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Busy week, much media, and some changes

25 June 2011 in Blogging, Internet, Media, Personal by Stilgherrian | No comments

What a week! I’ve written five articles. Another two are due for Monday. I’ve done my usual Patch Monday podcast. I’ve done five radio appearances on five different topics. I’ve been interviewed for Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, and that’ll appear next week.

I’ve even been interviewed by an anthropologist for his PhD project. I’m talking to a new editor about more writing. And even — this is weird — to a television production company about a TV project.

That all comes after a month or, really, six weeks or more of travel, intense work, intense and deeply personal events and the tightly-tangled ball of stress, depression and anxiety that can trigger. Which it did.

I’m knackered.

And there’s still plenty of work to do and decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.

I mention all this for a variety of reasons…

  • While I do have Weekly Wrap posts, I’ll also do individual posts linking to things like major articles and radio spots. This should make it easier for people to find things they’re interested in, and quite frankly it’s better Google juice. It also gives me more of an opportunity to reflect on each item — like adding a quick personal view to supplement a story that was a straight-news piece.
  • There’s about to be a flurry of small posts as I process the week’s radio spots. Consider that a warning.
  • I wanted to post at least part of the background before more reflective posts started appearing. I haven’t written much from a deeply personal perspective lately — certainly not like the essays that I was doing a couple years back. This is part of the head-clearing process before I return to that.

I write in so many places these days — ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC’s The Drum, even occasionally at places like CRN Australia. And, as I mentioned, there’s probably more to come. That’s all writing for other people.

This here is my place, and it’ll be about writing for me.

No, I’m not sure what form that’ll take.

I’m not sure what it even means.

Do those bullet points flow from the intro? No, not really. But that’s where my head is this morning. I’m sure things will become clearer as the day unfolds.

[Photo: That's me (embiggen) photographed with my webcam just now at Rosella Cottage, the somewhat bigger house that's the "family home" of the owners of Bunjaree Cottages. It isn't normally rented out to punters. I've been here at the cottages alone for a week, and I haven't bothered shaving. I'm staring to look like I did before ’Pong and I shot that short film The Shave back in 2008. It's not a good look.]

“Urgency is poisonous”

21 April 2008 in Business, Human Nature by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

Here’s one for a rainy Monday morning. 37signals’ experimental 4-day working week is going very well.

When I first compared this enlightened approach to people-management with the drive-them-harder style of Jason Calacanis, it triggered a massive debate, and I wrote a follow-up comparing the Calacanis approach to an evil cult. Last week 37signals reckoned that urgency is poisonous.

One thing I’ve come to realize is that urgency is overrated. In fact, I’ve come to believe urgency is poisonous. Urgency may get things done a few days sooner, but what does it cost in morale? Few things burn morale like urgency. Urgency is acidic.

Emergency is the only urgency. Almost anything else can wait a few days. It’s OK. There are exceptions (a trade show, a conference), but those are rare.

When a few days extra turns into a few weeks extra then there’s a problem, but what really has to be done by Friday that can’t wait for Monday or Tuesday? If your deliveries are that critical to the hour or day, maybe you’re setting up false priorities and dangerous expectations.

If you’re a just-in-time provider of industry parts then precise deadlines and deliveries may be required, but in the software industry urgency is self-imposed and morale-busting. If stress is a weed, urgency is the seed. Don’t plant it if you can help it.

I can’t agree more. A client phoned once, all a’fluster about an “emergency”. Before I could think, I blurted out the question, “Why? Whose life is in peril?”

Of course no-one was in danger. This client was operating in crisis mode, as usual: that anti-pattern also known as “firefighting mode”: “Dealing with things only when they become a crisis, with the result that everything becomes a crisis.” I’ve written about that before here and with my colleague Zern Liew.

8 Random Facts about Stilgherrian

15 March 2008 in Blogging, Personal by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Oh, I get it. Social media “guru” Laurel Papworth has to kill time before her Saudi trip gets sorted out. So what does this visionary of society’s future do? She ropes me into a blogging meme. How modern. How avant garde!

How… 2005.

Laurel was tagged three months ago and is only getting to it now. And they’re not even real ropes!

Is that enough slagging-off? Shall I get on with it now?

Actually this will be fun on a Saturday morning. It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these. Here goes…

Read the rest of this entry »

Another brain in my notebook

06 March 2008 in Enmore, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

Photograph of page from notebook, showing very bad sketch of human brain

My notebook is full of references to the human mind.

Once, on a Saturday Night at The Duke last year, it was a written note by a chap who’d only just been released from jail.

This time (pictured) it’s ’Pong explaining certain basic neurological reflexes.

No, it doesn’t say “Eight High Freeze” — whatever that is! — but “Fight Fligh[t] Freeze”. This diagram explains it all, neurochemistry and everything. Uhuh.

I just love the way that sketched explanations only make sense at the precise moment they’re being created.

Maybe I should go back through that notebook…

Scaring the shit out of clients

12 July 2007 in Business, Human Nature, Internet, Transparency by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

It was Oscar Wilde or G B Shaw or — oh, somebody interesting — who, when accused of shocking people, replied to the effect that people should be shocked a good deal more often. Or offended. Anyway, I can’t find the right quote so here’s a different one.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

That’s Wilde.

Yesterday we ruffled a client’s feathers. We were invited to tender for a web development project. Our response was, in essence, “Yeah we’re interested — but not if you’re going to do it that way. We don’t think that’ll work because [reasons]. We strongly recommend doing it [some other way]. Before we go any further, is it cool for us to tender that way, knowing that’s not what you asked for? Oh, and here’s the keys to our intranet, so you can see the dialog which led to this conclusion.”

Bang!

Someone’s worldview was gunned down ruthlessly! Politely, but we did use phrases like “high-risk death march”.

Now I should say that one of us worked with this client for almost a decade and the other has worked with them on two projects in the last year. So our comments were based on some knowledge of the organisation and its needs as well as our own professional opinions. Nevertheless, what we said was shocking.

I’ve always wondered why clear, direct communication is so rare in business. People seem almost afraid to say what they mean. “Don’t upset the client!” So a recommendation like “Process A is dangerous and you should change that immediately or risk almost certain failure” becomes a mealy-mouthed “Is everyone happy with the assumptions relating to Process A?”

All urgency is drained away. The project continues flying serenely towards the looming mountain.

But don’t upset the client.

If your recommendation is for major change, when do you broach the subject? Sign up to the “wrong” concept of the project and then try to change it? Leave it until people have spent more time going down the wrong path, and the deadline is closer? No, something so important should be communicated as soon as possible.

Organisations aren’t used to people speaking quite so directly. When it happens, it’s like a splash of iced water into the face. And sometimes, that splash into alertness is precisely what’s needed.

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