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.

Do something different!

How would you persuade people to call and get help to fix their financial situations? With the game changing in the market - many companies are running expensive ads to attract customers to call and buy their financial packages.

Why not instead hire celebrities to answer the phone randomly once in a while. This will create a buzz and will gravitate customers to call for help. When people see something they like (including a celebrity), they give you their attention. The unknown loan salesman is a mystery; however, the celebrity clearly can sustain your attention. You are watching them on TV or read their email (if the celebrity is your CEO etc) all the time and this is a proven pattern.

Invite Celebrities in your company (CEO, CFO, xxO etc) to answer the support calls once is a while.

Why not?

Mortgage payment

Should people get paid for paying their mortgage payment?

Variable pay

Wages should be paid variably every week. Every fourth week the wage is more (for example 30-50% more). Other weeks are reduced to give the same overall pay.
Consequence is that people might live on the basic wage and treat the extra amount as investment money. There might be careful planning to get a new mortgage. The fourth week wage should increase depending on the profitability of the company – and that applies to everybody and not just some people on top. People may look at their salary in two ways: 1) current expenses and 2) capital money

This could have a powerful effect on investment attitude and economy.

Real-state market

When real-state price is falling many investors/buyers tend to wait until it falls further. This hurts the economy. As a result the market falls further because some people need to sell at lower price.
Why not, create a new deal that you sell at today's price but contract with the buyer that in a year or two if the house price index has fallen by a certain percentage (you keep that in an escrow but collect interest) then you refund that % to the buyer. There is no point in waiting. The market moves in a self organized way (not by government intervention) and the market stops falling and you may not have to refund anything. This could be a new type of contract which creates possibility of win-win situation.

Credit crisis as Antarctic expedition

Another wonderful whiteboard presentation by Paddy Hirsch. This time he describes the credit crisis as Antarctic expedition.


The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Financial crisis - CDOs explained in 6 minutes

I have posted cartoons used for visualization of financial crisis here before. However nothing is faster and sticker than a 6 minutes white board presentation. Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch simplify and visualize the problem at the white board in a 6-minute presentation he calls Financial Crisis 101: CDOs explained.

Just in case education

Think back of most of what you learned in high school. How much chemistry or biology you use in your life? We learn those things just in case if you become a medical student or biologist one day. Unfortunately most of the topics at schools are like that. However if you want to learn how to dynamically include a snippet of HTML in your page - you will learn something that sticks to your brain just in time.

Just in case learning is a huge waste in our education system. Can someone teach kids test driven and context-driven material so that they know why a topic can add value to their life?

Why open source software works?

Open source developers, scratching their own itches. They don’t suffer from phony deadlines and decisions others make for them. They are the first class customer for what they produce and the problem "let’s check with users and where the requirement …is" simply doesn’t exist.

Creative pause

I am a big fan of pausing after a quick episode of getting something done. It is a good habit – you pause and interrupt the current path (if it isn’t a happy path), thus formulating thoughts about the situations that has not previously emerged in your thinking.

What if you can’t go back into the flow after a pause? Then your brain needs a nap. We are the only mammals who have consolidated our sleeping pattern into a long nightly period. My dogs are far more advanced when it comes to productivity as they follow these principles:

1. They take a nap whenever they want

2. Don’t care who is rambling, if they don’t understand – a quick nap get them back to where they can understand the rest

3. They are honest and not in the business of consolidating things

4. Have guts to admit they are mammals

5. They follow the open space principles – wherever is possible, take a nap

6. They do what they mean

7. They make me jealous

Google has a place to nap. I am wondering as to how best we can have a napping place at work. If you need a full handy tips for learning when you’re most likely benefit from a nap, read the wonderful article of Boston guide How to nap.

Slack

There is a great lesson in watching the faces of Olympic athletes just before they start a race. Bolt the fastest man on earth has a calm and peaceful and playful confidence. Swimmer Michael Phelps has a quiet and intent look and is always connected to his iPod (great unintentional advertisement for iPod).















When facing the project – minimize noise, long meetings, leaks and ask yourself what could I do about this thing to make it doable and great.

Visual thinking

"When it comes time to discover, develop, or share an idea, nothing is more powerful than a simple picture drawn live in front of--and ideally with the participation of-- our audience.

Aside from the cognitive and neurological science behind my statement, the fact is that when an audience sees an elaborate and polished presentation, they instinctively believe it is done and have a very hard time adding anything constructive to it. On the other hand, when they see the picture coming together in front of their eyes, regardless of how simple or ugly it may be, they emotionally respond and participate. "
- Dan Roam - the author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Here you simply watch the video below where Dr. de Bono, presents his six thinking hat ideas to the audience with the drawing in the back of the napkin style (an effective way). I have used the six thinking hats in the planning games for software to cover all the aspects. This video has the sticky factor for me and I can’t imagine getting the same effect through a power point presentation (unless it is a cartoon).



You might consider presenting your ideas on the plain paper next time you are posed to present something for your next project. For sure it won't be boring.

Micromanagement

There is a style of management with which comes from these assumptions: 1) People are motivated by reward and punishment 2) System works best with chain of command and control 3) People should obey their managers 4) Employees must do what their managers tell them to do.

Now you have a system in place where subordinates are incapable of doing the job, giving close instruction and checking everything the person does. Managers seldom praise and often criticize. Whatever their subordinates do, nothing seems good enough.

Your great people now are being treated as if they are incapable and untrustworthy. In this way, people who are micromanaged can become dependent, unable to make the smallest decision without asking their manager. Your system requires robots and "yes man" people to fulfill the top leader’s insecurities and needs. There might be a chain of managers who are criticized and they in turn pass this and become critical to others.

How to cope with micromanage? One way is to build a feedback loop (carefully) to show how these things are broken. When they over-control, avoid them and when they give you space, give them a positive feedback. In this way you have more control yourself (don’t micromanage your boss) and you are on the road of changing the command and control culture.

Random thoughts

1. Finish one thing really well before starting something new.
2. "Loosen up." – life isn’t that serious
3. Exercise — it is more important for your brain that your body
4. Being irreverent and off tangent helps
5. This is geeky - logical data model concept is out of date
6. Your project should have a good story – Hollywood way of making things happen.
7. Why CA does spent 3 Billion on Education and 9 Billion on prisons and criminal affairs?
8. Release your product daily

Cutting in the bad time

Cutting is typically Recession obsession-preoccupation. It may well be necessary, but smart leaders can always increase profit by promoting great and creative bunch, people like you who read stuff like this. The cutting mentality is deadly – most everyone goes into a demoralizing shell when "cutting" becomes the smell of the place.

The Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition

As well as providing a useful description of each stage of learning, the Dreyfus model describes how best to help the learner progress to the next stage in their learning.
According to the Dreyfus model there are five distinct stages, as the learner gains experience and develops insight and intuition. Very briefly:
The Novice wants recipes, best practices, quick wins
The Advanced Beginner wants guidelines, a safe environment to make mistakes
At the Competent stage you want goals, freedom to execute
The Proficient learner wants maxims, war stories, metaphors
The Expert wants philosophies, discussions and arguments with other experts(!)

Below is a video clip from Ben Zender’s talk at TED where he is coaching the audience to realize their untapped love for the classical music. This is a very entertaining talk which Ben plays like a 7, 8, 9, 10 year old child and then play like an expert. This video is fascinating and shows the Dreyfus model in action.

The Dreyfus Model - from beginners to experts

First Created by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus in 1980 while researching AI, the model was popularized by Dr Particia Benner in the mid Eighties in her work on theNursing Crisis in the US.

Most people achieve a level of 'Absolute Beginner’ or ‘Competent’, with few moving to ‘Proficient’ and fewer to ‘Expert’. It seems people get stuck somewhere in between, they can move from being beginner to competent by their own but beyond that they need proficient and experts around them. Well, it all depends. Listen to the rest of the story by Andy Hunt of Pragmatic Programmer fame interviewed by Rich Sharpe (15 minutes).

Multitasking - Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk.

Bad for your brain

Multitasking is a taken for granted attitude for many managers. I recently reminded one about the cost of multi-tasking, but the answer was “you can drive while you talk…” Surely this is multitasking. But are we serious about paying attention? When it comes to that your poor brain isn’t capable of multitasking. However, multitasking is a great way of prolonging your projects.

Cartoons for teaching

I always wanted to design games or create attractive stories for teaching things. Why not replacing the boring physics and math formulas with an interesting story where events happens in a city that people move with speed of light and most of the quantum phenomena affects their life in a dramatic way.

I also thought it would be cool to play a game “LoanOpoly” for learning the mortgage banking cycle instead of reading a dry, boring, thick and expensive book on the subject. I love books and presentations that tickle your creative spots using visuals, cartoons and charts. Here is a wonderful presentation [the author is unknown], using cartoons for teaching the subprime story.

All too true!

Virtualization is green

Jon made an interesting comment while we were talking about virtualization of servers. Beside other benefits he added: “it is also green”. It is good for our environment since you don’t need many servers, less heat, less parts and it requires less space.

Buy Don't Build

Now that I am working at a Start up, the concept of build vs buy is the top topic of my daily life. Here is the principle that I am following:

• Buy big things (operating systems, compilers, database engines) and build small things.

The main question is? Does a system “Upgrade your users” and not just the product? Does it enhance user’s life?

Reverse Living

I've been too busy changing job and starting things from scratch in the new company. Things like using open source development tools, getting back into creativity mode and working closely with business. I should say that I miss seeing my friends and should have a better plan to meet with them. I also feel younger in a reverse living fashion. As Roger von Oech says:

"Reverse Living":

… The life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, and get it out of the way. Then you live for twenty years in an old age home, and then get kicked out when you’re too young. You get a gold watch and then you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement.

What is your story?

You make a story. You verify your story (if you are a programmer – you write tests to shape up your stories). Then you do work that matches the story. Your decisions are toward accomplishing the story. The story will become true because you're living it.

New Book on Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior

If you do project work, you need to read the latest book from Tom Demarco and his co-authors, Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior.

This book captures memorable names for frequently encountered situations (project patterns). I am sure these phrases will be used in the future to paint the right concept for a given context and enhance the communication. Some of the patterns:

• Project Sluts—managers who can’t say no
• Soviet Style—building the product no one can love
• Hidden Beauty—an ethic that drives great developers
• News Improvement—status gets rosier as it rises in the organization
• Dead Fish—learning to appreciate project odor

and many more

When it's time to quit?

It is time to quit when you realize you have been saturated and you need to open the space for your friends to move things forward. If you are working on project O then it is keeping you away from doing project N. It is time to quit when you think what you are changing is small and you can create a much bigger change and opportunity for your friends by conquering a new horizon.

Something that’s framed as a loss is really effective at changing behavior

From NPR Radio:

"Yale professors Ian Ayres, an expert in contract law, and Dean Karlan, a behavioral economist, both entered weight loss bets. And both won. They took off the weight they pledged.

With their new company, StickK.com, they hope to facilitate personal commitment contracts for weight loss and other types of personal goals. If you don't live up to your end of the contract, StickK will give your money to charity or a person you designate. The service is free to registered users. The professors, ultimately, hope to make money through advertising revenues."

“What we know about incentives is that people work a lot harder to avoid losing $10 than they will work to gain $10,” explains Ayres. “So something that’s framed as a loss is really effective at changing behavior.”

Some psychologist estimates the negative effect for an average loss to be up to 2.5 the magnitude of a positive one; it will lead to an emotional deficit. I have seen this effect when my team of 11-12 years old losing a soccer game (big deal) where winning seems just a normal thing.

Estimate using probability curve

Programmers usually pick the earliest possible date when they are asked to estimate. Tom Demarco and Tim Lister make this observation with the probability distribution diagram. The area under the curve shows the probability from 1 to 100%. The most probable date of complete is August 9 and we are certain that 100% of the project will be complete by February 20. Tom Demarco and Lister refer to earliest possible point of completion, June 17 as the "nano-percent date". Nano date is the one that managers like and if you give them a range like this diagram it may not go well with them at all. This explains the fact that programmers estimates at Nano date and things always takes longer.

Appraisal Process

“If the appraisal process is so useful, we should consider using it in our personal lives. Would we say to our spouse, significant other or intimate friend, ‘Dear, it is time for your annual performance appraisal. For the sake of our relationship and the well-being of the family unit, I want you to prepare for a discussion of your strengths and weaknesses and the ways you have fallen short of your goals for the year."

”Also, honey, I would like for you to define some stretch goals for the coming year."

- Peter Block, Forward to Abolishing Performance Appraisals book

Unpredictability with Style

Real leaders use unpredictability to inspire, teach and make the world a better place while tyrants use it to meet their numbers (management by spreadsheet) and profit from people.

Here Victor Borge shows this philosophy with a brilliant piece of musical comedy in an inspiring and unpredictable fashion.

Arthur Benjamin - a man faster than calculators!

Thanks to NP for mentioning this TED talk - I had a great time watching this pure entertainment show by the "mathemagician" Arthur Benjamin. Remarkable!

Productive times of the day

What is your most productive times of the day? Don't go to meetings or tasks around these times of day. Look at your energy level during the day to find out when you are at the pick. After a week - you are positioned to do something about it.