Wille Faler’s Buzzword Bingo

People love predicting and predictions, yet new turn of events always seem to catch us off guard. Just compare last years predictions with todays realities: UK property was predicted to continue growing at mindboggling rates, today it’s dropping for the fourth month in a row. Growth in 2008 was expected to beat growth in 2007, now we are worrying about a potential recession.

Why are we so sure about our predictions, yet manage to get them so wrong whenever events turn in another direction?
The hint is in the words of the last sentence: direction.

Most predictions aren’t actually predictions, they are extrapolations - They extrapolate the future based on the current direction and trajectory, nothing more. They may take known information into consideration, but they rarely affect the extrapolation in a material way.
The fact is unexpected events and turns of direction are just that, unexpected, people rarely, if ever see them coming. But these events are the events that often dramatically change the current direction and shape the future: Who saw 9/11 coming? Almost no one. Has it shaped history as we know it for the last 6-7 years? Definitely.

The moral is that predicting the future is a fools errand, you’re always going to be wrong. Extrapolating the future from the current direction is fine, as long as you realize that it is just that, and not necessarily an accurate prediction of future events.

Integrity is a scarce commodity not only in business and politics, but in mankind as a whole. Most people are either too afraid to say “no”, or too focused on short term gain at any cost to possess it.

Having integrity is not easy, it means disappointing people, sometimes on a regular basis, and most people do not feel comfortable hearing things they don’t like, or saying things they know others do not like. Integrity can imply a number of things, for example:

• Do not promise what you are uncertain of being able to deliver.
• Do not pass the buck, blame others or grab glory that should belong to others.
• Acknowledge the contributions others have made to your success.
• Admit when you are wrong, but don’t dwell on the past - fix the future.
• Do not make compromises that compromise your own core values - be prepared to walk away, but don’t be a primadonna and drama queen.
• Do not indulge yourself in fantasies and wishful thinking - see your situation as it is, and deal with it.

I’m guessing most people struggle to tick even three out of the six boxes above on a consistent basis. Integrity may not always please people, but at least it will grow trust - people will know that your word is worth something, and that they can trust you come rain or shine.
But if integrity was an easy thing, it would not be such a valued commodity: it requires constant vigilance, self-awareness and an iron discipline. Even the strongest characters will succumb to the primal instinct of ducking responsibility and pleasing people in the short term from time to time. The only question is, what will you do and what kind of an individual do you want to be?

The above comic made me laugh out loud today - it is very accurate to the attitudes of a lot of people (myself included in the past). However “working harder” implies a couple of things, first that people are currently “slacking off”, and second, that people can maintain a consistent level of productivity even when working tired and under extreme pressure. If people are not already “working hard”, you are in trouble.

But the second point is more interesting: there seems to be a certain level of machismo around working long hours - it shows that you are a mans man, prepared to do what ever it takes to deliver. However there is a distinct diminishing return to working longer hours, to the point that it can actually become a negative return: many professions, like software engineering to take one close at heart, requires you to be constantly mentally sharp to be at the height of your productivity. Once fatigue and stress starts setting in that mental sharpness is gone with the wind, and people start making simple, stupid little mistakes that they wouldn’t do under normal circumstances.
Under short periods of time, long hours may work surprisingly well (people may be “in the zone” when they put their head down and just work hard), but in the long run fatigue and stress will take its toll. Obviously different people have different levels of productivity, stress tolerance and maximum number of productive hours in them, so giving a blanket number can’t be done - but on average I think the current 40 hour working week is pretty close for the average person in the long term (>2 months).

“Working harder” can only at best be a short term solution to solve short term problems - if it becomes the standard mode of operations, something is seriously wrong with the way your organization works.

Most of us are afflicted by indecision from time to time, the paralyzing feeling of not knowing what to do, but knowing you need to do something and decide something.
But it is important to recognize that most of the time, making a decision, even the wrong one is better than doing nothing and deciding nothing, as long as you are prepared to re-evaluate your decision.

Not deciding or doing anything means you are not moving anywhere, things grind to a standstill. On the other hand, if you make a bad decision you can quickly evaluate and learn from your decision - a bad decision tells you what doesn’t work and possibly what should work. It means a bad decision will leave you better equipped to correct your mistake and make the right decision.
Bad decisions are not the enemy, indecision is, just so long as you keep an open mind to acknowledge your mistake and correct it once you know more.

As a person I have two great gifts - I’m extremely lazy, and I have a very short attention span (which makes me very intolerant of long, drudging meetings and politicking).

I consider these two traits a gift and a big asset, and I’ll tell you why:

Laziness is a virtue
Being lazy in a rational way, with the long term in mind means a couple of things: I go to great lengths to avoid duplicating work and I try to automate mundane and boring tasks wherever possible. Doing things that can be automated is a waste of time, and so is doing the same thing over and over, or even worse, fixing things that went wrong the first time around. It may sounds counterintuitive, but being lazy actually makes me more efficient and thorough the first time around as I try to find the shortest, most elegant path from A to B. Being hasty and rushing things will almost inevitably end up meaning you will have to do twice the work to fix the things that didn’t work out.
Lastly, being lazy means I do not exert a lot of effort trying to predict things in the future that I cannot realistically predict: I am aware that there are big unknowns in front of me that need to be mitigated and dealt with, but I won’t waste time (or more preciously: energy) trying to exhaust every option and avenue when I know 90-95% of them will be for nothing.

A short attention span is a blessing
If a meeting is longer than 15 minutes, chances are my mind will start wandering of in the direction of day dreams, if a document is longer than five pages of dense text, my eyes will probably start glazing over by page six. Having a short attention span means that I am pretty good at cutting to the chase and finding the core of a matter: I know I don’t want or have the time to read an essay when a paragraph will do, I like problem definitions that are short, solutions that are simple and explanations that are brief, devoid of excuses and chit-chat, but call to action.
I’d rather spend my time solving problems and creating solutions, than reading about them or engage in debate about them. Don’t take me wrong, I like small talk as much as the next guy (probably even more), but small talk is small talk, business is business.

(Click for a larger image)

Failure is such a common outcome in IT, that if you somehow manage to avoid it and even exceed success expectations, you could land yourself in trouble in the long term if you are not careful.
Sounds weird? Let me explain: Considering the complexity of software development and the rate of failure, anyone, any method or any technology that helped you exceed expectations may be hailed as the second coming of Christ.
For instance, if a new framework shows itself to help developers far exceed their productivity using other frameworks, people may soon think that said framework will be their saviour: it will not only cut development time, but the expectation is that its success will be applicable in every other software related area of a project or product, and not only that, people will pretty much expect the technology to do wonders with little to no developer input, and even cook coffee if you ask for it.

One has to be careful to manage expectations and explain the limitations, even if you are an enthusiast for the “new way”. If you don’t, and in some cases, even if you do, the buzz around it may get completely out of hand. Having buy in from people is good, having people think that the second coming of Christ is about to happen is bad: no matter how good the new technology is, it’s not going to make you walk on water or cure cancer, which means that at some point, probably sooner rather than later you will fall short of the high expectations people have, and at that point you might be branded something worse than a failure, you might get branded as a quack.

The distinct look of someone who might blow up on you any minute now..

I learned one thing today: don’t offend nerds. I wrote a post last night with a few vitriolic words about Ubuntu Linux written in frustration that resulted in a hailstorm of angry comments (a post I have since back-tracked on).

Some of the comments made where useful and helpful, others where mildly aggressive and annoyed, a few where outright aggressive and derogative (I have not let all comments through, giving trolls space isn’t adviseable).

I have another blog written in Swedish about politics, that has a considerably larger readership than this blog, so I have thick skin in terms of taking abuse in the comments of my own blog (and elsewhere, I’ve even had the occasional hate websites created in my honour), as I’ve pretty much offended and trampled the toes of just about every interest group and political persuasion there is out there.
But I never knew to expect such a strong reaction to a blog post about Linux: it seems calling a nerds favourite technology “a piece of shit” (which, by the way, was extremely out of context on its own) is much worse than saying that Karl Marx was a delusional retard to the face of a raging communist..

Now I know..

Me: It is strange how most of the time people will throw all reason and logic out the window in favour of protecting their own status and ego.
Support engineer: Yes, I know, but I’m not a software developer, so I really don’t have much of an ego, which means I can’t really be arsed with all of that.
Me: What do you mean?
Support engineer: Don’t you realize that most software developers have massive, oversized egos?
Me: I don’t know. Personally I don’t put much ego into things. I just have a blatant distrust in other people, born out of.. an unjustified sense of superiority.
Support engineer: See, my point exactly.

..I guess self-awareness (and deprecation) are the first steps to a cure. At least knowing your flaws means you can work around them.

Every organization needs a couple of rebels that can inject fresh ideas into it. I’m saying “a couple”, because a good “rebel-to-status quo person”-ratio is probably required: A single rebel can be easily silenced in a sea of status quo, either by having his ideas universally rejected, or by becoming demotivated and disillusioned with the slowly turning wheels of change.
If you have a couple of rebels, the voice of “dissent” will be heard louder, and the dissenters can spur each other on, keep each other motivated in their quest for change.

But why are rebels so important for organizations? Simple: most people are creatures of habit, they like the status quo, regardless of how mediocre it may be. Rebels on the other hand are the inventors, entrepreneurs and change agents of organizations, large and small, entrepreneurial and bureaucratic. Without the rebels most organizations would soon wither and die of obsolesence.
Rebels are the reason we have the wheel, fire, electricity, refrigerators, cars, computers and other everyday technologies. Had everyone been a Status Quo person, we might still have been living in caves, eating raw meat and dying at 30.

The rebels are the agents of change that drive any organisation, nation or people forward.

People often blame the size or bureaucracy of an organization for how politicized it is, that might have something to do with it, but I’m not convinced it’s the only thing. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that politicking within organizations has more to do with egos than anything else.
How many instances in your career can you think of when an organization and the people in it have behaved in thoroughly irrational ways despite it being universally apparent what the rational and correct thing to do would have been? My guess is that it has happened more frequently than people just doing the rational and correct thing.

The fact is, despite how people pride themselves on being “goal oriented”, most people are actually more concerned with how they will be perceived than what they actually achieve: They don’t want to step on the wrong persons toes, they don’t want to make the decision that may be rational, but will reflect badly on them in the off chance that it fails, they don’t want to rock the boat too hard.
The old saying that “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” tells as much about human nature as it does about IBM’s ubiquity in the 80′ies (when the expression was coined).

It is not size or bureaucracy that kills companies, it is egos and a culture of blame: once a place has too many oversized egos, too many people who don’t like ideas other than their own, too many people second guessing themselves and others, and too many people quick to pass judgment on decisions that where right but did not pan out anyway, a company is in deep, deep trouble.

At the heart of it, the problem is in ourselves and our egos. The best we can do is to be aware of, and keep our own egos in check, and stop tiptoeing around the egos of others: they may get annoyed with you in the short term, but most likely they’ll get over it.