Thursday, November 6, 2014
Eleven-Month Check-In August 2014
Ryan Companies
One of the noticeable changes when you leave an executive/professional position is that the phone stops ringing. Vendors, as friendly and chummy as they might be spend their time calling people who still have a budget, discretionary spending, etc. You have no worth to "internal customers" and peers once you are officialy "out of business." Money cannot buy you friends, only vendors and transients.
While employed I did have access to a lot of
computing resources. During this post-work time period I've employed
and explored a lot of web resources. I will confess that 98% of my work
is done on a $219 Samsung Chromebook using Google applications,
including spreadsheet, and presentation tools. I have versions of
Microsoft Office, both fat-client and hosted solutions but rarely use
them. I believe they are close to a non-necessary expense. LibreOffice
and Ubuntu also play into this phase of my working. One should still
remain cautious of "cloud" tools, resources and storage. Many of these
solutions still remain unprofitable and as we've seen in the past year
cloud storage certainly is totally open to the eyes of the cloud vendors
and government. You might want to consider encryption and an anonymous
proxy server solutions.
Some of you know that I've had a few lose end in the real estate world and that has taken some time. I'm still working on my mother's condo and hope to have that on the market by this weekend....the tattoo guy just made me have a mental flinch...I hope to have it on the market by this fall.
Tim Gray and I have kept in touch and will be having lunch in a week or two. Years ago, before his racing career, I told him that golf was a pretty boring game. Traveling around a track at 100+ seems to have caught his attention much more than a 15mph golf cart. Tim and I share some small town upbringing experiences but it ends there. We were of dramatically different work styles when we began working together. I learned a lot from Tim. He was a quick study, requesting just the needed information to make or confirm and decision and let you do your job. Once after a couple of years I tested him a bit asking about a performance review (we never had them back in the day). His response 'Why would we do that? I'll tell you if there's something we need to talk about." I loved working for Tim. Never underestimate his compassion and caring for people and employees. When you fall out of boat or end up in the deep end of the pool you want him holding the life ring.
The creative side of my head and hands is getting a bit more time. I've written several articles submitted for publication, kept up a couple of blogs, one serious, the other profane and tested the limits of friendship on Facebook. I've restarted "Marriage for Dummies" after the loss of the first rough draft. Attached is a recent small project, one of many. My plan is to take a carload of work to the Nova Scotia Folk Art Festival in 2015.
When I consider taking a "real" job I think of Dave Sterk. Dave and I were left-handed, shared a birth year and seemed comfortable with our ad hoc conversations. When I asked him why he was retiring his response was simple. "I can and I have things I want to do." We spend a lot of time as employees doing what others want us to do. Certainly we perform professionally and enjoy some parts of our jobs but at the end I don't think we'll surround ourselves with proposals we've written, contracts negotiated or work done long ago. Once in a while I create an image of some old geezers standing around a shuffleboard court, all of them retired programmers or network administrator (or perhaps even a long-ago CIO) talking about some algorithm implemented, a unique VLAN solution or a Ruby subroutine. Nobody cares about your past work. Being gone from the corporate world helps define and narrow the definition of what you really like, what you want to spend your time doing and what you may or may not be good at. It's a good transition. The fish was a simple little thing, a basswood log culled from a acreage clearing effort, a slab sawed off and tossed aside and then a notion of something that might look like a fish to hand work and then it turned into something else. I follow other artisans and craft persons' work on Facebook and have found some delight in international collaboration. This would not have happened if I was still doing the commute, parking in the ramp, walking past the local, pondering the mall sights through the four seasons and gluing myself to that fake wood desktop. Spending your time on lasting work and lasting friendship should be a priority. Dave Sterk retired and died two or three years later. Going back to an office 8x5 (or more) seems like a pretty illogical thing to do (some sort of 3x10 thing might be good).
Dave Hahn repeats the same lines pretty regularly. "Life is short. I try to enjoy each day." It's good advice.
I've reconnected with some of my past employees, even some who left not of their own choosing. Jobs and companies change, dissolve, morph, grow, shrink get better and sometimes disappear. The connections (other than vendors), relationships and friendships persevere.
Years ago I worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. During the new employee orientation this hard nosed old HR woman stated simply that there would be a six month review to determine if they had made a mistake. At that very moment I decided that I had made a mistake. I waited two weeks and then two more but then began a job search and left successfully at eleven months. It was the best bad job experience ever. Following that experience I had a great five year run at a startup and then provided the IT infrastructure for the growth from $35m to $750m at that place I used to work. There were other jobs, too, that are topics for the future. Now I'm enthused about each day in this era of my creative life.
Other than one business casual funeral I've not worn
any business casual attire in almost eleven months. Not once have I
pondered a departmental budget statement or attempted to explain the
core issues of IT governance to people who just want free iPads. The
place I used to work was OK, but it was the place that I "used to work"
and the work there was of a certain type, not necessarily the work I'm
doing now or in the manner of working that we are evolving to.
As I mentioned in my earlier update I do miss a few
people, those with authentic greetings, smiles, a sense of humor and a
commitment to unconditional teamwork.
Six-Month Followup March 2014
Ryan Companies
The other day another "ex" commented that the only thing they missed were the parties. Not being much of a party-guy I cannot say that that's been a vacuum. As I pondered his comment I thought about what I did miss and foremost would be a limited number of people. The professional collaboration and personal exchanges with "those missed" has left a bit of a loss. Creating solutions, solving problems, sharing updates on families, outside interests, a laugh and a knowing smile is tough to replace.
On a professional level I'm working on a few projects,
the most interesting of which is a national collaboration solution for
IT people in the construction industry. Commercial construction remains
when of the least progressive in technology deployment and investment
and as such, committed IT workers in that industry often find their
careers flat at best. Every company operates as an island, doing the
same research, struggling with the same decisions and most often each
make the same poor choices. We've put together a small group of
interested parties to work creatively on some innovative solutions and
that's exciting.
Personally I've been busy catching up on a lot of things
set aside over the past two, almost three decades. I've worn out one
paper shredder and the second one is making weird noises. Logic
prevailed and I could come up with no reason for saving things like
every flex spending form I'd ever filed. On a practical level I've
found that a good shot of WD-40 right in the jaws of the shredder allows
for a slightly longer life.
My son and daughter-in-law were here for the holidays and have returned
to Denmark, enjoying the opportunity to visit many countries that I've
not yet seen. My plan is to get to Denmark during the summer when my
son tells me the Danish stay awake for long periods of time, alternating
caffeine and alcohol, and of course smoking.
You work hard, focused on the goals, real and abstract, of an organization because you believe in the mission and the people...and of course you get paid. It's easy for that to become a big part of your life, perhaps to the distraction of focus on other parts. One of the thought-provoking references I've enjoyed has been Life Reimagined. I'd recommend it for everyone, even those less hair-color and hair-follicle challenged. On a lighter note and more in the vein of the closeted artist creative person I think I am I've enjoyed the work of a young artist turned writer Austin Kleon.
I've passed on a couple of interesting "job"
opportunities primarily because I want to have a bit more control and
land in a spot (or spots) that fosters good innovative accomplishments
and which is an environment of creativity, investment (and profit),
progressive professionals and of caring people, with a sense of humor,
humility and compassion.
For the time being I'm working on creating the next
opportunity, actually opportunities. I'm interested in a lot of areas
and simply need to narrow the focus a bit. I'll keep you informed
periodically.
- change is good
- each day a clean palette; one can never regret that
- when you are not going to a "job" you don't have to set an alarm
- when you are not going to a "job" you can stay up as late as you did in college..one of these nights I'm going to stay up all night
- Starbucks,
Caribou and Dunn Brothers are really a bore when you don't have to be
somewhere; I don't think any real work is done there
- there is no commuting "hassle factor" when you work at home
- every day is "casual day"
- lunches are a lot cheaper
- Facebook is more lame than you thought, but you do use it
- Google apps, the Chromebook and anything Bluetooth is good
- you don't have to use headphones to listen to good music
- your neighbor's dog(s) barks a lot more than you remembered
- change is good
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