Driving for the conditions

My cousin Dick was driving to work yesterday morning in Duluth. It was foggy. While driving, he saw a person flagging him to slow down. So he did and came upon this scene:

A semi-truck was crossing highway 2. It had stopped at the stop sign, saw no on-coming traffic in either direction and started to pull across the highway. A motorcyclist driving on highway 2, with the right-a-way, drove under the semi and was subsequently driven over by the back of the truck.

Dick is a first responder and was the second person on the scene. He approached the downed motorcyclist who was crushed and dead with no chance of being saved.

What went wrong? It appears as though the semi had cautiously stopped and pulled out. The motorcyclist had the right-a-way. What went wrong was perhaps the fog.

We've all been here - fog or pouring rain or blowing snow.

Dick told me this scene will stick with him for a long long time.

TBL: Next time we find ourselves in a similar situation, slow down, high speed takes away most options for safety when the conditions for visibility are poor.

Success

Here is a comment posted by Marty. It deserves front page posting. Thanks Marty.

Also, I have been a litte slow on posting. Bear with me, I will pick back up as school approaches. RU

I borrowed this from the Dilbert Blog and writer Scott Adams, but thought it also appropriate to the bottom line.
Marty


The Loser Decision
In my mid twenties, when I was a banker, a top executive in the company offered me a job as his personal gopher. I declined because I already had a good job managing a small group of people. Being a gopher seemed like a step backwards. There wasn’t even a raise involved.

The executive went ballistic. He told me I was making the stupidest decision of my career. I laughed to myself, wondering if anyone was dumb enough to think a gopher job was a stepping stone toward becoming a captain of industry.

Another young guy in the division took the gopher job. A year later he was promoted to Assistant Vice President. In three years he made Vice President, thanks to his mentor. Now he probably owns his own bank.

What I didn’t understand at the time, and the executive in my story didn’t mention, was that the gopher job was his way of getting to know me better, and introducing me to the other executives before propelling me up the ranks. My ego clouded my judgment. I wasn’t willing to go from boss to gopher. That’s all I saw in this decision, even though the reality is obvious in retrospect.

Years later, I got a chance to fix that mistake. When Dilbert launched in newspapers, the response was underwhelming. In the early years, it wasn’t a workplace strip. It was about Dilbert’s life in general. He just happened to have a job. I was surprised to learn, via my e-mail, that readers loved the relatively rare comics featuring Dilbert in the office. Personally, I didn’t think those were my best work. My ego told me to do it my way. My readers told me I was wrong.

What the hell do readers know? After all, they aren’t syndicated cartoonists, and I was, albeit in only a few dozen newspapers. But this time, fortunately, I ignored my ego, changed the focus of the strip to workplace humor, and it took off.

Recently I was reminded of this as I watched two young people allow their egos to drive them over career cliffs. I know they feel good about their decisions, just as I did when I turned down the gopher job.

I’ve come to call this ego-driven behavior the “loser decision.” I don’t mean it as an insult. It’s an objective fact that life often presents us with choices where the comfortable decision leads nowhere and one that threatens your ego has all the potential in the world.

You need a healthy ego to endure the abuse that comes with any sort of success. The trick is to think of your ego as your goofy best friend who lends moral support but doesn’t know shit.

Negative Power - A Cancer in your Company

I've witnessed this phenomenon numerous times throughout my career. It often is the result of territorialism. It goes something like this.

Somebody has a unique idea and begins to act on it. Pretty soon a person with some amount of power (let's call this person the CANCER) steps up and says - "you can't do that and here are the reasons why". The reasons are often cookie cutter - we don't do it that way, that is against policy, the company doesn't allow it, that's not in the contract, that's not your job - that work is done by _________, what if xxxx happened? and on and on and on.

We all encounter this periodically. Where it becomes a real problem is when the CANCER has such positional power and puts the halt on so many things that the progressive spirit of the company or department is crushed.

The solution comes in the form of higher leadership. The people who have the ultimate responsibility have to have the courage to act to change or eliminate the CANCER. We in the weeds have the responsibility to encourage higher leadership to act, but they have to do it.

TBL: Don't be the CANCER - do your part to identify when this is happening in your company and encourage leaders to stop it.

TDL

This entry is about To Do Lists. Having a TDL at the beginning of each day is the key to productivity. Time after time, if I show up at work without a to do list, my day just disappears and the amount of important things I get done is low. If I show up with a to do list, I can pound a ton of things out by noon. Here are my tips for a successful TDL:

* Go retro and use actual paper instead of a PDA. I've tried Palm etc. and the TDL is hidden, kind of out of site out of mind.

* Get some card stock - I use pink and blue (when my boss asks me to do something - I reach into my pocket and say "let me put in on my BLUEberry or RASPberry"). Card stock is easier to handle.

* Making my TDL is a three step process:
1. Using a piece of scratch paper I write down everything I need to do the next day.
2. I then go through and make some categories (grant, classwork, emails, personal, whatever). Then I take the card stock which is folded in 1/4ths and copy the list for each category.
3. Finally I go through each category and prioritize with a number (1 being the thing I will do first).

* When I get to work I get right down to crossing things off of the lists. And there is great satisfaction in crossing off each thing on the list (again much more fun on paper than digitally).

TBL: Improve your productivity - use a TDL.

Litter

July is the month each year when I get to spend the most time with my family. Angie and I have been doing lots of walking - usually 3-4 miles on the same stretch every day. One thing that absolutely amazes me is how much litter accumulates on the side of the road. It is really kind of tough to figure out. Do people really throw pop cans out of their window with such frequency? Or does most of this garbage blow out of boats and the backs of trucks? I don't know.

What I do know is that I can't stand by and watch. I've taken to carrying along a plastic grocery bag along and filling it up.

As engineers, we have a responsibility to serve and protect society. We do this by ethically carrying out our work. However, could we do even more by serving outside of work? By taking care of our environment in a lot of small ways? I say yes. I'm searching for lots of small ways. One is to pick up litter. I encourage you to do the same.

TBL: Find a small stretch of road near your home and take care of it by picking up the litter occasionally.

Unplugged

For the past 4 days I have been unplugged from technology. This is certainly a refreshing thing to do. It is amazing how "connected" we have become. Between cell phones and the internet, we are hardly ever disconnected for more than a few hours at a time. This isn't bad, but it can sometimes getting away is sure good. Our family spent 4 days at Giants Ridge. We biked, hiked, and kayaked. Every once in a while I would go check my cell phone in the car, but not very often and I didn't get very many calls. The sense of relaxation was great.

TBL: Dis-connecting once in a while is a good thing.

Habitually Late

There is absolutely no excuse for being habitually late. Whether to work in the morning or meetings, being late once or twice is excusable - being late as a habit is about as unprofessional as you can get. You are essentially telling people that their time spent sitting waiting for you is not important to you. Or that your job is not important enough to get out of bed in time for.

I clearly remember when this point sunk in for me. I was about 3 years into my first job and had taken a leadership position over 28 people. This one particular woman was 10-15 minutes late to work each day. She was a single mother and said that getting her daughter to daycare is what caused her to be late. I had sympathy for the situation. One person came into my office as she walked in late one day. He said "sir, why do you put up with this?". Before I could respond, the woman said "I have to drop my daughter off at daycare". The first person responded "respectfully ma'am - that's bullshit. We expect our students to be here an hour before you. You get to go home at 4 PM. They have to stay here until 10 or 11 at night studying. You can at least have the respect for your students to get to this school on time. If they aren't here on time, we kick them out. If this job is important to you, then get up a half hour earlier and get here 10-15 minutes early rather than late."

I sat there stunned. But, he was right.

If it is the opening morning of deer season, you can bet I get up early enough to get to my stand before it gets light. That being the case, I should make sure that I give my colleagues and job at least the same respect as my deer stand.

TBL: Be a professional - don't make a habit of being late.

Independence Day

On the eve of the 4th of July, a day that commemorates this country's declaration of independence from tyranny, I am thinking about all of the servicemen and servicewomen who will spend this holiday away from home.

I do not in any way condone the political quagmire called the war on terror. However, I am in our country's military because I believe I have an obligation to do my small part to repay those who have given their life for our freedom and to those who have dedicated a part of their life by serving in the military.

Tomorrow I will be with my family on the lake having fun, but I will be thinking a lot about my friends, colleagues, and my daughter who are sacrificing their holiday for us.

TBL: We don't all have to serve, but we definitely should think about the debt we owe those who do.

Superiority Complex

On my first job there were two or three people who I encountered that had what I later coined as a superiority complex. They had no qualms about telling you how good they were and what weaknesses you had. It was quite intimidating to encounter these peers and they were not fun to work with. As time went on (I worked there for four years), I came to realize, quite surprisingly at the time, that in fact these people were quite insecure. Their actions were a way to cover that insecurity.

TBL: When you encounter these people, don't be intimidated. And GEEZ O' COW don't be one of them!