Things I Learned from My Mom - Part II - Leave Your Comfort Zone to Grow

Today's post is on the need for change to achieve growth.

My mom grew up and spent her entire childhood on a farm in West, Texas.  Population ~2000.  As a child she told me there were times where they did not have indoor bathrooms.  In central Texas, she grew up without air conditioning.  For those of you who know Texas, that is a frightening thought, especially in August.

My mother left the safety of this bubble (small town, family farm) to move to Houston, "the big city".  She had very little money and only a few years of community college.  I was born in Houston because my mom wanted me to have more opportunities to be successful.  She wanted to have different experiences for herself as well.

West, Texas is still a small community.  There is a small community of people to interact with.  There are a lot of great things about living in a small town like West.  But, in Houston, I grew up with people of many different races and ideals - different ones from the small town.  I was exposed to computer software and developed my skills and had others to interact with.

I know my life would be different if my mom had stayed in West.

The biggest thing I learned from all of this is that you have to be willing to make changes, significant changes, if you want to grow.  It may mean living somewhere new, finding new experiences, and meeting new people.  Get outside your comfort zone.

Things I Learned from My Mom - Part I - Have an Optimistic Outlook on People

My mom passed away about 1 year ago.  I learned a lot from her.  Now it is one year out, and I have had time to reflect on the things that I learned from her.  I am going to break the things down into small posts.

Today's post is on how to deal with people you don't know.

Mom had an optimistic outlook on people.  She would talk to just about any person she met.  She gave people the benefit of the doubt.  She also never saw herself as better than others, from the person who delivered the newspaper to the person putting groceries in bags at the market or unpacking them to put them on the shelves.

She got to know all the people that were in the paths of her life.  She would take the time to talk to them and get to know them.  She had an innate trust in the "goodness" of people.  These people recognized her when they saw her and remembered her.  She had an impact on them.

My mom was from a small town, West, Texas (link, link).  There you got to know everybody - it was the norm.


What did I learn from this?

An optimistic outlook on people is a good way to go.  Even if some people are out to do us wrong, it is better to start the day with trust and optimism, it will take you a long way.

Also, there is something to be learned from everyone.  It doesn't matter what stage of their life they are in, or what their profession or economic status is.  You can learn from them.

Lastly, it can be really enjoyable to strike up conversations with people you don't know.  You might find something in common with them.  You never know until you try.

If you haven't seen this documentary - you should.

This quote was priceless to me:

And so we had a lot of great ideas when we started [the Mac]. But what I've always felt that a team of people doing something they really believe in is like is like when I was a young kid there was a widowed man that lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He was a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have paid me to mow his lawn or something.

And one day he said to me, "come on into my garage I want to show you something." And he pulled out this dusty old rock tumbler. It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band between them. And he said, "come on with me." We went out into the back and we got just some rocks. Some regular old ugly rocks. And we put them in the can with a little bit of liquid and little bit of grit powder, and we closed the can up and he turned this motor on and he said, "come back tomorrow."

And this can was making a racket as the stones went around.
And I came back the next day, and we opened the can. And we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in, through rubbing against each other like this (clapping his hands), creating a little bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks.

That's always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they're passionate about. It's that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.

Book Review - "Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life"

I picked up a copy of Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life (Link on Amazon) on Kindle for my iPad.  I was blown away by the wealth of practical advice on advancing a career, especially in technology companies.  Much of the knowledge in this book aligns very much with the philosophy of work I have been developing in my head.

Now I don't need to write a book about it because this is the book.  I have learned most of these lessons the hard way, by making lots of mistakes and learning from them.  Also - I have always had great people around me that gave me critical feedback at the right times.  One of the biggest challenges was learning to take feedback.

I would recommend this book to anyone who truly wants to advance their career through leadership.  Each chapter I read stood out to me and I could think of someone in my life that was currently fighting their way through that section.  For example, there is a great chapter on moving from "work horse" to "leader" that I will be recommending to a few coworkers who have great potential.

To show what I think of this book, I bought 8 copies to give to coworkers as post-holiday gifts that can perhaps help them past some of the challenges I have had to face in my career.

Leadership is truly a personal journey.  Here is a great blog post if you want to read more about that.

Book Review - The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs

I just completed The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs. The book is a nice, easy read with plenty of insight into the Steve Jobs approach to innovation.

Here are some key takeaways from the book that I have:

• Apple did not create any truly 'new' inventions. They took existing concepts to the limits. 1000 songs in your pocket. The thinnest laptop.
• One key principle is 'Simplicity'. Do only the minimal amount of features required to make the product useful.
• Have deep passion about what you do and why you do it. Make products you want to use.
• Learn outside your field. Apple learned design from many non-computer places. They hired designers and artists from different fields to be a part of it.
• Change the world.

There is a lot we can learn from Steve and Apple.

What's wrong with offshoring for software jobs

In my job I spend a lot of time talking with various offshoring companies. I feel that offshoring is an important tool to consider when growing a company. I can talk more along these lines ('necessity') if there is interest, but that is not the focus of this post.

I keep running into the same problem and I think this presents an opportunity and a challenge to these companies. The problem can be summarized in the following question:

Who is responsible for the team and the team's productivity?

From what I can tell, the most comment offshoring company thought process is as follows:

I (the offshore company) can provide to you plenty of resources with foo skill set. 'foo' could be Java programming, cloud development, testing services, cloud management services or any other skill set.

While skill/knowledge is critical to the job, there are other critical elements that can get in the way. I will refer to Joel Spolsky's model, of 'smart and gets things done'.

First, let me say that in my experience, I believe these companies have smart people. I am very impressed with the education systems in the various countries and their ability to get people ready. I have no issues here.

What's really missing is what happens after someone begins a job (the 'gets things done' part). In solid software companies, starting a job is only the beginning. People begin a career, learning how the company works, working with other smart people, and producing useful and high quality software in the context of how the company works.

Unless you are a company producing lots of small, independent apps, your code will be interrelated. No programmer is on an island.

We have seen that this process requires a high dose of collaboration, and in that process knowledge transfer, learning and debate. This is not something that can happen effectively over the phone or using some other remote communication model. At least not as the only communication model. The team building aspect takes a lot of time. The term 'jelling of a team' has been used to describe this process.

If it goes well, this process leads to highly productive teams. Let me be clear, I used the word 'team' instead of ' individuals'.

From the experience I have so far - I have not seen an offshore company that deals directly with this aspect. I have many theories about why this is the case.

What are your thoughts on this?

It Doesn’t Exist If It Isn’t Written Down

http://professorford.com/2011/06/06/it-doesn%E2%80%99t-exist-if-it-isn%E2%80%99t-written-down/

This is related to the previous article about integrity. I find that writing things down is critical to my personal productivity. Once written down, I free my mind up to focus on higher value activities rather than trying to remember things.