The RTP Scrolls

Unionized product development?

2008-09-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

This is not what you are thinking, I don’t want to form a union. In fact I wouldn’t want to join an union even if someone bothered to form one.

However, in a large organization, whatever power is not lost to organized labor is often lost to disorganized operations, diluted through excessive, and often unnecessary, divisions of power through the ranks.

Separating function by excellence and capacity

I think specialization is a wonderful thing. Focusing on a particular skill can transform a merely competent engineer into a good engineer, if not a great one. If someone is excellent at, let’s say, database development, and I mean walking-over-the-water excellent, it is counter-productive to try and make that person spend part of his time dragging himself through product planning meetings. Assigning database development to him just makes sense. That is the “excellence” criteria.

I also have no problem with delegation of responsibility spawning from an overworked function, where a single person clearly cannot execute both tasks. While separating the function, I tend to prefer *delegating* the function from the overworked person, rather than *separating” the function, unless the receiver of the new function is clearly excellent at it and can operate virtually independently. That is my “capacity” criteria.

Favoring delegation over separation tends to favor a democratic decision process over a distributed one. In a democratic process, one or few people make decisions after consulting subject matter specialists. In a distributed process, there are endless meetings because no one has the skills to know what should be done, but plenty of other ‘deciders’ to scatter the blame when the inevitable failure ensues. There should be no confusion between a centralized decision process that is transparent to many with a distributed process carried out by many.

Arbitrary separation, or “the unionization”

A distributed (or diluted) decision power is often the result of arbitrary division of responsibilities, where the functions are separated without meeting either the “excellence” or the “capacity” criteria. It is interesting to observe how otherwise wilful colleagues suddenly fall in “union” mode when placed in a team setting like this, avoiding making a decision they are clearly capable of because the responsibility owner is the one who is assigned to make it. Let it fester, and a team can be thrown back to the hellish days of GM assembly lines being shut down for a day because the guy who screwed the lugs of the left-front wheel called in sick.

When you need a better player, not a new one

If you ever watched a rally race (highly entertaining,) you observed an optimal separation of function: one person drives, the other navigates. Navigation says “hard left”, driver turns left…hard.

Now imagine that sometimes the driver misses a shift or two. Is it better to assign extra practice to the driver or move the navigator to the backseat, install a clutch pedal on the passenger side, and introduce a secondary driver that can focus only on shifting gears? It shouldn’t take more than a rollover or two before someone can answer that question.

What if I have many players, but not excellent ones?

In my experience, a team leader should make a point of making each of them excellent at something. If you have someone inexperienced, choose something small and make him excellent at it. And by “make him” excellent, I don’t mean assigning the responsibility for something and hoping experience will make up for it. What I really mean is “train, orient, and demand results”, which implies you mastered the skill yourself or have someone onboard who has. Don’t think “coaching” here, coaching is but a technique and a wrong one depending on the occasion. As a colleague and great team leader once wrote: “don’t be a team hugger, be a team leader”.

Think drill sergeant minus the cursing. Once your team members start to fall in one area of excellence or another, you should need less team members, be able to cut down on your communication matrix, and focus on delivering results versus keeping the illusion of collaboration through communication chatter. The team members you must lose will have marketable skills to bank on, not to mention that while learning to be excellent at something they will also have learned how to become excellent at anything they choose.

I used to be upset about training someone just to see him taken away to work on another project, but come to think of it, after shipping a successful product, the next best, and more frequent, accomplishment in my career has been the ~~drilling~~ training of green new hires that were later disputed by multiple teams.

For managers, I think this means approaching task assignment with a tighter grip on the deep technical skills available on the team and the skills required to complete the project, focusing on keeping the team as small as possible. Someone with excellent social skills may not always be the better choice over that zOS-expert-perennial-jerk in “B” isle; a jerk can always be told to be less like himself for three months, the smiley face cannot be urged to absorb years of experience before the project begins. The alternative? Forming a little “team-union” of two.

Passion for the business or for the craft?

2008-09-18T22:45:00.001-04:00

I used to be an avid soccer fan many years ago, an affection punctuated by the rivalry between two local teams in my home state. That rivalry extended in a good natured way to the relationship between my father and I, each siding with one of the opposing teams.

His team, the Corinthians Sports Club - for some obscure reason I must cheerfully point out to be in terrible shape nowadays - used to have this goalkeeper, Ronaldo, which only his team fans could stand. They adored the guy, a young kid who progressed through the junior divisions all the way to the professional team.

He was not only good, but very passionate about the club, as we call the privately owned companies that control the soccer teams in Brazil; in the field, he would angrily chastise anyone who did not carry their weight during practice or, even worse, during official games, when he often verbally assaulted whoever he perceived as a slacker.

At one time, with the bonuses payments lagging a couple of months and the team owners starting to talk about renegotiating some of the salaries, many players started to publicly complain and threaten a strike. The news organizations, ever eager to capitalize on controversy and knowing that Ronaldo would not mince words, asked him about the situation during an interview, to which the answer came in a mixture of reason and his characteristic zealotry:

People are complaining about late bonuses and giving interviews on how they also have to make a living like anyone else. Now you walk to the parking lot and see what they are driving [mentions of expensive brands]…the executives will sort this out, but the players need to understand that there are days when only wearing the Corinthians’s shirt should suffice.

Much later in his career, a couple of year past his best shape , Ronaldo, who vowed to retire playing for the team of his youth, was replaced by a younger goal keeper. With a few more years in him - and with the bills still coming – Ronaldo took on less glamorous stints on smaller teams, ending his career on a melancholic note: wherever he went people knew he was playing for the money and not for his team of choice.

Passion for the business

Ronaldo has proven with his history and rhetoric that performance, passion and compensation are tightly interwoven, if not as cause-and-effect variables, at least as expressions of each other. A high-performer is bound to draw better compensation and develop the kind of passion expressed by Ronaldo, an almost divorced view of work and compensation, not because they are actually divorced, but because after a certain limit compensation alone cannot motivate a high-performer.

I can appreciate Ronaldo, professional player, demanding performance from colleagues in the field, but I didn’t like Ronaldo, loyal shill, exhorting people to wear the team’s shirt as a form of compensation.

I use the above story as a counterpoint to situations where executives demand a passion for the business. My first objection is rather logical, actually all of them are, in that boundless enthusiasm cannot be demanded; maybe fostered, but not demanded. It follows that people who demand a passion for anything often do not understand what it means to be passionate about it.

Too much to love

When the business is just too big to be understood, it is difficult to love it. It doesn’t help matters when the bottom layers are broken down into other layers, further increasing the distance.

And when it is not the distance, it is the confidentiality, and when it is not the confidentiality, it is the business being used to justify practices that even the business’s own mother couldn’t love. But enough of my argument, the business is what is; and that is how I started to define the business: as the part of it I can actually influence.

I tend to focus more on the mission of the two or three layers above me, which narrows it down to people I actually work with and see it in the flesh every other day. To me they are like temporary family: I do as much as I can for them and give them a hard time now and then when I don’t think they are at the top of their game.

With the right alignment of the planets, a mixture of clear speak from line management and working very close to the people who will actually use my work to help their business, I am very enthusiastic about it.

Passion for the craft

Compensation? I like to see it as a form of sponsorship, where I am freed to do what I really like on a regular basis without being distracted by checks bouncing at the end of the month. My colleagues tend to appreciate how I do things and the things I can still do for them, not caring much for the teams I have joined in the past. The difference is subtle: I follow a tangent on Ronaldo’s model, letting the work be my own compensation with the caveat that *actual* compensation must stay above a level where I do not have to worry excessively about it.

This would be my unsolicited bit of advice to any executive team: promote a passion for the craft rather than demanding a passion for the business. That is empowerment over chastisement. People who understand their craft are more likely to be enthusiastic about it, when people discover they can learn something new and become good at it, they are inspired; with any luck, even passionate.

When people are enthusiastic about what they do, and that boundless enthusiasm is backed by technique rather than unchecked madness, customers tend to love it too. And when that feeling of elation comes out of succeeding at a task or beating a competitor, chalk one up to a job well planed and well done, not for passion for the business.

Ronaldo, for all his good intentions, mistook sponsorship for loyalty and betrayed what should have been love for the sport, not for his employer.

Bill Gates: Let the engineers rule

2008-07-21T12:14:00.001-04:00

Quote from Fortune Magazine on the four traits Microsoft took from Bill Gates.

Let the engineers rule

Microsoft employs about 30,000 programmers among its 90,000 people. In operating groups engineers are involved in every major decision. Not only that. engineers typically get paid more than businesspeople. The geeks also get lots of toys: Microsoft's $8 billion computer science R&D lab is the world's largest. At a recent executive retreat. Gates said he thought every great businessperson at Microsoft should cultivate at least five close relationships with engineers.

I like him better already :-)

Compensate me not

2008-06-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

Interesting side note on the latest edition of Fortune Magazine:

Did you know that a little financial compensation can actually make a person less motivated? Researchers at an Israeli university compared the standardized test results between students who were paid 2 1/2 cents for every right answer and students who were paid nothing. The latter group scored higher. The reason? Your brain approaches altruistic tasks with only the desire to feel as though you’ve helped, whereas 2 1/2 cents isn’t enough to satisfy someone’s self-interest. Likewise, you’re more likely to convince friends to help you move if you don’t pay them – unless you pay them at least the equivalent of a professional mover. (Pizza and beer, though, are fine.)

Jia Lynn Yang

Your career, death valleys, and ... nonlinear programming

2008-06-18T21:24:00.002-04:00

On the trail of science and corporate analogies started with "Using magnets to understand the corporate culture", I wanted to explore the similarity between mathematic optimization and corporate culture.

Traditional non-linear algorithms can end up in local minimums, or "death valleys", like the ones highlighted in "white".

In nonlinear programming, the objective is to determine the minimum value for an object function within a set of constraints. Some of the most popular techniques (at least back in the early 90's when I studied them) involved a starting point on the surface of the constrained solution space and, from those coordinates, a slight step towards a new set of variables that resulted in a lower function value.

There is a bit more to it, but when the solution space is convex, you can repeat the series of small steps continuously, achieving ever lowering function values until you reach the variables that result in the minimum value for the function.

A convex space is a solution space where you can connect all points within the space using a direct line that never leaves the space. In simpler terms, the interior of a sphere is a convex space; the interior of a U-shaped pipe is not.

Finding a solution within a non-convex space is quite more difficult because the algorithms that lead to the next set of variables favor immediate decreases in the value of the target function. When applied to a non-convex space, the conventional solutions may lead to a "local optima" point from where there is no escape. In other words, the algorithm "cannot see" a better solution because all the immediate alternatives look worse than the current one. In the illustration, the variables of "Quality" and "Execution" time on a hypothetical "Cost" function have "local optima" points highlighted in white, whereas the global minimum is highlighted in yellow.

What it means to you

This analogy works for an entire company or for a single individual, but think of how many times in life we settle for a "local optima" situation where we feel lost and without direction, with each step pointing to a potentially worse situation.

Think of how many times choosing the best short-term direction can lead you to a comfort zone from where it is difficult to escape. I call those zones "death valleys". Think of it: not leaving a dead-end job because your next evaluation may get hurt or because that long awaited promotion may take an extra couple of years; not taking that class because you can get one more assignment done and improve your chances of a better evaluation.

I know we are not points searching for a point of "local optima" in a 3D chart. The solution spaces are far from convex. Even worse, they are not static and are affected by our presence.

Whereas finding a better "local optima" or the elusive "global optima" in the realm of nonlinear programming requires exhaustive search, in real life it requires curiosity and friends who can tell you about what different parts of the chart look like.

Better solutions require different starting points

Knowing about the work of others gives you access to different starting points from where you can reach a better solution. Whether a "better solution" means a more fulfilling career or an improved work life balance, the choice is yours.

Of course, just knowing about a better solution is not sufficient, as the effort required to get there may not be worth the benefits. As an example, knowing that an SAP consultant makes twice your salary may not be a sufficient motivator to make you divert time from your family to study SAP skills in the wee hours of the night. Once again, the choice is yours.

Having others knowing your work is equally important as your peers can use their own vantage points to tip you into a better solution. Good mentors are great assets there.

A pretty chart (it is pretty, isn't it, took me a while to convince MS-Excel to play along) and some words cannot motivate anyone, but they can plant a seed. Whether you take on an off-chance skunkwork project, take in a couple of mentees, start that hobby, there are always ways to start leaving an uncomfortable situation in work and life.

Declared exploiters, your best ally in the workplace?

2008-06-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

Robert J. Ringer, in his award-winning book "Winning through intimidation" divided people in his business life in three main categories:

The ones that openly manifested their intentions of exploiting those around them under all circumstances, but would continue helping him for as long as he was still an asset to their agenda
The ones who claimed to be his friends, but would exploit him on every turn.
The ones who declared themselves his friends and genuinely didn’t want to harm him, but would do so when forced by the circumstances.

Robert purged the book from mentions about his personal life, reason why he probably didn’t list a fourth group of people would not take advantage of others under any circumstance, such as family members and close friends.

Through the book, Robert was quick to point type #1 as his favorite kind of business associate and boss, because being successful with their no-nonsense philosophy usually meant they were very competent and also objective in rewarding those who could help them be even more successful.

Although he had no kind words for type #2, it was people in the last group (“the type #3s”, as he called them) that received his harshest criticism, in that their initially genuine intentions disarmed him of his natural defenses and invariably led him to some sort of financial loss.

Democracy meets Survivor meets kindergarten

2008-05-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

On the bright side, at least for an incident involving the state of Florida and ~~kindergarden~~ students, no one was tasered:

Kindergartner Voted Out By Students

Fantastic attitude by the 2 kids who voted against the extreme poor judgement of their teacher in calling the makeshift referendum.

At five years old, and under the extreme circumstances of peer and leadership pressure, they have shown courage and judgement that many people will not muster in their whole lives.

Clean restrooms, Quality and "good enough"

2008-05-19T10:22:00.002-04:00

by A Touch of Glass

My parents were visiting us a few weeks ago. As a result I ate at restaurants more than usual. In between waits for meals, I had the chance to visit many restrooms in various degrees of cleanliness, ranging from "I could live here" to "I'll use a paper towel to touch anything".

It is curious how my behavior while washing hands changed based on that state of cleanliness. Facing a spotless sink and, on occasion, listening to ambient Italian music, I did pick an extra towel after washing my hands, but to dry up the faucet before I left. In the absence of anyone in the room, it was not a case of peer pressure. I suspected early stages of obsessive compulsive disorder and left.

Later it came to me: Quality breeds Art and Art is very personal. When I witness a job excellently done, I immediately trace it to a rare individual; while I stand in front of the object, I am trying to imagine the number of countless expert decisions made by someone with skills developed over the years.

Don't think I am crazy - restroom analogy notwithstanding - but I believe Quality is absolute; it has the same power in a restroom, in a book, or on a painting.

Now I have an anonymous janitor to thank for reminding me that our work can be more than something attached to an e-mail or placed on a shelf. It reminded me that we cannot be perfect at everything we do, but that we must pursue perfection in at least some of the things we choose to.

"Good enough?"

With enough Quality, part of our daily work becomes Art, and Art speaks through time and space on our behalf. It inspires, it educates, it gives meaning. It can even motivate strangers to do unexpected good.

Facing the endless assault of the "good enough" message promoted by our hurried western culture, I think more of us should take upon ourselves to make an impractical stand against it every now and then. In the same way people tell us we should exercise at least 3 times a week, shouldn't we pursue perfection while executing a mundane task at least once a day?

Even sworn pragmatists should appreciate that, on Monday morning, the delivery person drops a package at his door with enough good in that "good enough" box hammered shut before the weekend.

Water, air, Porsches and servers

2008-04-28T10:29:00.002-04:00

Just read today about IBM releasing a new series of water-cooled Web 2.0 servers.

Over 30-years separate these two technologies, one rooted in the main-frame dominated 70's and the other sparsely tied to a collection of technologies representing everything that is modern in the late 2000s.

by pvera

Ironically, a parallel story started at about the same time, in 1973, when the iconic Porsche 911 came out with an air-cooled engine, an anachronism when all major manufacturers had long turned to the more efficient water-cooled engines.

Later, in 1995, the pressure from ever more powerful competitors forced Porsche to abandon the air-cooled engines to the dismay and anger of its fans.

I found it interesting to observe the power of peer-pressure on the way both industries dealt with cooling capacity, one trying to abandon water for fear of being labeled obsolete and the other clinging to air - and obsolescence - for fear of losing its customers.

Passion, apples, and vision

2008-03-25T15:44:00.001-04:00

Fortune Magazine broke cover on its list of most admired companies for 2008. Apple took top honors on both US and World rankings. Some excerpts from an interview with Steve Jobs:

"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is."

It was certainly the most inspired point of the interview, if only slightly more than his views on downturns:

"We've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place -- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that's exactly what we did. And it worked. And that's exactly what we'll do this time."

The Anthill, collective wisdom, and survival

2008-03-19T20:45:00.004-04:00

By DavidDennis

In a typical anthill, foraging follows a pattern where the ants walk at random, stumble upon food, and return whatever they can carry back to the anthill. On their way back, they leave behind a trail of pheromones to attract other ants. Soon, a somewhat ordered line of ants can be found hard at work between the food source and the anthill.

Ants know a thing or two about cooperating with each other.

Now just imagine what would happen if ants stumbling upon food did not leave a trail of pheromones behind, or if the other ants were not to follow the trail.

That is the predicament of many large companies who have not embraced the internal deployment of social software within their firewalls.

Just the other day I read a thread where web 2.0 on the enterprise was described as the latest fad in the corporate world. I responded with a long argument about the benefits observed in the deployments within our company.

I should have talked about anthills.

My employee's opinions are his own; the GM spat

2008-03-13T16:24:00.001-04:00

I always wondered about how effective are blog disclaimers along the lines of "These opinions are my own and do not necessarily represent my employer's point of view".

It is easy to dismiss one lone voice inside the walls of a cube farm, but look at what happens when the press makes a piñata out of GM CEO Rick Wagoner over a comment made by GM chairman-turned-blogger on the topic of global warming:

GM to Lutz: Global warming is no crock

General Motors Chairman Bob Lutz may think that global warming is "a crock," but GM CEO Rick Wagoner made it clear at a press event Tuesday that GM doesn't share Lutz's views. Instead, Wagoner believes that global warming is a very real issue facing the planet and that automakers must take action.
"The comments weren't coming out of our company," Wagoner told The Detroit News at the event.

Wagoner continued by saying that average temperatures around the world are on the rise, and while there is no definitive evidence linking cars to global warming, it's GM's goal to reduce its vehicles' CO2 emissions.

Lutz defended his stance on global warming on GM's corporate blog last month, saying "My beliefs are mine and I have a right to them." However, Lutz insists that he shares GM's stance on "the removal of cars and trucks from the environmental equation."

Take note, Bob Lutz used his blog to address the negative media buzz.

"The science of experience"

2008-03-05T09:23:00.001-05:00

Excellent article on Times Magazine, titled "The science of experience".

There is an interesting experiment with two nurses, one with 2 years of experience and the other with 25. They tend to a robotic patient in a simulated environment, the junior nurse nearly kills the patient; the senior nurse moves across the run with far more confidence and speed, actually killing the patient in a shorter period of time.

A quote to motivate you reading the article:

Ericsson's (Dr. K. Anders Ericsson) primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson calls this exertion "deliberate practice," by which he means the kind of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling and fist-pounding.

Delegation meets inactive listening and a busy schedule

2008-02-11T21:15:00.000-05:00

In a not-so-distant future:

Employee: Remember the plague of locusts I unleashed last month?

Manager (preparing to leave his chair) : Not really, but what's up?

Employee: Our customers are very upset; they are picketing at the main entrance.

Manager (fiddling with papers on his desk) : They need to check that gate, it has been acting up...

Employee: They snatched the project manager from his car while he was swiping his badge.

Manager (joyful after finding the form he was looking for) : I need to replace my badge...

Employee: They torched his laptop...and the car.

Manager: Well, let me know how it turns out, gotta run to my next meeting.

A daily prayer for great software

2008-01-23T15:07:00.000-05:00

All you want is a click away
When that button is up
That information is too
Without swearing or pray

And that button works well
Because I tested it before
Because I always knew
What you would look for

I designed it with wisdom
And with inspired bouts
Because I knew what you wanted
And what you could do without

Through daylight and darkness
Without ever asking me why
You let me observe you
Sweat, curse and cry

As I mixed the night
With weekend and day
I never assumed
You would click anyway

Absolute responsibility, the unforgiving nature of excellence

2007-12-12T14:34:00.000-05:00

Twelve years ago, on December 17^th of 1995, Santos and Botafogo met in a historic final match to decide the Brazilian Soccer Cup.

To put the subject of this entry in perspective, these teams had not won a title of that significance for many decades.
They were not only playing for the title, but also for the reinstatement of their former glory, when their teams were often used as the basis for a national team that won three world titles.

For those who are not soccer fans, Santos used to be the team for the most famous soccer player of all times: Pelé,

Santos needed to win the final match in its home stadium. A 1-goal tie persisted almost to the end when Santos scored the winning goal. Relief lasted a few moments, shattered by the referee's inexplicable decision to invalidate the goal.

Later that day, Santos' coach, Emerson Leão, was invited to several talk-shows.

Known simply as "Leão" (lion in Brazilian Portuguese,) he had had a very successful career as a goalkeeper and was considered by many as one of the best in the sport. As a coach, he was notorious for his excessive, almost unforgiving, discipline with the players; demanding a level of professionalism that was unusual amongst Brazilian coaches.

Asked about how he felt about being 'robbed' of his victory and whether he blamed the referee for the loss of the title, his response came in a calm and composed tone:

Victory and success are in the details. It is in the day when we missed those 10 extra minutes of practice, it is in the moment we missed the chance to score another goal, or in that moment we did not pay attention and let them score theirs... In order to be successful, one cannot make excuses. I blame ourselves, I blame myself.

After passages as the coach for several other teams, including the national team, Leão would return to Santos once again, ahead of the winning campaign for the 2002 national title.

No excuses needed.

Coaching meets sensitivity and being politically correct

2007-12-10T14:22:00.000-05:00

In a not-so-distant future:

Manager: Your code module has released a plague of locusts that will engulf us all for the next thirty years. You need to be more careful.

Employee: Isn't that too harsh?

Manager: I am sorry, you are right. The code this organization has written has released the plague of locusts. Is there anything you think we should have done differently?

Employee: Not really, gotta go, the crew is gathering for lunch.

Reluctant heroes and unconventional wisdom

2007-11-15T21:51:00.002-05:00

"Loyalty a factor in heroism" is the title of an article that blipped on the news last Sunday. Interesting excerpt:

...researchers divided medal earners into two groups: those who enlisted ("eager heroes") and those who were drafted ("reluctant heroes"). The reluctant heroes scored higher than any other group in selflessness and working well with others.

Many possibilities preclude the conclusion that reluctant soldiers are more prone to heroic action, such as a smaller share of eager volunteers to begin with. Statistics aside, there may be a bit of unconventional wisdom to be observed in the corporate environment.

Given a challenging and critical assignment, should a manager give it to a team member that is less skilled but eager to assume the lead or to a more seasoned employee who initially does not want to take on the task?

I confess to be divided, but would tend to go with the later. I believe the reluctance from a skilled employee to be a sign of deep awareness of the difficulties ahead and their inevitable impact on his work-life balance.

I interpret that reaction in two positive ways: (1) the person understands what it takes to complete the task and (2) that the person knows he would give its best. Whenever someone takes on a challenging task with his eyes wide-open and at his own peril, whether he chose to do it or not, a hero is likely to be born.

On Leadership, Art, and Design

2007-11-07T21:23:00.000-05:00

HDNet is airing a documentary called "Sleek Dreams", about the creative process behind a show car built for the 2005 Geneva Auto Show.

The result is the beautiful Maserati Birdcage 75^th, a masterpiece from the renowned Pininfarina studio.

For aspiring designers out there, the interesting part of the documentary is really the influence of Ken Okuyama in the final result.

Lesson #1, the grasp of art and design transcends the medium.

Ken Okuyama was no stranger to automotive success, but it was interesting to learn that he got the job over 500 candidates from all over the world by submitting sketches of...animes; not a single drawing of a car.

He is not a good car designer, he is a good designer.

Lesson #2, good design can be taught...or imposed

In the creative process, Ken chose 4 prominent designers and laid out the tenets for the project: Massive wheels (24" minimum,) and a height under 3 feet. These were not garden variety artists, but designers with ideas of their own. The unusual proportions sparked incredulous looks and even a deriding comment about the wheel sizes being fit for a truck instead of a car.

Moreover, the direction was to establish the design for the car of the future, unconstrained by limitations found in the existing manufacturing techniques. "Think 20 years from now," he said.

In three weeks, each designer should present their final sketches, from which management and Ken would choose just one.

Lesson #3, unusual solutions for unusual stakes

The strategy seemed odd, after all, if he had such vision and talent to decide which design was better, why not design it himself? Moreover, the competition did not seem conducive to team spirit.

The wisdom manifested itself soon. It was not about having a happy team of designers; it was about giving the effort its best chance. Pininfarina wanted to cause a lasting impression during the upcoming Geneva Auto Show - the symbolic 100^th of its existence - and assert its image as the leading design studio for the auto industry. The event also coincided with Pininfarina 75^th anniversary. Wounds, if any, could be healed later.

Moreover, Ken placed himself at the center of the storm. He called the angst upon him, not letting it fester amongst the designers. During an interim review, Ken criticized each proposal in a very technical and impersonal manner.

A mixed expression of vexation and frustration was clear on everyone's face. The reluctant designer behind the "truck" comment ostensibly questioned the assessment, resulting in a post-meeting session where Ken *drew over* his sketch (the utter humiliation for a designer, according to the documentary,) in a conversation punctuated by comments such as "the nose is all wrong". His tone was not testy, actually rather technical, he seemed focused on the results rather than on his or anyone's feelings.

Lesson #4, sticking up for your vision

At the end of the 3rd week, the reluctant designer followed Ken's suggestion and eventually won the bid, penning a historic moment in automotive history. The triumph was not until Ken fought over management's first choice, which was not in line with his original vision.

A few weeks later, during the construction phase, the designer felt like going back to his original design, asking the artisans to make a key modification to the car lines. The mutiny did not last long, with Ken lassoing back the change during one of his periodic visits to the shop. The designer was allowed leeway as long as the original vision was preserved.

The final lesson, art...trough others

A great designer can transpose his Technique, Art and Quality to the final medium through the work of others. His inspiration must be (far?) superior than the inspiration experienced by the hired artisans, to the point where the designer understands it well enough to abstract it as a vision and to teach it as if the vision was already real.

Choose your next assignment

2007-09-28T11:47:00.000-04:00

Fantastic series of articles, titled "Top Companies for Leaders 2007" in the latest edition of the Fortune Magazine.

There is an interesting quiz, titled "Are you a good leader?", which is worth taking whether you are on your way to become the next CEO or just curious about what the "right" answers should be.

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Now for the best part, the article about Google and Whole Foods, from which I quote the intriguing

"At Whole Foods Market ... the basic organizational unit is not the store but the team. ... Every new associate is provisionally assigned to a team. After a four-week work trial, teammates vote on the applicant's fate; a newbie needs a two-thirds majority vote to win a full-time spot on the team."

and the great

'"If at all possible, we want people to commit to things rather than be assigned to things," says Shona Brown, Google's VP for operations. "If you see an opportunity, go for it."'

My first thought was that only executives got to choose their assignments, but a few moments later, revisiting various moments in my career, it was clear that the leadership chain not always knew exactly what I should be doing down to every year-round assignment.

Truth is, not everybody can choose their assignments, but then again, not everybody is a leader.

Corporations, Technique, and Quality

2007-09-13T23:52:00.000-04:00

This is the final article in the three-part series started with "On Quality and Art" and "Technique, Art, and Quality". Understanding this part requires you to accept the differentiation between quality and Quality, with a capital "Q", explained in the first article.

Companies are capable of building a product with quality, the kind of reassuring knowledge that a product is free of problems and does not fall apart when it is picked from a shelf or driven from a showroom. However, managing product quality is different than an individual's ability to marshal the primordial Quality into products, which brings me to the first question:

"Are corporations capable of preserving that Quality?"

Preserving Quality means keeping as much of it in the final product, from the moment the initial product design, or Art, is conceptualized by an individual until the moment it hits the stores. The word "individual" is used intentionally here¹.

The creation of a product involves several people over a large span of time. As explored in the previous articles, that imperfect process is bound to take away some of the original design Quality. In that sense, the mastering of techniques required to manufacture something is fundamental to preserve Quality in the finished product.

Another limiting factor is the degree of individual awareness about the original design premise, lest a combination of masterful execution for different production steps could yield a product that does not correspond to the designer's vision.

Quality control as a technique

Quality control is the process used to ensure that product or process attributes are kept within established quality parameters. This dull definition cannot make justice to the dullness of the activity in itself, but quality control is a "Technique" after all, and as such, should be mastered to the point where it can be executed without conscious thought.

A perfect way of making quality control a hindrance is...to make it visible. When a project contributor is requested to see quality control as a separate activity, maybe by entering additional data into a separate system, his attention is diverted from his primordial purpose of building the finished product, which brings me to another assertion.

Project contributors should only be made aware of quality control when their work does not meet the quality criteria, not before.

A different kind of Quality Control

What about managing the Quality, with a capital "Q"? Even with my attempts to define Quality - which pale in comparison to those by Robert Pirsig - its parameters are still highly subjective to be measurable and verifiable. A quality control team would be mystified while trying to determine how much of the original designer's view still exist at each stage of the production process.

As you are guessing, here comes another assertion:

Quality Control is the responsibility of the original designer, who must ensure that his original vision is preserved through the development process and in the finished product.

Only the designer himself has enough, if limited, rational view of the original Quality built into the design, which leads to the next assertion:

Companies, as a matter of technique, must have processes that support the verification of the original "Quality" in the product, even at the risk of granting unlimited power to the product designer.

A different production model

These philosophical thoughts are impractical within the context of hierarchical structure. Granting unlimited powers to an individual over the result of dozens of interconnected tasks performed by dozens of different people requires a rare combination of skills.

Such an individual would have to be able to channel inspiration from the primordial Quality and, at the same time, work under the governance of a quality control process; he would also have to be able to objectify his inspiration before he could verify its presence during the production process; and finally, he should have a fair mind to withstand the corrupting force of unlimited power.

And for the ultimate question...

Are corporations capable of Quality?

Only to the extent that those rare individuals discussed in the previous section can exist. On the bright side, most corporations are still capable of creating good quality products, threading a difficult path of compromises when it comes to Quality.

As a matter of quality, the degree of Quality preserved during a production process is subjective, but somewhat quantifiable by the original designer. To conclude this series, a parting thought:

Quality, with a capital "Q", can be managed within a complex product creation process.

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¹Even when multiple people collaborate in the design of a product, the organization is such as that individuals work under the supervision of a chief designer to elaborate on design aspects in their field of expertise. As examples, the acclaimed designs for the Apple iPod and the Motorola Razor are reportedly associated with the vision of individuals (Steve Jobs and Roger Jellicoe, respectively.)

Technique, Art, and Quality

2007-08-24T15:32:00.001-04:00

Having just written about quality and art, I wanted to expand the thoughts to the importance of good form in the creation of good art, eventually closing the arc in my next posting.

I start with an analogy of an important concept found in the work of Jean Piaget, who believed that knowledge was built on top of mental structures and that mental structures were built on top of knowledge, thus supporting a continuous cycle of learning. For the purposes of this entry, I offer this parallel thought:

Art builds on top of technique and technique builds on top of Art

Whereas the inspiration for great art is drawn from Quality, the amount of inspiration reaching the target medium is limited by the artist's technique. Whether the artist is a graphical designer penning the next logo for FedEx or Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, pure thought must be channeled through hands and tools.

The process of channeling inspiration into craft requires concentration and fluidity of action, with conscious thought being too structured and slow to allow the free flow of Quality into reality. Forced to think through his actions, an artist will continuously interrupt that free flow at every twist of a pencil or keystroke.

...a thorough understanding of its craft allows an artist to recognize additional facets of its primordial inspiration.

I have heard many times about the importance of practice in achieving greatness, but somehow selected this Fortune Magazine article, titled "Secrets of Greatness - What it takes to be great" as an index to that school of thought. The article highlights the importance of practice and hard work in achieving greatness of execution, but deprived from the freedom to dive into the philosophical pit by the pragmatic nature of his audience, the excellent Geoffrey Colvin did not introduce the subject of Quality as the differentiator between high-performers.

A great Artist relies on intense practice of his technique and dedicates time to observe its effect on others. That intense practice exposes the limitations of an artist's technique, a critical aspect to eliminate imperfections in the resulting work.

A thorough understanding of its craft allows an artist to recognize additional facets of its primordial inspiration. When the wood splinter at a too narrow cut or the metal cracks at a sharper bend, the medium can teach the artist indirectly through its reactions. In his next creation, the artist will know to avoid those shapes or, more commonly, research and attempt new materials.

Over time, the repeated iterations of discovering new techniques and materials create repeated iterations of more unusual results that closely resemble the artists intent. Absent their knowledge of the artists toil and the time it took him to arrive at combinations of materials that are far from the obvious first choice, the onlookers will not only observe genius in form, but also genius in technique.

It is that oneness between the artist and his craft that makes it possible for his work to transfer the combined force of his original inspiration and of his continuous practice through time and distance.

On Quality and Art

2007-08-08T23:01:00.001-04:00

A while ago, a good friend let me borrow his copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

Through steady reasoning, weaving philosophical references from all corners of the globe with simple lessons about motorcycle maintenance, Robert Pirsig creates a masterpiece around the topic of quality. Page after page, he redefines Quality - with a capital "Q" - as the absolute source of our knowledge; a connecting bridge between the unending potential of our future and the realization of that potential in the present. This is the kind of definition that cannot be found in a dictionary.

Now, onto art, starting with...a dictionary definition:

the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

These dull words make me wish that Mr. Pirsig had also written about art, but maybe he already has.

...a sufficiently inspiring work of art is indistinguishable from absolute Quality.

Good art challenges the observer to interact with it. A good artist is able to create a finite piece of work that causes unexpected feelings on observers. As the observers become aware of those feelings, surprise takes root to support a wave of new feelings, causing a chain reaction of conscious thought and ultimately a final stage of wonder.

How do they do it? Without a blueprint or recipe, out of the thin air of their imagination, they impart their intelligence and inspiration onto ordinary materials. Hours, days, centuries later, without exception, that intelligence and inspiration remain alive, ready to amaze anyone who gazes or listens to them.

Whenever a work of art touches someone, it needs characteristics that are lost in the observers; otherwise it will fail to cause new sensations and emotions. However, human beings are so complex that finding something amiss amongst millions would be virtually impossible to men. In many cultures, those who hover above men are known as Gods.

So, are great artists Gods? Certainly not, but at some point in time, they established a transcendental connection with a greater source of inspiration not available to average men. They were able to convey that fleeting moment into hand craft using rudimentary tools and their earthbound skill and senses.

That source of greater inspiration is Mr. Pirsig's Quality: the source of our knowledge. A true artist is able to channel that undiluted knowledge and transform it into art. Even as some impurity makes it into the final work in the form of imperfect craft and imperfect materials, the quality in the final work is still indistinguishable from its primordial source.

To paraphrase Arthur Clarke's 3rd law: a sufficiently inspiring work of art is indistinguishable from absolute Quality.

Maybe most of us cannot touch millions with our work or create timeless sculpture, but that is only one way of expressing art.

Art - now with a capital A - is the representation of Quality, and is available to all of us. All that it takes is that we sit quietly now and then, letting our imperfect thoughts to fade away while Quality asserts itself. If you capture as much of that moment in craft, words, or actions, and the result manages to inspire as much as one person around you, you will have become an artist.

Narrow bodies and narrow relationships

2007-07-30T23:23:00.001-04:00

This morning I read the news of increasing canceled flights for Northwest Airlines. The CNN article impartially listed the arguments from the airline and from the pilots union, which each blaming the other side for the ongoing problems.

Amidst the crossfire, an amusing pearl from a Northwest spokesperson:

"Beginning Friday morning, we noticed a spike in certain narrow body absenteeism"

"Narrow body", in this context, is Northwest speak for pilots.

Not to pick on Northwest in particular, but using such impersonal terms to address otherwise real people seems a sign of of modern times. Maybe technical definitions eliminate ambiguity, or maybe they preclude pain-inducing human bonds during times of economical duress for the company.

No matter the explanation, there is something terribly wrong with the distance, for I am a strong believer that there should be mutual loyalty between employees and employers. Treating each other as a collection of parts is never a good start.

A prescription for creating great products

2007-07-15T23:59:00.001-04:00

Have you ever thought about what causes a company to create a bad product?

I could quote from dozens of sources that have extensively analyzed the work environment; ranging from immature technologies, lack of executive focus, passing through the rising cost of supporting pension plans, incompetent vendors, unmotivated work force, and on and on.

Instead, I offer one thought that summarizes them all:

"People do not create bad products because they are incompetent;
they create bad products because they cannot tell the difference."

The quality transfusion

My best advice to any business trying to end a losing streak on the market is to expose each employee to a product recognized as the best in its segment. It should not be a competing product; while you are trying to copy their product, they will be busy building something better - not to mention the potential of copyright lawsuits.

During the next department meeting, place an iPod on the table and talk about it. If you are feeling venturous, skip the meeting, and take the people to a BMW dealership to inspect a 3 Series.

Tell them to take their time, turn the knobs, touch the material, operate it. Hint: Do not take your entire department to the BMW dealership if you really want a shot at a test-drive.

Letting them see and touch a product recognized for its excellence will infuse their senses with something new: the feeling experienced by a customer purchasing a great product.

Knowing the difference

The next time your team designs something that does not live up to that experience, they will know. And by knowing the difference, they will go back to the drawing board and will ask what is missing until they get it right.

It may take several trips between prototypes and sketches, but fear not, the losing streak will be over on the first one.