Neither an Alpha Wolf nor an Omega…just one with some Python questions
It’s probably an anachronism, but when I was in college there were still yearbooks-physical hardcover books with pages of color pictures of academic and social life on campus and the events that made the year memorable. Our school had a long tradition of publishing that piece of memorabilia, but in my freshman year it was on the verge of disappearing having turned into a softcover “magazine” during the few years before. Free of cynicism and filled with school spirit, I was determined to return the yearbook to its glory. I became the editor as a sophomore, beginning one of my first lessons in management and leadership, not to mention accounting and vendor management and teamwork…and setting expectations and delegation.
In the end, we had the first hardcover yearbook in years, but it turned into more a singular effort. In others, long lonely nights in the basement of the student union working by myself. It was definitely not a question of being a “bad boss.” There were many people who were excited about the vision of returning the yearbook and joined the team. However, I have a disposition towards self-reliance that was impractical and has kept me from delegating effectively or even asking for help. It would be years until I came to terms with time as a factor, but during that year as editor I did recognize the importance of delegation and managing to specific outcomes as skill I needed to develop. Realizing that there is no shame in asking for help has been a key factor in my development as a manager.
Harder still was the “letting go” and trusting others bit. The yearbook, along with fraternity leadership, gave me my first “certificate” from the school of hard knocks learning that it’s not enough to make others excited about “a” vision, but enfranchising them to take ownership for part of it. Over the years I have embraced collaboration-almost to a fault-and sincerely find joy and satisfaction in working with others. Being able to create a productive collaborative environment has been one of the marks of my growth as a leader and manager…and remains an ongoing lesson. As an entrepreneur, these things are an imperative and coming into focus as I pursue a much more complex goal that will never be achieved by an Omega wolf-the one with no pack.
A brief aside…
I am trying not to “curate” too much in these posts aside from some backstory or another’s credible perspective that reinforces what might otherwise be just my imagination. There will be plenty of things to chronicle that are spontaneous brain farts. But it’s worth it to me to take the time to reflect on some of these experiences to really learn something along the way. Also, let’s pretend for a second that more than (last I checked) thirteen people may actually read this stuff. So, it should be a bit better than some self-indulgent stream of consciousness, have good grammar and maybe even an occasional lesson in alliteration.
…and now back our program
This is the first of three scenarios I have recognized in the last two months whereby I will succeed only with others and am using all of my “certificates” covered in this and two subsequent posts. In the simplest form, I am just trying to get some help to accomplish something-and I am not shy about asking because I stall if I don’t. I have had a handful coding problems that have consumed way too much time, but are things that a development endowed friend could solve with as much conscious effort as I need to write use cases. It’s been fun to see my understanding for the grammar of coding grow, but it’s really just enabled me to accomplish some basic stuff. I have been pleasantly surprised when a bit of code actually executes error free and produces an expected result. That said, the quick iterations of learning in DataCamp, Coursera, and combing a bunch of blogs has rarely helped me get beyond the most basic functions in the time I have. I have not fully internalized Python libraries to understand how to speak to the computer and definitely find my brain exploding looking at a string of nested methods. So, thank you Allen and Ahmad for setting me straight and leading me back to the path, not to mention imparting some of your own brain nuggets. It is not so much professional favors as it is acts of kindness and friendship that I will not forget.
Coming up in subsequent posts…the next situation that I am starting to really enjoy is finding collaborators on Upwork or Fiverr to take more involved development activities off my plate once I have adequately defined the requirements and defined them as discrete functions within a subsystem. The third that is now emerging is where I have begun to recognize how this thing I am trying to build is not a toy and requires true partners with whom I can work more closely.
The beauty of being deliberate and mindful about collaboration is that I am able to bring certain people along on the journey and am meeting others I can depend on as I build a truly productive organization: virtually, physically, or in augmented reality somewhere in between.
