Off On The Side - Self and Success

I am sitting here in the hotel and I thought I would kill a little space of time by jotting down some thoughts I have concerning success.  You can relax, it is nothing magical, as a matter of fact it is a reinforcement of something thousands of other people have said.  Let me try and see if I can express it succinctly.

Success, however you choose to define it, is a matter of the choices you make.  You can directly influence your attainment of success by consistently making the choices that take you closer to it.  That is pretty straight forward and I think most people would agree with it.  But there is a massive stumbling block that sits right in front of many people and it is that stumbling block they can't find their way around.

I understand how to attain success in regards to any specific goal or outcome - however, I am completely stumped by a single question.  "What do I want to do."  I think a lot of people do not attain the success they want to attain because they don't have an object of focus. They are not stumped by "how to", but rather, they're stumped by "what to".  Now, I admit, that is one heck of a stumbling block.  It is more than just a stumbling block, it is the thing that prevents you from ever getting started.

For me, the answer to that question is "know yourself".  The journey to know yourself is a difficult one, full of strange challenges that arise without warning, but it is not an impossible journey.  I wouldn't even say it is a difficult journey.  It is a journey that you're on whether you want to be on it or not. So relax, take a deep breath, open your eyes and look around you.  The answer is there, you just have to see it.  Or learn to see it.

Teasing Out The Day

Well, let us see what sort of insight I can tease out of the day.

It was a typical Monday in Cloud Cuckoo Land.  Here is one small tribute to the insanity - because of the Thanksgiving Holiday, we have Thursday off. (I am working Friday, but most people are not.) In the first three days of the week, Monday through Wednesday, I would normally be slated to work three nine hour days, for a total of twenty seven work hours. I have twenty one hours of meetings scheduled, not counting incidental and unscheduled meetings.  Consequently, in three days, not counting the over time that I working (today I worked twelve hours), I have six hours to actually accomplish anythings.

UAT continues to move at a high pace, though I am already behind the eight-ball there.  One of the things I need to go is review all of the bugs that have been reported and forward them to the appropriate group for resolution.  Of course, given the amount of time involved, I have not been able to do that. I was hoping to do it this evening, but I ended up spending the time doing a variety of the things I couldn't due during the day due to interruptions and meetings.

Now, on top of the UAT, it looks like I am going to catch another segment of UAT, for another block of the project that some other group screwed up.  I tell you, I am getting tired of being the go to guy for failed program rescues.  I try not to let the sheer insanity of it overwhelm me, but sometimes I really feel like I am the lone voice of reason.

I will share with you something amusing that happened to me the other week.  I was in a meeting with a manager and the manager, by oblique reference, without ever coming out and actually saying it, strongly hinted that I should temper the opinions I deliver and only deliver positive news and if the news was negative, spin it in a positive light. I actually laughed.

I am a fundamentally honest person, and what I mean by that is this - about twenty years ago I made one of those personal vows and that was this - I would always speak the truth to my leaders as best I understood it.  I would not shave, slant, or other color my inputs.  I firmly believe that the truth will set you free - and in the case of business, the truth is what makes one person or group successful and another unsuccessful.I think a huge part of the reason this project is in so much trouble is because various people at various stages, on a continual basis, have not spoke the truth.  This is compounded by the Director, who does not want to hear the truth and generally doesn't seem to care.

It's a challenging environment and I am thankful every day for that stress counseling I went through a few years ago - those skills and techniques have been invaluable.  So, I would strongly urge anyone who is considering stress counseling to go - it is well worth your time and the techniques that you learn are very valuable.

Self-Evaluating On A Failing Project

I had an interesting problem today.  Like many companies ours requires us to provide self-evaluations periodically through the year, as part of our performance review process. I'm not a fan of our process, I find it bureaucratic, unresponsive, and mostly pointless.  Today's task had its own set of challenges. How do you do a self-evaluation on a project that you think is failing?

I started four times and realized each time that I was sliding into a litany of complaints about the project as opposed to an evaluation. One of the difficult tasks in regards to the project is that many of the traditional measurement points are irrelevant. In project work the most common form of measurement is performance against schedule, against the project and process milestones. However, in this case, our project and our process are all over the place.  We're not following any standardized process except, perhaps, in name only.  We've certainly pretty much ignored standard milestones.  So, how do I self-measure my performance?

After a couple of tries I ultimately decided on simply stating things as they were and highlighting the parts I was involved with, then giving some emphasis in regards to the things that were above and beyond my current assignments.  It is a strange thing because, in my view, the overall project is pretty much a horribly run dismal failure - yet on the project there are many people doing solid, professional, creative and imaginary work.  It is the classic incident of succeeding in failure - but, to succeed in failure requires enlightened management, and I have no faith that my upper management is enlightened.