Decision Making Paradigms

Have you ever seen the 2005 movie "Sahara", with Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn? Despite the 5.9 stars that it's got on IMDB, it's a great movie that I like to watch every now and then; it is, in my opinion,  Steve Zahn's best performance bar none.

A scene from this movie has been playing pretty incessantly through my mind recently; lodged therein by a morass of stupidity that I've waded into at work. The scene has our two main characters, Al & Dirk, travelling through the desert (the Sahara, specifically...surprise, surprise), on camels, and they have this conversation:

Al:
Hey, you know how it is when you see someone that you haven't seen since high school, and they got some dead-end job, and they're married to some woman that hates them, they got three kids who, like, think he's a joke? Wasn't there some point where you stood back and said, "Bob, don't take that job! Bob, don't marry that harpy!" You know?

Dirk:
Your point?
Al:
Well, we're in the desert, looking for the source of a river pollutant, using as our map a cave drawing of a Civil War gunship, which is also in the desert. So I was just wondering when we're gonna have to sit down and re-evaluate our decision-making paradigm?

It might be just me, but this scene always makes me laugh like I'm watching a Monty Python repeat. The one with the dead parrot comes to mind.


So the issue that's got this on my mind is as follows...maybe you can tell me that I'm off base and too close to the conversation:

My job is Product Compliance; I make sure that my company's devices are safe for the end user to use them. I liken my work to the work that they do at Consumer Reports: have you ever read the annual issue of that magazine where they buy a bunch of laptops, and they proceed to drop them, bake them, pour coffee on them, and generally abuse them to see which ones are more robust and a better value for we, the readers? This is sort of the work that I do, except I don't care if my devices get damaged or no longer work, only that after testing, they don't present a hazard to the user.

Ok, so we have a vendor with whom we work to get this stuff done (we'll cryptically call them VM). You may recall that I'm only in this job at this company for a short while thus far, so I'm still the low man on scrotum pole, so to speak. I'm still learning the particulars of business at this particular company...learning the product line, the corporate standards, culture, etc.

But my company has been using this vendor for over a dozen years, and in big company it's hard to change vendors, which is what I'm advocating we do. Why? Well, VM just plain sucks as a vendor. The folks in my group are very frustrated with having to work with them, the project folks are very frustrated with how much time it takes to get a project through the cycle, and they cost way too much.

OK, it's not easy, but we can certainly change our vendors here. I have been doing this exact work with a direct competitor to VM for something like 15 years. In fact, up until about 12 years ago I was working with about a half dozen such companies, VM included, and I stopped sending work to VM because they took 6 months to perform work that should take a few days. They haven't changed their work habits.

To wit: just this week I received a quote for work from them. A quote that I asked for during the ides of December. I've badgered them for this quote through January, February, and half of March. 3 months to get a damn quote?!?! At the end of February I had requested a quote for the same work from one of their competitors (I figured that VM had taken 2 months at that point, why not see what a competitor might do). It's a harder thing to quote this work without any real understanding of the product line or system as a whole, but I got a reasonable quote from the competitor in about 5 days.

VM takes forever to furnish a quote, and even longer to do the actual work. This, of course, affects our project cycle time, and therefore time to market, and as we all know: that's money. And lots of it. It's an industry-wide criticism with regards to VM.

So when's it time to reevaluate our decision making paradigm?

I presented the project with both quotes, and was vehemently challenged with a "we can't do that" response. There are, of course, many difficulties in changing this sort of vendor, but I've done it in the past. It *can* be done, and it *should* be done under circumstances like these.

The arguments against, unfortunately, came from folks of power and of fairly limited knowledge of my work or the requirements in this sort of work.

"That company's approval is necessary!"
No, it's not...approval from that SORT OF COMPANY is necessary.

"Our customers want that specific company to do that work."
No, they don't. They want that work performed by an accredited company, LIKE this one.

But really, project management would rather complain about the lack of service and whine about why things should take so long, instead of addressing the problem and getting better service elsewhere? There's precedent for this: my company has, in the distant past, changed these vendors before; they used to be with "GN", but GN was very expensive and extremely slow and non-responsive. So, they up and changed. To VM, who is now very expensive and extremely slow and non-responsive.

An analogy that presents to me is going to a restaurant. Let's imagine that you go to the restaurant, and they tell you that it's a 30-minute wait. 3 hours later,  you're shown to your seat. 30 minutes later the waiter shows up to take your order. Food shows up 2 hours later, and it's ok...not great, but ok. An hour after you're done eating, you get the check, and it's super expensive. You talk to friends about this experience, and every last one of them relates a similar story about their own experiences at that establishment. Apparently, it's the Modus Operandi for that restaurant.

I ask you: do you go back to this restaurant? I certainly don't. There are other places to eat, that have better food, shorter waits, and are a lot less expensive.

So when do we start to question our decision making paradigm? Is this a problem at my company alone, or does this sort of issue exist everywhere? Me? I'm still working on changing from VM.

Marriage = Work...or not.

Does it take work to make a great marriage?

My answer may surprise you: I don't know.

How can this be? I have what I consider to be a great marriage. Just about 22 years now, and I love my wife today probably deeper than ever I did in my misspent youth. Do we work at our marriage?

I don't know.

There are a couple of old tenets that are at odds, and that I think of every now and then:

1) It takes two people to make a marriage work

2) It takes two people to wreck a marriage.

Bzzzt! It only takes on ass to ruin what might otherwise be a perfectly good marriage.

Do my wife and I see eye-to-eye on everything? Absolutely not. In many aspects of our lives we have different viewpoints and different thoughts on how we approach issues. So how is it that we have an excellent, strong marriage? There are a few key points, and I'll share them with you (I'm feeling very giving right now...don't know why).

Know thyself, and use thee well

One thing that we do is that we tend to use our best tools for any given job.

That is, if there is someone who needs a bit of TLC, comfort, and caring for, DO NOT SEND ME TO DO IT. She is a nurse...a nurturer at heart. I am a somewhat pragmatic and very sarcastic (sometimes snide) engineer, and don't fully understand people. "...and does whining like a loose fan belt help you or this situation?" I'm not really very empathetic.

Need someone to deal with tweaking the investment portfolio. That's my job. I'm much more of a numbers person than she is. Need a something fixed? Usually my job (not that the Mrs. isn't capable, but it's how our individual strengths are put to use). Wiring up the entertainment systems? Me. Keeping in touch with friends and family? Her. Homework? Math, Science, & English: me; projects and displays: her. History: you're on your own, kid (although we'll both help, naturally).

Who cooks? We both do, but she more than I, I think. Grocery shopping? We both do, but me more than she, I think. I do more laundry and almost all the dishes (if I can't rope a kid into that), she cleans bathrooms and deals with chauffeur duty more than I do. I'm not allowed to paint ('cause I truly stink at it).

We're constantly working at life, and raising kids. Are we working at our marriage? I don't know.

We constantly say "I love you." (She more than I). We try to go out together, perhaps with another couple, every two or three weeks. I somewhat infrequently buy flowers for her (I've learned that she likes this...I don't understand, I just do). We talk about what the kids are up to, and if they're up to no good, we figure out what should our response be and deliver it together. We both tend to go to concerts, plays, sports games, etc...(she more than I, truth be told).

Assess your strengths, use them wisely, and grow weaknesses into strengths as much as possible.

How you say what you say...:

We certainly have our trouble communicating, she being quite right-brained and me being so far to the left, but in the back of my mind (and, I suspect, in the back of hers) is the certainty that we are both on the same team and are trying to swim in the same general direction...we have to remind ourselves to give the benefit of the doubt sometimes.

This alone was not an easy lesson to learn; I recall one time when our oldest was growing to be roughly adult-sized my wife had put on the lad's winter jacket and it almost fit. She had that playful pout on her face that made me think that she must be feeling pangs about having an almost adult-sized kid  (my baby's growing up sort of crap). In my infinite wisdom, I pointed out that the jacket remained too small for her. My thought was to mollify her sadness, indicating that the kid is not yet adult. She took it as me calling her fat.

We had a fight about that one! But this is one of those things that pointed out to me - that reminded me - that communication is the most important part of any relationship, and clear, accurate communication is one of the hardest things in the world to master.

This drives home a point that I have made to the kids numerous times, and to many of the people who have worked for me through the years: How you say what you say is generally more important than what you say.

The Benefit of the doubt:

We have communication troubles all the damn time. But let's acknowledge that communication is a multi-part process. You have a transmitter and a receiver  and they don't always share a common understanding of the words that are used. If I'm asked for a trash bag, I'm reaching for the tall white bag that we put into the trash barrel in the kitchen. Sometimes she meant a smaller shopping bag that she could throw a small something into in order to promptly put it outside in the barrel. Sometimes she meant the huge green contractor-sized trash bags.

This is, of course, a simple example, but it'll suffice to show that the words used were correct, but the message received was not necessarily the one that was transmitted. There are countless incidents of this sort, some of them not so simple or kind.

BUT, if, when I hear something from her that rankles me, I think about it and ask myself if she means what I heard, we can avoid a lot of conflict because the answer is almost always 'no, she couldn't have meant what I heard. She's better than that'.

Give the benefit of the doubt. When I bend down to pick something up, and she suddenly knees me in the head, assume that it wasn't done on purpose. She's a better person than that. When I hear her say something mean or derisive to me, I have to think that she said something other than what I heard. Look for clarification.

Let me esplain...no, there is too much; Let me Sum Up: 

To me, it all boils down to a few simple rules:

• Be on the same side...even if you disagree, at the end of the day, when you confront your common "enemy", you still have to be a unified pair;
• Give the benefit of the doubt...the message that came in my ears probably didn't come out of her mouth;
• Communicate;
• Let it go...we all make mistakes, and sometimes we don't communicate when we should have...sorry, can we get on with our lives?
• Say "sorry" when it's warranted (and mean it...they can always tell if you don't mean it);
• Buy flowers every now and then;
• Share the load;
• She should be his priority, he should be hers (forgive the genderization there...these things work equally well in same-gender relationships);
• Play together often;
• Be apart sometimes (guys' night out, girls' night out...);

Are these things "work"? I don't really think so. I think that these are just the rules of engagement for living in a community, which married couples do. For me, marriage is pretty easy.

I leave you with a quote:

"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

~Socrates

Dividing by way of Multiplying

It may be that I'm an engineer, or it may be that the reason that I'm an engineer is the same reason that it bothers me, but I really get a wrinkle in my panties when I hear a lecturer, or see in an ad or on TV (or hear on the radio...) people using math incorrectly.

I'm not talking about when people make an error, and assert that 2+2=p.

I'm talking about when they just don't seem to understand what they're actually saying, but they're talking with great authority and confidence.

I know: what?

As examples:

"Eight times lower"...shouldn't that be "one eighth"? How can something be "Eight times less" than anything? This basic error I see frequently, and I'm sure that my beautiful wife is tired of me pointing it out when it crops out, but it bugs me.

There was an ad for a speed reading system on TV that asserted that you could experience a 1,000% increase in your reading speed. Wouldn't it be great to read everything 10 times faster?

Well, an increase of 10X isn't the same as a 1,000% increase.

Start: 100
A 100% increase brings you to 200, which is 2X.
A 200% increase brings you to 300, which is 3X
It's actually a 900% increase that will bring you to 10X

Here's one that had me wondering:

"We multiplied our efficiency by 50%"

Well, that just sucks. If you started at an efficiency of 100, and you multiply that by 50%, you're now at 50.

This means you got less efficient. You are now half as efficient as you used to be. I wouldn't crow about that.

This is on the coat tails of "Divided by half". When you divide by half, you end up with twice as much, but the advertisements are usually suggesting that you get half of what you started with. I'd hate to divide my electric bill by half...I'd end up paying twice as much!

I recall back in the year 2,000. The Millennium.

Ah, no...that wasn't the Millennium. Of course, those of us who pointed that out were ridiculed endlessly (actually, that's not accurate: the ridicule did end, eventually), and I'm really not sure why. The transition from December 31 2000 to January 1 2001 would have been the Millennium. The mass media and the mainstream didn't seem to care. Or rather, they DID care...they preferred to be wrong! I get the same sorts of responses with these math issues of mine: seems like people would rather be wrong, and rely upon me to "know what they mean".

We've spoken before, I think, about how people allow themselves to use poor language skills, relying upon their listener to simply "know what they mean". This is the same sort of corruption, I think. I'm supposed to just magically "know what they mean". I like to think that the better idea is for the speaker to think about what they're trying to say, and say what they mean. That way, miscommunication is minimized. At the end of the day, I know me: I hardly ever know what anyone means! :)

I'm all alone again, aren't I?

Linkedin Endorsements...FEH!

I read over on Matt Conlon's page his opinion about a new "fad" that's hit the professional social page Linkedin of late. It's called "endorsements". He has a great explanation about it, and why it sits so poorly with him; read it here, on his blog.

Essentially, these endorsements are intended to be exactly what they sound like: one professional is stating in a rather public fashion that it is their professional opinion that THIS PERSON is very good at THIS SKILL.

As a "for instance", I have skills listed on my profile of Product Verification, Risk Management, ISO 14971, and many others that are relevant for the work that I've done these past decades. I don't recall adding all of these, although when this feature first popped up on my radar, I did add one or two (or ten).

It's a great idea.

But the implementation sucks.

Linkedin has made this endorsement scheme pretty much exactly like (how I understand) FaceBook's "like" button.

Click. Done.

This has become a problem for me, and for many other professionals (like Matt) because it's too easy.

What I think of as the perfect example:

I had gotten endorsements from people with whom I worked, and I knew that they knew my abilities in (for instance) Risk Management. Great: they think I'm pretty good at that. Thanks! Let me wander over to your profile and endorse you for (for instance) Electronics Design, as I have worked with you while you designed things that I subsequently broke. You're pretty darn good at your Electronics Design work, and I say so.

Then I got an endorsement or two from people with whom I'm friends, but with whom I've never worked. What the huh!?!? How, exactly, do you know that I'm good at basket weaving? Well, I suppose that they, as a friend, decided that I'm a relatively smart fellow, and I've been basket weaving ever since I set Moses afloat in that stream so long ago...they up and endorsed me because they know my character, and know that I wouldn't lie about such a thing. I MUST be good at it.

Then I got endorsements from a person that I know from professional groups that I have belonged to at one point or another. We'll call him "Racer X".

This one puzzled me, and I considered it to be that person just looking to be a good doobie, and telling the world that I'm a stand-up guy. Ok...sort of defeats the purpose of the endorsement thing, but ok.

Then Racer X endorsed me for something else the following day. I looked into his profile, and saw that he is currently unemployed. OK...he's scrounging around Linkedin for job leads, and my ugly face popped up in front of him, and the easiest way for him to keep from puking at the sight of me was to hit "endorse". Go away, thou foul visage.

Should I run out and endorse Racer X? I've never worked with him. One thing that matters to me is my reputation. All the dirty stuff that I do, I do behind closed doors, with a great deal of plausible deniability and no witnesses (and spoofed IP adresses). My name is, thus far, pretty darn clean. I like to think that in my professional circles, my name carries the wind of honor and dignity. No, really...it does.

Then the next day he endorsed me again. Something's up here.

That day, I got a call from one of the Directors in my company's Quality Assurance department. "Hi, Throckmorton." Said he. "We're currently interviewing a person for the position of Progress Slower-Downer, and this fellow appears to know you...can you tell me anything about Racer X?"

Aaahhh...Sokath, his eyes uncovered! (That there's a Star Trek reference...you might have to look it up!).

NOW I understand: Racer X is looking for a job in my company, and he's clearly hoping that, if he endorses me, I will reciprocate and endorse him back! Well, hell.

This is irritating to me, to say the least. These sorts of endorsements mean nothing at all to me. AND, they serve to dilute the value of legitimate endorsements. It makes the whole scheme a useless pile of fertilizer.

If someone wants endorsements or recommendations from me, there are basically two guiding principals by which I oblige:

• I have to know you, and have direct experience with your ability in the specific skill for which I am endorsing you;
• I have to like you (which basically means that you're a stand up guy or gal who always tries to do your best in the interest of the company / project and the people with whom you're working);

My name, my reputation, means something to me, and I will protect it. I have, more than once, told people calling me for references for people whom they are interviewing to NOT hire certain folks. When these folks ask me if I'll be a reference for them, I do tell them that I might not be the best choice.

I have, more than once, written and provided glowing references for people of high character and fiber. I will do everything that I can to help a person who wants to work well and actually earn what they get.

This brings to mind some lyrics of a song, which bounce through my mind every now and then, and have since high school:

Don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give you answers that you want me to.

~Fleetwood Mac (apparently...but could be "The Rockets"...Google seems a little confused about that)

At the very least, if you want a reference from me, make sure that you know that I know that you are a person that I would want to work with, and whom I trust to work to the best of your abilities for the company, and for the people around you. I will praise you from the highest mountain in these cases.

As for Linkedin's Endorsements: FEH! I think that I may just go out and see if I can disable that feature.