221–230 of 347 posts
This is classic military when presenting anything to an officer for review. I've definitely read references of it going back to WWII (intentional, obvious oil smudge on otherwise pristine rifle). It was frequently stated that no officer could leave a document unedited after review, so an obvious misspelling or two would be added. It's a way of life on the military, really.
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I think there is a more likely, albeight sadder explanation. Steve was simply able to read the faces of the team and correctly guess that they didn't comply. As a compliance professional he was very sensitive to that and immediately reacted.
Or, a more likely and less idiotically cynical explanation is that a man famous for having vision, aesthetic sense and incessant drive for excellence that enabled him to completely revolutionize multiple technology industries ACTUALLY had vision and a sense of aesthetics.
I've heard of (but never tried) a similar thing done when showing design concepts to a client. Usually several variations are prepared, and if you're any good they will all be viable options. When presenting to a client they will normally want to try and critique something regardless of how good the designs actually are. The story goes that you are supposed to make an obvious mistake, like a spelling error, on purpos…
The variation on this that I'm familiar with relies on our perception of three as a magic number for choices: two options doesn't feel like a real choice, four feels like too many choices, but three is perfect. So when you're presenting design concepts, you show three: the one you want the client to pick, another that's very similar to the one you want the client to pick but with some obvious glitch in it, and a thir…
I'm reminded of a blog post by an old govvie that hated this approach. His argument was that every time we work around a problem in our process, whether it was a bad system or an incompetent co-worker or manager, we became the problem. Every time we added a duck or built a workaround we were building frameworks that would hold a bad policy in place for longer than if we just stopped and said "that's stupid". Adding t…
This is sort of related to the story about Van Halen's concert contract that required a bowl of M&Ms in the dressing room with all brown M&Ms removed. [1]
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This is what happens to me too. I feel bad for the wasted cold cuts. So I'll give them two tries, one attempt and one adjustment, next time I'll wait for the person who does it better.
> I feel bad for the wasted cold cuts. I've recently started hunting to get my meat, and I seem to be really sensitive to this kind of terminology lately. You feel bad for the wasted animal that was killed .
This is also great parenting advice. Give your kid the feeling of having chosen to eat their vegetables, and they'll devour an entire plate of them.
Can you please elaborate a bit more?
We're careful to emphasize the sanctity of personal choice wherever we can, and to encourage her to make her own decisions based on an evaluation of her options (really, we're fine with her picking any of the menu options we give her; if she picks a gross combination it's hers to eat, not ours). The important thing seems to be that once she makes a decision, she becomes invested in it and is much more likely to see it through.
I probably shouldn't discount the preparation aspect, however. She eats much more of her lunch when she helps to prepare it (and thus knows what to expect when she opens it at school). Similarly, we have a countdown for bed ('bedtime in t-5 minutes! Bedtime in t-2 minutes!') that makes the transition to nighttime more or less painless.
My company just doesn't have product or project managers and it's wonderful. Fewer meetings, no intermediaries, more agility. It could only work in practice, it could never work in theory.
As someone who is responsible for 10-15 concurrent IT projects across numerous teams, many of whom I don't manage, this sounds terrible. I think the "no PMO' approach may work for homogenous groups whose focus is one project, but for a large organization, effective project management is a must.
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This is what happens to me too. I feel bad for the wasted cold cuts. So I'll give them two tries, one attempt and one adjustment, next time I'll wait for the person who does it better.
> I feel bad for the wasted cold cuts. I've recently started hunting to get my meat, and I seem to be really sensitive to this kind of terminology lately. You feel bad for the wasted animal that was killed .
You can call it by some strange name, but I don't call bread "wheat that was harvested" or pie some outrageously long list of ingredients.
I understand your sentiment, particularly in the context of waste. Honestly I think you're probably not correct, anyhow--I imagine GP feeling roughly just as bad if the waste was a non-animal food product. If I were speaking for myself, I can say that I would.
I just want to point out that yes, the rook eats the queen, but at some point, some piece has its manhood removed in a most grisly fashion. Surprised the PM didn't have any feedback on that bit.