Author Archives: jdtharp

Going without…

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It occurred to me last night that although I’ve been using the iPad a lot over the last month, vie never really put it through a real stress test to see if it can stand up to being the only computer I have with me on a trip. Some of that is a factor of all of my recent travel being work related and needing my work files with me for the trip. But this week I have the perfect opportunity to run the iPad in real world travel conditions and see how it holds up. I’ll get to assess it’s utility as not just a media player, but also as a primary tool for blogging, email, and forum participation; basically this is my chance to find out how it performs as a laptop replacement.

I know that being without a traditional computer for five days sounds like some people’s version of a perfect week, but it fills me with a certain amount of concern simply because I can’t point to the last time I traveled without a full blown computer (or two) along for the ride. I’ve probably lost most of the readers by now, but I’ll be taking plenty of notes and report back on my observations and experience. It might even be helpful for some of you who are not obsessive early adopters.

Since I regularly go a day or two without even turning on my laptop, this test seems like an easy win for the iPad, particularly since the heavy duty writing and photo editing will take place when i get back to Memphis. Knowing that, though, I think I should be able to prove to myself that this little device can actually free up a lot of space in my usually ridiculously heavy electronics kit bag.

Written on iPad.

One day more…

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Trying to find the motivation to muddle through one more work day before taking the better part of two weeks off… Just about anyone can guess how successful I’ve been at that so far. Sure there’s plenty of things I could be doing, but I’m just not seeing the sense in starting anything new at this point. Anything that’s a priority tomorrow won’t even be on the radar in two weeks. Not saying that’s good or bad, just that it’s the way things are. Right or wrong, the only thing I’m interested in tomorrow is hitting cruise control early on and ducking out as quickly as possible. My body is in West Tennessee, but my mind is already soaking up the Cruzan and the tropical sun.

Showers…

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We’ve now reached the point in vacation planning where I start obsessively checking weather forecasts, flight details, reservations, etc. At the moment, the next ten days are a solid strip of “showers” according to the National Weather Service. I hope that’s just your typical early morning showers and not the all day torrential downpour type. I’ll feel awfully silly sitting by the pool in a driving rain pounding down rum punch… But I’ll do it if I have to.

It’s just policy…

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Policy
–noun, plural -cies.
A definite course of action adopted for the sake of expediency, facility, etc.: We have a new company policy.

Most of my professional life, I’ve been a policy guy in some shape, form, or fashion whether it’s writing, interpreting, or ignoring said policies. As a policy guy, it’s part of my mission in life to point out the general foibles of those who set policy… Even (and perhaps especially) when those policies are promulgated by those with whom I share bonds of affinity, friendship, and respect. Though it’s sometimes harder to poke the people you like with a stick, that mostly just means that it’s really worth doing.

As a matter of policy, my employer has decided that supervisory personnel are not allowed to work at locations other than at their assigned duty location (i.e. from home, a telework center, etc). Notwithstanding the fact that somewhere north of 60% of all personnel work somewhere other than the “corporate headquarters” and most of us supervise people who are geographically dispersed, the general belief is that you can’t manage what you can’t see. I have philosophical differences with this position, but there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with such a policy per se.

The challenge comes when, for unforeseeable reasons, the message goes forth that all personnel, including supervisors, will telework until such time as they are directed to report to the office. Seems all well and good from the outside, but the malcontent in me has a compulsion to poke at it just a bit further. The message that was really sent here is that “we know you’re capable of doing your job from a remote location and that’s what you’re going to do when it’s convenient for us… But don’t ask to do it when it’s convenient for you.”

I don’t have any moral qualms with hypocrisy and I certainly don’t have issues with working from home. I’m better able to focus on writing and reading when I’m not interrupted by “walkups” or people yelling across the room a couple of times an hour… And as we all know from our previous reading, a productive Jeff tends to be a happy Jeff. Still, it would be nice to do it occasionally when it helped me meet some of my own requirements rather than being marks on a tally sheet showing how quickly we got everyone “back to work.”

I’m just sayin’.

Fails, Epic and Otherwise…

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This weekend has mostly been about failures. Originally I had planned a simple shot over the bow at Apple and AT&T for their seeming inability to figure out how to enable 3G connectivity for customers whose primary billing address is a post office box. While not catastrophic in scope, it just seems like the address I use for… ummm… everything else, including paying my AT&T Mobility bill every month, should be acceptable for other billing purposes for the same company. After 48 hours, a few convolutions, and eventually finding a workaround buried in an iPad forum, the issue was resolved without needing to change my billing address. If anyone else is having the same issue, ask me how it worked out and I’ll be happy to pass along the info. It mostly involves telling AT&T a little white lie. No one has any problems with that, right?

The next fail, is more the epic of the weekend. It involved a levee “failure” that ended up flooding the naval base where I work. I use failure in quotations because that’s a cop-out term that means you don’t know what happened to it (i.e. breach, overtop, etc). However, I digress. The result was a reported 4-5 feet of water inside the wire that effectively swamped the entire base and conflicting reports of how much, if any, water actually made it inside the building. Not to make light of the situation, of course, but I do wonder if anyone else has been struck by the irony of a landlocked naval base taking on enough water to basically put it out of commission. I’ve also noticed, without the irony, that the single best source of information about the situation there has been the base’s Facebook page, that has had regular official updates as well as innumerable unofficial observations contributed over the last day and a half, where other official and unofficial sources of information have been almost silent on the situation. I’m suddenly seeing more value added to Facebook than as a wonderfully engineered time waster and advertising venue. That it’s doing a better job of keeping the communication flowing says something less than good about our in-house infrastructure.

And finally, Winston came home from the kennel with a “hot spot” on his neck. Think weeping open sore (and accompanying nasty stench) and you’ll sort of get it. He’s on prescription antibiotics and a cortisone spray, but his neck looks especially nasty. Thankfully he doesn’t seem to be scratching it, so hopefully the meds will do their thing and he’ll be healed up in due course. Just one more of the many joys of pet ownership I suppose.

Back at it…

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You may have noticed the distinct lack of anything going on here for the last week or so. That’s mainly because every waking minutes has been dedicated to making sure 150 odd people managed to get through a conference in Fort Worth with as little stupid happening as possible. It was mostly a success, but I do have a laundry list of things I would do differently if there is ever (God forbid) a next time. Now it’s a matter of tying up the loose ends, reviewing the end-of-event surveys, and making sure everyone is paid on time for their travel expenses. I’m glad the event is over, but will be even happier when the last details are safely put to bed.

While closing out the details is sometimes as bad as the event itself, my annoyance is somewhat moderated because the conference was the last major piece of work standing between me and five days of sitting on the beach. That definitely makes the pesky details seem a little easier to handle. Seven working days left and my biggest goal from here on out is to avoid all major problems and defer as much as possible until later in the month. I assure you, that sounds easier than it will prove to be in practice… but that’s certainly not going to stop me from trying. I can’t quite put things on autopilot, but I’m going to get as close as possible to it. In the meantime, it’s a serious rededication to relaxing at the house, playing with the pups, and catching up on a week’s worth of DVR’ed television.

Hardest part…

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Sitting here at the tire place with nothing but time on my hands reminds me how much I despise sitting around just waiting for things to happen. Aside from the unhappy series of events that led me here this morning, the last 36 hours have mostly been about waiting; waiting for people to do things they said they would do a week ago; waiting for hundreds of pages of handouts to churn out of the printer; and for the other shoe to inevitably drop.

Now that I have plenty of things that need done, I’m waiting again this morning and my schedule is purely in the hands of other people once again. Of course sitting here watching the torrential rain gives me a chance to think about the 20 cases of paper products sitting in the back of the truck and wonder just how well the “watertight” bedcover will actually perform. Any results less good than “wow its really dry back here” will tend to ruin my next six days.

I’ve still got a laundry list of things I need to get done today and the clock is running. The later in the morning it gets, the faster it seems to run. I suppose I’ll feel a bit better when I get the dogs to the kennel this afternoon. In the meantime I need to get serious about making everything else ready to be on the road for a while. In order to even get to that point, though, they need to get these damned tires on the truck and get me back up and moving. Sitting here while time’s wasting is making me crazy.

Event planner…

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Work in the bureaucracy long enough and you’re bound to pick up tips and tricks that will help you navigate out there in the deep waters. If I can impart any small bit of advice at the moment is it this: If anyone ever talks about needing you as part of a team planning a conference, kick them in the junk. Repeatedly. And then run away. No good can come from this project. It is evil and accursed; very truly an unclean thing.

The schedule will never be final, speakers will drop out at the last minute, senior leaders will decide to change their entire theme two days before the thing starts, and others will just ignore your request to get their material in advance. You, of course, will get the blame for those things that go horribly wrong, while others will get the credit for what goes right. It’s the definition of a no-win situation where you will have responsibility for everything, but authority over nothing. Your default response to everything in life will be to sigh heavily and rub the bridge of your nose in a futile effort to make the headache go away.

If you do ever have the misfortune of finding yourself in this position, just get use to the fact that everything will go wrong. It’s like Murphy’s Law on steroids with a side order of PCP. And your reward for a job well done? You get an invitation back to do it all over again for the next conference.

*Sigh* Has anyone seen my ibuprofen? Or my Pepto? Or my coffee?

I wonder…

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Sometimes I just have to stop and wonder why I’m putting as much emphasis as I do on certain things. Sure, I mean there’s the pride of a job well done and all, but I’m forced to wonder exactly what part of the universe would come crashing down on my head if I gave it a rest for a while.

For all my protestations of not giving a &?$@, I tend to put a premium on getting things done right. Right now I would really love to put that away for just a while and take things as they come without feeling the overwhelming desire to fix them in some way. The rest of the world seems to get along ok with halfassing everything. Why shouldn’t I get the same opportunity? What’s the worst that could happen if I really did find a way to turn that switch off? I mean, hell, they can’t shoot me and no one has ever been drawn and quartered for being a slacker.

It’s a happy fantasy, but I know that’s not going to happen. It’s not the way I’m wired. And as much as I’d like to toss in the towel and say the hell with everything I’m not sure I’d even know how to do that and make it stick. So instead of doing what I want to do and making a big bloody stink, I’ll drift off to sleep, get up with the 4:30 alarm, and do it all over again tomorrow. I’ll screw on my best British stiff upper lip and keep it that way until I retire, hit that PowerBall jackpot, or someone finally drives my blood pressure into stroke territory.

Climate…

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Note: Before you continue, please take a moment and review my “Disclaimer” page. Posts like this one are the reason the disclaimer has its own page.

Every organization, regardless of size, has a “climate.” Defined another way, climate is the general attitude that pervades the workplace. We’ve all worked for organizations that were working well at one point or another – where good things just seemed to happen. The opposite is also true: It’s the reverse-Midas effect… where everything you touch turns to shit. That’s a long way of saying that there are certain indicators of general organizational health… and that people are usually well-served by paying attention to those indicators.

Want to know how well your organization is really operating? Look to issues like the level of trust within the organization (i.e. can you rely on the guy sitting next to you to deliver in the clutch), how well the organization communicates vertically and horizontally, the level of job satisfaction of your personnel, and if you are able to retain good people once you have them. If you find you’re having problems in more than one of these areas, you guessed it… Your climate sucks.

If you want to actually put your house in order, the way to do that isn’t in simply pushing harder and expecting more… it’s in addressing the root cause of why these issues are cropping up in the first place. Sometimes it’s a structural problem that can be addressed with a shuffle of the org chart, other times it may be a manpower problem (and that doesn’t always mean needing more people). Sometimes it means finding the right people, losing the wrong ones, or some combination of the two. Other times it may mean giving your best performers the room they need to operate effectively. And as much as I hate to admit it, sometimes it means some people need to be reigned in more effectively. The solution can’t be to just ignore the issues or you’re going to break your people and break the organization.

I’ll not claim to be a great leader, as I tend to think most of what’s written about leadership is pure bunk. And while it will probably never be my strong point, I know enough about leadership and institutional dynamics to know when it isn’t being done right. All you have to do is watch how people act and listen to what they say when they think no one is listening. If you’re a leader, it will be eye opening… and if you’re a bad one, well, I guess it won’t make all that much difference anyway.