I’ve probably used this title a bit too often over time, but . . . what the hell, eh? Not sure I’ve publicized it, but I have decided to accept the early retirement package offered by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to all employees who have celebrated their 60th birthday. I will, therefore, at the tender age of 63 (well, a couple weeks prior to achieving that particular milestone) be a retiree. I’m not, however, actually retiring, as I can’t truly afford to. So . . . I’ll be looking for interesting things to do that will also bring in a little bit of income to supplement my modest pension and the reduced Social Security I will be “forced” to apply for a bit early. So watch for me to get increasingly “vocal” as I feel the need to make a little rain for myself. I’m hopeful I can do that without being obnoxious, but one never knows. Others will have to be the judge of that.
Tag Archives: Blogging
From the Frying Pan, Into the . . . ?
Last week, during the remaining few hours of a two-day Novations class in Project Management, I received a couple of somewhat disconcerting emails. The first one, from the President of the company, was a notification a “Voluntary Separation Program” was being offered to all employees (well, almost all) who would be 60 years of age or older on May 15, 2010. This was announced as the latest step in many that have been taken to prepare the business for the challenges presented by the ending of the Space Shuttle Main Engine program and by the changes announced recently by NASA. I can’t say it was a surprise. The second email was from HR. It contained the (again, not startling, but nevertheless uncomfortable) news that I was (being close the 63 years old) eligible for the program.
Now, I had not – until that point – seriously considered leaving the company. I have been there for a total of over 23 years (cycle time; I worked my first year as a temp and left for two years to join a somewhat ill-fated yet necessary attempt to rejoin a family business) and had every intention of remaining at least another 15. Furthermore, as the lead for a team charged with changing the way we did business, with special responsibility for the use of social media, I was excited about the challenges we faced and the opportunities that presented. Suddenly, I felt very old and somewhat useless. It was not a comfortable feeling at all.
I have since spent a great deal of time thinking about what this means to me and, as a result of this thinking, I have decided to take the offer. In fact, I signed the papers yesterday declaring my intent to do so. While it isn’t the most lucrative of offers they could have made, it will give me about six months in which to plant the seeds of my next career, a career I intend on pursuing with a vengeance. I am also old enough to retire, which will increase the time I have before I need to start dipping into our savings. One last course available to me is filing for social security, something I would rather wait until I am 66 to do so I can receive the full amount.
So . . . what am I going to do with this breathing space. Well, my friend Luis Suarez has hinted at some of it in his post of today, “When This All Gets Cool, It’s All about The People and Your Passion“, and it’s even in my profile on Facebook, where I said “I am most interested in using today’s Internet based social computing technology to further the interests of my company and, not incidentally, humanity as well. I see no reason the two interests can’t converge. Do you?” It looks like I won’t be doing it to help my company, but I’m confident I can find other companies interested in what I do. Possibly, the most exciting thing about this change in career, though, is it will allow me the time to work with schools, community-service organizations, and other types of enterprise that can benefit from my passion about social computing and the promise they hold for doing the right things.
This is the journey I am now embarking on and I’m literally bursting with enthusiasm for it. I believe it will be a large part of the experience I will chronicle in this blog. I will continue my long association with my friends and colleagues in the Enterprise Thinking Network, many of whom will continue (unless there are further, massive layoffs) with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. In fact, I am scheduled to co-present a workshop with Johnnie Pourdehnad, long-time associate of Russell Ackoff’s, and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as the Associate Director of ACASA (Ackoff Collaboratory for the Advancement of Systems Approaches). This will be in April, before I have officially left the company (scheduled separation date is no earlier than May 14), at this year’s In2:InThinking Forum – an event you should consider attending if you are interested in new ways to view the world and the work we all do. I recommend it highly.
At any rate, thanks to a fairly extensive network I have built over the years in order to increase my value to my current organization (Hmm. Guess that didn’t work all that well, but it has had the side benefit of being useful to me professionally), I have already begun seeking out new adventures and new ways in which I can be of service. Maybe I’ll even be able to make a decent living at it! I you have any ideas of what some of those things can be, please don’t be shy. Let me know. I promise I’ll get back to you.
Learning From Those who Know
I continually struggle with how best to share here on this blog. Guess I’m trying to find my voice, which is difficult when one’s personal life is so thoroughly enmeshed with one’s professional life and the company you work for needs to keep much of what it does close to the vest. So I need to work on separating those things that are mine (my thoughts, that is) and those things that are my company’s.
Credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
There are a couple of bloggers whose thoughts I really respect and I am learning a bit from them on how to go about doing this and growing my ability to share and connect. There are others as well, but the two I’m speaking of are Euan Semple and Gil Yehuda. Euan has a blog he calls “The Obvious“. Here’s what he says in the section “About this blog”: “This is my personal blog which I began in February 2001. I called it The Obvious? when I wrote anonymously and chose the name to reflect the fact I have to overcome my inhibitions about stating the obvious!” This resonates so strongly with me as I have always felt that anything I saw had to be obvious to everyone since it was so obvious to me. I’ve learned that’s not necessarily the case, but I have yet to fully convince myself it’s true. Reading Euan and, especially, the method he uses in his blog, is very instructive to me; might be to you as well.
Gil Yehuda’s blog is a bit different, as he writes a great deal about Enterprise 2.0. In fact, the title of his blog is “Gil Yehuda’s Enterprise 2.0 Blog“. Gil doesn’t write quite the same as Euan. Most of his posts are a bit longer, though short enough to not be tedious to anyone who’s used to the rapid-fire reality of today’s online world. Since my greatest interest – indeed, my job – is centered around Enterprise 2.0 capabilities and design principles, I appreciate Gil’s clarity and constancy of purpose in sharing his thoughts. His latest post, “What to Contribute: Thoughts of a Blogger“, is a great read on how to deal with the issues I find myself pondering each time I set out to write. I have to admit I have waaay more ideas than I manage to write about.
I intend on learning all I can from these two. I’m hopeful that time will find me opening up more and engaging with greater frequency and, hopefully, clarity as I follow how they do it. There are others – in fact Gil’s latest blog (link above) points to a lot of them, the majority of whom I follow on Twitter – and I will write about them as well as time goes on. Each has a voice worthy of listening to, even if your interest isn’t Enterprise 2.0, as they have firmly established themselves in the “blogosphere”. Check ’em out.
A Few Wordz on Spelng, Grammar, and Punctuation.
In the course of an interesting conversation precipitated by a Tweet from one of the folks I follow on Twitter (is that from the Department of Redundancy Department?), I was asked to share a blog I posted on a site within the firewall where I work. Since the subject of that blog has absolutely nothing to do specifically with the business I’m in, I have no problem doing that. Please understand, though, I was writing in response to an issue I had heard raised numerous times at work and I was specifically trying to address that issue.
Nevertheless, the issue probably exists to some extent outside our particular firewall. In fact, since the blog post that precipitated the conversation I’m referring to was making a point far more generally applicable than the subject of my blog, I feel compelled to point it out as well. It’s from ProNagger.com – Converting Procrastination Into Action, and the specific post is located here. What follows now is my post from work, the title of which is identical to that of this post:
I have heard that some people are a bit reluctant to use AskMe because they know whatever they write will “live on” for a long period of time and they don’t want to take a chance of looking foolish for years to come. I can understand that, especially when it comes to taking a position with respect to a technical issue that may not have a crystal clear answer. I can also understand the reluctance when it comes to spelling, grammar, etc.
So let me point something out that I’ve learned over the last couple of years. First of all, while spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all very important (and few people are quite the stickler I am for their correctness), when it comes to communicating and sharing ideas, I think they’re a bit overrated. This has been driven home to me especially when using Windows Messenger, which I do quite a bit. I have finally reached the point where I don’t bother using capital letters and I only use punctuation when absolutely necessary to be clear.
I also use Twitter, which only allows for the use of 140 characters in any act of publishing. So, sometimes I take a lot of liberties with spelling in order to pack as much meaning into a short communication. So, the point I’m making here is . . . I hope you won’t let the possibility you will post questions, answers, etc. on AskMe with mistakes in them stop you from contributing. It really isn’t that big a deal – especially when balanced against the substantial need to increase our ability to share our knowledge and learn from each other.
This post generated quite a few comments, most expressing relief to have this pointed out to them. One of them, from a colleague I know well who blogs a fair amount internally, merely pointed out his discovery that the original author of the post can edit it, but those who comment could not. I felt compelled to respond and here is what I said:
I have learned the same thing. However, I specifically refrained from correcting this blog because of the message I wanted to convey. I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are extremely important in demonstrating the veracity of a document intended to convey important factual information and, perhaps, some other types of communication that require excellent form. I think we all agree as well there are certain forms of communication that needn’t be quite as “clean” as others; IM and blogs come immediately to mind. I have read a lot of blogs by a lot of very well-read and highly respected people. I notice errors popping up all the time. I think most people forgive those errors, not because they don’t matter at all, but because they don’t really detract from the message and the rapid dissemination of ideas is seen as more valuable than careful editing. Besides, blogs generally don’t go through edit cycles and, if you read the newspaper you know editing is no guarantee of good writing either.
I have a confession to make. Though I changed nothing in the blog as it appears at work, I did make a couple of changes here where I discovered errors in my original post. Please forgive me. As I’ve confessed elsewhere, I have a tendency to be a member of the Grammar and Spelling Police . . . I have to follow my bliss!
Rick
I have learned the same thing. However, I specifically refrained from correcting this blog because of the message I wanted to convey. I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are extremely important in demonstrating the veracity of a document intended to convey important factual information and, perhaps, some other types of communication that require excellent form. I think we all agree as well there are certain forms of communication that needn’t be quite as “clean” as others; IM and blogs come immediately to mind. I have read a lot of blogs by a lot of very well-read and highly respected people. I notice errors popping up all the time. I think most people forgive those errors, not because they don’t matter at all, but because they don’t really detract from the message and the rapid dissemination of ideas is seen as more valuable than careful editing. Besides, blogs generally don’t go through edit cycles and, if you read the newspaper you know editing is no guarantee of good writing either.
Systems Savvy 