“Thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing in a production-oriented society, and doing nothing is hard to do. It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.”
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Header Image: The receding tide on Lindisfarne, Holy Island. In the background is the castle.
Leave the door open for the unknown, that’s where the important things come from… for, to acknowledge the unknown is part of knowledge.
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Header Image: This is some of the local Blackthorn blossom. It explodes into this wonderful white for a few days and then is gone. It’s leaving is often hastened by a spring storm, but not this year, so it has been glorious.
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
John Maynard Keynes
Header Image: This is Haweswater. It’s a reservoir with a history. Below these still waters lie the remains of the village of Mardale which were flooded to provide water to the growing city of Manchester via a 56 mile long aqueduct.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
Buckminster Fuller
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Header Image: We’ve had some wonderful spring mornings recently. This is one from today’s morning walk.
“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”
William Blake
Header Image: This is a view from near Jenny Brown’s point in Silverdale, not far from Walduck’s Wall. It seemed an appropriate picture for the quote, this area always feels like a place if discovery to me.
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
Vincent Van Gogh
Header Image: Enjoying a beautiful autumnal walk along the shores of Derwentwater. Putting several small things together, covering a lot of ground and being rewarded with glorious views.
“When creativity is under the gun, it usually gets killed.”
Teresa Amabile – Creativity Under the Gun
“Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.”
C.S. Lewis
“Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.”
Zig Ziglar
Header Image: This is the water and rocks below Birks Bridge in the Duddon Valley. It’s a great place for a STORIES adventure, particularly for a swim.
“In our language there is a word with enormous power to create shame and guilt. This violent word, which we commonly use to evaluate ourselves, is so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that many of us would have trouble imagining how to live without it. It is the word “should”, as in “I should have known better” or “I shouldn’t have done that.” Most of the time when we use this word with ourselves, we resist learning, because should implies that there is no choice. Human beings, when hearing any kind of demand, tend to resist because it threatens our autonomy – our strong need for choice. We have this reaction to tyranny even when it’s internal tyranny in the form of a should.”
Marshall B. Rosenberg – Nonviolent Communication
“The executive’s job is to take risks, not to avoid them.
A senior executive’s job is to manage risk. We often interpret this as reducing or mitigating risk. But really the executive’s job is to take risks, not to avoid them. Since all action directed toward the future is risky, the executive must decide which risky actions to take and how best to take them. Investing in the stock market is risky, but if you want to earn a return, you have to do it. You balance risks and returns, and choose investments.
The simple reason that the contractor-control model of IT breaks down is the presence of uncertainty. Plans are made with an eye toward the future, but the future is largely unknown. Thus, rigid adherence to a plan cannot be effective—at best, the plan is valid only as long as the assumptions it makes are valid. The seated CIO is the one who tries new foods—well, if they look edible.
The presence of uncertainty is the simple reason why Agile approaches work better than plan-driven approaches—it is also the reason why a good IT leader will often have to make “wrong” decisions. An IT leader adds business value by adopting an intelligent attitude toward risk.”
Mark Schwartz – A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility
“Requirements simply don’t exist. A requirement, by definition, is something required: the basis for a contract, a way of managing an external service provider, part of a deal where a buyer promises money and a contractor promises to deliver something well-defined. But within an enterprise, what does it mean for something to be “required”? A requirement purports to express a necessity, but where could this necessity come from? In a publicly held company, maximizing shareholder value might be a necessity, but how could a particular feature of an application be necessary when there might be many other ways of maximizing shareholder value?”
Mark Schwartz – A Seat at the Table: IT Leadership in the Age of Agility
Header Image: A spring sunrise taken on one of my pre-work walks. This was one of those cold and crisp days when sunrise often seems so vibrant.
Graham Chastney 