Achievement

# Do you have a clear image of what you want to do and achieve in your life today?

No is the simple (maybe flippant?) answer.

A concept I’ve probably implicitly understood but never examined is the idea of achievement. What is it anyway?

One definition of achievement is “a result gained by effort”. Everything requires effort. There’s an expectation also that all effort has results. Some are tangible (seen, felt, experienced, acknowledged), some are not. Some will happen immediately upon the expending of the effort, some won’t be seen for long after, maybe even for decades. Brushing & flossing require effort (got kids?). So does exercise. And so does the job that pays us to fund our lifestyles. Some want the symbols of achievement (an MBA, a BMW) while others want explicit recognition from someone else.

I prefer the term success over achievement,  and my idea of success is stolen from inspired by legendary basketball coach John Wooden:

“Success is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to the best of which you are capable.”

What I want to do today (or in the near term) is more clear. I want to be around & work with people who are doing their best, and are willing to share their knowledge. I want to learn from them. I want to help them in ways I can sense they want. I want to express and sharpen my own, often vague, ideas in a variety of mediums – words, pictures, music. I want to connect people with other people I know to see what magic they can come up with. I want to play to my strengths, and work with people whose strengths complement my weaknesses.

So the answer is not No, but Yes.

I want to be doing as many of the things that I want to do, with the people I want to do them with, being the person I am and can become, helping people along the way, and to be doing this every day that I wake up.

Reminiscing

## What did you want to be when you grew up?

My parents worked at a bank, the same bank. In fact, that’s how they met, and got married. The bank’s policies around couples meant they could never work in the same branch. Dad took on the role that meant he’d be transferred every so often, and mum would find a branch nearby. In those days, the optimal location didn’t exist: either the parents commuted, or the kids did, or in some cases, both did.

The concept of after-school care didn’t exist in those days either. Kids ended up either at home by themselves, or at a friendly neighbour’s. In some cases, the parents’ place of employment allowed the kids to turn up there after school until the parents wrapped up their day’s work.

I ended up at one or the other parent’s branch after school every single day, six days a week. I’d get introduced to people who came into the bank. There were all sorts of people from all backgrounds and all classes of society. In every little village or town that my parents moved to, people were friendly. Most answered my questions when I cared enough to ask them. I knew nearly everyone of the bank’s customers by name, and often their profession – or at least their spouse’s profession or location of employment.

Bank branches were also located in the busiest part of town. Trade, commerce & industry in full force. Art exhibitions. Handicraft emporiums. Author book signing events. The occasional attempt at robbery. Food and drink for sale. Butchers. Bakeries. Fruit vendors. Bus drivers and conductors. Milk cooperatives. Wine stores. Tailors. Cloth merchants. Other banks’ branches. Hairdressers. Restaurants. Several other shops that looked like offices. These people all would rock up at the bank, of course.

And then there were the wives of “foreign-workers”. The Middle East was a huge employer of people from the south of India. Anyone with basic literacy skills found employment in offices in the oil-rich sheikhdoms. The currency arbitrage attracted several menfolk, even if they didn’t have literacy skills, to try their luck. The womenfolk, single women raising their kids with ‘gulf-sent’ money would be dressed in gold & livery when the traipsed into the bank. When the menfolk returned once every 2 years or so, and weren’t drunk, they too rocked up to the bank to organise their financial affairs.

That was the background in which I spent the first decade and a half of my life. Printed money in strong rooms (cash safes) smelt wonder. Coin- and note-counting machines were fascinating. The sounds of both metal and paper currency being counted and tallied. The frustration of the bank staff when paper records and paper currencies didn’t tally. The elation when they did.

I learnt error-spotting on ledger folios, and short-cuts in arithmetic because mum & dad both brought home them home at month-end time to complete the double-entry system of manual book-keeping. I could identify many sorts of errors: transposition, addition, sequential recording. I knew how to identify numbers from bad handwriting (long before I had ever heard of the EMNIST dataset. I learnt skills because I was exposed to the work that my parents did.

I also learnt that asking questions was endlessly fun. Regardless of their backgrounds, people were eager to talk about themselves. Humor went a long way. I had picked up a ton of dirty jokes from these people. Not everyone was offended (and I made sure my parents weren’t around when I told them 🤪). I learnt the fine art of learning by follow up questions.

I met a caricaturist, Prakash Shetty, when he had his exhibition on the floor above my dad’s bank. I was about 10 years old. Watching him draw, and then listening to him explain how he did his craft was fascinating. I started sketching because of him. I don’t think I’ve thought of him in a long time. I also loved his handwritten font, and began copying it nearly every day. It spawned my initial interest in calligraphy.

I’ve met people from so many different professions and I don’t think I remembered any of those professions vividly enough for long enough. I wanted instead to learn something from everyone I met. Crossword solvers. Wordsmiths. Yoga paduvans. Electricians. Plumbers. Mechanics. Bank managers. Auditors. Milkmen. Bus drivers. Nuns. Priests. Old-age home workers. Doctors. Nurses. Grocery storekeepers. I typed those professions out with specific people in my mind, after all those years!

The one professional I vividly remember not having met during those times was a pilot, or anyone who worked with/ on aircraft. Unsurprisingly, that’s what I wanted to do. I never did.

Capture, Package & Deliver

The local used bookstore is becoming a regular haunt for me. There are two particular aisles that are a magnet. Every time I’ve been in there, I’ve found an interesting book or few. My personal library is growing at an alarming pace, and I love it. The book I found today was titled “Thought Leadership” co-authored by Matt Church, Scott Stein & Michael Henderson.

Upfront: I’m not a fan of the phrase “thought leader”, let alone the capitalised version. I’ve seen far too many self-promoting, vacuous and incompetent assholes calling themselves thought leaders.

I swallowed my usual visceral response to the phrase, & began thumbing through the book subtitled “How to capture, package and deliver your ideas for greater commercial success”.  A few chapters in, and I’m glad I didn’t follow my instinctive response to ignore the book.

It strikes me that I do all three things – capture, package, and deliver – with ideas. Except: They’re about wildly diffuse ideas, from different domains. I’m interested in and read on a wide range of topics. I remember what my close cohort of friends and acquaintances are interested in, and I share stuff that interests them. Is there a better way to package what I capture and deliver it in other ways? How can I bring my writing, design, & public speaking skills to bear on this?

Reading The Neo-Generalist, followed by this book, is making me ask questions (ha! A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger is the book that preceded these two) of myself. Am I being effective at what I really want to do? Where am I spending my time of late, given my daily challenges? How can I invest my time more appropriately?

Ill-health pushed me to take a couple of sick days off. Promises to the kids helped me get out of the house, from behind the screens, and invest time with them. Letting my mind wander away from frustrations I’ve been bottling up has been cathartic.

With 86 days left in 2022, I have some things to put into practice to package. Documenting this journey will be valuable in of itself.

 

 

L&D contd

A hurriedly posted part 1 here

The second conversation with a colleague who is a ‘encouraged reluctant participant’ in a particular program. It is intended for folks with STEM capabilities from a culturally different background to step into leadership roles.  While they acknowledged the effort that’s gone into getting the program off the ground, their previous lived experience with both the creators and some of the participants has raised questions about the  intention of the program. “Inauthentic”, “gaining visibility is the ticket to success” , “The program seems to encourage that behaving in a certain way is all that’s necessary to be a leader” were a few of the descriptions used.

All that to say, if I was to create a program for this cohort, what might that look like? Coincidentally, an author I connected with online wrote to me today to say he’s considering beginning a podcast with a global network, to focus on the local leadership skills for the GenZ & Milennials cohort. It’s a timely reminder that I’m not alone in thinking about these local challenges, and that collaboration is essential.

Most of my recent satisfying endeavours have involved helping a few grads learn how to learn in an organisational context. I have a couple of ideas that I wanted to kick off this week that didn’t happen for health reasons. There’s much possibility here that I want to explore.

 

Learning & Development

I had two conversations today with colleagues on the subject of learning & training. They came from two different parts of the org.  The context in both cases got me thinking about well-intentioned learning or training programs that are abysmal failures, viewed from the perspective of those that these programs are designed for!

One conversation was from a designer of learning programs. They were in “discovery stage”. I did not get a sense that after months of discovery, they were any wiser about the needs of the individuals they were designing the capability building programs for. They did repeat what managers had said about their current and future skills necessary. They talked about the state-of-the-art training technology available, and how it could be co-created with the business units.  Someone was mapping the skills-capability matrix, which they weren’t across the detail of. They were conscious of the increasing rate of attrition, & were under instruction from their leadership team on fixing the problem through building skills of the future.

TBC

 

Support

Many times over the last few decades, I’ve been witness to how people who trust each other, whether in a work setting or otherwise, band together to deliver a promise in the face of enormous challenges. Today was another such day at work. Despite the ridiculous deadlines inflicted on a small team, and insane personal challenges to contend with, they were able to ship an invaluable tool to their eager customers.

I also see distinctly how poor leadership management behaviours are causing these ridiculous work hours. Doing it once may be heroic, but demanding that they be done as a matter of routine is madness.

I’ve been listening to a podcast from two amazing data scientists, both of who found themselves unemployed. A quote (I paraphrase) about “going from doing work I find meaningful one morning, to no longer wanted to be doing it later that morning” when finding herself laid off resonates strongly.  It’s also a reminder that the stated “focus on people” means little when those people don’t see that translated into support in real life – whether being paid appropriately, or paperwork being done at even half the pace of the demand of them. Disappointing.

 

In-sights

Where do insights come from? That’s the subject of Gary Klein’s book “Seeing what others don’t”. It’s also the question I’ve been pondering on.

One of the jobs I held was titled “Insights Analyst” – a role I felt unsuited for at the time. I had about zero experience in the telecommunications industry in this country. I had little understanding about the business climate in the country as a new migrant. I also had no idea about what was expected of this role – and it appears, neither did the good folks in HR who crafted that job description!

And yet, I have remained in this industry for 13 years. The Occam’s razor explanation is that I’m so poorly skilled that no other industry or company will hire me. The story I tell myself is because I enjoy it. It’s got the right blend of challenges, opportunities, people, technology, and personal purpose that works for me.

Challenges & opportunities: Do a field visit with an expert or field technician from the industry, ask questions, and listen. The pits and pipes and equipment in the ground or hanging from the poles take on a magical appearance when I do. I’ve learnt the history of telecommunications, looked at the equipment from the very early days of the industry, understood the scale of the physical challenges, empathised with the scale of the emotional challenges of poorly paid yet invaluable technicians, listened to their ideas for improvement, and where I could, translated them so that the ‘leaders’ recognise the opportunities to save money.  The relationships I’ve built through these continue to this day. When I don’t understand something, or want to learn more, I have a network (pun intended) to ask questions and learn from.

Technology: My weakest area as a non-engineer.  I don’t know the maths, or the physics, or the chemistry involved in how the network operates. Yes, there is chemistry involved: cables rot too. Technology spans a wide range of things: the hardware that does magical things with data, the fibre that hauls this data at speeds of light, and the software can enables all sorts of weird and wonderful things to be done with it. This is even before what users do with the technology. In industry parlance, Layer 2 of the OSI model, is as fascinating to me as the software that enables everything at and above that Layer.

People: are the driving force for me. I’ve met so many experts in this field that work alongside me. I’ve learnt far more about the industry, the technology, the challenges and the opportunities than I ever could have done from either a university course or an apprenticeship. I’ve been introduced to people in ancillary fields that I’d have never met otherwise through these people. Many of these folks have become dear friends, folks who’s opinions I ask and value on subjects other than the industry or the work.

So insights. Where do they come from? Gary Klein suggests it’s from keeping an open, curious mind. It’s from being able to be shocked out of our assumptions. It is in building new connections between things not usually connected. It’s in observing and identifying anomalies that don’t fit our belief systems. Insights are disruptive. They don’t allow you to see the world the same as you did before.

 

Assembling

Not knowing what to write about is a common obstacle that stops me from writing even a word. Even this sentence took an enormous amount of will to type out. Editing as I write, feeling like the words aren’t right, the idea isn’t right, the flow isn’t right.. and backspacing till all I’m left with is a blank screen, again. Doing it a few times is the only way to get something, anything typed out, whether it makes sense or otherwise.

Distractions are always lurking. That music playing in the background? Check out that guitar lick, watch it again. What’s the lyrics again? What just ran past my window? Why are the kids screaming. Distractions pour like waves upon the beach, always wanting to change the direction of the flow in the moment. It’s easy to feel the pull of the distractions, much like the water’s pull at the beach. Just standing there, in the moment, feeling the sand shifting under my feet.Knowing when the water’s run out, I am still in the same spot. The analogy breaks down here?

I’m struggling. My back’s causing a lot of grief, weeks later. Words aren’t flowing as well as I’d like them to. My fingers aren’t doing as well on the fretboard and in the picking. My eyes aren’t coping with the glare of the screens. My soul feels tired. Is tired.

Daylight savings kicked in this morning. The clocks are turned an hour ahead, whatever that means. I’ve had much to be grateful for; including a guitar+double bass blues jamming session this morning with the 11yo, who’s getting pretty good at it. The 16yo is listening to a sax solo from Dire Straits’ Your Latest Trick – a change from the usual ignoring dad’s recommendations 🙂 We got the chicken coop assembled, and in the garden.

Getting back on track…

Reaching out to people I find interesting has never felt easier than in the last few months. People who’ve taken the time to write and publish their work. People who’ve created something I found cool. Have taken a stand on something they deeply believe in and written about it. People who’ve shared their own processes (& demons) of creation.

I’ve been helping heaps of people with a platform to share their voice and ideas at work. It is of course a lot of work that is not a part of my “job”. I get to help craft their stories, sometimes showing how they can do it themselves. Other times I help with designing their presentation (and learning concepts of design along the way). Helping someone has become far more satisfying than doing things for accomplishment.

My own creative endeavours – calligraphy & writing – have taken a back seat in the process. Procrastination, poor choices, and “owning experiences that aren’t mine to own” are some reasons.Ill-health has been another.

It’s again ~100 days to the end of the year, and a good time to re-energise myself with sprints. I’ve begun one already: 100 days of code with Replit.

Music:
I have just begun learning to play Mr. Spontaneous thanks to Gareth Pearson’s lessons.
10 minutes on the cello,
10 on the double bass,
10 learning to read sheet music

Small steps to get back on track.

Renewal

Elections are finally over. Six weeks of agony for both the candidates and the voters, and on Saturday Australia voted for a change of government. Loads of ink and pixels are devoted to hypothesizing what drove the change, and what the future might hold.

The implication on work, particularly for those entities and people dependent on the government as a source of funding or livelihood, will start to manifest quickly.

Despite all the changes though, I sense hopefulness. A renewal of sorts. That things might have seemed dark for a while, but they can be brighter. That the opportunity has opened up to do good work, that helps more than the handful of rich people who’ve been the beneficiaries of the largesse seen in the last few years.

That is an uplifting feeling for now at least.