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When I'm writing a novel, I'm dealing with a double life. I live in the present at the same time that I live in the past with my characters. It is this that makes a novelist so eccentric and unpleasant.
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 I listened to the South Carolina returns come in last night as I drove back with Tamara from Kansas City. Good news aplenty, and some bad news.
The good news - even great news - is that the Mike Huckabee took a loss last night, and that's probably the end of his campaign. He couldn't belt it out in the Bible Belt, and if he can't win there... well, that's about it. And thank God. My man, Mitt, is ahead in the delegate count. That's good news too. The bad news is that John McCain has the big mo' at the moment. He's sure to get the Huckster's supporters after Pastor Mike bows out in the next few weeks and endorses him. And I'm pretty sure that Fred Thompson will endorse his senate buddy. Which leaves Mitt standing alone, chugging it out on his own. Those key endorsements will make it tough for Mitt to win, and in all likelihood, McCain will be the nominee. The good news is that McCain strongly supports our troops and wants to restrict spending in government. I can easily get behind those. My chief beefs with McCain are that he pushed amnesty and limitations on political speech. If he continues to keep his big mo', he'll get hammered big time on these issues by Rush, Sean, and the blogosphere. He'll have to listen and give strong reassurances to the right if he wants to win in November, and I think he wants this badly enough that he'll do that, but... he loves to have the media love him. How will he play to these two opposing groups? Hard to say... Good news: Hillary leads Barack in the Democrat delegate count. I want her to get the nomination. It will drive every conservative bonkers, the idea of Hillary and Bill back in the White House. That's a one-way ticket to record turnout. Go Hill! Let's see how Florida turns out, and then Super Tuesday. |
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 I met with the recruiters at Paragon to train them on the backend of the system I've developed, and found that they work and think a little differently than the system presents itself to the end-user. End-users aren't always good at telling developers specifically what will work for them. It's kind of an intuition on the part of the designer. Luckily for me, I took Tamara with me to sit in on the meeting. She's an implementation specialist, and has a strong compass to know what's going to work and what won't. So this weekend, I'm going through the backend of the web site to conform it more closely with how I understand the recruiters view their work. It means rewriting quite a bit. But if it means more enthusiasm for the product, it's worth it. As I go through the rewrite of the menu, I ask myself constantly: how will they view this? Does this make sense? Is this clear? Is it complete and robust? That's a lot of mental gymnastics. There's a depth of thinking that goes on while doing this that requires paying no real attention to anything. Sometimes, my work is best done while walking the neighborhood because there is thinking involved, and sometimes, I get a lot accomplished in the shower, and sometimes, just browsing web sites absent-mindedly helps. Does that look like work? No.
Is it work? Absolutely. Once the design is right, everything becomes obvious and easy. I think this is true for a lot of people, but most work environments / cultures don't allow for that kind of free-activity conceptualization. If they don't see something that looks like work (typing! typing!) then you're slacking. But how do you think things through and arrive at the right answers to problems when you're expected to be typing! typing! meeting! meeting! talking! talking! all the time. Perhaps because there is that work! work! expectation in most companies, big projects struggle to finish correctly and thus makes no sense to the end-user. The clear thinking and mental prototyping required for clean design is not visible to the observer, and in some companies, simply not allowed - which will leave a lot of unanswered questions at the end of some projects, because no one thought them through. Is that success? Just meeting a deadline and looking like you're working! working! is no success at all if the end result doesn't amplify the productivity of the end-user. It's amazing to me how often this obvious requirement for every project gets lost in the path to production! production! |
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I bought a Harvard Business Review the other day, and read an interview with Bruce Wasserstein, who has been described in a different article as the most brilliant strategist by a guy who does global lawyering for mergers and acquisitions. Does he deserve that title? Under Mr. Wasserstein's watch, Lazard, which ranked 11th in completed global M&A transactions last year, has become a public company and thrived. While other banks unraveled amid the deepening credit crisis at the end of last year, Lazard's solid M&A record - and its lack of mortgage-related meltdowns - has made it "a darling of Wall Street analysts," Mr. Greenfeld says. Nice feat.Back to the HBR article, Wasserstein gives insight on how he hires and retains: You attract the people your system invites. If you create a bureaucratic system and have meetings every day at 8:00 AM and send a report card in at the end of the day, you may think, intuitively, that's good management. That works for some companies. But if I did that, I'd lose my best people - the people I want. We sacrifice some degree of efficiency by deliberately having a somewhat less centrally managed culture.We have and want to attract a network of stars - people who communicate and cooperate but are entrepreneurial and stand out as quality individuals, who are not the cogs in a corporate machine. Quality people must be managed with customized approaches. The idea is to create a hothouse where young talent is nourished by our culture and people are encouraged to think creatively, think deeply, think about the long-term client relationship - but above all, I want them to reflect on what they are doing and why, and then wonder, "Can we do it better?" Management's role is to help them. It's an iterative process. Create an atmosphere where we can all teach one another and stimulate the imgination. Ideas are not hierarchical - they come from all levels - so allowing the talent of younger people to bubble up is our imperative. Our model also requires that senior managers lead by example - they are all "doers." It's a good line worth considering... "You attract the people your system invites." Think about this on a more micro level...I know some artist-types who are amazing and breathtaking people. Personally, I love them. But their system - the environment and methods they create around them in which to do business - make it impossible to business. Because they are messy personally - which is cool in a remote and observational way - they attract others comfortable with that system. And those people tend to be scattered and loose, shooting from the hip and winging it with bravado. Most of them struggle to "make it." They lack structure. I also know some people who are wired in the most anal retentive ways, insisting on a rigid way of doing things, and wanting others around them to comform and getting irritated when they don't. Their system, boxed-in and immaculate, works on formula. And the minute that life doesn't comply with their formula, they seem to work harder to put things back in the way that they understand them (wasted energy on things they generally can't control) than they do on adapting to a new world. What's your personal "system?" How does it affect those around you? How does it impact your success? Now take this to a macro level... if you own or run a business, or manage a section of a business, what types of employees do you want? Do you want cogs in the wheel, professional burger-flippers who act according to the manual and job description? Do you want people who can run with little or no push from you? Do you want those who can act as Wasserstein wants his people to act, stars "who communicate and cooperate but are entrepreneurial and stand out as quality individuals?" Personally or professionally, how is your system designed to invite those you seek? |
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 I remember back in college, I took a Georgaphy class. My instructor asked us, "What is the single reason for all weather?" He stumped us and we gave him no answer. After a significant pause, he asked again, "What is the single reason that we have wind, rain, snow, drought, tornadoes, and balmy days?" Pause again. "Give up?" We nodded sheepishly... "The sun," he announced. A student raised his hand and said incredulously, "The sun causes rain." "Of course, it does," our instructor replied. "You've heard of the water cycle? How do you think water rises into the sky for it to fall again? The sun heats it." "But what about snow? The sun doesn't make it cold," the student countered. "Without the sun, the earth would be colder than we can imagine. The sun doesn't make it cold; the sun warms half of the earth every 24 hours. When it snows, the sun just hasn't warmed the earth enough to cause rain, and so we get snow." "Well then, how does the sun cause wind?" another student queried. "Why do we have wind? Wind occurs because air moves from high pressure to low pressure. So why do we have bubbles of various pressures? The same reason that we have areas of warmth and areas of cold: heat from the sun. What happens when air is warmed? It expands. And when it cools? It contracts. High pressure, low pressure. That's why the sun causes wind." That day I learned that all weather spawns from warming by the sun. I also learned in that class that the earth goes through periods of cooling and warming, called Glacials and Interglacials. The last Interglacial, called the Eemian, occurred over 100,000 years ago. The warmest peak of the Eemian was around 125,000 years ago, when forests reached as far north as North Cape (which is now tundra) in northern Norway well above the Arctic Circle. We're currently in a warming cycle called Holocene. I know that it's not yet as warm as it was during the Eemian period, so in all likelihood, it will get warmer yet - with or without man's help.Why is it getting warmer? Because it's the natural cycle of the earth. Is man contributing to the warming trend? That's open for debate. Today, it's nine below where I live. We're enjoying a healthy dose of snow this winter. It's a quite normal season for Iowa. And this weather today came courtesy of the warming of the sun, as it always does. |
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I had lunch today with a guy who described himself as a: Gravy Train Engineer I love that :)I also heard the phrase "I hope we're not pole-vaulting mouse turds here." Lunch was a hoot! |
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A few days ago, I said that I would post a link to the project on which I've worked. Here's the link to the beta web site. What Is It? In concert with Paragon IT Pros, Paragon 24/7 aims to help companies more easily find the right candidates for their staffing needs. It does so in four ways: - It's a very user-friendly search engine that features an iterative search. You never run into "No Matches Found" and you never have to start over if you don't like the results. Instead, you can refine your search as you go, either adding a filter to it or removing a filter from it as needed.
- The search results of candidates can be viewed in a comparison chart at any time, making it easy to see the differences between candidates.
- You can subscribe to the search results and get notified of updates by either email or RSS feed.
- It works when you want to work, available 24/7 - late nights and weekends - and allows you to queue up conversations when they are convenient to you. Finally, you get to leave phone tag behind you.
If you browse the site now, there is only one candidate. But that's only what's public. Behind the scenes, 119 vetted candidates are entering their information into the web site, and as Paragon verifies that the data was entered correctly, more candidates will appear for public viewing. Once that's done and we take it through one last thorough testing, we'll release the public web site.Today, over 70 hiring managers at one company alone in the Des Moines area received a link to the beta web site. In the next month, dozens of other companies in Des Moines, and then dozens more in Omaha and Minneapolis, will become aware of the site. What is 247Toolset? 247Toolset is mine... it's my representation of me, the guy who built and owns the technology behind Paragon 24/7. Talks are underway to expand the use of the search engine into other applications, and I should be able to talk about those by the end of February. I'm actively looking for companies that need an engine like the one I've built. I have some ideas about that, and I can tell you that I'm working to create a sample site for medical staffing, then later for engineers and accountants and so on. I had a conversation in the early evening today that might blossom into a broader recruiting network, with the engine I've built at its center. We'll see... but people are excited. So if you like, beat up on the beta web site and share your thoughts/experience with me. I'm wide open to critique or suggestions. |
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A little lunchtime fun...  |
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I bought Tamara the book Eat Pray Love as a stocking stuffer and took a moment to read a bit from it. I found this passage, which is so well-written that it needs to be said: Luigi Barzini, in his 1964 masterwork The Italians (written when he had finally grown tired of foreigners writing about Italy and either loving it or hating it too much) tried to set the record straight on his own culture. He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political, and scientific minds of the ages, but have never become a major world power. Why are they the planet's masters of verbal diplomacy, yet still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, yet so collectively unsuccessful as an army? How can they be such shrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such inefficient capitalists as a nation?His answers to these questions are more complex than I can fairly encapsulate here, but have much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated, and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists, and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors..." In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business - not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into... rhetoric and plot. Not too long ago, authorities arrested a brotherhood of Catholic monks in Sicily who were in tight conspiracy with the Mafia, so who can you trust? What can you believe? The world is unkind and unfair. Speak up against this unfairness, and in Sicily at least, you'll end up as the foundation of an ugly new building. What can you do in such an environment to hold a sense of your individual human dignity? Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing except, perhaps, to pride yourself on the fact that you alway fillet your fish with perfection, or you make the lightest ricotta in the whole town? What a great way to show how to enjoy incompetence. The clowning of others, such as politicians, could be a spectator's sport to be savored, and what we can really expect in terms of excellence lies in our own hands in the small things that we do for ourselves. Like watching Tamara dice vegetables. Nobody dices vegetables like she does... with such precision and care. There is love in every move of her knife. It's amazing. Or like when I pick up a paintbrush and agonize over colors and details... I put such time into it and want to capture this elusive feeling in my art...We all have a few tasks we do that we perform with great attention to every detail because, for us, it matters. It's totally within our control. There is a moment in Amelie (my favorite movie) where Dominique Bretodeau eats chicken. He has no moment but that one, and his delight of chicken is all that he knows in this world.  As William Saroyan said: "Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough." God bless the Italians. And for that matter, the French. |
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I love Oregon...   And the quote of the day: Sometimes I have to do the things I don't want to do to be the man I want to be. There's a cool story behind that quote, about a man who showed himself to be very much a quality human being and stand-up guy for his family. I might tell it some other time. |
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