Yesterday I managed to slice a chunk of thumb loose while grafting new branches to my apple trees. Good thing it was not on my dominant hand as it’s already becoming very inconvenient to perform menial tasks like getting dressed in the morning.
Anyways, 3 more branches and 1 more opposable thumb to go. Stay tuned!
So…here are the before and after shots of the aftermath of grafting new branches onto my apple trees. That little voice inside my head was saying, you should probably be cutting away from yourself. The big man voice said…nah, this is easier…what could happen? Well…there you have it. Stupidity in motion.
Also, many thanks to my wife and the many Canadian healthcare workers that helped me out tonight. You are awesome! Thumbs up!
Over the weekend I was chauffeuring the family around when I ran into road construction. Here is how the conversation went between my wife and I.
Wife: “You should have taken that road back there”
Me: “Like there were signs telling me that they closed the road before that…”
W: “You should have known that they were building transit on Highway 7”
M: “It’s the weekend…how did I know they were working and if you knew, why didn’t you tell me to turn off?”
W: “You should have turned off anyways”
M: “Hindsight makes you look like an ass”
It’s a good thing my wife has a sense of humour 🙂
This morning I was surprised at an intersection while I was driving my daughter to school. At a 4-way stop I was waiting for another car to clear the intersection when an Audi tailed the same car through it and then gave me a wave indicating something along the lines of ‘oops…my fault’. I can’t exactly say that this was an honest mistake as I’ve seen that car there before. This made me think back to the thought of if it’s better to be a jackass and seize every opportunity whether moral or selfish or stay the course of being a good human.
Thinking solely on perceived stature, most of the times that I’ve experienced an inconsiderate driver it has mostly been a luxury vehicle. Could it be that it is in their nature to think about what would benefit them most rather than others around them? Is that how they managed to gather the funds for that vehicle and be ‘successful’? Successful is in quotes here as I’m under the perception that they are financially successful but maybe not so much in a moral sense.
In my currently unemployed state has made me me think if I should flip sides and play the political games that I have seen others navigate. I have had time to examine the decisions that I have made politically that would have affected my career. For the most part I have sided with my teams to help them advance rather than accelerating my ‘status’. Learning from my mentors, I have given full credit to the team in successes and shielded the team from failure. Looking back, this has probably made me look good moving down the ladder but not so much moving up the ladder. I have seen people sabotage others and throwing them under the bus to get ahead and ‘succeed’ in doing so. My career has moved slowly to my current job title of Product Manager. I probably could have done this quicker if I was on the other side of the fence but I have made many good friends and allies along the way by working alongside my teams instead of just dictating to them for no good reason. I’m told this is new school management to collaborate rather than dictate. This may be true but career wise is not helping at the moment.
So looking at things…I have two choices.
– Do whatever is needed to get a high paying job but feel broken inside
– Consider starting again lower and work my way up building credibility along the way.
I think I’ll stick with the later option. I would hate to move my moral compass as it might stay that way.
Food for thought. I saw a Facebook positing from one of my friends saying that it does not matter what denomination you belong to or if you are an atheist. What is important is that you are a decent human being. Very true.
So the above scene happened about a month ago at my cousin’s restaurant during a family dinner. My cousin and his son were sitting by the post on the drivers side and I was beside them right about two feet from the front bumper ended up. Luckily, we had squeezed another cousin and her boyfriend to the main table with us as they were sitting at the empty table that was hit.
To make a long story short, no one was hurt but more impressively, no one from my generation panicked. I think the torch was officially passed from our parents down to us that day when they saw us jump into action to make sure everyone was ok, triage and then go into action to keep the restaurant running and deal with the car in the window. It was a defining moment that confirmed that we have been raised well and are competent to officially be let loose in the world.
Looking back on the events solidified my belief that panic ensues when there is no plan. As my wife and I took charge of the situation almost immediately, everyone was able to settle into a “Let’s get this squared away” rhythm of crowd control, damage control and the logistics of working with emergency services and the insurance company. Well within a minute, everyone was delegated a task and was focused on completing it. My cousins who own the restaurant were able to focus on keeping the kitchen open while we took care of the incident. Customers that were present at the time finished their meal and commented on how impressed they were on how we dealt with the situation.
Sure, there were emotions present and adrenaline flowing, but it does not serve anyone use by using the extra energy to freak out. Gather data, triage, assign responsibility, get the job done. You can cover how you could have died that day later in the retrospective. For the time being, make sure the everyone is ok and focused on the task at hand.
Continuing to be previous post, I believe that being respected is better than being liked. Being a leader requires that tough decisions to be made. These decisions are not always the most popular decisions. Your respect and reputation are key to getting the hard work done. Your team must trust that you maintain vision of the bigger picture and are keeping everyone’s best interests in mind when picking the best past. It’s not the best feeling to leave the trenches and storm the enemy line, but if you respect the leaders, you know that there is an end game in motion that will benefit society as a whole (at least in your sides opinion).
To be liked all the time sets up an impossible scenario. There is no way to keep everyone happy at all times. Opinions will always differ, personalities will clash. The best you can do is make sure everyone maintains communication to at least have a mutual understanding of where the other one stands. It it then the leader’s responsibility guide the parties to understand if they are right or wrong and show to each of the parties where they stand in the big picture. One party is probably going to come out on top at the end of the conversation but with extra context placed around it, the decision will make sense and everyone can proceed to move forward.
Also important and in my opinion underused in the business world is the ability and permission to admit fault. It drives me insane when you are following a path that has been chosen and along the journey new things are found that indicate it’s the wrong direction but still keep going anyways. Sure, if there is a chance that it could be successful but risky it might be worth continuing, but if it’s undeniably now the wrong direction, stop, huddle, look at the data and regroup. Why waste the time and resources to get to the end of the path when you already know it’s going to be a dead end and you will have to back track anyways?
I was filling out a job application last night and was posed the question, “Is it better to be liked or respected?” This reminded me of a story that I heard in training early on in my career. (Sorry in advance if I misuse some titles.)
A private was complaining to his superior officer one day about how their captain was a total bastard yelling and barking orders all day. The officer looks at the private simply says..The captain is preparing us for war. War is not nice, this training is not nice, but it will save us when we get there. The captain will make the tough decisions that we will follow that will win us the war. Yes, the captain acts like a bastard, but he is a ‘right’ bastard.
This messaging has rung true for me throughout my leadership roles. While I can’t say that yelling and drama helps in day to day working situations, it does help when training new members of the team. Customer service is tough and in my opinion undervalued. To survive in this space you require a certain perspective. When I train I essentially turn into the bastard captain. There is not a day in training that I’m not raising the levels of stress and forcing them to learn without spoonfeeding, breaking them out of thinking linearly and making their own thought connections. After they have the basic knowledge of the products, scenario training begins. They will take mock calls that initially start calmly but then emotions of a frustrated angry ‘the whole world is falling apart’ customer come into play. They learn how to deal with irate customers who are yelling and cursing at them. In the end, everything that can go wrong, will go wrong from a customer misinforming them of a detail that leads them on the wrong track or just a customer that isn’t doing what they are asked to complete the resolution process. This training program changes their perspective that all customers are going to be a$$holes. When they actually go online by themselves, they find that for the most part the opposite is true. As their perspective prepared them for the ultimate unruly customer, anything that was thrown at them was a piece of cake.
It’s also shocking to them when I switch out of training mode and they find that I’m actually a nice guy who doesn’t see the point of yelling or forcing my will upon anyone. I have equipped them with everything they need to survive in the world of customer service. All that is needed now is to guide them through the jungle of new features and products. They already have the tools to piece new data into their own internal knowledge base.
One caveat to this method of training. You will have people give up and quit during the training as they find it harsh. This is a good thing as they would have quit at a later time anyways when exposed to irate customers. It also doesn’t hurt to outline your training program with HR just incase your methods are brought up to them 😉
So…how is the title for my first blog post? These are just random thoughts that somehow I have pieced together in my mind. They may be right…they may be wrong…just thoughts that might open some minds.
I have been doing quite a lot of reading and exploring in my spare time and came across some articles on quantum string theory. Apparently, the theory is that there are 10 dimensions that exist with only a few that we can physically experience and prove at this point in science. The rest of the dimensions exist in theoretical math equations that are way over my head.
The other book that I have read explores the concept of a soul. It says that a soul originates as an imperfect entity with some level of karma. The soul then puts some of itself in physical form to attempt to increase it’s karma to try to acheive perfection. Once in a physical state, the ‘person’ loses awareness of the soul but in it’s experiences either raises or lowers the overall souls karma throughout it’s physical life.
Anyways, I read these at different times but one night it dawned on me that these two concepts which are essentially science vs religion could co-exist with each other.
So lets start with life as we know it. It has a past, present and a future. Essentially compeltely linear as time always moves forward. Then there exists a soul in possibly one of the other 10 dimensions of string theory. If we remove the need for time being a constant, the soul can essentially exist throughout all time and experience all lives all at once. This could coincide with religions concepts of reincarnation, all secrets being revealed when you die as you are able to expereince all time all at once, and heaven and hell with the souls karma. Essentially all major religions tenants start lining up and at this point as we begin to prove string theory’s 10 dimensions.
So, who knows? As we prove or disprove sting theory, maybe the concepts of souls could exist and time is no longer seen a constant.
(Apparently, they’re already starting to prove the time concept with time crystals. I’ll post about that once I get my head around it.)
brteng 