Bonne Chance

A Modern Pastime

Deriding that about which you know nothing: A favorite modern pastime.

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library and Wine Library TV fame tweeted this USA Today link: USA Today On Twitter

Please note: I would have no awareness of this article if I did not follow @garyvee on Twitter. 

I have had many conversations about Twitter with friends and associates. Well, not so much conversations. More like rant-control as they go off about Twitter. Or Facebook. Or E-Mail. Or Blogging. Or Podcasting. Or Digital Music. Or Cable TV. Or Cell Phones. Or the introduction of the telegraph. Or the Pony Express. Or Railroads. Or Electricity.

OK, so the last few, not so much. 

Or another favorite: Wine is wine. Who cares where it's from? I either like it or I don't. Why do THEY make such a big deal about it? 

Or as in: Who needs Washington wine? There's already too much wine! 

Or even: Walla Walla wine! That's stupid. Who cares about Walla Walla? 

Or: Why Cadaretta? Why do we need ANOTHER wine from Walla Walla?

The people with whom I have all these rant-control conversations (I'm doing the rant controlling, they're doing the ranting) are all the same people. Over and over again. Coping with the prospect of new choices by ranting about them. 

Some people love the new. Often unabashedly and without selectivity. Such people are not the ranters I'm dealing with. 

Some people are alarmed by the new. Often unabashedly and without selectivity. Such people ARE the ranters I'm dealing with. 

What I'd prefer: Everyone sorting the old and new and making choices that work for them without complaining (ranting) about the choosing process. 

What I'm going to get: More ranting, I expect. 

The USA Today article suggests that 40% of Twitter is babble. 

Gary Vaynerchuk suggests that 40% of everything is babble. 

DAH suggests that more than 50% of everything is babble. And that at least 20% of the rest is ranting and complaining. 

Which is why we should all just chill ... a bottle of Cadaretta SBS ... and just chill. 

DAH is David Anthony Hance at DAHplaytime.com

Not So Fast

Not So Fast

This past weekend's edition of The Wall Street Journal (Aug 22-23, 2009) included an essay by John Freeman, editor of GRANTA magazine, adapted from his soon-to-be-published book 'The Tyranny of E-Mail.'

Mr. Freeman's essay is a manifesto for slow communication.

Actually, it isn't really, simply, a manifesto for slow communication. It is a manifesto for appropriate communication.

There's a very funny scene in the movie 'Joe Versus The Volcano' in which Dan Hedaya's office manager character, on a seemingly never-ending telephone conversation, repeats, over and over and over, 'I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?'

Monkey: What the heck are you talking about now? Joe Versus the Volcano?

DAH: Tom Hanks movie. By John Patrick Shanley. I love John Patrick Shanley.

Monkey: Who?

DAH: The guy who wrote Moonstruck. I love that movie.

Monkey: Right, OK. But what does that have to do with e-mail and 'Not So Fast'?

DAH: I know I can do it fast, but should I do it fast?

Monkey: Now there, again, I still don't get it.

DAH: Just because we are able to communicate more quickly, that doesn't mean that quick communication is the best way to share information.

Monkey: Now we're getting somewhere!

DAH: Being able to do something, and doing something WELL, are not the same thing.

Monkey: I've got it! I've got it! Hurry up!

DAH: Not so fast.

Monkey: You think you're so damn funny.

DAH: Most of the time, I am.

Monkey: I feel like I'm just the straight man in this partnership.

DAH: Duh.

Here's what Mr. Freeman writes, in a nutshell:

1. Speed matters. The speed at which we do something - anything - changes our experience of it.

2. The Physical World matters. We may rely heavily on the Internet, but we cannot touch it, taste it, or experience the (togetherness of) face-to-face interaction.

3. Context matters. We need context in order to live, and if the environment of electronic communication has stopped providing it, we shouldn't search online for a solution, but turn back to the real world.

Over the past few generations we have increasingly associated progress with speed, to the extent that we often consider them as one and the same. They are not. Speed is an attribute or an ability, while progress is a value, maybe a virtue.

Think before you hurry. Just because you're going fast doesn't mean you're going good.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at www.DAHplaytime.com

More Action, Less Planning

Just do it.

I told my boss that, this year, I want more focus on doing, and less focus on planning. It isn't that I think planning unuseful. Certainly not. I'm a real good planner. 

I was just feeling that we spent a lot of time planning, and debating plans. Then we changed the plans. And changed them again. Often before they were fully implemented.

I can make big, complex, detailed plans. I can sit at my computer and consider lots of 'what if' situations, and then think up lots of ways to handle every 'what if.'

But if me and my boss are the only ones paying much attention to our plans ... well, I don't enjoy planning that much. Planning just for the sake of planning.

A couple of days ago I read an article about long distance running. It was talking about how the leading US and European runners were starting to compete with runners from African nations, particularly in long distance events (5,000 meters, 10,000 meters, marathons).

For the past couple of decades, American runners have been losing to African runners in most long distance events. In the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, American runners had great success in long distance running (Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Alberto Salazar, Joan Benoit Samuelson).

This great success inspired lots of interest, and lots of running, and lots more studies and recommendations and plans about how to train and run even better.

And the American runners started to get beat, regularly, by African runners.

Now, American runners seem to be getting competitive again. Mostly training and racing by running hard and fast for a long time. Not by following detailed regimens and plans.

This approach is epitomized by the Mammoth Track Club (founded in Mammoth Lakes, California, in 2001). The mission of the Mammoth Track Club is to advance the naturally aggressive 'run first, ask questions later' style of the top African runners.

Just do it.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at www.DAHplaytime.com

A Manager's Lot Is Not A Happy One

I read something pretty interesting about the business practice of management the other day. It was interesting because so much of it seemed relevant to all interpersonal relationships, not just business management.

I was reading a short interview with Dr. Henry Mintzberg of McGill University. He's written a book about management, after following 29 managers (in many fields of work, from managing a bank to managing a refugee camp) through their daily lives over an extended period.

Dr. Mintzberg shared a fun analogy. He suggested that many people imagined a manager as the conductor of an orchestra, waving a baton to keep all the elements in time, working seamlessly together. Dr. Mintzberg thinks this is a myth. He thinks a manager may be more like a conductor during the first rehearsals of an amateur band, when everything is going wrong, and some of the necessary elements are altogether absent. That's a good analogy, and fairly accurate, in my opinion.

Here's a quote from Dr. Mintzberg's interview with MIT Sloan Management Review, excerpted in the Wall Street Journal on 17-August-2009 -

Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.

One step removed, they manage people. Managers deal with people who take the action, so they motivate them and they build teams and they enhance the culture and train them and do things to get people to take more effective actions.

And two steps removed from that, managers manage information to drive people to take action - through budgets and objectives and delegating tasks and designing organization structure and all those sorts of things.

Today I think we have much too much managing through information—what I call 'deeming.' People sit in their offices and think they’re very clever because they deem that you will increase sales by 10 percent, or out the door you go. Well, I can do that. My granddaughter could do that; she's four. It doesn't take genius to say: Increase sales or out you go. That's the worst of managing through information.

Three ways managers influence action (when they're not getting interrupted - another key element in the life of a manager, according to Dr. Mintzberg):
1. Take direct action;
2. Get those you manage to take action;
3. Share information and hope for action.

That pretty much sounds like how I get anybody to do anything, whether I'm 'managing' them or not.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at www.DAHplaytime.com

The Apple Cart Upset

Monkey: It's not the fall that kills you, it's when you hit the ground. The fall could be kind of thrilling.

I've been thinking about upsetting the apple cart. I don't mean that I want to upset the apple cart. Hey, I don't even have a cart, apple or otherwise. I'm thinking about the METAPHOR of upsetting the apple cart.

Here's the image: I have a cart full of apples. I've loaded these apples into the cart because I believe that these apples are of some value, and of more value somewhere else (otherwise, why the cart?).

Then, sometime (long time, short time) after loading the cart, it is upset, either accidentally or on purpose, by me or someone or something else. I don't really care how the cart gets upset, and I'm not interested in affixing blame for the upsetting.

I am interested in what is to be done once the cart is upset.

Apples everywhere, of course.

Some piles, some rolling, scattered, under the upset cart. Perhaps a few still in the cart.

I can right the cart, and likely repair it.

But some of those apples are going to be pretty bruised and battered. And the process of going through the apples to see which can be rescued may reveal that some of those that originally were loaded into the cart should not have been. They may be wormy, or already bruised, or damaged during the loading process.

I just didn't notice the lower-value apples before the cart was upset, because I was focused on the cart and my value perception of its contents.

Sometimes, in life, our apple carts are upset. We may cry and wave our arms in the air. We may curse and stamp and accuse.

Eventually, though, we're going to have to right and fix the cart. And, hopefully, we're going to look at the spilled apples with a critical eye, and leave the scene of the upset with a lighter load.

A wonderful opportunity.

DAH is David Anthony Hance at www.DAHplaytime.com