A Message To Garcia

"Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village - in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly—the man who can carry a message to Garcia."

[Elbert Hubbard - 1899]

Motivation:

At least once a year, I have some staple things I go back to that get the adrenaline flowing.  I think everyone finds these things in their life.  Whether it be movie, song, book, place, friend, or other; we all have something that reminds us why we love doing the things we do in life.  As an Engineer and Technical Project Manager (TPM), my things are tied to making the impossible happen.  Along with watching Apollo 13, Elbert Hubbard's "A Message to Garcia" is one of my favorites.  I'm sure some past co-workers already rolled their eyes when they saw the title of this post.

I have made many people read this story through the years.  Anyone who has ever been tasked with managing people knows the acute frustration faced when a team member requires "baby sitting".  Very few TPMs are blessed with a project where all they have to do is assign tasks and track progress.  Most TPMs are hired for the position because they also possess the relevant skills and background to step in and get work done along with the rest of the team.  No one wants to schedule slack to deal with "slower" employees, but we have all had to do it.

Read A Message to Garcia

The Point:

Before past co-workers get too worked up, I am not claiming to be "Rowan".  We all have bad days, moments of weakness, and occasionally legitimate reasons to push back on a task.  The story comes across as pretty negative towards employees in general and implies a level of military obedience should be observed in the civilian world.  Don't let that distract you from the core message.  If you didn't click the link above, please do so now.  The story is only a few pages.  The point of this post is to talk about what the "Message to Garcia" means in today's world and why I will continue making people read this for the rest of my life.

First let's make some basic observations.  The task given to Rowan was pretty basic in the realm of scope.  As an officer in the military, Rowan would already know who Garcia was and where he was at.  I would compare the discovery portion of this to being tasked by the CEO to ship a large item to a remote office in a 3rd world country.  You still need to figure out exactly where the office is and what avenues are available to get stuff over there.  In war, haste on anything the President asks you to do is implied. I would argue the CEO has that same level of gravity in business.  So there really is nothing else you need to ask him.

What makes this comparison slightly off is we have so many things available to us today as information tools. Even the laziest of employees can tap a few words into Google and figure out most of the steps on executing this task.  But now ask yourself, how many people do you actually know that would pull this off in a timely manner if the internet went down?  How many people would pick up the phone and start calling FedEx and corporate HQ to start asking questions?  If you had VOIP phone service that was also down, how many people would get out of their cube and drive to FedEx or HQ?  We all know the answer to those questions is not many.  We've all seen progress screech to a halt when the power goes out, or when a certain tool is offline for maintenance.

The sad part is that we also know people who wouldn't pull this off even if they had every resource available to them.  Never mind that they are smart enough.  Never mind that you don't have anything else important tasked to them.  They will just sit in their cube staring blankly at the monitor wondering why this wasn't assigned to someone else.  They may make a single query in Google or a single call to FedEx and then give up when they don't find the answer right away.  They will never carry the message to Garcia.

Real Problems:

TPM tasks are rarely as simple in scope as the task Rowan had.  But they are also rarely as difficult in lack of support or presence of danger.  Whether it's fixing a bug, building a new feature, or taking over someone else's project, the process is always the same:

• Identify needed skills
• Identify needed supplies
• Identify key stakeholders
• Get approval for skills and supplies with stakeholders
• Build your plan based on what you are given
• Win!

Today we have Google and Amazon.  There is basically no skill required in the technical world today that you can't teach yourself with proper tradeoff of sleep and caffeine.  And sourcing supplies is faster and cheaper than it has ever been in the history of history.  The only thing that keeps anyone from succeeding today is themselves.

But that's impossible!:

I'm not going to dwell on this much.  Yes, sometimes the task that comes down is factually impossible.  99.999% of the time that word is thrown out prematurely.  Don't let yourself get set up to fail.  If scope needs to be addressed, then address it.  Use your risk register for what it is for.  But treat the word "impossible" like the most foul word on the planet and only use it when you know beyond all doubt that there is no other option.

As a freshman at the US Naval Academy, you are only allowed to give five responses to a superior:

1. Yes Sir
2. No Sir
3. Aye Aye Sir (means I'll do what you just told me to do)
4. I'll find out Sir
5. No excuse Sir

There is something to be said about trying to approach your job with that limited vocabulary.  No excuses, no giving up, no deflecting blame.  Whether you agree with everything in the story or even my take on it, I've never met anyone who didn't desire to work with someone who just gets stuff done, no matter what.

Why this rant?:

As I said above, I'm not claiming to be perfect.  I'm not always just like Rowan, but I strive to be.  This week I am starting a new job with Northrop Grumman.  I am the TPM responsible for moving all of the systems that support New York City's 9-1-1 Response to a new facility.  This has never been done before.  There is no instruction manual.  No senior employee to show me how.  And there is zero margin for failure.  But I've been preparing nonetheless.  I've been getting myself motivated.  And I am ready to take the message to Garcia!

Geek Update for March

"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."
--[William B.Sprague]

Recap:

The month of March has been a roller coaster of action and emotion.  This Blog is just one piece of the puzzle in my decision to re-invent myself and focus on becoming a better person in general.  Being a Geek is who I am and drives the core of all of this.  However, March turned into way more than just dusting off the old C++ compiler.  One of the major decisions last month was to leave my current job.  It has been an adventure to say the least and a very rewarding experience.  I do regret leaving all the great folks at Ci/FATPOT behind, but it is simply the right thing to do for my family, career, and I believe even for the company as well.

The Geek side of things stayed pretty active.  ASP.NET and C# are up and running which may work well for a potential opportunity in Afghanistan.  I also stood up three separate Ubuntu environments so I would have clean playgrounds for different research topics.  One will be for JAVA/PHP web work.  The second is C++/Qt to play around with algorithms.  The third is a Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.4) to get back to my Operating System research roots by playing around with ChromeOS.  I also spent some time on topcoder.com getting my account back up to speed since I haven't been on the site since 2004.  TopCoder is pretty neat because you can pick what aspect of software development you like and actually compete for real money.  Nothing like getting paid for making yourself smarter.

"Help Wanted"

I have never actually looked for a job before.  Sure, I filled out a bunch of applications at fast food joints when I was 16.  But this is a completely different ball game.  In the past 30 days I have completely rewritten my resume, attended a job fair, interviewed or submitted applications to 25 different companies, and spent hours scouring through job boards and recruiter sites.  Some efforts have gleaned some results.  Others resulted in failure.  Most efforts to date have actually seemed wasted.  The interface to companies are somewhat cold and mechanical.  Even the biggest Fortune 500 companies have shockingly bad job portals.  If you are looking, or thinking about looking, here is what I have seen in the last month:

• Black Holes - Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and McKesson have shown no sign of intelligent life.  You get a thank you email for submitting to their system.  But after that, you have no way of knowing if you are under consideration or not.  In most of these cases it has been over 21 days without even a courtesy email to say my resume didn't fit.  Follow up phone calls with the recruiters who attended the job fair have also been fruitless.  They seemed interested then, but now is unknown.
• Almost Black Holes - Hewlett Packard (HP) uses Taleo for their job portal which has a decent search interface but gives inconsistent results.  You can pick jobs to track under the job cart and then decide from your cart which ones to apply to.  HP lists over 5000 open positions and shows up at job fairs, so one would think their recruiters would be responsive.  This has not been the case.  I applied for four different positions at HP.  I can see slightly different aspects to each job, but no idea what they mean.  Of the four, one says closed so that is easy.  The other three say active.  I can view/edit/withdraw on one, view/edit on the second, and only view on the 3rd.  I would guess this somehow ties to where I lie in the process, but no idea since no human has tried to reach me.
• Mixed Bag - Google has their own custom job search portal which leaves much to be desired.  You can search jobs and "star" ones you are interested in.  But after that, you have no way of tracking which ones you have applied to or what their status is.  Many jobs have been posted there for years.  I applied to 6 different positions at Google.  One position that included a referral from a Googler got an instant result with engagement from a recruiter and a phone screen.  I apparently did not do so well on the phone screen and they emailed me to say my resume was not a good match and that I could contact them if I had questions.  A) They had my resume before the screen and B) I did ask for feedback and got no response.  I appreciate they can afford to be picky...being rude is another thing.
• Solid - Northrop Grumman and Enterprise Holdings were responsive in both their system design and taking action on the applications.  I would still rate their job portals as mediocre at best.  But at least you can figure out where you stand.
• Recruiters - Useless IMO.  Within hours of indicating I was searching in some key places I started getting phone calls from recruiters.  I put the time in to fill out a profile for them and then never heard a peep.  I get that the job market is tough in some sectors, but it shouldn't be that hard to start lining up Technical Project Manager opportunities.  There are oodles of them listed out there hiring right now.
• LinkedIn and Network - The advice is true that this is your best source if you already have a career in progress.  The people who have actually worked with you know you best and gain pleasure out of helping you succeed.  All four of the interviews and job offers I have received to date have been directly associated with professional contacts.  

Tsugi!

For April, I will be focussed on educating myself.  I plan to get through "Making Things Happen" on the TPM side and "OOP Demystified" on the engineer side.  OOP is a gentle review for me on C++, but will be fun by trying to work through each step in JAVA and C# as well.  Who knows what else the job search will bring as well.

TPM Wisdom

Control the message!  Invariably projects will involve teams and someone on the team will decide to open their mouth.  Never stop hammering into your team the need to keep you in the loop on every conversation and act as an approval point for anything that will get said to the customer.  Failure to do this will generally result in an uncomfortable conversation with the customer where you look like you aren't in control.  The demonstration and sometimes even the illusion of control is what keeps the customer on your side.  It's your responsibility to control what the customer hears.