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Door Boot
I write pretty much what comes to mind. If you read further into this post, you will discover (if you haven’t already) that because of this behavior pattern, I’m just a blathering idiot.
In high school (I think it actually started back in middle school), me and my superior clique of buddies used to squash words together to create a tribal language that we used to belittle other people and describe funky situations. It was sort of like speaking pigeon English or creating clever acronyms with vowels tucked within them. Some of our language constructs were subtle and hard to decode, especially the ones that collapsed M words into N words where N << M. My favorite of all time, and one of the rare ones that I couldn’t decode on my own was, “Door Boot”. I wish I created it.
Door Boot = “dick show-urr bathing suit”.
I think “door boot” came into existence before the “banana hammock” descriptor came into vogue.
We Don’t Want Yours
We want our group to be less conflict averse so that the best ideas can be forged within the crucible of debate and (sometimes) heated dialog. We also want passion from our people. As a matter of fact, we demand it of everyone in our group.
BUT!
We don’t approve of your over-the-top confrontational style and we don’t approve of the ways that you externalize your passion. Sadly, we don’t have any role models in our management ranks to lead the “conflict aversion reduction and passion elevation” initiative. Thus, we have no clue of how we want our people to initiate confrontation or express passion, but we’ll know it when we see it, of course.
WTF?
Recruitment
Surprisingly, in spite of my relentlessly continuous rants against a sea of CCHs, BMs, and STSJs as far as the eye can see, I’ve been contacted by a handful of recruiters probing into my availability for jumping ship. Either they don’t know this blog exists and they haven’t read any of my blasphemous blog posts, or they have read some of them and they still think I can help their clients make money. The former is most likely, but if it’s the latter, then I’m stunned and I hope their clients have the same 21st century mindset as they do.
Since I’m very happy where I am, I will only consider those proposals that satisfy the following requirements. Of course, they’re presented as a bland, linear, 1970’s list of “shalls”.
- The potential employer shall (R-1) offer me 2X my current 6 figure salary
- The potential employer shall (R-2) offer me an opportunity to work on a vast array of interesting new product developments or existing product enhancements. I reserve the right to decide what “interesting” means
- The potential employer shall (R-3) supply me with all the tools I need to do my job and allow me to work from home 90% of the time.
- The potential employer shall (R-4) pay all expenses for me to travel to and from the employer’s home base if the distance between my house and the home base is greater than 20 miles.
- The potential employer shall (R-5) entrust me with an unlimited training budget to allow me to continuously probe, sense, cut through the camouflage, and evaluate the applicability of new software technologies to the employer’s product portfolio.
- For the sole reason of getting people to listen more closely to what I have to say on matters within my scope of knowledge and expertise, the employer shall (R-6) endow me with some kind of BFT. More than one title would be preferable because it may be the tie-breaker amongst multiple, simultaneous employment offers.
What do you think? Outrageously arrogant and full of hubris? Reasonable and practical? Let me know if you think I should shit-can this post and hope that no internet archive crawlers get a hold of it. D’oh!
Howard, Me, And Polarization
I don’t have the athletic gifts to “be like Mike“, but I do have the right stuff to “be like Howard”, Howard Stern that is. Howie has made millions over the years by flawlessly executing the well known successful strategy of polarization employed by talking heads (O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Coulter, Franken, Ventura) everywhere. He’s an asshole to a lot of people, but he’s also a hero to a large group who pay dough to hear his potty mouth. I’m similar to Howie in that I’m a polarizing asshole to many, but I’m a hero to no one and there’s no one willing to pay for the verbal diarrhea that spews forth from my piehole. I would gladly take the millions if I had the chance, but I’m fine with where I am right now, in this moment. Unlike hundreds of millions of people, I have what I need and I need what I have.
Oh, I almost forgot. Merry Xmas to all and don’t forget to connect with your loved ones today.
Serial Misbehavers Anonymous
Hello everyone. My name is Tony DaSilva, and I’m a serial misbehaver. I repeatedly and relentlessly attack sacred cows in broad daylight and unsuccessfully attempt to discuss the undiscussables both in public (to their faces) and in private (behind their backs). As you all know yourselves, this behavior is extremely counterproductive and it inflicts a considerable amount of psychological pain upon all those people around me, including those who are multiple hops away from the local carnage.
In addition to slam dunking turds into everybody’s punch bowl, this nasty affliction results in a predictable boomerang effect that overflows my own punch bowl with retaliatory grumpies. Often, the next day’s hangover leads to emotional waves of guilt washing over me and intense feelings of isolation. Someone please be my sponsor and help me to STFU during the tough times when the beast within awakens and wants to possess my body and soul yet once again. D’oh!
“Tony’s behavior was explainable, but not excusable” – KW
Unforgettable
Like telling telling someone: “You’re the worst project manager I’ve ever worked for!“, being told “You can’t lead anything!” is pretty unforgettable. I was the transmitter of the former subjective sentence, and the receiver of the latter subjective sentence – by someone who thinks it’s objective, of course. As time ticks by, I’m glad that I’m becoming more and more comfortable accepting opinions that I don’t agree with, especially the infallible opinions of those in positions of authority.
Targeted Ire
What we need is more people to lose their temper in public. – Watts Wacker
When you’re dissatisified with a stagnant, risk averse, and status-quo-loving bureaucratic group, how do you blow off steam without alienating or intimidating those few people who help you do your job better and those people you are committed to helping do their jobs better? One approach, which doesn’t work but is incredibly hard to abandon , is “targeted ire“.
When I perceive smug, fat headed executives and managers (of all types) talking up a storm, sucking more out of the org than they put in, and doing nothing of substance to improve everyone’s performance, it’s hard for me to “act professionally” (lol!) and keep my freakin’ mouth shut. In the back of my tortured mind, I often hear a faint and fearful voice saying “STFU you idiot“. Sadly, I find it incredibly hard, if not impossible, to follow that advice. Besides the ever present “fear of excommunication“, I think the fact that I don’t aspire to become a self-important, meeting-loving, and game-playing corpocrat drives my self-destructive behavior. Bummer……. or not?
“Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.” – Benjamin Disraeli
So, how do you express your dissatisfaction with a stationary and fading organization when the world is crying out for movement and emergence? Do you do anything about it? Do you assume that you‘re powerless, ignore your passion, and force yourself to STFU? Do you put on “the mask of political correctness” such that your potentially sacred-cow-busting ideas and thoughts get obscured by all the sugar that you coat them with? Are you paralyzed by fear? What do you advise?
Dynamic “To Do” List
While making an iterative pass over the pages in my wiki space, I stumbled upon the goals for 2009 that I recorded on my “Dynamic To-Do List” Page:
- Increase my question to statement ratio.
- Don’t comment on stuff that I don’t know anything about!
- Don’t give unsolicited opinions as much; especially when I know it will piss off someone with a higher rank.
- Listen without immediately formulating refutations and alternative views: resist the urge to “auto-reject”. Listen to understand, not to criticize.
- Ask “How can I help?” more often, especially to younger folks.
Let’s Be Careful Out There!
Based on a recommendation from fellow whack-job W. L. Livingston, I’m currently trying to read “The Theory Of The Leisure Class” by Thorstein Veblen (cool name, eh?). Man, this guy’s a tough read. The vocabulary that Thor(?) uses and his huge paragraphs often cause my CPU to overheat and spew blue smoke, but the self-imposed intellectual torture is worth the pain.
I love exploring the ideas and thoughts of guys like Veblen because they are so far off the beaten path and mind stretching that they cause new, but previously unused synaptic sub-networks to be instantaneously created in my brain. For me, spiritual and intellectual growth is painful but inspiring. The acts of continuously trying to widen my horizons, destroying old and obsolete mental models, and exposing myself to the ideas of others makes me feel vibrantly alive.
When you consciously choose to explore and probe weird and non-standard ideas that go against the norm, you’ve got to watch out for yourself. Internalizing and then subsequently espousing your new learnings in public can be detrimental to your health. If people are really set in their ways and you don’t take their feelings into account, you could trigger the fight or flight response in them. In one-on-one exchanges, the blowback that you experience may not be so bad. However, publicizing your new thoughts in a meeting with a group of clanthinkers can cause you considerable external and internal damage.
“Let’s Be Careful Out There” – Sergeant Esterhaus
Some Of My Heroes
“We’re just two wild and crazy guys” – Yortuk and Georg Festrunk
Unlike the quote above, Joe Walsh’s “I’m just an ordinary average guy” fits me to a tee. In spite of this, I’d like to think that I’m open to new ideas and thinking. At the moment, here are some of my favorite, inspirational, weird, and forward looking (but pragmatic) thinkers:
- Seth Godin
- Hugh MacLeod
- Clay Shirky
- Chris Guillebeau
- Leo BaBauta
- Paul Graham
- Scott Berkun
- Tony Hseih
- Ricardo Semler
- Joel Spolsky
Check out what one or more of these whack jobs have to say if you’re yearning to explore and discover new opportunities that may crack the concrete in your brain and challenge your same-old, same-old mental models of the world. If you think there is an “edge” to my blarticle posting style, then you should give all the credit to those dudes.
Who are your favorite thinkers, visionaries, and potential status-quo busters? What, you don’t have any? Why not?
Why am I here?
WTF?
Meh!
D'oh!
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