Action Figure Daniel

Category: Work

  • Why it’s Martha Stewart and not some other woman

    I once had a discussion at work about putting things away. I was arguing that we should always be putting away the stacks of paperwork that were routinely left out on desks, especially paperwork that was used on a daily basis. Others agreed that most paperwork should be put away after being used but that paperwork used every day should be left out. I think that such stacks of paperwork quickly become unwieldy and begin to overtake desks like blackberry vines planted over a septic take. This overtaking would not be such a problem except it looks horrible and proves nearly impossible to find anything, especially when the keeper of the papers is off for the day.

    I saw that my arguments for order could not compete with arguments of laziness and it struck me: “Why is Martha Stewart so famous?” I thought out loud. The room went silent, no one could answer (this was years before she was hauled off to jail for insider trading). “Martha Stewart is so famous because her house is immaculate.”

    The room remained silent, I had found a mascot for my argument. I hadn’t actually prepared this defense but the words “Martha Stewart” came out of my mouth before I had any idea of how I could connect her and our paperwork dilemma. I started running with the defense, making it up as I went along, all the while hoping it would lead somewhere good.

    “Martha Stewart is so famous because she is always immaculate. Every day, every project, every craft, is always put away meticulously: all the beads are sorted and stored in separate containers, the pens and markers are sorted by color and spectra, the paintbrush are carefully cleaned; every thing to its place, every thing stored in its proper way. This attention to detail means that Martha is always presentable and people want to listen to her because her very habit of cleanliness makes her seem more trustworthy and reasonable. That is how a Customer Service department should be. When people come to talk to us, they should be able to trust that we will care for their information as carefully as we care for our workspace. They should be able to trust that if we cannot find records, it is because it never happened not because we might have misplaced the records somewhere. They should be able to trust that we are meticulous professionals. People, customers and the whole rest of the company, should respect us for our skilled record keeping and thorough attention to detail. They should not have cause to be distracted by enormous stacks of paper on our desks or for the constant interruption of someone needing some particular piece of paper that should have been filed away but was not.”

    I ended my soapbox speech and there was stunned silence. My suggestion of always putting stuff away was adopted and to this day, the offices maintain a generally organized appearance (though I think that has more to do with a few cases of missing paperwork and less to do with my appeal, but I will take what I can get). Though I do not know for sure why Martha Stewart is so famous, I do believe that clean and presentable work spaces are critical to maintaining a trustworthy and professional environment. Get as dirty and messing as you want on a given project, spread it out across the whole office if you need to, just make sure that at the end of the day everything, every thing, is put away as it should be.

  • Arguments I don’t understand: Black and Brown

    One argument that I still cannot wrap my mind around (mostly because no one can offer any credible guidance) is that black and brown clothes (or shoes) do not go together. My thinking goes like this W{*} = K{*} (mathematical for “white goes with everything” equals “black goes with everything”, where I use the crazy definition of everything to mean “every reasonably conceivable color”).

    Here is my hang up: if black goes with everything, and brown (for example, #8B4513, Saddle brown, as shown below) is part of everything, then doesn’t it stand that the two can be worn together?

    Tell me, is this offensive?

    Well, is it?

    I could get the argument if it were more along the lines that putting two non-vibrant, non-energetic, non-exciting colors together can make one seem uncreative, deadpan, and boring, but I have yet to hear that argument. And, there are times which such colors should be worn: when attending funerals, when mourning the end of autumn (when all the leaves start rotting and are black or brown), or when you don’t like someone very much and you want them to think you are boring in hopes they find someone else to hang out with (this one doesn’t work so well, so use it in conjunction with other tactics). So, until I hear a better reason why black, that color that goes with everything, doesn’t go with brown I’m still wearing them together.

  • To Hone, Not To Sharpen

    The ‘honing’ stick is a classic piece of every knife set. The long cylindrical piece of ribbed steel is often mistaken as a ‘knife sharpener’. It’s not. It’s a honing stick. You may think, as I did for many years, that sharpening and honing are the same. This would be a mistake. Honing and sharpening are very, very different things.

    The process of sharpening is simple: drag the knife blade across the sharpening stone at a predetermined angle. The knife is dragged across the stone, yes a stone not a steel rod, until a new edge is formed. In the process of sharpening actual pieces of the knife blade are broken off as the steel grinds against the rock. Sharpening should only need to take place when the blades edge is destroyed.

    How is the blade destroyed? As the knife is used to cut, the precise steel edge is forced from side to side until it eventually curls over. Maybe you haven’t seen a curled edge, but you’ve probably used one before. We call them dull knives. With a dull blade you can sharpen it, thereby removing the dull edge and creating a new edge and in the process removing part of the knife. The better solution would be to hone the knife.

    The process of honing is equally simple as sharpening: drag the knife across the honing stick at a predetermined angle, about five times for each side. As the blade is dragged across the honing stick there should be a pleasant and harmonious ‘zing’ sound with each stroke. As the blade is dragged across the ridged honing stick, the curled edge is grabbed and pulled up, in essence uncurling the blade like a cowlick. The straightening of the blade makes it cut sharply and smoothly again – and here’s the reason for doing it – all without removing any steel from the blade. Thus, with the process of honing, the sharpness of the blade can be maintained along with extending the life of the blade almost indefinitely.

    Let me take a moment and apply this to organizations: When a new process is rolled out in an organization, it is usually designed to cut a difficult problem into more manageable pieces. As time goes on the new process loses its edge as it tries to cut into the problem. As the new process loses its effectiveness managers might be tempted to sharpen the process again, again. The problem with sharpening is that the process is ground against the hard stone of bureaucracy, with each pass removing pieces of the blade. Over time the blade is destroyed and the knife is useless.

    Instead of grinding the process into nothingness, managers should hone the process. This can be done by thoroughly reviewing the process and looking to see where the process might have curled over, thus causing the process to be less effective. Once the curling has been identified, then the process can be straightened so it can maintain its effectiveness.

    One time honing is not enough though. With knives, honing should take place after each time the knife is used; each and every time. While it may not seem practical to review processes each time they are used, consider that a full fledge investigation is not needed. Instead, each individual completing the process can ask themselves a few simple questions: Did the process flow naturally? Was the next step always clear? Was there any place where the process hung waiting for a manager to make a decision that the individual could have made? Was unnecessary information collected, distributed or recorded? Are there any obvious changes that should be made?

    With these few simple questions being asked after each process is completed the organization can use the cumulative knowledge of all the process workers to keep the process sharp and effective, or if needed consider the process destroyed and rebuild the process by sharpening it and trying again.

  • The Nasty Business of Repentance

    Sin is a nasty business. The one thing worse than sin is repentance. Sure, there is a nice, peaceful feeling that comes from repenting but it can be hell to get there, literally. I speak from experience. A year ago, on 11 May 2009, to be exact, I experienced some indiscretion that I have regretted ever since. It was a mistake that I had made many times before, but that I had vowed to not make again.

    My penitent heart had remained clean for several months before that fateful Monday. I don’t even remember why, only that I had been distracted enough to not guard against failure and thus I failed. I had a simple task that day, one that could have been done all morning; I never did it. I will confess: an inventory report seems a simple thing, even an innocent thing unlikely thing to cause so much grief. In the end it did.

    The way the inventory report works is that it takes a snapshot of the inventory as it stands at that very moment. There is no going back, no time travel, no way to make up for a lost report. Thus, for one who fails to run the report, the only way to repent is to wait a whole year until the blemish of a missing data point is erased by the natural course of circulating data as the charts only have one year, or 52 data points, worth of data.

    In this case I had to wait the entire year to repent and am relieved to report that as of 10 May 2010, one year after my folly, the charts are again pristine and my repentance is complete. The cleansing graces of atonement can once again abide with me.

  • The End of Justice

    The time has come for Justice to be decommissioned. After nearly two years of faithful service, he has been reclaimed by his maker. Okay, not really, but I liked the dramatic flair. The Owner’s laptop is dying and he wants a laptop like Justice and I have been wanting a smaller laptop and so we are trading. To accomplish this I will be shortly wiping Justice and ‘reeducating’ in the work ways so that all he knows is the drone stuff and he will become “LT05”. Sigh, it is sad that even now I am writing his last post ever. We’ve had a fun and good run together but we both knew it wouldn’t last forever.