Just the ball is moving

I was tempted to drop this post into the 'Wisdom of Jeff Van Gundy' series, but since JVG didn't actually relate the following observation I am going to drop, let's just call this the (unofficial) start of a new series titled 'The Wisdom of Martina Navratilova'.

Tennis legend Martina was doing the TV commentary of a recent French Open match I was half-watching when one of the players missed an easy volley at the net. The slow-motion replay showed he had (slightly) looked up from the ball coming to his racket, and seemed to look over the net to the spot where he was aiming the shot.

Here's what Martina said (more or less), after the missed shot and replay:

He looked where he was going to hit the ball, and that is such a common mistake for regular players, club players, and even the professionals. Of course you want to see where you are going to hit the ball, but the problem is you stop seeing the ball. The court is not moving, just the ball is moving. You have to watch the ball, and that is such an easy mistake to make.

Fantastic observation from Martina, (who was always my choice before Evert by the way), about not only the importance of concentration, but the need to focus on what really matters, and to let go of the things that are not fundamental or important to what you are trying to accomplish.

It's kind of a different spin on the old classic advice to focus on the things you can control and not on the ones you can't. In tennis, you need to focus on the very thing you can't control, i.e. the ball, and not spend time on the other thing you also can't control, the court, but the one you can't impact.

You may not always get the outcome you like, but you can at least try and influence the ball, so you'd better concentrate on that.

The same idea is likely applicable in many other contexts as well. It makes no sense to fixate on the things that we not only can't control, but we have no ability to change.

I'm comfortable not knowing

Note: Re-running a post from the archive, not (completely) because I didn't have time to write anything this weekend, but rather the very thing I wanted to write about sounded so familiar to me that I had in fact written about it before. Hope you enjoy...

About a thousand years ago I was a newbie consultant working for a large, (actually quite large), implementation services arm of a equally large software company. As the software products that our consulting and implementation services group were responsible for implementing numbered in the dozens (if not more), and they were each one reasonably complex technologies, the company enrolled all newly hired implementation consultants in an extensive 8-week training program that was affectionately known as 'bootcamp'.

The bootcamp consisted of 8 hour days, for 8 weeks, taking all of the new consultants through the details and inner workings of the most commonly purchased of the company's applications, giving us a reasonable facsimile of 'real-world' problems that needed to be solved via case studies, and took us through what life as a traveling software consultant was actually all about. Aside - the job and lifestyle was equally better and worse than we all anticipated, but that is a topic for another time.

But even over an 8-week period, the amount of technical, functional, business, process, and project management material that was presented to us was immense and fast-paced, and truly, there was almost no way to actually remember I'd estimate more than about half of it. The rest, and certainly the more important parts of the knowledge needed to become a good consultant would take more time to acquire, and work in the field with real customers to reinforce.

All of this setup is to get to the point of this post. I don't really remember anything specifically from the content of the 8-week training bootcamp save for one sentence that was uttered not from one of the excellent instructors or experienced consultants that led our training, but rather from one of my fellow bootcampers.

At the end of a long week of intensive work on some complex application and technology concepts, our instructor was making a final point about some detail or another, and she noticed a look of confusion on the face of a student in the front of the class. She paused, explained the point once more, and then asked him point blank, "Do you understand what I mean by configuring setting ABC in order to allow the customer to do XYZ?" , (the specifics don't matter, and I don't remember what they were anyway).

The student thought about the question for a second then replied, "No, I really don't understand. But I'm comfortable not knowing."

The instructor was a little taken aback, tried to re-state the concept, and hammer it home so that it clicked with the student, but she missed the real point of his response. It was not that he didn't care about understanding the point she was making, or that he would never understand it, but rather in that setting, with that specific point competing with about 3,000 other ones we'd all been exposed to in the last few weeks, that is was ok to not understand. He was comfortable (his word), with his ability to access reference material, draw on his network of colleagues, do some of his own testing, etc. in order to understand the key point when confronted with the problem in the future.

He was comfortable not knowing because he was comfortable in his ability to think about the problem, access relevant resources, and apply what he'd learned more generally in order to solve this specific problem. He didn't need to know everything, Heck, no one needs to know everything.

I like people that don't claim to have all the answers. I especially like people that are willing to admit that they don't have all the answers, but know how to find them. 

And are comfortable with that.

Nothing but our own fear

I was at the Globoforce WorkHuman Conference earlier in the week, and one of the more interesting aspects of this conference from the many that I attend in the course of the year is Globoforce's willingness to showcase speakers and topics that are not necessarily 'on the nose' with their specific set of technologies and solutions.

Most conference, especially vendor user conferences, tend to be super-focused on product - what's happening with the product, what new features are being developed, which companies are adopting the product, how can you learn to use the product better - you get the idea. And that makes perfect sense for vendor user conferences since the one unifying element that generally is the purpose and the binder for the event itself is the actual product. No products, no users, no user conferences. Pretty simple.

And while there was certainly some of that product related content at the Globoforce event, it did not seem at all like the primary reason for the event, and the driver for most attendees to take the time to be there. Globoforce and the community of folks at the event did (mostly) seem to be there for a more general, conceptual, and different reason - the idea of making work more 'human.'

What can make, or should make work more 'human' is at the same time a simple and kind of complex topic, (and not the same for everyone). I wrote about my ideas on this a couple of weeks back, so I won't go into them again here. But by making this non-product centric concept the central theme of your user conference, it frees up the organizers to make some interesting choices in terms of speakers and topics.

For me, one of the highlights of the event was a wide ranging Q and A session with the legendary actor Michael J. Fox. In the Q and A, Fox shared really openly and passionately several stories from his long acting career as well as his well-known and continuing battle with Parkinson's disease.

The conversation was full of gems, (like Fox lost out to Matthew Broderick for the lead role in one of my favorite films, 'War Games'), but the below quote, (which I tweeted of course, because that is what you do), was for me the idea that I am pretty sure I won't soon (if ever) forget.   

'When people look into my eyes they don't see fear. They see their own fear reflected back at them.' @realmikefox #WorkHuman

— Steve Boese (@SteveBoese) May 11, 2016

For some context, Fox was asked about if was ever scared or afraid of his condition and the ongoing battle with Parkinson's when he made the observation about fear - his lack of fear and the fear he senses others see when they talk with him about his condition.

This observation also reminded me of my single favorite Star Wars quote. Yes it is from Yoda, and no it's not the worn out 'There is no try' line.

The one I am thinking of is from The Empire Strikes Back from the part of the film when Luke is on Dagobah to train with Yoda and learn about the Force. 

Here's the setup and the line from Yoda (thanks IMBD).

Luke: There's something not right here... I feel cold. Death.

Yoda: [points to a cave opening beneath a large tree] That place... is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.

Luke: What's in there?

Yoda: Only what you take with you.

The 'fear' Michael J. Fox talked about was our fear, not his.

The 'evil' in the dark side cave wasn't really in there, rather it is carried in there by the seeker him or herself.

I think we often forget that most of our fears are within us. Not a product of some scary, external circumstance.

We choose what we see. We choose what we carry with us into that cave.

And what is really remarkable that what led me to think about these things for the last two days was something I heard at an HR conference.

Have a great weekend.

"I welcome their contempt"

The USA's 2016 presidential nomination contests have been nothing short of incredible.

It doesn't matter your particular political affiliation, or philosophy, or world view - there has been something for everyone to love or hate or be embarrassed by, seemingly every week. And if you are someone that doesn't care at all about politics, you still would have to admit that the campaigns have at least been amusing theater.

I don't normally, (ever, I think), write about politics, and this post is not really about politics in the classic sense, but rather is inspired by a recent quote from one of the major candidates still left standing - Uncle Bernie Sanders.

I just want to share the quote, and a tiny bit of context and then I am out for the weekend.

Here's Bernie, (citation to Business Insider)

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said on Wednesday that he welcomed a spat with several high-profile American CEOs who criticized his rhetoric.

Sanders slammed Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt over their recent criticism of his populist economic agenda.

"I don't want the support of McAdam, Immelt and their friends in the billionaire class. I welcome their contempt," Sanders tweeted on Wednesday afternoon.

None of the details of Sanders' plans or the agendas of McAdam or Immelt matter to the point I care about and why I wanted to post about this which is this: You are defined as a person and as a professional and leader by your enemies as much as by your allies and friends.

Sanders is thrilled that titans of industfy like Immelt are speaking out against him and his plans. These are exactly the kinds of enemies Sanders wants to make as he pushes his populist, stand-up-for-the-working-man rhetoric.

Sometimes you seek out enemies, sometimes you just make some - either way they speak volumes about who you are.

I think you do want some enemies. That means you stand for something. Just make sure you have the right enemies.

And make sure you know who they are too.

Have a great weekend!

Young single people, guys in their 50s, and not much in between

Back 159 years ago when I worked on my first major IT project team doing an an old-school ERP implementation one thing about the composition of the 25 or so person project team was pretty striking.  The team itself was sourced from a few places - regular full-time staff of the client that was funding the project, several implementation experts from the software solution provider, a few technical consultants from one of the Big 4 (I think it was still Big 6 back then) consultancies, and finally three or four independent contractors taking full advantage of the 'gig economy' before that was a thing. So about 25 or so folks, it was a pretty large project with a mix of subject matter experts, software developers, QA and testing people, and project manager types.

But what was interesting, (and what would turn out to be not at all uncommon I would learn), was that there were almost no members of the team between the ages of say 30 and about 50, otherwise known as 'prime' working years for most folks.

That diverse, (we had folks from at least 10 countries on the project), and large project team was almost completely devoid of people in what would be the classic working and parenting years, say about 30 to about 50. There were definitely no women in that age range on the project, and there may have been one or two men (at most), that were parents of kids they still had some level of responsibility to care for.

One of the 'veteran' guys from the Big 6 firm that was more or less running the project summed it up for me about midway through the project.  He said something to the effect that (at least at that time), IT consulting and big enterprise technology project work was either a game for young people who have not settled down and have no spouses/kids to worry about, or older guys, (and it was almost always guys), whose kids were grown up and either moved out or at least were old enough that their Dad could get away with being on the road 200 nights a year.

Apart from the technical skills needed to succeed on a project like that, there were also the personal stresses and demands that having the kind of job was likely to put on you and any family/friends/pets that you may have had. You were more or less on the road, traveling to the project site Monday - Friday, week after week, month after month until the project was over. At which point you'd maybe get a little bit of downtime and then start the cycle and lifestyle again with a new client/project. I did this kind of work for a long time, what made me discontinue this and move to something more stable, (and with far less travel), was becoming a parent some 15 years or so ago.

What's the point of this trip down memory lane?

I caught this piece, a profile of Facebook's Maxine Williams, the relatively new person in charge of diversity initiatives at the company, where the interviewer was pressing her and Facebook to try and explain their efforts in promoting a more diverse workforce, and their relative successes and failures in this regard. it is a pretty interesting piece, and I recommend giving it a read.

But after reading it, and thinking about these issues a bit, I was reminded of that 20 year-old project team, and how the nature of the work, and the nature of how (at least back then), most people tried to live their lives, that would have made 'generational' diversity, (is that even a thing?), extremely difficult, if not impossible to achieve. It would have been really tough to find very many mid-career parents willing to sign up for the demands of those jobs, so what we ended up with was a group of folks that had little to no problems with being away from home all the time. That is just how it worked out and what made sense for the workers, the client, and the project itself.

The closing point of all this? Tip O'Neill said that 'All politics is local.' John Sumser has said that all recruiting is local. I kind of think that sometimes we need to think about that when also thinking about diversity and workforce composition in that manner as well. Not every type of job or project is going to easily lend itself to a natural, blended, and widely diverse collection of people willing , able, and capable of performing said jobs.

If one of the goals of a consulting company that did projects like the one I described above had it as a goal to become more diverse and balanced across generations, it would have taken some pretty significant shifts in how work was organized, how client demands and expectations were managed, and how individual consultants were evaluated and rewarded. And that would have been a much a bigger set of issues than just trying to recruit or retain a few more people that were in their early 40s.  

Maybe diversity, however you define it, is only partially, and maybe even a small part overall, of a recruiting problem, and is more influenced by how, where, and when the work gets done than by where you run your job ads or the campuses where you recruit.