GRIZZLY PEAR
Squeeze. Roll into a long string. Make a big donut. Cut into little pieces.
repeat.
repeat.
repeat.
Put it away.
Exciting stuff.
Do it again, with a different color.
Ad nauseam.
The girl has grown out of this phase.
He will too.
Kids are fickle.
Maybe tomorrow,
no warning.
So many things I thought we’d play again.
The day was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Squeezing play dough all afternoon.
When he was exactly 1,109 days old.
Leaving a warm memory and a blog poem.
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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.
~
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!
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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.
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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
Pure over-the-top gratuitous absurdity.
Yes, there’s the fan service with the ladies at Boobies and lingering shots of Scarlet.
But mainly it’s a rollicking romp through the wacky profundities of space.
The show is a visual feast. Each episode director was given total artistic freedom, featuring a multiplicity of art styles.
And as always for a Watanabe project, excellent music.
It definitely belongs in the top tier of Watanabe’s catalog with Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. It feels sacrilegious, but I wonder if it surpasses its two companions.
I hesitate to proclaim as to which one is “best”.
But would I rewatch Space Dandy before the others?
Yes.
A few months after this initial draft, my opinion of this anime has only increased. Bebop is still a must-watch for its style and its place in its canon. Samurai Champloo is Watanabe’s most coherent story. However Space Dandy has cemented itself in my favorite work. This show is certainly the first one I’d rewatch.
After scanning the web, I find myself aligned with the consensus about this show. As such, I’ll leave the deep thoughts to the folks with domain expertise and just post a couple (spoiler-free) comments.
First, the most appealing aspect of non-American cinema is that we can never be confident that things will end well for the protagonists. American films might kill a secondary character, but it rarely ends badly for the headliner. Asian films don’t show such mercy, so the anticipation of potential doom hangs over the entire series. It might not be noticeable for a single feature-length film, however, such uncertainty is almost unbearable when the experience is extended over 11 days (watching only one episode a night).
Second, this show has a moment that is a gorgeous combo of narrative, graphics, and music to create a mid-story climax. The movie Whisper of the Heart and the show Kids on the Slope have similar climatic scenes that absolutely capture the moment with imagery and music. This alone makes it worth your time to watch the first half of Terror in Resonance. Unfortunately, it is no shame to leave Terror after the singular moment (unlike the other two works).
My opinion of the show has only diminished over time. I occasionally revisit the aforementioned moment on youtube, but this show is in the bottom tier of the Shinichiro Watanabe catalog, slightly better than Carole and Tuesday. While the show was good enough that I don’t regret the time, I won’t rewatch it.
Given my appreciation of Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo), I should have pursued this show years ago, but I wasn’t interested after hearing that this was a kids show. A few months ago, we were looking for something to watch and we were intrigued by the fact it centered around jazz.
While technically true, this series is better described as a teen romance drama with a jazz motif. Even though teen romance is even more distant from my preferences, and I still enjoyed it. With only twelve episodes, the plot moves at a good clip. Midway through, there is a a moment that has “all the feels” and is fully earned. I’ve revisited that moment a few times on youtube.
As someone else has quipped, the problem with teenagers is that they’re children in an adults bodies, injected with a whole bunch of hormones. As a teen drama, this show has a whole lot of that in spades, with other complications due to a lack of communication between the characters. Then again, I don’t think there would be a show without such snafus.
Fortunately, I avoided love drama in my own teens, however I didn’t appreciate the freedom that I had at that age without the responsibilities of a family. Then again such a realization is only made after the passage of time. In the moment, one only feels trapped in the constraints of the present without the benefit of hindsight that comes with age. Then again, that might have been a good thing, I could have been overwhelmed with too many options.
Then again, those days aren’t coming back so I shouldn’t rue the past. Hopefully my future is still wide open. Plus, I don’t have to worry about finding a life partner!
As I revisit this post before publishing, I appreciate having watched the show, but feel no urge to re-watch it. It is highly recommended if you dig jazz and don’t mind some romance, but I don’t consider this a must watch classic. Then again, I just got sucked into watching an hour of random youtube videos while editing this post. In comparison to such unstructured silliness, this show is a better use of one’s time.
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Ten years ago, the corporate office held a go-karting a teambuilding event; I still reminisce about it fondly as I push my boy around on his tricycle.
However, my real education in teamwork came two decades ago as a laborer in a landscape crew. There was a true camaraderie in that small group of six guys moving dirt up and down the Oakland hills. We had our roles, and we worked hard together.
We were also paid hourly; we only made money when we showed up. There was no luxury of missing time, even if our bodies weren’t 100%. If someone wasn’t feeling great, we’d cover and carry a little extra load until he got better.
I was the beneficiary of this informal arrangement on the single public project during my six months with that crew. A week before the big project, I hurt my back moving mud up a hill. It was bad (I would feel its effects for several years).
I could barely walk, but for prevailing wage I made it to the job site. The guys covered me, handing me the easy tasks – shuffle tools around, signal traffic, etc.
Trust is created when the team rallies around its weakest member, when that person is most vulnerable. Reciprocity is earned by favors truly earned.
Weekend events may be a perk of working a desk job, but real teams are forged on Monday through Friday.
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How can we create great teams when they work on multiple (slightly adversarial) entities?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
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Cal Newport on the eureka moment that is typically often built upon long grinding frustration. How can we keep fighting the difficult low-visible tasks that really pay off in our profession?
12 Rules for Creativity. The comics of Grant Snider are consistently enjoyable, even when thye skirt the edge of being overly precious.
Philipp Schaerer’s exhibition “Ornament & Découpage” (2019) is a stunning series of composites set in historical landscape photos.
… and a photo.
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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
My bread is constantly evolving from one recipe to another, but my pancakes have remained consistent. The recipe hasn’t changed much from I posted it three years ago.
±240g (1 cup) starter
2017
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda or baking powder, whatever you got.
Nowadays, I throw in two eggs, add a second tablespoon of sugar, and use less the salt. But really, it’s basically the same recipe from 2017. Pancakes have always been a loose recipe to use up old sourdough starter that would otherwise be discarded.
This weekend, I made the ultimate step in the recipe. Try to see what’s missing.
±240g (1 cup) starter
2021
2 eggs (seperate the yolks and whites)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
Yup, we’ve gotten rid of the baking soda!
The girl wanted to have pancakes on Saturday morning, but I didn’t have sourdough starter to cook with. When I make non-sourdough pancakes, I usually add extra baking soda to push the good rise.
However, my wife hates the chemical flavor from baking soda, so I googled “pancakes without baking soda”. The top hit worked out perfectly. The short process:
The pancakes went over so well, I prepared sourdough starter for pancakes on Sunday morning as well! Saturday’s non-sourdough pancakes tasted just like cake, while Sunday’s sourdough pancakes had a little tang. Both came out great!
In making pancakes two days in a row, we were also honed in on the perfect cooking temperature (just a hair above dead center between medium and low).
It’s slightly more hassle to beat the eggs, but the effort is worth it to avoid the baking soda. I’m curious if there are any more changes to be made.
Then again, maybe I’ve landed upon the final recipe.
Moderate at council should a man be,
Not brutal and over bearing;
Among the bold the bully will find
Others as bold as he.
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~
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.
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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.
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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.