Dave's Whiteboard

Note: persons attempting to find a motive in this posting will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a meme in it will be shot.

Pisces: Your detractors are misguided; there is not an upper limit to the number of slides you can have in a one-hour PowerPoint presentation.

Thanks to you, though, there soon will be.

Aries: Good news: the CEO said the LMS you recommended was “a hit.” Bad news: just before that, she said, “We’re really taking…”

Taurus: Friends are concerned about your failing memory: your blogroll links to your own blog.

Gemini: You’re jazzed about microblogging, but remember: the number of U.S. households with birds as pets is twice the number of people using Twitter.  It’s true: parakeet, the original tweet.

Cancer: Networking pays off this month as you’re invited to address the National Association of Professional Keynote Givers.

PKG09 will be in Manhattan, though budget cuts have shifted the venue to the Grand Central Terminal concourse.

Leo: Don’t let the opinions of others deter you from creating a new image.  Keep in mind, however, that a shaved head and a goatee are not mandatory for speakers at TED.  Especially for women.

Virgo: You’re always open to learning new things.  This week, you’ll learn that “smile sheet” does not mean that you made people smile.

Libra: People with your sign like to get things done.  People with your boss’s sign prefer you do the things that have been assigned to you.   Meanwhile, the Scorpio two cubicles down has just updated his Facebook page with “updating my Facebook page.”

Scorpio: No, the Libra two cubicles up the hall does not have more followers than you.  She does, however, suspect that there’s no battery in your iPhone, and has noticed that the icons you painted on it never move.

Sagittarius: Like most Archers, you desire independence and new experiences.  For the near future, however, you’ll struggle with incorporating YouTube clips into the three-day workshop on Safety Compliance for Senior Auditors.  (Could Ning help?)

Capricorn: Coworkers appreciate your efforts to share and spread knowledge through social tools.  Try to restrain your eagerness for guidelines, however.  Several colleagues refer to you as the Wiki Witch of the West.

Aquarius: You’ve created many opportunities for using your skills through your extensive use of LinkedIn.  Last week’s messages to five anonymous contacts have paid off.  One of them will call you within the hour.  He’s your boss’s boss.

Redlining photo by NathanFromDeVryEET.
Grand Central Terminal clock photo by Matt Garland.
“iFone” photo by Eric Byers.
Opening paragraph ever so slightly inspired by S. L. Clemens.

A slow, off-topic morning — mostly off-topic, anyway.

First, legal news from the Federal Court of Appeals in Canada.  Down home in Cape Breton, Glenora Distillery has been making a single-malt whisky, Glen Breton Rare.  It’s a Canadian single malt.

The Scotch Whisky Association has for years tried to prevent Glenora from using the word “glen” in the whisky’s name, apparently believing that people will not understand the words “Canada’s Only,” “Canadian,” and “Canadien” on the bottle.  And miss the maple leaf.

Last week’s decision (reported in my home town paper) rejected the SWA’s contentions, finding the name neither deceptive nor misleading.

Cape Breton Island is sometimes a hardscrabble place.  As Ronnie MacEachern wrote in his song, Go Off on Your Way:

With each sunset, they’ll be leaving
When it rises, some return again
Just one penny for each broken heart
I’d surely be a millionaire

So there was a resonance when I happened across Anna Frater’s poem Dà Rathad (“Two Roads“) with its embrace of where she finds herself:

Ged a tha an rathad air a bheil mi cam
agus tha na clachan a’ gearradh ma chasan,
agus tha dìreadh an leothaid
gam fhàgail gun anail,
chan e an aon rud
a tha misc coimhead romham
latha an dèidh latha.

Although the road I take is crooked
and the stones cut my feet
and climbing the hill
leaves me breathless,
I am not confronted
by the same prospect
day after day.

And, to raise the mood a bit, I listened to Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh in this Gaidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) / Gaelige (Irish Gaelic) blend from the album Dual (the word means “to braid, to twine” in both languages):

I couldn’t let the bardie’s 250th birthday pass without some recognition.  Here’s David Sibbald reciting on of Burns’ most famous poems.  Lyrics, and a bit of annotation, follow.

To A Mouse.
On turning her up in her nest with the plough, November 1785.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi bickering brattle!  (hurried noise)
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle.  (plow-staff)

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth born companion
An’ fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; (sometimes)
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! (must)
A daimen icker in a thrave
(one ear of corn out of two dozen sheaves)
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t.
(..from the remainder, and never miss what you take.)

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! (tiny)
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin! (feeble walls)
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane, (to build a new one)
O’ foggage green! (dried grass)
An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen! (cold and sharp)

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past (plow-blade [lit., nose] )
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald, (out of house and home)
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble, (to bear)
An’ cranreuch cauld. (hoarfrost)

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, (are not alone)
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley, (amiss)
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

Surrounded by All Things 2.0, I’m still inclined to looking backward, since the past is where I’ve spent most of my time.  For the new year, I think instead of resolutions, I’ll go for actions.  Here’s a first one: a decoder ring for Robert Burns’ most famous song.

Why decode?  Well, the lyrics are in Scots–a language or dialect* of Lowland Scotland, as distinct from the Gaelic (Gaidhlig) of the Highlands.

* “A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”
– Max Weinrich

Also, overexposure tends to deaden perception.  Especially in the U.S., we associate the song with noisemakers and incoherent New Year’s Eve singing.  So it’s maybe time to revisit and reframe. Auld lang syne (“old long since”) means something like “the days that are past,” and especially “the times that we remember.”  In a way, Burns is celebrating our ability to store and retrieve our shared experience.

(Want extra credit?  “Syne” is pronounced like “sign.”  No Z sound.  Trust me.  You can hear proof if you hang around.)

Here’s a lovely version sung by Eddi Reader (who also sang it at the [re]opening of the Scottish Parliament):

(Dec. 30, 2009 update: the original video w/ Mairi Campbell disappeared from YouTube, so I’ve substituted this.  You’ll find it acceptable.)

Series: Managing the White Space

In my leisurely amble through Rummler and Brache’s Improving Performance, John Cleese keeps intruding.  Cleese made training films, including the classic Meetings, Bloody Meetings, with the immortal line, “You don’t do work in meetings — you just meet.”

(The movie title links to a preview; fast forward to about 2:40 to skip the intro.)

Rummler and Brache, looking at the process level of the organization, say that processes (like meetings or the Energizer bunny) just keep going.  “In our experience, most processes do not have goals,” they say, which makes it hard to align goals with those at the organizational level.

If the organization chart is a vertical view, a process chart is a horizontal one.  And while a few processes exist entirely within one functional area, most extend across those areas: they span the white space on the org chart.

Rummler and Brache apparently developed the swimlane version of a process chart, with horizontal rows for the functions, like lanes in a swimming pool.  Here’s a simple example from this article (pdf) by Ken Orr of the Cutter Consortium.  (Click to enlarge the chart.)

Even this “straightforward order fulfillment process” involves a credit manager, a sales manager, the shop, accounting, and customer service — and, of course, the customer.

We fall easily into the habit of confusing a process with a group that has the same name.  If it’s the marketing process, then it must be Marketing’s responsibility.  And obviously if it’s the sales process, then Sales is in charge.

Rummler and Brache recommend “as is” charts as a tool for breaking through functional walls. They’re talking about process maps that show what groups take part in a process.

“All too often, a team finds that there isn’t an established process;
the work just somehow gets done.”

(Which takes some of the shine off “organization,” doesn’t it?)

Like behavior, process is a verb: it’s what’s happening.  Output is a noun: it’s the result of the process.  It’s vital, Rummler and Brache content, to make sure the process has goals, and that the goals align with those of the organization.

Process effectiveness and efficiency should drive a multitude of business decisions.  For example, a reorganization serves no purpose if it doesn’t improve process performance.  Jobs should be designed so that people can best contribute to process outputs.  Automation is a waste of money if it calcifies an illogical process.

The authors contend that the process level is the least understood (and therefore the least managed) level of performance.  “Viewing business issues from a process perspective often reveals a need to make radical changes in goals, in the design of business systems, and in management practices.”

If nothing else, a look at the business section of the paper might nudge you toward re-examining the organization you work with.