Microsoft had some brilliant marketing strategies over the years. The rollout for Windows 95, for example was literally a cultural event. But, they also had some clunkers. One of the worst I ever remember was the rollout for their first version of their database program called Microsoft SQL (pronounced “sequel” for my non-techs friends.) The product wasn’t that bad. But, like most 1.0 releases had some real growing to do. But, the problem was a giveaway, called a SPIF in tradeshow parlance. They gave away a carabiner. Those metal clips that let mountain climbers hook into ropes.
Microsoft wanted this carbabiner to symbolize how SQL Server would help their clients scale mountains. A well tuned database can “hook” into all aspects of your business. It was a great metaphor. Microsoft took these carabiners, branded them with the SQL name and logo and put them into fancy gift boxes and handed them out to VIPs at the launch party.
Here’s a picture of a carabiner I use with my camping gear to hook stuff to my backpack.
The Microsoft SQL ones looked much nicer, of course. And there was that pretty box as well. There was just one problem. The particular carabiners that Microsoft was giving away, like the one pictured above, are not designed for climbing. This works great for quickly hooking things onto a backpack, but if you want to trust your weight to it, you need a different kind of carbabiner. One more like this.
This carabiner is designed to bear your weight. It’s heavier than the first one and also more expensive. Microsoft knew that no one was going to use their free carabiners for climbing so they opted for the cheaper decorative ones. Which, as I mentioned are still useful for many things.
The problem was that Microsoft didn’t think about the differences too much. When you turned over the SQL carabiner, it had a safety warning:
NOT LOAD BEARING
To a climber, that means, “Don’t use this carabiner for climbing.” But, “load bearing” has a meaning in the database world as well. It means, there is a limit to how much of a “load” your database can handle. SQL was being launched to compete with the big dog in the database world, Oracle. Oracle could handle huge loads, and did. And now Microsoft was handing out an object to physically represent their entry into the database world and from the get-go describing it as not able to handle the load.
Obviously, Microsoft recovered and today, SQL Server holds a significant marketshare. But, They certainly stumbled out of the gate.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
It’s a reasonable question, right?
How are you today?
You hear it in the grocery store. You hear it from your coworkers. You hear it from the telemarketers calling your cell phone because your number somehow “dropped off” the Do Not Call list. They all say it and none of them mean it. Sure, when a dad finds his 15 year old daughter sobbing in her room and asks, “How are you?” he really does mean it, but when strangers or casual aquaintences ask? It’s a formality.
And the real problem is that there is no way to make it sound sincere. Just as the question is symbolic, the answers are predetermined.
How are you today?
Fine
Good
Great
Better than I deserve
I can’t even bring myself to break the pattern. I was dealing with a family emergency last week, kids making some tough decisions. A coworker that I know enough to swap basketball scores with asked,
How ya doing?
Good.
I couldn’t help myself. I was dying inside, but he didn’t want to hear that. I don’t expect to hear it when I ask someone “How are you.” Just try it. Next time you are going through the grocery line, ask the person at the cash register “How are you today?” We both know the answer will be “fine, good, okay” or some variation.
So, if you shouldn’t say “How are you?” what should you say instead? Make one small change.
How is your day going?
You change the question from a reflection on the state of the individual, to a description of the events around them. And you also make them think about their response. I’ve been doing this for a while and the response is kind of dramatic. You will see the person behind the cash register pause and think. It seems like they are considering, “How is my day going?” The responses seem genuine. It may only be for a minute while they are bagging groceries or handing me an ice cream, but for that minute, we hold a conversation rather than simply speaking words at each other.
I stopped for an ice cream last week at 9:45pm. The grocery store closes at 10:00pm.
How is your day going?
It’s good. Been a long day.
You get to go home soon?
Yeah, just finish up with closing. Thanks for asking.
She smiled a genuine smile as she handed me the chocolate covered vanilla cone.
If you really want to know how people are doing, stop asking them.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
We were Paris . . . and now we are Orlando.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Who would you go out of your way to meet in person? A famous singer? Movie star? Religious figure? Sports figure?
I realized there were not many people I would consider bothering in public. Sure, there are people that I admire. People who I enjoy watching or listening to, or even just knowing there are people like them in the world. But, would I consider disturbing those people by walking up to them as a total stranger? Not many. Maybe no one.
I was flying back from a business trip from somewhere in Indiana many years ago. My flight was leaving on a Thursday in the early afternoon. The small regional airport I was flying out of was pretty quiet at that time of day.
You know, Muhammad Ali is over in terminal 2.
What’s that?
Muhammad Ali, you know the boxer? He just checked in and he’s flying out of terminal 2. He’s over there right now.
I’m not sure what possessed the gate agent to share that information. Maybe he was a little star struck. My flight was leaving out of terminal 1. But, it really was a small airport, the walk to terminal 2 was only a few minutes. And I thought about whether Ali was one of those people I would be willing to disturb in public. I decided that even if it was just to get a chance to see him in person, it was worth it.
Ali was with a few of his family and assistants sitting quietly next to gate waiting for his flight. I found I was more nervous than I expected. There was no one else around. I wondered if he booked his travel purposefully during slow times to avoid crowds. Feeling like a kid again, I approached him and apologized for disturbing him, but said I just wanted to tell him how much he meant to me.
Yeah, it was totally a “hero worship” type of conversation. Ten of my children are adopted. Seven of them are black. I live in a state where less than 2% of the population is black. I mentioned to him how much I admired his career and that of his daughter Laila. It’s important for my children to have positive role black models. They need to understand that while we do not judge people by the color of their skin, we also do not limit them. Ali, and his daughter, who was a professional fighter at the time, were people who had great success.
Ali couldn’t speak, or didn’t anyway. A result of the Parkinson’s disease. But, he did offer to shake my hand at that point. It meant much more to me than I thought it would. There are people who don’t like Ali as a role model. He abandoned Christianity for Islam. He refused to join the army. He was brash and arrogant. He was unabashedly proud of his race and at times made statements that were construed to some to be racist against white people.
But, what impressed me about him, was that he was an individual who was not willing to simply be carried along by the tides of history. For better or worse , he made his own way. Sure, he made some pretty boastful statements. But, he then backed them up. He was not only the only man to win the heavyweight boxing title three times, he was the only man to win it twice. He lived life on his own terms.
I have a weird mash-up running through my head. It’s Kanye West, at that time where he rushed the stage when Taylor Swift was winning an award for best Music Video. But, this time, rather than talking about Beyoncé, Kanye is talking about Ali.
Imma let you finish. But, Muhammad Ali was the greatest of all time. Of All Time!
Yes, he was the (G)retest (O)f (A)ll (T)ime.
Rest in peace and thank you for taking the time on an afternoon in Indiana to let a man thank one of his childhood heroes.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
He was the most dominate center of his time. Shaquille O’Neal was a monster on the basketball court. Off the court he was good for a constant barrage of entertaining quotes. Most of the time they sounded like something your junior high child might say. I remember him saying,
My new nickname is going to the be “The Big Aristotle.”
I remember thinking, “I wonder if Shaq even knows who Aristotle is?” He was brilliant on the court, and the jester off the court. I had it wrong. Nearly everyone had it wrong. And in fact, we were about as wrong as we could be.
Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest movie directors of all time. He directed or produced some of our most memorable and iconic films: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones movies. By anyone’s estimation, he was the consummate director. And yet, Spielberg lacked something that the youngest newly minted UCLA film graduate had. Spielberg, like Shaq before him, left school early before earning his degree.
Spielberg, while making blockbuster movies that entertained millions, decided that he wanted to finish his degree. It would make no difference to his career, but it was important to him. He re-enrolled at UCLA and worked his way through the classes like any other student. The only consideration that the school gave him was they decided he could skip the senior project. That’s where students are supposed to write, produce and direct a 10 minute film. Yeah, he kind of met that requirement a few times.
The point is that anyone who looked at Spielberg’s career might have assumed that as a successful director, he was a film graduate. Just as anyone listening to Shaq ramble on during a post game interview would rightly assume that he dropped out of college to become a professional basketball player.
I was the team manager for a team of engineers who lacked “engineering discipline.” My manager wanted me to get the engineers to focus more on process and making sure we were properly considering the potential impact of changes. I decided that I could never get the engineers to change until they realized I was “on their side.” In an effort to connect with my team, it was important that they not feel threatened. If I asked them to change their processes, they needed to know that I wasn’t asking them because I doubted the technical soundness of the solution. No one likes working for a manger who is going to second guess their choices. That is especially true when they know more about their job than their manager.
I approached most of my questions to my engineers with an attitude of “I don’t understand this. Help me understand why we need to do it the way your are recommending.” During this “teaching time” it let me ask questions that addressed my real concerns.
Won’t that change destabilize the network?
Well, not if we manage to get the components switched up in less than 5 minutes.
So, what happens if you run into a problem and it takes longer than 5 minutes?
Well, then it’s going to be bad.
So. . .how do we mitigate that?
By being the one who “didn’t know” anything about the solution, I was able to hold non-threatening conversations with my engineers where they exposed their own process weaknesses. The system worked well and soon we were the envy of the department. My manager was pleased and my engineers felt like it was their idea to be more conscientious.
I was talking one day to the project manager attached to my team. Carl wasn’t technical, but he was a brilliant PM.
Carl, what would you guess I studied in college?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe political science?
Computer science.
Computer science?
Really? I would have never guessed that.
And that was the point. I needed those engineers to not feel threatened. If they thought I was a complete neophyte when it came to networks and systems, they were much more likely to feel secure in their own knowledge. And the fact was, they did know more than I did about their systems.
How people perceive us is not necessarily reflective of our capabilities. Like Spielberg’s lack of a degree, or my background in CS, sometimes it’s helpful to let people “get it wrong.”
But, what about Shaq? Did he actually know that Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher?
Probably. I’m sure that it is required information if you want to get a doctorate in Education. Shaq, a guy who let the world believe he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer was possibly the sharpest knife in the drawer. He left college early to join the NBA. But, he didn’t stop learning. During his career, he finished his bachelor’s degree, went on to earn a Masters degree and then earned a PhD. He realized that if people saw him as a big dumb fool, it only helped him to win more basketball games. He was often underestimated.
What are people’s impressions of you? Are they accurate? If not, you have the power to change them.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Today’s post makes no sense unless you are familiar with the term “The ETW Express.” So, I’ll just leave this picture of a train.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Why are there locks on the lockers in Mormon temples?
Mormon temples are typically closed to the public. Not even all members of the LDS faith are permitted to enter temples. You have to be living your life in accordance with the church guidelines. Everyone is welcome at Sunday services in LDS chapels, but to enter the temples (which are closed on Sundays, BTW) you have to be following a set of requirements one of which includes obeying the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.”
If you have ever toured a Mormon temple. During an open house before they are closed to the public, you may have noticed there are locker rooms where patrons can change into clothing specific to the temple. It’s a fairly typical locker room, although it doesn’t have showers. It has changing stalls for privacy and lockers to store your clothes in while you are in the temple. Like many lockers, the locker key has a tag with the locker number. and that’s the part that has always caused me pause. If everyone who is in the temple had to interview with their Church leaders and commit that they were following the commandments, why the locks? Was it because the church didn’t trust it’s members? Did the church think the members were lying when they said they were honest in their dealings?
About eighteen months ago, I went on a diet. I didn’t so much go on a diet as I changed my eating habits. I was 210 lbs and the heaviest I’d ever been. Some of the changes I made were lifestyle changes. I started taking the stairs at work. I went back to playing basketball a couple days per week. I parked further away from the door and walked more.
But, I also made some eating changes. I cut out soda completely. I used to drink a lot of it, maybe 100 oz per day. (That’s about 8 cans worth.) I replaced it with water. I cut out most sugar. I’ll have an occasional piece of birthday cake if it’s a special occasion, but I skipped the candy aisle in favor of nuts and berries. Fresh fruit and jerky are also good low-sugar snacks. It’s expensive to eat healthy. But, my changes paid off. The pounds started melting away. I eventually settled at about 175 lbs.
It was my first time trying to lose weight and I had heard that “diets” fail, but changing your habits and sticking with it has the best chance of success. So, I committed to “this is the new normal.” And once I finished the sugar detox, I felt better. Sure, I’d get tempted occasionally, but a bottle of water and an apple would often hit the spot that a candy bar used to fill.
I also changed my shopping habits. I avoided even walking through the candy aisle. I was good with my decision to give up sugar, and figured I didn’t need the temptation.
I work in a “cube farm.” And my cubicle is at the back of the farm. I have to walk past nearly every other “pod” of desks on the floor. The security team has a small table in the middle of their set of cubicles. They have a big bowl constantly full of candy. They rotate through various “snack” size candies. Most of the time I have no problem walking past the bowl without even a glance. This week wasn’t so problem free. There, sticking out from under the dum-dums and salt water taffy was a distinctive blue wrapper.
Almond Joy.
Even the name sounds wonderful. Almonds are a nut (on the healthy list) and it’s loaded with coconut (more healthy nuts!) and it even had the word “Joy” in the name! Before I knew it, I’d snatched up he delectable morsel, shucked the wrapper and was immersed in the “Joy.”
It’s just one, right? I mean, one snack sized (mostly nut-filled) candy isn’t going to balloon me back to 210 lbs. Besides, now that I’ve eaten, I don’t have to be tempted any more since that was the last one! Did I mention that the security team regularly refills their candy bowl? Sometimes multiple times per day. They restocked.
Is it their fault? Not at all. I’m a grown man, I can decide for myself if I want to eat one tiny, sweet, chocolaty, taste of paradise. But, what’s the difference? I would not go to the store and buy an Almond Joy, no matter how much I enjoy them. Does the fact I ate this one mean that I’m not committed to keeping the weight off and staying in better shape? Again, not at all.
It’s the temptation, of course. If I have to go to any work to get the candy, I won’t do it. I won’t go to the trouble of buying a candy bar. I won’t go out of my way to get the candy, but if it’s right in front of me, and it’s free for the taking. (Seriously, the security team encourages the rest of us to enjoy the candy.) The issue is with me and the solution is also with me. Would it be easier if they didn’t stock the candy? Yep. but, I can’t control what they do. I can only control what I do. I need to walk the long way around and avoid their table of temptation. Or, I need to recognize that the temptation is there and prepare myself to avoid the impulse to eat all the Almond Joys.
Of course, if they don’t stock the bowl with Almond Joys, I don’t have to worry as much. I’m not really tempted by the other types of candy.
And that brings me back to the lockers in the temple. Are the locks there because the church doesn’t trust it’s members? I don’t think so. They are also not there because the church assumes people lied about being honest. but, everyone’s temptations are different. I would go a mile out of my way to return an extra dime that the store gave me in change. Stealing is not even a temptation to me. But, not everyone is like me. I have my own temptations, some more serious than an occasional Almond Joy. But, there are people who are tempted by an unlocked purse, or a unattended wallet. There have even been cases in professional sports locker rooms, where the players make millions of dollars, of someone being tempted to steal a few dollars that were unguarded.
So, I think it’s about us helping each other to avoid temptation. If I know you are tempted by Turkish Delight, but you are watching your weight, I’m not going to bring my Turkish Delight to work. If you know I’m tempted by Almond Joys, maybe you stock the bowl with tootsie rolls instead. I think the locks are a way of saying, “We understand this is a temptation for some of you. We’re going to help you keep your commitments.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
What happened to your hand?
My boss told me to heat up a batch of sauce. And as I was moving it, the new guy was totally out of position and bumped me. The boiling sauce went all over my hand. My boss gave me some burn cream. I didn’t want to go home early, but it finally got too painful.
I was picking my son up from his job at a local restaurant. It’s a little inconvenient to have to go out in the middle of the night. It’s not even predictable. As a closer, his shift ends anywhere from 10:30pm to 12:30am. Still, I guess I can’t complain. He’ll have his license in a few months and then he’ll start that process of spending less time with his family. It’s only about 15 minutes from his work to our house, but it’s nice to have that time to spend a few minutes talking to him.
Tonight, he was holding his hand up and at an awkward angle. It’s hard to tell with a 16 year old, just how much pain he’s in. Never one to complain, he’s often simply bourn the pain of an injury without saying anything. He was only bringing it up now, I think, because he felt he needed some explanation for getting picked up early.
The restaurant he works at is a popular one for teenagers. He was pretty excited to get the job and less excited when he was assigned dishwasher. The dishwasher typically is the last guy to leave at night. Even with a lot pre-closing, there were always the utensils that the other people used during closing that had to be washed. However, he understood that you have to start at the bottom when you are the new guy. Fortunately, he’s working with a bunch of other high school age kids. They don’t all have a high tolerance for work. So, turnover is a constant process and he quickly moved up to more prestigious jobs such as “tortilla maker.”
On this night he was training a new dishwasher. He was trying to do his new job and help the new guy. It’s what led to him getting burned. His boss had naturally been concerned with his health, but also worried about my son deciding that getting hurt was a good reason to stop showing up to work. Knowing my son, the boss needn’t have worried. My son’s been blessed with a high level of commitment from an early age. If he starts something, nothing will stop him from completing it. (Unless it’s household chores, but that’s another topic.)
He reminded me of one of my first jobs. I was the gopher in a cabinet making shop. I was 21, just back from serving two years as a missionary for the LDS Church. It was a summer job before I headed to BYU for school. My job was sweeping and sanding, and carrying stuff from one location to another.
It was the sanding that got me in trouble. We made solid wood six panel doors. The face of the door could be sanded with power tools, but the inset panels needed to be hand sanded. That was my job. On my first day, I was handed a piece of sandpaper and pointed at a door set up on a couple saw horses. Sanding takes very little skill. “Make the rough spots smooth” about covers it.
I attacked the task with enthusiasm. As I tucked the the sandpaper into the panel and slid it to the right, it caught a bit of the raised grain. Before I knew what was happening, the paper acted like a really dull scraper and the bit of wood peeled away from the door into a four inch long sliver. Unfortunately, the sliver was very thin and very sharp. It skimmed my little finger, penetrated through the fleshy part of my ring finger and embedded itself into the side of my middle finger.
I wasn’t so much hurt as I was surprised.
Hey, ah, boss?
Yeah?
I’ve got a problem.
We got some clean paper towels and wrapped my fingers. I assured them that I was good to drive to the hospital.
Are you coming back tomorrow?
What do you mean? I still have a job, right?
Oh sure. Absolutely. It’s just the last person we hired for this job showed up for the first day and then announced he didn’t like wood dust. We never saw him again. We just wanted to make sure this wasn’t going to convince you to quit.
I’ll be here.
As I drove my son home, I thought about what makes a good employee. Sometimes, it’s just being willing to show up, even when things get a little hard.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
Social media has changed the way we get our news. Facebook is one of the biggest news platforms. Traditional newspapers have had to adapt or die. We have a local paper. It’s local to Provo, but it covers all of Utah county. The paper will publish regular news stories, but its Facebook page will also post questions to try to get readers engaged. Most of the time it’s questions like,
What’s the weather like where you are? Post a picture.
What do you think of the look of the new LDS temple in downtown Provo?
But, last week they posted a question that made it obvious that they didn’t understand their audience. They missed their target group so badly that the group of people they were asking a question of commented not to answer the question, but to talk about how inappropriate the question was.
We are all familiar, or should be familiar with the questions you can’t ask in an interview. No questions about married status, or number of kids. No questions about religion or politics. Even asking someone about the origin of their name can be construed as potentially discriminating on national origin, another no-no.
But, what about after you hire them? Can you talk about family then? Ask them where they are from? Invite them to the church BBQ?
Of course you can. And you should. But, like anything, you have to use judgement. I have 13 kids. When I go into an interview, it’s not something I bring up. And as mentioned, interviewers cannot ask about it. Of course, I expect that interviewers will Google me, and they will see this blog and my signature block. But, in the interview, we all pretend that no one knows about it.
I’m very proud of my family. But, I don’t talk about it during the interview for a couple of reasons. First, some people have the idea that the world has too many people. If I have 13, clearly I’m being irresponsible. They wouldn’t say that, of course. But, I’m not trying to give them a reason to reject me. I could talk about the fact that ten of my kids are adopted from orphanages all over the world, so really I’m helping not hurting, in the eyes of the “overpopulation” crowd. But, it’s not a conversation I’m interested in having.
The second reason is that people assume that if I have that many kids, I will be taking more sick time. That I’ll need more time off to deal with kid issues. Again, I’m not interested in giving them a reason to pass me over.
But, once I join a company, discussions about family are great. But, as a new employer, you have to ask. I once went to work for a small company. I had been working there for a couple of months when the COO and I were driving to Salt Lake City for a meeting with the client. We passed a 15 passenger van.
That’s going to be my next car.
Really? How come?
Well, we are finalizing an adoption of three girls from Colombia and with 13 kids, the kids will no longer fit in my Suburban.
Wait. You have thirteen kids.
Yeah.
How come I never knew this?
He didn’t know that because he didn’t ask. Especially if you are the boss or the supervisor, you should not expect that your employees will share the details of their life with you. And you need them to share. Not so that you can figure out if they will have more time off for kid events, but so that your employees feel like you care about them. They need to know that you see them as more than just a cog in a corporate process. That change only happens when you communicate.
In fact, not asking tends to make them feel the opposite. They feel like you don’t value them as an person. And it’s not a big stretch to extend that to not valuing them as an employee. But, ask the right questions.
The mistake my local paper made? Well, they were trying to spark a conversation. Summer is a time for fishing in Utah so they asked,
Tell us some of your favorite fishing holes.
Are you crazy? So that people can overrun them? Not a chance. But, if you ask me about my family, I’d love to talk.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
System.out.println(“Hello World”);
Paxton(L, 0-1) IP:3.2 H:10 R:8 ER:3 BB:1 SO:7 HR:2 PC-ST: 103-67 ERA:7.36
Cylinder head bolts: Torque: 39 N-m (400 kgf*cm, 29 ft*lbf)
Chances are there is at least one line above that is completely foreign to you. Maybe they all are. At different times, they have all been foreign to me. I realized recently that I need to stop complaining about my car. And I need to stop because of my love of baseball.
My car (Iron Man) is broken again.
He’s carrying over 270,000 miles. It’s an old car. It breaks. I used to grumble and complain as I scoured junk yards for rear struts or scoured web sites for videos on how to replace the thermostat. But, the truth is, I enjoy it. That realization was a surprise to me. The knowledge shouldn’t have surprised me. But, I like to think I’m pretty self-aware. I was surprised that I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to enjoy tinkering on my car.
And the lines above are illustrations of why. I’ll explain what each of them mean in just a minute. First, I want to talk about baseball. I love baseball. It’s sometimes embarrassing how big of a fan I am. I can tell you which team has gone the longest since winning a World Series (No, not the Cubs. The Seattle Mariners have NEVER won a championship. FOREVER trumps 107 years.) I can tell you that Ken Griffey Jr, is the first player to go into the Hall of Fame as a Mariner and he was elected with the highest percentage in history. (99.3% Who were those three guys who didn’t vote him in on the first ballot?)
Anyway, the point is that I’m a baseball nut. And yet, it wasn’t always that way. At one point I thought baseball was the most boring sport in the world. “No hitter”? How does that sound exciting? “Perfect game” means no one gets on base? Ughh, shoot me now!
But, then a funny thing happened. I started watching the games. (They were really boring.) Then, I started reading the sports page about the games. (They became slightly less boring.) And I started to understand the game. And then I got hooked. The science and strategy of the game started to come into focus. Once I got over the learning curve I found it was the most enjoyable sport I’d ever watched. Even a bad baseball game is good to watch.
I learned and then I could appreciate it.
My job doesn’t require me to write programming code. But, I’ve taken plenty of programming classes. I studied computer science in college. I’ve programmed in C, C#, Java and Visual Basic. And yet, when you are starting out learning to code, it’s just so much gibberish. A misplaced comma? Your program will fail to compile. Forget a semi-colon? Your code will fail to compile. Miss one single character in a program with hundreds of lines of code and your program can fail to compile. Worse still is if your program compiles but then fails to properly run. At least when the compiler compains it hands you the line number of the problem.
Programming can be the most frustrating exercise in the world. And yet, I found that I really look forward to opportunities to brush off my coding skills. “Hey, I’ll bet I can get this spreadsheet to calculate the missed percentage depending on the number of days in the month!”
If you ask a programmer if she can write a program to accomplish a particular task, they will sometimes look at you with a blank stare. You might as well ask if you can use a car to drive to Montana. Of course, you can, it’s just software. But, until you get over the learning curve, programming is a challenging and sometimes aggravating exercise. Many people avoid it entirely because they don’t understand it.
My car was overheating. And, it was drinking anti-freeze. I spent weeks trying different things to avoid the reality that I had blown a head gasket. Last weekend we had a BBQ. My uncle and my cousin came over. They poked their head under the hood, listened to the description of the problem, helped me remove the spark plugs and announced, “You have a blown head gasket.”
Replacing the head gasket is a moderately involved task. You have to drain the oil. Drain the anti-freeze, and then literally disassemble a good portion of the engine. Next, you take the pieces you pulled off (called heads) to a machine shop and have them plane the edges so they are absolutely flat. Then, you put on new head gaskets, new valve cover gaskets, reassemble the engine, refill it with oil and coolant and then hope that you did it all right. If you missed a step or didn’t get it sealed just right, you have to take it apart and start over.
Sound fun?
Yeah, it does to me too. Wait, you didn’t say yes? (I know some of you did.) But for the rest of you, it. Probably sounds like a really, really boring couple of days.
That’s when it hit me. I used to feel about baseball and programming the way I felt about car repairs. But, as I learned more, and let myself get involved, I started to enjoy it. I don’t complain about the length of baseball games. I complain about the fact that I don’t have enough time to listen to more games. I don’t complain about “having” to write a program. I get excited that I have a chance to get my programming hands dirty again. Why should I complain about car repairs?
I shouldn’t. I appreciate the chance to get my hands dirty and play with the collections of wrenches, sockets and other tools in my shop.
I was the marathon runner complaining that my feet hurt.
No more. Embrace your interests. No one wants to hear you complain anyway.
If you are interested, here are the explanations for the three lines I started with:
System.out.println(“Hello World”);
This is a Java programming command to print the line “Hello World.” It’s a tradition in programming to create a “Hello World” application for your first program in a new language.
Paxton(L, 0-1) IP:3.2 H:10 R:8 ER:3 BB:1 SO:7 HR:2 PC-ST: 103-67 ERA:7.36
This is the “pitcher’s line” for James Paxton, a pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. The line indicates that he was the losing pitcher of this game and his current season record is zero wins and one loss. He pitched (IP) three and 2/3 innings of the game. During that time he gave up ten (H)its and eight (R)uns. Of those runs, eight of them were “earned (ER.)” Unearned runs are runs scored during an error, or as the result of a walk, or hit batsman. He walked (BB) one batter. He struck out (SO) seven. He threw 103 pitches, of those 67 were strikes. His season earned run average (ERA) is 7.36. BTW, this was a TERRIBLE line. Paxton got rocked. The Mariners lost 14-6.
Cylinder head bolts: Torque: 39 N-m (400 kgf*cm, 29 ft*lbf)
This is the specification for how tightly to turn the bolts on the cylinder head for a Lexus ES300.. (My Iron Man car) This line is somewhat misleading. It actually gives the same number three times. You need to “torque” the bolts to 39 Newton-meters, which is equivalent to 400 kilogram-centimeters, which is the same as 29 foot-pounds. All of those are a setting on a torque wrench that measures how tightly a bolt is turned.
We learn to appreciate what we understand. And we should seek to understand what we appreciate.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
