It’s school holidays here in Sydney, and I’ve been lucky enough to take some time off in between projects to enjoy them with the family. While the weather hasn’t exactly screamed “Let’s go to the beach!“, it’s certainly been great for some of the drought-stricken state. It was on a rare gap between squalls that we snuck in a trip to Balmoral, and it was knee-deep in the moat of a glorious sand castle, when it struck me…. Continue reading Can you dig it?
Is it time for a good cry?
Have you ever cried at work?
I have – and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
It was back sometime in the very early 2000’s and I was at the end of an 81-day straight cycle. I don’t just mean 81 days with weekends off……I mean.
81.
Consecutive.
12+ hour days. Continue reading Is it time for a good cry?
Brett’s off sick today
I see a fellow digging holes. An earnest looking chap, he’s beavering away, dirt flying everywhere, his shovel moving at a tremendous pace.
I see a fellow following him, filling the holes in. Again, earnest chap, shovelling in the dirt his mate flung about, patting it down neatly and moving on to the next hole.
So I ask the two what they’re doing, interested in what’s motivating them to carry on this seemingly meaningless pursuit. Continue reading Brett’s off sick today
“Queen’s pawn to D-4”
Over these weeks and months, I’ve mentioned strategy, or strategic thinking, thinking 5 steps ahead, business being like chess, and not letting your ego cloud decisions at least a dozen times or more, but as I look back over the last 96 hours, I wonder if any of it is sinking in at all.
It’s too long and boring a story to explain the exact circumstances, but needless to say, had I spent more time thinking and planning, then I wouldn’t have been kicking myself the way I have been this morning.
“They said what??”
“It’s the bearings. Definitely the bearings. They didn’t do the maintenance checks on the bearings”
“Concrete cancer. Definitely concrete cancer. Probably not enough cover to the reo”
“It was the Mafia-supplied concrete. Had too much sand in it”
I’m talking about the recent partial bridge collapse (well, part of it collapsed entirely) in Genoa, Italy. I daren’t speculate as to the reason, or reasons, it collapsed, as I’m sure there’s a bunch of people, much smarter than I, who are busy trying to figure that out.
John who?
25 pages in: Haven’t yet unfurled a single sticky tab.
50 pages in: I’m concerned the mighty tome I hold in my hands isn’t going to offer the rich vein of insight and knowledge I had hoped for, and I’m beginning to doubt Ryan Holiday’s recommendation.*
100 pages in: Surely by now there’d be signs of the lessons I’d hoped to uncover? Perhaps they’re in the next Chapter….? I shall press on, because this is turning into something more that I had expected.
150 pages in: Can’t put it down. I’ve abandoned hope of uncovering any specific leadership lessons, but am engrossed by the story of this relatively unknown fighter pilot and his campaign against the US Armed Forces, with whom he served from 1944-1975.
200 pages in: My previous fears are unfounded. It appears I’ve unknowingly stumbled headlong inside the mind of one of the most influential military theorists since Sun Tzu and Von Clausewitz, and there are lessons galore.
It’s like The Matrix. There is no escape. I’m a believer.
I can sense John Boyd is smiling…
“Took you a while tiger, but you got here”
* note to self: never doubt Ryan’s book recommendations again.
I first heard of John Boyd while reading Ego is the Enemy. It contained a small piece about a US Air Force Colonel who is considered by some to be one of history’s most prolific military theorists, but remains firmly in the darkness when it comes to notoriety. In one of his recommended reading lists, Holiday pointed to a book on Boyd, noting it as “required reading“.
It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in the design and function of fighter jets (which I’m not), or the military or military theory (which I am). The lessons to be learned in the Robert Coram book Boyd: The fighter pilot who changed the art of war go far beyond his influence on aircraft design, and extends into an unwavering campaign of self-belief that spanned 15 years and took on the entire might of the US Air Force.
It is simply not practical to try and explain the history and detail contained within the book. Distilling the 504 pages into a short blog post would not do justice to Coram, the book, nor to Boyd himself for that matter – who was a stickler for detail.
So apart from recommending the book, and suggesting you buy it, here are the Top 5 things I learned from Boyd: The fighter pilot who changed the art of war:
Manoeuvrability – it isn’t just sheer thrust, or speed, or fire-power that meant success in the air. It was the ability of a plane, and pilot, to transition between manoeuvres, turning defense into attack, or attack into slaughter, or defense into retreat. His Energy-Manoeuvrability (E-M) Theory is still the foundational piece in many elite military, business and sporting programs, and suggests that your ability to adapt and re-adapt is crucial to not just survival, but sustained success both in warfare, business, and in life.
‘Are you Being or Doing?’ – Boyd is perhaps most famous within the US military for a speech he gave young pilots who faced a cross-road in their career. I won’t do it the disservice of paraphrasing it, so have provided an excerpt from the book directly. In true Boyd fashion, it needs no explanation.
The OODA Loop – Boyd spent years developing not only ways to better design fighter jets and methods of waging aerial warfare, but ways to understand how decisions are made, and the cycle within which they live.
Search for John Boyd on Google and you’ll inevitably come up with reference to the OODA Loop. Management theorists see it as his defining piece of work, and many have since written complicated and detailed thesis papers on it.
Fundamentally it looks to explain the process that a person consciously, or sub-consciously runs when making any decision, big or small. The above diagram is lifted directly from the book and while there’s an obvious mountain of potential explanation behind it, this distillation of a complex process that takes place within your brain is particularly elegant, and better left to you to digest the detail.
I believe the trick here is not to try and actively interfere with the process, but simply be aware that it exists, and that if it exists for you, then it likely exists for every other human you interact with. Understanding that everyone makes different observations, and based on those observations orients themselves differently, and then decides and acts in accordance with those differences, makes for a much less stressful work or home environment during conflicts.
Jocko Willink has a similar approach for those who like their leadership strategies in 6 words or less.
Thinking strategically – Boyd’s ability to out think, out manoeuvre and simply out play entire arms of the United States military, from the outset looks to be the work of The Prince himself. Again, you don’t have to subscribe to military might, or even agree with the way the US handles waging war to appreciate the way Boyd moved the chess pieces to play out what he thought, no, believed, to be simply more important than anything else. His vision of the outcome allowed him to position those pieces better than his opponents, and there were many, very powerful opponents. He understood that in life and business, as in chess, you need to be thinking not just of your next 5-steps, but of your opponents next 5-steps too.
You can’t do it alone – Boyd had his Fighter Mafia, his Reformers, his Acolytes – a core group of people that believed the same as he did, that, in their own differing ways, sacrificed individual glory and fanfare to do what they thought was right, what was necessary, to protect the lives of US fighting forces. They worked symbiotically, centred around Boyd, sure, but collectively they changed the way the entire US military fights both air and ground war campaigns in a post-WWII era.
So to summarise my summary….
When you’ve found something you believe in, and are dedicated to seeing it through, find a bunch of like-minded people, think ahead, assess the threats, and when faced with uncertainty, don’t be afraid to make a call, act and understand the entire thing is a cycle.
All that from a loud-talking, cigar-smoking fly boy self-proclaimed “Ghetto Colonel” who grew up rough, and was told he’d never amount to anything.
Seems like sound advice to me, and really, isn’t learning from the everyday what it’s all about?
Do you have something you believe in? Something you sacrifice glory for in order for it to be realised? Have you read the book? What did you think? So many questions, so many opportunities for you to answer them!
Leave a comment below, or find us on the Contact page.
What I learned from some plastic bricks
Today I was humbled by a kids toy. Well technically speaking, it was designated 14+ which means I was humbled by a toy for teenagers (or precocious 7-year olds).
Last Christmas I was given an 1,158-piece Lego kit. A charming Ferrari F40 in fact. It’s currently School Holidays in Australia, and in between bouts of sheer bewilderment as to how parents over the years have survived this terrifying period, I upended the enormous box of perfectly engineered pieces onto the floor and kicked off the build.
It started off reasonably easy, with the chassis and engine bay the first elements coming to life. It wasn’t until the body started to take shape that I realised simply how far away I am from being an actual Engineer.
Dramatic revelation for a Lego build, I know.
As the perfectly sculpted, 99.9999% consistent pieces fitted together into small chunks, and those small chunks fitted together into bigger chunks, and the bigger chunks evolved into an elegant feat of engineering magnificence, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat inadequate.
The way in which these little pieces came together was just astonishing. Now I’ve built a lot of Lego in my life. Like, a lot. I don’t however, recall having the eye-widening, brow lifting response to the thought, the intricacy, the engineering marvel that is the 1,158-piece F40 kit. Chunks were coming together to form graceful curved edges, out of straight bricks! Chunks that didn’t appear to have any rhyme or reason would effortlessly slot into sub-millimetre exactitude, forming delicate wheel arches and passenger foot-wells.
And here I was calling myself an Engineer.
Did I expect that when I left University I’d be neck deep in calculations, clutch pencils and reams of sophisticated looking computer outputs? No. I failed Engineering Computations in 1st year, and probably failed it again in the subsequent Summer School (I think I may have been awarded a Pass Conceded out of sympathy?).
No, I was never destined (smart enough) to be a design engineer, and I knew early on that my career would likely be in the people side of things; solving problems together, leading teams, delivering outcomes as a group.
Which as it turns out I really enjoy and appear to be OK at.
What it did show me though, is that as Project Managers in civil infrastructure, we underestimate, and I suspect, under-value the expertise, input and often brilliance of the designers in our industry. How often have you complained that a design drawing is poorly set out, or about how some element would be difficult (and in some cases, impractical) to construct, or any number of other apparent grievances? Honestly, for me, it must now tally to the hundreds, if not thousands.
How often though, have you marvelled at the fact that someone, somewhere, has coordinated the design of an entire structure, from function, to form, to reinforcement detail, to integration with any number of complex elements, and shown it all in a set of (mainly) easy to read drawings, and then gone to said designer congratulating them with a hearty “Well done!“? Honestly, for me, it must now tally a total of about 3. In 18 years of working construction.
Which makes it about 0.00045 times / day. Which is just not good enough.
Being a Designer must sometimes feel a lot like being in IT. How often do you ring IT and say “Hey there, all my systems are working fine. My email is good, my printer drivers are all up to date, I’ve remembered to change my password in the allocated time, and I just wanted to say Thanks!“?
Honestly for me, it must now tally a total of…..
We only ever ring to complain.
So the next time you see something that’s smart, or innovative, or just a job well done, tell someone. Tell anyone. Send them an email. Do something! Make an effort to find the person or team that designed it, or built it, or maintained it, or swept it up, or cooked it, or whatever’ed it, and tell them.
Covey wrote about it back in 1989 and nothing has changed.
“Satisfied needs do not motivate… Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival, to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.”
– Stephen Covey
Apart from the obvious, that thanking a person is just a nice, polite thing to do, there are 5 reasons why positive encouragement is important in the workplace:
- People want to feel important
- Encouragement reinforces the right things
- Encouragement inspires people in tough times
- Encouragement builds employee loyalty
- Encouragement is free, and gives huge returns
All that from some Lego. Now that’s a lesson in the every day. And isn’t that what it’s all about?
Have you thanked a designer lately? Have you thanked anyone today? Grab someone (politely) and tell them you appreciate them!
