Anger to Action to Planning

Knee jerk responses to anger that manifest as action require planning first. Otherwise danger arises quickly.

“Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!”

• Robbie the Robot

That quote popped into my head within moments of starting to write this entry.

It’s Thursday evening, just before my pending deadline for publishing in less than 12 hours, so I thought I’d better dump my thoughts into another rambling post.

Rambling is something I do so very well, you see.

Looking back at my last post, I see some tinges of the old behaviour, but a more adult approach has started to take hold. You could call it procrastination, but I call it protection - avoiding action spawned from anger leading to more responsibility or issues than I’m ready to assume.

This more cautious approach has been driven by a little reticence on my part that the current situation can be fixed by my simply assuming responsibility alone.

I might well solve an immediate problem, and I also might well create a dozen more. Inventing personas is all very well, and inventing whole procedures is all within my capacity, but there is a limitation on this thinking…

Why Bother?

Sure, it keeps me busy in the short term. I have lots of lovely new policies to create.

But it also creates more work to track, and builds a bigger gap between my direction and that of the company if I’ve got it wrong.

So I’m taking a slightly different tack, and starting with the obvious policies; looking to improve what’s there, work hand in hand with the people currently responsible, and build on the stuff that’s present, using their knowledge with the forethought of those who would most likely be involved.

Let’s just say I wrote a policy out of thin air. By engaging more with the people who are responsible for that area, I might well be able to take their thinking, or early unreleased drafts, and turn them into something concrete that we can stand behind much quicker - and with the certainty that it’s not just me; others can work with them too.

Much better.

More collaboration, less frustration, and a better experience all round.

So this is my first set of thoughts about project Airplane, but I have another project on the sidelines that I’m working on:

Ejector Seat.