Scientific Ink

Tag: Work

  • Personality Profile – Considerate Creator

    So, a bunch of us at work took the PersonalDNA online personality test. They seem to do it right, not asking for personal information up front, providing an interesting experience (not too many questions, not totally superficial, sliders, multi-way sliders, 2-D charts).

    The results were interesting, grouping us differently than I might have predicted. Surprisingly, I grouped with our graphic designer (and others) as a “creator.” Now, I’m a project manager, I typically do not “make” much besides status reports and burndown charts on hours and budgets. I hold a little structure/the larger project view, but that doesn’t fit my idea of being a creative person.

    The more I think about it, though, I do have several pastimes that involve making things – photography, gardening (though with all the change the past few summers, my garden is a bit worse for wear), journaling, blogging, knitting. I spend an inordinate amount of my free time making things, and I really resist structure in those activities. For instance, my favorite knitting reference is The Handknitters Design Book (apparently not pictured anywhere online!) which is a technique recipe book. Allison Ellen provides only a few start-to-finish patterns, but she shares lots of information and inspiration on how to assemble your own patterns.

    Hmmmm. Do I need to get a bit more of that creative spirit into my day job?

  • Make it suck less

    So, I did it again. I have spent much of the last two days trying to edit a technical document into something that I can understand and that exceeds my standards for clear and informative writing. I’ve been line editing, I’ve been working on organization, I’ve been pinging subject matter experts for examples and to clarify points that do not come across well to me, I’ve been excising passive voice. Essentially, I’ve become a tech writer again. And I’m struggling. The document is due, I’m not happy with it, and I don’t think I can line edit my way to nirvana.

    I came home tonight frustrated, needing a break from the document, but fretting about the looming deadline. And then, sitting on my yoga mat starting my practice, I realized that I was trying to grope my way through this document towards the perfect document. And, I noticed I was wasting energy beating myself up for not knowing which thread to pull or which angle to pursue to get there.

    The place I used to work had several catchy phrases we used when we were stuck: “make mistakes faster” was one, “make it suck less” was another. They’re intertwined – “make mistakes faster” is an acknowledgement that we’ll make errors and omissions, but we can reduce their impact by conducting shorter project iterations and sharing work with each other more quickly. The spirit of “make it suck less” is to find satisfaction in incremental improvements. Instead of pining for the perfect solution, instead of whining about the lack of time, tools, or creativity to accomplish whatever unrealistic goal, take stock, prioritize the options, and make it as much better as you can.

    Basically, for me, the inverse of “make it suck less” is rampant, soul-throttling perfectionism that gets in the way of doing the little things that add together into the big things. It’s analysis paralysis, endless theorizing, pining for some ideal document/software program/website. It is trying too hard. It is Anne Lamott’s radio station KFKD – the double whammy of self-aggrandizement and self-loathing that gets in the way of getting any actual work done.

    Luckily, if I take a rest, go for a cycle ride, or do yoga, I give myself the space to notice that KFKD is on, I give myself the quiet to remember that that all I can do, all I need to do in this moment, is to “make it suck less”, to work with what I have and be patient.

  • Things I learned leaving

    At a small place, one cool thing is that individual positions can be tailored to the innate talents of the staff. A downside is that jobs that are built around an individual are not readily handed off to others. People have different skills, this is a good thing. It does interfere with interchangability, though.

    It was interesting wrapping up my job for delivery to someone else. As I left my previous job, I parcelled the work I had been doing into a few pieces.

    • Items handed off to new PM: project management, resource coordination, planning for new projects, client communications
    • Items handed off to others in organization: communications with vendors on invoicing, receptionist, business analyst/information architect.
    • Items put on hold for “persons unknown” – to be hired in or subcontracted out as needed: copywriting, seo

    I had coped with a small staff by taking on several responsibilities myself. This strategy got things done in the short term (faster to do it myself than explain it sometimes, I was able to fill in gaps that I recognized).

    Over the long run, however, I think that playing several roles it helped us stay smaller longer, that I actually delayed the piece I needed (bigger team). I also think that I interfered with myself playing any single role as well as I would have liked, multitasking is a myth.

    I have every confidence that my replacement will do great things there. She’s a professional project manager, and a stronger one than I am. I think that as my old employer grows, and it is growing fast at the moment, more specialization and delegation will have to occur. And I know she will put that in place.

    I don’t know if that means that I am suited to a more “entrepreneurial” than a “mature” phase company. I’m a generalist, a bridge person between specialists. I’m also wondering whether my versatility helps or hinders. Probably both.

  • Cascade of changes

    It’s been a strange week.

    I’ve learned of several deaths in friends’ and colleagues’ families. Two of my favorite yoga teachers in town are moving to Chicago. My yoga studio ripped out a wall of equipment.

    DTE decided to tear up my front garden again, this time to insert plastic pipes, 6 months after tearing up the exact same spots to do it with metal pipes, and about 2 weeks after I replanted the ripped up sections. They also piled several feet of soil dug out of the lawn between the sidewalk on the road on top of newly seeded grass where we had just fixed up damage done by the people who paved our driveway.

    I went to a new hairdresser for the first time in many years. I had been with Jeanne for the last 12 years or so. And, Friday I had my last formal day at my old job.

    Message to Dunrie: do not get attached.

    (more…)

  • Twitter is like stand-up all day long (this is good)

    Stand-up may be the highlight of my workday. There’s something about it–quick status updates, celebrating achievements, sharing milestones, the rhythm of it, team bonding, flagging confusion or misunderstandings, in-jokes (ending of course with “let’s be careful out there”), the ritual…

    We briefly tried chat standup, but it was annoying and boring, so we went back to verbal standup. We briefly considered using Campfire within Basecamp as a chat stand-up. It seemed like a good idea, there’d be a record associated with each project, but it seemed to be organized by project and therefore over compartmentalized. We didn’t try it and have stuck with verbal stand-up at 10:30AM.

    Recently, I’ve been twittering status messages. Twitter is like standup all day long, in a good way. Earlier this week, I was invited to a 10AM client conference call in an email I read at 8AM. I twittered that I had a surprise client meeting. A remote team member saw my twitter, IM’d me and asked if he needed to chime in on it. I might not have thought to ask him given the turnaround time, but he contributed.

    Yay standup, yay twitter, go team.

  • Letting go II

    While I’m still playing with the idea of ridding myself of my automobile, more angst is coming from wrestling with whether I need to leave my job, or how I can change it so that I can stay.

    It’s funny. I have been reading Go Put Your Strengths to Work, and after the exercises in which the reader diagnoses what is and isn’t working in a week’s worth of work activities, Marcus Buckingham includes a long section counseling the reader not to dump her/his job and rush off in search of the next one. He writes that while the “eject” button is the dramatic solution (a leap into the dark to the next situation, which may or may not be a better fit), we can iteratively move our current job closer to our perfect job through attention and goal-setting. Certainly I have the most negotiating power with the folks who already respect me and depend on me (that is, my current team and employer). It’s annoying to be right where Marcus Buckingham predicts I would be. I’d prefer to be unique.

    So, it is listmaking time for me, figuring out what it is I can’t do without, what I can trade for other things, what it is I can no longer do, what I have to ask others for…

    Things I need: team, writing, collaboration, clients, change, variety, action. I want to have different problems than we did last year, than we did last quarter. I want to be making different mistakes.

    Things that concern me: I don’t want to be the single point of failure or hero. I want to build or participate in a system where I and our clients are supported by a team with overlapping interests and responsibilities. I’d like to be replaceable. I’d like a little slack in the system, a little redundancy. I don’t know how to do that in a small team. I think we simply need to be bigger.

    But, there is an upside. I have shed some tasks and responsibilities that were mine that weren’t right. I removed myself from some email lists (like Perry Marshall’s), re-examined some of my work habits (yes, there are ways I have participated in creating my own angst), and essentially spring cleaned my office and my job description. Yes, whether I’m happy at work really is up to me. Whatever the outcome, this realization is a good, if painful, thing.