The Fire Within

There is an old saying in business, the customer is always right. Ask anyone in business though and you know the customer in fact is not always right. The customer wants what they want, but that doesn't make them right.  Since that saying doesn't work people have tried to come up with ways of saying the customer isn't always right. A number of years ago I heard someone giving a talk and they said the customer isn't always right, but the customer is always true. What they tell you is the truth, or at least what they want you to believe is the truth. I've been in a number of interactions with customers where they state something wrong. It isn't always a lie, sometimes people forget. It might not be intentional but it isn't the truth so that can't be right either. At the end of the day the fact remains the customer wants what the customer wants, and if they don't get what they want they can always take their business elsewhere. Does that mean a business...

If you've been a reader for some time you know how I love the idea of dichotomies. Things like how often our greatest strengths can also be our greatest weakness. Recently I've been thinking about emotions at work and how they are both a positive and a negative. There are many sayings about not taking things personally and getting upset. "It's not personal, it's just business." What a load of crap. Tell it that it isn't personal to the small business owner when the big box moves into town. Tell that to the person that just got passed over for a promotion they've been busting their tail for. It is virtually impossible to not react emotionally in those situations. In my career I've had every emotional state. I've felt anger, joy, jealousy, boredom, happiness, pride, ambition, fear, surprise and disgust.  It is good to be passionate, but you can't become so overzealous that bumps in the road consume you. You can't be so frustrated that you...

I read an interesting fact posted by @chrisderose  about the show The Wonder Years , which premiered 33 years ago in 1988. The show depicted events 20 years earlier in 1968. A similar show today would be set in 2001. His tweet about this blew up because it is crazy to think about. I, like so many, remember watching that show growing up and it seemed like it was based on events from so long ago. It makes me wonder, did my parents recall those events as easily as I can recall events like 9/11 or the hanging chad of Bush vs. Gore?  I was thinking of music the other day when I realized I was listening to the "oldies" station playing music from the 80's and 90's. I remember growing up listing to music from the 50's and 60's, I spent some time searching for a station that played that era of music and I couldn't find one near me. You could find a channel on Spotify or Amazon Music of course, Alexa would serve it up for me no problem.  Things change as does our pe...

In my work there is a concept called the project management triangle, it deals with four main qualities you try to balance. Time - The total number of hours it is going to take and over how many days/weeks/months/years. Cost - What it is going to cost in dollars and cents Scope - What features are included Quality - How well put together the product is. There is a tradeoff with this so we typically say as the client you can pick two, but then those doing the work get to set the other two. If you want something fast and cheap, it is not going to have a lot of features and it likely won't be the best quality. If you want something fully featured really fast, it is going to cost you. It is a pretty simple concept, but not one many people probably talk about except maybe a handful of times in their life. I work in software development and it is a common conversation had almost every day. The interesting thing about it though is how much it applies to almost any area of our lives. If yo...

Have you ever realized how much food fits in your refrigerator? It is a lot. I needed to make a repair on our fridge that required defrosting it as there was a heat component that needed to be replaced. For the few days leading up to it my family was lectured how they had to eat something from the fridge any time they were hungry. The day before I was going to start the repair, for lunch I did my part by having the left over chili, a small amount of mac & cheese, a single taco with the left over meet from taco night, a container of yogurt and a slice of cheesecake for dessert. It was my own customized 5 course meal. So I did my part and our fridge had never been so empty. I then gathered every cooler I could find in my house, used all of the ice and ice packs I could find and used freeze pops to help keep things cold knowing they would refreeze just fine.  I was amazed at how much stuff we still had in the fridge even being as empty as it had ever been in the last decade. All I...

In these crazy times I've started hearing stories about how people are becoming burned out. It seems like as many companies are struggling and laying people off, those that are surviving, or even thriving are hesitant to add staff because the future is so unknown. The financial outlook of their company is stable at the moment but every day feels like the bottom could drop.  If you are an employee, you know what is going on in the world. Many people are losing their jobs or taking pay cuts with unemployment rates still very high. You don't want to rock the boat. You like your job and you certainly don't want to lose it so a little more work expected of you is accepted based on the comparison to the alternative.  As I was thinking about burnout and doing some reading I came across this quote by Marissa Mayer where she said burnout is really about resentment. How right that is. If you've ever felt burned out, or having that feeling of wanting to find something new or diffe...

It is easy to get lost in our thoughts. Dwell on a topic, over-analyze it, and let it consume our thoughts. While there is some respect for focus, dwelling on things we shouldn't can be harmful. The ability to control our thoughts, control what we are thinking about can go a long way to making us happier and more productive. Controlling your thoughts is harder than it seems. The more we tell ourselves to stop thinking about something, it causes us to think about it more. You are focused on what you don't want to think about, and you get caught in a spiral. The only way to break out of it is to find something to take your mind off of things. Find a different task to work on. Take up a hobby that focuses your mind. Pick up a book or watch a movie. All great things to cause you to escape what you were thinking about. When we dwell on an item it causes a level of stress that none of us need. We need to find ways to recognize when we are dwelling on something we don't need to so...

My family recently took a vacation to the Black Hills in South Dakota. It is an area with lots to see and do, beautiful scenery and a rich history. Of course there is Mount Rushmore, which is an inspiring place if you are interested in the founding fathers of our country. Then there is Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok was killed and is burred.  The real history which ties these two things together, what nobody wants to talk about, is how we stole this land from the Native Americans for whom the Black Hills are sacred. There was a treaty signed by the US Government that defined the borders and gave the Black Hills to the Sioux tribe in 1868. However the discovery of gold less than 10 years later caused the US to break the treaty and push them from their land. Around 50 years later, an idea was formed to carve a statue into a mountain to promote tourism in the area. It worked, as I spend my money to support these elements.  I can't help but wonder what our nation would look like...

When it comes to problem solving, the challenge is we generally start from a place of what we know. Perhaps we have been doing something in our company for a long time but now growth or some other change has increased the demand on the old way of doing it. Or maybe you've been able to deal with your kid in a certain way but then they get older and their friends change and they have different ideas that has to change how you interact with them.  We deal with problems and most of the time problems come about from some sort of change. If things happened the same way it would be easy to figure out how to manage your problems, find solutions that fix them and get things humming. The hard part is just when you think you have a problem solved something else changes and a new problem comes along. My wife and I have joked for years how every time we start to feel like we have this parenting thing down our kids grow out of one stage and into another. I mean you can try to parent a teenager t...

With my job there are at times late night calls to execute a change to minimize the impact if something goes wrong. One of the benefits of this is you can learn some new and interesting things as you are talking with people outside of normal hours. This week I learned about something called the Observer Effect which is my new favorite concept. The Observer Effect is a theory in physics that by simply observing a phenomenon you are impacting the phenomenon. A great example of this is checking the air pressure in your tires. When you check the air pressure you let some of the air out in the process to get the reading of the air pressure. It is a miniscule amount but it is there none the less.  If you want to see this effect in real life, pick a friend or spouse and observe them. Don't say anything, just sit down with a pen and paper and take notes about what you observe. I guarantee that you you will have an impact on them, simply from your observation.  The reason I love this c...

To be a good team member, you have to adapt and be willing to help the team succeed. Sometimes it means doing things which aren't your strengths, or even things you don't like to do. If there is a process in place everyone else follows it is important as a team to follow that process. It is also important for you to remember you are a unique individual. You have different strengths and talents. You might have a different approach than others do. You see this a lot in sports where someone has an unusual stance or throwing style. Everything says it shouldn't work but it is effective for them. The same is true for you, you bring a unique view of things.  You also may see something that is a problem that others don't. Even if you follow the policy you know you are still going to have an issue. You need to be able to speak up, take a stand when something is not right. It is one of many dichotomies in life. You need to be a good team mate, but you also need to be the best ver...

I will admit, there are things around the house which aren't as apparent to me as they should be. My wife used to get upset because I was oblivious to things that needed to be done. I'm sure I'm not much better but I do know I try to be observant. Now when I go to put my dirty dishes in the sink and there isn't room, I can usually recognize I should load the dishwasher. I knew that I wanted to make a change, and that didn't just magically happen. I had to choose to be more observant. I had to notice things lying around that needed to be picked up. I wouldn't act unless I was able to notice that something needed to be done. Observation is the key. We can't change anything if we don't open our eyes to see it. If we aren't looking for the items that we want to change we are not going to see them. That doesn't mean we are ignoring it either. Ignoring something means you are aware of it but you are refusing to acknowledge. Sometimes it just doesn'...

Every month that goes by in the year 2020 we continue to think that the world can't possibly get any more screwed up. We need to all stop saying that because there is always something worse. In May it got worse when we all saw the senseless murder of George Floyd. I was sickened, outraged, and scared. I knew what the state of the country was. I was scared because I knew what the reaction was going to be and we've all seen how that has played out. I never would have thought I would have to be teaching my children about the difference between protesting, rioting and looting. The words come up as we try to explain why the black community is angry and why they have the right to be. Explaining how this problem does not have a simple solution. How there are people that are trying to manipulate the narrative to make us think something other than the truth. How there isn't one problem to solve but a complex web of interconnected issues that have been built up over time and contribu...

As we've been in this global shut down for over 2 months now you can tell people are getting restless. We continue to learn more about the disease, how it spreads and how deadly it is, yet we still have much to learn. We don't have a vaccine and won't have one for at least another year, and then the questions will arise on how much testing has been done and how safe it is. There are doubts and questions and endless opinions (oh so many opinions) of people who aren't experts pointing to articles by theoretical experts or actual experts who share their opinions based on what little data they have. Too much of the information we are being fed is meant to generate fear. The problem that is going on right now is a divide between keeping things shut down for safety and opening things back up to get businesses moving again. The issue is both things are true. The disease is deadly, though not as deadly as once suspected. Just because it isn't as deadly doesn't mean we...

If you are a sports fan you've probably heard about The Last Dance , the documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls currently airing. Anyone who saw Jordan will tell you he is the greatest basketball player to have played the game. That has come under debate recently with many current NBA fans claiming LeBron James is the greatest ever. I'm not hear to debate who is better, what interests me is how much people, especially young people, only know of recent players. It happens in every generation to a degree but I think as time goes by people get less interested in the history of the thing they love. Because of the documentary many people are listing their top 5 or top 10 players of all time, and they are listing Jordan but they are leaving out greats of the past. To appreciate LeBron you need to understand what Jordan did. To appreciate Jordan you have to understand what Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell did before him....

I heard recently all you really need every day is 5 minutes of news. In just 5 minutes you can be updated on the key items going on in your community and world. The key is stopping at 5 minutes because the rest in my opinion is propaganda that media tries to drive home and stir up more clicks and viewers. It doesn't matter if you lean right or left, there is a news source that will bend the narrative to fit whatever picture you want to be painted. If you stop at 5 minutes you have a lot more free time every day. If you have time you aren't reading the latest doomsday or conspiracy stories what can you do with your time? We are going to look back at this time and the level of innovation, art, stories and new ideas that come from this time where we are locked inside will be one of the greatest in history. The reason I know this is it has happened before. This pandemic isn't the first plague that has swept over the world. When you look back over history,  during some of th...

Five months ago I wrote a post about propaganda . The whole idea was around how companies, governments, organizations and institutions create propaganda and how we need to be knowledgeable about the methods used. We need to seek the truth. Fast forward to today when we are in the midst of the largest global crisis since World War II. Most of us (90% or more of the world's population) were not alive during that time, we just read about it in history books and learn about it from Steven Spielberg movies. We are living in unprecedented times, dealing with something of this magnitude with access to the information that we do is new territory for us. There are countless, news stories, eyewitness accounts and "facts" shared from people that "know someone" in any number of epicenters around the world. Whatever your view is on the situation, no matter if you believe everything happening is an overreaction, underreaction, or just the right reaction, you can find infor...

Work has been a little crazy for me in 2020 which has cut into my reading time in the evenings of late. I was fortunate however to finish reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know .  I've always been a big fan of Gladwell, his ability to tell stories and make you think is phenomenal. He is a story teller, but rather than writing fiction he takes real stories and can weave them together to present a concept you never realized was something you should think about. This book starts and ends telling the story of the arrest and death of Sandra Bland in 2015, which happened amidst the contentious race relations with police when it was at its peak around this time. Gladwell takes you through court transcripts and recordings of the interaction, to present a different way of looking at the situation. Not trying to prove who was right or wrong, just presenting all of the information that led to the unfortunate e...

I started listing to an interesting podcast call Cautionary Tales. I love listening to good stories where you have an opportunity to learn. One episode really got my attention talking about when the Academy Awards mixed up the winner and announced the wrong movie as Best Picture. It was all about how sometimes you put systems in place to catch an error but they actually cause the problem. In talking about that mistake the speaker talked about Charles Perrow, an author who brought about a concept that explains how sometimes we try so hard to prevent a mistake that we end up causing it. Every time we try to prevent a mistake, we put a process or system in place to catch or prevent the error. But for every process and system we put into place we make the whole endeavor more complex. Where you have more complexity you have more opportunities for failure. Perrow talked about how some systems are vulnerable to catastrophic failure to the point that it is all but inevitable for a failure ...

It has been a tough week for me, putting in more hours than I normally do and working a lot over the weekend. I'm not complaining, it comes with the job and sometimes there is just more work that needs to get done. It isn't a regular occurrence and I really like my job so you do what is needed. What I noticed is how off I felt today. Feeling like I'm forgetting information I shouldn't or just not being able to focus like I normally can. It really shouldn't surprise me though, because my tank was on empty. As I sat down to write this post I looked back through the nuggets I find on the Internet and of course this tweet popped out at me. If we are always available, we aren’t worth much. All of us need down time, think time, rest, time to reflect & pray. We give out of the overflow, not out of the fumes of an empty tank. — Michael Catt (@MichaelCatt) January 16, 2020 It didn't hit me last week when I saved it but I'm not surprised I did based on how ...