The technology required to actually make something invisible is so complex and unreliable that it isn’t worth the bother. The “Somebody Else’s Problem field” is much simpler and more effective, and “can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery.”
This is because it relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.
Douglas Adams – Life, the Universe and Everything
When I read about SEP fields in Life, the Universe and Everything it resonated with me.
We miss opportunities every day because we have our personal SEP fields turned on. Almost every time someone is rewarded for “doing a great job” they are not being rewarded for doing their jobs; they were being rewarded for seeing beyond their job, beyond their SEP field and tackling things that were not their problem, not anyone’s problem, but needed tackling.
We are all surrounded by tremendous opportunity to excel if we look. Your employer pays you to do a job, you need to do that job to the very best of your ability and if you want to excel you also need to turn off your SEP field.
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Jusso over at gameproducer.net posted this:
Creating games has many beneficial things in life whether or not you plan to sell any games: team work, social skills, organizing work, creativity, writing, networking skills… and tons of more.
And asked “what you’ve got from this thing we call ‘game dev’?” so I thought I would have a stab at it.
Every day of the last ten years I worked with people passionate about what they do. Almost every one of them could earn more money and work more family friendly hours in another industry but they don’t. I always find their passion for what they do inspiring. Read the rest of this entry »
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us is a good book, short, quick read with some interesting ideas.
There’s a lot on leadership, naturally, and on how leadership does not need to come from, or lead to, the top of the org chart. Leadership is a choice you make not a title you are promoted into.
From a product marketing perspective however the big idea in the book is that tribe dynamics in the internet age is changing the way we all consume. Seth proposes that we are no longer purchasing average products from companies that don’t care.
He proposes that we now purchase in two distinct ways: Read the rest of this entry »
If you mix great people, passion, initiative, risk and a little bit of crazy; anything is possible.
I started this blog a little over six months ago and have posted over 80 times on various topics surrounding the middleware space. In all that time I have only mentioned Emergent once in passing.
Some have read into this that I want to put my time with Emergent behind me or that I don’t think they are worthy of mention. In fact neither assumption is close to accurate.
I sense the last 6 months have been hard for Emergent. They have stared into the abyss; have had to let good people go and have looked very hard at who they are and what they value.
This struggle to define themselves has in truth been going on for a few years and the lack of progress was one of the reasons I left but from my job interview in 2007 to today I believe in the people and their passion for video games.
Today was therefore a great day! Read the rest of this entry »
I love politics but this is not about politics, its about basic leadership and a groups total inability to play as a team to achieve a goal.
This is an exert from Jon Stewart’s show last night..
let me see if i have this straight..
You need to replace perhaps the most beloved liberal in the history of the Senate with a candidate that believes Curt Schilling is a Yankee fan because If this lady loses, the health care reform bill that the beloved late senator considered his legacy, will die.
And the reason it will die..
[regains composure]
lets continue.. Read the rest of this entry »
Could you measure your team leadership skills with email analytics?
At boarding school I played Rugby (loosehead prop). Different members of the pack have set positions in the scrum depending on their abilities. The pack works as a unit to achieve a shared goal and those with their heads down need to trust those around them to succeed.
Creating team cohesion is a primary leadership task. Read the rest of this entry »
You sit down at your desk or work-bench and begin, at some point you feel it must be time for lunch but when you look at the clock you realize it’s time for dinner; you lost track, completely absorbed in what you were doing.
Flow is the term Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced in his book of the same name Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. He studied thousands of athletes, artists and workers from all walks of life; Surgeons and line workers, programmers and mechanics from all over the world. Through his research he identified what he calls the eight common characteristics of flow.
The books hypothesis is that by recognizing the common mechanics of flow we can all achieve it in most of the tasks we do each day, therefore making us more productive, focused and happy.
Both personally and as a team leader I find the idea that the state of flow can be manufactured intriguing. The first three characteristics from the eight I think of as the framework needed to achieve a state of flow in any task. Read the rest of this entry »
