Monterey 2010

My sister and brother-in-law are in town.  We had a great time last night with them in downtown Walnut Creek and today in Monterey.  We went to the aquarium, rented a 4 person bicycle, played some frisbee on the beach, and had an awesome dinner at a German restaurant which we thought was a pizza restaurant according to Yelp.

Low Esteem & The Factory

“If you want to hire people to do a job, to be cogs in the system and to do what they’re told, you might want to focus on people who don’t think very highly of themselves.  People with low self-esteem might be more happy to be bossed around, timed, abused, misused and micromanaged, no?  And the converse is true as well. If you want to raise your game and build an organization filled with people who will change everything, the first thing to look for is someone who hasn’t been brainwashed into believing that they’re not capable of great work.  A harried teacher might find it easier to teach a class to obey first and think second, but is that sort of behavior valuable or scarce now?

Industries that need to subjugate women or demonstrate power over one class of person or another are always on the lookout for people they can diminish. Our task, then, is to find people we can encourage and nurture until they’re as impatient with average as we are.  The paradox is that the very people that are the easiest to categorize, to command and to dominate are the last people we want to work with.”

– Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

What’s the Point?

“An idea turns into a meeting and then it turns into a project. People get brought along, there’s free donuts, there’s a whiteboard and even a conference call.  It feels like you’re doing the work, but at some point, hopefully, someone asks, “what’s the point of this?”  Is it worth doing?  Compared to everything else we could be investing (don’t say ‘spending’) our time on, is this the scariest, most likely to pay off, most important or the best long-term endeavor?  Or are we just doing it because no one had the guts along the way to say STOP.  Are you doing work worth doing, or are you just doing your job?” – Seth Godin

4th of July 2010

Running A Project & Managing A Project

“If you choose to manage a project, it’s pretty safe. As the manager, you report. You report on what’s happening, you chronicle the results, you are the middleman.  If you choose to run a project, on the other hand, you’re on the hook. It’s an active engagement, bending the status quo to your will, ensuring that you ship.  Running a project requires a level of commitment that’s absent from someone who is managing one. Who would you rather hire, a manager or a runner?” – Seth Godin