Science is cool !?!

As the Paralympics opening ceremony started I called out to my 17 year old daughter that Stephen Hawkins was there. This was a girl who dropped science as soon as she could, aspires to being an actress and shows her main interest in fashion and TV shows like Friends, TOWIE and Two and a Half Men.

In this instance she literally squealed "No way!", rushed in a sat on the edge of her seat watching Stephen's contribution. The phrase "in awe" is the one on my lips to describe how she reacted to Stephen's appearance. I confess that this surprised me, but also pleased me. Was it a sign of growing maturity?

I mentioned this at work as a younger colleague was commenting that he wishes he had done more science at school. He observed that science is cool, or at least a lot cooler than it was. TV programmes and presenters such as Brian Cox have gone a long way to change perceptions I guess that news stories and pictures of missions to Mars, the large Hadron collider and similar items have done no harm either.

As a long time back physics graduate I find this interesting and fascinating. I confess to a sense of pride in my daughter's reaction and feel that as parents and teachers we have "done good".

Week #1 - What to write?

Well, I am about due a “governance” post on the book. I will confess that other “Life” matters have distracted me a little, but it is worth laying out my high level intent and setting expectations about the content design.

The big question is what am I going to write and indeed who for – or should that be the other way around?

When I started thinking about creating and e-publication it was going to be based upon a number of papers and ideas I had written that I thought would be helpful, or at least thought provoking to other change agents. In this instance the target audience was people like me. With my then collaborator we recognised that there needed to be some sort of structure to the contents so I created a graphic that essentially looked at how one navigated an organisation, other individuals and oneself through change.

During the time we worked together my collaborator’s ideas changed and she started looking to create a more mainstream and traditional change book.

When we stopped collaborating I knew I needed a stronger hook and from many conversations (and previous personal experience) I knew two things. Firstly that poor sponsorship is an oft cited reason why change fails to deliver what was expected and secondly that the support (training, coaching, advice, etc) for sponsors is poor. This developed into the idea of a change sponsors’ handbook that would have tips, advice, information that should be helpful to anyone with the responsibility to sponsor a change project or programme. I developed the working title “To delivery and beyond…” partly in humour (as in the misquote of Buzz Lightyear) but mainly with serious intent as a sponsor is usually part of the business and around longer than a project/programme manager and thus more influential in delivering the expected benefits. Yes, the sponsor has to help the project/programme manager to deliver the capabilities, services, tools, etc, but is only in driving their use after the project/programme has closed will we find success.

In recent months my mind has moved on to the need for smarter ways to deliver change. The argument being, with a lot of experience and some objective measures, that the rate and complexity of change is outpacing our ability to deliver change in what is essentially an “Industrial” manner; an approach that fits with the “Industrial” management structures found in most organisations, which itself seems to be failing.

I passionately believe that we do need to be smarter and wish I had the answers, but right now I don’t and indeed I am not sure if anyone has. It is also true that today it is hard to see who the audience would be other than other “thinkers” in the change field.

So essentially the question is:-

1. Something for change agents?
2. Something for sponsors?
3. Something about new ways of delivering change?
4. Something else?

As I clearly need to focus I will rule out option 4.

Option 3 is still something to hold on to, but I do not have enough to build content right now and the audience is unclear/smaller than the others.

The same lack of clarity about the audience afflicts option 1.

This leaves Option 2 which seems to tick enough boxes.

• There is a clear and growing audience
• I have material that can be used and be meaningful
• I believe I can demonstrate the thought leadership I set as one of my objectives
• Many of the target market use smartphones, tablets, internet resources etc. so I can  reach a broad group
• I thin I will learn a lot doing this

OK decision made in terms of the what, but I am not entirely sure about the working title and need to create an outline of the expected contents so that I can start planning the book’s creation.

While I will think about the title as I go about other aspects of the book I don’t need to firm up on that yet. I do however need the outline so that will be my focus for the next few days or so and I will post that next.

If you do read this and want to be part of keeping me honest in this endeavour, please do follow this blog, it helps me know that I eyes watching me and not just chance visitors.week 

The breadcrumbs in my mind

This may be a long a tortuous post so you are forgiven for baling out at any stage. The inspiration of this post traces back to the repeated comments from my wife asking where on earth a particular thought came from? That and a radio programme with some Elton John music.

My thoughts are always connected, one sparking another, even if they are not always linear or obvious to others. This happened the other evening and I thought it might be interest to try and trace the path of connected memories. I will admit that I have been mentally drafting this blog as I did things like cut the lawn. These exercises spawned more connections which my complicate the retelling.

So let's start at the beginning #1 which was my wife and I driving home on Saturday evening when Paul Gambaccini announced that he was featuring Elton John and played "Don't let the sun go down on me." My wife commented that she remembered that song from listening to it when she and first met. Interesting fact: when my wife and I married we each brought over 100 LPs each and had only two duplicates- Elton John's "Greatest Hits" and Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come On Eileen". Our musical taste remains just as diverse right up to this day.

So #2 I was thinking that while I didn't really recall that particular song, but I did recall listening to "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" with my two college flat mates one night in 1979.
I recalled writing a few lines of poetry that evening which I have kept ever since.
#3 had me thinking of other pieces of poetry I have written, a couple of which I will share at the end of this post.

The next step had me remembering two things so #4 was both my headmaster calling me an "intellectual philistine" (he was probably right back then!) and another friend telling me more recently that while I may put a few words down on paper that were not prose, that did not make me a poet. My mind started wondering about why one writes poetry and what one needs to do to qualify as a poet.

For me I write poetry to capture and express feelings and experiences that are difficult in other ways.
This had me recalling that one of my old flat mates is unfortunately dead, he died of a thrombosis, and the second suffered a serious head trauma shortly after leaving college. This erased his memories and I have subsequently lost contact with him. As result, my memories and those few lines are all that keep that evening alive.

So for #5 I thought of another poem I wrote that captured a regret I had looking back on a summer I spent working in Dounreay and living in Thurso in the north of Scotland. I was approaching my final year at university and had long enjoyed my beer and pubs in general, but I found drinking in Thurso was no fun. There were either places to get seriously drunk with no comfort, or hotel lounges populated with pensioners. As a result I didn't drink, but did a lot of walking and read a number of books by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that I borrowed from the library. I recall reading "Cancer Ward", "The Gulag Archipelago" and "A Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich". I am sure it would have surprised my headmaster to see me reading those books.

The thoughts of my summer in Thurso then linked to #6 the previous year when I spent the summer at apprentice school in Warrington. That was my first working summer and I looked to fill my weekends. I was fortunate to have some friends I could visit, but at least one weekend I remember going into Warrington to a rock concert. I don't recall the headline band, but I do recall the support act, a punk poet called John Cooper Clark. So we are back to poetry. In fact John Cooper Clark's work has just become part of the GCSE curriculum!

Thinking about that concert started my mind exploring other acts I had seen, especially some of the less well known one such as Rockpile (Dave Edmonds, Nick Lowe, etc), Joe Jackson, The Tubes, Al Stewart who was supported by Ellen Foley. Now Ellen Foley was the female voice on Meatloaf's "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", but did not appear on the video we see these days. Ellen was blonde, but it was a dark haired lady who mimed to Ellen's vocal on the video.

I suppose that takes us pretty much full circle ie music to music.

Now could anyone follow the breadcrumbs? I wonder if others find their minds connecting ideas and memories in a similar way?

I will share (or maybe inflict) some of my poetry now.


Study Of A Bird
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

I used to look at palaces
And see no further than old bricks and flaking paint!
I used to look at mountains
And only see muck and strain!
I used to see a girl, any girl
And find all the reasons for not marrying her!

Was it living?
Was it fun?
It seemed to be the way it was,
But then I knew no better.

I know when it changed.
A bird did it to me.
I never possessed her tho' I yearned to.
I have regretted it ever since.
She sat there elegant and proud.
I went back again and again.
I wanted her like none before,
But she was dear and I was poor.

I said goodbye to her that summer.
I had seen her many times.
Her imperfections meant little then.
They mean nothing now.
I started to live that summer.

I have seen Versailles and never seen a crack.
I have seen the Grand Canyon and not a speck of dirt
Sunsets and never a fly bite
The beauty of life in the chaos, confusion and uncertainty of a delivery room.
And I have known deep deep love.

The details remain,
But they have their place.
They don't crowd me
They don't chain me
Flaws and imperfections remain
In me
And all around me,
But now they add and not distract.

Though my walls have never been graced by her
My life has
I won't stop living
Nor can my eyes not see the beauty around me
She made me rich.

One World
=-=-=-=-=

One world, two views, no right or wrong

Are the stones beneath my feet
Evidence of destruction and decay
or the path to a better way?

Are the mountains I see
Warnings of destructive power
or monuments to a lasting hour?

Is that shoal I see, flashing and dancing
A single being
Or a thousand parts fleeing?

So often two people see the same thing, but don't!
Same world, two brains, no right or wrong.
Two hearts, one love, one life.

Dreaming Spires

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Oxford, city of dreams

For some, a lucky few
Fulfilled

But for most a period of
Anguish
Pain and
Tear-filled essays

From whose cocoon they will emerge as butterflies

Interestingly, though I can see it in my mind and I am sure I still have it somewhere I cannot locate the original piece of poetry in this breadcrumb trail. Maybe the memory alone has served its purpose?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The value of housekeeping!

I have a Samsung Galaxt SII phone, that all in all I like a lot. My only moan, and I have covered this before was the short battery life. This is a recognised drawback.

My solution was to buy a bigger (2x) battery that also gave some welcome bulk when holding it.

For a long while I have been happy, but just recently the battery life got worse. The phone was often not lasting a working with only light use. This was both annoying and frustrating. If the battery had not been reasonably new I might have suspected battery fatigue.

Instead I went online to research the question. There was certainly a lot of chater that the latest release of the Android software was power hungry, but I could not really follow the geeky advice. I did see something about disabling something "push" and took the advice to download a battery saver app and something called autostart.

The battery saver did seem to find lots of apps to close, many of which I had no idea were running. I am a curious user so have downloaded many apps , but use relatively few. Seeing all the apps closing I decided to uninstall all the apps I could not remember using or had no future intention using. I then ran autostart and found reams of apps all set to start when the phone started - these are now disabled and I start them when I need them.

Lastly under developer options in setting I found a switch to close an activity when I leave it, thus, I think reducing the number of residual apps operating in background and consuming power.

I am sure I have lost some functionality doing all this but I have not really noticed what.

Today I have used the phone and after 10 hours I still have 2/3 charge. My phone is back to being a useful phone again!

The moral is to housekeep more often......it is worth it.

Keep me honest.........and compartmentalised!

I have talked before about personal branding and the fact that I have been using IanJSutherland / Ian J Sutherland. As part of that I made reference to taking the IanJSutherland Blogspot and wondering if I should roll this blog into it.

Well I am glad I did not as I have a new use for it AND I do like the wide terms of reference I have for this blog and the eclectic posts it generates. With over 20,000 page views now it would be a shame to lose it.

So, what to use ianjsutherland.blogspot.com for? Well I have decided that I will use it for the coming months for a little self-governance over my plans to write and distribute a book. They do say we all have one book in us; mine has still to escape.

I plan to post at least once a weekend sharing my thinking and experiences around this endeavour. This discipline should keep me honest and encourage me to walk my own talk regarding project management etc.

My current thinking is to publish in January. I have no idea whether this is possible, but I intend to be more structured about planning the work this time and will amend expectations if necessary.

If you should decide to follow this it will help keep me honest and focused. The first post  is already up there!

This solution gives purpose to that blog and leave this to develop as it will with a slightly Brownian path (look up Brownian Motion!).

Please do help.

Walking the talk!

I have been talking about writing an ebook for some time. It was originally triggered when I first bought an iPad and was inspired by the new distribution channel it created, both in terms of global spread and also take up by managerial and professional level people. My thinking was how amazing it would be to have thousands of copies of something I wrote with my ideas distributed all over the world. Who could possibly guess what exciting opportunities that might create.

This formed my original thought of distribute high volumes cheaply or indeed for free.  I was not looking at creating a booklist bestseller.

A short time before I had decided to start blogging as I was curious to see what that was all about and to practice an set of skills, ie writing and communication, that was identified at school and college as a weakness. While more recent testing has suggested that my skills are much better and in fact high percentile amongst my professional peers, the suggestion that I am not good is deep rooted. Side note: It is quite scarey how those things stick with you, even 30 years on!

I came across an american contact who had written interesting newsletter articles over the years. I approched her to see if she had thought of publishing these as an ebook and found that I struck a chord. We worked together for a while, pooling our content and producing an initial draft (all done via email and skype!!) before the differences between our aspirations became too great.

As I said I was look for high volume, low price, good (but not necessarily a masterpiece), door opener from which I would learn and build, while she was looking for the capstone to her career wanting that #1 position on a booklist and for the book to generate an signifcant income stream by itself. We decided that our interests were not compatible and amicably agreed to part.

That was about 18 months ago. Since then I have learnt more about the creation of ebooks, both the technical aspects and the business ones. There are some great free tools available and some interesting webinars, as long as you can resist signing up to the "products" that are ineveitably being promoted. I have learnt how easy it is to create an app for the new Android platform and continued to develop my ideas on what the book could or should look and feel like.

This has not been wasted time, but instead it has been interesting, if unproductive.

So what now? Well I think it is time to pull the proverbial finger out and get something produced. AND to take my own medicine ie plan for this rather than just hope it will happen.

I have arbitrarily picked next January to launch my "book" whatever that is. I have no idea how realistic that is, but one needs a target and I can start planning around it. I have started drafting a plan using some software I like called Swiftlight (see initial thoughts below) and decided to use this blog as a form of self governance. I will look to blog about thoughts, achievements and plans at least once a week. This will create a degree of discipline and, as is the vogue these days, transparency.

I am very happy for comments or offers of help. I have given myself until the end of August to make this plan good enough and come up with the initial product design template....so ten days!

Wish me luck.

Not all critical tasks are equal!!

Every now and then it is great when someone shines a new light on a problem. In this instance I have connected with another linkedin member, Bruce Nagy, and he connected me with his website. I have looked at a lot of it, "got" some of it and "grabbed" by other bits.

I won't try to to cover all of Bruce's propositions as I am sure I would not do them justice, but I wanted to share the piece that set me back on my heels and has me thinking again.

Let me set the scene.

I have lamented before that project management in the world I inhabit has become dominated by Gantt charts and we have lost mos if not all of the PERT and crtical path analysis I was trained with. Indeed I was talking with a long time friend and commented that it was a long time since I had heard anyone even used the term "critical path", let alone use it. He concurred.

For those not familiar with critical paths, they are the chain of tasks/activities that define the end point of a project. The importance is that any slippage in one or more of those tasks will have a direct impact on the end date.

What Bruce's work suggests is that one assesses each of those tasks using a simple approach; an assessment that can prioritise them against the risk they will slip thus enabling you to optimise where you place your attention and supporting/mitigative efforts.

It is captured in this paper  that is freely available from Bruce's website. the key piece, at least to me, is as follows.

• Look at each task and rate it against two scales marked from 0 -10, one for capability and the other for motivation. (see panel for assessment criteria)

• Having assessed and rated the tasks one has some akin to the classic BCG 2x2 matrix. 

• It does not take a rocket scientist to see that the tasks with "low capability / low motivation" are at the most serious risk of slippage and worthy of a project manager's urgent attention.

• The startegies for dealing with activities falling in "low capability / high motivation" and "high capability / low motivation" will differ, but enables effective focus of effort. 

• Of course "high capability / high motivation" still carry a degree of risk - that is the nature of project work - but one should have more confidence in their delivery to plan.

As I said this has set me thinking again. I  would argue that I do this intuitively, but also recognise that a systematic approach is valuable for consistency and scalability ie getting otehrs to do it too. It is also valuable as away of explaining to stakeholders and sponsors why you are concerned about aspects and what they warrant their attention too.

My challenge to myself is to see how and where I can use this in my current work.

I am sure I have undersold Bruce's insights, and that his ideas go further and have far wider applicability, so I commend you to have a look and assess it for yourself.