Author: neil

Genchi Genbutsu (literally, “real location, real thing”) is a vastly under-rated concept by nearly every leader I have come across. Few people have the stomach to walk an hour, let alone a day or week – in the shoes of their frontline people.  Besides the usual platitudes of “you are doing a wonderful job, we couldn’t do this without you”, nearly every frontline folks I’ve met are deeply suspicious of the “leadership” team.

With CoVID’s shackles finally coming off, in the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to re-start my field trips. The amount of learning in spending two days I have personally had is utterly useless unless I translate it for the rest of the people I work with, who aren’t yet able to do what I can do.

I came across an article yesterday that made the point loudly – the skills gap in Tech that exists that few people are talking about is writing. The author, writing from her recent experiences, observes:

Perhaps the importance of writing is why, in the tech policy space, a majority of leaders come from legal and policy backgrounds – where clear communication is part of the training – despite the need for technical expertise in many of these roles. This gap in writing is impeding our ability to recruit technical experts in these critical government positions.

While there’s little in the way of training I can claim, writing every day is one of the few things I can think of to improve the way I articulate my ideas.

I’ve been trying to understand a little more about the workflow of version control that my technology colleagues talk about all the time. It’s particularly relevant now that we’re all collaborating (me included) on a technology problem that I will be the documentation guy of. I figured I could write (my strength) about a subject I know much less about (this tech thing we’re doing) using the tools of the trade (version control and documentation pages).

I learnt how to use Git & GitHub a few years ago, but like all things unused, they are far away in the recesses of my mind. Now is the time to learn from the inside from those who use this tool everyday, and learn to contribute to the repository (aka repo), and learn the workflow.  This video I discovered over the weekend was most useful as a refresher.

* with apologies to Bon Jovi
The last month or so has gone by quickly, and it’s time for another reflection on the time invested in these new habits.

Spencerian Calligraphy

I’ve gotten a lot more fluency with arm movements, working on the drills and the shapes and shades for all capital letters. It felt like a huge victory when I got through to the letter Z.  I’ve spent a lot of time in drills, and it is slowly starting to pay off.

Habit stacking: Focus on how I begin and finish is my focus for the next few days. Start with a tidier table. Clean the pens out after I’ve finished.  Tidy the desk after.

Walk Every Day

Illness stuck, as did nasty weather. We’ve managed to walk every day otherwise, and recommencing after both the illness and the weather inflicted stops was not hard. We’re walking for an hour or more. I’m taking more pictures.

Habit stacking:  It feels like I need to focus on ONE picture. It doesn’t matter how beautiful everything else is.  I will take one picture and learn about the ‘manual’ controls on the phone camera from here on.

BUT:  The purpose of this habit is exercise, not photography.  Jog/run for 2 minutes in the middle of the walk is what I will attempt for the next few days.

Vocal Learning

This has been surprisingly easy to keep doing. I missed only one day.
I find my voice slowly changing timbre. I’m slowing down in my everyday conversations (unless I’m excited or agitated).

What I’m not doing well is the preparatory work – like everything else. The breathing. The exercises. The posture.  The mindset.  Lest it turns into a task to complete. I also didn’t get to do the recording in the mornings as I intended, because I’m not waking up earlier.

Intentional preparation for the next few days.

Writing here every day

It was easy to get 100 words in, but not so easy to focus on one idea. I tried to do that for the last couple of weeks. Quality isn’t the aim, volume is. I will continue with this – except that I will write in the mornings, before I start my work day.  Journal writing in the night helps to deal with the emotions and scars of, and gratitude for, the day.

What I’ve learned

1. I can do all these in less than an hour.
2. The preparation and conclusion routines are as important, if not more, as the habits I’m trying to develop.
3. Removing the limits on the phone automatically increased the amount of time I’ve spent on it, mostly on Chrome. Re-establish these immediately.
4. I’ve started going down the rabbit hole of learning about Web 3.0 and crypto. Deliberately, collectively learning about these new technologies in the company of others who understand a bit more than I do, and who care enough to explain it to me is a wonderful experience. It requires me also to focus on searching out content that I seem to have an easier time of that is relevant to my learning friends.
5. Doing things as naturally as brushing my teeth or drinking water – ie without overthinking about them – removes so much overheads on limited mental energy.

I’ve noticed a change on YouTube videos of late: the like button shows the number of thumbs up, but the dislike button has no such numeric count.

Engagement with these platforms is often measured in the number of views, the number of likes, the number of comments.

I wonder if that small change will result in a change in the number of comments? What about those that go along the lines of “200 idiots who know nothing”.

All this to say that I’ve been reading a lot of late about Web 3.0. One particular observation that struck was “You’ve been happy to exchange your content to the big platforms for a like or heart” – the context being that large centralised platforms have for the last twenty years or so garnered all the value of the work / content of the plebs who use these platforms.

Another useful mental model of Web 3.0 came from Andrew Chen, a VC at Andreessen Horowitz who described it:
Web 1.0 – Read
Web 2.0 – Read/Write
Web 3.0 – Read/Write/Own

There’s a lot of content that gets created (labor) that is not compensated in the current digital economic model. The dream of the Decentralised Web, or Web 3.0 with its blockchains and cryptocurrencies and smart contracts is to change the game in a way that value accrues to the creator. Communities, something I am truly obsessed about, care about creating value for not just the individuals but indeed for the community. The promise of Web 3.0 is to bring that vision to life.

They call this a rabbit hole, and I’m about to tumble down one, at least in my readings.

By the way, Natalie Merchant’s performance is amazing.