I have always depended on the kindness of others

Original post:  Nov 25, 2013

Late Friday, I got some bad news. We are making extensive preparations for a major meeting. Unfortunately, we were working off of incomplete information. No one realized the oversight until the last minute. Making things worse, we are facing a deadline to deliver later this (Monday) morning.

At that point, you have to decide what you are going to do. You can allow that oversight to blossom into a full-blown failure and deal with the consequences. You might have an excuse, but it certainly won't ease the pain. I don't think too many people sympathize with finger-pointing.

I am fortunate to be working with a number of dedicated individuals. These hardy souls refused to be intimidated by the circumstances. Instead of panicking, they calmly asked for the correct information and set to work completing the mission. Through their dogged intervention, we should be ready in time for the deadline. Of course, it required heroic efforts and the sacrifice of personal weekend time to get it done.

I am very thankful that I am surrounded by persons who are so focused on delivering more than what is expected. I am firmly convinced that none of us can be truly successful without the benefit of a total team effort.

If we do the job correctly, no one will really know what happened. The expectations of our customers was that we had everything under control all night long. That said, I know what these individuals did. I will make sure that a wide range of individuals within IS know and understand their commitment. I also plan to add my personal thanks.

With a little help from my friends

Original post:  Apr 12, 2013

I was once involved in an "earth ball" competition. It's a simple game. There is a giant ball placed in the middle of the field. You divide the players into two teams on opposite sides of the field. The first team to move the ball to the goal on the opposite end wins.

The ball itself is massive. I believe the one we played with was ten to twelve feet high. It looked a bit like this (except it was a bit larger and heavier, so it would not have ever been this far off the ground):

I don't remember how many players there were on each side. It must have been at least a dozen and probably closer to twenty men. For some reason, I started out on the sidelines. Perhaps we were only allowing a set number on the field at once. If you can imagine the strain of having opposing forces pushing as hard as they can, you can get a mental picture of the scene. The ball ended up in a stalemate somewhere near the center of the field.

I had the bright idea that I would break up the game. I had pictures in my mind of leading the team to victory. When I got in the game, I sprinted at the ball, intending to jolt it forward. That would, of course, lead us to a breakthrough and eventually to victory.

What I did not anticipate was what happened next. I got to the ball at full speed and launched myself into the globe. Instead of pushing the pile forward, I almost immediately bounced off. I think I landed about ten feet back solidly planted on my rear end. Thankfully, there were no handheld video phones or I might have ended up on YouTube.

I guess the moral of the story is that it isn't always possible to do it all yourself. It often takes a team and a lot of sweat and tears over a sustained period of time to get major tasks accomplished.

Disappearing in a flash

Original post:  Feb. 20, 2012

No matter how exquisitely we construct any single post, it is bound to be consumed in a brief moment. The work of hours or days may sometimes last only a few minutes. I think about that when I read some of the bloggers that I follow. They relentlessly add new information. Yet as quickly as they can post it, I voraciously consume it. The tortured output that might have required a year of labors is old news in a few minutes.

At the end of every movie, the credits roll by. I find that very few people will stay through the credits. They have little to no interest in the endless scroll of names. Yet if you turned that around, there is undoubtedly a long trail of tears that led each of those individuals to sacrifice in the hopes of enjoying some brief moment of fame. Even if it is only a flash of a second in nearly unreadable type rushing past at a hundred miles of hour, it is still an achievement that most will never enjoy. It represents that singular ability to point to a real achievement. Even if it is nearly invisible to the masses, it is a way to be a part of something much larger than an individual effort. Every single movie is the collective work of hundreds of people. For some, it may be the only movie they ever work on. It will be the only time they can ever truly refer to something more tangible than the blink of an eye.

While the overwhelming majority of co-workers will never read a single word of this collection, I will still write. Maybe it is simply ignoring the larger fates. Be that as it may, it is mine. It represents a small piece of the overall effort I bring to my projects daily. All too soon, it will also be but a distant memory.