Vasco Duarte posted this entertaining story about a conflict between an experienced consultant and his new manager over dress code on-site. I commented there, but wanted to explore the story further.
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So, trying out twitterfeed, and thinking it appropriate to muse on my first few days of Twitter joy.
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Not that it was planned as one, but during SPA2009 I came into possession (how is not important…) of a big tub of sweets. These were just ordinary goodies, not fancy Belgian chocolates, the sort of thing you can buy at any newsagent here. I’ve a sweet tooth, but not that sweet, so I opened the tub and put it on a table in the common area at the conference.

An hour later I strolled by, and noticed that the tub was half empty. Another hour, and the tub was still half-empty, but only because someone else had bought some different sweets, and added them to the tub. And an hour after that, a box of cookies had joined the tub of sweets.

I find this interesting, and a great indicator of the sort of community the conference engenders. The sweets acted as an attractor, and (though I didn’t see it) I can imagine people passing the bowl, looking, commenting to someone else standing around, taking a candy or two, and feeling quietly better about the day. Not that they needed lifting, but my spirits were definitely higher when I saw the way others had added to the stock.

Particularly if it’s not a habit with you or your team, try bringing in a couple of bars of chocolate or a tub of cookies. Don’t make a big deal of it, just put them down somewhere people can see them and take one. Then see what happens.

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - a justly famous book on the nature of science - introduced the term “paradigm shift” into the study of the history of science and thereby into our common discourse. It’s one of those works that everyone talks about but - it seems - few have read: including, sorry to say, me, until this last few weeks.
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This looks impressive, but scarily similar to this…

Here’s a situation I’ve seen many times. Generally in large rather than small organisations, but I don’t think a company has to be huge to suffer from some variant of this. Someone (let’s call them “Worker”) needs access to a resource to get their job done. They have to apply to a second person (”Gatekeeper”) to get this done. For some reason, there’s an organisational policy in place that determines that Worker is not allowed access to the resource. Somewhere in the organisation there’s a third person (who we’ll call “Deus ex Machina”, or “Deus” for short) who has the authority to override or change the policy.

Examples of a resource might be (say) a particular server, system or VPN, and the policy may hold that workers of a particular sort (say, contractors rather than permanent staff) are not permitted access to that resource for security reasons. It’s important to realise that the request is not an arbitrary one - our Worker really does need access to the resource to work effectively. Other than this, the details aren’t important - I’m sure you’ve seen this situation, and can fill in your own examples.
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Well, maybe not (or not yet) but this is the best response I’ve seen to the UK government’s interim report on Digital Britain. The report is low on vision, low on ambition (2mb for goodness sake!), shows little understanding of how digital network technology is being used today, and seems far too tied up with sustaining the existing business interests of content providers.

2009 could be the year that a number of big organisations make a success of Agile. This will be because - at the right level in those companies - there will be people who fundamentally understand the principles, have had experience applying them, and (here’s the nub) are effective, inspirational, persuasive leaders. Pushing agile out beyond development teams and single projects is organisational change, and this doesn’t succeed without clear need and great - visible - leadership.* The clear need is provided by the turmoil in the world of business and finance: companies that get this right will survive strengthened, those that don’t will perish or at best stagger through.
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A small (and belated) selection of what worked for me in 2008…
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Here’s an interesting project about staying mentally fit (I think “fit” is a better sense here than “healthy”, btw).

For the record, my five-a-day for keeping the engine running:

1: Read - blogs, books, fiction, non-fiction, work-related or not.
2: Play guitar - of course
3: Walk - open air, outside, whatever the weather. Clear the mind and get perspective
4: Solve something - a crossword, math or logic puzzle.
5: Write something