I've been trying to write all day. Two starts on what could become two posts are now filed away. Now I'm here at the computer and we'll see who wins. Win? Well, this debate has been going on in my head all day about something I felt passionate enough about to write about. I thought this was going to be about Julie, or it could be what it looks like being in my head. The second has lots of possibilities. But I will not know who is going to win for perhaps another hour. I'll just sit here writing and one of the stories will pop out nearly grown. No penalty for losing first place for publication. They'll keep coming out until they don't. I will go back and edit this beginning so it doesn't clash. The continuity thing. I'll invent stuff to tie the start and middle closer together.
Question: Is it better to stop and correct the finger mistakes at the time or roar along and catch them later? Answer: It depends. I usually correct things pretty quickly, which gives me an opportunity to take anything really clashing that's not supposed to be there, well, out. The truly obvious. On the other times, sometimes when I'm really typing so much slower than I'm thinking, I rush ahead, chase the idea to it's roots, typo's flying left and right. Then I go back and weed through the section again, correcting the finger fuckups, that's what they are 'cause I'm a very good speller. Sometime later, when one of the ideas has dominated, I'll start editing. Cutting and adding sections. Putting in the stuff I thought about later. Stuff that belongs here. Because this is the story. This is the story of what goes on in my head. Well, one of the ways it can be when I'm writing.
Stuff pops out and I write about it. But it's stuff that's been in there a long time. This is worked-on stuff. And sometimes not. Some of it just gets made up in the moment, improvisation with the words themselves. I don't mean "worked on" like the sentences just fly out word for word. But it feels like the pot is consistent enough to stand unaided. Well, deep enough. Deep enough to write out a non-trivial idea.
Anyway, this is a characteristic behavior pattern. My first answer is rarely the best. I do not talk precisely enough to satisfy some people, this is a huge clue. The depth of the ideas, like yours I'm sure, get better after a while. Usually I'll tell you that I've thought more about whatever.
Oh, now maybe this is the root idea. No, I mean the next one. I've noticed that it takes about a year to decide if someone is going to really work out in a new job. We're all on the same scale, but it's a scale in n dimensions. There are no tens, as Ken Cleveland used to say to me. (Yes, the Bo Derek movie.) Everyone has flaws, blind spots,
You do the best you can up front in hiring, but some people don't make it for reasons you were not aware of. I did an even worse thing, I hired a guy who failed a question when I interviewed him. Well, I didn't veto the hiring as I should have. It was a really fundamental technical question in our mutual area of expertise. He bullshitted me. I knew it Turns out the question was directly related to why he didn't get through his first crisis. He froze up. I thought, shit, a guy with a photographic memory. Someone who has moved along remembering all the rules but never learned to think things through. Probably he's learned how to think things through a long time ago and learned well. But he didn't have it then and I had spotted that during the initial interview and took no action. I figured it was an outlier, but even at the time it bothered me. He seemed really smart - knew a lot of stuff. He seemed to know how to think.
So one of the things you do in that first year is to get to see obvious holes in ability or skills that were not apparent earlier. A good manager looks hard for the holes and skills in everyone. If someone appears perfect to you, you have missed something so keep looking. Knowing people have weaknesses is one of life's lessons. Some people can hide for a long time, but usually you see it in the first year or much rarely after that. There is nothing wrong with having a part of you that does not work quite as well as others. You specialize in some things. You are really good at some things, and you pretty much suck at some things. But a good team or a good manager will make sure you work with someone good at that stuff. You hire towards your weak side. You hire complements, not supplements. You already here. Hire someone smarter that you. Strangely, it's a pretty rare risk for your own career. You did good by spotting the talent. We're all doing better because you recognized a weakness and compensated for it. So that's the whole thing with hiring. Get the best damn person you can find after a reasonable search or trial run.
I've hired people I knew weren't quite good enough. Got really burned in reputation for a while early on. Of course, hiring is such an inexact art and everyone will fail eventually. No one always hires or marries the right person. You get caught in new places. Good people appear solid or solid is the illusion.
So I had this BRILLIANT idea of writing about the weakness stuff, MY OWN STUFF, I'm working on. You will not be happy until you learn it anyway. So I might as well save us a lot of time and get it out there. Here is where I'm not happy with me in a business sense. Everyone is crazy at some level, but you probably will not encounter that area at work. So do I have a confessional weakness too? Forty years in business says NO. I'm just getting smarter. More connections between neurons or whatnot. Imagine if you could get two ends of the resume scale for everyone? What I'm good at and where you'd better have my back. Wow, so much less stuff to work through when you work together. Could be one or two missing, and we can always invent new ways to screw up. Given the negative consequences, however, people would much rather do the correct thing. Once you know what it is, a weakness is not hard to spot. Your friends, family and co-workers figure out as much as they have to to work with you.
So, why not get your own weaknesses out there? What am I, whatever looks out of David Sheriff's eyes, what are my weaknesses? Last place I hired on I just sent an email to the guy that I work with listing a few physical issues I deal with, Now don't get scared, I'm not going to get all icky on you. I propose to do even better. Get it ALL out there. Where do you need to make sure someone backstops me?
This is such an eminently rational way to apply for a job, list your weaknesses. Well, we covered the answer thing earlier. Unless we are both pretty sure, wait before acting on something I say before I have thought much about it. I can readily identify where those places are. I can rank the quality of my ideas. When I come across a new area I don't know enough about, I will generally say so and qualify the opinion.
Then, and this is the initial image that got this whole piece started. The problem sinks back from the present. Like a ruminant's cud, the problem situation keeps coming up at random moments. Well, that's not actually how I thought of it. I thought about where the ideas went to get processed and Eureka! answers occur to me. And do all of the ideas get thought about at the same time or do they time share the processor? I decided they mostly just get all slopped around at the same time. Whatever process it is that constitutes thinking in the background goes all the time and in parallel, far as I can tell. I will intentionally revisit areas that don't feel right yet. Lots of stuff goes on in the background. When I'm asleep, whenever. I can tell things are interesting in my life because I stop listening to music in the car for long stretches.
My consciousness is like a spider picking it's way through my thoughts. I just notice what pops up ripe. Some stuff needs more time in the kettle, some stuff is urgent and you do the best you can. Ken Cleveland taught me to think about plan b and whatever. If things go to shit at least you have thought about it and you will do a better job handling things. That's your job, to explore several moves ahead if you can. Like chess in infinite dimensions. You don't sometimes get very far in the plan you need now, but it's better than getting cold-cocked.
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