i thunk so

I’ve listened to Jim Cramer on the radio quite a bit. He’s usually on his game. Yeah, he’s a little annoying to listen to, but he’s very knowledgeable. That’s why this video kind of shocked me.

Liveleak: CNBC’s Cramer goes Crazy over Stock Market

Filed by JP at 4:02 pm under Rants, Business
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In a new teaser, Microsoft is touting its new, revolutionary GUI, Surface.

It looks cool, but how far away is Surface, realistically? This interface does not lend itself to everyday interaction. Who wants a computer in their coffee table? Well, the answer is “I do!” but is it really practical?

I’ve seen many demos for interfaces like this — some from MIT student project videos, and I definitely remember seeing other videos on YouTube showing interfaces like it. I’m guessing Microsoft won the bidding war and this is the end result.

YouTube: Microsoft Surface Teaser

Filed by JP at 10:45 am under Design, Technology, Business
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An all-female law firm in Chicago is turning heads with a slammin’ new billboard campaign.

ABC News: ‘Life’s Short. Get a Divorce.’ — Chicago Billboard Turns Heads

Filed by JP at 4:28 pm under News Clippings, Design, Business
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I’m guessing my multi-part series on the banality and and ineffectiveness of middle management will go on for awhile, so I’d like to keep from piling on all at once. I’ll attempt to keep my comments focused on a few key points in each of the posts of this series.

For now, back to the show…

Remember the movie Jerry Maguire? Remember when he wrote that memo called “The Things We Think and Do Not Say”? Well I want to write a memo to middle managers everywhere. I think I’m going to call it “The Things You Say that Nobody Really Believes”.

There’s a new project coming, and I think you’re really gonna like it!
Middle managers are usually dismally deficient when it comes to the ability to inspire. Chances are if this project is going to be managed in much the same way as the project I’m currently working on, my top priority is going to be contemplating new and exciting ways to kill myself.

We have great opportunities for advancement here
Oh really? Do you mean it? Someday I may actually get to be just like you?

This company has an open-door policy
Is that supposed to be a perk? Let’s be honest. Do any of you really feel comfortable with the idea of going over your manager’s head to gripe to his superior? When has that ever ended well for anyone?

I don’t want to sound cliché, but…
Then you should probably just stop talking right now.

Of course there are worse things about middle management than their pathetic attempts at inspiration, but the point still should be made that people — normal people who actually do the work — respond to leadership by example, not a social class of professional elites incapable of drawing their own conclusions or formulating ideas of their own.

Filed by JP at 9:20 am under Opinions, Business
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I found a fascinating article today in the New York Times entitled “Big Oil Find Is Reported Deep in Gulf” that initially made me smile. It was a report about a huge oil find deep underneath the Gulf of Mexico.

Chevron, Devon Energy and Statoil ASA, the Norwegian oil giant, reported that they had found 3 billion to 15 billion barrels in several fields 175 miles offshore, 30,000 feet below the gulf’s surface, among formations of rock and salt hundreds of feet thick.

Naturally, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this will eventually just be used as another card in the deck for the oil market manipulators. Once those oil rigs go online, the oil market will be that much more “sensitive” to inclement weather in the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course it’s all puppeteering and scare tactics anyway since the oil companies have a “can’t lose” scenario. By not investing in refining and production infrastructure, they can claim lack of capacity and manipulate prices as such when anything bad happens. They also save that investment capital for themselves, and happily add it to their already record profits. How many businesses in the world can you think of that actually profit from ignoring consumers and from not reinvesting in infrastructure? Only one that I know of.

Filed by JP at 8:47 am under Rants, News Clippings, Opinions, Business
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I’ve always had a problem with authority, so it only makes sense that I would want to introduce a new wrinkle to the corporate bastion that is middle management.

Yes, it’s time for a makeover. You perpetually resource-wasting corporate slugs may as well enjoy your last days. There will be no place for you in your current form at I Thunk So, Inc. I’ve always said that when I become the ruler — I mean leader — of a legitimate place of business, I will take with me everything I’ve learned during my years spent in corporate trenches, mired in politics and small ideas. Let’s take a walk through a few lessons I’ve learned.

Company Loyalty
Remember company loyalty? Neither do I. It’s a fallacy. There was a day when someone might have proudly proclaimed “I’m a Company Man.” Well, I guess that when your kids grow up without ever having known you, at least they will be able to tell everyone at your funeral that you were “a Company Man.” Now there’s something to hang your hat on. The idea that someone would actually be loyal to a business entity should never resound with any business leader. I suppose there was a time, say, during the Great Depression and thereafter when unions became en vogue, that an argument could be made that corporations took care of their employees with things like paid lunch hours, health benefits, and profit sharing. To be clear, though, those things were never truly done in the interest of the worker. They were merely a mechanism to keep the production lines moving and the union ringleaders quiet.

We work hard, but we play hard, too
Let’s stop kidding ourselves about work and real life. Forcing people to reconcile work with family or leisure time is simply bad business. People are the most productive when they have clear and attainable goals to strive for. The most obvious daily goal would be leaving work on time to get back to the life they really care about. The sooner you get over the idea that people enjoy your company when they come to work every day, the sooner you will be able to move on to creating an environment where people can actually get work done, unencumbered by your presence.

That’s right. Nobody wants you around. You are what they talk about as soon as you leave the room. You are the reason they are Alt+Tabbing all day long. You are the reason they have rearview mirrors mounted on their monitors. They already have an established early warning system in place to thwart your best-laid plans for quashing office fun. In fact, the one thing that gives them the most pleasure is finding new ways to make you suspicious and paranoid.

Oh, and people don’t go to after-work parties to fraternize with management (or each other, for that matter). They’re there for the free drinks. Don’t believe me? Don’t pay for the drinks one time and see how many of your “buddies” show up next time.

More to come in Part II of this series. Stay tuned.

Filed by JP at 10:50 am under Opinions, Business
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For years now, I’ve been involved with both the management and the production sides of projects. As a result, I’ve been in too many meetings. I’ve thought about it for awhile, and I’ve decided that web project meetings fall into one of these four categories:

1. The aimless project with ambiguous agenda kickoff meeting
   • This type of meeting tends to occur near the beginning of a project (ideally, anyway), and generally centers around vague project “requirements” and flippant timeline considerations. Priorities may be discussed and shifted during this phase. Roles and responsibilities are also discussed in this meeting, but almost always only as a CYA measure for reference when the fingerpointing meeting (see below) occurs later.
2. The “Free thinkers unite” meeting
   • This meeting is usually the bottleneck of any undertaking that kills the spirit of anyone who is actually tasked with real work on the project being discussed. Companies with no firm grip on project management are strangled by the lack of organization and the non-existence of a defined project team. This opens the floodgate of ideas from unaccountable sources. Non-stakeholders who are still perceived as “experts” are often invited to these meetings (usually by other non-stakeholders) in order to add complexity and unrealistic goals to the project.
3. The fire drill meeting
   • This is the meeting which is ultimately called near the end of every project timeline. It is where most of the real work gets done. Of necessity, the previous offending non-stakeholders are left off of the invite list. Unfortunately, though, their damage has already been done. The original requirements of the project will now be quickly redefined to water down the original goals of the project, while still including as much of the flair and garnish piled on by the free thinkers. The end result is usually an overbearing and ineffective product which will ensure the job security of all involved since it will lead to glaring flaws in the ability of the worker ants to produce quality product. This results in the need for endless revisions to the already ineffective product. It also creates the need for more specialized managers to be brought in to manage the ineffective managers already in place.
4. The fingerpointing meeting
   • This meeting generally takes place immediately following the late or delayed release of an untested product — untested since any time alotted for testing was hijacked by the need for endless revision requests from upper crust non-stakeholders. Usually, one or more of the upper crust will attend this crucial meeting to sternly evaluate the team’s many failures. Communication — more specifically, the breakdown of it — is always established as a primary culprit in the project’s derailment. Accountability issues are raised, and finger-pointing begins. This meeting typically ends with a directive that “this will never happen again at this company” and a promise to formulate a plan to ensure it.

This stale, corporate environment is the killjoy of many a career. It is the reason people ultimately decide in favor of looking for work elsewhere or becoming an independent contractor.

You may be asking yourself “What can I do to stop meetings where I work?” The key is to state your demands before agreeing to attend any meeting. Set your attendance status to “tentative” and request a meeting agenda from the organizer. You also have the option to decline a meeting. Doing so may raise the ire of the organizer, but will at least open the dialog about why you feel the meeting would have been ineffective. This brings me to my most important point when it comes to combatting useless meetings.

Managers yammer on about openness and communication. They have open-door policies, but they love to be intimidating. The first time you speak your mind, you may be shocked at the result. Managers whose methods and practices are questioned openly in meetings are often left with nothing to say. And wasn’t that the point all along?

Filed by JP at 11:26 am under Opinions, Work, Business
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I have a compulsive urge to move on. It applies to almost every area of my professional life. At a project level, I literally need to have three or more things going on at once so that I can choose what I want to work on at any given time. When I get bored of one project, I push it off to the side and move on to the next boring thing. Rare are the moments when I dive headlong into a task only to find that it’s addictive. When those moments do come along, the feeling is euphoric; and the by-product is usually something I am very proud of. Almost always, these projects are related to side work, and not my bread-amd-butter work.

At a career level, I seem unable to stay in one job for more then a few years. I haven’t decided whether this is attributable more to the career path I’ve chosen which lands me at dot-coms or small Internet firms. The company I’m consulting at now is the first big-time Internet retailer job I’ve worked for as of yet. I’ve been there for about six months, and tones of repetition are starting to set in.

I don’t feel like this is symptomatic of my personality because I am someone who prefers consistency on many levels. For example, the married life definitely suits me. I enjoy eating the same types of foods — most say I’m a picky eater, so I’m definitely not a “grass is greener” kind of guy when it comes to cuisine.

The long and short of it is that I would like to get to the point where I can work on something without hearing a ticking mental time bomb.

Filed by JP at 6:41 pm under Personal Drama, Business
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Morale around work has been pretty low lately. I’ve been scrambling to think of ways to lighten things up. I don’t exactly come off as the playful, fun-loving guy that I am (I think I’m usually just too deep in my own thoughts to notice or acknowledge others much of the time), so it was an interesting study in quick creativity.

I mulled over the idea of an awards program, and settled on the Easy Button Awards (a.k.a. “The Easies”). Now I’m not a manager or a director or anything, but I have been in the past. I think that peer recognition is cool if it’s done in a way that is not embarassing to the recipient — nobody likes to be elevated above their peers in front of their peers….at least, nobody who’s normal.

It’s kind of a silly idea, and probably short-lived; but I think it is a start. It didn’t help morale much in the short-term, though. One of my co-workers actually announced her departure shortly after I nominated her for and awarded her with the first Easy Award. I hope the two aren’t releated. Hmmmmmmmm….

Filed by JP at 6:45 pm under Ideas, Opinions, Business
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