What is BACIC?
BACIC is a tech community which intends to use the building blocks from the culture of past teamwork experiences and continue to add more blocks to it. Taking the good lessons, ideas, technology, and stories and spreading them into the wider world and making improvements along the way.
The Mission
To take the things that made our work in technology rewarding, our teams great, and our business fantastic and put them into the future minds and hearts of engineers, designers, and leaders.
The Sad Truth
Through experience, I can tell you that we can easily lose touch with that initial passion that got us into tech in the first place. Be it burnout, bad leadership, greed, lack of focus, time crunch, fear, or poor team culture, to name a few.
I’ve seen it several times, unfortunately, and if you have been around the block, then perhaps deep down you know this too. The tech landscape is littered with numerous examples, but we aim to push back and build a stronger foundation with stronger blocks!
Our Basic Building Blocks
The basic building blocks for that stronger foundation are in the name. BACIC packs in as much meaning as it stands as a metaphor for stacking blocks to build something great. Each of the letters represents an important block to the whole purpose:
B — Building Diligently,
A — Ambitiously Learning,
C — Creativity with Focus,
I — Impact, and
C — Culture
Building Diligently
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” — Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
It’s the fine art of making something real and ensuring you’ve considered all the details. Getting shit done, but not cutting corners. Shipping a product, but making sure it includes the manual.
Do you feel yourself being pulled in two different directions? Good! Because this dichotomy is essential to navigating the real tensions faced in large organizations, teams, and even within your very being. Every year, month, day, and moment-to-moment. You cannot have one without the other!
Building an understanding and intuiting a correct response depends on what's going on around you and what you can see coming in the future.
Internalizing this will help you create a solution to today’s problems while being able to account for future problems to either address now or have tabs on those problems moving forward.
Ambitiously Learning
“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.” — Brian Herbert
Strive for the stars, but be down to earth. Work to be the most advanced, but appreciate the fundamentals. Learn all you can, but don’t miss out on applying what you learned!
Yet another dichotomy to get comfortable with. Whether you want to be a dependable, rock-solid contributor or a high-reaching, all-star leader or somewhere in between, you’ll have a universe to master and teachers in a variety of forms.
A good attitude towards being your best while remaining humble to take lessons from anywhere will make you a pleasure to work with and inspire others.
Creativity with Focus
A piano has 88 keys but can produce an infinite amount of melodies.
While anything is possible, sometimes you have to work with what you got. Constraints can drive the most innovative ideas and are sometimes required to move things forward.
Designing solutions that don’t require buying more tools or overextending your team is an essential skill. Of course, knowing when it’s time to expand your repertoire is equally essential. A third dichotomy to contend with.
Impact
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” — Pericles, the first citizen of Athens
This is what it comes down to. Is the work actually worth doing? Sure, you might be getting paid to do it, but does it make a difference?
Would you rather be in charge of leading a massive project responsible for tweaking a small component for a pet rock kit or sweeping the floors as part of the team going to the stars?
Handling the above factors will serve you well in a team environment, but choosing what you work on in the first place is key.
Culture
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African Proverb
The final piece that makes everything sparkle! This includes how things are done that sit well with your values. Some of the key questions on this topic that may come to your mind:
- How much of yourself can you be in a given work environment?
- Are you comfortable speaking your mind?
- Do you feel fulfilled with purpose and enthusiasm?
- Are your boundaries being respected?
- Can you separate work and life?
- Do you have to deal with excessive bullshit?
There is something to be said about making work more fun and exciting to bring about motivation at the moment. However, long-term discipline and consistency are rooted in building trust and respecting people’s needs and boundaries.
The hard work of listening and understanding, then bringing in balanced solutions to add building blocks to the team’s dynamic over time.
The Basics of BACIC in a Nutshell
We believe that these set the foundation for a solid career in technology and make up the cornerstone of great teamwork and, hopefully, entire organizations.
This is just the opening theme song of an entire multi-season series, so to speak. We’ll have much to expand and explore on these topics and more!
Other Things we are Keeping in Mind
Additionally, while focused on tech, we aim to remain broad to provide interesting variety to our readers. We aim to keep a keen interest in our community, giving opportunities for writers, far and wide, to contribute at will towards our overall mission.
So stand up, have a stretch, and lay some blocks with us!
