I have been away on holiday. It was one of those breaks where much of the time is mapped out by events that are happening, Sue’s sister got married at the start of the week, it was a church ladies weekend away at the end of the week.
In between we had a few days relaxing in the Lake District. Jonathan and I managed to cross of a few more Wainwright’s with a long day up Grassmoor.
So now it’s back to work.
I have been away on holiday. It was one of those breaks where much of the time is mapped out by events that are happening, Sue’s sister got married at the start of the week, it was a church ladies weekend away at the end of the week.
In between we had a few days relaxing in the Lake District. Jonathan and I managed to cross of a few more Wainwright’s with a long day up Grassmoor.
So now it’s back to work.
I was reading an article from the Harvard Business School today and came across a word I wasn’t entirely familiar with the meaning of: “peremptory”.
I like coming across new words, especially ones that might have a use. I sometimes run an experiment with them to see how long it will be before I hear someone else using the new word.
According to the dictionary it means:
peremptory puh-REMP-tuh-ree, adjective:
1. Precluding or putting an end to all debate or action.
2. Not allowing contradiction or refusal; absolute; decisive; conclusive; final.
3. Expressive of urgency or command.
4. Offensively self-assured or given to exercising usually unwarranted power; dictatorial; dogmatic.
I think this might be a word I use again, it describes a number of people I deal with every day. It also one that could be used of me, especially in my ADT moments.
I’ve just finished reading a Harvard Business Review OnPoint called Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform. This talks about attention deficit trait (ADT). The Harvard article comes at a cost but the article in Time has a good overview, as does the CNET article.
Frenzied executives who fidget through meetings, miss appointments, and jab at the elevator’s “door close” button aren’t crazy – just crazed. They’re suffering from a newly recognized neurological phenomenon call attention deficit trait (ADT). Marked by distractibility, inner frenzy, and impatience, ADT prevents managers from clarifying priorities, making smart decisions, and managing their time. This insidious condition turns otherwise talented performers into harried underachievers. And it’s reaching epidemic proportions”
Sound like anyone you know?
It seems that ADT is completely caused by our environment, by the office, by the technology, by relationships.
So how do we control it:
ADT is closely related to the way that our brain reacts to fear so it’s important to promote positive feelings through stressful times. Positive feelings are also associated with good relationships. The author recommends interacting with someone you like at least every 4 to 6 hours. That’s an interesting thing for someone who mainly works at home to hear.
I’ve talked before about the physical side of looking after our brain, sleep, diet, etc. It’s a good reminder that I’ve let it slip a bit recently.
Organising for ADT is about creating the space and time to think away from all of the distractions. This isn’t just time management, but it’s also managing things out.
I was talking to someone who runs a huge fund in New York, and he was saying he demands that his employees take several days a month just to think–to leave the office and just go off and think. He wants them to not bring their e-mail, not bring their cell phone–make themselves unavailable. And I think it’s a really smart management strategy.
Organisations used to give people sabbaticals, some still do. In a world that is increasingly asking for for “fast” rather than “right” I think that people are increasingly going to need times to reconnect with “right”.
I would expect most people to be really happy with a proposition of getting something for nothing, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with 64-bit Windows. I wrote about this a little while ago. IDC have recently published an White Paper on it:
One of the biggest missed opportunities among today’s customer base may be the lack of use of 64-bit x86 Windows Server solutions to boost performance, scale, and utilization rates. Overlooked by many customers potentially for the wrong reasons, 64-bit Windows Server solutions offer a compatibility story that can be misunderstood, leaving customers to make deployment decisions that prevent them from enjoying the technology already installed in their shops.
Let me reiterate one of the main points here because many people still do not understand this point – you already have it available.
I’ve tried to think of an analogy for this for some time and I’m struggling, I think because it is so unusual for people to ignore what they already have.
I think you are probably getting the point now.
The graphs of adoption that are shown are striking:
That’s a huge amount of potential.
I tend to have two worlds that I keep reasonably separate – personal and professional. There is, of course, some overlap, but for the most part, my professional relationships are different to my personal ones.
I keep this principle in my online society too. My Facebook contacts are a different set to my LinkedIn contacts. It would appear, though, that Facebook are wanting to change that. Techcrunch is reporting that Facebook is making changes that could enable it to know about both sets, but treat them differently:
But that’s changing, fast. First, we noted that Facebook is creating friend grouping last month. By specifying certain friends as professional contacts, a whole different set of content can be shown to them (sans the dating status and pictures of you getting drunk). Or as Nick O’Neil puts it
, Facebook may be growing up.
And now Facebook is quietly making changes to their data structure to allow for the concept of “networking.”
…
Once launched, Facebook (or third party developers) could add a lot of functionality around networking. Applications could be developed that show a social graph for users who’ve said they want to network that goes much deeper than one level of friends. You could, for example, use Facebook’s people search (which is now public) to not only find people, but see exactly how you are connected to them. In effect, Facebook could build a LinkedIn-type networking application within the overall Facebook network. And that could be very bad for LinkedIn in the long run.
I’m not sure how I would feel about having one tool and two different sets of relationships. The relationships are different. I might set my status to “Graham Chastney is feeling tired” in Facebook, but that’s not something I would necessarily want to tell all of my professional contacts. I’d also want to be able to mark all of the applications as professional or personal. Take the bookshelf type applications, I might want to tell my friends a different thing to my colleagues. Would I really want to poke a professional contact?
At the bottom of a Japanese Maple tree sits a distinguished gentleman of some years, his name is Vernon Stumpy.
This is Vernon’s favourite place in the whole world. The Japanese Maple has beautiful red leaves and provides wonderful dappled shade when the sun is shining. Vernon now calls this place home, but it wasn’t always like that.
Only a few years ago Vernon had no idea that this place even existed. He was happy with his job as the head of the Gnome Protection League. He was happy travelling the country inspecting the living condition of his fellow gnomids and making sure that they were being looked after.
One day Vernon heard reports of a gnome in Lancashire that concerned him. These reports suggested that Cyril was not being treated very well.
Cyril’s arrival was also something of a surprise to us. If truth be known, gnomes would not be my first choice in garden ornamentation, so Cyril had been somewhat neglected and Vernon had picked up on this via the gnome grapevine. It wasn’t that we didn’t like Cyril, we just didn’t know how to look after him. So Vernon stayed to instruct us in the best way to look after a gnome, it was a bit like having our very own Super Nanny.
Initially Vernon only stayed to be a comfort to Cyril, but our humble little garden soon found a special place in Vernon’s heart and he no longer wanted to travel the world.
Vernon’s choice of travel arrangement may have something to do with his desire to settle down. He arrived at Teil Green courteously of the Royal Mail, which didn’t look to me like a very comfortable way to travel. He was accompanied by the paperwork from the Gnome Protection League so that we knew where he had come from. A few days later someone from the League called to make sure that he had arrived. We also received regular SMS texts from them checking that all was going well.
Sadly Cyril is no longer with us. One day a bunch of garden giants where playing with a giants ball. Cyril had no chance to get out of the way. With Cyril gone Vernon couldn’t stand to leave this place he had now come to call home.
Occasionally Jimmy and Grandad, but more often just Grandad, go and visit Vernon. Grandad and Vernon love to talk about the good old days when life was simpler. They love to enjoy the dappled shade and reflect upon all the change that they have seen. Sometimes Grandma bakes a cake, the two of them love good honest home cooking.
Vernon is very special to Grandad. Grandad hopes that he will always have a friend close by.
I am regularly reminded how easy technology change is when compared to people change.
This week the New York Times looked at the things that we are learning about communication in the Internet age.
This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.
Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.
Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.
In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.
Most people are a long way from understanding what is being said here. Many people have little comprehension that what they think they have written isn’t what people read.
Personally, I write this blog in the knowledge that most people won’t comprehend what I want them to comprehend. I’m also quite sure that I haven’t really comprehended what the author in the New York Times thinks they wrote.
There is a trend in many businesses that limits travel in favour of teleconferences, e-mail and video conferencing. It’s driven by a focus on the cost, rather that a focus on the value. I really liked this quote from the article:
“When you communicate with a group you only know through electronic channels, it’s like having functional Asperger’s Syndrome — you are very logical and rational, but emotionally brittle,” Professor Shirky said.
As we come to comprehend how we actually communicate I expect to see the balance between electronic and face-to-face interactions change significantly. This week I spent much of one day in a room with a team working on a single deliverable. We got much further together in a few hours than we would have done in a week as a virtual team. We recognised that we needed to be together to achieve what we needed to achieve. It was a high value meeting, it was also a high cost meeting.
We are a long way from fully understanding the extent our Asperger’s, until we understand it, we will not be able to design coping mechanisms.
There have been a few reports on Gartner’s top 10 technologies for 1008 over the last few days (here, here).
It’s been a while since I wrote a reasonably serious post so it’s time to get back into the saddle.
So what did I think of this top 10.
To start with there weren’t any surprises in terms of inclusion, but as the list is supposed to be in order I was surprised by the place on the list of some of them. It was nice to see the mandatory “2.0”.
1. Green IT
I think that Green IT is actually the incorrect phrase for these initiatives. Green IT gives it a nice feel, but the real driver for most business is the increasing cost of fuel. Businesses aren’t really going for Green, they are going for cost savings.
2. Unified Communications
This one has been around for a long while now. The steady shift to IP as the transport for everything seems inevitable. I think that we still have a long way to go before we will have worked out the human interactions and created a truly knew way of interacting. Some are further ahead than others but it still feels a bit too specialist. People are going to spend lots of money in this area, it’s going to be really important but it still has a long long way to go.
3. Business Process Management
This isn’t really a technology, it’s more of a methodology for using existing technologies. The issue I see is that most businesses don’t have a clue what they really do.
I was surprised to see this one so high up.
4. Metadata Management
Data is going to be a huge issue over the coming years especially the integration of data across systems. There is lots of data all over the place and increasingly people are wanting to put it together. At the same time the types of data are exploding.
5. Virtualisation 2.0
Well there had to be at least one “2.0” in there. It’s all about flexibility, moving this machine here, moving that application there without impacting the machine or the application. Green IT is going to be dependent upon this kind of technology.
6. Mashups and Composite Applications
Personally I’ve yet to see a mash-up that has really gone mainstream within an organisation. It’s used a lot for single web sites bringing together information from various sources, but within a corporation is a very different proposition.
7. The Web Platform
More service architectures. It seems to be moving that way, but very slowly. Most organisations are still struggling with what it means to deliver a service that they can tangibly see like email.
8. Computing Fabric
Fabrics have been around for a long time, this is the fabric moving inside the hardware of the device to work with the operating system. In computing terms most people are never going to knowingly interact with a computing fabric.
9. Real World Web
I think this is talking about the web becoming ever more part of the real world. It’s about the Internet being the real world rather than the Internet being the virtual world. It relies on something though – universal Internet access at good bandwidths. It’s OK in some places and using some connectivity but it’s not yet part of the real world.
10. Social Software
This is the one I was surprised to see so low down. I know a number of organisations who are seeing the use of social software explode within their business as well as outside of it.
What did I expect to see that I didn’t? I expected to see a lot more about mobile. I suppose it’s covered in 9. Real World Web but it’s not really central. I suppose it’s also part of 2. Unified Communications, but still not central.
I wonder, do other industries have lists that change so dramatically year by year, by comparison, the 2007 list:
I suppose that four of them are very similar, perhaps they don’t change that much.
That wasn’t too bad, perhaps I should write more of these.
This kind of follows on from my last post on Skilled Medical Staff, but I make no apologies for that.
I have been struck recently by the variety of skills that abound.
For weeks now the shower in our en suite (yes we have an en suite) has been dripping. The shower is actually against one of the walls in the bedroom so we could hear it dripping. Most of the time this hasn’t been a problem, but both Sue and I have had a few nights where we haven’t been sleeping as heavily as normal. In our lighter sleep all we could hear was the stead drip… drip… drip… of the shower. It was starting to drive us nuts. I finally phoned the manufacturers of the shower to find out how to get it fixed, they supplied me with a part and a skilled engineer.
Yesterday the engineer came and fitted the new part (he wasn’t supposed to come yesterday, but that’s another story). It took him less than 30 minutes to fit. He knew what he was doing and just got on with it. Now the shower is at peace. No drip… drip… drip… just peace, it’s lovely.
We had to get the person with the skills to come along, his skills were worth it.
Over the weekend we had a classical quartet performing at church. They were all highly skilled musicians who gave us a wonderful evening. We didn’t have to worry about whether they were up to the job, they were skilled. It was great to be able to relax into the music and feel it’s movement.
We are doing some large scale building work at church. While the classical quartet were practicing on Saturday I spent a little time watching two men roofing our new building. It was amazing to see how they skipped up and down the steps and along the roof carrying heavy tiles.
I marvel at these skills because I don’t have these skills. I’m thankful that others do. I would be stuck without them, but more than that, my life would be a lot duller without them.
The Bible talks a lot about the different skills in the church and how they are all needed. The most famous passage is one that compares the church to a body.
The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.
Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything?
But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”
A whole load of different skills, but all part of the same body.
I have to admit to sometimes being the hand saying to the ear – “can you get one with something”. The Bible tells us that those who are listen have as much value as those who run around and do. It’s not just coincidence that these words about the body are followed by some of the greatest words about love ever written.
You’ll need sound for these.
Just for fun:
http://ap001.net/t/cache.swf?x=N3x8YWN8fDQ3MGIzZTUwYjkyZWE=
http://ap001.net/t/cache.swf?x=N3x8YWZ8fDQ3MGIzZTUwYjU4NTQ=
Links:
Can’t wait 
.
If you only read this blog you may not be familiar with Jimmy and Grandad. It’s hard to know how describe these two characters other than to say that Jimmy is the grandson of Grandad.
They like adventures, and have been on a few, so together we thought that it was about time we told some of their stories.
Jimmy and Grandad live in a perfectly normal house which has recently, because of space limitations, been relocated into the garage at Teil Green. It’s a bit dull out there because there are no windows to see out of, other than the frosted glass one in the door. You can never get a proper idea of the outside world through frosted glass, especially when it’s been covered by the web that Mrs Spider has built in the vain attempt to catch the odd fly or two. Even small people want to see the outside world sometimes, so it was decided that Jimmy and Grandad would join the regular team at the Tuesday Night Quiz at the local Starbucks.
I don’t want you to get the wrong impression here, when we say "local" Starbucks we are not talking about some kind of local establishment which we walk to, this is a Starbuck franchise inside a huge Borders store next to a whole set of similarly huge franchised stores. But it’s the nearest one to us and the quiz is fun.
Starbucks does seem to specialise in large drinks and both Jimmy and Grandad were insistent that they could cope. Grandad’s coffee took an age to cool down to a temperature from which he could 
start to drink. Jimmy had a caramel frapuchino (or whatever it is they are called these days). Being over enthusiastic he started drinking before it had even started to warm up. Straight away was struck with that awful pain that you get across your nose when you have eaten or drunk something that is very very cold. We know it as ice cream headache.
This was going to be a long night of drinking for both of them.
When the time came for the quiz it was obvious who had been spending their time where. Grandad knew Oprah Winfrey and Clive James in the picture quiz – too much time in front of daytime TV. Jimmy loved the number puzzles – he loves mathematics at school. The other members of the team also helped out, but even with Jimmy and Grandad’s help Team Chastney was in it’s usual position of – third.
Third was OK this time though, although there was no prized Borders voucher to spend we did at least have the pleasure of beating the team of cheating young people (mostly from church) who were using the Starbucks wireless access to look up answers on the Internet.
Perhaps they’ll realise that learning comes from experience, not from the Internet.
There was a lot of debate about the answer to the question: "What is the fastest growing plant?" Andy, the quiz master, was insistent that the answer was Bamboo, Graham was determined that it was Kelp. When they all got home Graham went upstairs to check the ultimate authority on such things "The Guinness Book of Records", to Graham disgust the answer in the 2006 edition was quite clear:
"Fastest Growing Plant: Certain species of Bamboo grow at up to 91 cm [35 in] a day a rate of 0.00003 km/h [0.00002 mph]."
It was certainly better than a night in the garage, but all things have to come to an end, and with no voucher to spend, again, everyone departed.