This post's read time: 3 minutes
Dear,
Happy Valentines Day.
It’s been tough to keep up with writing you, since I have not bee able to get up very early before work, and we are working 10 hour days. What free time I have had goes toward work and handwritten letters, and about half of it to vegging out with TV or a book.
Today the rain disrupted things and so I can write you.
After my life at RMS, after the collapse of the Interactive Museum, and the closing of WeShelter, after my initial plans of using StokeQuest primarily as a consultancy involved too many compromises, after losing RMS to activist Investors, after finding that the enormous effort of starting an off grid community from scratch just isn’t my cup of tea without collaborators, I took a passive approach to life for a while.
I was pretty frustrated.
I think I am starting to come out of that. I’m really pleased with the diversity of my accomplishments and responsibilities lately, but I want to be careful not to lose the lessons I have learned:
I am very good at focusing, but life is so much better when I don’t put all my eggs in one basket.
The counterpoint: I can easily stretch too thin and not see the kind of impact I’m seeking.
So I have decided to apply to a program all about decision-making, and it has naturally lent itself to stock-taking and study of my decisions in general. How have my decisions worked out for me, and what can I do better?
For starters, I have not really made a decision in regards to work and employment. I know I do my best work when I have strong inter-dependencies – that is, when my goals are aligned with other people I respect and admire, and we work together on solving problems.
Finding these opportunities was one of the major stumbling blocks of StokeQuest as a consultancy, in part because I never “decided” to develop a funnel. I did not have a well developed strategy.
I believed that I could meet people with needs and then fill the niche with my skills. This kind of worked with WeShelter, but I underestimated the time I’d need on that project, and the wear and tear of couchsurfing NYC while working full time.
So now I’m thinking about Drucker and his boundary conditions – which when loosely applied to my role with CCR, for example, means I need to have a minimum expectation of what I am looking for and what I am trying to achieve. I can also set a high boundary, where I can either relax a bit once I achieve it, or else it means it’s time to move on to the next big project or maybe even another organization.
This organization has a lot of inefficiencies, opportunities the capture much more value for itself and its customers. I think that is exciting. As long as we are moving in that direction, I think I am content.
How do I make that measurable? Well, for starters, there is adoption of google drive and the workflows I’m designing for using it. If these are accepted both in the office and the field, that is a huge milestone on the path to greater success. I think we should be up to speed with all of that by the end of my next deployment.
The other issue is cultural. When something goes wrong, we need to at least talk about what we could do better, and how we can communicate more effectively. If we are not a progress-driven organization, if the folks in the field aren’t striving for higher performance and better on-boarding to grow the team, then CCR is not the right fit for me.
Possibly my biggest complain about CCR is that they reinvent the wheel every time, practically. There are so many circumstances beyond our control, so many unmanageable elements, that people don’t seem to be focusing on what they can manage.
ROI
When it comes to Minerva, one of the big questions I have is what’s the return on investment? Will I be happier, more stable, more fulfilled? Will I be able to make enough money to offset the cost of the program, with a modest bump in my personal budget, and still have the lifestyle I need to pursue my other projects?
This is just the beginning of making my perspective more forward-looking and more measurable. At RMS I used to set calendar reminders in the future to keep from fooling myself about my progress. It forces me to focus on what is within my control in a limited timeframe, which builds toward the bigger plan.
I’ve got to go work on that Google Drive implementation now. I’m excited to work on a second stage of this where I get to play with AppSheet. Have you heard of this no-code programming product?
Ok, go enjoy some strawberries for me.
Love,
Brad