Student Days.

Leadership classes last Wednesday and Thursday. LaMaze Classes on Saturday. Clinical Trial Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. What job? I feel like I've been a student for the last week.

LaMaze class. Instructor pointed out, this birthing methodology derrives from a French doctor training in Russia and noting how much more sense it made than the knocking out via anesthesia common in the Western world at the time. It should properly have been called the Russian method or something like that. Problem being that the western world of that era would probably never have allowed that communist practice anywhere in their capitalist nations.

So the conference in San Francisco actually ended around noon yesterday. The Giants game started at 12:30. I guess if I really were a student I would have been at that game and never made it back to the office.

More on leadership

Who gets two days to do nothing but think about what leadership means? This was a valuable time for reflection and maybe my employer gets something out of it as well.

Some more observations about workshop programs. These trainers love flipboards. They hand you markers and give you posters to write on. So you are brainstorming in big bold words and they look like they're doing something. You are empowered.

Also this trainer had a personal advisory board. Apparently, she has six people she has in her life that she has her advise her on any big decisions on her life. At least once a month, she has a one on one session with one member of her board and at least once a year she holds a board meeting where she invites them all over for dinner to talk about her. This makes me laugh that a person teaching about leadership would do this. Can't she make up her own mind? But than I thik about some decisions I have made and how they may have been different if I had listened to friends or family. And I certainly know people who could use help making big decisions. Maybe it works for some people, but I'll choose my own path. Wifey is the only committee I need for most decisions.

So my homework was about inspiring a vision. There was a very systematic exercise about looking at your past life and looking at where you are to figure out where you are going. Looking for themes in your life. This was difficult for me. For the most part, I just seem to float along and I'm pretty lucky so things work out. So in the car ride about two minutes from the hotel, I finally came up with my theme. Be Flexible and be prepared. By being flexible, I mean take it as it comes, just like I have most of my life, by being prepared I mean, you need to be ready when an opportunity does come up. Sort of how, I just lucked into my current position when a friend told me about it. I'll need to work on it a little more, but I do want to bring that vision back to my team and see what they think.

Lesson 3 was about challenging the process. Searching for opportunities and taking risks to fix things.

Lesson 4 was about enabling people. We talked about fostering collaboration and empowering the people we work with by giving them power and supporting them.

The last lesson was about encouraging people and all the other things taught in kindergarten. Say please and thank you and making people feel appreciated.

When I add it up, I don't know how I survived two years of managing people without this sort of thinking. And I also figured, there's a lot I need to learn. There are a lot of ways I can improve and I feel I owe it to my team to try those things.

They're in for it now. We're in for a lot of growth together.

Imagine me as your leader.

Today instead of the regular grind at the office I spent the full day in a leadership workshop. It's one of those touchy feely programs that can be very hit or miss. There's some valuable information and things to think about in these workshops, but there's also a lot of self-indulgent business speak masquerading at logic. In this case, I'm going with it. There are a lot of things I could learn about being a leader.

First observation. These things are always run by bright chipper people who never stop smiling and encourage participation at all turns. They'll ask a question like, "What is your goal for next year?" And I feel like I could say, "Gee, Linda, I won't be happy unless I ax murder 300 people." And she'll say, "Oh that's wonderful!" We all neeed to be constantly validated.

Of course, everything is boiled down to a nice accronym or 5 step thing.
Lesson one can be summed up as find your values and align your actions with your values. I have a sense of my values, but it's hard to articulate them. Even harder to live by them. Something I'll have to work on.

One of the exerciese in coming up with values is writing your credo to live by in about 5 minutes. The message you'd like to leave behind. Here it is in its entirety, unedited:

Live life so you will have no regrets in the end. Live honest, live intelligently, live with courage. Ask why? And if no one gives you the answer, give THEM the answer. Learn to trust. Be the resource that others can trust. Work shared with others will usually be easier. Never forget to spend time with your friends and the ones you love. And share your stories and your life with them. There is always time for a good story.

Lesson two is about Inspiring Vision. What is your vision of the future? I worry about big picture things, but planning for the future is not one of my strengths. I tend to just worry about what I'm doing the next day or if I'm feeling especially ambitious, I might plan something for next week. I see obvious solutions to problems sometimes, and can even think about some of the details about how to fix them, but I don't have a theme. My work is important, but maybe it's just not that inspiring. And as for long term strategizing outside of work, fortunately, that's a strength of Wifey.

More lessons tomorrow. I've got another full day of this stuff coming up.

Baby News

I know I promised myself, I would never plug tv shows through this blog, but I'm breaking that rule for the first time.

There's a show on TLC called Bringing Home Baby which has suddenly become fascinating and very Tivo worthy. It's a reality tv show/documentary where they document young couples taking home their babies and their experiences in the first 36 hours. I've seen poor deluded couples, rich spoiled couples, reactions with dogs, cats and older siblings. I think the thing I've learned is no matter who these couples are, they and the babies seem to get through it in one piece, so things should be okay. I'm wondering if they've ever followed a couple home and said to themselves, we can air that, you know how many young parents we might freak out?

Also had a nice little baby shower the other day. Saw a lot of people. We owe a bit of thanks to everyone. We'll have to get around to that.

Think of Peace Today

I'm guessing 90% of the bloggers who bother to blog today will mention 9/11. Here are my thoughts 5 years later.

For most Americans living today, this will always be remembered as one of the most memorable moments in their lives. Who isn't going to remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that Islamic terrorists,(mostly from Saudi Arabia) declared war on the United States? We cried. We were mad. We had the sympathy of the whole world, and we have tried to change the world ourselves. It's just any right minded person sort of has to question if we've taken the right steps in changing the world.

Are we any safer? Can we claim victory because 5 years have passed and there have been no more attacks on U.S. soil? I guess that is a victory of sorts, and I'm even willing to say that despite the shoe removals, taking of hair gel, and no-fly lists, and the fact that 99% of foreign cargo entering the US goes uninspected, that Junior and his militarist, industrial corporate bilkers of the American people deserves some of the credit for that. Have we been good or have we been lucky?

What I'm not willing to believe is the rhetoric that we're safer because we're fighting the baddies over there instead of over here. Iraq did not attack us, and even with Saddam in charge, I don't think they really ever had any intention of attacking us. This wrong war was the cornerstone of Junior's policy. We're spending $500 billion and we can't really say we're winning this war there, are we?

It's like the kid with the lucky penny that keeps tigers away. When you ask him how you know the penny works, he points out that he hasn't seen any tigers.

Latest Reading

There are times that I have read things and said to myself, that's crap. How did that ever get in print. Other times, with really good writers I am amazed the creativity and the depth of the story they can tell. I wonder what pool of imagination are they dipping into to pull out that story. I marvel at their gift. I just finished reading a novel by Jonathan Lethem which is actually much more imaginative than its title, "As She Climbed Across the Table" might suggest. He wows me with his creativity too. "Amnesia Moon" was another great book. But it's a different kind of wow. Most of the time, when I'm blown away by something, I know I couldn't tell that story in a million years. Lethem makes me think if I had a few hundred, I might be able to pull it off. He's got his own depth too him, but he seems to do quirky, and that's something I could relate to and possibly emulate. Maybe I've found something to strive for.

Preparing a wok.

It's lunch time and I haven't eaten yet. Maybe that's why I'm thinking about food. Anyway, Labor Day was a nice little break. Wifey's parents came over to prepare our wok. These days, Circulon and all the other pot making people have some form of pseudo Asian wok, usually with teflon coating and all those goodies. The easy clean is good in some respects, but those things chip and peel after a while. Instead we wanted a real steel wok. A lot heavier, but it should be a lot better for real Chinese cooking. But you can't use a new wok straight out of the box, you need to coat it yourself before use. It coats to take care of any imperfections in the wok and it also seems like a ritualist sacrafice before you really start cooking with it.So parents came over and prepared it for us. Next time, if I need, I'll be able to do it myself.

Take a chunk of pig fat, heat the wok and run the fat over the wok to grease it. Rinse it down. Heat the wok again and take a pig liver and great the wok again. Use a little bit of oil and coat the wok. Boil water out of the wok twice. And always oil your wok before you put it away to prevent rust.

Political Rant of the day.

I was going to blog about my labor day weekend, but something else got into my head. Again, it becomes too apparent that the President of the United States has no regard for the rule of law or fundamental human rights. It's odd to see that statement in print. He should be at the forefront of defending such principles, but that's obviously not the case.

Gitmo. So the Supreme Court actually shut him down for trying to skirt the rules and recreate military tribunals to serve his purposes. So instead of trying to treat the Gitmo bad guys in accordance with the Geneva accords, he's working with Congress to rewrite the law so he can ignore the law.

Today he also admitted to covert CIA prisons. Bad guys are bad guys for a reason. They need to be interrogated, but all indications are that tortured confessions aren't real confessions. There's also the ugly stain on America that we're essentially outsourcing our torture. We have laws in place, and there are the Geneva accords, so we're sending people to other countries where they can be tortured. I get that these are bad guys, but this still leaves an ugly stink. We've signed up to abide by some basic principles and we're not following them. Also, in many cases, we seem to have done this without informing our allies what we were doing, putting other governments in violation of international treaties as well. Nice.

And for the umpteenth time, this demonstrates a President with no qualms about lying to the American people. It just adds to the litany. Yes, Iraq had weapons. Yes, there were ties between Osama and Iraq. No, they didn't out Ms. Plame for political purposes, no, they were not conducting unconstitutional wiretapping and no we do not torture.

The lies won't stop, until we stop believing them.

Getting to adulthood

I remember being a kid and being told that I could only do something with adult supervision. What did being an adult mean? At that time, it meant being a big person, no longer a kid. But have I become an adult yet? When did it happen? Was it when I got the right to vote? when I reached the age when I could fight for my country? when I got to drink legally?

Or maybe it was less a legal thing and just a responsibility level? When I started making my own money? When I started paying my bills on time? When I understood Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil, and Montel really didn't have anything to tell me that I didn't already know? When I got married?

I guess it was like most things, it is happening gradually over time. Each of these things were little steps along the way that made me GROWN UP. I'm finally getting there. Or I better soon. Some little girl is going to be looking up to me for supervision.