Archives For Higher Ground

These are articles that relate to self-actualization, destiny, cause, calling or appeal to elements of the greater good.

Merry Christmas, Steve Gray

joe —  Fri 24-Dec-10

Downpour.jpgOn the day before many of us celebrate the anniversary of the greatest gift given to mankind it dawned on me that my greatest gift may have come when I failed to give one.

Five years ago my wife and I were on our way to church during a very heavy downpour, the cats and dogs kind of rain. Along the way we noticed a woman standing at a bus stop without an umbrella desperately trying to pull her coat over her head. She was on the other side of the median divided road looking quite miserable.

Just as we passed, Beth and I looked at each other and knew we were thinking the same thing. “We should U turn around and give her our umbrella.”

We didn’t.
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The Hallmark Effect

joe —  Sat 18-Dec-10

celebrate marriage.pngDid you ever notice companies that stage an Employee Appreciation Week often have some of the most demotivated employees? I’ve never seen a formal study linking the two but in my short time here on earth there sure seems to be a lot of supporting evidence.

I noticed this on Nov. 9th, the anniversary of the day my wife changed my life. This day isn’t really any different from any other day of the year except that we both take a few minutes to recall a very special moment 14 years ago. There are no gifts, there are no overt expressions of undying love – just another day with a simple “Happy Anniversary” to demonstrate that we do remember and appreciate what happened.

I know that many are thinking “What a lazy and cheap bum – he found a way of getting out of buying an anniversary present or expensive dinner. His wife must be one saintly woman for putting up with that.” She is, but actually we both wanted this.
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The Fear of Greatness

joe —  Sun 5-Dec-10

I struggle with greatness. This really dawned on me as I was watching No Ordinary Family, a show where everyone in the family has a super power.

Undercover Super Hero.pngWhat if I had a super power? What if there were one skill in this world that put me in a class of one? What would be expected of me? Would I be happier?

I’ll be honest, the thought of greatness brings out little Woody Allen moments of anxiety. It really set home these past few weeks in, of all things, preparing our team’s 2011 budget.

Budgets are in essence a process where you declare how much money it would take to be great. How much money would it take to deliver a product that would shatter our competition, amaze our customers, and make our shareholders rich beyond their wildest dreams?

But we never get enough money – nobody does. That’s how the economic principles of scarcity work. What if we did? What if our superpower was to persuade the CFO to give us an unlimited budget? What would be expected of us? Would we be happier?
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What Do You Do For a Living?

joe —  Sun 28-Nov-10

Do for a Living.pngIt’s a mutual friend’s Christmas party and I’ve just been introduced to you. After a few minutes of conversation I ask you “What do you do for a living?”

How did you respond?

How do you describe what you do for a living? I always wrestle with that. I’m a degreed electrical engineer that became a software engineer and haven’t written a lick of professional code in 15 years of engineering management and leadership. Yet none of those are the right answer.

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Stuck in the Middle of the Spin Cycle?

joe —  Sun 21-Nov-10

Despite what I wrote back on January 1st, tonight will be the only true blue moon this year. Science is fascinating to me in that it never takes anything today as absolutely true, only a stepping stone to what is likely more true tomorrow. It’s in a constant state of refinement and understanding.

Take for instance our dearly dead friends Ptolemy and Copernicus. You may remember that Ptolemy once proclaimed that the planets and sun all revolved around the earth. The difficulty with this easily accepted idea was that there were a lot of things that didn’t quite add up and required very complicated explanations on how this all worked.

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I Was an Accident

joe —  Sat 16-Oct-10

I was an accident, but then again so were Post-It Notes and look how much better our office lives are for that.

I remember the very day that my mother gathered up all of the courage she could, probably doing so every day for the previous 17 years to finally break it to me that I was the accidental result of a short lived affair she had before she met and married the man I knew as Dad. She then explained how Dad then legally adopted me and blessed me with my very complicated last name. Apparently I was the last one in the family to know this secret including my younger brother.

What amused me most was how scared everyone in the family was with how I would react. Even months after the news I would still have relatives come up, do that little head bob that seems to always accompany the question, and ask “How are you doing with the news?” Their reaction confused me much more than the original confession. As a matter of fact I think I responded to my mom with “Hmmm, that explains a lot”. (My brother and I are total opposites.) The news, while interesting, didn’t really matter much to me.

Somehow in our world we have muddled up the word accident to be the combination of the actual event as well as its unintended result; Post-It Notes were an accident, that pregnancy was an accident, Joe was an accident. No, Post-It Notes were the result of a failed designed. Post-It Notes themselves are amazing! Continue Reading…

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What a Waste of Time

joe —  Sat 9-Oct-10

I have some friends that are incredibly efficient. I constantly marvel as they take on a task, use no time in breaking through the barriers, and then slay the beast without any wasted effort. I imagine that if I were a FedEx delivery man, an EMT, or a just-in-time supplier that efficiency would be a major skill I would need to master.

There is one area of life where efficiency is the enemy.
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