Category Archives: Rant

Elon Musk on Process

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Following up on my last post about Elon Musk, I’ve got another quote from the same article in Wired I want to share:

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

This is one of the reasons startups can innovate so much. How do we get government to this point? In some situations, having a process is good. But I’ve seen it get to the point where employees don’t question anything – they just follow the process.

Elon Musk on Risk and CYA

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Wired magazine is running a great series on Icons to celebrate their 20 year anniversary.

For November, they profiled Elon Musk, an entrepreneur associated with Tesla Motors, PayPal, and SpaceX. This quote really stuck out to me; he was talking specifically about building space rockets here, but I think we all see this:

So, yeah, there’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.

It’s sad, but that’s completely applicable to government. We have to create a culture in government that accepts risk and failure as a consequence of constantly improving.

I’ve got another quote from the same article I’ll post later.

The Need for Will to Get the Important Projects Done

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Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed spoke at the POLITICO Pro Transportation launch event recently. I found Mayor Reed’s talk interesting, especially since recently Governing magazine published a piece on the five biggest infrastructure projects that might not get finished. I mentioned it at the time, but pointing out the ten biggest projects and that half of those might not get finished is extremely discouraging. We need these projects, and we can’t get them done. And one of the biggest (Denver FasTracks) is right here in Denver.

One of the five biggest projects (and I’m sure it isn’t the only one) might be finished later than 2030. Does anyone realize that we are spending money and we don’t what the need will be twenty years or more in the future? We need light rail, water and sewer improvements, transportation improvements, today. Who knows what we will need in twenty or thirty years? That’s why I keyed on Mayor Reed’s talk.

Mayor Reed had this to say about the need for infrastructure projects and the failure to get them finished (12:30 into the video, emphasis mine):

I don’t have a problem with our ability to compete with the Chinese. I do have a problem with us sticking our head in the sand. Other people are making infrastructure decisions so much faster, getting them done, and getting them built out. We have the same capacity to do it. We have a will problem in the United States of America. We know how to figure out the financing, we have political leaders certainly at the local level and at the state level who understand that this is critical and we’re watching our country decay.

Our country has an incredible need for infrastructure improvements right now. Our infrastructure is in decay. And we desperately need to put people to work. Yet we can’t even find the will to get the most important problems fixed this decade (or the next).

That’s why I’m discouraged.

New Theme on My Droid 2

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This is what I love about Android: the customization and the community.

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Here I’m running a customized Honeycomb theme (here) for a community built ROM (Liberty, here) that runs on the open source Android operating system on the Motorola Droid 2.  I’ve customized it with icons, a different launcher (LauncherPlus Pro), and a weather/time widget from an HTC version of Android.  I’ve completely customized the look (and functionality) of the home screen.

Community ROMs (versions of Android, basically) introduce new and great features, while fixing bugs.  I don’t have to worry about not getting an updated version of Android software on my Droid 2, because I know that other community members will release ROMs with the features.

And if I don’t like something, I can fix it on my own. That’s open source.

Can you do any of this on your iPhone/iPad?

New Points System in NASCAR?

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Reports say that NASCAR is contemplating a new points system (SceneDaily, FoxSports, and ESPN).  The current points system has been in place since 1975 (but it added the Chase system in 2004).

The current system is confusing.  According to Fox:

NASCAR legend claims the current system was devised on a napkin over drinks at a Daytona bar in 1974 and implemented the next season. The complicated scoring method gives 175 points to the winner, and decreases in increments of five points and then three points down to 34 points for the last-place finisher.

Five-point bonuses are awarded for leading a lap, and to the driver who leads the most laps.

The debated new system would award 43 points for first place (there are 43 drivers in a race) and one point less for each position, with 1 point for 43rd place.  If they want to do this, why not just use the average finish?  That’s even less confusing.

I know NASCAR wants to do all sorts of things to get more viewers, but here’s the deal.  The last race of 2010 decided the NASCAR Sprint Cup champion in the closest fashion ever seen by race fans.  And, the race was decided by the two best drivers of the year, working for the two best teams, who had the two best pit crews.

How much more action do we need?

My Pet Peeve – Gen Y Characterizations

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*Note – this issue has long been a pet peeve of mine. Beware.  Also, I am a member of the demographic cohort known as Generation Y or the Millenials.*

The ICMA twitter account (@LocalManagers) tweeted today about an article in the Globe and Mail about employees from Generation Y.

While the article discusses several generalities about Gen Y employees, the crux (and title) identifies that workers from Generation Y prefer job training to cash bonuses.

I don’t argue this point.  I don’t know what people from Generation Y prefer(and I truly don’t know which I prefer).  But, I object to the idea of this article (and thousands of others) that society can characterize people solely based upon their birthdate.

You understand that, right?  Any time we talk about Baby Boomers, Generation X, Gen Y, Millenials, etc., we are generalizing on defining characteristics of massive populations of people.  I’m not talking about the statistics like ten thousand Baby Boomers retiring every day (that can be statistically proven); I’m talking about people characterizing people from each generational cohort.  The people of our country have long fought generalizations based on race, religion, nationality, gender, or birthplace – so why generalize based on something so utterly distinct from personality, someone’s birthday?  Each person is different!

Most of these types of article (the ones I read, at least) tell managers how to manage employees based on their generational cohort.

Here’s my point: Manage your employees based on those individuals.  If you want to know whether they prefer cash bonuses or job training, ask!  If you want to know if they prefer open work environments, flex scheduling, meetings, health spending accounts, job perks, or anything else, ask them!  Need to know how to manage or discipline employees, interact with and get to know your employees!

Don’t manage me based on what a book or article in USA Today says people in my age group like.  Manage me!

This is how I will manage.