#89-9/1/09-Keeping Your Job
Keeping Your Job
“The difference that makes the difference”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Hello everyone!
Last week I attended two very interesting and significant events.
In the morning I attended the commemoration of NASA Ames Research Center as an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Historical Site, honoring all the great work that has been accomplished at that world-renowned facility. Work in the areas of aeronautics, astronautics, computation, spacecraft and satellites, wind tunnel research, to name just a few of the technologies.
As the chair of the San Francisco Section of the AIAA, I was honored and pleased to have been invited to make a short presentation.
For those of you who don’t know much about the NASA Ames Research Center, it has been the pre-eminent NASA research facility on the west coast for many years.
NASA’s Ames Research Center has been in existence since the early 1940s and has been involved in wing deicing systems for early aircraft right through to modern-day spacecraft.
Ames was initially know for wind tunnel design and testing, flight testing, and supersonic and hypersonic aerodynamics. The center conducted pioneering research in rotorcraft and vertical flight aircraft. Then expanded into spacecraft engineering, supercomputing and information technology, air traffic control, thermal protection for re-entry vehicles (the Apollo ablative shield was developed there), astrobiology and space life sciences, and Earth and planetary sciences. Ames led the development of simulators for human factors research, and has made major improvements to air traffic management.
Even with this great history, several years ago, there was some question as to whether NASA Ames would remain open or be closed. Budget cuts were placing in question the future of the facility.
It was clear that NASA Ames needed to adapt. To not only bring in more technology but to be more than technology. The world had changed. New relationships had to be developed. New ways of doing business. As I like to say it, “a new way of moving through the world”.
With a plan for keeping the best of technology and people, coupled with a plan for changing their relationship with the outside world, several years ago, NASA Ames was told that it would not be closed.
One of it first assignments was to build a new building.
The building plans began to develop along a typical path. The building envisioned was a 20th century building. It was just another building.
Enter new leadership and management in the latter part of 2008 regarding the building. One of the first orders of business was to scrap the “first” new building plan. Management then challenged the team to come up with a building that was a 21st century building, one that was completely sustainable. One that didn’t use more energy than it produced. One that used geothermal energy sources; recycled all it’s water; and used the environment to cool and heat the building. One that was a net-zero energy building. A building that was the most sustainable government building in the United States.
Apollo 11
When the astronauts of Apollo 11 landed on the moon Neil Armstrong named the landing area Tranquility Base. The new sustainable building has been named “Sustainability Base”. The ground breaking event took place last week and when completed, this building will be the most energy efficient and most sustainable government building yet built. It will set the standard.
NASA Ames didn’t close; it didn’t lose it’s job. It kept it’s job.
NASA Ames not only didn’t have to close, but has become a reinvigorated organization that will set the standards for many sustainability technologies going forward.
A lot like people.
In a very significant way, NASA Ames is a lot like people. NASA Ames is a lot like engineers and technology managers and leaders.
We love our technology. When the world around us changes we think the best thing to do is to be “better” at our technology. But very often, the world wants something different from us. The world wanted something different from NASA Ames. The world didn’t want NASA Ames to abandon all of it’s technology. The world wanted it to add something it didn’t have to the technology it already had.
The same holds true for engineers and technical managers and leaders. Your organizations don’t want you to abandon your technology. They want you to add to it. And 99% of the time, what they want you to add is the ability to communicate effectively. They want you to be able to integrate yourself and your ideas into the ideas of the team.
They want you to be able to have a wide variety of conversations with a wide variety of constituents. Your communication skills, your management and leadership skills (which ultimately also boil down to communication) can be the determining factor as to whether you get laid off or keep your job.
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2009 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 09/01 at 10:15 PM (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
#88-8/17/09-Un-Conferences Can Be…
Un-Conferences
“What is an Un-Conference and can it help?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, August 17, 2009
Hello everyone!
The Un-Conference
This weekend I had the opportunity to attend an “un-conference” for freelancers. While I am not a freelancer, I thought it would be interesting to attend an un-conference and see how they work. For those of you who have not attended an “un-conference”, they work this way.
A group of people arrive at an event. (In this case we arrived between 8 AM and 9 AM.) The leader(s) introduced the day and the general, overarching topic for the day. In this case the un-conference topic was “Ideas to help people who freelance”. The event was titled “Freelance Bootcamp”.
The event leaders then passed around blank tablets of paper and people wrote a topic they were either interested in learning more about or a topic they believed they were qualified to teach others about, and they signed their name on the paper.
All these papers/topical ideas were gathered and the leader then read each topic out loud. Participants, by a show of hands, indicated their interest in that topic. If a topic had 10 or more interested people (out of 200+ participants), then it was selected as a topic. The originator of the topic indicated whether they wanted to teach the topic, moderate a discussion, or have someone else lead the session.
Each selected topic was scheduled for a duration of 1 hour. In a day lasting from approximately 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM with an a short lunch, about 5 hours can be devoted to sessions. If 8 separate locations/break-out rooms are allocated at the venue, then 40 different topical sessions can be presented. People can move around during a presentation period if they choose, but generally speaking, people will select a topic of interest and stay for the hour. We had 40 different session topics spread over 8 different locations. Therefore, a participant was able to attend and/or present 5 different sessions.
So there you have it. That is the structure of our un-conference.
The Un-Conference and the Internet
There was something about the un-conference that brought me back to the birth of the internet. Here is what I mean.
When the internet was gearing up to hit the big time, the general consensus was that the internet would allow people to share “expertise”. We would have access to “people who were experts” in specific disciplines and we would have more access to them than we had in the past because the internet would make that access easier.
Expertise would be much more available.
The Promise Not Realized
As most people have learned by now, the internet allows us to have more access to experts and also more access to mediocrity. And it is not always easy to tell the difference.
When searching the internet for expertise, it is up to the seeker to validate and verify the validity of the expert. People who really do not know what they are talking about can come across as an expert.
However, there are certain situations in which a person may not want expertise but the opinion of someone who is an average person with average competence on a subject.
For example in the case of restaurant reviews. We may not want the opinion of a professional food critic but rather that of an average patron.
The Un-Conference
Un-conferences function pretty much the same way.
Un-conferences allow us to have access to experts, if they are there, and also access to people who are not experts, and they will definitely be there.
Now I want to be clear. This was my first un-conference, so this is a sample of one. I want to compliment all the people who put it together. They worked very hard and they did a great job. By any account the un-conference was an overwhelming success.
However, and here is the caveat. It depends upon what one expects to get from an un-conference.
I could have taught many of the sessions that ultimately got selected. (Sorry if that sounds not-so-humble, but that is the way I see it.) Remember, I’ve been in this business for many years.
I decided not to facilitate any sessions except one. And I chose not to teach it but rather to facilitate it in order to bring out the level of expertise of the group members. My goal was to learn about un-conferences and the people in them.
The Expertise
The bottom line is that in this un-conference, the expertise rose to only a certain level. And there it stopped. And the expertise was at a relatively low level in comparison to what I was looking for.
So why am I bringing this out in my blog. Because there were two important take-aways from this event. I think they are generally self-evident, but they were definitely reinforced by attending this un-conference.
The first is that “expertise is really expertise”. You know it when you see it, hear it, and get it. You cannot expect people who are not experts in an area or are not experts in transmitting their knowledge to be able to teach others expert information.
For some people who were just starting out in the “freelance world”, probably much of the information they received was useful. It gave them a sense that they were not alone. It gave them an indication of some of the early hurdles that free-lancers face.
But those who had been in the business for a while, were not going to learn too much. They were more likely to run a session. But that did not necessarily guarantee that they were experts who could give “expert information” in an “expert way”.
Second, it is very difficult, bordering on impossible, to get anything really useful in 1 hour. People, especially the younger generations think that the world can be placed in bite-sized segments. “Just give me the nugget”. “The top 10 things....” And yet I met many people there who, it was clear, had been told the nuggets but had not implemented them.
The Conclusion
Un-conferences are good for networking and hearing what others are doing and not doing. This is important, especially if you are just starting out in a certain business, industry, or technology.
An un-conference will expose you to the first-level of information.
But “un-conferences” are not places for training, facilitation, and coaching. They are rarely places to find expertise that can be translated to others. They may not be places to find experts to tap later, either (remember this is a sample of one only).
They are great places where people can learn and hear what others are doing and find “contacts” that they can access, usually for a fee, at a later date to help them be more successful. These “contacts” may be experts or merely people who have been in the business longer which does not necessarily mean “expert”.
They are also places to find people who are just starting out in whatever endeavor they are undertaking.
My Next Step
I will definitely seek out another un-conference just to validate or refute my sample of one. And the next time I will facilitate more sessions. And I would urge anyone who wants to know what others are doing in a specific field to attend an un-conference. They can be fun. You probably will not find a high level of expertise there. But if it is, you will probably only get a taste of it and then you can exchange business cards and access it later.
The bottom line is, if you want high-level expertise seek out known experts.
Apologies to anyone at the un-conference I attended who might think I am dissing the un-conference. I am not. It was a good event, as far as it went. I believe it did the job it was intended to do. Not everything in life fulfills it’s purpose well. I am convinced that this Freelance Boot Camp un-conference did indeed fulfill it’s purpose well.
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2009 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 08/17 at 10:45 AM (3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
#87-3/10/09-Finding a Mentor and Coach
Finding a Mentor and Coach
“How to find the right mentor and coach”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Hello everyone!
This week I was interviewed by Dice (the IT job portal) for an upcoming on-line resource they are preparing to assist young IT professionals in advancing their careers. I was asked what my three top suggestions were for IT professionals who wanted to advance their IT career. We ended the interview on the topic of what makes a good coach or mentor.
The interview got me thinking about how to select a really good mentor and/or coach, whether inside your organization or outside.
I know my own coaches and mentors were extremely instrumental in helping me with my career. So I thought I would share with you some of my thoughts on what are the important qualities to look for when selecting a mentor or coach.
“Mentoring and Coaching IS What You Think!!”
There is a lot of discussion about the importance of mentoring and of coaching for engineers regarding their careers. Many want mentors and coaches to tell them “what to do”. It seems our world is filled with people who want to know “what to do” in order to be successful.
As engineers and technical managers, we often believe that if we just know what to do, we can do it and we will therefore be successful. Knowing what to do seems to be the key.
And yet… the world is filled with people who know a great deal about what to do and yet things don’t change.
Here are some examples.
How many people want to change something in their lives? How many want to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, save money… the list is almost endless.
And for those who want to know what to do in order to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, or save money, there are more books and more courses than one can read or attend in a life-time (primarily because there are more and more coming onto the market every day.)
But gaining knowledge about “what to do” does not seem to change behavior in many situations. People read books and attend workshops and nothing seems to change. They diet endlessly. They exercise for a while then keep paying their gym memberships but never attend. They stop smoking and then start again. They save, paying themselves first, while running up their credit cards.
In the final analysis, it seems that changing behavior is not just about “knowing what to do”. There seems to be more than one variable to this equation.
How do we change behavior?
The question then is how do we change behavior and how do we move our behavior toward that of a successful long-term engineering career or toward successful engineering management?
What are the important characteristics in a mentor or coach? And how does this relate to your career?
The answer to these questions is embedded in the “way you think”, or more precisely, the way you and your coach or mentor think.
Another way to say it is that it is in your way of “being”. And let me be clear, the way you think and the way of being are not the same as attitude. Attitude is the by-product of the way you think and your way of being. So someone telling you to change your attitude is putting the cart before the horse.
Think of it this way
Your way of being … leads to and produces ...
what you do … which leads to and produces ...
what you have.
Summarized it becomes: Being --> Doing --> Having
Most people focus on having. They think they want to have, have, have.
Some, especially we engineers and technical managers, think that knowing what to do is the key. But alas, doing is not the key either.
So what’s up?
The first step in the process is the most important step. And that step is accessing a state of Being that will produce the doing. It is the state of being that drives what we will do and the doing, in turn, leads us to what we will have.
If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 10, 2009 Ezine And once you are there look for the heading: So What’s Up? to pick up where you left off.
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2009 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 03/10 at 06:06 PM (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
