Wandering and Wondering

As I am now OOW (out of work) and looking for gainful employment reflection becomes a valuable tool. Once, as a callow youth, I believed the world was my oyster (and that is as it should be), but now not so much.  An examination of what made success or caused failure is valuable as understanding the self is critical for insuring success and mitigating failure. I use mitigating because failure cannot ever be avoided, the damage it creates can be managed.

So what has this got to do with my youth? Back then, lacking experience in many things, there was too little "data" now I have an abundance of it, and my desire is how to understand it and express it for both of my readers. So this little blog may appear to take a different tack, as I will share some of the things I have learned over the years about management and leadership. This "backfilling" should give you a glimer of how I think; it takes a while to noodle out solutions to problems, which may require dismantleing a process, the physical result, or initial conclusions to reach a satisfactory ending. I see it in everything I do, from boat projects, to my patio, and Excel workbooks, and to the most profound assumptions I have reached about life, the universe and everything. In other words it does not take a super computer to come up with "42". Just some thought, relflection, and honest self evaluation.

In addition "things" inspire thought and you will see those here. For example (and yes it seems extraordinarily simple) no one makes mistakes--only choices. I like that thought as it implies control over ones life and removes the implication of outside events taking control. Of course this position does not favor the notion of pre-destination and omnipitant forces influencing our direction. The two postions may not be incompatible, but that is another discussion. Also you may have noticed my position towards the "rightness" of leadership and followership. I choose to judiciously avoid politics and discussions of political leaders as it takes time and historical perspective to evaluate the qualities and rightness of those leaders. So occassionaly you may see discussions of leadership qualities from literature and popular media. Academically there is precedent. Odysseus is frequently used as an example, the movie "Twelve O'Clock High" was a popular leadershp training and teaching tool not so long ago.

I hope you still continue to share in my on going journey.