have to stop hiding.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m just taking a break.”

“You’re late for the meeting, they’re waiting for you. You can’t just disappear, you have to stop hiding. Are you listening to me?” she notices that he’s drifting away.

He takes a big puff and lets out a rush of smoke.

“Come on, we can’t keep them waiting for too long,” she turns around and starts to walk towards the building.

He takes his last puff, flicks the cigarette butt onto the road and follows behind her.

problem –> solution

A lot of management folk I’ve dealt with have brought this up enough times that it’s worth talking about. I cannot stress how wrong this is, but I will try.

The idea is that if you bring up or voice a problem that you must also present a solution.

Any managers that say this or propagate this are practising weak management. They are not doing their job properly.

There are many reasons for this. Most important of all is that organizations that truly excel and improve have a policy of transparency and brutal honesty. Problems and concerns within an organization must traverse the entire management food chain.

In my opinion, bringing up a problem is the most crucial part, regardless of whether you propose a solution or not. Problems equal opportunity, and that opportunity ought to be shared amongst the team/organization. To assume that the person who finds the problem will be the best to solve it is foolish. Having the “no problems without solutions” policy leads to people bottling up problems until they’re able to draw out a solution. This leads to a collection of problems that should have been addressed a long time ago. You cannot afford to have people afraid to voice problems and in general their opinions.

Bringing up problems provides everyone a chance to collaboratively find solutions. Delaying problems simply magnifies them in the future.

The idea is not to create an environment where people are whining, no. The idea is to foster an environment where people are free to voice problems, and collectively discuss and solve them. So as a manager when you tell your team that they shouldn’t voice problems without solutions. You’re failing them. You don’t know what you don’t know, it’s okay to accept that.

mark my words

I’m trying my darnedest at school not to be sucked in by grading systems. Marks are wrong. The system by which we are graded is extremely flawed. I’m not saying I know a better way. I do not. I simply see what we have currently as flawed.

It’s not conducive to the process of learning at all. Not to mention how the competitive nature of the ranking process often discourages creative collaboration.

In one of the classes a girl was asking a series of questions to see if her approach to the a problem was correct. Her last question was, “But I won’t get a zero will I?”. This highlights the problem with marks. Students are tailoring the way they think and approach problems so that they achieve the highest grades. This, as opposed to thinking about ways to best solve the problem.

In fact, students will often only do assignments because they will be graded on them. Marks become a reason for getting students to do things or else they wouldn’t be interested in doing anything. The grading systems we have are poor substitutes for proper teaching techniques. Grading schemes allow teachers to be lazy in the way they structure the “learning” process. They don’t have to make lessons involving or interesting. They simply need to attach a value by way of marks.

Clearly the system is broken.

More on this later.

can you really?

Random thoughts/sentences.

The more things change the more they remain the same.

A very well run campaign indeed. Tremendous, in fact. Does that translate into anything else? Who knows?

Obama’s campaign had to be one of the best run large-scale marketing campaigns ever. Ever.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. Let’s be “hopeful”, but let’s not fool ourselves. They’re all politicians after all.

One thing that is hopefully indicative of how someone operates is that Obama seemed to surround himself with the right people and let them to their job. This is a very good trait to have in any situation. It’s nice being a great public speaker, charismatic, calm and cool and all, but if you don’t surround yourself with the right people (and let them do their work), it’s all for not.

Change? If nothing, hopefully it’s a change in attitude and change in perception.

It’s almost easy to care one day every four (US) or five (Canadian) years. But do we have a way of keeping the government honest along the way? Some form of accountability that’s is not yet another full fledged election. Can you imagine if during a campaign there was a neutral committee that fines a party for each false claim they make? Carry this into their term, and actually somehow holds a party accountable for their campaign promises?

I do have to say, the Americans have impressed me. This is the same country that let Bush be president for two terms, and clearly elected him for one (the second) term. And despite the smear campaign run by the Republicans, they still elected Obama.

Muslim. Arab. Pals around with terrorists. Socialist. Marxist.

And still, they elected him. Thank you for showing politicians that smear campaigns are awful, and they should not work.