QFTD, 5/17/11

“Life is too long to know C++ well.”  — Erik Naggum, via Peter Seibel

Interesting factoid: I coulda sworn that said “too short”.  To the point that I half-suspected it’d mutated in my cut-and-paste buffer and went back to check.  It’s weird when you mis-read something consistently.  It’s like those experiments where you can read short to medium length words, even if they’re scrambled, as long as the first and last letters remain the same.  I didn’t see “long”, I saw “life is too X” and filled in the blank.

SiriusXM continues to amaze …

… with their stupidity, I mean.

I have a SiriusXM account.  I want to “listen online”.  I reset my password, ’cause I couldn’t be bothered to look it up in the other room.  I try to log in with the password that I just reset.  It doesn’t work.  I reset it again.  I try to log in again.  It still doesn’t work.  I look it up in the other room and try that.  The old one still works.

I don’t know if they have some latency between resetting the password and when it becomes valid (which is dumb), or if they have different credentials for you “SiriusXM account” vs. your “listen online” account (which is dumb).  But if the latter, what is ESPECIALLY dumb, is that the “reset your password” link on the “listen online” login page RESETS THE WRONG PASSWORD.

Did I mention that this was especially dumb?

Mr. President

If you’re in my chorus, you know this already: in April, our President stepped down, and the Board of Directors voted me in.

I’d gone to our District’s Leadership Academy President’s Class, so I was not entirely unprepared.  Heck, that’s why I started this blog.  And it has, by and large, kept me too busy to post very much.  Alas.  And here I’d wanted to give a blow-by-blow description of the life of a Presidential hopeful.
Oh well.  Here are some things I’ve discovered along the way:
  • A lot of stuff that the President has to do, nobody tells you about.
  • Andy Andrews’s book The Traveler’s Gift is great.  So is its companion volume, Mastering the Seven Decisions.
  • When you build a to-do list, avoid questions.  For me, at least, questions provoke free floating anxiety.  Instead of “Who’s doing <whatever>?”, write down “Find out who’s doing <whatever>.”
  • Who is on your board is important.  Find out what their job is, and decide whether they’re doing it as they need to be doing it.  If they’re not, help them improve, or ask them to step down, and replace them.  Failing that, make sure the right person is on the slate the next year.
  • Decide your chapter’s major goals.  If you have a vision or mission statement, review it.  If you don’t, write one.  Ours are 1) Sing better, 2) Build membership, 3) Make more money.  It’s not accidental that these are interrelated.  Does your board agree with you?  Does your director?  (Realize that you could be wrong!  ðŸ™‚
  • Checklists are great.  This article made a big impression on me: The Checklist: If something so simple can transform intensive care, what else can it do?  (To be clear, I read this a while ago.)
That’s all I have time for this afternoon.  See ya!

If not me, who? If not now, when?

It’s an important question, for a leader or for anyone.  Usually the answer is You, Now.  Otherwise you wouldn’t be wondering about it.

But sometimes the answer is Someone Else, and/or Later.  And it’s important to remember that.
There’s a famous prayer that goes
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

That last line is also very important.  Some things you think you can’t change, you can.  Some things you think you can change, you can’t.  And it’s important to know which is which.

Random tidbits

  • VirtualBox’s “seamless” mode is really cool.  Make sure your guest additions are installed and working correctly.
  • EPUBReader for FireFox is my favorite ePub reader on my Mac (and the only ePub reader on the Linux VM running on my Mac :).  Prefer it highly over Stanza Desktop or Sony’s ebook reader.  Stanza on the iPhone rocks, though.
  • Land of Lisp is cool, as is Modern Perl
  • The airport at Detroit is really big.  Or maybe it’s not.  But certainly my plane taxied for what seemed like a very long time before takeoff.

What I’d like to know about my chorus

Here are some things I’d like to know about every man in my chorus, active or not:

  • skills
  • interests
  • vacation plans
  • retired?
  • things he wishes the chorus did differently / more of / less of
  • interested in competing?
  • primary interests as a Barbershopper
  • previous chorus memberships?  quartet memberships?
  • previous Board of Director roles, in our chorus or others?
  • any other suggestions or comments
For inactive members, I’d add these, too:
  • what would (or might) make them come back?
  • where do they live?
I have a dream of talking to all the guys in the chorus between now and end of 2011 and finding out all this stuff by the time I have to be President.
What do you wish you knew about every guy in your chorus?

Leaders build other leaders

My company recommends Maxwell’s Developing the Leader Within You, along with several other Maxwell titles.  I’ve started it, and I try to think about how it relates to both my workplace and my chorus.

One of the things it says is that, as a leader, you should always be developing, encouraging, and growing the leaders around and especially “under” you in the organization.  Of course, a chorus is different from a business; there really isn’t an “under”, there’s just “around”.
My sister recently described how her company handles their yearly United Way campaign.  They have a very set and practical way of a) getting people to manage the UW campaign, and b) training them to do so.  They have three phases the committee Chair goes through: Training, Chair, Large Donations.  Their first year, they learn the ropes from the current Chair.  The second year, they’re the Chair and they run the program and train the next Chair.  Their last year, they’re in charge of managing the large donations people (typically upper management).
This scheme has several advantages, it seems to me, and ties in to Maxwell.  It’s three years, so it’s a set commitment, not “OMG Forever!”  You get training from the person that just last year had your job.  The next year you train the next person to do the job you’re doing right now.  The last year, the person you just trained is the Chair, and they can ask for help training the next person, and you’ve had two years to get to know all the current and up-and-coming bigwigs and get them to give you the United Way lots of money.
How are you developing the leader within you?  How are you developing the leaders around you?  How are you developing the next guy to fill your position?  Sound off in the comments.