I think as much as I might wish for super powers, I also know that the ‘great responsibility’ thing would be hard, maybe too hard. Being fast or strong won’t let you solve the hardest problems, the ones that are about people and their dreams and perceptions.

As an employer if I read your blog I’ll be looking to see who you are. You can’t blog 50 or 500 times even just writing purely technical posts without revealing a lot; writing skills, interests, attitude, ability to present yourself professionally, and more. Often it will do so much better than a resume or an hour interview would. It’s not the whole puzzle, I still need to see how you interact with people and hold up under the pressure of an interview.

I often wonder if saying ‘blogging’ doesn’t hurt our ability to get people to write more often. Calling it a ‘diary’ is the wrong word, maybe ‘journal’?

Over the years I’ve found that pride is the biggest reason for this not happening more often. It can be embarrassing to realize that you’re doing something the hard way, or that a colleague (or the evil consultant) can just do it much faster than you can. I’m not above being embarrassed when that happens to me (it does), but it also generates the flash of excitement, the bit of cockiness that says ‘if you can do it, I can do it too!’.

Looking back, I still think it was a fair suggestion in response to a request for ideas, I think putting a couple dozen whatevers on the CIO’s desk every Fri morning is a great way to encourage cross team chat, and a chance for the CIO to get some face time with people they don’t get to see as much as they’d like.

At the time money was plentiful and so throwing cash at the idea to satisfy those who wanted yogurt, but in leaner times, could the goal still be accomplished? I think so, and one easy way might be to:

• Rotate through the team, having each person take a turn at picking up breakfast. Maybe even let them come up new breakfast sources to use the $30 or so budget. Nothing like having to get up a little early to stop and get the food to make you appreciate someone else doing it (and someone else paying for it!)
• Try to accommodate the ones who don’t want a chocolate covered donut, but not to the point of craziness. Not the end of the world if everyone knows this Fri is donut day and if you’re on a diet, you bring your yogurt or banana or whatever. As long as they aren’t excluded too often, it works.

Beyond breakfast though, this can happen with any idea. Start with a basic idea and before you send it in, stop and think about it. What is the real cost? Who will do the work to make it happen? Is it inclusive, or just something that benefits a small subset? Can you find a way to derive more than just good will from it?

Of course, Steve Jones should have posted this on Friday with a coupon for all the SSC readers to get a free donut!

Moving back to the used car editorial, it was often a surreal experience. I still remember driving a ‘74 or so Cadillac that had a feature that would auto dim the headlights – pretty advanced stuff for 1974, but I guess it it didn’t work that well then, or now, I don’t see many cars with it. Once I saw another driver pull the car up for viewing and forget to put the car in park, when the auctioneer waved to rev the engine, he nearly got run over! Fired the guy on the spot, which seemed harsh. Always wondered if the auctioneer learned not to stand in front of the car during that phase!

A follow up lesson learned – think I blew the title on this one. The ‘lesson’ here was about repetition and trying a lot of different techniques until you see that they aren’t really all that different. I tend to write by pulling a topic from my list, creating a title from that, and then writing the rest. Mostly that works ok for me, but I need to go back and do the same thing I recommend for presentations – make sure the content matches the title. I think a better title would have generated more reading/discussion.

As usual the comments (90 or so as I write this) are far more interesting than the editorial. I wasn’t patient enough to count the split, but clearly there is a set of us that care deeply about having a job that speaks to us, and another set that is willing to work hard and participate, but just doesn’t bond with their job for lack of a better way to say it.

Looking back, I can see this is one of the friction points I’ve seen on teams. I suspect the vested in work crowd works longer and expects the other set to do the same. Probably not as simple as that, but I think it would be a great Monday morning discussion and I wonder if having that chat might not help everyone understand what motivates the others a little bit better.

Of course, it’s how I do it that makes it me!

I’m comfortable with that style now, though I hope and plan that it will continue to evolve. But is that enough? How can you or I stretch our skills, learn to write differently (which isn’t the same as better!)?

I’ve had two opportunities over the past year to do some different writing. The first was that in 2009 I wrote the editorial for the PASS Connector. My goal there was to speak as me, yet speak on and about the organization. It was hard for a couple reasons. One was that I was used to writing as me, about me. Another was that I didn’t always have a deep view of everything that was happening within PASS. It was definitely more work, because I had to write using a different voice and that voice didn’t come naturally, though by the end of the year it was going faster.

More recently my friend Steve Jones has invited me to write a guest editorial for SSC once or twice a month. That’s yet a different audience, and Steve has built a solid pattern of interacting with the SSC audience that encourages reader response. It’s been a struggle to find a way to write something that will resonate with the audience, yet not just be a poor copy of Steve. Let me say that a different way – think of any local newscaster you watch. Now imagine stepping in to take their place. Same job, so how do you do it differently – as you – yet still just do the job of delivering the news?

I’m still in mid learning curve, not sure what the end looks like. Do I ultimately just write everything “as me” and quit worrying about it, or will I get better at adapting to writing with different voices?

This is one of those posts where I’m trying to cement my own ideas!

Doing too much or too little can each waste money, and I’ve done both – more than once. But after a few years of doing both, if I’m not sure, I’ll do less. Not out of laziness, because my tendency is to handle all the edge cases cleanly. No, it’s because I can always do more (and often quickly as the need is seen), but I can’t get back time invested.

Where I make these compromises varies. Sometimes it’s holding off on a feature, sometimes it’s running a query instead of building a report or an admin page, and sometimes it’s just doing something vanilla instead of banana chocolate strawberry on top sundae. Often it’s based on skills and confidence, often it’s based on time, and always thinking if I need to do more, am I doing anything that really prevents me from doing it. All of this without doing things that I consider intrinsically bad…like GOTO!

Time to market/solution isn’t the only consideration, but it’s often the most visible. I try to teach managers to look for good/better/best solutions, and then try to understand the points that differentiate them. As an employee I’ll just say that if you have the ability to offer options and get things done faster (without GOTO), you’ll never lack for employment.

Business isn’t about coding and database purity, and probably never will be. I’ve seen a lot of really ugly solutions make businesses a lot of money, and a lot of technically elegant solutions do just the opposite. Elegance is good, but no guarantee of profitability.

In our business you’ll often hear consultants saying things to the effect that they like companies that take shortcuts, don’t know how to index and maintain, etc. Usually with a certain amount of sarcasm and glee. Yet, as a business guy, if I’m at the point where it costs me a week or two of high dollar time to fix it, it means I’m winning, and about to win more when the ‘expert’ lends me his expertise for a few days.

Thinking I may still need one more try at this one.