Category: Leadership
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The Hail Mary Failure
Our team is down by 5 points, they are on the 40 yard line, 3 seconds left to play. Hike! Everyone scrambles for the endzone and the quarterback throws a high arching spiral that seems to hang in the air as the end of game whistle blows. It falls down into a mass of players,…
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The Miracle of Two Weeks
When will this be done? I don’t know yet. When will you know? I don’t know that either. Just guess how long it’s going to take. Um, two weeks? Ah, the magic estimate of two weeks. Just far enough out that maybe we could get it done by then, but not so far out, that…
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Asking Permission vs. Getting It Done
But won’t your manager be mad that you’re doing something that isn’t your job? – A good friend after I told him about a project I was working on that would help the organization but was never explicitly requested. What job description did you get hired into? – Two different people when I told them…
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Technological Stockholm Syndrome
Just the other day, I had lunch with a friend who just started working as an engineer. I asked him whether he was enjoying his job. He said that it’s a bit different than he expected and that he’s spending a lot of time banging his head against the wall just to figure out how…
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Be Salty At Work
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.” – Matthew 5:13 NKJV Ann and I enjoy watching Chopped, a cooking show where the chefs have a limited amount…
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Resorting To The Cheat Solution
Imagine designing a thermostat with ants. Seriously, try to get your brain to focus on how to solve when to turn the furnace on using ants. If you’re like me, our brain just sits there and says, “with ants!? WITH ANTS!?”. Then responds, “let’s solve the problem without ants.” Read: one where we already know…
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Accomplish Great Things Without Knowing How
When we first start playing chess, we calculate out all the possible moves we can make and consider each one. We decide on some immediate aim (taking a piece) for which we can see all the moves we need to take to get there. We quickly find there are limits to this approach as our…
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Momentum vs. Hack ‘n Slash Engineers
When I was first learning BASIC with a friend in high school, the world of programming was brand new to us and we both taught each other new things we had learned. As time went on I noticed that we had two different styles of learning. I would learn something new, write one program using…
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All Bleeding Stops Eventually
“Things which can’t go on forever, don’t” – Stein’s Law Overdrive feels awesome. We push it and reap huge benefits quickly by pushing the system beyond its normal limits. Unfortunately, the system can’t operate that way forever. If we use overdrive for too long, the system will break, often irreparably. In most systems though, the…
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Stuck In A Hole
“This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out.”A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you. Can you help me out?’ The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along…