Principles

With the Presidential campaign season in full swing, I feel obligated to comment on a subject I feel many of our national politicians lack- principle. A principle is a law or rule that has to be followed. A man (or woman) must have firm, unchanging principles which he believes at his very core. This is the problem I see with so many of our elected leaders whose opinions seem to ebb and flow with the public opinion. I’m not talking about any specific politician, though this could easily devolve into a partisan pissing contest, but more the politician in general. They seem to lack principle.

Perhaps my opinion is the effect of the 24 hour news cycle, of being constantly plugged in and bombarded with news from all angles- email, Facebook, twitter, cable. You can’t go far without finding someone’s opinion being blasted in your face, usually at a high volume. But underneath all of the bloviating, I rarely get the sense that someone is politicking for the good of the American People. More often, they are out to win, to make the other side look bad and to lord their superior opinions over their opponents. When did it get this way? When did calm discourse and working to find common ground become a relic of the past?

I long for someone with principles and the ability to move beyond party lines to accomplish what those principles stand for. I don’t necessarily have to agree with someone’s ideals to be able to find benefit in their point of view. Too often politics is a win at all cost, loser goes home with nothing game. It’s not a game. It’s our livelihoods. Our tax dollars. Our health care. Our economy. It’s not a set of talking points, and for once I’d like to see someone stand up there and take responsibilty without doling out the blame and pointing fingers. I’m just so tired of “politics as usual.”

Which brings me back to principles. Principles are the foundation on which all other things can be built. A politician with shifting principles, shifting loyalties will never be able to build something great when his foundation is constantly shifting based on the prevailing winds. Someone who stands firm in his beliefs, whatever they may be, will gain the hearts and minds of the people who are so desparate for something of substance.

SOPA/PIPA and the Wikipedia Blackout

If you’ve been on any social network, read or listened to the news or tried to access Wikipedia today, you’ve probably noticed that there is a massive push to raise awareness and fight support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). I hope this is something you support. It is federal legislation that will could well open individual owners of websites (like aaronbushell.com) to liability should someone post copyrighted content on the site. My website could be shut down without due process. I could be fined or jailed as someone who supports copyright infringement. THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

If you go to any Wikipedia page today, you will see that they are forwarding all pages to their SOPA informational page. You can put your zip code in to get the contact information for your elected representatives. I highly recommend you contact them to voice your opposition to SOPA.

The Secret: What Great Leaders Know & Do

Originally posted 3/22/11.

I am currently reading Ken Blanchard’s book “The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do.”  It is a typical Blanchard book- long on idealism and easy solutions to complex problems, and short on overcoming obstacles and actual, real world situations.  I find Blanchard’s books to be almost fairy-tales in their setup, execution and swift, wrap-everything-up-in-a-bow mentality.  That is not to say Blanchard’s books are not valuable, far from it.  I wish more managers would take the time to read about becoming better managers.  In my fifteen years as an employee, I have had one manager who was truly great at developing people.  She was the first manager I ever had in the professional world and I modeled myself after her example.  She was also a disciple of these kinds of management books- we had FISH (another Blanchard staple) all over the walls of the employee break room and our daily and monthly meetings often revolved around team-building and setting goals.

Since leaving banking three years ago and moving into manufacturing, I have found there are fewer managers who I would consider great.  In fact, most have been downright average.  None have been bad managers by any stretch, but there have been few who were in any way inspiring to their employees.  Most of them come in, put in their 8-10 hours a day and go home.  They run around, put out fires and sit through meetings, but do nothing to help develop their employees or strengthen the team they are in charge of.  It is disappointing, really, to see so much human potential put to waste.

In my previous blog post, I talked about finding purpose in your job.  Too many managers don’t see the purpose in their jobs.  Their purpose is to inspire and lead their employees!  To help them achieve their goals and dreams.  Every single employee who comes to work has hopes and dreams.  They have goals and aspirations.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be coming into work every day.  It doesn’t matter if someone’s goal is to become CEO or make enough money to quit their job, it is the manager’s job to help them realize and work towards those goals.  How many people can say their manager has taken five minutes to talk to them about their goals and aspirations in the last month?  You’re probably nodding your head sadly because your manager hasn’t asked you about your goals since your last annual review.  And that is an absolute shame.

The War For Talent

Originally posted 3/19/2011.

I read this morning an article called “The War For Talent” discussing how difficult hiring has become for computer developers out in Silicone Valley, NYC and other tech hotspots around the country.  It is getting difficult enough to find and hire the best talent that companies have gone as far as twittering pictures of what a new developer gets on their first day on the job.  Here is one example:

This is the “new developer” setup at Tasty Labs, a social media company best known for it’s founder, Joshua Schachter, who founded Delicious before selling it to Yahoo and pocketing a cool $15 million.  I looked at that setup and immediately realized how completely forward Tasty was being with it’s workers, and how well it knew them that it had these thing set up for “Day One.”

First, the Macbook Air and 27” external display- the epitome of “cool” in those circles shows the potential programmer that the company is willing to spend on it’s employees and wants them to have the best hardware to do their work on.  The wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and iPhone all add to the enticing package, making potential employees drool over the “cool” factor alongside the “fun” factor that must be involved with a company who chooses all Apple products for it’s new employees.  I did the math, this setup probably costs around $2500 and as much as $3500 (depending on the options chosen) for each new employee the company hires.  For comparison’s sake, I did the math on the setup I received as a part of my first day on the job: Dell Optiplex 380 desktop and monitor: $325.  Desk phone from 1980 (I’m not kidding): It couldn’t have cost more than $10.  That’s pretty much it.

Now, I would like to consider myself a pretty valuable employee.  I show up early and work late, I am at the top of my group when it comes to productivity, development of the business, customer service and leadership, and still after 3 and a half years, I am relegated to hand-me-down hardware that was new in 2007 and a telephone that might as well have a rotary dial.  You might think that I am jealous (a little bit) or angry at my current employer (not at all).  The reason for this is that I love my job because it gives me purpose.

Yes, I am bringing it back to purpose again.  All the cool gadgets in the world cannot replace a sense of purpose in your career, and this will make the difference between a tech company who can attract and retain the best talent, and one who is constantly throwing the latest and greatest gadgets at their employees to get them to stay.

BTW, I am not saying that Tasty does not give it’s employees a sense of purpose, I don’t know, I don’t work there nor know anyone who does.

But I do know that what I do matters.  Every time I see an airplane take off from the airport near work, I know that I helped build something on it.  Maybe not that particular airplane (I have only been doing this for three years), but for at least some airplanes, I have helped to build through the parts that I have purchased.  This is an amazing thing to consider, when you know that every day there are 87,000 airplanes in the sky (30,000 commercial flights) and those flights are carrying people, packages, freight, and many other things to their destinations.  None of that would be possible without the airplane parts that I purchased.  It is an incredibly fulfilling feeling to know that.

It is so easy to get bogged down in the minutiae of your job or your place of work- the office politics, the heavy workload, the long days with little appreciation; that it is easy to lose sight of the big picture.  We build airplanes that take people to their destinations.  We build freighter airplanes that take thousands of pounds of freight to its destinations.  The iPad 2 that I received this week made it’s way to me from Hong Kong in a Fed Ex 777 Freighter that someone doing exactly what I do every day helped to build.  That sort of thinking is what brings it home.  Purpose.  It is up to you find it, but I assure you, it is there.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Red Swingline Stapler sitting on the developer’s desk.  Now THAT is the epitome of cool.  Frankly, I think everyone at my company should get a red Swingline.  It would bring that little wink and understanding nod to the everyday work that is so often sorely lacking.  It would say “Don’t take things too seriously.”  That’s a message worth sharing.