Occam’s Razor

In the Land of the Suits

I’ve gotten spoiled. For more than a year I’ve dressed business casual instead of doing the pants, shirt, tie and dress shoes thing. Actually where I work (U.S. Geological Survey) it’s more casual than business casual. It’s casual pretty much all the time. Jeans and T-shirts at work are okay, almost de rigueur. If you are having an important meeting, particularly with people in other agencies, you might wear skip the jeans and sneakers and go for something dressier. Dressy at USGS means slacks, a button down shirt (no tie) and possibly some leather shoes. I now have a whole closet full of the clothes I used to have to wear every day. It consists of dozens of ties, lots of nice and starchy shirts, shiny dress shoes and even a couple sport coats. Now they have become nearly obsolete, suitable largely for attending weddings and funerals.

And I now have a job three miles away instead of twenty-five miles away. Whereas I used to arise long before dawn I now am generally up with or after the dawn. (It depends mostly on whether I need to shuffle my daughter off to school or not.) Whereas I used to arrive before six a.m. at a carpool lot to board a vanpool for D.C. and spend a day in the city, I now more often hop on a bike and peddle to work. Instead of having to park in some distant space in Pentagon South Parking like I did for nine long years I now park my bike right next to the main entrance.

So I was beginning to forget what it was like to live that other life that encompassed the first twenty years of my career. But today I attended a Service Oriented Architecture Executive Event, sponsored by BEA at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C. That meant for a day I got to play D.C. commuter again.

It’s a game thousands play every workday. In my case it meant getting up before dawn and putting on pleated pants, a quality shirt, tie and my dress shoes. I considered adding a sport coat but figured it would be overkill. It meant dashing through a hurried breakfast, driving to the Herndon Monroe Park and Ride and finding a parking space. It meant waiting ten minutes at a bus stop, making sure I had the right change and entering a packed bus for a twenty-minute ride to the West Falls Church Metro Station. From there it meant doing the Farecard thing, boarding an Orange Line Train then, after paying inflated rush hour rates, having to stand the whole way into the city. It meant juggling my bag making sure I wasn’t inconveniencing anyone else and wedging myself into an odd spot so everyone could get on the train.

On the way into the city I could not help but examine at the faces of my fellow commuters. What I saw were people more like zombies than alive. The more awake ones were reading one of the free papers passed out entering the station (usually The Express). But most had their eyes glazed over and looked like they desperately wanted to be asleep. But like they do every weekday they are operating on too little sleep, insufficient caffeine and subjecting themselves to an uncomfortable ninety minute commute. The announcements, heard a zillion times, served only to annoy and not enlighten.

My destination was the Federal Triangle station, just a hop, skip and a jump from the opulent Ronald Wilson Reagan Building. To call it opulent is to damn it with faint praise. While the public is welcome to come inside, you have to go through the hassle of metal detectors. That meant the same thing I did several times a day when I used to work in D.C. Empty pockets of anything that might be metallic. Show photo ID. Wait in line. Hope that you clear the metal detector on the first try. In short: trust no one. (Thankfully at USGS I just flip my ID at the guards and they wave me through.)

The Executive Forum turned out to really be a forum for executives. I realized as soon as I reached the Rotunda on the 8th floor that although I thought I was well dressed, I was really underdressed. Adding a sport coat would not quite have met their standard. This was three-piece suit city. Virtually everyone (and certainly all the vendors) had perfect hair. Even the waiters were wearing suits. My tote bag was clearly not quite up to snuff: everyone else had snooty narrow leather briefcases.

And it was a good event. I learned a lot about implementing service oriented architectures, even if I can’t see it happening in my agency any time soon because of the niggardly amounts of money Congress throws our way. But even so I found myself fascinated by looking at all the people in suits. The vendors were particularly dolled up and meticulously groomed. I know they were trying to make a good impression. I figured BEA must have had quite a wardrobe budget for its public sales staff. In particular they know how to hire great looking women. I’m sure they would decry any suggestion that they do so deliberately, but these were classy booth babes. My favorite was the thirty something blonde with the D breasts, low cleavage in the vertically striped dress. But please understand they were also entirely professional. And they were on top of us, moving us quickly from event to event and making sure we were shuffling to the right rooms and elevators.

For a free event they didn’t skimp on second-rate food. You sort of expect muffins, bagels and coffee for a continental breakfast. But there were also fancy bottled waters I had never heard about. And by the 10 AM break the confectioneries were replaced with lovely, nearly irresistible cookies. By 11:30 AM my head was buzzing with all this SOA stuff. Thankfully it was a half-day event. But they were not done with us yet. Because apparently BEA thinks it has a pocket as deep as Oracle’s. They are one of the sponsors of Bobby Rahal’s racing team. So who should show up as a featured speaker than none other than Bobby Rahal himself? A lot of people were excited. But frankly I didn’t know him from Adam. BEA must have deep pockets indeed to drag him out from Indianapolis for this minor little luncheon speech, none of which had anything to do with the event itself. But before setting us free they offered us a free buffet lunch that was first class and delicious.

Shortly thereafter my coworker and I left to return to our modest offices in the Reston suburbs. I felt out of place walking around USGS wearing a tie, but fortunately no one of note noticed me. They might have started pointing at me. Who was that dude and what was that strange thing around his neck?

It wasn’t that long ago that living in the land of suits seemed second nature. Even getting out of bed before 6 a.m., while it wasn’t something I liked, was something that became almost second nature. Now I wonder how I endured it all those years. What was with all that suit and tie stuff? Why do people in the city feel the need to be so dressy all the time? Why do they torture themselves and endure ninety minute commutes each way, much of it in the dark, and spend their days in office buildings far from the people they love? How do they manage to keep doing it day after day? The answer of course is that because they need the money and it’s a necessary tradeoff that they made.

All I know is I am not planning to ever find another job. I hope to stay with USGS forever. Not only is it a terrific place to work, but also 30 minutes per day for a commute beats the heck out of 2-3 hours for zero compensation. I have found working nirvana and I am grateful.

May 12th, 2005 at 09:15pm Posted by Mark | Life 2005 | no comments

Better Living through Unemployment

My wife has been out of a job since the end of October 2004. When she was fully employed she worked on a help desk, solved mysterious Windows problems and made around $50K a year. Then her employer decided to outsource her department. She got a very nice severance check and was let go.

Fortunately there was my income to fall back on. Since I made about twice what she was making there was no looming financial catastrophe. The last six months have proven that our lifestyle has not changed much. We’ve avoided a regular trip to New York City and we also eat out a bit less. But otherwise our lifestyle seems largely unchanged. Still, it seems counterintuitive to me that our income could be cut by a third and we’d not notice it that much.

It helps to be fairly liquid. We have never been people to live beyond our means. Our house is modest. We have two cars, one paid for, the other half paid for. Our only other real debt is our mortgage. Since our house was purchased twelve years ago for less than half what it is now worth, and the principle is about $130,000 or so, our mortgage payment is easily doable. It’s about what most people pay for decent two bedroom apartments in our zip code today.

And technically my wife is not unemployed. She is now “self employed”. She is very self employed. This is to say she picks up a few greenbacks here and there fixing and building computers for friends and for clients. She does not market herself. She will also teach a class at a local community college starting next month. Adjunct teaching pays slave wages. From the 12-week course she will likely bring home about $1300. I expect that by the end of the year she will have earned at most one tenth of what she made in 2004.

Whatever time she has left over is hers to use as she wishes. She is having no problem keeping busy. She loves writing and now has the time to immerse herself into it. She has submitted one story and will be submitting others. She also critiques others stories in an online writer’s workshop. She occasionally meets friends for lunch. She has projects around the house she can pick up or leave as whim dictates. And she can sleep in late most mornings. She is not a morning person, so she now usually crawls into bed sometime after midnight when I have been asleep for a few hours. Her unemployment seems ideally timed. For example she was able to transport my father for some outpatient surgery while I worked a full day. She can also transport our daughter to her various activities without me leaving early from work to do it, which was often the case in the past.

While I am still a bit skittish about how this loss of income will work out in the long run, I am a lot less skittish than I was. One reason is that I’ve discovered that living on one income can pay a dividend. Last year with our dual incomes, even after healthy deductions and credits, we paid close to $19,000 in federal income taxes. This year I project we’ll pay about $8300 in federal income taxes. The change in our job situations caused me to look at my withholding. At my old withholding rate (Married - 0 dependents) I was withholding about $13,800 annually from my wages. Now I need to withhold $5500 less. Since I am paid biweekly this effectively means I can take home $211 more every two weeks. This can pay a few bills. But we’re already paying all the bills, still going out to dinner regularly and not going in the hole. So in a way this money feels like a windfall.

I realize that most families in this situation would not be as fortunate. My job also comes with good benefits, like health insurance. I also realize that there are some other costs to my wife’s unemployment. She is not racking up social security credits, and must pay the employer’s portion of her Social Security and Medicare taxes for her meager self-employment earnings. She is not putting money into a 401-K, so those potential earnings will not be accruing in the future. Since we are doing fine perhaps the best use of the extra $211 a pay period be to put the money into an IRA.

Still, our situation seems counterintuitive to me. Until recently living on one income was out of the question. It seems odd that we can reduce our income by a third and feel so little pain. This was simply not an option before. Unemployment for any sustained period of time would have meant major changes in our lifestyle. We would have been looking for the next job the day we knew our job was ending. My steadily advancing career explains part of our good fortune. Part of it is also explained by not living beyond our means. But part of it is also due to our progressive income tax system.

Our tax system is often maligned but now it is a blessing. The flat rate tax favored by some people would have worked to our disadvantage. Instead we paid proportionately more as we made more income. The flip side is we pay proportionately less when we earn less. If you ask me this is a very sweet system. Each according to his means may strike some as socialism, but to me it seems eminently fair. I didn’t begrudge the $19,000 we paid in income tax last year. I felt fortunate that we were in a position where we could contribute so bountifully to the commonwealth and still live so expansively. Of course since we were doing so well we should be asked to contribute more toward the cost of society’s upkeep.

At 45 my wife is probably too young to retire permanently. But it seems like if she wanted to take the rest of her life off from the grind of a 9-5 job she could. I just hope that I don’t find myself on the receiving end of a pink slip before I retire.

April 27th, 2005 at 08:55pm Posted by Mark | Life 2005 | no comments

Obesity: A Modern American Value

Obesity is becoming as American as apple pie. This should not surprise us. Have you looked at how many calories are consumed in a slice of apple pie? To use one of the more egregious but ready examples: McDonald’s Baked Apple Pie has 250 calories, including 34 grams of carbohydrates, and 11 grams of fat. And remember, the apple pie is dessert. It comes after the meal. The Big Mac has 560 calories and 30 grams of fat. Their large French fries: 520 calories and 25 grams of fat. That medium chocolate shake: 580 calories and 14 grams of fat. So there you have it: a typical fast food lunch at our most patronized fast food restaurant has 1910 calories and 80 grams of fat. If you are a woman who is 5′5″ tall, weighs 130 pounds, is 25 years old and who exercises lightly you have just consumed all but 13 of the calories you need for the day. If you are a guy, same age, six feet tall, 175 pounds you can consume 703 more calories later in the day and not gain weight. And let’s not even get into the percent of calories from fat.

To help us out the USDA has come out with a revised pyramid that is supposed to guide the average American on their dietary choices. New for 2005 is the notion that you should incorporate exercise into your daily life. In fact the new improved pyramid calls for at least thirty minutes a day of moderate or vigorous physical activity. So, if you follow their guidelines will this keep you from getting fat? Not necessarily. Buried in the fine print is this interesting statement:

About 60 minutes a day of moderate physical activity may be needed to prevent weight gain. For those who have lost weight, at least 60 to 90 minutes a day may be needed to maintain the weight loss. At the same time, calorie needs should not be exceeded. Children and teenagers should be physically active for at least 60 minutes every day, or most days.

What wonderful advice. But difficult to follow. Because the reality is that our society conspires to keep us physically inactive and obese. To me it’s a wonder we are not all Fat Alberts. Reading between the lines in this culture unless you have developed and sustained habits by eating healthy and exercising all your life, you are basically screwed. You are going to be overweight. If you succeed in taking off the pounds from your sedentary lifestyle you will still have to exercise moderately for 60-90 minutes a day to keep it off. Forever.

It’s certainly not impossible to get this amount of exercise a day, but it is impractical for most of us. It’s kind of like saying that you could spend 60-90 minutes a day fishing. Consider the typical dual income parents with two children. They are likely up before dawn getting the children ready and out the door. Then they are off in their car to work to spend another exciting day sitting at a desk, vigorously challenging their keyboard with aggressive calorie intensive finger strokes while cursing energetically at their monitors. Most likely they don’t have a health club at work so they can’t go for a mid afternoon jog. And even if they had the time, which they don’t, they have to rush home to pick up the kids before the day care center closes. Once home they then have to make a family dinner, help the children with their homework and take care of the numerous other odd chores that consume their day.

So working parent, what’s it going to be? Your family or your health? Choose one of the two because unless you can survive on a few hours sleep or have an iron will you must choose. Naturally we choose family values. And so we gain weight. And if we’re lucky we steal a couple hours on the odd day off or on the weekend for some exercise. This is family values in action in modern America. Survival of the fittest means you must survive by being unfit.

Of course we want to eat right but since we’re not exercising and our life often feels scripted we find it easier to succumb to temptation. We need something positive to happen during our days. Food is cheap, readily available and extremely convenient. We’re running late and the Wendy’s is right on the corner. So just this once (although it is the third time this week) we’ll do the drive through for dinner. A couple days a week some well meaning but evil employee will bring donuts into the office. We can’t resist. All that fat and sugar sure tastes good and it is more interesting than our boring, sedentary work. Email is easier to read with the taste of sugar in our mouths.

Why are we gaining weight? It’s because unless we are childless, work outdoors, or have a beneficent employer who doesn’t mind two hour lunches so we can get to the health club it is virtually impossible for the average willed human being to consistently make the time to get the exercise needed.

I look at my own habits and realize I still don’t get enough exercise. I bike to and from work, about three miles each way, when weather permits. I frequently climb four flights of stairs to my office in the morning. But this is only forty minutes of vigorous exercise a day. It’s not enough. I need more. I should be doing this and another half hour or so working out on the elliptical machine when I get home from work. And I should be doing vigorous exercise on the weekends too. When time and weather permit I take off on long bike rides or long walks but time doesn’t often permit. To truly get the exercise I need I should give up one of my other activities, like adjunct teaching or blogging.

If we want Americans to be fit and healthy we need is a culture that supports these choices. Instead we have just the opposite. We have employers who want us to work lots of unpaid overtime because it’s good for their bottom line. We have families that require two incomes in order to maintain the standard of living we knew growing up. We have advertising everywhere and much of it encourages us to eat exactly what we don’t need. And if the advertising were not enough it’s virtually impossible to travel down any major thoroughfare without encountering multiple fast food restaurants on both sides of the block. We can’t get affordable housing near our jobs so we end up letting our cars push us where we need to go. As compensation for the 90-minute hellish commute we sip our Caramel Chocolate Frappuccino Blended Crème coffee from the Starbucks drive through on our way to work (460 calories, 60 grams of fat).

Because only supermen have the willpower to consistently endure the new recommended USDA lifestyle we get fat. The rest of us are just human. But we feel the guilt anyway. The guilt makes us feel bad. Since we’re already doomed, why not eat something else? There seems nothing else to do but surrender to the reality and stifle our anxieties with inactivity and more food. With our bellies full of the Papa John’s pizza that we picked up because we had to work late again, all the energy we can muster in the evening is to sink into the La-Z-Boy and tune out our feelings of shame. Let’s watch Survivor and see who will get thrown off the island today.

April 21st, 2005 at 09:58pm Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Sociology | one comment

Bosses I have known

I should know what a great boss is like. After all I’ve had a lot of bad ones. Now that I am a boss myself I am trying to figure out how I can be the best boss I can to my employees. In one sense it is easy to be a well-liked boss. But that doesn’t mean I can be both a well liked and an effective boss. That’s when it gets trickier. To do both is sort of like riding a unicycle while juggling balls in the air. I’m not there yet.

But first a survey of bosses I’ve had. I wonder how many of these will seem familiar to you. I will arbitrarily start with my first “professional” job in 1981 when I was working at what was then known as the Defense Mapping Agency. It started with boss who was a lush. If the red, bulbish nose wasn’t a give away, his breath betrayed his secret. Except for being divorced he was a real Andy Capp. I don’t ever recall him holding a meeting with us. But I do recall his going off most lunch hours with one of his employees to spend some time in the back of his van where the curtains were always closed. It was pretty obvious they were not out there to meditate. The good part was that he was so inebriated he never hassled me about my work. His evenings were spent bar hopping. In spite of being an alcoholic he generally seemed happy, if somewhat sedate. I left that job in 1986 and wasn’t surprised when he died a year later from cirrhosis of the liver. He was probably in his late 40s when he died.

The next boss was a tall African American gentleman who ran a shop full of COBOL programmers. He lived in his office and we didn’t see much of him. But at least he held occasional meetings. In one such meeting he gave us the bad news that we were not entitled to a fifteen minute break in the morning and afternoon. But he seemed competent and jovial, if somewhat distant. When I had questions he earnestly answered them. But I was one of a dozen employees he supervised. I was a measly GS-7 at the time, so he hardly noticed me and left it to my mentor to direct my day-to-day work.

I left that job to spend a year outside the government working for an organization affiliated with the Democratic Party. I was 30 at the time but this boss was 26. We should have gotten along great because after all we were both liberal Democrats. He was brilliant, soft spoken, wore starched white shirts and a tie, and smoked like a chimney. He was very aloof. Fortunately his supervisory work was not too demanding. Basically he ran the computers and the budding network at the time. I was one of two programmers, and neither of us had computer science degrees. We were however inexpensive, a key attribute in that financially challenged organization. I was there a year when I was summarily laid off. At least that’s what they said. The boss once removed gave me the bad news. I never got the feeling that my boss liked me. Our relationship was superficial. I most likely wasn’t quite what he had in mind and he probably wasn’t too sad to see me go. But then I was something of an odd man out at the place. I was a type B in a place full of type A’s. They liked to work late and didn’t understand why I didn’t. Their social life was defined by their work life.

I spent three months in a contract job before I returned to the bosom of the federal employment, now wiser about the ways of the world. My new boss was five years or so older than me, skinny as a rail, bookish and carried dog-eared science fiction novels with him. I suspected he was gay since he lived alone and never showed any interest in women. But he was a geek through and through. Why he accepted a supervisory position I’ll never understand. He was not management material. Maybe he just wanted the extra money, or saw the grade as a status symbol. At first he didn’t seem to like me at all. I had to become a nerd like him before he warmed up to me. He held sporadic meetings but largely left us alone. Like many programmers I have met he didn’t come alive until about 4 PM and could often be found hanging around until after midnight. He survived on Clark bars from the vending machines in the Pentagon. I think after a while he resented me because in a couple years I picked up the same level of domain knowledge about the system we ran that he had. Perhaps that’s why soon afterward he took a job elsewhere. He could no longer perform the role of system hero and he liked the hero role.

Eventually we were reorganized. I was thrown into a different division and got a boss who suffered from severe diabetes and seemed to be a few years from retirement. He was nice and easy to talk to but he only seemed to vaguely understand the complex work I was doing. He was very impressed by my hard work and professionalism so he gave me choicer assignments. I certainly appreciated him for that. But eventually one of his project managers whom I worked for decided she didn’t like me. She threw me off her team. He was too intimated by her to back me up. Appeals to his boss didn’t work. So I left that agency and joined the non-defense side of Club Fed.

The next boss never saw the human me, but did see me as a key strategic asset. I was a valiant knight on his complex chessboard. I was a key asset because I could competently manage complex projects and didn’t need much direction. But working for him was very strange. We had offices across the hall from each other but he hardly ever spoke to me. He put out these “I’m an executive and you’re not” vibes. He dressed in fancy three-piece suits. He had clients constantly streaming in and out of his office. He rarely raised his voice. Everything he said he said in a soft, confidential tone of voice. But he was very insistent on competence, something I found rather unusual in the federal government. He hired very selectively. He was not beyond intimidating those who worked for him until they jumped ship and became someone else’s problem. He struck me as competent but very pompous. Eventually though he got his comeuppance: a new executive arrived who disliked him and made his life a living hell. Since he was of retirement age when it was suggested that he retire he was arm-twisted into leaving. But you knew he hated it. He loved the role of director. My boss had dreams of being an executive too, and this executive cruelly dashed them. I felt sorry for him. He was aloof and pompous all right, but he was still competent. He deserved better for thirty years of service. Literally one day he was there and the next day he was gone. We never had a chance to even give him a goodbye luncheon.

His heir apparent and my next boss was his lunch buddy, actually a contractor and former federal employee who spent years in the office doing work far less interesting than mine. He took the contracting job to get away from stress, since he used to be a hotshot executive who worked at the Justice Department. To say the least we were surprised by his appointment. We had GS-14s who had been waiting years in the wings for their big chance to be boss only to find their hopes summarily dashed. They should have joined his lunch club. This new boss was a low-key boss who was at least very approachable. But he was very overworked. His bosses were throwing assignments at him until he was hip deep in them. Nonetheless he projected an aura of confidence and competence and never gave a hint that he was overwhelmed by all the work. But he was a good boss in the sense that he listened sincerely to you. He was also a devout born again Christian. If he could have done it he would have invited me to a prayer meeting. He wore his religion on his sleeve and peppered his conversations with “Praise Jesus”. I confess I was impressed to learn he and his wife spent their vacations feeding the homeless. I admired the sincerity of his faith. He was one of the few Christians I have met who actually seemed Christ-like. But he had too many responsibilities to be very effective supervising any of us. He did however wring a promotion in the process.

Again the obvious GS-14 candidates were overlooked. So a GS-15 who had no supervisory experience suddenly got the job. He ended up being put on special projects and spent at least 75% of his time not being our supervisor. I rarely traded more than a couple sentences a month with him. He was a boss in name only, but he seemed sincerely happy for me when I told him I found a job in another agency. The subtext: I had escaped from the zoo. Congratulations.

For the first time in my career in my current job I have a female boss. I finally hit the boss jackpot. I can think of nothing about her to dislike and lots to admire. She is extremely competent. She traverses the fine line between empowerment and micromanagement very effectively. She does not feel at all like a boss. She feels like a peer. She loves gossip and she thrives on office politics. She is not the least bit stuffy and has a very snarky attitude, but never about individuals. All this by itself would not make her a stellar boss. What makes her great is that she trusts and empowers me. She can’t always make money appear out of a hat but she will almost always work with me to help my visions and strategies come true. She opens doors for me. She smoothes the path when she knows it must be smoothed. If all this weren’t enough she is technically competent. She reads all the same professional journals I do. She is truly a delight to work for in spite of the fact that both our jobs can be pretty demanding. I often get to work and pinch myself wondering how long my good fortune will last. I hope, but don’t expect, that she will continue to be my boss until the day I retire.

Today I spent most of my day giving performance feedback to my employees. I am blessed with terrific employees, none of whom I would ever consider firing or even trading. But most of them are up to their necks in family or personal issues that are very challenging. So I spend a lot of my time accommodating their unique situations and finding ways to get the work done in spite of these obstacles. I try very hard not to be critical. I try instead to empower them, just like my boss empowers me. So mostly I watch them fly and marvel at how well they do their job without my guidance. I try to be a nurturing presence in their professional lives. I try to get to know them as human beings. I give constructive feedback and suggest ways to improve things rather than criticize them for minor mistakes. I don’t think any of them are planning an exit. I count my blessings. I understand that I can only succeed with their help, respect and cooperation. I find that the most important thing I can do is to earn their respect and to trust in their judgment. While not all employees can thrive in such an environment, mine can. So I think I’ve got the juggling balls part figured out. Now I need to figure out how to ride a unicycle at the same time.

April 13th, 2005 at 09:25pm Posted by Mark | Life 2005 | no comments

Workforce Planning - An Oxymoron?

“We are all interested in the future,” the “futurist” Criswell once said, “because that’s where we will spend the rest of our lives.”

I spent the last week or so at work planning for the future. All good businesses are supposed to look ahead and anticipate the future. The same is true with the federal government. In my little corner of the civil service my boss handed me the responsibility of putting together a workforce plan for the next five years.

Well this was certainly something new. I wondered if this was just another paper exercise or something that we might actually use. I was tempted just to jot down random thoughts in a Word document, call it a plan and then archive it somewhere where no one will actually see it or use it. Why? Because it seemed to me that if the Congress and the White House can’t adequately plan for the future, why should my little corner of the federal bureaucracy? My poor overworked boss, for example, has to make our federal information system comply with the Clinger-Cohen Act. Among other things the act requires that federal systems be rigorously planned and projected out for the next five years. Performance standards are set in advance and variances of just five percent can end us up on watch lists. It’s not a good thing to get on a watch list. If you are unwise enough to get on one of them you will spend your days being terminally micromanaged instead of actually getting any work done.

What’s sauce for federal agencies should be sauce for the Congress. But of course it doesn’t work that way. My agency should be able to count on its annual appropriation bill being passed and signed into law before the start of the fiscal year on October 1st. But nine times out of ten Congress has found more important things to do then get around to the pesky business of passing appropriation bills. So we linger for months in a series of congressional Continuing Resolutions that dribble out money to our agency until Congress decides what it really wants to appropriate for the fiscal year. Generally this means our plans are on hold because we don’t know what we will be allowed to spend. Eventually the appropriation bill is signed into law and money arrives in a rush. And then often chaos ensues because the actual money appropriated and the money planned rarely match up. Yet while all this is happening we are planning for the next three years. Given past experience these plans will mean little either.

So I was somewhat sanguine when I sat down and tried to create a workforce plan looking five years in the future. It was time to see if I had any psychic powers. Could I read the mind of the President and the Congress where so many had failed? It seemed best to me to plan for the most likely worst-case scenario. It was a good bet that if President Bush had to choose between tax cuts and fully funding my agency, tax cuts would win. So it seemed a safe assumption that we’d have the same amount of money, or less than we have currently. Water resources are pretty boring compared with homeland security and defense so we won’t be on the top of anyone’s list. Plus the Washington Post said President Bush was going to propose a flat budget. Figuring our appropriation would at best stay steady but cost of living raises would have to be absorbed, a three percent reduction in man-hours over the next three fiscal years seemed prudent. Why three years? Because after the next three years Bush would be out of office. For years four and five I assumed the next president would at least fully index us for inflation, so I kept the manpower steady.

Three percent of man-hours though are not trivial. It means someone won’t be doing work for us. It also means our water information system will be more in maintenance than development mode. A lot of our work is done by federal employees whose time we buy part time from other districts inside our agency. Most likely these people, and not the full time staff, would take the brunt of the reductions. Some of them might be out of a job. Hopefully their districts would scramble and find other work for them.

But with attrition rates of about five percent a year, it looked possible that no one would lose their jobs. But of course workforce planning is also about making sure you have the skills you need in the future, not the skills you have now. What skills would we need in five years? It was time to summon my psychic powers again.

Coming from an agency where outsourcing was king I figured my agency would likely see a lot more outsourcing. It was hard to imagine how they could outsource many of us. After all finding information technology people who know hydrology is not a trivial task. But looking over the people we employed I could see the green eyeshade people would likely scrutinize some of our employees. For example, in theory database administrators should not be outsourced since they hold the keys to sensitive information. But in actuality they have a commoditized skill so they are fairly easy to outsource. The same is true with the people running and managing our servers. In fact in the network area the trend is to outsource not just the people but the whole network infrastructure. I could see in five years that my agency would be paying some private data service center that would guarantee bandwidth and storage space. Anyone involved in configuring and patching Solaris and Linux machines might well be unemployed or doing other stuff.

Ouch. This hurts because a lot of these people are my friends. I didn’t want them to lose their jobs. But my hunch is they would be a lot more likely to stay employed with us if they knew how to manage contracts with external service providers. In fact, with trends like storage area networks I could see the whole notion of managing physical servers going away. Want a server? Create a virtual dedicated server in a storage area network. Need more space? Tell the Oracle 10g database and it will find it, configure it and put it to use immediately. By using grid technologies we will neither know nor care where it is. It will just be a network service purchased with government money and professionally managed by external corporations optimized for this sort of work.

I finished my plan and gingerly gave it to my boss. I warned her I felt it had to be politically incorrect. I was stepping on too many toes. But she said I did an excellent job and to coordinate it with the other unit chiefs.

And so I find myself rooting against my own plan. I put it together trying to do it in the most benign way possible and still recognize the likely reality that we were going to get less and less money but be asked to do more and more. But it seems however controversial my ideas they seemed fairly well grounded in reality, at least according to my boss.

So it seems to be that all I can do is ring the alarm bell. There are icebergs out there but they are hard to see. But if we can be proactive then we can save our valuable employees a lot of pain now by not filling positions and by moving in areas we may not want to move toward, like network consolidation. But there will still be pain. Whether with or without a plan the dollars we’ll get are likely to be fewer. We can only minimize our pain while trying to be the most effective we can with the money we have.

February 4th, 2005 at 08:37pm Posted by Mark | Life 2005 | no comments

Some Observations on Management

I’m coming up on my first year anniversary of being a manager. I’m figuratively still dipping my toes into the management waters. I’ve made more than a few stumbles, but I think I am at least beginning to understand a few things about what it really means to be a manager.

In many ways it is a very different sort of job. It is true that someone else manages every employee, even me. The president of the United States is still accountable to the people. Even the self-employed have to manage themselves (and their customers) or they starve. What’s really different being in the management role is that as a manager you set direction.

Maybe this is not all that surprising to you. I can just tell you that as a manager it feels surprising. Being a manager is in many ways like being a driver of a car. The car would just sit there inert if the driver did not start the ignition. While it may seem trivial that is the essence of management, but it is also its most crucial aspect: you get to turn the key. The system does not work at all if someone doesn’t turn the key.

But it’s not always a great thing to be someone who has to make decisions. If you are indecisive by nature then management is not for you. But if you are comfortable making decisions and (just as importantly) comfortable dealing with the consequences of your decisions then you may be management material.

I must confess the “turning the key” part of management is something I like. I’ve directed people in their work for many years. But they were always multitasked. They were not directly accountable to me. When push came to shove my projects often got short shrift. Someone else, usually a manager, had more clout than I did. Now at least some of the people who work for me are accountable to me and no one else. I provide direction on what needs to be done. But just as a driver does not tell the engine how to do its work I rarely tell my staff how things should be done. I assume they are competent in their field.

Just as it behooves a driver to check the oil and the tire pressure before taking off on a long drive, it behooves me as a manager to monitor my employees’ work. The key though is to monitor, not micromanage. If you notice your engine kicking up you don’t necessarily take it immediately to the mechanic. Maybe it will smooth itself out, or maybe you need to add a quart of oil. The same is true with management. You learn to respond cautiously to perceived problems. I have to figure out when the situation requires me to initiate some maintenance. And this becomes a judgment call. Often a can of oil solves the problem but if it doesn’t then it’s time to call the mechanic.

It would be pointless to suggest that no work would get done if management were not there. Prior to my hire work continued for a couple of years anyhow. My staff rotated through the management position as temporary details. The engine kept running because a lot of inertia was in place. What was missing though was vision. My team excelled on handling the tactical problems of the day. But they couldn’t implement a long-term strategy. Instead they operated like an airplane in a holding pattern.

I often wonder just what the heck I do all day. How do I add value? I do not modify a line of code. If the system goes down I can’t fix it. On the surface my days look pretty trivial. I read a lot of email, much of which is way too micro for me to read all the way through. I prepare briefings for management. I listen to employees and pass relevant information up the chain of command. I schmooze with customers and suppliers. I listen to employees who come in my door and want to rant. It doesn’t seem like these things should justify my inflated salary.

But I have come to understand that I am not there to punch a clock. My job is not to turn out so many widgets per day. My job is to make sure the team is oriented and moving in the direction that I largely set. So in some sense it really doesn’t matter whether I work four or twenty hours a day. There is not necessarily a correlation between effort and effectiveness. The driver does not always have his attention completely on driving either. Part of his mind is listening to the radio, or thinking about other problems, or wanting to boink the cute chick in the car next to him. It is important that he drives well and is mindful of other cars and obstacles around him. On a more complex level this is what a manager does. He tries to be very aware of the environment around him and move his team through the various obstacle courses called reality so that the work gets done.

And this, alas, is where I need more schooling. Being decisive and confident in my driving doesn’t necessarily mean that I have earned the trust of the drivers around me. In fact I bump into them regularly and they are not happy about it. But slowly I am leaving my trainee status behind and feeling like I have earned my operator’s license. I understand I can’t treat my customers quite the same way I treat other drivers. They are not peers. They are my customers. I spend more and more of my time listening to their concerns and figuring out ways to make them happy. I have to do this while keeping my team happy.

And that’s the biggest challenge of management. It often feels like being between a rock and a hard place. Customers always have more demands than can be fulfilled. They always want something bigger, better and faster and they want it yesterday. Employees want to do a good job and feel valued, but they also want to have a life. And work has to be done efficiently. Processes cannot always stop to satisfy the special request of the day. So a lot of management is learning to say no in ways that sound like you are actually saying yes, and smoothing out feelings among employees so that they system works with the maximum efficiency.

In some ways it sounds like a virtual job and not a real job. At its essence management is a people job. And it is a necessary job because whether we like to admit it or not we need management. (Or more precise, we need effective management.) A team runs for a while without leadership but eventually it peters out and stalls.

The effective driver is usually not just concerned with what is immediately in front of the car, but is also thinking about what is around the bend and miles down the road. To make that sharp curve he must have all the car’s components tuned just right. When he does the car slides around the curve smoothly. When he doesn’t the car runs off the road. It’s not so much the effort required to turn the steering wheel that makes an effective driver, but knowing how much to turn it, when to turn it and how carefully to apply the brakes.

For a manager though it’s like being driving with a hazy bandana in front of your eyes. So if you think about it making that curve is quite a feat. When done smoothly and professionally you have a very effective manager. I hope I will get there someday.

January 12th, 2005 at 09:27pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | one comment

Grateful

It is Christmas Eve: my favorite day of the year. Christmas is always something of a let down. As a child nothing received on Christmas could meet my wild expectations on Christmas Eve. So Christmas Eve is for me a day full of boundless expectation, wonder and hope. It doesn’t hurt that the whole Christmas season reaches its wild crescendo today. The days are very short, the nights are very long and the houses spend their long nights ablaze with colorful electric lights. The Christmas tree (artificial in our case) is up and perfectly decorated. Presents are heaped up beneath and around the tree. Except for my daughter’s room the house is clean.

All this ritual and ceremony and yet I can’t actually claim to be a Christian. It seems there is little of Christ left in Christmas in 2004. After all it doesn’t take much research to discover that Yule celebrations are about as old as mankind itself. Christmas was set up by the Christians to counter the Feast of Saturn, or Saternalia by the Romans. Before the Romans got around to inventing their gods it had many other names. Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and many others celebrated the Winter Solstice. Christianity is but one of the latest traditions to latch on to this special time of year, Kwanzaa being the latest.

There is no present I can receive anymore that is likely to delight me. I have everything I want and amazingly I am satisfied with life. It helps I suppose that my dreams are rather modest. I do not feel the need for a midlife sports car, nor an estate, nor do I secretly crave for to be an executive. I have so much to be grateful for that it is hard for me to think up anything that I truly want. Those things I want are things I cannot really have and which seem corny. For me terrific Christmas presents would include world peace, the end of hunger and respect for our environment. No, I am not kidding. Alas money can’t buy these sorts of presents. Money could not even put John Kerry in the White House. I suppose I could wish for immortality. If not immortality then I could perhaps wish for eternal youth. But I’m not sure I’d want these either. I’m not sure I’d want to inhabit this same body 1000 years from now. The earth as it will be then will be so changed from the one I know now that I suspect living in it would be unbearably sad. Nor do I want to necessarily look like I did at 20 when I am pushing 50, because I don’t want to be thought of as someone quite as naive, headstrong and impoverished as I was then. Nor does the idea of attracting women that young appeal to me because for the most part they shared my naivety and immaturity too. Been there, done that.

Instead I find myself reflecting on how fortunate I am. In many households the loss of one income would be devastating. My wife lost her job at the end of October and it’s nice to know we don’t absolutely need her income. We can survive nicely on my income. I have perhaps the most precious gift of all: good health. Yesterday as a huge rainstorm moved through the area I counted my blessings that we have a roof. As the storm passed and cold wind followed in behind it I counted my blessing that I had indoor heat. Many in this world are not so fortunate. In Iraq families wait in line overnight to fill up their automobiles or for gas to heat their home. Our major “crisis” yesterday was having our Internet service go down for a couple hours. Poor us: we watched a DVD instead.

2004 was still full of personal struggles. Perhaps the most challenging was my parent’s relocation from Michigan to a retirement community in Maryland, all this while my mother’s health declined precipitously. Numerous hospitalizations and weeks spent in nursing homes eventually resulted in something resembling a real recovery. My Mom has been home in her apartment for a couple months now with no subsequent hospitalizations. Her mobility has improved, and with the aid of antidepressants, physical and mental therapy she is a much improved 84 year old lady. When she arrived from Michigan she exclaimed, “I made it! I actually made it!” She expected to die before she left Michigan. Now she gets around slowly, her congestive heart failure is being well treated and she can occasionally make visits. She will be at our house eating Christmas Eve dinner with us tonight. Most importantly some of her old spirit is back. No money can buy such a wonderful present. I had grieved it was gone for good.

I am grateful for my friends. While not large in number they are all dear to me. And I am grateful for my siblings. Though we are geographically separated we are all still very much one family. And I have had opportunities to see all of them over the last year, along with many of my nieces and nephews. I am grateful to have a wife who loves me, and a daughter who is very creative. I am especially grateful for my 18-year-old boy cat Sprite, my best companion in every sense of the word who wants nothing more than the pleasure of my lap and to look into my eyes while I stroke under his chin.

I am grateful for my job. While I could ask for a larger team, I could not ask for a better team, even if half of us are geographically separated. How unusual is it for any manager to have just one employee who gives 150% or more? I have a whole team of people who continuously go the extra mile and dig into the thorniest problems, during and after hours, with nary a complaint. And I am grateful for Susan, my wonderful boss, the best boss I ever had, who somehow manages to make her stressful position fun. But I am also grateful that my job, though often stressful, still gives me sufficient time off to do the things that are meaningful to me. I am grateful that it gives me time to take up my new hobby of bicycling. I am grateful for my many travels up and down the W&OD trail this year. I am grateful to have a job three miles away instead of thirty. I am thus grateful I have at least 90 minutes more on a workday to do with what I want, instead of commute to and from work.

I am grateful that for whatever reason I have left my midlife crisis behind at last. I am grateful that while there are major stresses in my life and there will doubtless be more that I can usually ride above them. I know that every year will have its ups and downs. But I am especially grateful that here, today, I am in a place of peace and contentment.

I hope your Yule time celebrations, in whatever forms they take, bring happiness and comfort to you and to all you love.

December 24th, 2004 at 10:17am Posted by Mark | Life 2004 | no comments

Unusually Competent People

If I am a bit slow blogging this week it’s because I have been very busy at work. It’s has not been the sort of stuff worth more than annotating: two days in a conference room with executives watching Powerpoint slides and trying not to fall asleep, and three days in a training session on creating effective virtual teams. In the middle of it though everyone paused for a retirement luncheon for our friend and colleague Colleen.

Colleen is retiring after 36 years of government service. She started at age 19. She retires something of a legend in our organization: a woman whose extreme competence, organizational skills, intimate knowledge of her domain and enormous people skills put her in the top .1% of effective people that I have ever known. And I know this even though I have only known her only ten months.

Not only will she be dearly missed but she leaves behind a far flung trail of employees, friends and admirers who were deeply touched by her during their lives. Colleen’s work has been amazing. She was recently awarded the Meritorious Achievement Award by our bureau’s director. But even that award damns her with faint praise. This is a woman with amazing organizational skills. She managed a large geographically distributed team and glued them together to finish tight deadline projects with incredibly tight budgets.

She was omnipresent but not usually actually there. But you knew she was watching you intimately. She was on every email list and most remarkably she actually read everything. She connected all the dots. She got people who needed to talk to each other together who didn’t know they needed to talk to each other. As a result she saved huge sums of taxpayer money. Part of the price she paid is that she seemed always in motion, flitting from one work site to the next. She seemed to spend more time on business travel than at home. She had perfect management skills. Most of the time she was a people person and worked through influence. But when necessary she could come out in attack dog mode, but oddly she could never be mean while attacking. She was just incredibly assertive. I know because she zinged me a few times. But she was always so sincere, so believable, so caring, so dedicated and so single minded it was impossible to dislike her. Most of the time she wore a radiant and natural smile. People who worked for her did not just like and respect her. They were in awe of her. It’s a shame she never decided to run for office. She could have had quite a number of followers. She would be excellent presidential timber.

But she would have none of that. Colleen put her own limits of her domain. Instead of remaking the world she made her portion of it exceptionally good. Perhaps she paid a price. Perhaps her husband felt slighted by all her time away from home. Perhaps her evenings and weekends were more often spent in unpaid overtime than channel surfing. But unquestionably she led people. And they followed. They marched. And new people like me who spent months doing things the old way found that there was no escaping Colleen’s personal gravity. Through smiles, through doggedness, and through her calm voice she pulled you in and made you see things her way. For example the reason I was in the communications training class this week is because she wanted me there. I thought my skills were at least okay but they did not meet her standards. She required excellence from me too, even though we are peers. Pulled by the high esteem and the respect she commanded I meekly agreed to the training. How could I not? She smiled at me so wonderfully. She cared so much. She was so concerned about the organization. To show her the respect due her senior status this was the least I could do. It was my own modest retirement present to her.

And now, except for a couple more conference calls before she officially clocks out, she is gone. If there is one thing she may have done wrong it is that her team seems a bit shell shocked at the very notion of not having her around. But that was part of the reason I sat in the training room this week with so many others. She knew not having her around as the glue that brought everyone together was a deficiency that must be overcome. She would have none of it. She would not retire quietly to let the organization slowly slide into chaos. She would retire when things were lined up so that the organization could keep charging forward without her. She would measure the success of her career by how stable things remained after her retirement.

I often wonder why she wasn’t more ambitious. Granted a GS-14 is pretty high up there in the federal government civil service ranks. I have no doubt she could have been just as effective at an enterprise level. Yet she chose to stop. It appears that status did not mean much to her. Only doing things very, very competently mattered. She fought entropy with every fiber in her body. She will leave our organization a markedly more orderly and efficient place than before her arrival.

Colleen is not the first woman I have known like this. In my last job in a different agency I had the pleasure with working with a lady named Diana who had many of the same characteristics. She took on the biggest, hairiest enterprise project in the agency. She was the project manager for a new enterprise grants management system that replaced a couple dozen stove piped systems. Diana also got everyone to sing and dance together. And she delivered this system on time and nurtured it through many growing pains.

On the macro level these unusually competent people are often unnoticed or unappreciated. But they deeply affect the lives of the people they touch. They serve as wonderful role models for those they work with. With Colleen’s retirement I feel the heat on me a bit. I’m wondering if the expectation is whether I can be the next Colleen. On one level I would like to be so respected and admired. But on another level I also want to have a life apart from work, and I’m pretty sure that part of her life suffered.

But I salute amazing people like Colleen and Diana. Human beings are so much like cats: hard to orchestrate to do anything more complicated than stand together for a picture. But people like these women manage to do it incredibly well. They orchestrate people and turn their organizations into the New York Philharmonic. I strongly suspect if Lorin Maazel knew these women he would be envious. If these women could do to orchestras what they did in the domain of the office the New York Philharmonic would be a third rate orchestra.

I’m really glad I have had these two women in my life to respect and admire. My biggest regret with Colleen is that I did not know her long enough to be fully mentored by her. But even though she is gone I will be channeling her. I probably cannot do what she did but she encourages me to always give my very best.

December 10th, 2004 at 10:02pm Posted by Mark | Sociology | no comments

Six Figures Ain’t What It Used To Be

Sometimes life’s milestones go almost unnoticed. In filling out the paperwork for my car loan this week and totaling up my income I discovered that my income alone was now just barely in the six figure range.

So why don’t I feel richer?

I always figured that if I were making this kind of money that my life would be a heap more upscale. Maybe I’d be driving a Lamborghini, but if not that at least a Lexus. Instead I have this lovely brand new but modest 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid. This hardly screams midlife-crisis babe-attracting-magnet mobile.

With a six figure income isn’t it time to get a McMansion with a three car garage? We seem content with our modest three bedroom single family home. The McMansions are all over the place in my community. It would not be out of our reach for us to trade up to a grander house. But the truth is I don’t want a McMansion. My income is now in six figures but apparently my neighbors have much deeper pockets. They have the McMansion, three cars in the driveway and a wife who stays at home and drives the children to ballet classes. But not everyone can be an executive vice president. Where do these people get the money? Am I underpaid at $100K a year?

Perhaps I could buy a vacation home, weekend getaway or timeshare condominium. But I don’t want any of them. I don’t want to spend my weekends driving somewhere to have some stolen moments in the country. I don’t want the hassle of maintaining another piece of property. I can hardly keep up the one I have. And I doubt that even on six figures that I could really afford two mortgage payments.

While I no longer struggle from paycheck to paycheck I find that my experience with poverty and struggling to make ends meet for so many years still controls my behavior. I cannot be reckless with money. I largely practice pay as you go. I won’t carry a credit balance. I typically buy used cars and keep them until they are just short of falling apart. (This new car is the exception, but even so we put $10,000 down.) As for style, I have none. I have no sense of fashion. Blue jeans and T-shirts supplied by technology vendors account for much of my wardrobe. My daughter says I need a visit from the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy folks. I have no idea how to be hip. Worse, I have zero desire to be hip. I am comfortable being indistinguishable from the crowd.

Still I have noticed the income creep over the years. A family vacation in Hawaii a few years ago would have been unthinkable at one time. It probably cost us $7000. It was paid for by extra paychecks and by dipping into savings a bit. I hardly noticed the cost. Similarly this year my wife elected to get some cosmetic surgery. The operation cost us $6000 or so. We paid for it out of savings and paid ourselves back within a few months.

Such things are helped by having low housing costs. Our mortgage payments are about $1500 a month. At one time the payment seemed obscene, but now new residents have a hard time renting a decent apartment for that kind of money. We have been fortunate in the timing of our housing decisions.

I spend money in places and in quantities I didn’t before. I give a lot more money to charity not just because I can but because I want to. And I gave thousands of dollars to political candidates and political organizations in the last election. It was too bad I didn’t get a better return on those investments.

So I’m certainly not complaining. Poverty sucked. Some part of me continues to be scared that I will be impoverished again. On some level I realize this is foolish. I have 401Ks, mutual funds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity that can be tapped in emergencies. It gets easier to spend money with every large or frivolous purchase. But I still feel the need to horde my money. I pay myself first but I often wonder why. Am I afraid to live the larger life? Or am I simply comfortable living in the trappings of a modest life even though our financial reality suggests more expansive possibilities?

I don’t know. But I often feel I should be more financially savvy. Trading up to a bigger house would make a certain sense at this stage in my life. Perhaps the class of my neighbors would improve (not that I have many problems with my existing neighbors). Perhaps the Rotarians would ask me to join. Perhaps I would feel what it would be like to be “in” or at least a member of the somewhat moneyed crowd.

But overall I sense that passing this particular milestone doesn’t mean that much anymore. There are plenty of other people in my fortunate boat and we are all trading up. This means that prices are going up, which means that my income doesn’t mean as much as I think it does. I’m doing well. I consider myself fortunate. But I still can’t see coming up with $24,000 a year to send my daughter to Sidwell Friends School, something she’d like us to do. I can’t see buying her a car when she gets her license. Although we have money set aside for her education I can’t see her in a preppy private school somewhere when a public university will do just as well. All these things still feel beyond our financial reach, or at least don’t seem prudent.

Perhaps I’ll do it if I ever reach the $200,000 milestone.

November 24th, 2004 at 01:15pm Posted by Mark | Life 2004 | one comment

A Lesson in Leadership

Management is a blessing and a curse. I’ve experienced a lot of the downside of management recently. Perhaps that is why it was such a pleasure to experience the upside this week.

To be fair I shouldn’t have much to complain about. My employees, geographically scattered though they may be, are all terrific. Each gives 150% or more of themselves than most employees, and all but one are civil servants. Most of the time I don’t need to direct them. If something needs doing they just take the initiative and do it. This week for example one of my employees volunteered to sift through a user requirement document, pick out the requirements that were meaningful to my team, work them into something we can use and organize them into a meaningful engineering specification. I didn’t even have a chance to ask if anyone wanted to do this grunt work. She just jumped in there with both feet.

I have another employee, a super geek type, who routinely goes way beyond the call of duty. His job is mostly investigating emerging technologies. I frequently find that he has visited the local Barnes & Noble and returned with some dense computer books on things like web services or current practices in software testing that he bought with his own money. But he digs into the not so interesting stuff too. He’s passionate about high technology but is still disciplined enough not to let the high tech stuff interfere with the routine work that has to get done. And all my employees are this way.

But still management often feels like navigating a minefield with a gauzy bandana tied over my eyes. I expect eventually I will step on fewer mines. But it has been a rough first nine months at times. I don’t feel all that great when I learn that I’ve inadvertently stepped on some toes in the organization. Nor do I like discovering I made a mistake by doing work traditionally done by others. And these are just but a few of the mistakes I have made. There were times when I wondered if I should have stayed working for Health and Human Services. I should take some comfort in knowing that many of these issues predate my arrival. Perceptions about my team, good and bad, formed years ago. It doesn’t help that we are geographically separated and rarely meet in person. Consequently inferences get made based on words heard over speakerphones or in snippets of email. There is no body language to read.

For whatever reason there have been long standing bad feelings between my team and another team. I didn’t quite understand the depth of the animosity until recently. I have been groping for a way forward. But this week when the team leader of the other team came to town I had an opportunity to sit down with her and work through some of these thorny communications issues. It was valuable face time. I learned the history of frustrations from her perspective. I went through some of the issues on my team that contributed to the problem. Simply airing the issues in a business-like manner was enormously helpful. We put a plan in place to get the key people together (via teleconference of course) and resolve these issues. It involves first acknowledging the problems of the past then putting them behind them once they have been vented. Then we hope to move rapidly forward because we have issues that need to be settled soon. Neither side can afford any more bad feelings. As a manager I have the duty to get past them so that we can do our work.

This was also the week that my user group came to town. The group had been formed twice before and had failed both times. All this preceded my arrival. In past groups there had been personality issues and presumptions of empowerment on issues that did not exist. For six months we had been working through tedious but necessary issues of creating a new group charter and getting executive sponsorship. Finally we got around to picking members for the group. Most had never met each other before and I only knew about half of them, and all superficially. I delegated most of that work to the chairman of the group. We spent weeks preparing for the meeting. We worked through agendas several times. The list of issues, many of which needed quick action, was very daunting. To hedge my bets I beat the organization looking for a professional facilitator and finally found one. My chairman and I met with her before the meeting and outlined our needs carefully. Would all this preplanning make a difference this time?

8:30 AM on Wednesday found us all meeting each other for the first time in a conference room. I had packets of material on the table prepared for them, and table tent tags with their names on them. But I had no idea if this combination of a dozen people would actually be able to work together. Would it become yet another toxic team experience? Was it the gods, the good preparation or just blind luck? For whatever reason we all quickly bonded with each other. When I suggested we all go out to dinner that night everyone enthusiastically agreed. I realized that I too was getting this management stuff. Social engineering had become an important part of my job. If I couldn’t relate to these people as people then I figured our team was doomed. Over dinner at an Italian restaurant we relaxed, joked, traded our life stories and basically discovered we enjoyed each other’s company. I had no more worries about my new team. We had jelled. One guy even came over and put his arm around my neck. I was both surprised and flattered.

But could we get through our daunting agenda? Fortunately our facilitator Cheryl was with us every step of the way. It turned out she didn’t have to do that much facilitating, but she let us know when we were getting long winded. I had no one to take notes so I tried to take them myself. This was hard to do when I was doing a lot of the speaking. Cheryl took up the slack. She captured ideas on large pieces of paper that were being continually stuck and restuck to the walls of our conference room. In the evenings she assembled formal notes of the day’s events in electronic form. I was free to do what I needed to do: engage in conversation and lead the team where it needed to go.

Having a terrific facilitator was such a blessing. We had focus, we had organization, and we were liberated to do what we did best. I kept a close watch on the clock and made sure we were meeting our expected outcomes for each segment of the meeting. I led many of the discussions. When I made suggestions they were largely listened to seriously. But it is hard or impossible to effectively lead if the elements are not in place. But this time they were. With our excellent facilitator Cheryl, careful preparation, a good bunch of people and everyone’s commitment to excellence we ended our meeting today on time and with our goals accomplished. We formed the sub-teams we needed, set out agendas for future meetings, made some tentative decisions and worked through thorny issues of how we would work together in the future.

I figure this is about as good as it gets in the leadership business. The days were long, but the people were fun to be with. It was terrific to feel so organized, empowered and to lead a team in the direction I wanted them to go. And I know I led the team because they followed me with great enthusiasm and with a genuine sense of commitment.

I felt pumped and energized. From out of nothing we created something very important to our little universe. I don’t think this team will fail like the other teams have. We will move forward with confident strides and with genuine respect for each other.

November 19th, 2004 at 09:06pm Posted by Mark | Life 2004 | no comments