Develpreneur: Become a Better Developer and Entrepreneur

Clarity and communication are common themes in our improvement episodes. Those are most important when you need to know who you work for. Which master do you serve? The mistake highlighted this time is among many in a situation gone wrong. It also shows how some oversights or missteps can open the door to significant consequences. It does not hurt to be cautious in the modern business world. Things can change quickly. Important Clarification - Know Who You Work For There are competing goals and objectives even within companies. When you add on top of that all of the politics and maneuvering that exists in many environments, things can get complicated. Even more important, your boss is not always the one that signs your check. You may have customers or other influencers in the supply chain that you need to serve. You can not make everyone happy all the time. Therefore, make sure there is clarity about who you work for so you can keep them happy at least. The Lesson Learned The best professionals find ways to avoid conflicts as much as possible. They wait patiently and avoid stepping into minefields. Unfortunately, that is not always possible, nor are the minefields evident in all situations. This lesson is one like others we have seen. Make sure you understand where you stand and what your limits are. That includes how much you are allowed to impact a situation. Sometimes the best way to make progress is to accept a meandering path. Also, sometimes you must realize you are a follower, not a leader.   If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

In a season about growing from errors and mistakes, it seems that an episode about admitting defeat is required.  We cannot stay stationary and make progress.  This concept holds for individual situations and group decisions like the one we examine.  That is why some things in life clearly defined as a win or loss (a sports match, for example) are a blessing.  We have no real choice other than to move forward.  Yes, we can languish in the loss and try to reverse it.  However, it is an exercise in futility that forces us sooner or later to accept reality. Admitting Defeat Is Necessary One of the key ingredients to learning from a mistake is recognizing it as such.  That is something I have bumped into many times.  Someone "gets lucky," and a mistake still results in a successful result.  They then decide the error was a good thing, and they continue to make it.  Eventually, things add up, and now you might have a habit to reverse rather than a simple mistake.  When we have a clearly defined loss, we are forced to examine it and look for ways to win the next time.  For example, watch athletes and coaches that constantly blame the officials for their losses.  They never seem to improve.  They are effectively reinforcing bad habits. The Lesson Learned No one likes a sore loser.  Like it or not, that is how you will be viewed when you refuse to move forward from a loss.  All of the complaining and excuses and even finger-pointing end up looking like whining.  Own your mistakes and losses, and then look for ways to turn them around.  You gain more than the respect of those around you.  You take a step closer to victory the next time. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

This episode of learning from mistakes focuses on clearly defined objectives.  The error highlights what can go wrong when we fail to have them.  We also see these same potential issues pop up when we have weakly defined requirements.  Finally, there is a need to communicate all of this as well.  When we don't know what we don't know, many things other than hilarity ensue. Clearly Defined Objectives Are Needed Through Our Daily Life There are many ways to fall for this lack of clarity.  One of the most common ones is to fall back on labels and similar mechanisms.  There are many opportunities in life to communicate an idea through a generalization and send the wrong message.  Some of the best examples point to grammar mistakes.  However, labels and painting with a broad brush achieve the same result.  Just think of a simple title like a manager.  It can be used in many situations but is vastly different in reality.  For example, do you think a manager at a fast-food restaurant is professionally anywhere near in skillset a manager for a professional sports team?  Is an office manager the same as a people manager?  They are not.  However, we can use that simple word in all of the above situations.   The Lesson Learned The situation described in this issue was a big loss in a way.  The initial decision was swept away because of the way it was executed.  However, it did work out once the approach was switched to one that was clear and direct.  While the mistake was not erased, a path forward was created that allowed everyone to put it behind them.  Keep that in mind when you are struggling with clearly defined objectives.  The solution can be a clarification away.  If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

There are a few times I have been taught the value of testing your backups.  That is why even disaster recovery needs to be validated.  The first story I share is probably a worst-case scenario.  However, it can happen, so we need to be aware of failure points.  We must validate our backups regularly to ensure the process we are counting on is there when we need it. Testing Your Backups Before They Are Needed There are many ways to test backups and our disaster recovery plan.  We can do the extreme version, cut power to the required systems, and attempt to replace them via the procedure.  However, that may not be needed.  We may be able to do partial testing and ensure we can restore or copy the required files.  Even simple things like an automated update process can cause issues with our plan.  Therefore, we need to test regularly and ensure we keep the component parts updated and ready for use. Outliers and False Comfort It is easy to fall into a false sense of comfort about your strategy.  That is where the second story comes in.  Do not assume that your process working last month means it is still working this month.  Likewise, ensure outliers such as systems, applications, or files that are rarely (if ever) used are included in the backups.  I know of several situations where all was well until it was determined that some long-ago created file was lost or corrupted.  Then they found out that the file or system was not covered in the DR plan.  Even a simple act of rebooting a system has caused loss, and when that system was not backed up properly, it was a painful loss. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

There is an old joke about sweeping consequences in IT related to wildcard commands like "rm -rf *."  However, there are ways to avoid getting bit by them. For example, we can do test runs and subset queries before doing the real thing.  While it is undoubtedly faster to rip off one of those commands, it is also dangerous.  This episode looks into some tricks of the trade I learned after countless times of being tripped up by this concept. Sometimes Easy Creates Sweeping Consequences A database is the best tool for examples of doing something quick and dirty that ends up costly.  We can see this even with resource usage before more significant effects like data loss or corruption.  The old SQL command of "SELECT * FROM ..." is one of the first many people learn and the biggest culprit.  We do not see any problem with a table with a few rows.  However, once we move to millions of rows, we can quickly turn this quick call into a time-consuming one that ties up a lot of resources.  Even worse, we can add a join or two without constraints and bring a system to its knees.  It is easier to grab all the columns for a quick browse, but that can also drain more resources than desired. Check Your Expectations The database example is nice and clean because we can always add limiting constraints or do counts of result size.  These tools allow us to validate our query meets our expectations without fully running the query.  For example, we can do a select before a delete is run and ensure that the records we will delete are the ones we desire to remove.  Likewise, we can select before we update.  We can also do smaller selects to determine the result set size before joining those queries.  These are just a few examples; we can apply this to our other coding efforts and most life situations. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

We continue the series about errors and recovering with an excellent example of acceptable loss and when to walk away.  We see these appear in negotiations regularly.  They are shown in movies, television shows, and in real life.  We walk away regularly without even realizing it. So yes, when you decide not to purchase an item or enter a store because of products or pricing, you are walking away from the negotiation. Determine Acceptable Loss Up Front The key to being able to walk away from any negotiation is to determine your breaking point beforehand.  This preparation allows us to detach emotion from the negotiation and have a way to hold ourselves accountable.  It can prompt the internal conversation of "I thought we would not accept that..."  That one can be a lifeline when emotions start to kick in.  Likewise, we can create a list of wants/needs to help us avoid giving in to speed up the process or prevent conflict.  Those are all "tricks" used by good negotiators. Good After Bad We all have a built-in desire to avoid loss.  That is why the idea of having invested too much to stop investing in a person or project is a common pitfall.  We have this false equivalence of thinking we can invest more in a loss and turn it into a win.  Likewise, we often make the mistake of thinking we have spent so much we have to continue.  Our point of no return needs to be set before starting a project.  That is why this story works so well.  I could have quickly decided that my time was worth X dollars.  THen, when faced with a change in value, I would have had a hard line to measure against.  These bad habits involve emotion and can be avoided if we think them through beforehand. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

This episode looks at a marketing campaign and my lack of paying based on key performance indicators or KPIs.  This was a slightly costly mistake and, thus, one that sticks in my memory.  The mistakes that cause us some level of pain are also the easiest to remember. However, that is not the only lesson to learn from this past mistake. KPI - Key Performance Indicators Any form of sales or marketing campaign can be a black box when we do not set KPI values.  There must be a way to measure success (or failure), and our metrics are the key performance indicators.  For example, most advertising campaigns focus on clicks or leads for a measure of potential additional sales.  Likewise, there is a KPI referred to as impressions that is to measure how many people see the ad. Pay On Delivery The most significant challenge in any transaction is matching delivery and payment.  You can see this on e-bay and Etsy sales, among other similar sites.  We want to ensure that we get what we pay for or are paid for our product/service.  However, we can take a "trust them" stance and pay upfront or provide a service before payment.  Those options allow us to get burned, and I was in this case.  Trust is something to be earned.  Therefore, we should avoid cash upfront situations unless we have reason to trust the other party. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

In this episode, our trip down memory lane stops at my first professional interview and when I learned to ask questions.  It is thought by many that those that know never ask.  However, that is far from the truth.  There are always details to be learned.  Likewise, good questions can impress others in an interview or other assessment situation.  Smart people still ask questions; they ask insightful ones. You Provide Insight When You Ask Questions This story is about an interview, and that is the number one situation in our lives where we want to provide a lot of information in a short period.  A good interview goes deep quickly and gives the audience a chance to understand us to some degree, not simply meet us.  Therefore,  everything we say or do not say will be used to evaluate some facet of our personality, skills, and drive.  While that can be stressful, it should also help us realize that we need to be focused and intentional.  Research is helpful before we go into an interview and can alleviate some of our worries.  On the other hand, we cannot use what we learn to short circuit the interview process.  Instead, we need to use that to go deeper. Learn What To Ask All of this may seem confusing and even counterintuitive.  Thus, it helps to simplify the recommendation.  The goal of an interview is to get both parties to understand each other better in a short time.  Research about the others and related organizations can help you get past surface "get to know you" items.  Do not use that to shorten the interview.  Instead, use that time to ask more probing or leading questions.  A simple example is if you know the interviewer will be your manager, you can skip talking about that arrangement and instead ask about their management style.  What you know can save time on introductions.  Then you get to talk about meatier topics and discussions that will help both sides of the table. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

We look at another childhood error and its somewhat humorous result as an example of how to plan for acceptable risk.  We often think of that as something where you are willing to pay the price.  However, we also need to examine mitigating the consequences to where they are acceptable.  It is sort of like placing a monetary bet.  There is a limit we can lose, but maybe a side bet will help reduce the overall loss.  Precautions And Acceptable Risk Preventive action is an excellent way to adjust acceptable risk.  We see examples of this in beta testing and limited releases in the business world.  Yes, the product may fail. But, on the other hand, we have less invested and less potential for negative backlash.  That allows us to push out a new product and consider it an acceptable risk rather than delay release or continue to redesign or refine it.  Testing Theories and Risks Momentum is so often an underlying item of concern in our discussions.  This story is no different.  Sometimes the best way to approach a novel idea is incremental.  That allows us to verify our assumptions without building as much momentum and even limiting potential loss or harm.  However, sometimes we have to reach certain minimums of progress or speed to provide a proper test of our idea.  We can't attempt to jump over a portion of a gap.  Likewise, testing the result of an impact is useless if the impact is so slow as to be unnoticeable. Nevertheless, we can take incremental steps towards our solution.  They need to be adequately sized to be effective. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."

A lack of situational awareness is just one of many youthful mistakes we make.  Yet, it is the root of tons of lessons.  We see it as children shining they are immortal in some way.  However, sometimes there is just a misunderstanding of risks involved in actions or environments.  Some of these same mistakes can hit us much later in life and come from incorrect assumptions. Situational Awareness Cures Many Ills Sun Tzu points out in "The Art of War" that the best way to win a battle is to avoid it.  Life is full of similar situations.  We are often faced with a challenge that is best avoided.  That is why we spend so much time and money on preventative medicine and other precautions.  Why deal with consequences when you can avoid the source event or action instead? Take A Breath And Pause A scene that often occurs in action movies is a sort of calm before the storm.  The hero or heroes are overlooking the enemy territory or compound.  Then we have some sort of planning scene or montage.  A great example of this is the 80's TV show the "A-Team" where there was always a pre-battle planning frenzy.  We need to do something like this on a regular basis in our lives.  When we take a few moments to gather ourselves we avoid rookie mistakes."  This process may include running through a checklist or simply surveying the path(s) ahead.  In any case, those moments taken to pause and plan can often be a highly valuable investment. If you like this season, you will probably like Scott Adams' book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life."