thecapacity

I have a confession to make which probably won’t surprise many of you, least of all my wife. I hope it’s a minor flaw that doesn’t make me too intolerable but the fact is: I like to be right.

I don’t believe I’m the “In your face – *boo yah* Where’s my $20?” kinda right. I prefer to consider it as a paternal smugness, quiet calmness with a wry, knowing “Well, I’m sure you had to figure that out on your own but I just wish I could have made things easier for you” kind of smile.

So I don’t normally go out of my way to toot my own horn but I wanted to take exception because I think it will illustrate a lot about me… and trust me I’m wrong a fair amount of the time too.

There are great debates about “Generalists vs. Specialists” and “Consumers vs. Producers” and I’m sure a ton of other “Mavens, Connectors, etc…” generalizations from Freakenomics.

Honestly, I’m not sure which of any of those labels I truly am. On a Meyers Briggs test I’m a bit of everything and I sort of think of myself as a guy who could step into many situations and make do, which probably means a “Consuming Generalist Connector” if one had to pick.

To me it’s reminiscent of that TV show “The Pretender”, minus the genious IQ. I make no illusions that I’d be an adequate Dr. or working at the LHC, but I’ve done marketing, management, business, technology and lots of variations in between.

Most of my friends know that I parse a lot of data, it “feeds my need” and making the connections and tracking the patterns is something I find fulfilling. Recently, someone told me I have a great mind for strategy and I glossed over the compliment but in this most recent context it was interesting to reevaluate that statement.

So what was it? What did I do? Simply put, I did what I enjoy doing; I read and observed and let intuition guide.

I won’t bore you with a soliloquy about the merits of on demand fabrication and the future, but if you’ve followed any of it you’ve heard about Ponoko, BigBlueSaw and Shapeways.

Recently Ponoko announced an upcoming feature release, something to make digital design and fabrication easier and more approachable then invited people to guess. So I guessed, not having “the answer” in mind till I started writing my comment but when I wrote I had that sense of knowing I was right.

It wasn’t like competing for a Nobel Prize, there were probably only about 75 other posters but the only other person who mentioned something similar was the one immediately following mine. And now it’s real and people are excited about it.

Me, I think it’s a great concept and I’m excited too, but I must admit; I’m also excited about being right.

So Ponoko, where’s my prize?

I’m finally getting “settled” in my new role working from home and part of that means getting a chance to get through some podcasts. Actually, although I love TED Talks, I’m not actually a big fan of podcasts.

Imagine taking all the rambling and inherent pauses of conversation and couple those with ear piercing music, relative to the volume of human speech. Now add in sickeningly upbeat scores, which last too long but are too hard to fast forward through. Then sandwich content between mirrored intros and fade-outs so that back-to-back episodes sometimes yield 2-4 minutes (end of one and the intro of another) of worthless music…

Well, it shouldn’t be hard to see why a constantly information starved individual like myself would have a hard time listening. It’s almost a shame because some, like “Managerial Tools“, have great content but feel like a waste of time, when the “nuggets” can be gleaned much faster by reading articles.

However, I do have a soft spot in my soul for two true podcasts… I’ve really enjoyed the Stanford “Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders” sessions due to their diverse treatment of all things “innovative” and “entrepreneurial” and the NotHans Podcast (which I really think should be called a “NotCast”) because of its quick humor and varying overt and subtle shades of joviality. I’d recommend both many times over for people who like those sorts of things.

However, I am rapidly gaining another favorite on my list which is the “Harvard Business IdeaCast“. I’ve worked my way through eight episodes, so I’m still withholding judgment, and today in Episode 95, I found even more gold.

In this episode, or the accompanying Business Week article, Tammy Erickson tackles one of the biggest challenges facing corporations in the next 10 years, one I wrote about recently.

We’ve heard of developing future leaders, from Professor Linda A. Hill, but Tammy makes us aware that the roles being “prepared” may not align with the ones being desired by those leaders.

She writes about it in Top 10 Talent-Management Challenges and I hope there are a lot of people reading and acting on her insights. From the dangers of “extreme jobs” beginning to normalize our performance expectations and we’re in danger of forming a corporate environment that Gen-Yers (and some Gen-Xers) simply don’t want to join.

Working at a large technology company I’m familiar with the “graying” of IT. While often public perspective on “technology” is skewed by the Kevin Rose’s of the world in enterprise situations it’s often much different.

It’s not uncommon to start a job as the only “new hire” around, surrounded by people who’ve been working in their respective fields for 20-30 years. It’s an intimidating position to be in, necessitating a certain type of individual, and I’ve seen many people make that transition (or transition out).

I’ve heard that you can live a thousand lifetimes through books, but I’ve lived at least that many years through the stories of my colleagues. My first officemate could disassemble HEX in his head faster then I could look up mnemonics and I’ve learned about life, as well as IT, from him and many since.

The phrase “There’s a lot of history here” has a particular place in my field and those who don’t learn from the history of others are doomed to repeat it.

However, I have felt at times that the “oldsters” could afford to let some of us “young’ens” have a chance. I don’t mean to imply they should “step aside”, simply provide better opportunities for “us” to learn and try. Learning involves making mistakes but often there’s not enough of a “penalty free” environment in day to day office politics. Slate has a business perspective on this situation though their view of age-ism is the inverse of mine.

I sometimes worry we’re creating a void, where those “too young” won’t be qualified (i.e. have the same opportunities and experience of their predecessors) to take over from those who will be retired in 5-10 years. I think the rise of the “still going” businessperson is probably one of the factors driving the shifts in innovation and entrepreneurship we’re seeing today.

A few weeks ago, during dinner, I expressed this feeling to a colleague who’s been in the business a long time, predominantly on the sales side. What I got was one of those tidbits of history and insight that makes me appreciate the wisdom of the years. He looked at me and in effect said “you’ll be fine” but what convinced me the most was what he said next;

We’ve had some rough years and back when it got really rough and all the talent had left, they threw us green guys out in the field. And you know what? You learn, you learn real fast.

Sink or swim, trial by fire… sometimes I wish life didn’t have to be so binary, but the reminder that no true opportunity can every really be cushioned is priceless.

Every so often, an article on “the elevator pitch” comes along where you’re supposed to present your product in 30 seconds or less… five sentences or less… two eye blinks or less….

I don’t want to add specific examples, because I don’t want to single out any one example, but you’ve certainly seen this advice multiple times for multiple scenarios… resumes, product pitches, confessional booths, marriage proposals…

I’m sure when I first heard the suggestion my brain did something like;

Hmm… that’s a neat idea…

Well, yea I can really see the befit to being succinct…. and I know I hate it when people “broadcast only”

I really learn by getting a chance to ask questions…

So, I guess once they’ve gotten a good summary they’re smart enough to see the value on their own..

Then they’re hooked and will want to learn more!!

Although I’m a planner by profession and have a consumer nature, I’m naturally a “less talk more do” kinda person. So this aligns with the “optimization” and slight east coast mentality that I have.

So the faith in this advice has permeated my career for many years now. I’ve practiced giving succinct status statements (I also know rambling can get you in trouble) and I’m usually able to answer technical questions with something succinct and satisfactory like “yes, I’ll make that happen”.

Thus today’s revelation has come as a bit of a shock when I realized the advice I’ve been following all these years is very misleading and often downright wrong!

In such an information dense dialog what should be a rapid give and take has, in retrospect, degenerated into “take and move on” with you losing out. Often I’ve delivered such a fantastically succinct statement that it’s apparently left the exec, customer, or finance speechless.

It’s a clear alternative for you to consider my possible ineptitude and I admit to not being a natural sales man, often expecting facts and my passion to speak for itself. So think back to a time where you’ve epitomized this approach and how often the person on the other end was left speechless, uncertain where to continue.

I’m sure there was one of those pauses where you were expecting them to ask a question or say something. You had the next reply ready, only the chance never came and you were forced to continue as though you’d only meant to take that awkward break.

My experience has shown me that too often the person on the other end is scared looking stupid, and that without something for them to “grasp” in the verbal discourse they resort to Mark Twain’s old advice that keeping silent is the wisest thing to do. As another counter example consider meetings, where it’s often the person who talks the most who’s given credit for being the expert.

I saw this illustrated clearly while working at a tradeshow last week. My instinct was to give a quick pitch and then answer questions to help explore their understanding. However, the recipient of my “wisdom” wasn’t certain how to continue the conversation and had I not continued with “trivialities” they would have left with no continued interest beyond a “thanks”.

I’m certainly not advocating a dialog of dysentery, however I believe there’s a bit of human psychology that’s at play here which people “elevator presenters” overlook;

• People are far more likely to forgive you for telling them something they know then for making them feel like idiots.
• There’s also a level of repetition required for people to intuit and internalize information. Repeating information through variation is a powerful tactic shunned in the 60 second pitch.
• Even if the person on the other end has already been told “this is fast” saying “the obvious” is a chance for them to judge your passion and authenticity.

That’s just a start, but I think there’s many reasons why you should take as long as you’ve got, to say as much as you can. Just as Web 2.0 focuses on being “feature stingy” rather then “feature rich” the new 2.0 way to pitch your plan is in through a conversation, not a soundbight.

You clearly need to think out how to say what you want to say, this is no excuse to not prepare. However, thin-slicing aside, no matter what power tie you’re wearing, there’s too much competition for you to expect people to get hooked by 60 seconds of information.

6 weeks! Wow, yes it’s really been that long since I started reading Programming Collective Intelligence and last posted here.

A lot has happened during that time, my wife got a new job and because of that we moved. We’re both happy about the chance to “evolve” and I think it’s going to enable a lot of opportunities. But clearly there’s been many things going on as a result. I’ve been lucky in being able to continue in my current job and am “just” transitioning to a remote employee working full time out of a home office.

I really like having a traditional office with people to “work with” (whether it’s directly or indirectly) but I’m actually enjoying the work at home (WAH) aspect too. Long term I want to manage IT professionals and I believe that will inherently entail remote employees, so I think the chance to be one for a while will garner me a lot of experience and understanding.

I’m also excited about being nearby some fantastic friends, whom I’ve known for a very long time, although it means “trading” the fantastic “local” friends. I don’t ever believe you have to “play favorites” with friends, I’ve certainly got enough love to go around, and it’s exciting to be “forced” to use social technologies to keep up with the ones I’m leaving behind and also to also use those tools in my new location as well.

This should also signal a return to “projecting” for me, which is another event I’m particularly excited about. It’s not all roses though, I can’t remember the PW on my wireless router, my office is still a mess with boxes everywhere and my home server was DoA.So it’s going to mean a technology upgrade (and I need to buy my wife a new computer too) and a lot of threads to tidy up but in the end I really feel positive about the shift.

Hopefully you’ve not all forgotten about me and you’ll forgive my absence. I hope I perhaps just sat idle in your RSS feeds and you didn’t feel the need to purge me because of the silence.

j

As the year draws to a close, I’ve been busy trying to complete multiple projects concurrently. However, a few months ago I purchased an iPhone and it’s proven to be very effective at productively filling the “in between” time.

I only owned an nano previously and never used it for much beyond the gym. However, with the iPhone I have been able to watch many interesting presentations such as the Google Tech Talks or listen to Standard lectures on iTunes.

Two of the more interesting sessions have been Dan Pritchett on the Architecture at eBay and Cuong Do
Cuong on the amazing scalability efforts of YouTube.

In the mornings, I wake up early and read web articles at home before work. Yesterday, I stumbled across the blog of Nati Shalom of GigaSpaces, in particular his summary of the Qcon conference. I had never heard of Qcon before but a quick look reveals a track list like an enterprise CV.

• Architecture Quality – Modifiability, Product Lines, Latency, Performance and Scalability, Architecture
  Patterns
• Banking Architectures – Real time, STP, Messaging, AMQP, SEPA, MiFID, Front office
• Connecting SOA and the Web: How much REST do we need? – REST & SOA, Internet Scale Integration, REST & WS Myths
• …

This reminded me of another convention I recently became aware of, O’Reilly’s first ever Money:Tech converence.

I can honestly summarize the work I’m a part of by saying we make IT infrastructures like these or bigger, happen.

The good news is that I don’t manage these architectures long term or on a day to day basis. Primarily, I’m part of a team that designs (pen and paper exercise), builds (install and configure a proof of concept) or tests (benchmark) environments that other businesses will use, and maintain, in their production environments.

Although there are feedback loops, the bad news is I sometimes feel out of sync with reality, and a touch ADD since I’m moving between architectures and technologies so rapidly. However, the more difficult problem is that I often work twice as hard to make sure a “thought exercise”, which someone’s going to use for their business, will be what is needed even, or perhaps especially, when they’re not sure what those needs are.

Although my company has plenty of internal conferences, it’s pretty safe to assume that what I do doesn’t make the tracks at most of these external conferences. It’s kind of like the difference between gyms and country clubs, you don’t hear much about the latter but they’re out there.

It’s probably also certain that what I do will never serve you a funny spoof or some video of a cute boy/girl booty dancing, but I work for institutions that house your money or your medical records and it’s a safe bet that what it lacks in glamor it makes up for in success.

While we’re not as vocal about what we do as eBay or YouTube, I feel confidant that our clients haven’t endured the endless cycle of sleepless nights of the YouTube team (watch the video), or suffered the numerous downtime issues for which eBay become known.

Maybe we should make a bigger effort to be present at these conferences, I’d like to believe I could effect that change. I’ve learned a lot just by watching the after effects, and I believe sharing with the same community would make us all more successful.

Monk at work has another great post about the CrossFit motto; “General Physical Preparedness”. It’s a style of physical training that Adam relates to work, and continual improvement. Something he terms “General Work Preparedness” with admonishment to “Generalize, not specialize” because “specialization has its price”.
I think it’s similar to a discussion I had with a college of mine regarding the difference between “specialists” and “generalists”. Even though I’m not a fan of the terms, when I saw the graphic it was actually inspiring to me.

In my work we have “IT Architects” and “IT Specialists” and it’s tempting to equate Architect to Generalist and draw a similar connection for Specialist. However, I think that’s more a fallacy enforced by English rather then a realistic comparison.

It seems entirely realistic to be that there might be someone who specializes in Linux but who can architect a complex multi-platform solution. Or if that seems too contrived consider an architect who’s entire world has been the mainframe.

A better conclusion from this discussion, but by no means the end of the discussion, would be to consider the different approaches that a Generalist and Specialist bring toward problem solving, and not the specific subject matter depth.

When you talk with a colleague do they speak in “high level” abstract concepts, or do they attempt to convey vagaries with with tangible, though perhaps not entirely accurate, examples. I believe a generalist approach tends to paint in broad brush strokes, where as specialists attempt to make things more tangible.

We all have strengths and affinities but as Adam says, “specialization” (in this case too much of one approach) has a price. I read somewhere today that successful entrepreneurs are individuals who can be both creative (sales, marketing, innovation, design…) and disciplined (operations, finance, paying bills, …).

Maybe one of those behaviors comes more readily then the other and maybe you don’t aspire to run your own business, but you must still represent this personal growth in your career.

So what are you training for in your career? Currently in my life I can design, implement and manage IT Infrastructure. Just like with GPP I don’t know what I’ll need those skills for but if I need them at least I know I won’t throw out my back.