I must have read this book way when. How else would I have known this is a sad book? I think my parents had a copy.
After watching the movie, I borrowed a copy from the library to read it afresh.
The book is fully deserving of its acclaim. It is a heart-aching fable with spare watercolor sketches.
It is a subtle and nuanced meditation of childhood and the loss of adulthood (unfortunately, the movie bowdlerized the message by shoving it in your face).
Grown-up normalcy is shown to be absurd.
But.
Only an adult would see the message.
That said, I’m not going out to find more recreational sadness even though this book was totally worth it.
Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
(notes on) Team of Teams
This new world moves too quickly for top-down, optimized entities.
The twin narratives of this book are the rise of the hyper-efficient organizations (exemplified by the work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor) in the 20th century and the rise of the hyper-connected network (exemplified in the structure of Al Qaida) in the 21st century.
After Saddam was crushed in Iraq, the occupying forces were constantly harassed by the flexible amorphous cells of the terrorist organization. This underground operation was running laps around the awesome might of the great American military machine. General McCrystal’s task was to reverse this trend.
He accomplished this by “shared consciousness” and “empowered execution”. He merged the information silos in multiple organizations so that all the data was shared throughout the forces. He also delegated decision-making power as low as possible, allowing the staff who were most familiar with the situation to respond in an agile manner.
These twin endeavors ultimately turned the tide of the war. While history was being made, I had thought that the “surge” was merely an issue of applying more resources. I did not realize that the eventual defeat of Al Qaida was the result of better management techniques.
At first glance, it does not seem that the lessons in this book are immediately applicable to the much more methodical work of a government OPM.
However, timing is always an issue. Sooner is generally better than later, but our processes with multiple peer reviews tend to push the schedule longer. It’s a bit of a conundrum. Budgets for state buildings are tight. This one renovation may be the only project in this building for the next twenty years. With such timescales, losing a couple of months is worth the tradeoff of ensuring the design is dead on.
But still, the needs are immediate. It would be nice to move more quickly so we can better serve our users. This book makes me wonder if I should experiment further to speed up my projects. It also makes me question if our system of multiple checks is truly effective. Are we getting proper value for the delay? Each extra step incrementally improves the project, but at what hidden cost?
In all, this book is a good read. It is a compelling story of how a top-down behemoth adapted in response to the networked resilience of its opponent. Restructuring the team was the key to the endeavor, the nature of the organization is its strategy. As such, this book is a great case-study companion to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Anti-Fragile.
The other concept that intrigued me is the regular status update meetings that were instituted by General McChrystal. Along with transforming their main base into a large open office plan, his team started running a 2-hour meeting every day. All relevant parties could attend these meetings, and he touts it as his primary tool to achieve “shared consciousness”.
There is a prevailing trend in Tech to avoid such meetings. In that vein, I’ve been pondering how to minimize my OAC meetings. Maybe that is the wrong approach. Maybe I should be thinking about how to maximize the effectiveness of those meetings.
As OPM’s, we tend to think in a top-down fashion, after all, we are the “owners”. However, delegation (empowered execution) is the primary job of our work. Empowered execution is only effective when there is true coordination, so how does one create a shared consciousness between the multiple parties in our team?
~
A Question
How do you handle regular status meetings?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
~
A Link
As an employee of the State of Nevada, I’m contractually obligated to mention that October 31 is Nevada Day when we joined the Union. Unfortunately, we observe it on the last Friday of October, akin to celebrating Independence Day on the first Monday of July.
Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM. See you next week!
Stay humble, be kind, and keep experimenting! Justus Pang, RA
Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
(notes on) Anti-Fragile
Taleb’s core premise is that we can’t predict the future, so we can only prepare in the present.
Pretty basic advice for an uncertain world. So what can we do?
His counterintuitive elaboration is to posit the idea of “anti-fragility”. Anti-fragile things are not merely robust – they don’t merely avoid failure under stress. Anti-fragile systems improve when they encounter variability. For example, our bodies get stronger when we practice a wide variety of exercise routines.
What an inspiring concept!
Anti-fragility provides a framework for developing improvements. As individuals, there isn’t a ton we can do to fix the big problems, but we aren’t completely powerless. Don’t obsess over massive single-shot wins. Focus on making lots of experiments. A bunch of little mistakes will come up with the occasional win. Transform one of those discoveries into a big victory.
He recommends that one starts with a life that maintains a baseline stability. With this solid foundation one is freed to take some risks that might become big wins. Avoid debt and live freely. Procrastinate thoughtfully – a default aggressive stance isn’t always best.
To nitpick, I admit that the book is a bit long and would have benefited from a sharper editor. But what the hell, it’s well worth your time. Taleb is a punk. He points out that the emperor has no clothes, and that our castle is a house of cards. I wish this book had been published while I was in grad school, I suspect my master’s thesis would have revolved around this concept.
As with all audio books, I started listening to it at 1.5x speed. Unlike most of them, I dropped it down to 1.0x speed almost immediately and listened to all 16 hours at the narrator’s natural pace. Highly recommended.
~
One Question
Where can you start experimenting? How are can you create the variability to make you become anti-fragile?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
~
One Link
Along with Anti-Fragile, I recommend checking out Simon Sinek’s book the Infinite Game. It hammers in the point that “winning” in life is being invited to “keep playing”, a critical concept that rhymes well with the themes of Anti-Fragile.
Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM. See you next week!
Stay humble, be kind, and keep experimenting! Justus Pang, RA
Reading this book was an exercise in confirmation bias. Long ago, I had reached similar conclusions Comte-Sponville, after a similarly devout upbringing while also leaving the faith in early adulthood.
While losing a personal diety may be difficult for some folks, it was quite liberating for me. Not to become a wanton libertine. Rather I was freed from carrying an unnecessary construct in my brain. It allowed me to enjoy life more fully.
That said, I don’t begrudge those who are religious, and Comte-Sponville’s first essay is a discussion about tolerance in the face of the unknown. You be you.
However, we’ll still believe in the absence of a god (more certain than a mere agnostic). His second essay plainly addresses why he does not believe in the existence of a deity.
Finally, he tackles the title of the book in the third essay, exploring how an atheist can explore spirituality.
I’m an architect, not a philosopher. So even though I had naturally come to similar conclusions as Comte-Sponville, I enjoyed reading a professional exposition on this matter. The book is well structured with the three essays that build upon each other, and then it ends with a rousing epilogue, on Truth and Love.
Here is where all our different themes converge without conflating.
Fidelity to truth: rationalism – the rejection of Sophism.
Fidelity to love: humanism – the rejection of nihilism.
Fidelity to a separation between the two: atheism.
…
Love, not hope, is what helps us live. Truth, not faith, is what sets us free.
We are already in the kingdom. Eternity is now.
In all a great read. He hit his mark in writing a book for a popular but serious audience. There are plenty of allusions to other authors whose names I recognize but have never read, but the book is plenty readable, and each essay is properly dense, as appropriate for this weight subject. This is not your usual quick burn self-help fare. It may be “little”, but took a surprising amount of time to work through.
Even though I don’t feel the urge to purchase my own copy, I’ve already recommended it to several friends and I suspect this will become my standard book recommendation for anyone interested in such matters.
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
I came across this quote during the pandemic. I immediately put it at the top of my personal core values document.
Naturally, I was eager to read the entire book, but the library does not have a copy. Fortunately, I found a free loaner at archive.org.
The book is great.
Admittedly, its appeal is limited to the already persuaded. But if you are sympathetic to woo eastern philosophy and a permissive parental style, this book is for you.
Parenting is stressful at times, worrying at others. Especially during a pandemic when all choices are lackluster (at best). One is haunted by a nagging sense of opportunity cost as the kids lose years of their childhood, trapped at home.
This book is a salve for such concerns. The basic message is to take your foot off the gas. Let the kids grow up and grow up with them.
It is also an insightful approach towards the Tao De Ching. In the past, I’ve had difficulty reading through the original. It’s heavy dense stuff that is purposely impenetrable to the uninitiated.
This parenting version focuses only upon this facet of humanity, making it much easier to read. I’ve read the original enough to feel comfortable claiming that this version reflects the spirit of Laozi. Indeed, it can be a lens to help you navigate the original work.
Of course, this book is watered down compared to the original. But if it resonates, what more do you want?
While writing my first draft, I had every intention to purchase my own copy. Since then my ardor has cooled. This is no fault of this book; I’m buried in too many great books and classics! As I read more, the backlog increases.
One day I’ll figure out how to control my reading appetite. Maybe I’ll pick up this book then.
Even so, this book is highly recommended. Plus you should check out William Martin’s blog; he posts regularly.
Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
(notes on) The Leadership Pipeline
Despite its title, this book did not improve my leadership skills.
It was more valuable than a collection of tips and tricks. This book helped me plan my career path by forecasting the unique pressures that confront leaders in each level of the hierarchy.
The key premise is simple. There are seven different layers of leadership, and they are fundamentally different from each other. Success after a promotion does not merely require more from one’s previous position. Each step requires a qualitatively different type of work.
The book describes the responsibilities from (1) leading oneself (2) leading others (3) leading leaders … all the way to (7) the top of a global mega-corp. In my career, I’ve had few opportunities to manage staff. By becoming an OPM, I suddenly skipped a whole level, jumping from leading myself to leading leaders, without the intermediate step of leading others.
By naming the hierarchies and their specific pressures, the book gave foresight into this unique position. It also prepared me for navigating the hierarchical governmental organization, quite a change from my time in small firms. It made me aware of the challenges that confront our client agencies and my own management team.
The greater empathy for my supervisors has framed my internal dialogue concerning what I want to with my career. Going from architect to OPM was an obvious paradigm shift. However, I couldn’t have guessed that paradigm shifts of similar magnitude accompany each step up within the division.
Promotions obviously come with greater stress and commitments. Less obviously, promotions include a sacrifice of enjoyable work tasks.
In private practice, such tradeoffs are cushioned by financial compensation, but pay grades in the public sector is constrained. Is the extra stress worth just a nominal bump? The higher status is nice, but is it worth giving up pleasurable tasks at work?
The Leadership Pipeline is highly recommended for someone who has recently entered management. The practices that helped us reach the next level won’t automatically translate to success. Excellence in management is achieved by adjusting properly to these new realities. This book gives fair warning that each step up the ladder involves a paradigm shift of fundamental responsibilities.
There is another concept from the book that I’ve often pondered. It recommends that companies develop a parallel technical track for promoting individuals who don’t want to join the ranks of management. I’m happy that I hopped into management, but architecture would be greatly served by developing clearer career paths for technical folks who have no interest in managing other humans. In private practice, it often feels that technical proficiency is merely optional. Architects are devalued within our own profession, and I have no idea how to fix this problem.
~
One Question
How do you manage the tradeoffs of changing responsibilities as you’ve earned promotions up the leadership pipeline? Have you ever turned down a promotion?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
~
Three Links
The Growth EQ has a good post about using Science, History, and Practical experience to evaluate the suggestions of others.
Five questions from Seth Godin to knock you out of the comfort zone, especially if you’re in a rut tackling little tasks with raw efficiency.
Loes Heerink has a stunning photo series of merchants with bicycles overloaded with produce and flowers.
… and a photo.
Sewage Pump, Dunedin City, New Zealand, November 1904
~
Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM. See you next week!
Stay humble, be kind, and keep experimenting! Justus Pang, RA
Moderate at council should a man be, Not brutal and over bearing; Among the bold the bully will find Others as bold as he.
Thank you for reading. Please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
~
(notes on) The Hávamál
In this polarized moment, it is easy to forget that we share more than we diverge. Each individual is unique, but we are all human, and functioning societies have evolved to rhyme with each other.
Proverbs blend the universal with the specific. These sayings give us a glimpse of the humanity of those outside our tribe, separated by distance and time.
Recently, a friend shared some quotes from the Havamal on social media. The memes didn’t fit my mental stereotype of hard-charging, harder-drinking Vikings. Intrigued, I dug up a translation by W. H. Auden. The Havamal was indeed a delightful compilation of such proverbs, akin to the wisdom books in the Bible.
Given my love of aphorisms, I was particularly drawn to the first half – a mix of world-weary proverbs advising honor, caution, cynicism, and practical wisdom. The second half changes in tone and holds a visionary power, especially the passage of Odin sacrificing himself to himself.
To be fair, it isn’t all roses; a couple of passages are demeaning towards women. However we are not slaves to the ancients, and these sayings can be recast as relevant as gender-neutral warnings to be wary of our own urges.
As our society becomes more secular, we risk identifying ourselves too tightly with our professions. We see ourselves as vessels of our income-generating activities. Even worse, we might view others in light of their utilitarian offerings.
These proverbs remind us that each person is a tapestry far more richer than a canned response to “what do you do?”
In my three years as an Owner Project Manager, I have been constantly reminded this is a relationship profession. The final goal is an edifice of glass, steel, and concrete, but the art is in working with people who carry their own hopes, dreams, and fears.
At our best, an OPM should push this temporary tribe towards excellence in moment, leading them towards greater opportunities in the next project.
A kind word need not cost much, The price of praise can be cheap; With half a loaf and an empty cup I found myself a friend.
~
One Question
What are are the references of wisdom in your life?
To ask well, to answer rightly, Are the marks of a wise man: Men must speak of men’s deeds, What happens may not be hidden.
Hit reply and let’s chat!
~
Three Links
Peter Hayashida wrote a lovely meditation his career and life in general as he was wrapping up his work at UC Riverside.
Writer CJ Chilvers has a post of Personal Publishing Principles. Each of us should do create a similar manifesto for our work.
The Voyager satellites included a golden record of sounds from earth. It is also posted on youtube.
… and a photo.
Mahjong Tiles, Las Vegas, August 2021 My son spent an afternoon building up and knocking down walls of these tiles. My grandparents gave me this Mahjong set twenty-five years ago.
~
Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM. See you next week!
Stay humble, be kind, and keep experimenting! Justus Pang, RA
The Wander’s Havamal is a clean, easy read. The language is crisp and contemporary, heads and tails clearer than the public domain translations on the internet.
My only quibble is that they chose to separate the poetry from the explanitory notes. I understand why endnotes are necessary for ebooks, but I hate splitting this information between separate pages in physical books. Ideally, they could have followed John Minford’s Art of War, rendering the translation twice, cleanly and then with commentary.
That said, the commentary is worth reading. Dr. Crawford is a linguist so his notes are centered around the language and the challenges of translation, providing a glimpse into the challenges in bringing us the wisdom of the past.
In all, this is a great translation for a modern reader. I plan on borrowing it again from the library to go through the commentary in detail. However, I don’t think I’ll be picking up my own physical copy until it is reformatted.
Whatever you do, go check out Crawford’s unique rendition of the first 79 stanzas in the Cowboy Havamal.
I have to admit that I haven’t revisited the poem much since I first wrote this post. However, this remains “on the rotation” along with Ecclesiastes, Tao Te Ching, Analects, the Bhagavad Gita, and the I Ching. There is too much to read out there. Of the making of books, there is no end – even if we limit the library to texts older than a millennium!
Conversely, it is terrifying that this poem only survived via one book in Iceland. One rues what wisdom has disappeared through the ages, like tears in rain.
Yet again, we moderns are drowning in knowledge. Fate has placed us in an age with all the world’s wisdom at our fingertips and then gave us the addictive algorithm of social media. The gods show no shame, toying with mortal fools in this technological era.
The Pareto principle states that you get 80% of the value from 20% of the effort. In this case, the book is literally 20% the size of the original and 10% the cost of the full size reproductions.
Yes, you get 80% of the value out of the book. The images cutouts are lovely and paper cutouts are perfectly suited for miniaturization since they aren’t very detailed. Furthermore, Matisse hand wrote his text in a huge script which still looked large in this compact edition. As a book, there was minimal translation in making it a smaller book.
However, art isn’t an 80-20 game.
Something doesn’t feel quite right with the book. It’s partly because the translation was located in a separate section. Even though Matisse claims that the writing was not important, flipping back and forth detracted from the experience. The publisher also reformatted this reprint to be in a landscape format there are four pages visible on each spread. Even worse, the publisher messed around with the spreads and altered the page order.
The biggest problem is that when you are so tantalizingly close to the artist’s original intentions, its impossible to shake the disappointment of not crossing the finish line. In this case the missing 20% is a big deal. Ideally, an English edition would have been printed full size with a slightly expanded page size to include a small typeset translation of the writing on each page.
Then again, we live in a world of limits. This little edition was still a good deal. The full size editions are out of print and cost a few hundred dollars on the secondary market. Jazz is great, but not at that price. I’ll just wait for the next publisher to print a fresh batch of full size copies.
I should note that my edition is now personalized. I was reading Jazz and also sketching my boy playing with his toys in the playroom. It was late at night and I fell asleep on the carpet. He stopped playing, found the pencil, opened up the closest book, and went to work.
As a good architect, I made another change! I’m going weekly now.
Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear some feedback on this letter! Please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
(notes on) A World Without Email
I’ve been a fan of Cal Newport after reading So Good They Can’t Ignore You a couple years ago (quickly followed by devouring Deep Work and Digital Minimalism). Accordingly, I borrowed his audiobook from the library as soon as it was available. The book did not disappoint. It is a great distillation of Cal’s current ideas on email and productivity.
Like many self help books, the first part sells the problem with a narrative detailing the road to our current “hyperactive hive mind”. This section is necessary, but is a bit drawn out. Fortunately, the second part of this book is full of actionable ideas and is highly recommended. You can find all this advice by listening to hours of his Deep Questions Podcast, but this book perfect for someone who isn’t already a Newport acolyte.
Some of his key recommendations include:
be wary about the dissipation of our attention, mental switching costs are incredibly detrimental to high performance in knowledge work.
a mix of practical tips for increasing productivity (such as batching similar tasks on various days)
go outside of email for managing work. Use processes and systems for workflow coordination, such as using taskboards.
don’t assume the simple and easy makes for the best process in organizing your work flow. A little friction may result in long term efficiencies.
Based on the recommendations in his podcast, I’ve already initiated weekly check-in’s with my architect and my immediate supervisor, which have worked spectacularly well. For my next projects, I plan on imposing a communication protocol.
I normally try to avoid enjoying the my status as an Owner. However, I shamelessly exploit the Owner’s prerogative to push the Architect’s workflow beyond our industry standard “fire in the inbox” method of management.
Maybe my first step will be to assign them this book.
My reaction to this book is muted because I was an avid listener to Cal’s podcast last summer. As such, I had already implemented many of his recommendations in his book. If I was ambitious, I would borrow the ebook from the library to carefully re-read the recommendations in the second part of the book. However, I’ve recently turned away from self help books towards classic literature, focusing upon the eight waking hours outside of the office. As such, I haven’t felt an urge to return to this book.
~
One Question
Do you have any workflows that may seem circuitous but actually help you manage the work more efficiently?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
~
Three Links
Arnaud Marthouret wrote three lessons from racing a bike too fast. His third lesson about no distraction resonates tightly with the aim of The World without Email.
Seth Godin’s Wayfinding gives us permission to be inefficient, because the murky is where the innovation is most needed.
The paintings of Torsten Jovinge (1898-1936) are a real treat. Thanks to Daily Dose for introducing me to this artist.
… and a photo.
Tree Stump, Mt. Charleston, June 2021
~
Thanks for subscribing to the OPM letter! I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a contentious Owner PM. See you next week!
Stay humble and keep experimenting! Justus Pang, RA
