Engineering generalship, Robert E. Lee, and the “Two Cultures of Engineering”
Over the years, I have enjoyed studying topics, like the Civil War, that are not directly related to my career as part of my approach of seeking to improve. Shelby Foote once said “The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things…” Lincoln’s speech…
Systems, Change, and The Revenge of the Bureaucracy
In my career thus far, I have gotten the experience working in a number of different organizations and a number of different organizational constructs. I have learned lessons from each. Recently, I have been reflecting on how to organize those lessons and how to apply them to enable better outcomes. As I have thought about…
Similarity and Synergy, but Not the Same
One of my mentors was often encouraging me and the others he was guiding to broaden your beam. In various ways, he was always encouraging us to learn more, widen our aperture, understand how our efforts fit in the bigger picture, and to better understand the other parts of the big picture. At some point, this led…
Don’t let the house stand in the way of the project
My father’s recent passing has me reflecting on some of the things that he taught me that I am only able to begin to fully appreciate as I get older. He owned and managed a plumbing, heating, and air conditioning business for decades. On breaks and during the summer, I worked in various jobs for him until…
Analogies, things I know, things I don’t know, and how those things interact
Years ago, one of my favorite mentors shared his view that if you don’t understand an idea well enough to explain it using an analogy, you don’t understand it. In hindsight, I think this was his version of the quote attributed to Einstein that “if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Over…
Certainty, uncertainty, and what we choose to believe
It seems that people have been inventing stories to make sense of events for as long as people have been. Nassem Taleb, in Fooled by Randomness, commented about people’s tendency to create narratives to explain events. In his view, people tended to create deterministic narratives to explain random events or outcomes that resulted from uncertainty. Taleb believes that “You…
Musings of an Analyst 