This post's read time: 3 minutes
Dear Friend,
I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to fill you in on my busy yesterday. The morning began with a skate on the marsh, clawing into my drysuit and jogging slip-sliding out to the ice for a quick lap. The ice was not very good, lots of feathery holes to trip me up and slow me down, but it was beautiful to watch the sun come up behind the hill.
Then, I had my interview round with Minerva. This was a bit crazy, as my interviewer was in a noisy cafe in London, during an immersion session with a current class of grad students, but I really enjoyed the experience.
She explained to me how Minerva has a process to teach you how to break down your own knowledge and build it back up so you can better understand your own strengths, and grow them. I asked for an example, and she described the difference between two types of decision-making, but of course now the exact words escape me and I did not take very good notes.
I described a few things in response to her questions, mostly about housing in Maine but also some experiences in business, a brief discussion of first principles and Elon Musk, and finally the story of getting the truck stuck and throwing my back out – the moral being to recognize when there are enormous risks, or a potential cost to a decision, which you are ignoring because of fatigue or hubris (or usually both) – this is also very Elon Musk.
Then I finally got to sit down with D, a crucial member of the CCR team who has flown in for cross-training P and I with how we do our customer development, project management, invoicing and billing. It’s so great to put a face to a name we depend on so much.
Then I was doing reference checks on candidates for our open positions and then it was straight into a lunch with the team from Campbell Scientific. This was fascinating – we learned about new technologies and received more background on the types of sensors and loggers they produce.
I ordered a haddock ruben and listened closely to their sales manager’s description of his final engineering project before taking on his management role: designing and testing the weather stations which were installed on Mt Everest as part of a Rolex & Nat Geo collaboration. They also told us so much about the solar industry and gave us a feel for the same sort of met measurements for development and operation which we use for wind. Never a dull moment.
Then I had a little work to finish up and raced over to Prospect, where one Chair of the Comp Plan Committee was sick and the other in Florida, so I opened up the building and led the meeting, even though the internet died and I had to call into Zoom at the same time as trying to run a meeting.
After that, I had a good conversation with the folks who run the town office. They worry about dramatic and potentially illegal changes coming from the new select board. It is a huge experiment having three new board members join up all at once, and if some of us are prejudiced or reckless it can have disastrous consequences on the individual lives of the people who live here. It was largely a conversation about managing change and preparing for a wide range of future possibilities.
I also received some wisdom on the actual operations – the roles of Select Board in managing the town staff, managing town finances, communicating with stakeholders (mostly through piles of mail requiring specific types of action), when and how to hold meetings, some of the technicalities of being overseers of the poor, and finally, a quick discussion of how much time ought to be spent thinking about processes and productivity versus actually doing the work.
The office staff take pride in doing a good job, and were vocal that they want to always learn and give the role everything they have. They are committed, and appreciate how important their work is for people, despite some toxic interactions and the ever-present danger of drowning in paperwork.
I was adamant that at least 20% of their time ought to be spent reflecting on the work that they do, and at most 80% of their time spent actually doing it. I think they were intrigued by this and I’m excited to go deeper and share with them a few things I have learned from managing small teams over the years, mostly scrum and agile management techniques which might make their work more fun and less stressful – and help them get more work done in less time.
I do want to emphasize that most people I talk to are proud of how well run the town office is, and how nice the staff are. I agree with them. Our survey also said as much. Most people are overwhelmingly happy with our town the way it is. No drastic changes necessary.
Ok, I have to run.
Love,
Brad