Friday, May 15, 2020

A Rose by Any Other Name



OK, I turn 50 later this year and I'm wondering if that's old enough to officially be a grumpy old man? My reason for asking is I realize that there's something that bugs me.  I hate buzzwords.  Actually I don't think it's a grumpy old man thing as I've always had a dislike for buzzwords along with an even stronger distaste for using unnecessarily complicated or pretentious language. I'm sure I'm guilty of using both, but nothing pleases me more than explaining complicated ideas using plain and simple language. In my mind the responsibility for good communication lies with the person doing the communicating. If they can't get across what they're saying so that the intended audience understands it nice and clearly then they need to try again. The person reading or listening should not have to consult a dictionary or Google the latest buzzword list because someone is trying to appear cool or more intelligent.

Buzzkill

Now I should be careful, I guess, because there is the argument that putting a new name to something can create a "buzz" (I guess that's why it's a buzzword?). It can create new interest in something old. There's also the argument that sometimes a new word or expression captures an idea or concept better somehow than however it was expressed in the past. Still I can't shake the thought that it's often the case that someone is trying to say something is new, when really it's just repackaging of an old idea and giving it a new name.  Like I said, I may really be a grumpy old man already!

OK, OK, grumpy old man, give us some examples so we can see what you're talking about. Alrighty then young whipper-snapper, here is my "top 5" (or is that bottom 5?) of buzzwords that rub me the wrong way, starting from the least offensive to the one that will cause me to use almost cuss words...

1. Circular economy

This one used to bug me a lot more, but I've slowly warmed up to it. It basically means to use life cycle thinking about a product or process and the way it affects the environment. Having done a fair bit of work on life cycle assessments (LCA) to look at environmental impacts it really bothered me when people used the expression "circular economy" to say the same thing, more or less.  But, I guess if you use "economy" in an expression then the bean counters will pay attention, and maybe it's a snappier title than having to explain a whole bunch of concepts with life cycles? I don't know. I give this just 2.5 out of 5 on my grump-o-meter. 

2. Value proposition

Hmmm, I remember the first time I was in meeting and someone kept talking about "value propositions" and I had no clue, so I leaned over to my colleague and asked him what the heck it means. "It means a business case." Ah.  Then why not say "business case" then? I should add that I'm a technical poop engineer and until that time I'd managed to avoid the cold realities of business stuff and business-speak, but here I am now dealing with a different type of fecal linguistics. Yeah, "value proposition" still rubs me the wrong way, but it's here to stay I guess.  3.0 on the grump-o-meter... unless you want to really get my juices flowing and shorten it to "value prop." and then I'll give you 3.5 or even 4.0.

3. Digital twin

I have to be careful with this one so that I don't violate my own dislike of pretentiousness. I've worked with computer models for more than 20 years and messed around with computers since the 1980's (yup I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and I was proud of it!). So here we are in 2020 and all of a sudden everything is freakin' "digital."  Arghh.  So, a "digital twin" is in fact a "computer model."  Why we can't say that I don't know.  Definitely a 3.5 on my grump-o-meter despite the fact that I use the term myself now on occasion as it's creeping into more conversations... and hate myself for doing so, just a little.

4. Totex

OK, I tried to look this up on Wikipedia to give you an official definition, but I think it's beneath them to even have this. According to Wikipedia it's a Japanese company that makes weather balloons. I actually much prefer that over the current vogue in the UK water sector where TOTEX is the name given to accounting for both operating expenses (OPEX) and the capital expenditure (CAPEX) in a project combined as... you guessed it... TOTEX, short for "total expenditure" or something like that I guess. It's an all new and fancy way of looking at projects... no wait a minute. It's a basic economic evaluation of operating and capital costs or value over time that's been called a "net present value" (NPV) or "net present cost" for years and years. That's how we've evaluated every project I've ever worked on since I was a poop engineer, I think. So what's new and shiny about "Totex"? Nothing.  It's a basic and sensible economic evaluation that every sensible engineer has done since they graduated from university. 4.9 on my grump-o-meter. Please do shoot me if I ever use the expression. Or at least slap me very hard.

5. Ideation

Number 5 and an easy 5.0 on my grump-o-meter. Who came up with this word? It's not a real word. Let me go and slap them a little. Oh wait, it's an old word from 1818, though it appears it was originally a psychiatric term for suicidal thoughts.  Huh, I'd never have guessed.  Still, it's current usage is slap-worthy.  It's a precocious way of saying "idea generation" or "brainstorming," but only if you think you're a cool person. Please, don't. It's really not cool.

OK so that was my rant for the day. I should say that I really don't feel too strongly about any of these words if you really, really do want to use them. Go ahead. I won't slap you really. Well not much. In my next post perhaps I'll make the pitch to have the word "squoze" added to the dictionary. English is, after-all, a consensus language!

I'd better go and ideate a new digital twin, being careful to include totex in my value proposition under the nexus of the circular economy.






Thursday, March 26, 2020

WAH WAH WAH

No I'm not crying yet, but I am limiting the amount of news I watch now we're in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.  It's serious enough without the media hype, so I think I'll read the news on LinkedIn or other less hyperbolic outlets for a while.
Photo by Marco Albuquerque on Unsplash
The topic for this blog is related to what's going on right now - working at home (WAH) - which is what a whole bunch of people are being forced to do in order to limit the spread of the virus. This is also know as telecommuting, working from home (WFH), teleworking, mobile working, remote working and who knows what else. But I prefer "WAH" just because that's what I used to put on our out of office sheet (a lot!) when I worked in Kansas City and it sounds like I'm a big baby!

In a previous blog I talked about the work-life balance/blend and in it I mentioned listing out the pros and cons of WAH and so, given that so many of us are stuck at home working now, I thought I'd take a shot at listing my own perspective on the pros and cons from working at home a fair amount over the years, as well as some pitfalls to avoid your WAH becoming "wah, wah, wah"! So here goes with 10 of each...

10 Pros of WAH

  1. No commute. Whether you have to fight traffic or fight the crowds in the subway, there's no denying it's a lot less stressful shuffling off to your home office or kitchen table in your bunny slippers (see Pro item 3).
  2. An extra hour or two in your day.  Linked to not having to commute, but in my mind worth separating out as a benefit on its own, is that the time you used to spend traveling to and from work is wasted time that you now get back to use as you see fit. Many people make the most of that time by listening to podcasts, making calls, listening to audiobooks etc. but to me that's more that they're making the most of a bad situation. If you WAH you can listen to that favorite podcast when you want, make a call that won't drop, or actually read a real book!
  3. Very relaxed dress code. Sure, wear your bunny slippers. Heck wear a onesie if you feel like it.  Hmmm, maybe not if you're going to do any video conferencing.
  4. Better connectivity and IT. I need to be careful here so that I don't offend my employer, and maybe it's because I'm a geek with my own preferences when it comes to computer stuff, but over the years I've generally had a better internet connection at home (thanks Xfinity), and a printer and scanner that work better than the office one. Also, I can use my own Mac or iPad when my work laptop is grinding to a halt because of Windows issues or the standard software I can't configure gets bogged down for random reasons. Now, I must say that my current work laptop is working a whole lot better than some have in the past and, generally speaking, the days of my laptop grinding to a halt are mostly gone.
  5. Better coffee. If you've read my previous post, you knew this one was coming.  Whether you're a Nespresso fan like me, or you grind your own favorite beans, or pick out your fave K-cup, you generally have a better selection and control over what you can drink at home.  Many offices are pretty good in stepping up their game in the coffee department - our office provides a Keurig machine - but unless you work at a fancy startup that has candy bowls and it's own barista, you can generally get better coffee at your own abode.
  6. Flexible working hours. This is where I should refer back to the work-life balance/blend article. If you do it right then the flexibility of shifting your work hours can be really useful. You can do that with a job where you go to an office but it's much easier to do it when you're working from home.
  7. Lower your carbon footprint. Well maybe.  According to this article it depends. I think in my case the GHG emissions from driving my little hybrid to the office is probably balanced by the need for the AC in our house when I WAH. I should check...
  8. Dogs. Yup, I share my home office with my dogs (and a cat sometimes). They are awesome. Now if I could take them to the main office, perhaps...?
  9. Your own refrigerator. Your favorite snacks, leftovers... all in your very own refrigerator. You don't have to share the space with the rest of the office, and it's not all thrown out on Friday afternoon by the cleaners, your favorite container and all (well not in our house!).
  10. The bar. My company has strict alcohol policies that forbid booze to even be on their premises.  In my house it's perfectly legal. When 5 o'clock comes around...

10 Woes of WAH

OK, you can see my obvious bias with the long list of "pros" for WAH. But it's not all roses.  Here are  some downsides to WAH...

  1. No in-person communication. Yeah you can overcome this somewhat with video chat, if you can persuade your shy co-workers to turn on their camera, but it's not quite the same. And when it comes to group calls hmmm, that can be an amusing challenge...
  2. Working longer hours. In the "pros" I highlighted the time you get back from not having to commute, but it's easy for that to become extra work time. You need to manage that carefully to avoid burnout.
  3. No decompression/transition time. Ironically, that long commute that I listed as a negative in the previous list, is actually useful for some people as a time to transition from work to home life (particularly if you're listening to your Podcast on how to deal with stress at work!). Without that some folks struggle to transition out of their work mode to home mode.
  4. Work-life blur. So there's work-life balance, or the flexibility of work-life blend, but what can happen is that you never turn off from work.  Now this can happen even if you don't work from home, but I think it's a bigger danger when you do WAH. Checking e-mails in the evening and as soon as you wake in the morning are tell-tale signs your work is dominating everything and the balance/blend is just a blur.
  5. Interruptions. When we bought our house in Texas we purposely looked for one with an office, so I'm generally well set up to avoid interruptions, but if you're using common space like the kitchen or, like many poor souls right now you're having to manage your kids home from school and try to work at the same time, it can be a challenge. I'm guessing there are many BBC dads out there right now. I feel for ya.
  6. No meeting space. Right now we're practicing "social distancing" to combat the spread of the coronavirus, but when we get back to normal business life, one challenge of WAH is you don't have a place to meet people in person. It would be kind of weird and unprofessional to meet people at your home, unless you know them really well, so then you're stuck with arranging a meeting at a coffee shop maybe. But what about meeting or presenting with multiple people? There are ways of doing it, but they're not as easy and convenient as using the common spaces and meeting rooms of most offices.
  7. Reduced office facilities. For some reason FedEx doesn't pick up from my house every evening and despite my bragging about superior IT at home, I have no way of printing out full- or half-sized drawings.  There are just some things provided in an office setting that aren't there at home. So you have to figure that out (Thanks FedEx and UPS)
  8. VPN and Internet Woes. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) allows you to connect to your corporate network via the internet over a secure connection. Very useful and very smart... and slow and not always available. Again, this is much better today than it was a few years ago, but still it can be a source of pain sometimes.
  9. No water cooler conversations. I think this is an American idiom, but it basically means those unplanned conversations you have when you meet a colleague in a common space or in the corridor. Sometimes they are very useful and fruitful. When you're holed up at home you don't have those opportunities or conversations except with your significant other or the dog!
  10. Personal hygiene.  Not sure how to put this delicately, but just a week into us all working from home, I'm noticing some of my colleagues on video chat have maybe not shaved as frequently as they used to.  For sure I'm guilty as charged. 

Avoiding Pitfalls

On balance I definitely see the pros of WAH outweigh the woes, but beyond that, and being stuck at home whether we like it or not, we can overcome some of the downsides if we think about them a little. Here are a few tips to help overcome some of the pitfalls of WAH.

  1. Set a schedule. In order to avoid overworking and the danger of work-life blur, be intentional about setting your daily schedule. Try to work fixed hours as you would in the office setting, but use the flexibility to suit you when you need it, still making sure you work the hours you need to, and not too much more.
  2. Take a break.  Linked to the schedule, make sure to take breaks, go for a walk (take the dogs!), have a lunch break etc.  At the end of your working time, take time to decompress and transition out of your work mode if you need to.
  3. Take care of yourself. For the sake of your significant other and your own dignity, please take a shower! Exercise and eat well.  These apply as much for WAH as working in an office.
  4. Be gracious, flexible and lighten-up.  It can be a bit weird to work from home, so let's cut each other some slack. Enjoy the "pros," and help each other in dealing with the cons by being a little more understanding and flexible ourselves.  And let's have fun with it all. Life's too short not to!

So, there is my take on WAH. I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts and experiences, so please share in the comments section.