Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

Many generalities, as usual, but also some very important specifics. I particularly like the first bit regarding his lobbying rules.

Let’s get to it!

I’m sure all 3 of you who monitor my blog have seen this already, but just in case, Barack Obama gave a speech yesterday — a bold, courageous, visionary speech:

We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle—as we did in the OJ trial—or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina—or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

Pretty much everybody knows that carbon dioxide from sources like coal-fired power plants and cars is heating things up. But how many of us are making different choices because of it? Not many.

Economists tell us that if you want something to happen, you just need to align the rules so the right things are rewarded. This idea underlies all those pay-to-pollute and pollution credit proposals out there. So maybe we just need to make it more expensive to do cause global warming. A big new gas tax? Think that’s likely to happen when politicians have to get re-elected?

In his essay for the BBC, Matt Prescot argues that consumer choice is not enough to combat climate change. The world needs strong political leadership, too:

This is especially true when it comes to changing the rules under which individuals and businesses compete, and making the hard choices for the long-term good of society.

So we need some gutsy leadership. I wonder where that is going to come from. If we wanted gutsy leaders, wouldn’t we be electing them? I think electing politicians with the long view, we’d need an electorate with the long view. Then we’re right back to consumer choice.

I may as well mention to my six readers that I am on the market again. I won’t write too much about the circumstances until things are resolved, but suffice it to say that I’m looking for a small, close-knit team whose members consider each other friends and who genuinely want each other to succeed. Either an individual contributor or lead/manager/mentor role would be great. Here’s my “r?©sum?©”:http://www.michaelmcdaniel.net/resume.

Let me know if you have any suggestions! Thanks.

As I mentioned briefly in a previous post, I’ve been reading David Allen’s excellent book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stree-Free Productivity. I’m done with it now and starting to implement it. I’ve installed the GTD Outlook plugin (not strictly necessary, but worth the $70) and am really enjoying using the system.

The overall purpose of the system is to free your mind of all the things you’re trying to remember so you can focus and use all of your brain’s space for active processing. Anybody who knows me well will have heard me talk about making choices to get stuff out of my head. Well, this book talks about creating a trusted system to do just that.

Using a series of lists to manage action items by context was a huge boon for me. Now, when I’m in traffic, I can look at my list of calls to make and can easily knock off a couple of tasks in free time. If I’m at home and have 10 minutes, I can quickly scan my list of tasks for one that will fit in the that time. I think it’s already helped my productivity and my confidence that things aren’t slipping through the cracks, and I’ve just begun to really use the system.

I read a slashdot thread on it, and someone there suggested that this system appeals to engineers because the flow of information in the system is similar to that used by programmers all the time. I think there’s something to that, but I suspect anybody can learn to think that way with a little practice.

James Osborne sent me a very interesting article in Wired magazine.

The article talks about IT jobs moving overseas and the anxiety many US workers feel about that. It likens the phenomenon to the move from agriculture to industry, from industry to services, and from services to information. What’s next? Here’s the article’s conclusion:

“Today, even innovative firms spend too much money maintaining products: fixing bugs and rolling out nearly identical 2.0 versions. Less than 30 percent of R&D spending at mature software firms goes to true innovation, according to the consulting firm Tech Strategy Partners. Send the maintenance to India and, even after costs, 20 percent of the budget is freed up to come up with the next breakthrough app. The result: more workers focused on real innovation.”

The Indians, apparently, are focused on process and quality and efficiency but not discovery. Jobs will be lost, certainly, but only those requiring less talent creativity.

Now, I hadn’t heard anything about this, previously. Sure, I knew Amazon had moved most of its email-based customer service over there. I’m told their English over there is better than what’s written by the folks Amazon can hire for the same money in Tacoma. And that comes up in the article too. It’s not about cheap. It’s about quality and value.

So what should forward-thinking software developers and managers be thinking about? The Next Big Thing, of course.

There’s no greater challenge to my attempts at authenticity than a visit by my own parents. They came in last Thursday and are here until Friday. It’s been a great visit so far, and we’re having fun, but the more I learn about myself and about authenticity, the more I realize that my relationship with my parents is one of my biggest authenticity challenges.

Growing up, the thing I dreaded most was hearing “I’m disappointed in you” coming from my parents. I think it’s pretty common for children to feel about themselves the way they think their parents feel about them. Over time, children are supposed to differentiate themselves and eventually fully emerge a wholly separate individual who can see his or her parents as flawed, frail individuals who just did their level best. I wonder if I’ve never managed to fully separate in that way.

I don’t think that I’d hate myself if they disapproved of me, but during this visit, I find that I keep protecting my image around them. I don’t bring up things they’d disagree with. I find myself tempted to caretake them. I try to read their body language and judge when to switch topics. I suppose this is not very different from a lot of parent-child relationships, but I’m increasingly conscious of it.

Of course, I could choose to change that at any time, right? But that’s pretty darn scary, really. REALLY showing up only works well if that opening up is reciprocated. And given how often I see ‘em, is it really worth rocking the boat?

Part of this is, probably, that now I’m the father and they’re the grandparents. Drawing up boundaries with parents is hard for anyone, I’m sure.

I was sitting in a meeting today with a bunch of managers and a director. The topic turned to something about which I’m passionate and threatened. I went on automatic offense. I used words like “stupid”, “moronic”, “inane” and anything else I could think of to belittle the idea and its originator (who happens to be a VP). The thing is, I don’t really disagree with the idea, just the implementation currently on the table.

I don’t think this kind of “best defense is a good offense” behavior is really going to further my career. Fortunately, I have most folks trained to know that I engage in a bit of hyperbole. But this is exactly the sort of thing I’m working on right now.

In months past, I wouldn’t have recognized it at all, or only if I’d been so nasty to warrant mention from someone else. Now, at least I can see it happening a little afterwards. Next, I expect I’ll catch myself doing it and then I can make a different choice. The big news is that I’m not really beating myself up about it—I’ve noticed positive changes, and I acknowledge that I’ve still got work to do.

Separately, I had two 1-1s where I got to talk about what I do well and where I need support from my people. That felt really good. It’s not the sort of thing political leaders would do, since that sort of candor would be suicide for anybody projecting a false image as part of his or her job. I think it works in management, though.

For me, though, projecting the image of perfection is so ingrained, it feels strange and scary admitting to imperfection. But there are those who say anything that doesn’t scare you isn’t really worth doing.

I finished up weekend three at Leadership Skills Training today. I’d have to say that overall, I got what I wanted from the class. The curriculum is mostly experiential. By that, I mean that each participant gets something different from the course. The lessons are created by the people who show up and what they bring in from their everyday lives.

There are many qualities of effective leaders. For me, the class was all about authenticity (that is, authenticity is what I’m working on at the moment). Effective leaders are authentic: they are transparent, open, and what you see is what you get. I show up fully sometimes, but I tend to lose hold of it when I start worrying about how I’m supposed to be. There’s a lot of background that isn’t really relevant in this context, but suffice it to say that I’m a bit of a perfectionist and when I start worrying about perfection, I lose hold of authenticity.

I came away with some strategies and tactics to employ in making my unconscious decisions more conscious (so I can choose differently if I want), and some ideas for ways to get more in touch with my authentic self. Feel free to ask me if you want more details. If there’s enough interest, I’ll probably add some more thoughts here as well.