I’m a fan of things going wrong. It’s only when things go wrong that anyone pays attention enough to really learn something, or get the courage to try something new.

Followed shortly there after by this:

An easy metric of innovation culture is learning – are people at all levels learning, sharing and growing from whatever happens, good or bad. Not lip-service. But actual learning, where people admit their own mistakes or oversights and what they themselves might have done differently (rather than the witch-hunt many big companies confuse with learning).

As an employee of a company who has recenty hired a new CTO and CIO and has been repeating the word “innovate” like it was gold, this strikes very close to home. Often times the managers, who on their own are self-serving salary-hunters and nothing more, see a mistake and immediately go into what is openly referred to in my workplace as “CYA”, or Cover Your Ass. Whereas a better idea migh be to look at the environment their own behavior has created and learning that maybe things need to be done differently.

I think my idea creates a pretty neat situation. If you’re not any good at what you love, what are you good at? There are training classes available to make you better at performing a task but where do you to learn to love something else? I’m certain that the concept that you will love something when you get better at it is flawed, but I know the idea that some people are just doomed to being miserable failures is wrong. What do you think?

Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.

– Peter Drucker

We get so used to trying to dispatch questions quickly (and ideas often ride the backs of good questions) we forget the most important part of a question – the part where you stop and think before you answer.

…

I used to respect people who were masters of the quick answer. But as I get older it seems the masters of quick answers are often just masters of facts. Trivia. Other people’s theories. Now I think when it comes to matters of importance, these are people to fear. I agree there is definitely a time for fast thinking, but when I look around it seems slow thinking is the path to many of the things we claim we want.

Often, in my workplace, a question is asked, a quick response is given, and because, presumably, the answer was so quickly given it accumulates nods of approval within seconds. This is exacerbated when the quick response includes the latest industry buzzwords or some obscure technology that is arguably better suited to a lab environment. But since the response included these things, most of which folks truly don’t understand past the marketing release, it must be a good idea. I can imagine the question some of these people are asking themselves before beginning their nod and approve process. “Well, he knows how *technology j* works better than I do so it must be a really good solution, I guess?”

I’ve been in my field long enough now, 16 years and a few months, to be able to acknowledge that at least half of my snap reactions to design questions have been wrong in my career. I’d be willing to place a bet that 99.9% of my reactions ended up achieving the goal at hand, but upon looking back there was surely a simpler, more scalable approach to the question. I believe that is the crutch that quick answers lean on. Something might work. It might get things from point A to point B. But it also might be the equivalent of taking a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles that connects in Dallas. Sure you get there, but was it really the best, the right, way?

Shortly after I was allowed to check my bags for my flight home I took the tram to the departing gates and strolled around the terminal hoping to find a place to sit down with my laptop and get it charged so I could listen to music or watch a movie on the flights. Flights.

I attempted to check out of Mandalay Bay and split some of the charges out to my personal card since I’m pretty sure work wouldn’t be too thrilled with me upgrading to a suite and drinking every ounce of wine from the minifridge. Coolest minifridge ever. The minute you lift a bottle or slide a bottle from the shelf, a sensor kicks in and signals the desk to charge you. Which brings me back to trying to check out. My card comes up declined. This is impossible. There’s absolutely no way in hell I spent every penny available to me. Right?

I realize very quickly that the last part of the night was pretty fuzzy. I did go to a cash machine at least once, did I go back repeatedly? I call the bank and my balance is fine but my card has been locked due to what the bank deemed “suspicious activity.” What the fuck does that mean? It seems ridiculous to me that they saw a withdrawal in a different state and immediately thought, “holy shit this guy is getting ripped off!” I mean, people travel. There’s nothing suspicious about that. Well, unless you’re a muslim checking into a flight you paid cash for with plastic explosives in the crack of your ass. I suppose that would be an instance where travel could be considered “suspicious activity.”

But I’m not a muslim. I have never packed plastic explosives in my ass crack. I’m just a guy who went to Vegas for a work convention and spent his last night there giving money to the casino. Which reminds me that I realized last night that young guys who get really loud at Black Jack tables because they think it makes them seem like high rollers are annoying as hell. Not annoying like gnats or mosquitoes, either. No, annoying like you wish it was legal to punch them in the face and remind them that high rollers don’t play Black Jack at the $10 tables and they don’t hoo and holler and give each other high fives and Obama-style fist bumps. I suppose it’s possible that they do, but I highly doubt it.

It reminded me of a trip to Reno I took years ago with my brother and my apparently-former-best friend. Sitting at a Black Jack table, losing our asses but being loud and obnoxious and telling each other it was OK that we were getting killed because we were playing for the team. As if that makes any sense at all. I can only imagine that at some point during that night, as we got drunk and beaten by the casino, some guy who was my age now was sitting at a nearby table thinking to himself how badly he’d like to punch all three of us.

Thankfully, though, nobody got punched. Not in Reno those years ago and not in Vegas last night. I guess I can’t speak for all of Las Vegas, but at least in the vicinity of my body nobody got punched. Including me, but I’m not going to jump out of the seat I’m in right now and shout “WOOHOO!” and high five the guy sitting at the table next to mine. For one thing he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him and for another thing he looks absolutely miserable. I can only speculate that he got his ass kicked by the casino last night as well. He may have even been punched, I don’t know. He may have gotten really pissed at a Craps dealer and yelled at him, only to have the older-looking italian guy reach across the table and proceed to beat the hell out of him.

I’m pretty sure if that happened and I tried to high five the guy because that didn’t happen to me that I would end up getting punched myself. So I’m going to stay in my seat, quiet, and finish this glass of water that’s doing nothing for my hangover.