johnmaconline

Reflect on the past year. Revise your practice accordingly.

This is a good personal practice. But it’s also a good organizational practice. 

Unfortunately, organizations can get caught up in formal trickled-down objectives, documentation, and tools. That distracts them from the purpose of the objectives all-together. Quite frankly, its hard (and possibly unfair) to trickle down a business objective to an individual contributor in development or QA.

So instead, the best organizations don’t try to fit square pegs into round holes. They ask different questions of themselves and their people. Regardless of the formal process. 

What went well? What didn’t?
Where were we trying to go? Where are we going?
What helped us? What hurt us?
What do we know now that we didn’t know then?
What have we learned? What do we need to learn?
Do we have the right people? How do we hire the right people?
Are we worldclass? How do we become worldclass? 

Reflect and revise. 

Ever play the game of “Which superpower would you want?”

Flight or invisibility? Strength or speed? X-Ray or laser eyes?

It’s fun to think about and interesting to debate over a beer, but ultimately meaningless. You can’t have any of them. You’re choosing between options that don’t, and won’t ever, exist. 

Decision-making 101 starts with understanding the difference between imaginary and concrete. What real options do you have in front of you right now? 

A job offer is concrete. An HR screening call for your dream job is a maybe. 
A signed contract is real. An exciting discovery call with another is not. 

The future depends on decisions. But only the ones made between real options.  

It’s OK to decide something, and then when one of the what-ifs turns concrete, make a new decision. 

The what-if game is just that — a game. Don’t confuse it with the discipline of deciding. 

It’s freezing and snowy outside my window.

Makes me think of snowballs. Of course, when our kids were kids, snowballs played a large part of a snow day’s activities. Not so much now. Ah, good days.  

There’s the snowball rolling down the hill. It starts small, and at first, you have to push it. It doesn’t move without you. As you roll it, it gathers more snow and picks up mass and momentum. Until, at some point, it has enough mass and momentum to keep rolling on its own. The compound effect. 

There’s the snowball fight. Throw one. Dodge one. Feedback. Sometimes yours hits. Sometimes you miss. Either way, you learn. Adjust and toss again. 

There’s the snowballs that become a snowman. Grow it and shape it until it’s the right piece for its place in the stack. It started as just a snowball, but now it’s something more. A part of the whole. A creation greater than the sum of its parts. 

And finally, snowballs melt. They’re ephemeral. They don’t last forever. If you wait too long, or expose it to the wrong environment, it vanishes. Snowballs have a season.

A snowball is just the start. 

Keep rolling. 

The ultimate difference between the two men was their mood. Custer was never satisfied with where he was. He always aimed to go on the next higher station in his society. He was always in a state of becoming. Crazy Horse accepted the situations he found himself in and aimed only to be a brave and respected Sioux warrior. He was in a state of being. Custer believed that things could be better. Crazy Horse did not.

• Crazy Horse and Custer, Stephen Ambrose 

Which is better? Being or becoming?

We are both. The march of time always puts us in a state of becoming. The present moment always puts us in a state of being. 

You can be dissatisfied or satisfied in either state. 

It’s not about choosing one. It’s an “and,” not an “or.”

It’s about knowing when to move and when to stand still. 

P.S. This is a great book, by the way. Not only interesting history, but  Ambrose does a great job uncovering the contrast between the characters and their cultures. Like so much else in our world, good and bad here are relative, and it’s not that easy. 

Many people, or at least many organizations looking for funds, call this time of the year the season of joy.

It’s easy to be cynical about it, because you know they’re playing on people’s emotions around the holidays. People want to feel joy. Yes, people are more vulnerable. People are stressed. People feel the stuff from their past. 

However, we also have an opportunity. 

We can step in. We can notice. We can ask. We can offer. We can listen. We can hold space. 

People need help. 

So help. 

Many people, or at least many advertisers, call this time of the year the season of giving.

It’s easy to be cynical about it, because you know the advertisers want you to spend money on their stuff. Buy this so you can give it. It’s consumption, materialistic, and quite frankly, bald-faced. It’s not even thinly veiled.

However, we also have an opportunity. 

We can give generosity. We can give connection. We can give hope. We can give time. We can give leadership. We can give love. 

So give.