themadpeacock

Most of the time I post stuff I hope will be helpful to you in some way but today I just wanted to share something that is on my mind.

Several things have happened in the last few days that have led me to give careful thought to how I was raised, the benefits I got from my childhood and how I want to raise my daughter.

My parents are and have always been adventurers; they both joined the BOAC (BOAC became British Airways in 1974) to see the world, they met in Tehran and have explored the world together ever since.

My Father was a Country Manager for British Airways so my childhood most resembled that of a Diplomats child. We moved every 2-4 years to a new assignment, lived amongst the expatriate community in company housing and socialized with diplomatic, military and local families from all over the world.

Since leaving home I have remained nomadic by most peoples standards. As a result I have now lived on 4 continents, in 9 countries, 15 cities and Texas.

When I was younger I was envious of co-workers who lived in a city surrounded by family and friends they had grown up with; they had a home, they belonged somewhere, they could answer the simple question “where are you from?”.

But as I got older and especially since moving to the USA I have grown to treasure my upbringing and the very wide worldview my parents gifted me. I see the world, its events and it’s opportunities differently from those same people I envied when I was younger.

When I was twenty-one I decided to leave my first job in London, I was offered a job in Germany and took it. I spent a week learning key German phrases like; my name is.., where can I find.., nice to meet you, two beers please. Sold my car, packed my bag and went; I arrived in Munich with no place to stay, knowing no one and carrying only the address and phone number of my new employer.

People commented how brave I was to make such a move, in truth there was no bravery, it never even occurred to me that it was a big move. To be honest resigning from my first proper job was by far the scariest part of the entire thing.

As the world becomes truly global, as cultures collide and all business is international I have an advantage thanks to my parents and it’s an advantage I want to give my daughter.

I am paying a lot more attention to flow these days and my productivity is already improving.

One of the best things about working from home is more control of your work environment but in almost any work environment you do have some control.

A few lives ago I worked in a company with an unhealthy addiction to CC; every email went to everyone it seamed and it was easy to get hundreds of internal emails a day.

In reaction I turned of automatic email fetch and started to only hit send/receive 3 times a day. Some colleagues who sent emails like “can you come into my office” were thrown at first by my lack of immediate response but they got the hang of it and my productivity increased. Read the rest of this entry »

I know some of you spend more time in Facebook than in your RSS reader or browsing blogs.

I have therefore set up a Facebook page for themadpeacock that will more or less mirror the content of this blog

If you would prefer to read this content in Facebook do a search for themadpeacock and become a fan of the page, you will then see new posts in your Facebook news feed..

If you do switch to reading the blog in Facebook please remember to “like” posts that you like so that your friends see it in their news feeds and I become very very famous.

A blog should be a place for conversations; but from a usability point of view it is not an easy way to communicate.

On a blog there is usually no way too follow the conversation without revisiting the page many times over the next 2-3 weeks and that is a pain. Some sites have a “notify me” feature but the lack of wide spread adoption of this system indicates that perhaps it does not work.

The feedback I get from you is typically face-to-face, email or Skype. These systems allow us to have more engaging conversations about a topic or post.

So I have decided to test out a new tactic..

At the bottom of each post I will be adding a footer that says:

Have feedback? Please e-mail me; I look forward to hearing from you.
Think a friend would like this post? Please send them the link

My hope is that this will make it easier for you to share feedback with me and also share posts you like with your friends.

What do you think? is that better than having a comments field? could I disable comments?

I must not fear
Fear is the mind-killer
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration
I will face my fear
I will permit it to pass over me and through me
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing
Only I will remain.

Ten credibility points if you can tell me what that’s from without googling it. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Connolly wrote a good post on what your network says about you.

Trust and credibility can either be destroyed or boosted in seconds, depending on the individuals and companies we are aligned with or associate with
via What do your contacts say about you?

I think of my linkedIn list as a list of people I know well enough to introduce as “one of the good ones” to other people. If I have not talked to someone for a long time can I still do that? People do change.

Should social links have a half-life or do we just keep accumulating more and more as we move from project to project, job to job, industry to industry?

Un-friending or un-linking people is a socially awkward thing to do.

What do you think?

My theory on ideas is that you should have lots and kill most.

Ansel Adams, one of the most celebrated and prolific photographers once said “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.”

Its not enough to just have ideas; like photo opps you see but never shoot they don’t count. You have to press the button, commit, take the photo, record the idea, flesh it out a bit.

The process of recording always helps me,  just by writing it down I can usually eliminate the weakest 95% on my own, its just like taking a bad photo, its obvious as soon as its put on paper.

The surviving five percent I like to share with a trusted people who have relevant domain knowledge. If I am lucky one idea will survive the session and advance to the next fight.

During the brainstorming session don’t always stop defending an idea when the first flaw is identified, push the exercise to squeeze every drop of critical thinking from the group. Often I find that identifying all the weaknesses helps identify dangerous assumptions in the underlying thinking

Over the years I learnt a few things about group brainstorming, more through trial and error than wisdom I am afraid to say.

1. Not everyone likes brainstorming, some of the smartest people I know prefer to work a problem in private.
2. Not every smart person is open minded and not ever open minded person is smart.
3. Brainstorming, especially across management layers is something many are not comfortable with, politicking often gets in the way.
4. If all members of the group don’t know up front that I expect most, if not all, of my ideas to be savagely killed (but not after a fight) they back off to avoid conflict and week ideas survive.. that’s very bad.

As with so much in life the harder the fight the more worthy the victor. Twelve significant ideas in any one year is a good crop; the trick is identifying the right twelve and killing the rest fast.