Notes
Things I keep having to say twice.
Short pieces on systems, non-profits, neurodiversity as an engineering problem, and starting again in public.
Most screening filters test one skill, and it is almost never the job.
Application forms, interviews, probation and performance reviews all measure how well a person handles a particular social format. The result then gets written down as attitude, or fit, or interest, in words about the person rather than words about the format. Changing the format is cheaper, and a good deal more honest.
Read the noteA measurement of format becomes a description of character.
Consultation after the decision is a photograph, not a question.
Decisions about a group of people are usually made in rooms none of those people have ever been in, by people reading a summary of a summary. The consultation that follows is often asked to approve wording rather than direction. You can tell the difference within about a minute of opening the paper.
Read the noteYou can meet every standard in the document and still be impossible to deal with.
A standard is a floor somebody else set, some years ago, to stop the worst outcome. It is checked component by component, while people use the whole chain end to end. The gap between the two is where the phone calls come from.
Read the noteThe workaround is the real requirements document.
Every organisation has a spreadsheet nobody talks about. It lives on one person's desktop, it has their initials in the filename, and when you ask about it they get slightly embarrassed. They have been doing your requirements gathering for you, unpaid, for about three years.
Read the noteWhy hiring someone won't fix your information problem.
It treats a process problem like a headcount problem. The new person inherits the same gaps, works around them faster, and now the workaround has a salary attached.
Read the noteWhat I write about
Four things, and they keep turning out to be one thing.
Systems
Why the official process is the draft and the workaround is the finished version.
Non-profits
Small budgets, high stakes, and nothing survives unless people want it to.
Neurodiversity
Ability written off as attitude, by filters built for somebody else.
Starting again
Rebuilding as ordinary work, done on the boring Tuesday.
I write these when I have something worth saying.
No schedule, no list, no popup. If one of them is useful to you, tell me what you are working on and I will point you at the rest.