geek!daily

Seven Ways To Approach An Issue

I was chatting about this with someone yesterday and made a total hash of recounting it, so I thought I’d do a quick blog post to clarify my thoughts.

This requires that you understand the Circle of Concern/Circle of Influence concept from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. There's a good summary of these concepts at Cut The Knot.

Now imagine that inside your circle of influence is a smaller circle of responsibility. That's the things you're directly responsible for doing; the area outside of responsibility and inside of influence is what you can talk others into doing. ;]

With that in mind, here’s a good framework (from a USN SSBN commander by way of Covey’s book, “The 8th Habit”) for how to approach an issue which you believe you know how to resolve depending on your level of influence and/or responsibility:

1. Stand Mute
If it's completely outside of your circle of influence, stand mute. There's no constructive course you can pursue. Instead, consider whether or not you're genuinely concerned; if you are, channel your energies into expanding your circle of influence to include issues like this in the future.

2. Ask Questions
If it's just outside the edge of your circle of influence (inside or outside), ask questions which tend to confirm your assumptions about the issue. You'll learn things, you may provide focus and insight, and you might get invited to the solution. You'll likely expand your influence in the direction of the issue at hand ... as long as your questions are pertinent and well thought out.

3. Offer A Solution
If it's just inside the edge of your circle of influence, propose a solution. This isn’t a lot different than asking questions as noted above; rather than putting your solution up bit by bit, you’re presenting it as a holistic thing, complete with reasoning. It’s really just a change from participant to potential thought leader.

4. State Intent
If the issue lies just outside your circle of responsibility but well within your circle of influence and you believe that you can take or coordinate positive action, make a plan and present it as your intent to the person or people who have direct responsibility for the issue. This provides them insight into your proposed actions complete with a plan and the opportunity to question underlying assumptions, impact of your proposed actions, etc. They might put forth an alternative proposal, suggest modifications to your plan, or instantly agree and ask you to carry out your intent.

5. Take Action And Report Immediately
If the issue’s at the outside edge of your circle of responsibility, you have a solution which you firmly believe in, and there’s an impact to others, take action and report that action immediately. This allows them to see the impact of your action, judge the effectiveness of your solution, and will increase your circle of influence and responsibility over time as you stack up more and more successes.

6. Take Action and Report Periodically
If the issue’s clearly inside your circle of responsibility and there’s not an immediate impact to others, take action and report that action periodically (e.g. at a weekly checkin or in a weekly summary blog post, hint hint ;-) . This again exposes the impact of your action and, with continued successes, will grow your influence and responsibility.

7. Take Action
For those things clearly in the center of your circle of responsibility, just do it. You’re good at it, we already know it (that’s why we made you responsible for it =), and we trust you completely. Go\!

How do you know where the boundaries of your influence and responsibility lie? Your responsibilities should be clear (and if they’re not, you need to sit your boss down and make that so). As to influence, that’s a bit of an art and a bit of intuition; mostly you judge it by thinking about who’s coming to you with what issues, questions, and concerns.

The Values Driving My Value-Driven Life

I had the great good fortune to attend FranklinCovey's FOCUS training with several members of my team last week. One of the exercises they give you is to select 4-9 core values and write positive clarifying statements for each. I just finished up and, since one of my statements is "I openly share my values and invite discussion," here they are:

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These are the values which drive my life. On my best days, this is who I am; on my worst, they still mostly apply (I hope ...)

Passion

I actively seek challenges that excite me.

I convey my excitement openly, genuinely, and infectuously.

I urge others to identify their values, tap into their passions, and get going!

Respect

I consider the circumstances of others in my dealings with them.

I assume the best and most constructive motivations on the part of others.

I demonstrate my ignorance of others' circumstances by asking positive, open-ended questions and listening carefully to the answers.

Integrity

I live by consistent values in a transparent manner, without regard of what's at stake or who's watching.

I make decisions based on my values and what's right for the situation and people involved, not what's most personally beneficial or most expedient.

Candor

I share my values openly and invite discussion of them.

I express compliments and concerns freely and frequently, in ways that will be heard and is not hurtful to others.

I make a point of complimenting the good work of others. I share compliments I've heard with the subject of those compliments.

I share concerns in ways which make them actionable for others.

I hold myself and others accountable for mistakes. When appropriate, I fully acknowledge my role in bad choices and work to make things right.

Leadership

I step into unowned problems and help find them a home.

I constantly seek to improve my vision of the best possible future and articulate it to others in a way which allows them to act independently toward that end.

I look for opportunities to mentor others in growing in line with their personal values.

I help others engage in long-term critical thinking and help them recognize that they are fully empowered to act as a force for positive change.

Compassion

I take opportunities to do small kindnesses and good deeds whenever I can.

I relieve pain wherever possible.

I seek first to understand.

Courage

I do not allow concerns about my personal well-being to prevent me from addressing a problem.

I take positive, direct action even when I dread the work or the outcome.

I seek creative solutions to intimidating problems, pursuing the most positive outcome for all involved.

Reliability

I meet my commitments. I do not take on commitments which I know I can't meet.

I manage expectations openly and clearly.

Humor

I use humor to defuse tension and relieve pain.

I always look for and share the humorous aspects of challenging or grim situations.

BarCamp RDU: Fun and Done

Was a lot of fun. Did the Werewolf and Value-Driven Life sessions and got more interest in both than I expected. Also pitched in on Nick Napp's "10 Ways To Accelerate The Failure Of A Startup" which drew a big crowd and was good, but that was because Nick did all the work and his usual consummately excellent job presenting.

I'll be sad to miss it next year; we know our family vacation will be earlier and in Orlando to celebrate our 10th anniversary with the one that brought us together, Mickey Mouse. =]

BarCamp RDU in 8 hours!

Was checking in to get the details on where and when to be there and, courtesy of a semi-random chat with my friend Evan, decided to propose not one, but two non-technical sessions tomorrow:

1. Werewolf 101: Rending Your Friends For Fun And Profit!
2. Taking a Leap of Faith: Letting Your Values Run Your Life, A Story in Three Acts

And then, being the nervous sort, I had to write up some fast notes on what I'll say in either.

The second one surprised me a bit and, frankly, I'll be surprised if anyone bites on it. But it's a topic which I've studied to considerable depth and about which I'm passionate ... and sometimes people actually want some ideas on how to think about their lives and consider what they want to make of them.

Six hours to sleep, up and shower, and an hour to drive. Wheee!

(p.s. yes, the WW101 class is really just a ploy to play some Werewolf. And maybe get a game together for that night. Would be fun to go back to the Velvet Cloak Inn ...)

Let Our Congress Tweet? Who's Stopping Them?

A quick follow-up: When Ellen Miller posted to further promote Sunlight Foundation's Let Our Congress Tweet" petition, she made this statement:

Under the current system, members of Congress are forced to break rules to use new technologies and services to do what their constituents ask of them: connect, listen and be held accountable. So, that YouTube video you saw on a lawmaker’s Web site? Illegal! [...]

She also linked to the "Unsolicited Mass Communications Restrictions" section of the House Administration Committee's Member Handbook, presumably indicating that this was the section that supported her statement.

I read the section (and the bulk of the rest of the handbook for good measure. So I asked for clarification in the comments of her post. What I got was a response from John Wonderlich, who authored the original post, saying in essence that the rules are unclear and they're seeking clarity. Much softer stance, it seems, than the original hard line that our Representatives were being forced to break the law.

I tried to respond, but it seems the blog isn't accepting further comments from me. Here's the comment that wasn't:

Fair enough. I share your interest in transparency. Having spent the time to read these rules, I also heartily endorse any efforts to update and clarify them.

That said, I take issue with the sensationalist nature of the copy on http://letourcongresstweet.org/ as well as the assertion that it's outright illegal rather than unclear. Furthering your cause by scaring people with incomplete information and vague possibilities demeans your mission. The means count as much as the end.

I'd also assert that transparency is more about being able to reach in for information than those inside being able to push information out. A commenter at MetaFilter summarizes it well (http://www.metafilter.com/73194/Let-Our-Congress-Tweet#2178791):

"How is Yet Another One Way Communication Medium "sunlight"? Sunlight is when I can see what they are doing, even when they don't want me to. It's not a press release."

Good luck.

Disappointing that they had to resort to unclarity to fix the clarity thing.

Let Our Congress Tweet? You've been had.

If you're like me, some large number of the people you follow on Twitter have tweeted something like this today:

Congress, change the rules. Talk to us on our social networks. http://LetOurCongressTweet.org Let our Congress Tweet! #LOCT08

You may be tempted to join in. It seems like a noble cause, and whoever's trying to keep Congress from tweeting must be evil, bad, and wrong, wrong, wrong. Right?

Maybe not.

John Wonderlich of The Sunlight Foundation — an organization which professes the admirable goal of, among other things, more transparency in government — published a blog post today titled, "Member Use of the Web Reconsidered". I know this because they also registered and launched the site LetOurCongressTweet.org today, whose content implies that Congress fears the internet and that the quality of discourse with our politicians would be vastly improved by allowing them to use "the communication technologies that we already use" as if they were still writing with quills on parchment and dispatching their missives via a coach-and-four.

Now let's be clear here. I'm a tree-hugging San Francisco Democrat who firmly believes in transparent government and free speech; of course my first reaction should be to tweet this every hour on the hour. But I'm also a rationalist who likes to understand the issue reasonably fully before I lend my voice, so I clicked through to Wonderlich's post, which felt low on facts and high on rhetoric. At one point, Wonderlich engages in this reductio ad absurdum argument:

"If Members can use whatever brand of inkpen, or any brand of paper, or buy whatever shoes they want, they should be given radically expanded freedom to use the Internet [...]"

He could just as easily have said, "If Members can drive whatever brand of car they like on whatever roads they please, they should be given radically expanded freedom to drive on sidewalks and in public parks" with just as much semantic content. But at least we're clear that they've moved beyond quill and parchment. And they apparently wear shoes! Hooray!

However, he does give good links, one of which led me to section 7 of the Open House Foundation's analysis of the restrictions on House members' web use where I found (once I learned to read just the parts excerpted from other reports and ignore the opinion bits) some excellent historical context regarding why those regulations came to be (hint: concerns over using public resources and time for personal purposes and members linking from their official sites to commercial and political sites they favored).

With this fresh in my mind, I read Rep. Michael Capuano's letter. To my eye, the letter recommends the CHA give more freedom than is currently enjoyed, specifically by allowing the posting of video content on non-House.gov servers as long as the spirit of the current CHA rules and regulations are observed. It makes no reference to tightening any restrictions; instead, in precise language that's refreshingly devoid of posturing, it clearly recommends:

• Official content posted on an external domain must be clearly identified as produced by a House office for official purposes, and meet existing content rules and regulations;
• To the maximum extent possible, the official content should not be posted on a website or page where it may appear with commercial or political information or any other information not in compliance with the House's content guidelines.
• Any link from a House website to an external site on which the Member video is hosted must contain an exit notice.
• CHA, the Office of Web Assistance (OWA), or other designated House entity should maintain a list of external sites that meet whatever requirements are established by CHA.  

In contrast, House Republican Leader John Boehner's "Internet Freedom Alert" to "Online Community & Activists" nearly oozes with emotionally charged phrases as he writes "to alert you to an attack on free speech" and raises the concern that the proposed changes "would prohibit Americans from viewing content published by Members of Congress on websites that are not 'approved' by the Committee on House Administration." Doesn't mention that it's a limitation on official content. Doesn't mention that the limitation already exists under current CHA rules and regulations. Doesn't mention that the recommendations apply only to video content. Pretty much leaves the facts behind early and never looks back.

Finally, I found my way to Rep. Capuano's rebuttal of the earlier "Freedom Alert". Indeed, he makes very clear just what I'd read in his original letter: loosening restrictions, video only, intended to prevent subtle abuses. Stand down, mighty Twitter militia; the country's freedom is just as safe as it was yesterday. No, really.

I won't comment on whether I think the current rules are too restrictive; I've not read them all, so I can't say. Instead, I'll note that Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama all engaged in many electronic town halls, and are even engaging (by proxy) in a Twitter-based debate. I get emails from Rep. Pete Stark all the time; he comes by at least twice a year to listen to me and my neighbors gripe and answer our questions. I can get updates of action on the floor of the House of Representatives via Twitter. I don't feel like my Congress is limited in any meaningful way from communicating with me and, frankly, I'm not sure I want them to be tempted by the distraction that Twitter can offer. Maybe that's what got Rep. Boehner all fired up in the first place; seems he's been able to tweet just fine for more than a year and even post not-official-House content on YouTube. He doesn't seem at all limited, really.

I'll also observe that I believe we should be properly thoughtful in changing regulations that limit the freedom of action of our elected Representatives. If there's one thing this whole episode has made abundantly clear to me, it's that transparency and openness are better served when we reach in for information of our choosing, not when they push out the information they want us to have.

Update: Erin Kotecki Vest (aka queenofspain) at BlogHer got the same vibe and came to much the same conclusion.

Update: I didn't realize when I wrote this that Tim O'Reilly feels differently. His post adds one unverified fact: he states that it's currently against the CHA rules to tweet from the House floor. It also reduces the purpose of CHA rules to "decorum." I find that difficult to swallow.

Update: I've found the CHA's Member Handbook. The relevant sections seem to be pages 44-47; I don't see anything there which prohibits tweeting from the floor. I'm going to keep looking for a more complete ruleset.

Obakucinbidwardston for President

Tonight I finally, reluctantly, watched the Democratic Presidential Candidate Debate held a couple of days ago at Dartmouth College. I'm one of those undecided liberals who's convinced that we're doing ourselves harm by moving state primaries earlier, thus extending the presidential campaign. I've watched it now, and I'm still undecided, though I'll say that Sen. Dodd, Gov. Richardson, and former Sen. Gravel are off my list. Dodd weaseled, Gravel was outright bizarre, and Richardson came off a bit too idealistic for even me.

While I was at it, I checked out the SelectSmart 2008 Presidential Candidate Selector to see if their results agreed with my gut feelings. Their ratings are expressed as a percentage match between your theoretical ideal candidate's positions and the stated positions of the potential candidates. Ironically, it does -- I'm still largely undecided. All the Republicans were below a 50% match, all the Dems above it, and the five I'm still pondering (Biden, Clinton, Edwards, Kucinich, Obama) within a 10% band.

And I'm still undecided.

Alice is Lost!

Have you seen her?

Beloit Mindset List for 2011 is out

Every year for the last 10, Beloit College publishes their Mindset List. It originated as a way to help their faculty better understand the world view of their incoming freshman class. In the last decade, it's release has become a national event, with nearly every media outlet sharing some form of the list with its audience.

I could push a lot of spoilers, but I'll save that for later this week. I'll just say that as they years march onward, there are fewer and fewer references I don't immediately get ... and more and more which startle me with a reminder of my age.

(non-spoiler: #4 ... really? #9 ... really?!)

Link: Beloit College Mindset List For The Class of 2011.

ThereWolf!

We played Werewolf! at the Velvet Cloak Inn where Beth and I had stayed the night before. They gave us The Charter Room for the evening as it's currently closed for renovations. They were awesome to us, incredibly hospitable; one of the owners, David Smoot, personally worked on the air conditioning issues in the room (it was a toasty 86 when we arrived) and was about to rip the protective cover off the wall when the guy with the key called and got it sorted.

Werewolf Rules and more Pictures of the Villagers.

BTW, staying at the Velvet Cloak was incredibly great. Super hospitable, great rooms poolside, strong-fast wifi ... and the Charter Room opens again in three weeks! Sorry I'll miss it this time around, but I promised Mr. Smoot that we'd drop in next time we're in town. And we will.

Names as best I remember them (send me more and I'll fix this; I'm teh suck with last names it seems): Carl Youngblood, Chris Redinger, Joe Martinez, Tony Devlin, Coby Randquist, Rick DiNatale, Ted Behling, Evan Light, Marcel Molina Jr., me, Chad Fowler, Lyle Johnson, Devin Mullins. Not pictured: Ryan Daigle.

Update: So now I'm home, have slept (a little), and am rapidly correcting names as I learn them have added everyone's names, and see that I left out the part about how astonishingly fun the games were. They were. I'm really looking forward to Rails Edge now. =]