Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

I’m not shy about this: This is a rant. I’m frustrated and I need to express that. But I still have a point.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) suck. More importantly, people who make decisions based on FUD rather than rational argument suck.

Background

One of the hats I wear is as a software consultant.

Once upon a time I wrote some highly specialized software which someone started pushing on anyone who would listen as though it were the panacea to their field’s problems. Obviously, misrepresenting something in a sales pitch is wrong and I told that person so, but as a peon, at the time, I couldn’t push too hard on that angle. Similarly, anyone who bought into this vision is just as responsible for the ensuing mess as the author of the falsehood pushing sales pitch. Someone’s pushing you to buy into their vision of the universe and their panacea? It’s your job to be skeptical, to be analytical, to question their claims.

OK, I’m not writing that software anymore. Not to say that it doesn’t have its place, nor to say that it didn’t have some particularly cool elements to it when properly applied. Just that life took me on a different path, so I’m not there anymore. But a few of the people who bought the sales pitch know my name. Occasionally, they think to themselves, “Hey, self, I’m convinced that this software will solve all my problems. Now if only I knew how I’d be king of the world. Who do we know that understands this thing inside and out and can help us?” So they give me a call and, once they convince me that what they’re doing is actually interesting and that they understand that my time is followed by an invoice, I might be talked into spending some time with them. Sometimes it’s just talk – advice about ways to approach their problems and potential solutions. Other times it’s actually writing code.

Project X

Project X is what we’re going to call this thing. It’s a big project, and at some point they drank the kool-aid and some time later they called me up and said, “Hey, we heard that you understand this thing which we’re using to rule the universe. We’d really like you to work with us to get it running in a way that will let us get where we want to go” and I said “Well, I’m not actually sure that this thing is the right thing for you, but so long as you’re open to the possibility of using something else or writing something new, I’d be happy to be involved in Project X.” So now I spend some of my time every month on Project X.

Project X recently released a document describing a big part of what I’d call their goals. It goes into quite a lot of detail and it’s highly repetitive, but after trawling through it, I came to a big conclusion. That software I wrote back when? It’s totally wrong for this project. Not like a little wrong. No. Completely and utterly wrong.

Rational

That’s OK. This is my business. I help people figure out how to do stuff. Sometimes I create what they need. Guess what I’m going to do now. I’m going to write up a few pages clearly explaining what the relevant needs are, where the panacea misses and maybe even suggest an alternative. At this point, the goal is simply to open the team’s eyes to an obstacle and to open the floor to discussion. I’m the consultant: I don’t make their decisions for them. I present suggestions. I try to help them realize their goals.

My top priority at this point is to start a constructive discussion. I want the team to see the upcoming obstacles and I want to help them avoid being roadkill. I’m also not a total asshole. I write a professional, coherent (probably more so than this post) and rational argument. I ask the group to consider the requirements and look at the solution they are backing and consider the possibility that we’re putting a square peg in a round hole. True, I think it’s a certainty, not just a possibility. But right now I want them to just start talking about the idea. Tomorrow we can deal with getting them to change direction.

Change

People hate change. They don’t admit that, of course. They say they embrace change. Change is a powerful word. The key to it is actually pretty simple: People love change if they aren’t the ones making the change. Maybe very indirectly. Like voting for a presidential candidate. But if they had to get down to making change, there’d be a very different story. It goes like this:

What we’re doing now might not be absolutely perfect, but it’s pretty darn great and we like it. You see a mismatch between requirements and the solution? The requirements must be wrong. Or they’re pie in the sky requirements and we don’t really need to meet them. Well, OK, let’s talk about maybe changing solution. Will it take effort? Oh, really? Change and work? No, I’m sure what we have now is amazingly perfect. You’re clearly misunderstanding something critically important here, but I’m really busy now, so I’ll explain it to you later. For now, just go back to following the old plan.

FUD

So now I have two issues to resolve. One is that change is needed otherwise the project will flop. While I’m “just” a consultant, I still care about the projects I take on. That’s one of the requirements to get me to take on a project. So a flop would really make me unhappy. The other is that the team is exhibiting the classic reactionary signs, fear, uncertainty and doubt. They’re afraid of change, uncertain about their own requirements, and doubtful of my assessment.

Today sucks. Tomorrow will be better. I’m sure of it. But damn if I don’t want to scream and shout right now.

</rant>

Spain, or Food informs Life

Totally off-topic for me. Then again, I clearly fail at having a topic. Anyway, if we accept that the intention is to write (not going as well as I kept hoping) and, more specifically, to generally write about the process of life, of work, of defining process, then this, being a foodie post, can only liberally be classified as the process of life – but I’m fine with that.

I follow a few dozen blog feeds. Somehow that list keeps growing, and very rarely do I drop a feed. The new ones tend to have more frequent or longer posts. In other words, I’m spending more time reading blogs than I used to. I’m not sure this is really in my best interests, but at least I enjoy it and from time to time I find a post that’s really so interesting or educational that I can easily justify the hours I spend as work-related research.

Anthony Bordain’s post about his experience visiting Spain is definitely not work-justifiable reading. But reading it, I find an unbidden smile creep across my face. Near the end, a twang of longing in my chest. Spain. We went there last summer for vacation, and it was Denise’s first time there. She said she felt at home. So did I although, of course, I lived there for a decade and visited several times since. So what’s with this longing? Why do I suddenly miss Spanish life? Tony nailed it – life in Spain is just so amazingly simple and yet each little moment is so wonderful. It takes warm people and a love of life to get this feeling in a country, and I just don’t think it’s physically possible in this icy winterland which I now call home.

But it’s more than just plenty of sun that leads to happy, warm people. Food is critical. Good food, specifically. The kind that just grows naturally, or perhaps with a little helping hand from time to time. What grows easily here? Cucumbers? Probably not even that. In any case, the food here just doesn’t taste like real food. Tomatoes and other fruits are watery, meat is meaty, but lacks the delicate flavours that we’d call terroir if we were talking about wine. I’d like to see anyone base a rich culture on such lackluster foods. I really would – it would give me hope for life in Canada.

I’d love to contribute in some way to this, but it’s just not my industry today. But I’ll definitely be thinking about what contribution I can make. Suggestions welcome.

Why should success be balanced?

Just read another piece about Dean Kamen and his company, DEKA.  I can say with no embarrassment that each time I read about the next thing DEKA does it makes me want to cry.  There are so few people/companies/entities out there that have the courage to really think long term and to do it in such a positive way.  If I can achieve a small fraction of what Dean has done in his life so far, I’ll be ecstatic.  But would I give up the idea of a family, leisure time, watching movies and what most of us would refer to as “having a life” in exchange?  It’s a hard question, but I think the answer, at least for me, is a resounding no.  Would I be happy living like Dean does, but knowing that I’ve given people health, life, independence and freedom through medical advances, dignity, mobility and self-sufficiency in the iBot and the Luke arm, and, hopefully soon, water and electricity with the water purifier and Stirling engine?  I don’t know.

What I do know is I’m really happy to know that there’s someone out there with the drive and the means to do what he does.  While I do what seems infinitely more mundane in my daily life, I hope to one day be inspired by an idea that can really bring joy to people who need some.

The Mac switch, or finding OneNote for Mac

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve moved to using more modern, GUI-centric tools in my work. As was further evident my work involves, among other things, developing software – i.e., designing architecture, planning, implementing, testing and documenting all along the process. This has created an interesting reliance on tools, but I’ve strived to keep most of them within the Eclipse ecosystem, particularly as I, and my co-conspirators, have both Mac and Windows machines – so cross-platform tools are pretty important. Up until now we’ve been working under this model where the main development environment is Windows-based and I’ve been keeping my eye on case-by-case Mac compatibility in order to support my own development work. The last several days I’ve been trying to find a Mac replacement for OneNote, and this search has led me to an interesting question: Why am I thinking of my Windows environment as the main one when my Mac is hooked up to the 24” screen, keyboard and trackball and my Windows environment is a highly mobile tablet with a 12” screen? Obviously I’m using the Mac as my main workspace and just relying on the tablet for portability and, occasionally, handwriting or voice recognition (see the not-yet-written post on writing ergonomics).

Goodbye hiatus. Hello tooling.

Just after I told myself that I was going to get back to writing regularly (Dec 2007), I wrote all of two posts and then disappeared. Of course, having only two posts means having a similarly low number of readers, so it really shouldn’t matter – but it does. To me. A complete change of plans and cities very successfully distracted me from this goal I had set for myself. But I’ve moved, the plans have changed, and now I have little to drive me but my work. So the time has come to return to writing.

Goals VS Sanity

Does having goals necessarily require the loss of sanity? I’ll admit I may have bitten off more than I’d like when I decided to add a second full time commitment in the form of school on top of my already busy work life – but I have goals, and both my work and my studies are part of pursuing those goals. Do all people with goals drive themselves to insanity, or is it just me?

Hiring challenges

Recent discussions I’ve had with a group of 4th year undergrads and professors got me thinking about how hard it is to determine if an applicant is really suitable for hiring. There are two key aspects that should always be considered when hiring someone:

1. Do they fit the team well?
2. Are they qualified to do the job?