Process

“May you live in interesting times,” goes the old curse, and it looks like we are. Whoever we are, whatever role we’re in, it feels harder than it’s ever been to know what to do for the best. Conventional advice that’s always applied feels as though it probably doesn’t any more, and who’s to know what the new wisdom is? Whatever I write here will probably look laughably outdated before too long, but I was thinking this as I looked at the stock market, for one thing....

My day-to-day work is all about processes. Processes are a good thing. They mean repeatability, predictability, they can be honed until good outcomes are guaranteed. I work with computers, and software that enables business to run efficiently. If you can’t define a really good tight process, that software can’t help you, usually. Computers are great at process because they don’t make mistakes. If there is a problem, it’s because of the process, not the computer....

I have a love-hate relationship with project management. But it’s 95% hate. It’s OK, I’m a grown-up and I don’t show it. I do what needs to be done, I show up at the meetings, complete the tickets, update the statuses, I keep people in the loop. Inside, though, my inner teenage anarchist is ranting and rebelling. Probably more, the better and more professionally the project is being managed. Notice, in my list detailing my compliance, there’s no mention of the actual work being done....

Toby is brilliant. And a problem. Somebody I know calls everybody of a certain type “a Toby”, because that was the name of the first one she encountered. If you come into a company as a consultant and begin asking questions, Toby’s name will come up a lot. Because Toby knows the things that everybody else just takes for granted. Toby can do the things nobody else can do, and understands the things that nobody else can quite grasp, so everybody else leaves them to him....

As a child, for some reason I really really wanted to make the best paper plane possible. I tried a lot of fancy designs, most of which were worse than the classic pointy “dart”. Nothing was better than one of the early ones I found, which in the classic form I learnt is made like like this. Fold a sheet of A4 paper lengthways, then unfold it again. With the valley side of the folded paper up, fold the corners of one end to the centre line created by the fold, so that they create triangles at 45 degrees....