Another Piece of Urban Sculpture

I kind of like this one as well.
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Anderson Reservoir, Santa Cruz Mountains

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The Scent of Rain

I woke up this morning, took a shower, made a bowl of oatmeal, sliced up a blueberry muffin and toasted it for breakfast.*  I watched a few segments of the morning news, none of which managed to stick within my memory, then I packed up to head for work.  I opened the door to the stairwell leading down and was immediately struck by the rich scent of rain.  That is one of the essential scents of spring. Along with it I love the atmospheric feeling of impending rain.  My commute into work was smooth, with the exception of one car who stopped on an on-ramp, having lost their nerve when it came to merging with the flow of traffic. I arrived at the office, parked, and got out of the car to walk across the parking lot.  The scent of rain still lingered and there were incidental tiny drops spattering off everything, including me, but the wind had kicked up and several strong gusts buffeted me around as I crossed to the building.  It is a good day to be working inside.  I feel productive as this morning begins, so let us see if that productivity manages to ride with me through the day.

Dreaming Zephyrs

I am back from a walk at lunch and thought I would tell you about a strange little dream I had last night.  I dreamt that I was in some sort of corporate meeting with several hundred other people.  The presentation was very boring, so the speakers were losing people in droves - to the point where people were actually simply standing up and walking out en masse. I stayed until the end of the presentation, mostly from courtesy, since in the dream I was sitting in the back of the meeting and daydreaming. Which, uh, is frighteningly like many a real meeting I have gone to, with the exception that usually most people have perfected the blank-corporate-meeting-stare, so they don't actually walk out. After the meeting wrapped up I went out to catch a bus home.  The first bus I caught was a giant, but overcrowded, double-decker bus.  I was wedged in near the top of the stairs with no room to spare, next to a real life friend of mine.  We had a pleasant conversation as we headed home.  We both live near each other, so we were planning on making the same connection to a smaller bus.  As we went over a bridge I could look out over the city into a storm tossed sky where many small figures, like people, were riding about over the city on zephyrs of wind caused by the impending storm, swirling around and around.  That is where the dream ended.  All in all it was a strange, but cool dream.

The Simplest of Things

I was wrapping up the evening here and I thought I would take a few minutes tonight and write about the simplest of things. Human contact is an amazing thing, whatever form that contact takes. T.R. has been working the last two weeks and traveling, so our contact has been limited to intermittent texts, a few email, and the occasional stolen phone call. (We're used to it, since both of us have jobs that, though different, sometimes require high focus and a high commitment of time.) When we are in these circumstances I am constantly amazed at how much I come to cherish just a simple incidental phone call, her words, her voice, her laugh, her thoughts. The simplest of things and the most astounding of things. So, if you have a moment, where ever you are, whatever you are doing - take it and call someone you love. You'll never regret it. That is my thought for the night, as I wind the evening down and get ready to slip into bed.

I finished reading Dean Koontz's "Breathless" and I have to say - though I loved Merlin, Riddle, and Puzzle - it tapered out at the end and ultimately didn't deliver for me. I followed it up however with an absolute page turner that has me laughing out loud in the middle of the night - Christopher Moore's "Bite Me: A Love Story", which is the sequel to "You Suck". I love Christopher Moore and he has never failed to pull round after round of laughter out of me - and in Bite Me - I love Chet the Vampire Cat. Chet rocks!

So, with Love, Voices and Vampire Cats, let me call it a night. Good night!

Strip The Day of Its Clutter

Strip the day of its clutter
Clear away the dust and debris
The tiny broken pieces of other days
Sweep them up and consign them
To the bins of discarded memories
Set down the weighted burdens
Still carried though reason is lost
Then stop and close your eyes
Breathe deeply of the fresh air
Smell all the green scents of spring
Set aside that last chill of winter
All things are reborn here and now
That includes you and all your branches
Renewed, emboldened, let them turn
Let them turn toward the sun
Strip the day of its clutter

What A Rough Patch Of Road

What a rough patch of road I have been on. When I find myself on a rough patch of road I tend to strip life down to the essentials and just keep moving forward. That is basically what I’ve done for the last six months.  It seems strange as I continue down the path of healing each successive week takes me closer and closer to the point of being healed.  I am still not entirely there yet and I have learned that I really cannot tell you how much farther down the road I have to go.  But, each successive week I feel better and better and it is only in retrospect, in comparison to the week before, that I realize how much better I feel.  Let me tell you, getting a toe amputated is certainly a traumatic event and it has awakened in me a far greater empathy for those people who are going through far greater trauma than I. It feels good to be feeling good though. That in and of itself is one of the simple miracles of life.

 

Is It Art?

Sculpture at Moffett Park Towers - personally, after careful contemplation, I like it.
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The Theory of Bright Lines

 

Over the last decade or so I have formulated a pragmatic approach to management that I call the theory of bright lines. I have come to believe that the best managers draw "bright lines" from their employees. By a bright line I mean they clearly define what tasks need to be done, the process for doing those tasks, and the reasons why those tasks need to be done. The vast majority of employees want to do well - I would even go so far as to say that the vast majority of people in the working world need to do well - need at a very deep psychological level that has do with the need to have the tribe acclaim the value of the individual.

 

Where employees fail they fail in one of two simple areas. 

 

First, there is innocent failure - this occurs when the individual crosses one of the lines (they either do something they should not or fail to do something they should) because the line is vague and not well defined.  When this type of failure happens it reflects poorly on both the leadership and the individual.  When this type of failure occurs for the most part both the leader and the individual can be corrected with training and instruction (with the further definition of the bright lines). 

 

The second type of failure is a willful failure - where the individual deliberately crosses one of the lines.  There are, of course, many motivations for this particular action or series of actions - but ultimately it comes down to a deliberate act of will on the part of the employee.  When this happens there is only one circumstance where this behavior is acceptable and that is the circumstance where the employee sincerely believes that the line is bright line is drawn incorrectly and is attempting to demonstrate the correct placement of the line.  Under those circumstances crossing that bright line is an act of innovation and courage - and if right - should be rewarded not punishment. In all other circumstances the sanction should be swift and fair, up to and including termination.

 

Over the years I have also come to believe in the value of "hire quick, fire quick".  I think that when you are hiring people you really can't tell with any certainty how a person is going to work out in a position, so what you do is assemble your list of qualified candidates and from that list, simply pick the one who appears to be best qualified and move them into position - and then, either they work out (in which case you saved money by shortening the hire cycle) or they don't, in which case you let them go - and you let them go as soon as you believe they won't work out.  I have come to this conclusion after years of watching other managers skirt around sub-par employees who do nothing but drag a department down - productivity wise and morale wise.

Metaphoric Wednesday

Well, I am starting behind the eight ball today.  The morning was a bit chaotic and it took me a while to get settled in here at the office. With a combination of training and meetings over the last two days I am running an email deficit today – I’ve got a stack of things in the “action required” folder – so I reckon most of the day will be spent trying to make some headway against that tide.  (I seem to be obsessed with metaphors today).