Andrew Boyd’s Blog

Randy Komisar talked about different CEO styles in The Monk and the Riddle. Basically, it came down to different personality types (a la MBTI/TMI/astrology/etc) that mapped to the stages of a corporation - I paraphrase, but the basic concept was that there are:

• Phase 1 Starters that are all ideas, excitement and enthusiasm - these folks get the thing off the ground. Starters are riskoholics - they love the challenge of impossible odds.
• Phase 2 Growers that are more organised - they replace the starters, and build the organisation through the first couple of years. They are risk managers rather than balls-to-the-wall risk takers like the Starters.
• Phase 3 Maintainers that are very good process people - they thin out the early excess weight in the organisation and settle it down into a good value proposition for shareholders. Maintainers are risk-averse and performance means more to them than relationships, steady and guaranteed growth more than a shot at the truly remarkable.

There is world enough and time for all three styles. All are necessary, indeed vital, within their respective phase.

The time comes in the growth of every organisation where the Starters need to move on, and let the Growers take over.

Me, I’m a Starter. I love big scary ideas - I’ve described it as going down a hill on a pushbike, and turning a corner at the bottom of the hill going a little too fast - I can’t sustain it for long, but I love the feeling of the back wheel starting to skip out… that moment in time when success and failure hang in the balance, and there is no alternative but to just do it.

What this means is, being totally self-honest, is that I am good at inspiring others to get into an idea - a concept, a cause, a dream. I need to recognise that there will come a time when the Growers and Maintainers have to do their stuff, and step aside gracefully. Sometimes, it isn’t easy, especially when people figure that because they don’t need me at that hand over time, that they never did need me around. It is OK. Starters can be tempted to see Growers and Maintainers as wimps, and Growers to see Starters as foolhardy.

In my own mind, I’ve recently completed one job of Starting something, and am moving onto the Next Big Thing - a community project that may not have any visible signs for several months. I’ve discussed how I feel about this change of project with Donna, who is a Starter herself: she is currently forced into a Grower/Maintainer role with one of the community projects that she is involved in, and is feeling somewhat resentful towards Starters at the moment. Her distress is real, and I sympathise.

The moral of this tale, such as it is, is to understand your true nature and work with it.

I am a Starter. I start things. If the cause be worthy and the premise just, let there be Growers and Maintainers to compliment my need to start things. But please, do let me start them, for in the end they may be truly wonderful.

The day started with Donna and I racing upstairs to open presents at 6:15AM or so like a pair of little kids. We’d planned a day of indulgence - away from keyboards and mundane strife - neither of us usually sit and just watch TV - so the day of watching DVDs and TV series was the greatest indulgence we could think of.

After presents, I made strong Turkish coffee with cardamom and we watched Heroes Season 2 episode 7.

Then it was time for the preparation of breakfast - Donna made Potato Rosti with Smoked Salmon and Mustard Dressing - the crispy Rosti (fried potato cakes) contrasted nicely with the softness of the salmon, and the mustard dressing complimented both without overpowering either:

Our thanks to Bill Granger for the wonderful recipe.

I opened the bubbly - our first for the day was a bottle of Greg Gallagher’s Blanc de Blancs (2005) - a nice drop, dry, with the merest hint of honey and pollen. Greg, formerly of Clover Hill and Taltarni, did a fine job:

Sipping Blanc de Blancs and eating the Rosti, we watched Heroes Season 2 Episode 8.

Time to start calling/SMSing relatives with Merry Christmas messages. Then more Heroes episodes - and when we started to fade a little, some chocolate fudge. A little later, we had some Poacher’s Pantry Sweet Chilli Chicken - the smoked chicken breast marinated in gooey sweet chilli sauce:

For lunch, Donna prepared Garlic Prawns (also to a Bill Granger recipe):

We ate these on the balcony, accompanied by a 2001 Clover Hill Blanc de Blanc - dry as dry, with the wonderful biscuitty flavour that comes with well-aged bubbly:

We finished watching all the Heroes shortly after lunch (to Season 2 Episode 12) then had a bit of a snooze. We woke up, watched 300, then I got dinner started - Spicy Stir-Fried Prawns with Vodka and Mango (recipe from John Rose’ The Vodka Cookbook), accompanied by our favourite evening tipple (vodka-tonics):

Dessert (with some episodes of Deadwood) was a Deeks Gluten-Free Pudding accompanied by one of the finest “stickies” I’ve ever tasted - 2005 Jeir Creek Botrytis Semillon Sauvignon Blanc:

Overall, a wonderful day. Donna and I both work fairly hard - it was the sheerest luxury to take a whole day off together and enjoy some fine food and wine.

A friend sent me a link to the Extreme Aerial Bowfishing video. To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it.

In my life, I’ve been both a farmer of my own food and a conscience-driven vegan (I am currently neither). On one hand, I can see the point of destroying feral animals and gathering wild protein - and on the other, killing for sport no longer appeals to me personally. Killing out of necessity - to eat - I can see that.

Something to think about.

We’re all very 2.0 these days - Library 2.0, Knowledge Worker 2.0, Government 2.0.

I face the “a pleasure delayed is a pleasure doubled” vs. “hair-trigger nerd instant gratification syndrome” frustration this morning. The budding blogwar with Anne Zelenka over her comments on Peter Drucker has lost a little steam now that she’s blocked further comments on the post, Technorati is down so I can’t check my overnight figures, and the wireless LAN at home is acting up.

So… is delayed gratification a part of modern nerd life or not? Single point of focus activities like coding imply a certain tradeoff between effort and result, an understanding of “give some now, get more later”. For myself, I work for a living, am happy to trade my time for cash - but I do want interesting and fulfilling work (which I get in spades at SMSMT). This implies a certain need for instant gratification - I want the work to be interesting now. Curious.

I’ve been a Tolkien fan for at least 30 years. I read my omnibus volume of Lord of the Rings until it quite literally fell to pieces.  Like many Gen-X geeks I played Dungeons and Dragons and related RPGs. I read The Hobbit to my own children when they were little. I loved what Peter Jackson did with the movies, even though he changed some bits. I delighted in showing the extended versions of the movies to my partner Helen as her introduction to Tolkien.

So… the Tolkien legacy has produced another book, and I rushed out and bought it. I’ve owned The Children of Hurin for a couple of months now, and, well, I’ve tried three different times to get into it, and I find it boring. This is some kind of heresy I know, and I’ll probably burn for it, but I can’t understand how tedious it is. Maybe I’ve changed, and I suffer now from nerd ADD where there is a minimum necessary attention grab. I don’t know, perhaps {{shudder}} I have outgrown one of the greatest novelists of the last hundred years. So I re-read some of Tolkien’s other books, and even the obscure work like the Silmarillion was better than The Children of Hurin.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, The Children of Hurin was not published as a separate work because J.R.R. just didn’t think that it was good enough.