May 5th, 2007

"Brian is ready to hear derision about yesteryear."
-Rob Mackie, that little rat bastard

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"40 is the new 20"
-Me, quoting, rather hopefully, the adage of the Baby Boomers. I mean, I'm really just whistling in the dark, here ...

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You know, one of the most defensive moments in anyone's work life is the point at which they perceive that they are being told how to perform some task ... especially when they have been performing that task for years and have found it to be the best way for them to work.

I faced this problem today when a tool that I was using before my vacation no longer works the way I want after my vacation. So now I have to do things differently. I have no choice. It pissed me off for a good 30 minutes until I realised that I could still perform my job, just in a way that may be less streamlined to my own particular working style.

Let's wind back to an experience I had in 1995 with a friend whom I also worked (tangentially) with: He didn't like the way I was preparing notes on something I was to document. He thought it was "stupid" and "inaccurate" (his words) to have a single page printed for every single screen of the software. He got into a hissy fit when I told him that I knew some screens would change, depending on the input at the first prompt, and that I didn't care, I just needed one page per screen for my notes. He got almost hostile and started to tell me how to do it better. He felt that since he knew much more about the software (and he did) he also knew more about how I should write some documentation for it. Not the content, mind you, the method for producing the content. Well, I snapped at him and growled (CF above: nobody likes to be told how to do their job). I had my own reasons for doing it—and if he'd stopped to ask, I would have told him why. But by the time he made me all defensive about the way I worked, he lost the opportunity to hear me explain anything to him. That's how human nature works: Make people defensive (even if your intentions are good) and watch them get quiet, sullen, and hostile. All you can do is back off and wait for it to heal. (But, then, if you are the type of person to tell others how they "should" work, you're probably not the type to show that kind of interpersonal patience, either. But I digress.)

Well, he was younger back then, of course. He's clearly changed since then. So have I—although the way I work is still a bit eccentric, even if the details have changed.

You see, in the computer software business, we are doomed if we refuse to give up old ways of doing things. I mean, everything changes (though, I have noticed, not nearly as often anymore) and the tools we use are constantly being upgraded, the technologies are constantly being changed to add more or different functionalities ... heck, even the hardware gets upgraded in new and exciting ways from time to time. And all those changes could drive someone crazy if they weren't prepared for it.

I have constantly had to reinvent myself and my working habits because of all the changes, and although I am fully aware that newer does not equal better, I still upgrade more-or-less with the rest of the pack. (In some things I am a late adopter, e.g., my cell phone, which I resisted until it was painful not to have one.)

But one thing I have noticed about my and others' work habits: Though we may all be given the same set of tools to work with and the same tasks to perform, we all seem to find different niches and ways to work inside those parameters. Or think of it this way: My wife's and my condo is laid out identically to about 20 others in our building ... but when you peek into those other condos, the furnishings, the way the space is accentuated, the colours, etc. all make them unique homes.

And I think that our unique approaches to how we work is not just some "quaintly unnecessary human characteristic", inasmuch as it is a survival instinct. No two people can live exactly the same way, and that trickles down into our working environment: No two people work exactly the same way ... which turns out to be a good thing in the broader scope of a corporate environment. With differences and diversity comes broader knowledge and experience. Overall, the organisation is stronger that way.

So why are we always so quick to homogenize everything? What do we hope to gain with that? Aren't we aware that "efficiency" is a short-sighted narrow-minded "small-picture" goal that actually endangers our future versatility?

Meh, I'm going a-go eat some cake now.

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