Are we unprofessional?

From Uncle Bob's Clean Code, discussing the pressures that professionals get to deliver unacceptable quality:

What if you were a doctor and had a patient who demanded that you stop all the silly hand-washing in preparation for surgery because it was taking too much time? Clearly the patient is the boss; and yet the doctor should absolutely refuse to comply. Why? Because the doctor knows more than the patient about the risks of disease and infection. It would be unprofessional for the doctor to comply with the patient.

Ouch! What a great metaphor! It really hurts, but it is also a brilliant invitation to get vocal when one needs to get vocal.

Kids need to learn to make good choices

You know, kids learn to make good choices not by following directions but by making choices

I liked this sentence so much that I wanted to find out more about its author, Alfie Kohn. After reading several reviews, good and bad, at Amazon, I ended up ordering Unconditional Parenting and making worse the backlog of books on my table.

While skimming over its intro, I liked a fragment by Barbara Coloso, on teenagers whose parents complain 'he was such a good kid, so well behaved, so well mannered, so well dressed. Now look at him!':

From the time he was young, he dressed the way you told him to dress; he acted the way you told him to act; he said the things you told him to say. He's been listening to somebody else tell him what to do... He hasn't changed. He is still listening to somebody else tell him what to do. The problem is, it isn't you anymore; its his peers.

Carrots & Sticks? Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

Fun and surprising TED Talk by Dan Pink on Motivation.

Experiments show that extrinsic motivators (carrots and sticks) work great for simple/mechanical-like tasks, probably by providing a narrow focus. But... rewards make performance worse for creative/complex tasks!!!

It's a funny coincidence that today I picked up a free copy of the The Wall Street Journal and it had an article on executive bonuses. Huge expensive carrots that, according to the experiments above, lead to less ability to deal with complexity.

"because" vs "in order to"

Charles Handy, in The Age Of Unreason

Continuous change is comfortable change. The past is then the guide to the future. An American friend, visiting Britain and Europe for the first time, wondered, "Why is it that over here whenever I ask the reason for anything, any institution or ceremony or set of rules, they always give me an historical answer, 'because'; whereas in my country we always want a functional answer, 'in order to'. Europeans, I suggested, look backward to the best of their history and change as little as they can; Americans look forward and want to change as much as they may.

I'll keep an eye opened to see what answers I give to myself, and what answers I hear from other people. Being an in-order-to person looks to me like a very nice goal.

Brick walls

But remember, the brick walls are there for a reason.
The brick walls are not there to keep us out.
The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough.
They're there to stop the other people.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture - Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (video transcript pdf)

Change we must

Professionally, I'm always advocating for change and innovation.
Politically, I never vote for the party that is ruling in a given administration.

Then, why oh why do I get so annoyed when I'm unable to shop the exact same model of running shorts that I bough five years ago? Or was it ten years ago?

Update:
Luis, in a comment to my original post, tries to make me feel better and invites me to put the blame on the usual suspects: politicians, executives and managers.

I started to feel better until, what started as a joke became an interesting lesson for myself: am I not showing the exact same attitude that I often and loudly complain about? The we-have-always-done-things-like-this-here automatic response? The who-cares-if-the-alternative is-better mindset? Check Ferran Rodena's Eliminating Waste: Lessons From The Trenches for an example of this attitude from a group that does not belong to the usual suspects

I was offered some more technologically advanced shorts and I did not even consider its possible advantages! I must remember this the next time that I want to push some change!

Teachers and teachers

From an article in The New Yorker by Malcom Gladwell (via Bil Sherrin's intranet blog):

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year.

It's a good article, focused on how hard is to predict new hires performance in some fields.

Unfortunately, I don't think this kind of metrics are obtained in the education system in my country. In fact, several teacher unions here consider teaching evaluation as something to oppose as it promotes competition over collaboration. Yep. Feedback? Who needs it?

Passion for the craft

Denilson Nastacio's unsolicited advice to executive teams:

promote a passion for the craft rather than demanding a passion for the business. That is empowerment over chastisement. People who understand their craft are more likely to be enthusiastic about it, when people discover they can learn something new and become good at it, they are inspired; with any luck, even passionate.

When people are enthusiastic about what they do, and that boundless enthusiasm is backed by technique rather than unchecked madness, customers tend to love it too. And when that feeling of elation comes out of succeeding at a task or beating a competitor, chalk one up to a job well planed and well done, not for passion for the business.

Graphic from Creating Passionate Users

My own unsolicited advice? Read Denilson's full post, keep in mind his story about that goalkeeper's career, and enjoy being passionate (about something you can understand and can take away with you wherever you go).

Mmmm, I'm now scheduling a meeting with myself to review my latest career decisions. (Hi, M-the-sweet-hurricane! My being green with envy about your passion and focus on working on a radical career change also have lots to do with this meeting :-)

Why are we able to answer emails on sunday...

...but unable to go to the movies on Monday afternoons?

Why can't we take the kids to wok if we can take work home?

Those are very good questions asked by Ricardo Semler in his The Seven-Day Weekend.

Back in the U.S.S.R.

East Germany may no longer exist, but now we have companies featuring central planning by Troikas, mission statements crafted by apparatchiks, quinquennial planning, no right to choose leaders in companies, no democracy in the workplace, a clear distinction between intelligentsia and peasants (top CEOs make 512 times the median salary and enjoy company 'dachas', jets and limos), and 'state' monitoring (time clocks, dress codes, drug-screening, 'employee assistance' plans, e-mail monitoring, smoking and personal conduct rules, as family-life audits). [1]

This is not a quote from a labor union leader, an anti-globalization essay or a witty comedian. It's from a proponent of democracy and transparency in the workplace that happens to be a business owner putting his money where his unconventional mouth is [2]: Ricardo Semler, in The Seven-Day Weekend [3].

I loved this book, even if its writing style is not that great. Its main point is showing how Semco, Semler's company is run. When Semler and Clovis Bojikian started changing the traditional command and control ways,

"We wanted to demonstrate that the workplace could be a place of satisfaction, not of suffering. Work should be a pleasure, not an obligation. But this wasn’t just some humanitarian thesis. We believed that people working with pleasure could be much more productive.”

To Semler, it's not about values: it's about competitive advantage.

Hurry up and read his book, or take a peek into The Semco Way by reading a 1989 article by Semler in the Harvard Business Review or a 2006 article about him in Strategy+Business. I'm sure that it will give you lots of food for thought.

[1] Soviet/Corpororate parallels quote: It's a funny coincidence that I read this during International Workers' Day
[2] Unconventional mouth quote: by Geoffrey Colvin in a Fortune article
[3] Even if Semler is a best selling author, I never heard about him until I recently read a post by Jon Lister. Thanks so much, Jon!

Do Take Notes

Manuel Blum:

Finite Automata can add but not multiply.
Turing Machines can compute any computable function.
Turing machines are incredibly more powerful than Finite Automata.
Yet the only difference between a FA and a TM is that the TM, unlike the FA, has paper and pencil.
Think about it.
It tells you something about the power of writing.
Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton.
With writing you have the extraordinary power of a Turing machine.

via David Singer's Read This Blog!

I am thinking now

Do not miss (sorry, louder, DO NOT MISS) this TED Talk:
Patrick Awuah: Educating a new generation of African leaders.

It's not only about Africa. It's about entitlement[1] and responsibility, education, ethics, critical thinking, incompetence, economic elites, empowerment... in any part of the world. 18 moving minutes that will make you think.

I'm keeping a quote from it:

Every society must be very intentional about how it trains its leaders

[1] I was talking about this to someone and could not think of a good Spanish term for "entitlement". He translated quoting something heard in lots of movies when the hero is in trouble while abroad: I am an American citizen. Not that I believe that Americans are worse than in my corner of the world in the entitlement disease, but I thought that it was a very funny and good translation.

Salen de su predestinación

Ángeles Caso escribe hoy una buena columna en el dominical de La Vanguardia, sobre "la cultura de la pobreza" y, los que, como su propio padre, se rebelan contra ella. Me sorprende este párrafo:

Me cuentan mis amigos profesores que los hijos de emigrantes que acuden a sus clases suelen dividirse en dos tipos extremos: los que, desubicados y acaso angustiados, no tienen el menor interés por el estudio, y aquéllos -mayoritarios, según parece- que saben que sólo gracias a la escuela (...) lograrán salir de su predestinación de seres pobres, incultos y, por ello, manipulables. Me hablan de la pasión con la que muchos niños ecuatorianos, peruanos, senegaleses o rumanos estudian matemáticas, inglés, ciencias, historia y lengua española, agarrándose al conocimiento como la garantía de un futuro mejor. Y me describen cómo, frente a ellos, nuestros propios críos suelen acomodarse a la ley del mínimo esfuerzo, creyendo que la vida les deparará por sí sola bienestar.

No creo que esto sea lo que nos suele venir a la cabeza cuando pensamos en el impacto de la inmigración sobre la escuela.

Turn them off!

It is turn off TV week. Just do it!

And if it is not TV but your PC/phone what is keeping you from having green knees at the end of the day, it is a good week to give it a thought to this: who is in charge, you or your gadgets?

Praising effort vs. praising smartness

An article worth reading for anyone dealing with kids or former kids: How Not to Talk to Your Kids. The Inverse Power of Praise. Very simple experiments with highly surprising results. I'd like to read more about this topic, but, for now, I'm keeping this quote from Carol Dweck

"(when praising kids) emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure"

Trascender nuestra tribu

En una entrevista a Lluís Magriñà, director del Servicio Jesuita a Refugiados en La Contra de La Vanguardia:

No hay libertad sin educación. Ser libre es trascender tu tribu. Por eso la democracia real hoy sólo es factible en los paises en los países donde se generaliza la ensenanza secundaria.

Lluís Amiguet, el entrevistador, escribe:

Magriñà nos trae de África algunas lecciones para nuestra democracia moderna y europea, empezando por que sólo somos libres si somos capaces de trascender nuestra tribu, nuestro clan y nuestro partido para elegir al más capaz de cualquier tribu, partido o clan, aunque no sea el nuestro, y dejar que sea él quien nos represente y gestione nuestro intereses.

La idea de Magriñà sobre la importancia de trascender la tribu me hace rebuscar unas notas de hace unas semanas sobre una entrevista en La Vanguardia a Arjun Appadurai (de pago), en la que hablaba de identidad cultural, globalización y conflicto. Algunos extractos:

Los estados nación están perdiendo capacidad, control sobre su economía, y hay una tendencia a enfatizar la esencia cultural. Incluso en la UE, la gente se pregunta que sucederá, por ejemplo, con la identidad italiana. Esta preocupación puede convertirse en patológica, extrema. Cuando esto sucede hay una búsqueda de un chivo expiatorio al que atacar. Pueden ser emigrantes o minorías internas.
(...)
Una minoría que se enfada es un objeto perfecto para el enfado de la mayoría. La frontera hacia el genocidio se da cuando las dos cosas se encuentran: una mayoría enfadada y una minoría enfadada. (...) En las banlieues parisinas, la mayoría todavía no está enfadada. O, al revés, en la India la mayoría está enfadada con Pakistán, pero los musulmanes indios, que son 120 millones entre más de 1.000, tratan de buscar la paz. Lo que sucedió en Yugoslavia o Ruanda tenía que ver con el enfado de minoría y mayorías.
(...)
La creación de la identidad francesa supuso empujar a otras como la bretona, que era muy fuerte. De ese modo, si no eres de la identidad mayoritaria, eres separatista, peligroso, antipatriótico. (...) Hoy, para ser independientes sólo pueden hacer una cosa: crear un Estado. En el cual volverán a chocar las pequeñas identidades. Para la identidad grande, el nacionalismo será una liberación, y, para las pequeñas, represión.
(...)
Cuando el contacto se hace más intenso, paradójicamente funciona lo que Freud llamaba el narcisismo de las pequeñas diferencias: aunque la gente sea casi igual, pequeñas diferencias se convierten en muy importantes.
(...)
La gente necesita identidades locales porque no vamos a ser sólo ciudadanos del mundo, pero hemos de crear constituciones sin el toque de etnia local. (...), pensar en nuestras identidades locales como en las de una asociación voluntaria, como si perteneciéramos a un club de fútbol, donde no importa de dónde vienes, sólo lo que quieres o te gusta. O como en los clásicos principios del Estado nación acentuar el aspecto geográfico, que es el más sano frente al racial o lingüístico.

Me resulta divertido que mencione clubs de fútbol y mayorías y minorías enfadadas. Toda mi vida he pensado que los patriotas son a menudo gente enfadada que parece levantarse por la mañana esperando descubrir la última afrenta que ha sufrido su patria. Y también llevo muchos años sorprendido de que el sentimiento patriótico no esté en el ámbito de lo privado, junto a la religión, tu equipo de fútbol o tus preferencias sexuales y de color de calcetines; en cambio, muchas veces este sentimiento es una parte central de la vida política.

La entrevista me ha dado muchas ganas de leer La Modernidad Desbordada (creo que la edición en español es inecontrable; Modernity at Large en amazon.co.uk) y Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger. Y quizás también de regalárselos a algunos patriotas de distinto pelaje y patria que conozco.

Bonus link vagamente relacionado: Changes, animación estupenda (2 min 30 sec, youtube) sobre la identidad y la uniformidad. Via César Viteri en Multimaníaco, con comentarios interesantes sobre la gestión del cambio organizativo; a su vez, via Vida de un Consultor; a su vez, via...)

Rethink ourselves

Me-too post about a popular and highly rated video: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us (4:30 minutes). I loved it.

Update:
Bonus links: A transcript and the video on Mojity, a cool video+comments mashup.

Analogies and Connections

The RTP Scrolls is a place where Denilson Nastacio and his readers have some fun drawing analogies from unexpected sources, borrowing examples from Mother Nature, mathematics, physics, biology, politics and on occasion, metaphysics.

Denilson's unexpected jumping often makes me think about James Burke's Connections (an alternative view of change) , one my my favourite TV shows ever (that I haven't had the chance to watch it in 20?! years). The great news for me is that, while googling to write this post, I have learned that I'll be able to watch some of the episodes.

Enjoy!

Sobreprotección

Un amigo, compañero de arenero en el parque infantil, me envía un powerpoint (*) simpático sobre cómo ahora aspiramos al riesgo cero, buscamos culpables ante cualquier accidente y exigimos un nivel de comodidad que de niños no teníamos ni remotamente.

No tiene créditos, pero la mayor parte del contenido parece sacado de este artículo: Los niños de antes vivimos de milagro.

(*) Fabián, disculpas por lo de "un pouerpoint".

Darwin? Photoshop?

Evolution - A Dove Film (1 min 17 sec, Google Video)

(via Anton Piatek's Strangeparty)

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/
http://www.porlabellezareal.com/