Blog

Wednesday, 9.09pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. – Rumi

Management has to be one of the most pointless activities out there.

Who would willingly become a manager?

Become someone who has to watch others doing work and try and get the best out of them?

After all, managing oneself is hard enough without being responsible for other people.

One of the worst ideas in management is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Think of something – anything that is good in the world.

How many of them were “managed” into existence?

Trees? Animals? Your family? Art? Books? Jeans?

A seed doesn’t need to be managed into existence.

You don’t need to measure and report key performance indicators.

Given the right conditions it just grows.

Wouldn’t you rather find the right person that wants to do work you need to get done and let them get on with doing a good job?

Wouldn’t that be preferable to managing them?

Thinking of life or business like gardening rather than managing may be a good idea.

Your job becomes one of planting seeds and nurturing them, protecting them and letting them grow.

Or, if you’re trying to change, your job is to find the right seed – the right behaviour, approach or strategy that will make a difference.

Then you need to make it ridiculously easy to do – you need to think small.

Big things are too big to keep in your head – too big to fight.

It’s too easy to give up when you have a big challenge.

Like running a marathon when you haven’t jogged in twenty years.

You need to start with something smaller – like walking every day.

And when you change you’re going to fail or not see results as fast as you want.

You could say, “I’ve been training for two weeks but I’m not getting any faster.”

Using the word but stops you in your tracks.

There’s nowhere to go from there.

Or you could say, “I’ve been training for two weeks and I’m not getting any faster.”

Using the word “and” seems unfinished. It feels like the word “yet” is missing from the end of that sentence.

You aren’t faster yet.

But you will be.

As long as you keep showing up.

Thinking is hard work – if you want to change something you have to make it automatic, something you do without thinking.

And the easiest way to do that is put it on a schedule.

If you want to get fit, get your exercise times in the diary.

If you want to create art or write – set time aside every day to do it whether you feel like it or not.

Deadlines are just pressure – they don’t help.

Showing up is what matters.

And then, if you’re trying to change something there is always the risk of sliding back to your old ways.

And it’s easy to do this when you come across an old trigger – something that prompts you to do what you used to do.

For example, if you go shopping hungry you know you’re going to buy some chocolate.

So, watch out – and avoid being in that situation.

Then there are bright line rules – things that are very clear, where there is a yes or no answer.

These are good.

The classic here is dry January – where people decide not to drink all month after the merriment of the month before.

It might not last – but it’s a pretty clear rule.

The thing with change is it’s hard – really hard.

And there isn’t a way to do it without some pain and effort.

But there are ways to make it easier to change something – whether it’s a habit or a process.

But to make it last you need to do it in a way so it doesn’t need ongoing management – so it manages itself.

Because anything that needs to be managed will stop working as soon as that manager stops paying attention.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wrong turns are as important as right turns. More important, sometimes. – Richard Bach

You should never ask someone what they want.

It’s a question you shouldn’t even ask yourself.

Why, you ask?

There are three reasons, wrote Watts S. Humphrey in one of his essays:

First, people find it hard to visualise a solution to their problems, especially if they aren’t professionals in building those kinds of solutions.

Second, they often know how to do their job but not why. So, all they can show you are their existing, often manual, ways of working.

And third, if you do have a solution it could change everything about how they work and mean thinking again about what problem they have.

That’s why most approaches that focus on problem solving end up solving the wrong problem.

It takes multiple attempts to get to something that actually works for you.

As a professional, you come at things from a different point of view.

You’ve seen people experience problems that you’ve solved before, so you know what they need – a very different thing from trying to make what they want.

But that only works when you’ve been there and done it before.

When its something new you’re at the same place as everyone else.

And that’s a place filled with insecurity and angst.

Angst because, if you’re like most people, you worry that this time you won’t succeed – you won’t get it right.

And that’s ok – it’s just something that you have to get past.

But you can only do that if you have a way – a strategy ready for when that happens.

One approach that has had almost no traction is called Literate Programming.

It’s not the easiest thing to explain – but in essence its inventor, the legendary Donald Knuth, said you should first think about what you’re trying to do in plain language and then express it in code.

From that point the whole concept starts going downhill rapidly.

In an attempt to avoid that particular section of slippery slope we should talk about bread.

How would you make a mechanical breadmaker?

You might start by learning how to make bread.

The first time I tried doing that, we were in Italy and I was bored, and making bread seemed like a good idea.

So, I had a go.

It was a fairly angst inducing experience, given that I was guessing that flour and water was involved and had no books or Internet.

I’d forgotten about yeast and a few other ingredients, and the resulting block in the oven felt and tasted like a house brick.

So, I did some research, got a little focused and ended up with an edible loaf.

And it seems to me that any creative endeavour and, let’s face it, everything we do can be creative, needs an approach that lets us explore problems rather than trying to solve them.

If you’re writing a book or a program it makes sense to start by thinking and writing about your hopes and fears and expectations of what the thing will do.

Then you can come back and refine your thoughts, focus your attention and come up with a plan.

The book or program should then almost write itself – the result emerging from the cocoon of thought you’ve built up around it.

It feels sometimes that people are too eager to get to the end – without checking if the end they get to is the one they need to reach.

A little thinking might help – but it’s hard work.

Mainly because we need to admit that we’re unsure and need to look around, ask questions and experience things before coming up with a solution.

But if we do that maybe the result we get will be the one we need.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Sunday, 8.45pm

Sheffield, U.K.

I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it. – Clint Eastwood

I came across a piece of writing by a writer that I hadn’t read for a number of years titled Why Every Business Is A Software Business.

That writer was Watts S. Humphrey, who died in 2010, and was called The father of software quality,

I read his book on the Personal Software Process when on a work placement during my degree and the ideas in there stuck with me.

In particular the concept that you could catch more bugs by reading your code before trying to run it.

But in other ways his approach was hard to use.

But before we get to that it’s interesting to look at the idea of all businesses being software businesses and why that creates new problems as well.

The first thing is that everyone uses software to some extent.

Increasingly the thing that sets you apart is how you use the software you have.

Two companies, for example, could have Microsoft Excel but use them in very different ways.

What you’re trying to do is be unique in some way – be the only fish in your pond rather than a small one in a crowded one.

But that unique thing comes from having an asset – an oil well, a gold mine or, increasingly, software.

But what if you can’t develop that yourself – you haven’t got the skills or the team you need?

Should you outsource your requirements?

Humphrey argues that you shouldn’t – because you’ll lose control of what makes you unique – you hand your future over to someone else.

And that’s something that I’ve seen happen in a number of cases.

And that’s also what stops many people from investing in software – the fear that they’ll lose control over the core bit of their business – the thing that makes them unique in the first place.

Now, if you have money the answer is to hire someone and keep at the problem until you have something that works.

It may be rubbish to start with but eventually you’ll have something that works for you and maybe even something that you can sell to others.

So one of the issues to deal with is control.

The big thing for Humphrey, however, was quality.

And quality, in his view, was something that came from measurements and statistics and studying how you were doing.

And this is where I have some difficulty.

And that’s because while the output from software development might be lines of code the question for us is which lines matter.

We know that the more we write the more mistakes we make.

So it makes sense to write programs that are as short as possible.

Which means choosing higher level languages and writing programs that create programs – removing the possibility of error.

There’s also all that work that goes into intellectual effort – the angst, the self-doubt, the stuff that we might not want to measure precisely.

Plus measuring everything is very boring.

Maybe it needs automating.

None of that, of course, invalidates Humphrey’s views on how to create software – it’s just that making it too mechanistic doesn’t work for me.

But the control point has a very simple answer.

If you can write your own software then you’re in control anyway.

If you can’t and need to hire someone and you have the money then you’re fine as well.

But for all the people out there who need applications developing but can’t afford to get it wrong they should ask and developers should offer open source solutions.

That way, I pay you to write code and if we decide not to work together I can still take that code and develop it further.

Even better, if you can take something that’s already open sourced and use it you reduce risk even more.

It may seem paradoxical but in today’s world the way to be in control may come from being completely open.

Which seems contradictory – how can you be unique when everyone has access to what you have?

But thinking that way may be to confuse being unique and being in control.

When you’re in control the customer has to work with you because you control their future.

When you’re unique the customer wants to work with you because of who you are.

Because they can see a future where you two work together.

And that seems a nicer way to be.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 9.44pm

Sheffield, U.K.

The thing that makes the thing is more interesting than the thing. – Casey Reas

I’ve been reminded today just why I dislike Microsoft tools quite so much.

I was trying to make something quite dry more interesting.

Let’s see what you think.

Say you want to buy something – oil, gold, bitcoin, shares – you’ll probably want to know what the prospects are for that thing.

So, you’ll look at its price history – that’s the blue line.

That tells you that prices sometimes go up and sometimes they go down – and most people stop there.

But you could, if you were so inclined, work out what prices could do after a particular day if they carried on acting the way they had so far.

What’s the high case and what’s the low case – within a certain level of confidence, of course, say 95%.

Still with me?

Now when the price actually starts moving past the day on which you did your analysis you could spot the point at which prices went below what was a normal range – suggesting that perhaps you should jump into the market and buy some of that thing.

Or not if it went the other way.

Anyway, like I said, not the most interesting thing in the world – forecasting financial time series.

So – perhaps animating this would make it more interesting.

After a couple of hours on Powerpoint – I was starting to regret the whole idea.

The problem is that most of the world runs on Microsoft tools – and while they help lots of people get things done they’re just not interesting.

What they give you is a pencil – but not a good one.

The kind of pencil you get in kids’ birthday bags, all colourful and smiley but with a harsh and gritty line.

But they’re cheap and so everyone gets one and gets on with using it.

And that’s what happens – millions of people using Excel and Powerpoint in business – and that’s just the way it is.

And if you want to fit in you need to do that as well.

It’s the lowest common denominator problem – the thing that unites everyone but it’s also not where excellence or greatness or anything interesting happens to be.

For that you need to look elsewhere.

Which led me to the work of Ben Fry and Casey Reas who have created a language for drawing things.

Things much cooler than a line chart.

Like simulating flocking, something quite interesting when you think about how complex behaviour emerges from simple rules.

There’s no real point in asking why we don’t use tools like this in the workplace.

It’s because there is a learning curve – and even small learning curves can stop things being used.

And that’s why so much effort goes into making things simple to use.

The fact is that Excel and Powerpoint and Apple rule because they make things simple to do.

And sometimes you can even do complex things.

But we’re also starting to see the emergence of a new art form – one that’s moving away from the tyranny of the simple to something more interesting.

Take McKinsey’s Global Energy Perspective 2019, for example.

I look to McKinsey as the reference on using Powerpoint in business.

Their ideas on structure and communication through decks has permeated the consulting industry.

But they’re now moving to interactive charts and javascript and css.

And that’s engaging and interesting and dynamic.

The challenge for us in the world of work is trying to take the labour out of what we do, giving that to computers and spending our time being creative.

And we’re very fortunate to live in a world that has people working to share knowledge openly and make things more inclusive.

And taking that opportunity to learn and develop our skills is the only way we’ll escape that lowest common denominator trap.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 10.11pm

Sheffield, U.K.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. – Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

How many software programmers are there in the world today?

In 2019 – maybe around 26 million or so.

A post – I think on LinkedIn – suggested that was a small number.

It’s a small group of people that build and control a lot of the stuff that we depend on these days.

But all that stuff must be making our lives better, right?

Right?

One of the things you see is that people spend a lot of time solving the same problems again and again.

And that’s because there are lots of simple problems that need solving whenever you try and do something.

Take building an extension, for example.

You’ll need to manage a contact database, make calls, keep notes, follow up, put a project plan together, follow that plan, fill out paperwork, comply with health and safety rules and a whole lot of other things.

The chances are many people will manage with paper and notes.

Some will use a spreadsheet.

A few will use project management software.

There is an inverse relationship between complexity and the number of users here.

The more complex the tool the more complex the job has to be to justify learning and using it.

Now, one of the things about complexity is that it’s often a substitute for control.

Take Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software, for example.

The standard reason for using a CRM is so you can keep better records of what you’re doing with customers and so serve them better.

The real reason you use a CRM is so you can keep an eye on what your employees are doing.

Or maybe that’s unfair.

You’re just tired of information being all over the place and a CRM looks like a way to bring everything into one place and manage it well.

How has that worked out for you?

If you’re the go-getting sales manager who believes in the power of CRM systems you’ll probably say it works great.

The chances are, however, it’s working because of you and your interest and sheer will power in getting everyone else to do things your way.

Left alone, things degenerate.

It’s the law of entropy.

If you didn’t check the CRM every day then pretty soon people start putting less in and it slowly goes out of date.

You’re probably wondering what the title of the post has to do with anything I’ve written so far.

Patience. It may make happen.

No promises, though.

There’s another line – I think from Clay Shirky – but I’m struggling to get the reference that says people who make encyclopedias have always known that trying to put structure around information is a thankless job.

The minute you try and create a form or a rule or a framework to hold information stuff starts to leak and get messy and not fit properly.

What you can do is make it easy to get information out and try to keep people honest with what information they put in.

So, the point is that software is not easy to use to make your business better.

And that’s because of this relationship between how hard the task is, how complex the software needs to be and how much control you want.

So that brings us to service businesses.

All businesses, some people say, are now service businesses.

I’m not sure how true that is.

There’s often a product hidden somewhere. As they say about social media, the reason that product is free is because the real product is not the software platform but you.

You’re the product and the thing they’re selling to others.

Service businesses, on the other hand, rely on people doing something.

Eric S. Raymond, an open source advocate, says that service firms can’t be made bigger by investing capital.

What happens is that money pays for people and stuff and makes fixed costs go up – and then they run out of money.

He says three models work:

1. Singing for your supper: tip money
2. A corner shop: stay small and keep overheads low
3. A wealthy patron: find someone to support you

Raymond’s argument is that people won’t fund software startups because as service businesses they won’t scale.

He predicts you’ll end up with better off workers but fewer businesses owned by investors who take most of the money.

So… people with more money but fewer super rich folks.

That doesn’t seem to be putting people off.

People are funding software businesses.

And some are going on to become very large.

Of course, many more fail.

The thing is these days we are offered a very large selection of hammers.

There are lots of tools that help us do simple things well.

Some help us do things we want but, like Apple, demand our freedom in exchange.

You want an Apple product – you need to sign up to their ecosystem which is increasingly dictatorial – it seems.

You’ll need more than hammers in your toolbox to solve complex problems.

And those tools – it sometimes seems – are hidden in plain sight.

Tools that can help us solve complex business problems – but they are hard to learn and the people that learn them don’t always work in businesses.

So, until they get their act together, much of our time is still going to be spent wishing we weren’t wasting time in the ways we do now.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh