Quote of the week: you think you're busy, try this!

Whenever I think I'm busy, and I have two or three deadlines coming up on the same day, I think about the Royal Navy's Perisher submarine course, which I first read about in Tom Clancy's book "Submarine":

Here the real test of the Perishers begins. Each group of trainees is taken aboard a Royal Navy submarine and begins to do visual approaches on a frigate charging at the submarine. Each trainee gets to do five runs a day for a period of several weeks. As the course progresses, more frigates are added, until the Perisher trainee has three of them simultaneously charging at his periscope. The idea is for him to safely operate the submarine, fire off a shot, and not get run over by one or more of the frigates. All the time that a Perisher student is at the conn of the sub, the teacher is evaluating the trainee's reactions and ability to maintain his awareness of the tactical situation.  

Good luck with your frigates today. (Want to read more about the Perisher course? Try here and here.)

Quote of the day: getting decisions made

From Melanie Nelson's TinyLetter, a very good set of thoughts about decision making: 

...To keep projects on track, you have to know how to get decisions made. That is something that sounds simple but can be quite tricky, because what "knowing how to get decisions made" really means is "knowing what the decision maker needs to make a decision." This is not always obvious, even when the decision maker is yourself. I eventually realized that I needed some expert advice to make this decision, and now I have it.  

Based on that advice, I know I need to do a little more information gathering. Then, I'll need to mull it over for awhile (preferably while walking) and then by some magical internal process, I'll have a decision I feel good about. This fits my usual decision making process, which is "gather all the information and advice and let it stew a bit until my brain works out what to do." I'd tried to skip the "get expert advice" and "gather information" steps, and all the mulling in the world wasn't going to get me a decision without doing those steps.

It's funny to watch veteran decision makers make their decisions, because they won't even consider making decisions without the facts that they deem necessary. 

Quote of the day: the calming influence of money

For some reason, this passage from Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" has always stuck with me, especially when dealing with customers: 

Hagen knew his manners. He did not speak, he did not smile. He waited on his boss, Don Corleone, with all the respect of a favorite earl waiting on his kind; bringing him a cold drink, lighting his cigar, positioning his ashtray; with respect but no obsequiousness.  

Hagen was the only one in that room who knew the identity of the portraits hanging on the dark paneled walls. They were mostly portraits of fabulous financial figures done in rich oils. One was of Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton. Hagen could not help thinking that Hamilton might have approved of his peace meeeting being held in a banking institution. Nothing was more calming, more conducive to pure reason, than the atmosphere of money.

I kinda think Hagen was kinda wrong, but it helps me a little during a teleconference... 

Quote of the day: "...the sugar sanded"

From Louisa May Alcott's Little Men:

Jack Ford's peculiar pastime was buying and selling; and he bid fair to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, a country merchant, who sold a little of everything thing and made money fast. Jack had seen the sugar sanded, the molasses watered, the butter mixed with lard, and things of that kind, and labored under the delusion that it was all a proper part of the business. 

I regret to say that I may have seen the sugar sanded now and again (not recently, of course.) 

Quote of the day (repost): why micromanagement is bad

From Lt. Gen. Gus Pagonis' book:

I never tell a subordinate how to carry out a specific goal. Dictating terms to a subordinate undermines innovation, decreases the subordinate’s willingness to take responsibility for his or her actions, increases the potential for suboptimization of resources, and increases the chances that the command will be dysfunctional if circumstances change dramatically. Our first month in the theater only underscored my sense that our team would have to be incredibly elastic.

I think about this quote a lot. (I first posted it in 2011.)

Quote of the day from Ike: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

A while back, I listened to biochemist-turned-consultant Melanie Nelson's "Getting More Done" seminar; she introduced the quote to me from President Dwight D. Eisenhower that "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." As an inveterate planner, that sentence has rolled around in my head until this morning, where I thought, "I wonder if that quote is accurate?" 

I am wildly happy to note that it indeed is accurate, and so I present to you President Eisenhower's speech* to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in November of 1957, with the key sentence: 

...Some years ago, there was a group in the staff college of which some of you may have heard, Leavenworth Staff College. This was before our entry into World War One, and in that course it was necessary to use a number of maps and the maps available to the course were of the Alsace-Lorraine area and the Champagne in France. But a group of "young Turks" came along who wanted to reform Leavenworth. They pointed out it was perfectly silly for the American Army to be using such maps which could after all be duplicated in other areas without too much cost--they would get some area maps where the American Army just might fight a battle. So they got, among other things, maps of the area of Leavenworth and of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and in succeeding years all the problems have been worked out on those maps. The point is, only about two years after that happened, we were fighting in Alsace-Lorraine and in the Champagne. 

I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of "emergency" is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning. 

So, the first thing you do is to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window and start once more. But if you haven't been planning you can't start to work, intelligently at least. 

That is the reason it is so important to plan, to keep yourselves steeped in the character of the problem that you may one day be called upon to solve--or to help to solve...

Good stuff.

*There is a wonderfully clear aspect to Ike's speech, something that seems to be lacking from modern speeches. Hard to say why there's a difference.  

Quote of the day: Robert Rogers on fibbing

From Major Robert Rogers' 20 standing orders:

4. Tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is an army depending on us for correct information. You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but don't never lie to a Ranger or officer.

Quite so.