Path to Enlightened Insanity

I saw Wicked on Broadway today. It is an awesome show all around, great music, great design, excellent acting, and above all a great message.

I’m at the end of my day and want to get to sleep, but the two ideas that run through it:

1. Diversity is important, and is something to be cherished. Those who come from different backgrounds can have valuable, deep meaningful relationships. Additionally, diversity makes us stronger by providing a variety of view points
2. Those that appear good can be evil. I saw strong parallels to the third reich in many of the characters that are traditionally perceived as good in the traditional Wizard of Oz Cannon

So I love NYC… But, usually at this point in my trip to NYC I’m wanting to move here.. But today I’ve not felt that.. I think thats a good sign for Seattle.

We were discussing in my Organizational Leadership class what would lead to Al Qaida’s destruction. This was my major contribution to the discussion.

A thought to start us out:
I was reading about the boom and bust cycle of technology. The author asserted that Silicon Valley the early 1990s were fertile ground for the growth of the Web. Why? In the late 1980s many companies invested heavily in interactive television, and by the early 1990s they had dismantled their attempts. This left a fertile ground of graphic artists, user interface designers, and other related technical and artistic people to tap in the valley.

I think the best way to understand the best way to destroy Al Qaida is to develop a metaphor.

Think of each society or movement as a tree in a forest, feeding off the nutrients in the soil, sharing the air with those around it, and returning nutrients to the soil. Envision that each leaf is an individual person, and each branch is a group of people.

Farmers understand that certain plants support the growth of other plants by returning nutrients to the soil that a subsequent plant requires. As I understand it soybeans and corn are complimentary in their nitrogen usage; farmers rotate the crops because soybeans place nitrogen in the soil, and corn requires nitrogen from the soil.

In my mind our current attempts at dismantling Al Qaida focus around snipping the branches (apprehending Al Qaida members), and making the air harder to process, which inhibits all trees (increasing security, which makes it harder for people to live their lives.).

Very little attention is being placed on thinking about what nutrients western societies place in the soil. (ideology and actions in the world at large)

The fastest way to kill a tree is of course to cut off all of its branches, but in this case we cannot see all of the Al Qaida tree, and some of the leaves periodically jump from other trees and attach themselves to the Al Qaida tree. We also have trees that react to the nutrients in the soil the same way the Al Qaida tree did, and begin to exhibit some of the same characteristics.

The way to destroy Al Qaida is to deprive it of the nutrients it thrives on. In this case it requires us westerners to take a hard look at what ideologies and actions we propagate world wide, and how those ideologies and actions support al Qaida. This however is not letting the terrorists win. Quite the contrary, it is adapting to prevent the terrorists from having a base to grow from.

Unfortunately and ultimately Al Qaida is an indirect product of and is supported by western society. It is unrealistic if we attempt to think that Al Qaida exists in a vacuum, it has grown up in the sociological eco-sphere that we have helped create.

What does this mean for organizational leadership in general?

Simply that your organization is a product of, influences, and is influenced by the sociological eco-sphere in which it exists. And the organizations around you can be created by what your organization does. Ultimately the world is an interconnected web of organizations, all exerting some force, however small, upon the organizations around it.

Anyone who has known me for long enough knows that while I’m no fan of Microsoft I love Microsoft Excel. I’ve long believed it is the best written Microsoft product.

My faith in Excel just got smashed.

So I took a list of numbers from a CSV file that should add up to 0. (If you must know I’m mucking with a bill from a service provider thats all fucked up. They missed giving me the proper credit, so I’m detailing for them what the additional credits should be, so we should get to a zero sum.)

For those of you who want to check up on my the initial list is:
99.9
0
3.52
3.24
0.02
1.24
0.26
5.94
-0.23
-0.02
-2.87
-1.1
-3.12
-88.62
-5.27
-0.03
0
-0.37
-0.14
-0.4
-11.28
-0.67

So when I add this list up I get 0.00. Excel gets -0.00000000000001609823385706480. I even tried the other way round this and did two intermediate sums where I got 12.89 and -12.89, which Excel Adds up to -0.00000000000001598721155460230.

I can’t figure out what the hell is going on, although I have checked every number to make sure there isn’t a some rounded number being displayed with two digits.. So I’m stumped, and my faith is shattered.

Okay, so one of my favorite blogs is Discardian: One tip every day to help you let go of all that crap in your way. It has many helpful hints. But the general theme is to reduce the crap flowing around in your life, both physical and mental. I’ve found great inspiration there for cleaning up.

So, here’s a new one (or maybe not really, but I think I just came up with it): Don’t keep things in the physical world that are just around to help you remember things in the past.. Keep them in the virtual world, or not at all..

To that point, my high scores at bowling, so I can pitch the cheesy trophies.

Okay, so I’ll be a YouTube whore, but for a good reason. Joss Whedon speaking very eloquently about Equality.

I read this an article on the “Oddly enough” wire of Reuters, All my moms love me, Utah kid tells polygamist rally. I’m annoyed that the story was on the “Oddly enough” wire, which is usually reserved for more lighthearted and funny fare.

Allies are important, even if they don’t fully support you or you don’t fully support them.

So it is from this perspective I needed to write my position publically.

The core argument, as I see it, for gay marriage is that a government should not interfere with the affairs of adults as long as those affairs do not causing unwanted harm to another adult, or intentional harm to a minor.

Its not that far of a leap to say that I’m a supporter of consensual non-monogamy, also known as polygamy. Honestly I think in fifteen to twenty years we’ll be discussing legalizing marriages between multiple people. It’ll take more legal wrangling and a huge code overhaul, but honestly government should get out of the way of people.

I think the thing that annoys me most about resistance to gay marriage and consensual non-monogamy is that the resistance comes from a core belief that people should follow a collection of mores, or “life scripts” as I prefer to call them. (E.g. For guys: Be Born, Go to school, Graduate from High School, Go to College, Graduate in four years, Find a Job, Find a Girl, Marry Girl, Have 2.5 children with said Girl, Raise children, Work some more, Retire, Enjoy playing Yatzee and Shuffleboard, Die.)

One may claim that I’m over simplifying things, but I’ve captured the essence of the expected mores in America, that make up the root of the argument against gay marriage and consensual non-monogamy. The societal objective at work is to encourage people to follow the system of mores, if you stray from them you’re looked upon a bit unfavorably. I’ve done a dandy job of straying from the “life-script” managing way too many years in too many colleges, a couple of boyfriends, and an impromptu move across the country. So I’m not a fan of enforcing, or even propagating life-scripts.

I think we should encourage diversity, that includes diversity in family structures.

Okay, so more than one person thinks I’m a little crazy for getting in the car, with no notice, and driving to Seattle.

I’m reading All I really Need to Know I learned In Kindergarden by Robert Fulghum. (who lives in Seattle..) In it there is the story of Larry Walters, a guy who lived in Los Angeles who one day decided to tie 45 helium filled weather ballons to a lawn chair and go flying.

No, I’m not making this up. So, forgive me when I’m confused that people think I’m a bit crazy for moving to Seattle. I mean I made the necessary preparations, namely getting a map, getting food, liquids, and kitty liter, ensuring that I had the financial resources to make it, and packing a bit of stuff. Compared to Larry I think I might’ve overkilled my planning a bit. Fulghum details Walter’s preparations:

Larry has a parachute on, a CB radio, a six-pack of beer, some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a BB gun to pop some of the baloons to come down.

So yeah, I’m a little bit nuts, but I like it that way, and besides if you’re not going to have some imagination and follow through on your dreams then what are you doing?

Walters put it best, when he was asked by the press why he did it, he said “You can’t just sit there.”

I’m reading the book The Now Habit. (Go on click it and buy something from Amazon. I’m unemployed right now, and could use a little cash from Amazon…)

The first chapter of the book examines why we procrastinate. The book states that one of the reasons we procrastinate is that we see the task that needs completed as directly reflecting on our self worth.. This makes a helluva lotta sense.

An instance of this:

Back last summer at work one of our large west coast customers decided that they wanted us to manage their transportation. We struggled at delivering product on time. (Honestly the root cause of this was due to a choice in vendors that I didn’t make, and didn’t have the power to change. For the record I still make a habit of flicking off every driver from that company, and I cannot go into the State of Utah for fear of my hand cramping into a permeant birdie.)

Its one thing in my former line of work if there is a late delivery every once in a while, but when you start having problems all over the place with one customer it becomes a major problem. This had gotten to the point that this single ‘ol delivery lane, which wasn’t even that high of a volume, or even an important strategic customer had acquired director level attention all over the place. I wouldn’t’ve been surprised if some director from Central America was watching the damn thing.

So, I was the operational coordinator for this melee, so I had the joy and terror of being the person ultimately responsible for getting it right. When the truck arrived on time I was relieved, when it arrived late, I honestly got really perturbed, and felt like I had failed.

So one weekend morning I got a voicemail from a coworker that the truck for that date didn’t arrive, in fact the truck didn’t even pick up. I felt like I had failed, and I dreaded coming into work on Monday. So I didn’t. and I didn’t come in on Tuesday either.

But anyone who knows anything about transportation is that one person cannot do anything in transportation except twiddle their thumbs. Supply Chains are by their very definition team efforts, one person can only do so much, and while people can be responsible for a portion of it they’re only responsible in as far as they can manage others.

I was going to write about another instance, but well, its a bit too close to recent times. I could also make an argument that it was one of the direct catalysts for running away from home. (My landlady put it that way, and well it seems apt. Although it is a bit funny to say that “I ran away from home when I was twenty-five.”)

I’ve gotta get some job apps out… I didn’t get a call back yet from my interview at one of the big software developers out here…

I just got an utterly strange feeling of being pissed off at a Banana.

Okay, so I left Chiquita on not so good terms, which a lot of people don’t understand. Many people think that I failed Chiquita, that I shirked my responsibility to Chiquita. But what about Chiquita’s responsibility to me?

I stated no less than four times to no less that four different people (One Director, Two Supervisors, and One HR Professional) that I needed help in a few specific skill areas. (I’m sure it was more times, but I can cite specific times when I said this.

What came of asking for help? Nothing. I would’ve been happy to have been pointed in the right direction, but I didn’t even get that.

So I emailed one of my previous blog entries off to the CEO, basically stating, here’s some feedback that I think you might be interested in. We engaged in an in depth conversation that reached nine printed pages. I think one of the things that annoys me the most is that he stated “I have been told a few times before that there is sufficient training … that when employees ask, typically the company tries to find ways to help.”

So there is a problem. Either someone in the HR side of the organization is misinformed and therefore slightly incompetent, (Not having accurate information about the organization when your job to have information about the organization is incompetence.) or is being dishonest. Neither is good, but I hope its the former, and not the later, as the later brings in the fact that you have executives not practicing the core values of the company.

Chiquita failed me, I failed Chiquita.

Who failed worse is a matter of semantics and a point that isn’t worth arguing.

The bottom line is I won’t accept criticism for how I left.

Its an unfortunate mess, and no where near as tasty as a banana smoothie.

An Update (8/3/2006 at 1830 EST): A birdie has told me that the training was coming down the pipeline, which makes me feel better, but still it would’ve been nice if I had some idea..