Thought Picnic: Through Sibling Eyes

My buttons are just right

She asked me to button up my shirt to the top, in fact, she commanded me to do that. Immediately, I felt a tone of authority that I did not expect I should have at home.

Indeed, she has every right to see that we are well turned out, something that was lost in that communication was that we also had just as much a vested interest in ensuring that she was turned out well too.

However, that moment had created a conflation of roles, at work she is a teacher/principal, at home she is my mother – the words came out of my mouth as I refused to button up beyond a certain button-hole, I am not in your school, and you cannot treat me like your students.

Understanding each other well

There was a time when the swipe of a backhand would have connected with my face at that daring effrontery but an unassailable truth had been shared, the boundaries of her school authority should not encroach on the moat of existence within which our home is situated.

Having been in boarding school, I was not going to allow my home to become an extension of that regime, I think we understood each other well at that point.

Sometime after, she was prepared to go out and though we did not barricade the door, we the kids made our views known; there was no way she was going out like that (Mama Cordelia was the name we coined for that look) – for the simple reason that we would not be able to show our faces in the neighbourhood for people knowing that our dear mother had made an appearance we could not abide.

We prevailed and she did change into something we felt was acceptable and indicative of the status and air we expected our mother to carry as a mother and a respected member of the community.

In some ways, we had to duty to ensure the emperor did not appear in public in the proverbial “Emperor’s New Clothes”, the case had been made.

Siblings and quibblings

Having shared some deep and secret things with a sibling, there are reasons why that closeness of trust and candidness has been cultivated and nurtured.

As individuals we live quite different and separate lives with varied outlooks to our present, future and for some even the perspective of eternity holds sway – I cannot begrudge the strength of faith, belief, avowal and religion but a question lingers about what the basis of the relationship is.

In my conversation with the hospital chaplain – a catholic pastor this morning, this matter of conflated roles came up with the possible conflicts of interest – you might have a sibling lawyer but should that person be your advocate? If you had a sibling doctor their advice might be very valuable but would they be too close in helping you deal with very serious illness by playing the role of doctor?

Only with sibling eyes

The concerns of my sibling are well intentioned and much appreciated, well read and we are quite aware of the way our theologies differ but we need to be clear about the roles and relationships avoiding the situation where the bonds of our sibling unity are weakened or frayed by external influences that do not define the original affinity.

I crave a closer relationship with my siblings; I had flown the coop long before they grew old enough to know about big brother, if there is any fact to share and understand of each other, it should be clear and simple.

My sister is my sister and definitely not my priest, she need not play that role and neither do I want to play the role of supplicant or flock which just seems to complicate the basic brother-sister interaction introducing concerns that do not engender the ease of communication, just as many relations tend to conflate their genealogy with their professions and confessions creating uncomfortable scenarios.

Sound advice is good but not to the extent that we lose the bond that creates the relationship, I am sure we can just get along fine without the extraneous, the encumbrance and what else.

Beware of deceptive LinkedIn recommendations

Professional social networking

LinkedIn* is more or less the professional networking site that allows for people to keep tabs with people one has somewhat interacted with in professional life.

For a person who has been self-employed most of my working life and has worked in many organisations, LinkedIn offers a forum to keep tabs with people I have worked with and also allows one to keep abreast of the careers of those same people.

Most recently, I tapped this professional network for job opportunities after having been out of work for almost a year and that mostly due to serious illness. I was glad to find that many of my ex-colleagues responded with sympathy and help which eventually lead to a job.

Self-referencing resource

I have also found that the LinkedIn profile can serve as an adjunct to a curriculum vitae (CV) because it can contain information that would not necessarily appear on a CV for instance, it can be a self-referencing portal if an employer reviews the profile finds people you have worked with and probably knows those people or organisations and make qualified assumptions or deductions of the prospect.

A slightly more subjective but useful function in LinkedIn is the recommendation feature, it can be interesting and indicative of the views ex-colleagues have of a person, hence, it is important that the writer and recipient pay particular attention to the construction, content, context, intent and import of the recommendation.

The recipient is given the opportunity to edit and recommend to the writer changes that would reflect better in order not to have the opinions misconstrued by other readers.

Understand before acceptance

Where English is used but not the mother-tongue, it is even more pertinent that the matter be reviewed by an English speaker before publication. I have at least in a number of cases had to decline recommendations that were subject to unfavourable interpretation even though the intentions were noble and generous – such however should not be enough to allow a recommendation or it would be the equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot.

I was completely mortified when I read a recommendation posted on a LinkedIn profile, I was half persuaded to highlight that the intention and the meaning were at complete variance. However, on reflection, the writer might well have meant what he wrote and the recipient none the wiser about the nuances and pitfalls of the gentle English putdown has proudly published this damning assessment of abilities sandwiched in passable praise.

The short recommendation

“Person is a great consultant with a lot of knowledge from everything. Doesn't bother helping you with all sort of things. Really a great team worker and a nice colleague.”

Three short sentences that speak volumes that are either lost in translation from a Dutch context or are a good excuse to use language as a deficiency to castigate in the most unfair light.

Person is a great consultant with a lot of knowledge from of everything. Either way, the knowledge from or more correctly, the knowledge of everything could easily read as a Jack of all trades and a master of none. The more charitable turn of phrase would probably have been a very broad knowledge of technical concepts – giving it a more specific frame of context. Whilst Dutch allows for verbosity and generalisations that could be easily contextualised, English is not that forgiving.

Does he bother or does he mind?

Doesn't bother helping you with all sort of things. This is the damning part because it reads like he doesn’t mind helping you in every way but it says he is the most unhelpful person you can find regardless of the situation presented to him.

It might be that the writer thought bother was synonymous with mind; in some contexts ‘Are you bothered?’ or ‘Do you mind?’ could be interchangeable but definitely not here. With Google Translate to Dutch the meaning did not carry as well until I modified the sentence to read as “He doesn't bother helping you with all sort of things.”

Dutch requires that the object and subject are very explicit in a sentence, it is not that good with implicit references and so this passed the censorship of the recipient when it should not have gone any further.

Can he really be?

Really a great team worker and a nice colleague. This would leave one almost wondering what the writer was trying to say after the first two sentences and it might well allow one to consider the possibility of a Freudian slip. Malevolently, this was the sweetener to the bait, obfuscating the intentions in the second sentence.

You might call it pedantic but recommendations are read with a greater attention to the detail rather than the general idea of what the writer is trying to convey – this recommendation has in my opinion torn the professional reputation of an otherwise knowledgeable and great consultant who is a nice colleague to shreds.

To think this recommendation has been published for over 2 years might well mean the damage is already done.

As for my opinions of the recipient, I could not possibly comment any further. The advice is, never accept wholesale a recommendation you do not fully understand and comprehend regardless of the good intentions of the benevolent writer.

* LinkedIn - Wikipedia

How to move from working 9 to 5

Back to coffees at dawn

So, at 7:45 am on Monday morning a senior director of the recruitment/services firm that has just secured a contract on my behalf calls up to take me to my new assignment.

This is one of the few occasions where you see a Dutch executive quite well dressed and obviously well-to-do and knowing his onions about so many issues.

It is one of those situations where I get offered an assignment based on my reputation in terms of what I have done, who I have worked with or who I have mentored. No interviews, but the curriculum vitae and reputation does all the leg work.

I am beginning think there should be ways of quantifying ones stock in terms of reputation, reliability and professionalism as opposed to just having technical know-how and requisite abilities.

LinkedIn Networking

In the last 10 years, I have had the privilege of obtaining employment more through elements of networking than initial introductions; one should probably find ways of making those links work better.

So, I was quite enamoured when a friend invited me into his LinkedIn network and I found I was one of 2 consultants whilst others were directors or owners of their business.

Which just under 20 years of IT experience, I am beginning to wonder how I can make my knowledge work for me without having to be present to enforce the knowledge and do the 9-to-5 shuffle to put money in the bank.

This is the new quest along with finishing my MSc in IT and researching opportunities for doing a research degree in the Netherlands. More importantly, finding a way to change my income portfolio to a knowledge-based enterprise from a person/personnel based profile.

Build globally and change perspectives

Day One showed promise, there seems to be a lot I can bring to the table to help out, but then it only works if those I help appreciate the perspective I have of enterprise infrastructure.

I am an architect who designs with a good knowledge of the strength of materials, drawings should be confidently realisable just as infrastructure design should have manageability, usability and simplicity at the fore.

Support staff should have a dashboard of data that allows then go straight to solving the problem when called rather than spending the first 30 minutes construction the links before addressing the issues.

I am wont to saying that the battle for the reduction of cost and the effectiveness of service is at the desktop.

If you do not have that in hand through standardisation, business application streamlining and flexible management practices, your new implementation would grown in cost of support, personnel and management.

IT cost or asset

Then, Information Technology begins to look like a major cost not an integrated business asset and the bean-counters begin to look for ways to outsource all IT.

That is where Wall-Mart has come of age; their IT is completely integrated, nothing is outsourced. That is the challenge of many a CIO and not many have seen that it is about service and not the cost.