Some Advice on Advice

I was asked, "I'm very bad at taking my own advice but love helping people with their own personal issues. Does that make me a hypocrite?"

You seem to equate “advice” with helping people, but there are many other ways to help people without offering advice. And, of course quite frequently, even the best advice doesn't help at all.

(Note that I wrote “offering,” not “giving.” You offer, but they need not accept. Nor do you have to accept your own advice. You test it in your mind, or with small actions, and either follow or not, depending on the test’s outcome.)

If you like helping, try asking people what kind (if any) help they want from you. Perhaps they merely want a friendly listener. Or a pat on the back. Or a kick in the rear. Maybe they want you to clean their house. Or carry their heavy package. Maybe they just want a smile.

Stop worrying about labels like “hypocrite,” and start seeking ways to help people the way they want to be helped. Forget the advice business. As Ambrose Bierce says in The Devil’s Dictionary, “Advice is the smallest common coin.”

Can a Boss Take Corrections From Subordinates?

We were asked, "can a boss take corrections from subordinates?"

Certainly, some bosses can, but there are ways you can increase the chances of changing your boss, or at least your boss's mind.

I think that if the subordinate offers “corrections,” the leader is less likely to respond less well than if the offer is for “information.” That principle actually goes both ways. Most people are somewhat reluctant to take “corrections.”

So, if you are asking how you, as the underling, can “correct” your boss, I suggest you learn how to offer (not “give”) information. The boss can then decide whether or not to act on this new information, and how to do it. 

Again, this goes both ways. Leaders do better offering information than correction.

What Did You Say?: The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback Revised Second Edition

So, study the feedback process and become proficient. That will be your best chance, but be prepared for failure. Some people simply will not change, even if banged on the head with a two-by-four.

If your boss happens to be one of those frozen people, it will be up to you to do the changing.

Maybe change your behavior. 

Maybe change jobs.

Becoming a Change Artist

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Significant Change in Five Minutes

Some people seem so eager to improve their situation that they're in a big hurry to be told:

What can I learn in 5 minutes that can change my life?

If I thought they were able to learn from people telling them things, I would tell them this:

Stop trying for instant, effortless changes in your life.

But, most people probably won't learn this from me telling them. Instead, they will probably have to have some experience that could change their life.

From my telling, they might learn about something, but not really learn, in the sense of putting something new into action. Learning about something is not the same as learning to do something.

Generally, only experiences can really teach people things that would change their lives.

For instance, they might be in an auto accident that would leave them blind, or quadriplegic.

Or, perhaps they would come home one day to discover that their spouse has left them for someone else.

Or, maybe they would be fired from a job they thought was totally secure.

Or, they could win $100,000,000 in the lottery.

Such learnings would change someone's life in five minutes, though they would be followed by many more changes—call them aftershocks.

If that is what they're looking for, they don't need accidents or surprises. They could arrange a life-changing experience for themselves. Parachute out of an airplane. Compete in a triathlon. Volunteer for a month in a soup kitchen or a veterinary hospital.

I suspect, though, that people who ask for five-minute changes are looking for some other kind of change—no pain, no effort, but just something positive and perhaps wonderful, like eating strawberry ice cream instead of vanilla. Well, if that's their desire, they can forget it. It's not going to happen.

I hope you've learned that lesson in the five minutes it took to read this note—but you probably didn't.

see Becoming a Change Artist

Improving as an Agile Developer

The question was posed: "I'm on an Agile team, and I'm undoubtedly the least experienced member. What could I do to improve my software development skills?" Here's what I answered:

There are many things you can do to improve, and I’m sure you’ll get some good answers. If your Agile team is worthy of its name, you will certainly improve by working with them, reviewing their code, and having them review yours.

From my point of view, however, there is one thing to do that underlies all the other suggestions, and especially learning from your teammates:

Never pretend you know what you don’t know.

Always be ready to ask for help in learning new things.

You may think you have to look extra smart and experienced to impress your teammates, but it’s quite the opposite. Just show your willingness and eagerness to learn. Besides, your Agile teammates will always figure out if you're faking.

Some people might not value this approach, but they’re not people you want to associate with. They’re probably pretenders themselves. They're certainly not good Agilists.

Advice to New Graduates

It's now graduation season, time to give advice to new graduates entering the world of work. Every few years, I notice the season and republish some old, but still valid, advice I offered my youngest son, many seasons ago.

Letter to My Son, John

(On the occasion of his graduation with a degree in computer science)

Dear John,

I know some of the other fathers are giving their sons BMWs for graduation, but as a fresh computer science graduate, you're probably going to be earning more than I do as a writer.

It's not totally dishonorable being a writer. Last month, when Dani and I were in Hannibal, Missouri, we visited Mark Twain's birthplace. They've made it into a museum, and it seems to attract a lot of tourists.

Before computer scientists came along, writers used to be pretty famous, and some of them even got rich. So save this letter. You may not appreciate the advice, but someday you might be able to donate it to a museum.

On the wall of the museum, under an old photograph of his schoolhouse, was this quotation from one of Twain's letters:

"I was always careful never to let my schooling interfere with my education."

Being an old-timer in computer science myself, I didn't have to be as careful as Mark Twain. When I went to school, there was no such thing as computer science. There wasn't even a computer—unless you count me (that was my job title).

I made 90 cents an hour inverting matrices for the physics department, using a clunky old Friden, paper, pencil, and lots of erasers. No, I'm not going to advise you to complete your education by inverting some 10 by 10 matrices with a Friden. If I wanted to build your character, I'd buy you a hair shirt for graduation.

Subject Matter

I did want to tell you how lucky you were to have such fine schooling as part of your education. I hope that the next stage of your education will be half as good, which it ought to be, if only you can stay out of the trouble I got into when I was a fresh graduate.

The problems I caused myself weren't due to things I didn't learn in my schooling. As another great American humorist, Will Rogers, said, "It's not what you don't know that gets you in trouble, it's what you know that ain't so."

If my experience is any guide, there are a few parts of your schooling you may want to forget before you report for your first job.

The first and easiest thing you'll have to forget is all the specific facts you learned in your technical courses. If you had majored in Greek grammar, or in the history of rural Belgium in the Middle Ages, you wouldn't have to forget all the facts you so patiently memorized. In some subjects, the facts haven't changed in the past few generations, but you certainly can't say that for Computer Science.

Did you ever stop to think why Computer Science graduates are paid so much more than Greek or History majors? Did you think it was because of the scraggly black beard or your long fingernails? Well, it's not.

It's because Computer Science is high technology—and that means the entire subject matter is changing even as you read these words. The history student is being paid a pittance to remember a body of relatively fixed material, but you're being paid that fabulous salary largely because of your ability to keep pace with innumerable rapid changes.

Being a specialist in information processing, you should be able to understand the process that led to the information you found in your textbooks.  A fact that you found in your freshman textbook would be four years old by now even if it was brand new when you were wearing a beanie. But the book was probably two years old or more by that time, which makes it at least six years out of date.

And you also have to consider that a book takes about a year to publish after it is written, and perhaps two years to write in the first place. You can conservatively add another year for the author's inability to keep up with the latest in new technology.

That makes a nice round ten years for the age of the facts you learned as a freshman. It's not much better for what you learned as a senior—and could be worse, because advanced texts take longer to write, longer to publish, and are too expensive to keep updating every couple of years. Just how long is 10 years of computer technology? Well, I read the other day about the resale value of some System 370 models IBM introduced (ten years ago). Back then, they sold for about $3 million. Today, their book value is exactly zero. The big argument is whether to pay people for hauling them away or to call it even for the scrap value.

IBM used quite a bit of gold and silver in the connectors in these models, which accounts for any value they still have. So, unless you're in collecting precious metals, don't start your career in an organization whose computer is ten years old, either. Keep your gold fillings, but forget whatever facts you learned in school.

But don't worry. It's not so hard to forget facts. Psychological studies show that 24 hours after a lecture, you've forgotten half the facts presented. In the succeeding days, this halving process continues unabated.The same thing happens after an exam—as you certainly must have learned by now.

Once in a while, though, in spite of your best efforts to forget everything, something you learned in school will pop into your head. In that case, just keep it to yourself. The last thing you want to do on your new job is to go broadcasting your ignorance to your coworkers. Instead, close your mouth and open your ears. You might learn something that's new to replace the obsolete fact—which is even better than forgetting.

Grades

Telling your coworkers about all the facts you learned in school is almost as bad as telling them about your grade point average. I know it's hard to accept—especially after all the emphasis on grades the past 16 years of your life—but now that you've landed a job, nobody is interested in your college grades.

But forgetting your grade point average isn't nearly enough. You must also forget everything you know about grades and grading. Business is not school. You may be "graded" on your job, but it won't be on the same basis you were graded on at school.

For instance, when you wrote that little assembler for ComSci 321, you didn't have time to finish the macro facility. So you turned in a partially finished job for a B-plus.

Or that time the micro you designed for ComSci 442 gave the wrong remainder on floating point division. You took an A-minus and were glad to be rid of the thing.

Those strategies don't work on the job. There are no B-plusses for partially completed projects. And no A-minusses for hardware or software with bugs. On the job, you finish your tasks and you finish them right, or you flunk.

Or maybe you think you can take an Incomplete like you did when you didn't want to stop working on that really interesting flow tracer. Or the time you spaced off the last program in advanced programming. Well, forget Incompletes, too.

Specific Plans

If you have a good boss and you're sufficiently interested in something to want to continue working on it, you'll probably be allowed to do it—on your own time—and only after you've turned in the project as assigned. As far as other reasons for Incompletes, forget them.

If you flunk, you won't have to worry about going in to argue with the boss about getting a higher grade. Your boss will call you in before you get a chance.

But don't waste your time preparing arguments for raising your grade. Instead, prepare specific plans for finishing the project or getting rid of the bugs. And also prepare plans for improving your performance on the next assignment. If you don't there may be no next assignment.

Oh, you're not likely to get fired—not in today's business world. More likely, you'll get trivial assignments—and keep getting them until you can prove you're capable of finishing something correctly and on time.

There are no A and B grades. Only A and B assignments. Your college grade average might earn you an A assignment for your first project, but it will never earn you a second.

I know it's a bit frightening to learn that you must get an A on every assignment, but once you've mastered the art of "cheating," it's not nearly as bad as it sounds. Actually, the sound of the word "cheat" is the biggest barrier you'll have to overcome. I don't mean it in the sense of "cheating on your wife" or "cheating at cards," but more in the sense of "cheating death."

By "cheating," I mean going outside the rules that previously bound your thinking. Some instructors say it's cheating to solve an exam problem using a method that wasn't taught in class, or even by looking up the answer. In fact, some instructors still consider it cheating if you use a computer to help you solve your homework! But on the job, you're being paid to use any method that works.

You've spent the past 16 years of your life learning to play by the teacher's rules. Now you're expected to invent your own rules, and you're going to find it difficult to use "any method that works." But once you manage to forget about teachers and their rules, you'll find that this kind of cheating is as natural as drinking beer on a warm summer day.

More natural, actually. Drinking beer is an acquired taste, but breaking the rules is the natural heritage of every human being. Indeed, our superior cheating ability is what differentiates us human beings from all the other animals.

A fox is supposed to be a cunning hunter, but human beings can outhunt any fox that ever lived. How? By cheating, that's how. They "cheat" by getting other people to help them and by using tools invented by other people. You may not call those things cheating, but they sure look like cheating to the fox.

The reason you don't consider cooperation and use of tools as cheating is that you're a human being, not a fox. Your teachers had to forbid "cheating" in school in order to create an environment for teaching facts (which you'll have to forget) and giving grades (which are now worthless). They had to make you forget, temporarily, the basic ability that makes you human—the ability to cooperate.

On the job, you'd better remember your humanity. You don't sign an "honor code" saying you have neither given nor received help. On the contrary, if your boss sees you never help anyone else, or haven't the brains to ask for help when you don't know something, you'll be severely downgraded. If you do everything from scratch and fail to use the simplest shortcuts you can find, you'll be consider an ox, not a fox.

It's actually not that hard to work effectively with other people, even after all those years of isolation. Outside the classroom, where most learning takes place, you have plenty of practice getting and giving help—study groups, team projects, or just those endless conversations over cold coffee in the Union. You may have thought you were just wasting time, but you were actually practicing for the world of work.

Well, I know that's a lot of stuff to forget in so short a time, but I know you can do it if you set your mind to it. Underneath that schoolboy exterior, there beats the heart and throbs the brain of a real human being.

Before you know it, you'll have forgotten all that schooling and gotten on with the business of your education. Good luck!

Love, Dad.

Should I apply for a great opportunity & leave my friends?

The questioner asked: "I found a great job opportunity but I'm currently managing a big project. If I leave now I will leave my colleagues in trouble. Should I apply?"

Here's my answer:

One of my sons was in a similar situation a few years ago. His current job was a dead-ender, but he did not want to leave his friends and co-workers in the lurch. To my amazement, he asked me for my opinion on what he should do.

I told him that the best thing he could do for his friends was model the behavior they might lack the courage to do for themselves—namely, leave.

I told him that once he was at this new, better, job, his former co-workers would start calling upon him, looking for jobs. They did exactly that, and he hired a number of them.

As for leaving trouble behind, first of all if you have been a good manager, then they will do just fine in your absence. (If you have not been a good manager, why would you want to stay there, anyway?)

If you have trouble visualizing how those colleagues will miss you, get yourself a bucket of water. Put you hand in the water. Then take out you hand and notice what happens to the hole you left.

for more information, see Do You Want To Be A (Better) Manager?

How can someone prepare for consulting?

Someone asked, "How can someone prepare for consulting?"

Here's my short answer:

You can look upon consulting as having two parts (for the sake of this answer): subject matter expertise and expertise at offering advice on any subject. Obviously, you prepare tor consulting by becoming an expert in some subject matter—railroads, computers, marriage, divorce, submarines, glass, beer, management, software development, anything at all. Each subject will be different and require a different way to prepare.

The second part, though, has a great deal in common regardless of the subject matter. You need to know how to offer advice that people will listen to and act upon. Over my many decades as a consultant, I’ve frequently been asked about how to do this. So I wrote a book on the subject—and thus became a consultant to other consultants.

The book, The Secrets of Consulting, became so popular that I wrote a second book, More Secrets of Consulting, which also became a valued resource for consultants. So, unless you’d like to hire me as your consultant at $500/hour, and if you’re serious about become a consultant, or a better consultant, I’d suggest you spend the cost of a lunch and buy one or both of these books. Read them, follow their advice, and if it doesn’t help you, ask for and receive your money back. It’s guaranteed.

By the way, the person who asked this question didn't say whether s/he wanted to give or receive consulting. I assumed in my answer that they wanted to offer consulting, but the books work well either way—for consultants or those who hire consultants.

Who is Right, and What is to Be Done About It? (2)

Today, I give the rest of the story as it actually happened, then consider some of the astute comments given already.

What the Consultant Did
The consultant was astonished by the programmer's response: "That's not an error. Actually, the formula was in error, so I corrected it. The formula I programmed is correct, whereas the original formula was simply wrong."

The consultant understood, which the programmer did not, that a program error occurs when the program does not do what the customer wanted, not what the programmer thinks the customer should have wanted. That was the programmer's first mistake.

The programmer's second mistake was not understanding who his customer was. He seemed to think that the French were the customer, but the actual customer was the consultant.

(NOTE: If the actual customer had been the French, the programmer's action was still wrong, because of his first mistake. If a programmer thinks his customer has asked for the wrong thing, he could, politely, bring this thought to the customer's attention. So, if the French had been the customer, the programmer's third mistake was not bringing his thought to them. And even if the customer had been correctly identified, the programmer's fourth mistake was being rude and arrogant. That's simply not the way to get your point across, especially if your point is that your customer has been wrong.)

What the Consultant Said
"You didn't understand your assignment," the consultant said. "We're trying to simulate the precise formula used in France so we can compare it to the formula used in other countries. It's not a question of right or wrong, but merely of matching the existing French formula."

"Well," the programmer replied, "anyone with half a brain and a smattering of knowledge of inventory theory can see immediately that the French formula cannot possibly be correct, so what's the sense of programming it? Tell them to use my formula, if they want to improve their inventory management."

The management consultant decided to try another approach with the recalcitrant programmer. "That's a good idea. If you're right, I'm sure they'll really appreciate getting a better formula. In the meantime, it will help them to accept the new formula if they can see how it compares with their original one on this data, so I'd appreciate having their formula programmed as soon as you can manage."

"You don't seem to understand," the programmer insisted, "Why should I waste my valuable time on a formula I know is wrong? Just show them my formula and they'll understand."

At this point, the management consultant gave up on the programmer and got himself another one. The French formula was programmed and found to give the claimed results which were, in fact, superior in many circumstances to the approaches used in other countries. It turns out that the programmer's fifth mistake was overestimating the "correctness" of "inventory theory."

Readers' Comments
A number of readers correctly (I believe) said they would try talking with the programmer. In the actual case, the consultant tried this, but learned that the programmer was not going to listen. Perhaps this was the consultant's fault in the way he tried to talk to the programmer, but in any case, if your employee (and the programmer was, of course, working for the consultant) won't talk with you about a situation, then you have to get rid of that employee. So, attempting to talk is a good approach, in that it gives you essential information even if the programmer refuses to talk.

Other readers warned the consultant to consider his own role carefully, and to consider myriad possible interpretations of what's going on. This is always good advice for a consultant.

Several readers correctly identified one or more of the programmer's mistakes (above). Clearly, someone needs to educate the programmer about what his job is, and how to do it, but evidently the consultant lacked the skill to accomplish that. So, again, the consultant needs to consider his own role, at least for the future. In a similar situation, for example, he might take more care in choosing the programmer and/or making the programmer's task much clearer from the outset.

Those who advised the consultant to get "on the ground" with the inventory application were also on a productive track. In this case, the consultant was in the USA, and meekly accepted the refusal to pay him to travel to France and study the French approach first hand. If the consultant knew what he needed but didn't insist on having it, he made a major consulting mistake. If you insist, but your client won't supply it (time, or access, or money, or whatever), then the consultant should simply resign from that assignment.

Using specific examples rather than simply theory—what a good idea. Both the consultant and the programmer were probably "intuitives" in the MBTI sense, so they kept the discussion on the level of theory, which often misses some crucial data. In this case, if the French formula actually worked in practice, that would have thrown an entirely different light on the discussion.

Next Steps
All in all, the case example seems to have done its job—namely, stimulating an outpouring of darn good advice about consulting and programming.

Now that you have the "whole story," what further observations would you like to make as comments?

Who is Right, and What is to Be Done About It?

A management consultant, whose client was an international manufacturer, was asked to evaluate an inventory management procedure that the client had used with stunning success in their French operations. As part of his study, he wanted to compare the performance of the French procedure with procedures used in other locations, using historical data from several countries. A programmer with a strong management science background was given the job of programming the simulation of the French procedure.

When the consultant received the results he could not reconcile them with the figures supplied by the French company. After extensive checking he initiated a series of long telephone calls to France, suggesting that perhaps the procedure had not actually performed as well as they had claimed. The French management took offense at the implication of incompetence.

The French manager complained to the manager who had hired the consultant. Tempers mounted and international relations were strained to the breaking point.

By sheer chance, someone examined the programmer's simulation program and noticed that one term was missing and a second term was negative rather than positive. These findings led to a full technical review of the formula as translated. The review showed that the programmer's formula did not match the formula supplied by the French.

The consultant, much relieved, took the program back to the programmer and showed him the error. "That's not an error," the programmer protested. "Actually, the formula was in error, so I corrected it. The formula I programmed is correct, whereas the original formula was simply wrong."

That's the end of Part 1.

Note to Readers
Now, for you readers, the question is this:

"If you were the consultant, how would you handle this situation going forward?"

If I receive a few comments, I'll publish the rest of the story—what actually happened.

And please note: I don't accept anonymous comments. They're automatically rejected. By all means, use a pseudonym, but don't waste your effort trying to post anonymous comments.

Trying to Change a Dysfunctional Organization

Today, I'm continuing my problem-solving series with a letter from Rory, asking how to change his organization. Rory's situation should be familiar to anyone who has been literally thrown into "testing" in a dysfunctional organization.

Rory
Your books have already helped me and are continuing to help me, but I have a specific scenario at work right now and I have what I think is a good solution, but I'd really appreciate your take on the matter.

I seem to be very unhappy in Variable or Routine organizations, and I really want to work in a Steering organization, but as I've learned from you they are few and far between.

Jerry
By Variable, Routine, and Steering, Rory is referring to the cultures described in my Quality Software series.

Rory
Therefore, I want to try my hand at changing the organization I work in because a) I'll be happier (I think) and b) I think the company will be better off as well. However, after re- reading Chapter 12 of "Becoming a Technical Leader" I'm very mindful of not inflicting help. I went through an exercise where I documented the situation objectively, and then observed my feelings about it. I will include what I documented below my signature. I wanted to share it with you because I thought you might find it interesting, but I'm also interested in any help you could offer on the matter.

Rory's Exercise
The situation:
- Product Manager mentioned a new scenario to me one day before the product was supposed to be released to production.

Jerry
Strike one. Strike two. And Strike three. Out already.

Rory
- The application is currently in the staging environment where testing is supposed to center around verifying the configuration is correct.

Jerry
Huh?

Rory
- The new scenario revealed a bug.

Jerry
Was anyone surprised by this?

Rory
- The developer in charge of the part that was broken updated the stored procedures to account for this.
- After testing it again there were new errors and the feature did not work at all.

Jerry
Was anyone surprised by this?

Rory
>- After an additional change the new scenario is still not working
>correctly and an old scenario is no longer working correctly.

Jerry
Was anyone surprised by this?

Rory
More context:
- The work for this feature was handed down by a manager. Each programmer was assigned a certain area of the application to code.

Jerry
Meaning the manager had already done design work?

Rory
- I started testing this on my fifth day at the company after the design reviews were completed and I report to a different manager than the programmers.
- The product manager reports to a different manager as well.
- We have never held a retrospective on the feature.
- The feature design is not documented.

Jerry
Was anyone surprised by this?

Rory
How I feel right now:
frustrated, sad, stressed, unhelpful, confused, detached from team, hopeless

How I feel about the feelings:
- I feel a little silly for letting something that is not life or death frustrate me or make me sad.
- I feel weak for not knowing how to change the situation or myself so that I don't feel these things.

Jerry
Don't try to get rid of the feelings. Instead, learn how to use them productively. If after all this, you weren't feeling frustrated, sad, stressed, unhelpful, confused, detached from team, then there would be something wrong with you.

As for hopeless, well, there isn't much hope there. There's an enormous amount to do to change an organization that acts like you've described, and you can't do it alone. So, the first step for you is to quietly see if you can recruit a few allies. If you can't, then you should leave and find a better organization.

Rory
- I feel afraid that I may lower my professional integrity in order to increase my happiness which in the long run may make me less happy.
- I feel incompetent for feeling confused.

Jerry
No, in fact, only an incompetent person would fail to feel confused in such a situation.

And just how do you mean, "lower my professional integrity" in order to increase your happiness? In my experience, people who lower their professional integrity soon become terribly unhappy that they did it. So don't!

Rory
A brief summary of what I think bothers me the most:
We aren't working together as a team on this issue, and I feel unrelated to the problem and to the other people working on it.. I believe we're working in an inefficient way which doesn't fulfill my need to become more competent at delivering quality software. My autonomy is compromised, because I feel like the developers are using me to re-test something just to check that the code fix they made worked instead of checking it themselves before taking my time. (I feel guilty for feeling that way.)

Jerry
If it's true, then there's no reason to feel guilty.

You need to be talking with people about your feelings. That's the way to find allies--or to find out there are none to be had.

Rory
I also want to sincerely help the company deliver a great product and spend as little time and money as possible to do it, and I don't see us finding ways to improve.

Jerry
You have to find others who see things that way.

Rory
What I would like to do:
If I were an outside consultant (and I was asked to help) then I would probably schedule a meeting with the actual people involved and hold a retrospective. Then I would go from there.

Jerry
That's too big a chunk from where you are. You need to recruit support, one person at a time. If you're seen to be doing this, and then you're labeled as "subversive" and/or "not a team player," then the place is hopeless.

Rory
However, I was involved in this, and I think that some people would be offended that I'm asking them to come to another meeting.

Jerry
Again, don't try to get everybody. Change happens one person at a time.

Rory
Based on this I think my best option right now is to ask someone who was not involved in the feature and who seems to have a lot of respect and admiration to schedule and facilitate a retrospective for us.

Jerry
A good idea, but it won't happen if you're the only one supporting it. Develop allies!

Hope this helps.

Switching Topics at Conference Presentations

My problem-solving letters seem to be very popular, so I'll continue this series whenever I have an interesting situation to discuss. Today, it starts with a letter from a writer colleague, let's call him Edgar.

Edgar's Letter
This weekend I'm presenting at a conference.

This morning I got a revamped schedule and suddenly I'm doing a break out session on "Coping with Foreign Withholding Taxes."

I'm in a bit of a panic because I've spent the last three months putting together a totally different presentation about "Working with Translators." Nothing like giving a presenter last minute notice. :}

Problem is, I have zero experience with foreign withholding taxes. I keep thinking I need to look into it, but have never had the time. If anyone has experience or thoughts that I could share at the conference I could really use some help.

Jerry's First Thoughts
This is an excellent example of a person offering a solution idea, rather than a problem statement. Edgar is asking for information on foreign taxes, presumably to help him cobble together a last-minute talk on the subject. In other words, he's already decided that he has to solve this problem by giving in to the organizers' totally unreasonable demands.

If he does that, his presentation will merely reveal him to be a fake, a pretender, not the real expert people at the conference would have a right to expect. In the long run, that's only going to tarnish Edgar's reputation as a professional, so I recommended a different approach altogether.

Jerry's Reply
Edgar, I sympathize with your predicament. In half a century of presenting at conferences, something similar has happened to me twice.

The first time, I didn't know how to handle it. I bungled around trying to wing it on the new topic. (I knew a bit about it, but probably not as much as some people in the audience, and in any case, I wasn't prepared.) I looked fake, and/or stupid, and news in our profession travels fast. Especially bad news.

Some years later, the same thing happened to me. This time, I knew what do do. I came to the session room a few minutes before the start time. As people arrived, I warned them that the announced topic had changed. But most people came just at the last minute, so they didn't hear my warning.

I gave them a few minutes to settle. Then I said, "The topic you see in your program is 'Coping with Foreign Withholding Taxes.' However, four months ago, when I agreed to do this session, I was told the topic was 'Working with Translators.' So, I have prepared on that topic for four months, but I haven't prepared at all for the Foreign Taxes topic. In fact, I know virtually nothing about that topic. So, if that's what you want to hear about, this isn't the place to hear it."

I went on to say, "If, however, some of you are interested in Working with Translators, stick around and I'll make my presentation."

Most of the people actually stuck around, and liked the presentation. If my topics had been like the two you mention, I might have said, "I assume you came here today because you're interested in doing business overseas. One way to help that happen is to handle the taxes wisely, but another way is to obtain good translations of your writing. After all, if you have no overseas business, you won't have any foreign taxes. So, this presentation could serve your purposes after all, especially since there are no other presentations on translations."

I may also have said (I don't remember, but I was younger and more impetuous then), "If you're unhappy about this last-minute switch, you might want to tell the conference organizers about your feelings. It won't help to tell me, as I had nothing to do with it."

References

I hope this story helps you a little. It's the best I have to offer.

If you'd like to learn more about my approach to solving problems such as this last-minute switch, you might want read one or more of my books, such as The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully; More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit; and Are Your Lights On: How to know what the problem really is.

Links to each of my books can be found on my website: http://www.geraldmweinberg.com

If you enjoyed this little essay, please sign up to come back for more.

Thanks,

Jerry

Persistence in Problem Solving

I write about and teach about problem solving. I also consult on the topic. Sometimes, when one of my clients is stuck on a problem, I tell them I have a sure-fire solution method:

Write it down, seal it in an envelope, put it in a safe place, and open it after 50 years. Then, if it's not solved itself by then, seal it in another envelope for 50 more years. It's sure to be solved by then.

Well, I'd never actually tried the method, but something special happened today that I just have to tell. The story began, if I remember correctly, in 1949, more than 60 years ago. I was taking a bookkeeping class in high school, and on the first day, the teacher started off by saying:

"Bookkeeping is the only word in the English language that has 3 consecutive double letters."

Being a wise-ass young kid, I raised my hand and said, "I know another one."

Startled, she asked, "And what's that?"

"Bookkeeper."

That got a few laughs from the students, and put me on her s-list for two semesters.

Still, after all this time, that's about the only thing I remember from that bookeeping class--mostly because I kept seeking another 3-double-letter word, on and off for all that time.

Well, today I was working on a mystery novel with some prison scenes, and I came up with the kind of word I was seeking. It was prison slang for the warden:

Crookkeeper.

(Dani says it could also be the name of the person who guards shepherds' equipment.)

MORAL: Virtually any problem will be solved if you work on it for 50+ years. So, never give up, but sometimes delay.

Problem Definition

If you like solving problems, and don't always have the patience to wait 50 years, you may shorten your solution time if you start with a better problem definition. You'll be able to do that if you read one or more of the books pictured here. Take a look at http://www.geraldmweinberg.com

Addendum
I guess I should also post a contrasting story about the quickest problem solving effort:

About 5 seconds after I posted this blog, I got a tweet from "@perze" saying:

Hello Mr. Weinberg i don't want to sound like a wise-cracker but "bookkeeping" was misspelled in your last post.

Good for your @perze!

Fixing this post also gave me a few seconds to come up with a couple more 3-double-letter words:

1. When my Aunt Minnie used to visit, my father gave me the task of keeping my cousin Larry out of his sight. In doing that, I was the schnookkeeper.

2. When fishing, I was put in charge of guarding the tackle, so I was the hookkeeper.

3.