The Tree of Self-Realization for the Corporation

For a while there was a lecture by Keoki Andrus online. It was titled Turning High Potential into High Performance. Unfortuantely it is no longer available. When I asked how to get a copy, I was told that Mr. Andrus is working on a book and the publisher wouldn't allow the lecture to stay up. So we have to wait for the book, which as far as I can find is still not published.

A while back I went looking for the book and ended up finding a quote from Mr. Andrus in Virtual Teams

The biggest thing that can undermine a virtual team is passive aggressive behavior. You send me e-mail, I don't like it. I pretend I didn't get it, and you are damaged with out recourse"

I was looking at Mistrust in the Tree of Self-Defeat today and thinking about how this quote was a corporate example of mistrust and its effects of that on an company. How individual actions lead to corporate wide mistrust and the fruit it produces has some overlap in Alienation and Interpersonal Conflicts, but I think it has some fruits unique to a corportation to. What comes to mind is turnover, lack of productivity (maybe that is Apathy), lower profits, poor customer support.

All this lead me to wonder what the poster might look like for a corporation and not a individual. Alcoholism, drug addictions, and mental illness for example wouldn't be in the left tree. What do you think would be the signs of a healthy corporation?

So how might one person fight back and work to repair the damage caused by corporate mistrust? I think you start with Forgiveness for those who seem to be sources of mistrust.

Designing .Net Class Libraries

Krysztof Cwalina gives a presentation on Designing .Net Class Libraries. Courtesy of Brad
Wow! Three hours of instruction from one of the better class designers out there. Gotta love it when you live in a remote area.

The Tree of Self-Realization

I know the creator of this quite well. I grew up seeing it and I think I have been taught to live by it. From time to time I plan to write about each of the words used on the two trees. They will be my thoughts and not the creators. Hopefully the will do justice to his work.

Coping or Deliberate

A few years ago I listened to Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono on audio cassette. I picked up a used copy recently and have slowly been working my through it.

One of the first concepts Mr. de Bono puts forward is that there are two kinds of thinking.

There is the walking-talking-breathing type of thinking that we do all the time. We answer the telephone. We cross the road. We switch in an dout of routines. We do not need to be concious of which leg follows which when we walk or how to manage our breathing. But there is a different sort of thinking that is for doing better than just routine coping. Everyone can run, but an athlete runs deliberately and is trained for that purpose.

I am no longer a runner, but I can translate this to other things. I cross country ski quite poorly. To improve, I have had to study video footage of world class athletes, read, and practice. Slowly I am gettting better but only by deliberately working on form.

I bike and am better than average at that, but I deliberately pay attention to muscle usage, breathing, drinking, eating and timing.

As a professional, I write software and I see way too many people "coping". They learn one way of doing something and never change. They don't look for alternate ways, sometime worse and others better. Some of the ways you can be more deliberate in software include defensive programming, test-driven-development, refactoring, self analysis for common failures you create, becoming aware of the cost of using libraries and certain activities.

Where can you think deliberately today? Take your eyes off the routine reactionary responses and exercise your brain. It is fun!

A is not I

Well, I joined the group ride on Tuesday. My first real road ride of the year.
Marquette has enough riders to have three groups: A or elite, B above average, and C average. Being the end of March only the really serious riders are what you expect to see show up. I had no illusions. I expected to get dropped, but it is fun to ride and riding with faster people only makes you better.
We left the parking lot at a leasurely pace and I thought I might hang on for a while. But by the time we were a few miles out, I knew it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, at the 5 mile mark warm up was over on the Grove street hill near 492 and I got dropped. Not by a lot, but enough I just couldn't bridge up. After about a mile and a half, someone dropped back and towed me up. I hung on for the next 15 miles or so and then finally chunked out the back for good and soloed the last 8 miles or so.

A good ride, even if I was dropped. It looks like I may not be an A group rider here in Marquette. Maybe I can move up to it over the course of the summer. I'll keep at it.