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Cited:Feld, Charlie S. and Stoddard, Donna B. "Getting IT Right". Harvard Business Review. Feb 2004:72-79
There have been a spat of IT articles in HBR in the past couple of years, showing that IT has finally made it from the weirdo to the standard practice status. "Getting IT Right" seems to follow from "The REAL New Economy" and "IT Doesn't Matter". Feld and Stoddard make an argument for "three interdependent, interrelated, and universally applicable principles for executing IT effectively". These are:
Pretty simple to say but difficult for IT managers to implement. Although IT is obstensibly based on scientific and engineering principles, we resist any form of unified technology that we don't invent ourselves and any, I mean any
Delta tried a different approach, which Feld and Stoddard describe thusly:
I had a conversation with some folks down at BIG. They are trying to transform their IT staff from mainframers into web folks. The problem is that they have been stymied in their growth for years. As host developers, they never had to increase their skills. Mainframe development has not changed much in the past twenty years, especially not at this facility. BIG got in the rut of being training oriented, much like what Tobin describes in Knowledge-Enabled Organization as the problem of all training-oriented companies. Staff wait for the company to offer a training program on something, rather than taking charge of their own learning. Learning is different from training: I'm a learning addict but not very good at getting training.
BIG's IT folks want someone to come alongside them and advise them on what they need to do. It's a hard job: it requires an understanding of development practices, training, and corporate change. All stuff I'm experienced in.
I can't say that they'll invite me into this project but I hope so. Sure, I need the money but I also want to work on this project. It seems like a perfect fit.
I've spent many an evening wondering why I watch the fanboy stuff that I watch. Back in 1984, my high school pal, Paul Kinney, got all riled about a fly-by-night film by the name of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! Nowadays, a film with Ellen Barkin (Diner, This Boy's Life), John Lithgow (Third Rock From the Sun, Terms of Endearment, ) and Peter Weller (Robocop , Naked Lunch), Jeff Goldblum (The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy, Jurassic Park) and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, Taxi) ? this is an all-star cast appearing in a very weird film. Lithgow hadn't done comedic acting on the big screen until Buckaroo. He does an imitation of Mussolini that is spot on outrageous. If you're used to his hamming in Third Rock this won't seem too much of a revelation. But this was the guy who made Terms of Endearment!
Bonzai is as close to a ridiculous movie as one can get and still be a cool flick. The special effects look dated but imagine Mystery Science Theater 3000 got a budget to make a film. The great thing about the Special Edition DVD is the extras, including the secondary audio by the director who finally explains the infamous "Watermelon Scene".
Paul Kinney is responsible for many of my bad tastes but this is the best. Sure, it bombed and yes it makes no sense. But does Big O really make any sense, or for that matter, does CSI? Any Anthony Hopkins film?
Oddly, although the Blue Blazer Regulars who help the most are African-American, there is only th slightest color in the Hong Kong Cavaliers. Nowadays, we'd be a bit more leveling on a team with that name. Sign of the 80s.
"You drag me out of jail, you like Jerry Lewis, you give me hope ? what's going on?"
So. After d0g0wa5's comments (including some on the phone) it seemed like it was reasonable to state these. These points are things that I am fairly confident about. Think of them as things that I know about homosexuality or think I know. I could be entirely wrong about any of this.
1. "Homosexual" Resists a Common Definition
By this I mean that the term "homosexual" is simply a social label and not a thing in and of itself. Who is a homosexual? A person that commits homosexual acts? Or that commits them at a certain frequency? A person whose sexual expression is only in same-sex sex? Someone who is attracted to others of the same sex? Someone who falls in love with someone of his or her sex?
"Homosexual" is a social label, much like "husband", "sexual partner" or "good person". I'll explain why this point is important, but right now, understand that when two people say "homosexual" they may be talking about two differing concepts. I'll cover some of the more common concepts below.
INFOSEC has asked me to go down to talk to BIG about their massive training effort for programmers. It may lead to a part-time job ? one week on, one week off ? that pays pretty well, as I mentioned yesterday. I was a professional trainer at the start of my career, but it has been awhile so I decided to read up on it. Luckily, amongst the many, many useless materials on training and development, I stumbled on Daniel R. Tobin's The Knowledge-Enabled Organization: Moving From Training to Learning to Meet Businss Goals through a Dogpile aggregate search. The search first led me to an article on his website that dealt with "The Fallacy of ROI Calculations for Training". An obvious ploy to perk up my ears. The article is an abbreviated version of the points he makes in the book and full of manasclerk-oriented goodness.
You just know that I'm going to like a training book that has "business goals" in its title.
[ Continue reading "How Do You Know If The Training Was Worth It?" ]I have two potential contracts coming up, and I'm in the position where I have to take what I can get.
One is with INFOSEC at the Big Insurance Group (BIG). The pay is about what I made four years ago and it's only half-time. The other is with European Investment Bank (EIB) but pays less than half the hourly rate of the other contract. Which means that of the two, I would have to say that BIG looks better, since I can make as much as with the other and save on the daily commute. (BIG is away every other week, while EIB is a 2 hr train commute.) Wow. And I'm really happy about this.
The conversation with the contracting firm was with the owner, something pretty rare. I can do the job, no sweat, as long as it isn't with a particular person who has become a EIB employee. I can guarantee that I will be rejected out of hand by her, and for good reasons on her part.
So it goes. You work long enough, you ruffle a few feathers.
WARNING: I fully realise that this makes no sense at all and I bloody well don't care.
I wonder if the so-called Emerging Church is simply generational politics or a corrective reaction against the failures of hypermodernism. Think the French Revolution rather than the English or American ones. Let's follow the manasclerk train of thought on its way past the Dunes and Michigan City!
In many ways, the Emerging Church people are reacting against the Le Corbusiers, the Managed Economies, the Five-Year Plans, the Centralized Fascism. They attack CENTRAL Central Intelligence's IT from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. (Is anyone else kind of freaked out about MIS now being called "IT"?) And they are right to reject these hyper-modernist, hyper-rationalist fascisms.
It's more or less Sunday. I woke up this morning to a giant water stain on my new plaster ceiling: my upstairs bathtub started leaking at the drain. My downstairs tub's faucet started leaking back into the wall.
My friends gave me news that someone I consider the biggest thinker I've ever met holds me in sympathetic regard.
All these things bother me.
And this bothers me even more: there is no method, no wisdom, no instruction, no law. There is only Christ.
For all us hillbillies and hillbilly descendants: Matewan is hosting a Hatfield / McCoy reunion. Bring your favourite stories about the feud or life in the camps and let's swap stories.
I'm trying to schedule the time to get there with my dad. Maybe we can score a decent hotel nearby, although his river house isn't too, too far away.
You can get more information at the Matewan website.
Don't you love it when one thing that you're reading collides with another thing you're studying? The idea of môtis has reminded me of something that I read some time back. This led me to see some connections between knowledge management, Requisiste Organization and wisdom. (And thanks to jmmj for conversation on this and some of the ideas.)
Cass Sunstein wrote a review in The New Republic ("More Is Less", 218:20) about James Scott's apparently fascinating book on why social engineering fails, Review of Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. The whole review is pretty interesting and is available on Prof. Sunstein's site but the relevant part today is the first two paragraphs:
I was reading my backlog of journals this morning and read one of the IEEE PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATIONS. There was an article about knowledge theory and designing web sites. Really.
One of the points was about mètis which finally gives me a way to talk about what I do. I've been having a great deal of problem describing the value I bring to an organization. "I get to where you need to go before you do" doesn't sound right. Neither does "I correctly predict what is going to happen in the organization". Mètis gives me a better way to understand it.
Another anime to keep me up late... Adult Swim scored with bringing over this one. It's done by Sunrise, who also do Big O with them, so maybe they collaborated on it. WHR is a fabulous anime, with interesting imagery but probably edited down to keep out the questionable parts. Adult Swim may be obstensibly for adults, but it is still part of Cartoon Network.
Maybe AS could get tagged onto Boomerang. But it scores No. 1 in Basic Cable channels for 18-24 in its timeslot. Wow. Go figure. I'm so trendy and youth-oriented...
And what is the Japanese fascination with Christian imagery? Maybe they just want to be accessible to round-eyes.
Anyway, Witch Hunter Robin is pretty cool. And now I'm going to be addicted to Inuyasha, too, since it's sandwiched between Witch Hunter Robin and Big O.
Oooo. Big O. Giant Robots. Same firm made Batman: The Animated Series. It looks like it more than a little but loads more cool.
I got some good feedback on my CV today. A friend in KC looked at it and said, in a kind way, this is totally unacceptable. And "what are you?" It was absolutely not evident what I have done.
So it goes. The techies think I'm a poser and the managers think I'm a techie. And I spend my research hours studying organizational dynamics and comics. I know more about obscure comic strips than anyone outside of the industry should. Then again, I still know a lot about the beer industry. I couldn't tell you how the stuff is made (I know that it involves "wirt" and "fermentation" but I have no idea how it's done) but I can hold a decent discussion about the industry, how marketing and distribution works, etc.
No wonder I can't find work. No one can figure out who I am. I have the unenviable distinction of being interested in almost everything. I am insatiably curious. This makes me a great "go-to" guy, because I can do almost anything.
"manasclerk, can you oversee these two integration projects that you have no knowledge or experience in?"
"Sure!"
"You need to recreate all these webpages so that we can go live in three hours. Can you do it?"
"Sure!"
"We don't know what is going wrong in this product that you don't understand. Can you tell us what it is?"
"Sure!"
"I want my book to do this or that. Can you tell me how to restructure it to do that?"
"Sure!"
"We need graphics for the website that we told you we'd do and for which we're not going to get you any applications for."
"No problem!"
"We've got to do this training in front of the client and what is ready stinks! What will we do!?"
"Stop worrying! I'll take care of it! I've got 36 hours! No problem!"
I can learn anything, which is such a drawback you wouldn't believe. The problem is that once I learn something, I'm off looking for connections to something else. I flit from one idea to another, one implementation to another. Yeah, it means that processes that I design actually work because they take into account what is likely to happen in the organization for the next three years but how do you measure the worth of that? "No rework?"
I used to think that I couldn't be a professional writer because I hate sitting by myself all day long. But since that's about what my life is now, I suppose that it wouldn't be any worse than what I am doing now. Of course, I've been a professional technical writer, and even managed writing groups.
I have no depth of experience, no depth whatsoever. I can't find a single reason for someone to hire me, except for this one: I get things done.
I don't have a clue what to do or what I'm trying to sell myself as. Bored by technology, it's the only schema that I have to construct my world.
I'm going to spend the rest of the day reading Ray Bradbury. When I was a kid, my grade school had copies of R Is For Rocket and S Is For Space. I read them both over and over. Then I found the Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. Man! That was great stuff! You could smell Bradbury's stories. Smell 'em! Most writers let you hear what was going on, or if you were lucky, hear and see. Bradbury let me smell and taste and touch!
And then I found Dandelion Wine.
Wow. I always wished that I was the lead character, Doug Spaulding, running through the ravine, chased by the Nameless One, being a kid in the grass of summer. I guess I still do. If I could pick someone that I would be, I'd pick Doug Spaulding. I'd even settle for the character "Ray" in Death is a Lonely Business, another delicious treat, even if Bradbury no longer rewrites and it shows.
BAM! I'm going to read some Bradbury.
-- manasclerk
Clarence, in a comment on Thursday's post, says:
Well...I'm not pissed off, just confused.What are you trying to say? That we are still under the LAW?
Is no man required to repent?
Is no man required to believe?
Is no man required to be born-again?
How can any man be justified before God and not do any of these things?You are not being clear enough.
So let me clear up at least some of this.
I was going to put in some thoughts here, considering Dawn Eden's recent comments about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts's controversy regarding allowing same-sex marriages. I intended to list a variety of things that I know and that I guess a lot of other people don't. Maybe I've read too much on this topic or I just have a penchant for research on "social deviance".
Instead, I'm just going to piss off everybody.
We had a friend visit this weekend. We were glad to have the company. The week has been hard, even by our standards. We're not yet at the point where I stop eating (like I did in Europe) but we are at the point where 60F seems okay during the day in the house. There's no movement on any employment, and I have the uneviable position of having left behind easily identified skills (computing) and not having a big job title to get me the next position.
It's now just habit, filling in forms, sending in CVs, calling up my now defunct network. "Just checking in," I say. "Sure, I know that you haven't heard of anything. How are the kids?" As a networker, I'm fabulous: I can pick up the phone and connect you to a Broadway producer in about 24 hours. I can get you into the White House in three days, but only at a low level functionary. But to get a job for myself? I suck at it. I just don't know how to use a network to get something for myself.
I can pick up the phone and stay in almost every city in the world -- there are places in many Islamic nations that I'd have to work a little harder. I can even do it for you. A buddy of mine was moving to Chicago awhile back, and when we went to his "sight-unseen" apartment, it was a slum. I've been in Ossetian immigrant apartments in better shape. That put him and his buddy out of place to stay. He came with me and I picked up the phone and called a sister in Christ and told her I needed to impose on her by sending a guy that I don't know (my buddy's friend) to stay at their house. And of course she said yes: I'm manasclerk, after all!
As if cartoon network didn't consume enough of my time already, I made the mistake of starting to watch The Big O, an anime about, yes, giant robots. And memory. And identity. And overdone atmospherics. FLCL wasn't so bad: you knew that it would end in five episodes. But there are 26 Big O installments! And they are supposed to make more!
Whine, whine, whine.
Big O was Big Failure in Japan, but for some reason us cartoonheads Stateside dig it. It actually got cut before it completed its first season. Years later, Cartoon Network entered into a production agreement and brought the show back. It is so very Fritz Lang, and even makes over the top references to Metropolis, that wonderful film (even with the 80s soundtrack they did).
I gotta get a life...
And, yes, timmyturner, I actually know what you think of the name, and you can stop giggling.
-- manasclerk
L and I went to different church today. This all started last week, after I told my pal, H, that we were going to go to the membership classe at his church, where we have been "sojourning" for some time. I had invited him to a lecture and he called late on Monday to say that he would not make it. We talked about the big church meeting that lasted untill 3:30PM (on Superbowl Sunday!) and he filled me in on the details. It was a hard meeting but not particularly contentious.
We talked about various things that we saw going on in the church. All churches have problems, issues, and this one is no exception. For the most part, though, they seem to have it together. As we were talking about the church's history, he mentioned that several families left when the church became a "Reconcilng in Christ" community. Which gave me pause.
The Goat and I were out drinking our sorrows away. Well, that would be me drinking my sorrows away (trying, at least; it never works) and he just egging me on. I've never seen anyone or any goat that can hold his liquor like him.
Anyway, he and I were getting blasted pretty good when he leaned over and said, "I've always wondered why you didn't just end it? You know, like Derek."
I'm not sure what type of face I ended up giving him, but I hope it was nasty.
The author behind Can You Hear Me Now? sent me an email about something I said in a comment he had there. I had said that "I'm not a hillbilly, but my Dad is -- WV type. My great-great grandfather was raised in old man Hatfield's house and 'brought the last of the feuders to justice'. It's our family hillbilly claim to fame." He is rightfully proud to be a hillbilly, and he took me task for that:
"I'm not a hillbilly" might be a form of denial. Perhaps that would make a good topic to write about. "What is a Hillbilly?" You openly admit that your family has a Hillbilly claim to fame. Is it your desire to separate yourself personally from it like it was a stigma of some sort? ... I'm proud of my Hillbilly status. The way I look at it is: If you have one drop of Hillbilly blood in your veins, you're still a Hillbilly. You may hold a different view. It might be interesting to investigate it sometime. Just a thought."
Let me set the record straight: I take pride in my hillbilly heritage. My great-great grandfather, after whom my grandfather named my dad, indeed helped close out one of the more bloody feuds in American history (but by no means the worst). He was on Hatfield side, having been raised in old man Hatfield's big house there in Virginia (now West Virginia). One of the Hatfield boys (grandson of the old man, I think) wanted to turn himself in, being the last of the men wanted in the feud, but he was afraid of the law in the county, preferring the safety of Charleston, many miles away.
Ah, that bastard Bloated Goat of Despair! He returns! I've not talked about him for awhile -- out of cowardice, probably -- he's been a real jerk lately about the whole unemployment thing, adding that the ice damming on the back roof will finish off whatever the termites left in that corner. He's not a good companion, of course, but you have to admire his tenacity. The ten-gauge is loaded will steel shot and ready to go, so let's send him back on home to hell.
You'd think I'd feel a bit better than I do. Things have moved pretty well jobwise.I had my first coaching client today -- we went over developing an elevator speech, and after determining that fairness was his motivation, we came up with "Liberating businesses from the tyranny of Microsoft" as his hook-line. He has a real Patrick Henry fire about the open source movement: "Give me source or give me death!" It pays only in kind, though. I get free server space on a hosted machine that has python and perl, and Suse installed on one of my boxes, with OpenOffice and Ximian Evolution installed. It went really well for a first go at this. The cobbler's kids go barefoot, and I can do for others what I cannot accomplish for myself.
So why so down in the mouth?
Ronna Lichtenberg has written an accessible business book on relationships and their power and threat at work. It's Not Business, It's Personal: The 9 Relationship Principles That Power Your Career has much to say for it: she interviewed real executives and business leaders about relationships at work and found some interesting patterns.
What struck me was her comments about successful trust vs. unsuccessful need:
[ Continue reading ""Unsuccessful people look for the right person..."" ]Where successful people ask themselvs "What can we do together?" unsuccessful people ask "What can he do for me?"
Our maid of honour sent me a note about a recent experience of the Eucharist. "The presiding pastor stumbled over the litury," she wrote, "and after an awkard pause, blurted out, 'To Jesus!' before raising the chalice. Much fun." This in the midst of our discussion about funerals.
I know. The pastor should have been better prepared and should have treated the eucharist with more respect and reverence. He's human. We're human. Fallible and in need of never-ending grace, a continuous redemption paid once and for all time in an obscure Roman execution. No local church is perfect, as a friend of a friend reminded me this week. All are full of turmoil and problems. Perfection only exists in blogs, it seems.
Makes me feel better about when I do something in church that gets "the Glare".I wonder what Jesus would do?
-- manasclerk (atSign comcast net)
András Visky is a playwright, poet, professor and all around interesting fellow. He's passing through the United States for play at Calvin College that has his father, who was jailed under the Romanian Communists for his faith, as a character. He and his two "keepers" came by last night to say hello on their way to Chicago. They didn't stay long but he always leaves me with something important even when he is just talking.
András is the real deal and if you ever have the opportunity to hear him speak take advantage of it. I recall hearing a talk of his some time ago where he declared "You are the mother of Jesus!" Always thought-provoking. His lectures on Art are just as interesting.