Aspergers

I read Penelope Trunk’s blog Brazen Careerist.

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/. I added it as a link on my web page.

She has aspergers syndrome and mentions it every chance she gets. Frankly it used to get on my nerves. Sort of like saying you have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) every time someone see you. But we all do that in a way. Right?

Anyway, I have a teenage niece who had aspergers and most of the family kept their distance because she is, well, different. But the last time we got together with her parents several months back I spent a good part of the afternoon with her. Penelope’s blog helped me to understand how to interact with her.  It wasn’t a strain at all. Perhaps I understood an nth more than I had before. It was enough for us to hang out and enjoy each other’s company. One thing I realized was that you don’t try to make a person with aspergers into anything but what they are. Of course I believe this goes for anyone you know.

It turns out she has some very focused interest and an untapped well of creativity. I would never have seen this if I hadn’t been plopping over into Penelope’s blog now and then.

Of course Penelope has good career advice too but I could do without the asperger’s this and aspergers that but then maybe people with aspergers need to say that they have it. So shut my mouth.

Now I am part of the problem because I mentioned aspergers 6 times in this post.

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Puny Wars

I have been watching “The Pacific”.  A good mini series on HBO. Of course people compare it with “Band of Brothers”. But it is a different story and should be viewed that way.  But that isn’t why I am bringing it up. All my life I have fought my wars in business offices, board rooms and across conference tables or over a thousand cups off coffee. It is a sign of civilization that unlike my father and grandfather, I didn’t have to go to a real war.  My Grandfather fought in the trenches during WWI and carried a scar across his jaw the rest of his life from an enemy bayonet. My father who fought in WWII was lucky. He was in the Solomons and New Guinea but was never wounded. But he caught malaria and this sent him back to the states in 1943. Lucky as I said. The 24th division was in on a great deal of combat. He might never have come back. But he did.

Makes those wars I fought seem puny. Maybe you have a bad boss or a bad job or you get laid off. But you are alive. There will be another day. I am not demeaning the battles I fought (or you are fighting) because maybe our efforts in WWI and certainly WWII were to preserve our right to go in peace and not die in some awful far distant place. We need to put it in perspective. We need to keep it in perspective.

My wars may well be past. It’s not worthy of a book. I wrote one once. Few read it and maybe it is deservedly so. It is about something anyone could have done if they had the will. It is not quite the same as defending a ridge with the enemy a blink away with one goal. To kill your ass.

Perspective is good.

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A Little Java Programming Story

In 1994 I helped save a small obscure technology called Oak. It later became the Java programming language.

It wasn’t well publicized or perhaps not publicized at all. Other had to get credit for saving it or else it would not have been saved at all. HR folks are usually considered identifiable heroes. I knew that going in but did it anyway because I knew Oak was platform independent and would shove a red-hot poker up Microsoft’s plan to dominate what worked on PC’s and later laptop computers. A friend of mine from Borland who later went to Microsoft and reported directly to Steve Balmer once told me that Balmer and Gates hated Java.

But that’s not the story. The story is that by the time I showed up at Sun my so-called career was pretty much a wreck. I had been laid off from Borland in late 1992, a failed director whose boss had left him hanging out in the wind to be torn apart by the very wolves he had brought me in to tame. So at Sun I was very cautious (needing a job) but I eventually caught this disease that was running around the company.

It was the Save Sun disease. In 1993 Sun was struggling and losing its way. The general feeling was the era of the power desktop or workstation was in eclipse and that the PC was in ascendancy.  The Solaris operating system (OS) was being threatened by the Microsoft NT OS. Anyway, I liked Sun and thought well, I ought to look for some obscure technology in the company that would give Sun a leg up. Sun was always innovating so there was a great deal scattered around.

I actually found three.

There was Oak but that group was in a real internal battle with itself. In early 1994 I found out that it could run on any platform. In 1994 this was BIG. Its was architected by James Gosling.

Then there was Self which was a decent object oriented programming language developed by Dave Ungar and Randy Smith.

The 3rd was TCL which was a scripting language developed by John Ousterhout.

I was the HR guy for all 3 projects. So I had the proximity to all. Now to be truthful only the 1st and 3rd needed saving because all three were being cancelled as independent projects. TCL was growing as a team but whether it gave Sun some sort of compelling dominance was in question. Same with Self. It was an interesting technology but alone t was just another programming language in a hardware company.

Ultimately I chose to intervene in Oak because of the platform independence. How I did this is another post but it seems that I chose wisely for once.

Gosling was the main reason outside of the compelling technology reasons. He was willing to compromise and figure it out. Both Ousterhout and Ungar felt that their projects should go forward just as they felt they should. There was very little room for compromise of “give”. So Oak (java) won out and got saved. Interesting enough TCL could have become the scripting language for Java but Ousterhout refused unless the new language was called TCL-Java. That wasn’t going to happen. Ungar lost his project too but eventually he played a critical role in developing Java’s ability to compile which had been its Achilles heel. But that was only after after his project had been put on the back shelf. But if Java works better today, Ungar played a key role.

As for me, I needed Java as much as it needed me. I needed a success even if it wasn’t recognized at the time.

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Not working

It has taken about 3.5 weeks of NOT working but I feel untapped energy returning to my psyche and to my body. My mind is clearing but today at lunch when some friends asked me the greatest two values of HR, I went off again like I had never left.

1. Truly understand the business
2. Put your efforts into influencing people in a way that enhances the chances of success for the company based on that knowledge.

By the way, this is rarely HR programs. But so many HR folks are clueless that they happily while away the days and months and years on useless programs that have nada to do with the business outcome.

However, we do have to deliver the essential services. Comp, benefits, staffing to have the freedom to do the primary things (1 & 2 above). But when the job is all essential services, then frankly most of that can just be outsourced.

Anyway, I am still detoxing. Not ready for prime time yet (or maybe not working is prime time). Maybe in a month or two I won’t feel like “going off” when someone asks me that sort of question. Maybe I will just veg.

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Gulching a bit on the side

Freedom of will has always been of the most interest to me. Not someone elses opinion, ranking or approval. No, I am so independent that I exist in a vacuum. Appreciation now and then is nice but it can’t be the governing factor if you want to be a more independent individual. In my last job (I just left) my boss wanted me to run an executive leadership offsite for the interim CEO. She said it would make me look good in the eyes of management.

I told her that I would gladly do it but that looking good in the eyes of management would be the last reason to motivate me.

Of course, she said. I forgot.

I tend to gulch which in Ayn Rand terms refers to Atlas Shrugged and Galt’s Gulch. A place  refuge from the world that is destroying itself economically and politically (I guess they are the same) in her tome to individualism. My gulch tends to be of the mind. I just don’t do good work when I am seeking the approval of others.

As meeting went, it was the best leadership offsites I have ever “run”. I let the managers run it themselves and I made sure that the meeting started on time and that the food showed up. I said little of importance during the day. But here are a few of my highlights.

I believe lunch is here. We may want to stop for a half hour so people can get something to eat.

The cookies and coffee just showed up.

Damn the agenda. If this is working for you let’s just go with it.

I was on top of my game.

Of course the purpose of the meeting was to draw the sword of success from the stone of indecision. People walked away feeling very good about the day but in the end we failed because the interim CEO wasn’t the one chosen by the board as the going forward CEO and a new guy came in with his own agenda. By the way both the guy who didn’t get chosen and the new guy are both “good guys”. But the event went for naught except that it served as  a model in how not to over agendize a meeting.

Good food though.

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IF

A friend asked me today if I were 48 again what would I change? She was talking about work of course. I told her that 48 was not the focal year of change for me. 38 was. 48 was OK. I landed at Sun Microsystems and had a wonderful 6 years. But 48 was a year of exhaustion. Laid off for the 3rd time I was simply looking a quiet hole to hide inside of. Sun turned out to be more than that but that is for another day.

So 38. What would I have done differently? I had just been laid off from Atari and was looking for my next job. I grabbed the first thing offered to me and that started my tumble down the big honking hill.

I would have forgotten title, pay and the notion of career and gone for the money and taken more chances. My target would have been early stage companies and start ups. I would have gone for less bureaucracy, more leverage (aka STOCK). Yeah, higher chance of failure but failing never bothered me. Work is like baseball. Lose today? There is another game tomorrow.

Hell, I moved around enough as it was. 3 companies in 1983. Another 3 in 1986. I was the paradigm of staying out by anyone’s standards.

I was a decent networker. It would have taken time but instead of just looking for a job (any job) I would have gone for companies where I had a chance of making money on a IPO or acquisition. But I took the safe and cowardly way out (over and over again). I thought the way out (like I am OUT now) was through the top.

Higher title
More base salary
Larger Bonuses

They all help but they just fueled our lifestyle. There was no “out”. Be a good little zoo animal and don’t make scare the tourists (or upper management..or the board).

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BREAKTIME (2.0)

Oh the Hell with it. Before I get back to influence I have to talk about voluntarily being off work. For the first time in years I am free of it. I know it goes against our national ethic but it slams me back to the late 1960′s and 1970′s when I was willing to give myself permission to NOT WORK!

In the early 2000′s CE (not BC) I made enough money from a start up to not really have to work but after riding out the DOT BOMB period of 2002 and 2003 people started to call me back in and in I went. As a consultant, yes and life wasn’t too bad but then that spiraled down into work that looked and felt like a regular job until by November 2008 I was back in a regular job. 15 months of that and I finally hit the wall. Now I am out again.

I sometimes run in the morning and I can see people racing off to their jobs and I don’t envy them. I think, there but for  “just enough” money goes me.

In Silicon Valley you need a great deal of money or a pension to retire. I found out that you can be a poor millionaire. In other words your cost of living and lousy ROI (return on investment) can leave you in a position where you have to constantly go into your principle to pay the bills.

But if you want OUT you have to learn to cut back on expenses in favor of freedom from the strain of having to be someplace. It also helps if you finally have a son who is out of college and in his own job and paying rent to keep his room and board and not having out the universe costs for health care. We didn’t have this all worked out in 2002 but finally in 2010 we have arrived or at least for the moment. I really don’t have to work so when I do work, it will be something I actually “want” to do. I have no idea what exactly that is but I will figure it out.

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Ultimate Influencing: Rule # 1

The first rule of effective influencing is to make sure that it is not about you. It can’t be about your title, money or power. It has to be for the good of the organization. As soon as your clients or co-workers sniff that this is about your advancement in any way, they will abandon you rather quickly. Your motive must be as pure as possible. Nothing is totally sanitized but it has to be something of value and that value must effect the business. You will need to do some soul searching before launching a campaign. My colleagues in HR can rarely do this because most of the ones I know don’t understand the business and default to policies, procedures and programs that have nothing to do with the bottom line.

Don’t start this unless you know that there is a chance that this will have a positive effect on the bottom line. Your chances of success are dicey enough so it ought to be worth it.

More to come.

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A Dark Place

This from two and half years ago. For some reason I found myself in a dark place. I went through two back to back consulting gigs that bordered on insanity. It was this and the job just before it that let me know how susceptible I am to “bad” jobs. The reappearance of this environment recently caused me to leave my last job because to stay borders on insanity.

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The place where I am presently contracting is dangerous. It is not evil in any way nor have I met any people there that seem evil. But in its own way it is a prison. A self-inflicted one. It’s as if I sentenced myself to serve time in the place. Dave put it succinctly the other day. You were talking of taking some time off. This seems quite the opposite.

This is a place where you could lose yourself in the sameness of each day. No room for any risk taking. No room for innovation. In fact the mesmerizing lure of the place is that things don’t really change at all. It resists change. The people there seem to be waiting, but for what?

For things not to change.

In the interim they focus on the process of their respective jobs. No questioning unless it is the question of the inmate in the prison. Even the act of eating lunch is a privileged rather an expectation. It is alright to eat if it doesn’t interfere with the bureaucracy.

They share an unquestioning loyalty (the loyalty of a tethered animal) to their commander who, feeling unappreciated, tries to replicate himself multiple times in the form of them. They may not be the best, he says proudly, but they are better than they were before I showed up. If it is not exact at least he can wall in the pathos of their work life so that it fits his personal pathos. He believes it justifies his existence. It justifies his hundreds of thousands of shares of stock while he delights in dispensing a meagerly small number of options to those who come after him.

What was it that TE Lawrence said about the fact that many members of his bodyguard were cutthroats?

Yes, but they cut throats at my command.

They have grown very use to their prison. They even smile from time to time in their misjudgment of where they reside.

One man asked me how he could get more stock. He had alluded to this question a half-dozen times in my short 4 weeks of residency. I finally closed the door and said to him, Go somewhere else. It’s not going to happen here. I had seen into his master’s mind. It is the mind of a miser not a man who makes dreams comes true. he can’t even make his own dreams a reality.

Of course he had reasons to stay. I know those reasons. We all create them to feel comfortable. I just can’t feel that comfort anymore. It has been pressed out of me.

Were I king, he would quickly be banished. But I am not a king. I am a freelancer passing through on my way home from the quest. I am stopping to drink water from a dark well. There is very little light down there. Not enough to fool me and I trust my instinct that I have already tarried too long. Like Theseus, I will have to abandon Ariadne on Naxos and seek the rest of my destiny. There is no morality in it. If I stay I will torn be apart.

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How to be successful in a linear world

Very few of us have true power in the world of work (WOW). Our jobs seem to be defined by title, pay and position on the organization chart. We all get on the corporate line and wait our turn.

From my 32 years in Silicon Valley I found that most employees fell into one of the following categories.

1. Pushers: They are constantly pushing their agenda which is mostly about themselves. They always feel they deserve a higher title and more money. They tend to feel under appreciated and under recognized. if you do give them recognition, you are simply feeding the monster. Never happy, they expect more. Folks in this category don’t take criticism very well. Criticism doesn’t fit in with their myopic view of the worth. Now this doesn’t mean that pushers don’t do a good job. Many do. It’s just that they can never not do a poor job even when they do. These people do best when they become “indispensable” to someone higher up on the food chain.

2. Soldiers. Most employees in a company fall into this grayish category. They gripe and complain now and then but they show up and do their job. Unlike the pusher recognition for them is in knowing that they are competent at their work. They believe in the old adage of working their way up through the organization. They believe in seniority often marked by anniversary pins or other gifts. The problem is that as they climb they tend to treat other employees in the same manner as they were treated. Tend to be big about attending company meetings and birthday parties with cake. Generally not big about challenging the status quo even if the company ship is sinking. They will focus on the tactical if given the choice. The process is more important than the strategic. Doing things right is preferable to doing the right thing. They are the classic zoo animal employee.

3. Moral Minority: They are the “shit” disturbers in a company. They challenge anything that doesn’t make sense to the welfare of the employees of a company (in their humble opinion). If it ain’t fair these folks will speak up. It is rarely about them directly but usually they will benefit from the very thing that they are complaining about. They are the victim protectors of the company. They are somewhat like the pushers but it is not about them (or so they say). In the pushers case it is always about them.

4. Enablers: A very small population of a company. These are the innovators and influencers. They keep the bigger picture in mind, try not to get tangled up in the small stuff and usually can be identified by a singleness of purpose. If they are not directly creating new products or strategies, they are the people who influence change.

Since most of you don’t have hierarchical power you can either go into your hole and be a soldier (and best be a good soldier) or you can become an enabler. Enablers are influencers. They make things happen when no one else can. If you want success by taking this path there are some things you’ll need to be aware of.

1. Forget about title and money. They are anchors by which the organizational “enforcers” can control you. I am not saying you should work for free and not have career aspirations. Just don’t let them get in the way of what you are passionate about.

2. Influence rather than enforce. The more you hide behind your title and position on the org chart the more folks will try to go around you. Finance, legal and HR are typical enforcers and then they complain about why people don’t respect them. Duh! Better to develop a strong network of allies and friends and help them through the many corporate and organizational barriers than spend your time quoting and reciting rules and regulations. Yes, you have to stay within the law but no you don’t have always stay in a process.

3. Don’t let the process be the natural end of what defines you. Every time you tell people “this is the policy” or “you can’t do that” you lose effectiveness and more importantly, credibility.

4. Don’t hide behind your boss. The worst of all sins. Many employees define themselves based on what they believe their boss wants versus what is right for the company. You need to have an adult relationship with both your boss and the other employees in a company. Don’t disempower yourself by constantly bringing up the fact that your boss wants this of that or won’t stand for this or that. Stand on your own two feet. You can’t be all things to all people but they can at least know you are your own person.

5. Understand the company business and not just from one perspective but from as many as you are able to comprehend.

A short story.

In my last “job” we had a great vice president of HR and he understood this concept. But he grew frustrated with his relationship with both the CEO and the board and after about a year, he left. The reporting line of HR was changed to legal (Jesus, what a bright thought!). It was a descent into linear, bureaucratic HELL. HR suddenly became the big stick without the talk softly. My well-meaning but operational minded boss couldn’t protect the organization from the change. I am not sure than anyone could. The head of legal had a very traditional concept of HR. If my boss hadn’t been down one headcount, I would have left on the spot. But I stayed for 4 months living in this morass and watching HR lose credibility by the week. In the end I had to leave.

Thank the Gods that my strength (like it or not) is leaving. It is easier for me than most. I am good in a crisis (think bases loaded relief pitcher) and I am good at detaching and going away.

So I left.

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