Flip The Bozo Bit

The Term comes from Jim McCarthy’s book Dynamics of software development: Don’t flip the Bozo bits and more rules for delivering great software on time.

Problem. There is an idiot in your organization who drive and wastes everyone’s time.
Context. You are working on a project; one person makes unreasonable demands and pushes the wrong things all the times. One who never contributes anything remotely intelligent.
Forces:
* The work needs to get done.
* You can't fire the guy.

Anti pattern (possibly a wrong solution): Set the guy’s "Bozo bit" to TRUE. This means that, in your mind, everything he says and does can be safely ignored.

In some situations this technique can be used to filter out noise from your life. However ignoring the root cause for too long can lead to disaster.

How many of these guys do you have around?

Santa can help

1. Problem -Kids watching TV too much. Parents need a method to tell their kids to limit the watching time. This is a universal problem. This problem can be outsourced to Santa to have a card which gives kids a timing budget to watch TV.
2. Gift. The old man gives a bit extra time to the kids who watch educational and sport programs and deduct time from the naughty ones.
3. Business Model. Reward can be shared with TV stations who provide scientific programs, book authors and teachers who participate.
4. Texting. Santa card works like magic on the cell phones too. Kids who participate in scientific messages get a break while others get more limitation.
5. Marketing. Santa cards can be a great and empowering presents for holidays. Other companies like toy manufacturers, candy companies, and retailers can follow the same trend to increase literacy, health and Santa’s brand awareness for mutual benefits. This is a stepping stone toward fixing education and creation of long-lasting brand awareness by working with great partners.
6. Competition. None. Unless you want to brand it differently.
7. Brand. Proven character who some people believe in. The new cards can be issued right from your chimneys.
8. Customer base. Total market of two billion children. Children who are joining will have a bright future and a wonderful team to work with.
These are the kind of problems that Santa should solve. We need to solve our future problems by educating our children first and give them a brain friendly approach to deal with distractions.

Merry Christmas!

Take responsibility for your brain

Too often it is forgotten that our brain needs more care and safely than well being of our financial. We think our work environment is safe and our kid’s school is brain friendly place. Wrong. The biggest risk isn’t the current market crisis – it is the way people think. Worse yet, in difficult times people tend to reduce their creative efforts.
A good new year goal could be that in difficult times there is more need for taking care of your brain and injects creativity than at other times. There may be new situations to consider and new problems to solve.

Here is a wonderful clip by John Medina the author of “Brain Rules”. This video shows the toxicity of environment that exists at work and school environment and what to do about it.


Brain Rule #1 - Exercise from Mark Pearson on Vimeo.