Muntjac

We caught some of an old Inspector Morse episode last night, one so early, that it was probably based on a Colin Dexter story. Apart from the relative youth of the cast, what surprised was just how out of date it all seemed now.

* No attempts to take DNA at a crime scene

* An architect’s office full of people working at drawing boards

* An insurance office relying on paper records to manage information

Then once you thought about it, no CCTV, no mobile phones, people listening to LPs and checking the times for a radio programme in the Radio Times. Basically no computers, no iTunes, no iPods, no mobile phones!! The programme is not even particularly old, and already it has aged like those drawing room comedies. Will our lives change as much in the next twenty years! Will our lives in twenty years seem equally incomprehensible?


To look at the same issue from another angle, I am now an avid listener to podcasts, it helps make productive use of all my time commuting, without wearing out my eyes. I like to listen to the Indiefeed Alternative/modern rock podcasts. Available via iTunes, and ...

http://blindingflashes.blogs.com/indie_feed/

Following up on artists, I have downloaded a song, ordered a couple of albums from Amazon, and now downloaded an entire album. Four Fifty One, The Thermals and The Phenomenauts, respectively.

I can check out excerpts from album tracks on both iTunes and Amazon. All these groups are so obscure that they would be unavailable in any record shop.

When I was younger you could read the NME, and send away for the occasional tape of tracks that they really rated, or listen to John Peel, but although you were surrounded by music and writing about music, it was incredibly difficult to actually identify acts outwith the mainstream which you actually liked.

I suppose this comes back to the ideas of Nicholas Negroponte on us dealing in bits and bytes, and not dead trees now that many media have gone digital,

http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdcont.htm

the Chris Anderson idea of the Long Tail with viable markets forming in less popular art product creators,

http://www.longtail.com/about.html

or even a move toward a theoretically perfect market, where everyone has access to perfect information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition


Something else that I have been thinking about this week is the David Allen Getting Things Done methodology, based on some podcasts and the 43folders website. I’ve ordered the book, so that I can try an implement the methodology in a more thorough manner. Basically I am pretty good at time management, I am less good about just switching off from all the different jobs and projects that I am involved in.

http://www.43folders.com/
http://www.davidco.com/

The steps that I have implemented so far,

* starting work on recording all my actions against the relevant projects

* being more systematic and tidier about my miscellaneous note taking

* using a notebook to capture random ideas for later use

* trying not to scrawl on post-its, instead putting notes in my working jotter

* doing a daily brainstorm worklist, of tasks that I will conceivably do that day, with the more detailed listing of all the tasks that need done, not being rewritten daily, as it had been before

* putting future actions into the diary, for instance agreeing appointments with people to discuss more substantial issues

* putting time in my outlook calender daily for the routine filing/document management

* working away from my desk when I can, for example reading documents in the canteen

* to balance out the lack of accessibility, I do a weekly meeting with my staff, supplemented by plenty of additional chats to see how they are getting on

* managing my email differently, trying to deal with each email the first time I read it, reply, file or delete. This discipline makes for sharper/quicker replies.

* considering my work as a variety of different projects, and my day as a variety of strands of time, which are allocated across the projects.

* trying to trust the system to monitor the outstanding tasks, rather than keeping it all in my head

* feeling better about not multi-tasking

* feeling better about not getting everything done

* thinking that what I am usually doing is giving a touch on the rudder, moving things slightly in the direction that they need to move, and not stressing that they are not entirely resolved.

* thinking about my input being a process that can be applied to inputs to produce outputs,

* thinking about my input as being like a computer which needs to split its tasks into pieces, put them into order and then focus on them one at a time.

Of course all this is a lot easier when I have staff to manage, and I can deploy them on work, so my role is much more one of conducting the orchestra, rather than trying to play all the instruments at the same time.


Finally yesterday I was stroking a muntjac deer on the chin, like my dog, it seemed very fond of having its chin stroked. It is strange how allow the different species are in their social behaviour.

http://www.deer-uk.com/muntjac1.htm

untitled

And so,

at work we have just finished a major piece of work. We celebrated, with a glass or two of wine, and a relaxed weekend. However then, as my wife put it, the bubble burst, and it was clear that things were largely as busy as they had been before, and all the lesser work that had been shoved to one side, had not obligingly gone away.

Last week was actually pretty busy, Friday being a relatively busy Friday, with a quite a lot to get sorted out. I’ve also got a couple of temporary staff, and I do constantly worry about being able to give them enough work and supervision to keep them busy and engaged. They are only here till the end of the month, but all the same.

Chatting to someone before I left on Friday, she said that I should be thinking in terms of going for a promotion for my next post. I also had a chance to get out of the office and give a presentation. For me presentations are always fairly nerve shredding, and are either triumphant successes, or embarrassing. Fortunately this presentation went exceedingly well, no doubt largely down to the material itself rather than my delivery. However in total now feeling pretty positive about myself.

We were also talking about project management, which is very much the recommended methodology for managing work now. I explained that I did impose a light project management methodology onto the work for a while, but could not do so throughout, as I did not manage the overall process throughout. It was also difficult to adopt project management because to project manage you need to start with an agreed specification. In our work you don’t really know where you are going until you are almost there. There is a broad policy direction, and broad indicative outputs, and a broad indicative budget, but in terms of staffing there is a degree of flexibility. Accordingly you cannot plan ahead in much detail, it would really not add much value. You can however project manage in the sense that you do a bug hunt - looking for problems that will impede delivery, and then dealing with them.

Lessons learnt -
* you do need someone as the overall project manager, even if they are not the senior person in the project, you need someone with a big picture.
* I managed on the basis that I asked for things to be explained until I understood them, and they sounded possible.
* you can only project manage when you have time to actually act on what you have agreed, if you are all obliged to run about firefighting, there is not much value in a meeting until you have put the fires out
* if you have project managed upto that point then you are hopefully putting out the right fires
we ran with regular meeting of the core team, with an annotated agenda, which was prepared with all the key facts, the meeting was used to agree key issues
* the annotated agenda, also served as a minute, with agreed actions and outstanding actions
* outstanding actions were left on the page until done or superseded
* actions were always ascribed to someone, but largely we did not set dates
* the annotated agenda was regularly updated and served as the master data for the project
* if you never take leave, work all the hours it takes, relentlessly follow up on issues, and sort out everything that can impede delivery, you will make progress
* people seconded to the team are unlikely to be so ruthless, understandably, to make sure they deliver on time, you would need to actively project manage their work for them.
* This is only worthwhile if their outputs are key, if they are simply desirable you will need to live with the fact that they are unlikely to deliver on time
you need to be flexible about what you are delivering, it helps to explicitly argue out what would be desirable against what is realistic.
* in the end it all comes down to the art of the possible, with proper management you can achieve the seemingly impossible, but only by not doing a lot of stuff that everyone thinks you are doing
* you are still human, being rude and trampling over people will not achieve anything, having time for people, is actually refreshing when you are worn out,
* you need to leave time for yourself, the project is likely to go on for longer than you can work flat out.
* Set your limits for what hours you can work, and then stick to them, otherwise you simply end up taking sick leave to compensate.

Stewart Brand has put forward something called shearing layers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shearing_layers

this really applies to buildings and comes from ecology, but I think it has some applicability to project management. There are levels of detail that you can deal with, to differing extents. You need to be realistic about what you can plan and control, and what you simply do not have enough information to deal with. Accordingly you know your overall objective, but the finer detail is not yet apparent. However some work has a longer lead in so you need to firm up that aspect of the project.

Intuitively that is how I work. If I am making a piece of furniture, I decide on the overall function and materials quite early on, but the finish is only decided at the last minute. I do not create a detailed plan, but simply sketch ideas for how to joint the pieces on a chalkboard, and work down from the overall dimensions that the item cannot exceed.

I took a course in making furniture and we had to plan the item before we did anything, I’ve never worked like that before or since.

I suppose you could work up thoughts on the various layers, but really you need to work this out for yourself, if you cannot work it out for yourself, then you won’t understand the dependencies well enough to manage the work anyway.


In order to get through the mountain of lesser work that everyone thought I had been doing, that had been quietly shelved, I was in at the weekend. I deliberately decided that this was not just another day doing the same work. I used it to try and target material that I was aware needed done and was long overdue, and the boring document management which I quite enjoy. Deep down I am probably a thwarted librarian.

As readers of this blog will realise, the opening of a milk bottle inspires me to reflect, so I reflected...

* whatever way you slice it, my journey in to work is excessively time-consuming
* I would like to get out of the office more with some work of my own, rather than simply supporting other people
* the backlog of work is vastly bigger than just a day’s work !
* there are a lot of opportunities around where I am now

like a candle in a drawer

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Sleeping, long and straight, like a candle in a drawer.

Travelling home by train at dusk, on an unfamiliar line. The gathering shade had taken out all the colour from the land, leaving it l black, except fragments the colour of the sky, where water gathered.


In response to my recent blog on comparing my life today, with that of my parent’s generation. I would like to add that there are now opportunities available that were never available to my parents. In particular the ability to take a gap year, or dip into work and opportunities. Further I’m not sure to what extent this is actually a change, but if children choose to follow a similar career path to their parents, then their parents contacts and knowledge give them a huge boost.

The Robert Puttnam argument is that social capital in a community gives people access to contacts and networks that offer them opportunities. There would appear to be a widespread decline in social capital today, which would serve to emphasise the influence of close contacts like parents, as fewer people have useful contacts with people outwith their immediate social circle and peer group.

Our working lives have also changed. The model of working for forty years for the same company has gone forever. Unfortunately are pensions and terms of employment are still configured as if we will do forty years. Taking time out reduces your pension, taking reduced hours close to retirement, reduces your pension, taking a less well paid post close to retirement, reduces your pension. There is currently little scope for easing out of the workplace gently as you age gracefully. Instead it seems to be work till you drop, and then you go over the cliff edge, and hit full time retirement, on at best half your previous income, like a brick wall.

Extending on these thoughts, in giving our children the best start, we need to support them to make their own way in the world, giving them the skills and confidence to be self reliant in a world where the basic rules shift imperceptibly over time. Good health, good support, financial support, never go wrong. In order to succeed, a lot is demanded from people. However people are now much more cynical, young people are not setting out to change the world, they would like to be comfortable, but they don’t want to be wage slaves for forty years, simply to have a three bed semi, and 2.4 children. I don’t think you could say young people are less materialistic, they are less attached to possessions, they have too many, to place much value on them, but they are more addicted to functional novelty, the latest iPod, mobile phone etc., and keeping up with technology comes at a high financial cost, that is difficult to support on the income that comes with starting a job.



Commenting further on another previous posting, on the subject of wikis. I think that the demand for good user created content has now exceeded the willingness and ability of people to provide it. Looking at iTunes, or Amazon, or iMDB, or even wikipedia, you do not have to dig terribly deep and it becomes obvious that the infrastructure is there to support a wealth of informative comment, that simply is not there.

I suppose that sometimes the work expected of unpaid contributors is excessive. The work required in contributing to wikipedia would daunt me, and I’ve used bulletin boards for years. One way round this is to simply track paths, or use cookies to find out some information about the casual browser, and use this to supplement the information you do have, to provide suggestions and recommendations.

Alternatively I don’t see why contributors cannot be paid using micropayments. Contributors clearly contribute to the commercial success of some sites, and sites can be worth vast amounts of money, which the creators have cashed in on. If Second Life can create real world fortunes for people, the new user created web should be able to make money for people. Clearly you would want to ensure that you were rewarding quality, measured by recommendations, rather than simply quantity. You would also need to bias towards the areas where comments are needed, rather than adding simply another comment on today’s best-sellers. Also useful to keep under review so that you were not creating perverse incentives, for instance if you pay for comments that generate a lot of replies, you are simply paying people to start flame wars.



I should note that at work, we have just finished a major piece of work, and been much lauded for it. Considerable relief all round, it certainly has been a battle to finish. However also mixed emotions as the team is disbanded, it looks like I will be left with all the work of the team, and no staff to support me, either above or below. Now is probably a good time to cash in the kudos, and start looking for something else. I think I would like something that I felt was more creative, and more about building up something. I’ve just lost a member of staff after six months, and I really enjoyed training them up, and working with them.

I'm not saying this is spot on, but...

My Personality

Neuroticism
62
Extraversion
42
Openness To Experience
63
Agreeableness
37
Conscientiousness
85
 



You are neither a subdued loner nor a jovial chatterbox. You enjoy time with others but also time alone. Stressful and frustrating situations can often be upsetting to you, but you are sometimes able to get over these feelings and cope with these situations. A desire for tradition does not prevent you from trying new things. Your thinking is neither simple nor complex. To others you appear to be a well-educated person but not an intellectual. You have some concern with others' needs, and are generally pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative. You set clear goals and pursue them with determination. People regard you as reliable and hard-working.
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Compare and Contrast

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Compare and Contrast

How is my life different from that of my parents? Surprisingly little overall. In purely material terms, I live in a near identical house, with a near identical commute to my place of work. I can also afford a car, now fortunately more reliable than my parents could afford. Another improvement in our fortunes is that we now take annual holidays, although this does require some ingenuity, we cannot afford family passports, but we can afford Youth Hostelling Cards. In my childhood we only had a couple of holidays, but neither were overseas. However I certainly did my share of travelling with the Scouts, I loved outdoors stuff like camping and hiking. All of which my parents happily paid for.

As a child I did have the feeling that we had less money than most other people on the private housing estate where we lived, as a parent I now have a similar feeling. However now I suspect that people in traditionally blue collar work are more comfortably off than I am, with a traditionally white collar job. I am not suggesting that this is wrong, I don’t think of the level of someone’s earnings as any kind of moral judgement on their worth. However it is a change in society worth noting.

What is different, well I have two children, my parents had four. I have a far better paid job than my father. I am an established civil servant, now with twenty years of experience. I have a better education than my father, I have one honours degree, and two HNCs. However compared to when my father was working, civil service salaries have fallen dramatically relative to other salaries, and the financial rewards associated with qualifications and experience, now seem relatively paltry.

As a civil servant, I do have an assured pension, although this is at constant risk of being eroded, and it does mean I cannot change employer or work pattern without sacrificing my most significant financial asset. My wife works part time, but when the costs of supporting childcare are added in, it is uncertain whether this brings a net benefit. She does supply work with mentally handicapped children, in local schools. It has so far proved impossible to find a full time post, and she is doing nightclasses two nights a week, to improve her chances. She already has a degree, and substantial other training from nightclasses, and the Open University falling short of any recognised qualifications.

We have both had to move to find work, something my parents never did. Our first civil service postings entailed a substantial move, and we eventually moved back. The latter move probably meant that my wife could not undertake teacher training. She has been knocked back on numerous other occassions from teacher training, despite having two children, a relevant degree and extensive paid and voluntary experience with children. Basically she has spent her whole life working with children.

Somewhat unconventionally, I do not drive. With children, we could not manage without one car. My wife uses the car to ferry the children, and get to work, I rely on public transport.

We have to meet the increasing care needs of one of our parents, these needs already entail weekly visits, no significant support is provided by the Local Authority. The care needs are likely to increase. If we are to provide any significant financial support for our children when they go to higher education, it will need to be met from inheritances, we are simply not saving sufficient amounts of money at the moment.

My wife and I, both do substantial voluntary work in the local community, and have done for some time. I believe this to be well worthwhile, but it is unpaid, and there is no direct evidence that our employers place any positive value on this, or provide any significant support. None of our parents were involved with local voluntary work, although as children we benefited from the work of local youth organisations.

What conclusions do I draw from this?

We have done exactly what our parents generation would have recommended, we studied hard, we moved to find work, we chose secure, worthwhile jobs, we had children, and gave them the best possible start. We have also provided substantial support within our local community and our extended family.

In these terms we have made the most of opportunities that our parents never had.

Although our standard of living is ostensibly better than our parents, with the general advances in society, relative to the rest of society we are no better off than our parents. Society now feels even more unequal, and polarised, and it now seems even clearer that the wealthy can confer benefits on their children that other cannot. We have not achieved the social mobility that our parents would have expected of us, despite doing what they would have wanted us to.

As a parent, I am more concerned that I cannot provide more effectively for my children, and now believe that their chances of social mobility are no greater than mine, and that they will need to work substantially harder and smarter, to maintain the lifestyle that their parents had, or even rely on inheritances to get on the housing ladder.

It seems that choosing to be a parent means you choose not to have a “comfortable” lifestyle. Being a parent is hard, it is expensive. You can see why so many marriages fail. It is incredibly difficult bringing up children now.

As an individual, I feel that my life is substantially at odds with the world portrayed in the media, I can never aspire to the lifestyle that I see portrayed. Colleagues without children enjoy a far better lifestyle in material terms than I do.

I believe that if society expects parents to devote the personal resources to bringing up children that are required, then society and government need to do vastly more to support children and parents. The current shortfall in support for parents is a major driver for the current lack of social mobility. Children grow up on sink estates, and go to a bog standard comprehensive, or they can go to a boarding school because their parents run an international business. Bringing up children requires a vast amount of money to do properly, and if you need to substitute hard work and ingenuity for non existant money, you need a prohibitive amount of both.

Like all parents, I simply want to give my children the best possible start in life, and I feel that as a society we are failing parents.