Brick on Brick, Without a Plan

The Art of Communication

The art of communication is one that should never be left without nurture. It is a skill I have honed since childhood, when making myself heard, and hopefully understood, mattered.

I know the many times in my working life when being articulate, honest, truthful, clear, and detailed about ideas, events, or situations has been the difference between staying put and being walked out of the door with alacrity.

Conflict and the Power of Words

Conflict leers around the office or the workplace, where genuine engagement can easily slide into belittlement and being patronised. Both could be mistaken for compliments, only to be turned into something backhanded or used to upbraid you.

Besides that, there are the power plays and egos, where choosing your words carefully can significantly change the tone of an exchange. Drawing on a wealth of vocabulary with studied deployment is hardly putting the quality of your education to waste.

Finding the Right Analogy

When the going gets tough, and it usually does, finding the correct analogy to depict a situation becomes the best tool to deploy.

Consider a scenario where a user expected us to exhaust every avenue to determine why his anticipated long-running script terminated after two hours, even though nothing on the system had changed.

I posited that when a washing machine does not complete a wash cycle, you explore issues with the device, the water supply, or the connection to the mains; you do not ask for a building inspection.

That thought came to me as I finished taking a shower.

A Managerial and Political Issue

This afternoon, I was met with a complex managerial and political issue. For all my protestations about the guidelines, framework, and structure needed to govern a process that I felt left us exposed, all management wanted was for us to do something, anything, first, before addressing concerns that would fill reams of paper dating back to July last year.

After I had answered a series of questions, the activity was cherry-picked out of a larger case for correct procedure and directed towards a decision to be enforced.

In what I could only term a dare to challenge authority and face the consequences of stepping out of line, the manager, now assuming control where earlier they had failed to provide support, asked on the Microsoft Teams group chat:

The Challenge on Teams

"Everyone, anyone here unhappy with the approach?"

He might as well have said, "Anyone up for a fight? I'm here to bludgeon you."

I was dissatisfied, but this required tact, and there came the inspiration for another analogy.

The Bricklayer Analogy

"To put it another way, we are the bricklayers, and you want a house for which no architect has been engaged to design and no structural engineer has assessed. We are just putting brick on brick and hoping we end up with a shelter everyone can use."

As bricklayers, we know what houses should look like, but without a plan, a lot can go wrong. My job is to paint the picture; how you appreciate that work of art is beyond my ability to dictate, but the work has been done.

It will sink in somehow, and the message will not be lost in the morass of politicking and power plays.

Eloquence as Construction, Not Evasion

Let me be clear about one thing: eloquence here is not a tool of evasiveness. It is the means by which I explain and construct a clear narrative of the risk profile of an activity, one that could lead to penalties, the loss of professional reputation, or a negative impact on business operations and the user community.

Knowledge shared through such communication exposes the blind spots and pitfalls that are usually not taken into consideration.

Nor is this a matter of perfecting a process. There is no process. What we have is a range of assumptions that have not been properly tested or validated, yet are forced into implementation by expediency.

There is a further purpose to all this. By communicating in this way, one is also documenting the issues, so that when the matter of responsibility for any action arises, the points made earlier will show that management was informed and chose to act against the identified risks they had been asked to appreciate.

Experience Speaks for Itself

Many of us might hold junior roles in the multilayered hierarchy of the organisation, but never confuse our positions with a lack of maturity.

After 40 years in this business, where this is probably one of the least significant roles I have held in 30 years, I think I know a fair amount about management, and about being managed, and about getting a point across without equivocation.

We didn't just start at this yesterday.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Men's things - XXIV - A presentation

Sharing my prostate cancer story

Within the last fortnight, I attended a gathering of black men in Manchester and Liverpool, where I was invited to tell my story about my experience with prostate cancer.

The story on its own could be compelling, as I do have friends and acquaintances, even strangers asking for advice and direction about how to navigate these issues, that I term, "Men’s things".

However, in such a semi-formal setting under the auspices of a registered charity, I felt it should not be a typical story-telling setting, but one where whoever listened learnt something and could act on it.

What the prostate gland does

To that end, I created slides with some images, because in all previous presentations I have attended on the topic of prostate cancer, the issue of the function of the prostate gland as a muscular switch between urination and ejaculation was not clear. For instance, I learnt this long after I had commenced radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer.

Secondly, I had only found one image that gave a close-up view of how an enlarged prostate gland can present symptoms of difficulty or discomfort with the ease of urination. That visual image alone seemed to get men thinking about having checks on their prostate health.

Courtesy of NHS Overview of Benign Prostate Enlargement

Your active participation in your health, matters

On this perspective, I wove a story around my curiosity about some unusual blood test results outside normal ranges, through insistence to my GP for tests, the referral for further investigation, leading to a cancer diagnosis, then the treatment of prostate cancer, and the post-treatment side effects.

Beyond that is the need for black men to participate in surveys, especially when invited for bowel cancer screening, why men’s things should be more widely and openly discussed, and how early detection saves lives.

What I hoped men would take away from my presentation was that, “All prostate issues are not indicative of cancer, but every prostate enlargement should be investigated for cause and possible treatment.”

My presentation slides

Blog - Men's things - Prostate Cancer blogs

Blog - Photons on the Prostate - XIII

References

MedScape: International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) Calculator

Prostate Cancer UK: Risk Checker

Opinion: The issues the CrowdStrike Incident brings to mind

We are not all perfect

In my 36^th year of a career in Information Computer Technology of which more than two-thirds have been as a freelance consultant, even in Nigeria where some thought it folly to abandon a salaried role for the uncharted waters of treading the streets of Lagos and beyond for engagement, I have been quite fortunate.

I would be the first to say every seemingly subject matter expert has a history and that is in keeping with the credo that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. My recognition of some of the stupidest things to do in any IT environment allows me to reflect on the imperfections, errors, ignorance, overconfidence, mistakes, and failings of experts. Critically, we should learn lessons more and excoriate ourselves less.

CrowdStrike’s bird strike

However, on Friday I was hoping so much that my weekend would not be ruined by the incident of an event that we would need to remediate, especially when what caused it was totally out of our control. I refer to the 2024 CrowdStrike incident where a US cybersecurity company rolled out a faulty update to their software which affected an estimated 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices.

In the process, we saw this affecting airlines, airports, hospitals, banks, hotels, payment systems, government services, enterprise systems, and emergency services, among the critical services the CrowdStrike software is widely deployed to protect.

The more technical people have already analysed the issue and several solutions have been proffered including an emergency recovery tool that Microsoft released late yesterday to help fix devices that have been left in an unusable state. [Microsoft: New Recovery Tool]

How ever did this happen?

In my view, I am shocked that this CrowdStrike update happened and calls for a reassessment of how we measure impact, risk, and consequence when what we do can be so far-reaching and the means to back out or roll back a presumed solution requires extraneous measures.

If anything, and I have been involved in major deployments that could reach up to 250,000 users globally, you do not roll out a major update on a Friday and I never do on a Monday either. You need the presence of mind and personnel active during the week if things go wrong.

Before that, all techies are left asking, how did such a fundamentally flawed update make it out of the gates at CrowdStrike without being caught in testing, review, change management, risk management, impact assessment, and just the basic corporate desire never to roll out a problem regardless of the situation?

Preoccupied with the stock market

I got one interesting insight looking through the Twitter (X) feed of the President & CEO CrowdStrike, his last tweet was quoting another before pandemonium broke loose on the 8^th of July, and it was the ululation about CrowdStrike being the seventh best-performing stock in the Nasdaq 100 year-to-date and the 14th best in the S&P 500. In both indices, it is the highest returning software stock of the first half of 2024, up over 50%.

[Tweet]

CrowdStrike seemed to be a celebratory mode and last month they celebrated 5 years of being Nasdaq-listed, I hate to think that they had taken their eyes off the ball and by some careless misadventure, a company that was supposed to prevent cyberattacks presided over one of the largest outages ever in the history of information technology.

It leads me to think of the nursery rhyme, Sing a song of sixpence where the king specifically had a counting house to count his money and the maid suffered the mishap of having a blackbird which would have been one of the four-and-twenty birds that were baked in the pie which escaped when the pie was opened and the birds began to sing. Things were not particularly right in that kingdom.

Falconry gone to ground

That this outage affected airports and airlines globally is quite interesting because the update was to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor product. This was a vulnerability scanner that rendered devices totally inoperable. Certain airports deploy falcons to scare away birds that might interfere with the take-off and landing of aircraft. They prevent catastrophic bird strikes that could incapacitate aircraft and lead to accidents.

I find myself thinking CrowdStrike had become a bird strike of unimaginable consequence that the cost of the outages is yet to be computed as many devices might still be offline. CrowdStrike stock price fell almost 20% in the 5 days to the Friday close of the market. The king of CrowdStrike counting his money just over a week before just took a personal hit of $43 million it might be up to $300 million according to Forbes. Not much for a billionaire though.

Ticking boxes and flipping heck

Back to the fundamentals, the question about testing remains as much as I am left wondering what product, service, or project manager needed to tick boxes to meet deadlines over rolling out a patch later than planned to achieve something. Siding with the techies rather than management, could the management have been given different advice, but the techie was overruled for expediency purposes?

I have had these conversations too many times with project managers who have promised the world to management long before they have engaged the input of resources and facilities to get things done to the standard they have promised. The resource is then put in a bind to meet unrealistic deadlines.

You need a force of personality to push back and assert that your job is to deploy solutions that work the first time, maybe with a few tweaks, but you would never roll out what you can determine with all clarity still has issues and can constitute a problem. I do not want to screw up anyone’s project, but I have a professional responsibility to those I provide service and support to not to leave the state of their corporate devices any worse than before my solution was deployed.

Push back and regulation too?

Better late than sorry is not a sin, it is understanding the impact and risk of what you do. One last thing, the update should have gone out in controlled tranches, not globally in one fell swoop. I can see a situation where legislation might require those who can impact critical services to submit a full assessment and deployment plan to a regulator before deployment.

We might be a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), or a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) type agency at national, regional, and international global levels to superintend services that can affect global infrastructure along with teeth to regulate, sanction, or punish those who handle their impactful responsibilities with levity.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - LXXI

It is still out there

I had not considered returning to this topic even though it is reasonable to think that the Coronavirus is still out there. I have not written on this title since January, and that is how we seem to have forgotten about it. Yet, on asking after someone in church after the service on Sunday, I learnt that he had tested positive for Covid-19.

Then, as I walk around my city, in the daytime and at night, the years 2020 and 2021 seem a blur, and one is left asking, what really happened? The whole world came to a standstill and all I could think of was how and when I could be with Brian again.

We did get time together despite the restrictions in December 2020 and then a year later into 2022, we made the best of it and then in July of that year. However, a new Covid-19 variant denoted BA.2.86 known as the Pirola variant is becoming a cause for concern.

We should all calm down

The doomsayers and alarmists are already magnifying their voices on various platforms to scare us, including the untenable Donald Trump who released a political video with more populist dread and no public health concern. I am not going to project his nonsense here.

The impression is that the Pirola variant is not causing more severe illness and the current vaccines are effective against it. The said vaccines are constantly being updated to tackle new variants. [CDC: Risk Assessment Summary for SARS CoV-2 Sublineage BA.2.86]

Why Pirola which in Galician connotes vulgarity was chosen as a designation escapes me as I am not aware that follows the known Greek alphabet. Maybe, it is the new Summer of Love.

Measure the risk factors

Obviously, this means one has to consider one’s risk profile and exposure. My encounter with strangers or crowds is mainly at church with strangers usually as a welcomer and with people I know at typical church services. The recently concluded Manchester Pride weekend and other events crowded out the city, but my only participation out of the 4 days of revelry was to watch the Pride march outside my door and then steward the Pride Eucharist at the cathedral.

Much as I avoid crowds and enclosed places, the use of hand sanitisers might be prudent just as the consideration of wearing a face mask again. Only two days ago, someone put out a bag of unused face masks and other bathroom goods, I took a handful of face masks and a sponge for myself.

Just be careful, not carefree

Looking at the statistics and the trends, the UK is at 6 for the number of deaths per country, and higher than any of our proximate European neighbours in the number of deaths per million in population. We can get the statistics to tell all sorts of stories depending on inclination or persuasion. [WorldOMeter: Coronavirus]

For those of us who have avoided any infection, vigilance and caution should guide us without acquiring fear or anxiety about doing what we need to do. I have kept up on recommended jabs, 6 at last count and the flu jab season is already upon us, as it is September. One thought I will refuse to entertain is to see the likes of 2020 in the future.

For the blessed assurance of wellness, safety, and security, Psalm 91:3 never fails to provide a guarantee, “For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease.” [Bible Gateway: Psalm 91 (NLT)]

Obduracy gave us the Titanic and now the Titan

What a rollercoaster of emotions

As the emotions are still raw and people are still coming to terms with the tragedy of the apparent Titan submersible implosion with the loss of 5 souls, this is a difficult subject to broach at any time, yet it is one we must not ignore for the pertinent lessons to be learnt.

As the news cycle played like an orchestra of emotions from the notification of the passengers missing through postulations about the urgency to rescue because of the limited oxygen supply, we even had that glimmer of hope that there was some banging noise at 30-minute intervals, suggesting some human activity indicating distress. The truth amidst the speculations that almost drove us to distraction was a catastrophic incident had already happened and the people we were introduced to over the last 5 days had perished.

We need to know why it happened

Everything is now down to a post-mortem of what happened, and probably more will be revealed in a possible coroner’s inquest with the verdict of death by misadventure. Then, misadventure would be an understatement if all we have learnt about the Titan submersible and the operations of OceanGate in facilitating the tourist event to see the Titanic wreck is reckoned with.

I am in no way against having a sense of adventure, even of the pioneering kind where you are doing what no one else has done before. However, the adventure should never exclude proper risk assessment and more pertinently safety. It has transpired that OceanGate was many times warned about their submersible design, that it had not undergone any independent testing, then certain engineers involved were dismissed when they raised questions, that parts involved in cobbling together the submersible might suffice for a hobbyist, but never for a commercial operation where a general public is put at immeasurable risk of the possible loss of life.

The invisible fatal flaw of hubris

That this submersible was lost along with the CEO of OceanGate pitches the positive attributes and virtues of courage, confidence, adventurism, and derring-do against the greatest flaw when things go wrong, hubris. He was against the essential safety inspections and certifications that might have prevented what many experts in deep-sea submersibles now consider totally preventable.

It is quite likely that those passengers took and derived some confidence from the fact that the CEO was riding with them, it might have suggested to them that if the CEO was willing to take such as risk on such a dangerous mission, they probably would be safer than being piloted by someone with no skin in the game. James Cameron compared the obduracy of the OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush to that of the RMS Titanic’s captain, Edward John Smith, they both ended up at the bottom of the sea beside each other.

Trust but verify for yourself

It has become a somewhat fatal transference of trust, the fact that you can see someone else doing something that encourages you to dabble, even if you are totally unsure you will have the same outcome. In many things, we do need a trailblazer and some sort of example if we are to dare to tread where angels fear to go. We must do that with some knowledge of what we are getting into.

For instance, in a parachute jump, there are fundamental prerequisite checks to make long before the jump, to ensure that the parachute is intact, will operate, that the reserve is there just in case the main parachute does not open, and you do not jump to a conclusion without doing the essential checks, except if on a suicide mission, and that is a different thing.

I do wonder if any of the passengers would have reconsidered this adventure on seeing some of the other interviews with the CEO about the submersible and its record, along with the testimonies that we have now heard about some who ventured and did not consider a return because of their experience and those who pulled out after assessing the lax safety procedures amongst other things.

A tragedy totally preventable

There seems to be a lot of information out there that suggests this was a very dangerous activity and though a few scraps of pulling it off suggested a greater success than the myriad of issues and problems during the event. There is no saying that if the dive exploration that set off on Sunday were successful, not only would we have heard nothing of this adventurism, but it would also have steeled others to shell out about a quarter of a million dollars to see the wreck of the Titanic at 3,810 metres (12,500 feet; 2,080 fathoms) depth below sea level, rather than watch a playback on a National Geographic channel.

There is nothing to celebrate about this tragedy, but much to learn about how we perceive risk, the essential need for safety, the consideration of better-mitigating measures in case of adverse events, the readiness to abort missions when things turn precarious, and the decision to curb our sense of adventure at certain times, just to gain a bit more perspective of the fact that our humanity, whilst amazing resourceful is neither omnipotent nor omniscient.

May their souls, therefore, rest in peace, and may we that remain be humbled to listen and learn the hard lessons taught by the experiences of others.

References

BBC: Titanic director James Cameron accuses OceanGate of cutting corners

Wikipedia: 2023 Titan submersible incident

Thought Picnic: In weakness let your discretion rule

Buckled by weakness

History chronicles the lives of many great men brought down by their weaknesses, many through sex and all the accoutrements of seeking that gratification of the flesh.

One can only feel sad for the misfortune that befell Keith Vaz, the Member of Parliament for the Leicester East constituency and Gonville and Caius (pronounced Keez) College graduate of the University of Cambridge. He with the distinction of being the longest serving MP of Asian origin in the House of Commons.

A good head start, one would say and until Tuesday, the influential chairman of the Home Affairs Committee since 2007.

Pursuits of the flesh

I cannot be said that Mr. Vaz had many friends as a politician, he has been dogged by many scandals from which he has deftly extricated himself unscathed and even served a suspension from the House of Commons as a consequence, but with that he had weaknesses that when those became the focus of media attention, none ran to defend him as a symbol worthy of anything less than opprobrium.

As each and every one of us has weaknesses, it would be unfair to dwell on the shortcomings of one man, but there are things one must comment on with regards to his downfall.

Mr. Vaz would apparently have liberal views and tastes along with a penchant for exploring adventurous pursuits of the flesh. Being a married man of 23 years with two children, he was at the weekend exposed as having met for sex with prostitutes, which really is no crime in itself. [Sky News]

The plot congealed

However, the deeper the detail of the story got, it became impossible to bat away any of the tales as media intrusion without any lasting consequence. Mr. Vaz was meeting with male prostitutes for bareback (unsafe) sex on presumably excitement enhancing substances.

Again, there is no crime in adults meeting up for sex and choosing to have any kind of sex they desire, if done with consent. However, there are moral issues that would have arisen about this liaison and other issues of compromise that could result from being exploited by less than discreet and scrupulous partners.

Unbeknownst to him, his liaisons had identified who he was being a high-profile politician on television and they decided to contact the media about their trysts. The videos that then emerge for the scoop that landed on the weekend pages of the newspapers were recorded by the men he met up with.

Discretion above all else

It goes without saying that on matters of straying from the expected, one should choose those one chooses to cover very carefully. It beggars belief that Mr. Vaz took such risks with men who probably had more to gain than to lose with meeting him for sex.

I am of the opinion that meeting with people requires a modicum of understanding the power dynamic between yourselves to understand temperament and honesty of the person to ensure one does no suffer rotten consequences from the relationship. Meeting with people in the same cadre and class, much as some might frown at this anachronism goes a long way in ensuring no one comes to harm, or if any, negligible if the situation turns sour.

The reckless things we do

Beyond this, Mr. Vaz could easily have been the subject of blackmail with the men bilking him for anything they thought they could get away with. It is unimaginable though conceivable that certain people in the know of Mr. Vaz’ interesting tastes might have exacted favours of him by reason of his influential position and his work history is not without controversy.

Invariably, he had to resign from his chair because he was caught in a seriously untenable position that suggested subjective thinking and conflicts of interest in matters over which he had the power to influence, suggest, advice on and promulgate laws.

Tougher days ahead

The other not insignificant matter of his family looms, the wife probably put at risk because of the down-low proclivities of her husband. His wife may never walk out on him, but if she does, she first has to make sense of this development.

Mr. Vaz may not identify as homosexual or bisexual, though there is a growing cohort of seemingly outwardly heterosexual males venturing into a bi-curious phase of sexual experimentation.

His children will be beside themselves in understanding their father, the shock of which will not wear off that easily. There will be some rather difficult talk ahead, with the nuclear family and the extended family.

What next?

Things like this anyone would rather keep private and secret, to have such revealed to the whole world on the yellow journalism pages of English tabloids is a raid on one’s being that one must never wish on one’s worst enemy. However, I think Mr. Vaz will come through this, a bit battered, but unbowed, he was not known as Mr. Vaz(eline); a play on Vaseline, for nothing.

Now this is out in the open, Mr. Vaz also has to decide where his loyalties lie and whether his acquired taste for men is necessary for the full expression of his sexuality. This will also determine the future of his marriage and anything else he does from henceforth.

The lesson for us is to handle our weaknesses with a little more discretion and some smarts about those we choose to exploit those pleasures that derive from our weaknesses with. At risk is position, dignity, status and respect, none of which is easy to earn back once lost.

Security consultant might just be a guard

Seeking and loathing

On one of the dating app haunts that I sometimes ply, I came upon an elaborate profile in general terms, but something stood out that I decided not to ignore.

The young man had stated that he was a security consultant with a major bank. Now, having seen thousands of profiles, some angry, some demure, many empty and quite a few demonstrative of angst, insecurities, inadequacies and dare I say prejudices, I have been tempted to write a guide to useful dating profiles.

Then again, it is not like I have been entirely successful in my quest for companionship through dating apps or websites. However, what you do see on my profile in the main will be what you get. I rarely mince words and sometimes my old-fashioned self, requiring correctness, politeness, comportment and much else gets in the way of simple engagement.

Can we talk for a minute?

Yet, I thought to engage this young fellow to illustrate a looming risk in telling strangers on dating sites such unnecessary detail as to whether you own your homes, have a car, have the greatest job on earth and other puffery that is of no particular relevance than a possible endangerment.

I started with ‘Let me humour you …’, to have a high profile job at your age must be commended, however, in putting it out there, you create a vulnerability profile around yourself that can be exploited by nefarious people or organisations. Whilst they might not come for you, they can go for close contacts around you besides the possibility of you being a Trojan horse into your banking organisation.

Just over an hour after I sent the message, I got the response, “Try and social engineer me, just try.” The young fellow had missed the point. And so I responded.

Missing the point entirely

Social engineering is passé and that is mostly for low hanging fruit. As a security consultant, you have access and knowledge that ordinary users will not have. You have a nickname you have used on this site that will probably be the same on others.

Your picture appears here and simple Internet tools can be used to match your picture possibly to an identity on Facebook or LinkedIn and after that, they only have to build a vulnerability profile that they can exploit without you knowing that you are being stalked online.

In closing, I said, “We technical people have to be careful that either our of carelessness or hubris, we expose our organisations to more harm than we are willing to admit our acts of wilful stupidity cause.”

Unlearning arrogance

I was blocked. Blocked probably because he thought I was attacking him or he felt that he was too good to be taking advice on issues where he is supposed to be the expert.

A simple example of the silliness of putting such a risk intensive role online in forums like a dating site is for someone to go around saying they are secret agents. Others would either go for the agent or go for people around that agent to gain access acquaintances to whom some connection can compromise the resolve of the agent.

Then again, there is a know-it-all syndrome that I have observed amongst certain young people who have created an incapacity to learn or be advised, they are single-mindedly impervious to any instruction and rapidly chart a course to perdition.

Probably maybe

An alternative response would have been to acknowledge that there was a point being made borne of other experiences and that could be used to improve oneself. It is a question of attitude.

Suffice it say that the said nickname appeared on other sites, but for the fact that one, I have nothing to prove and two, I am not malevolent. It would have been an interesting exercise to create the profile I told him of and send it to him, but honestly, it would have been a waste of time in any case.

When I relayed the tale to a friend, he suggested the fellow might have been in security as a security guard. Not once did I contemn him, but his reaction belies that great possibility, he has keys to doors and not keys to data.

Thought Picnic: The career skill of knowing chances, choices and risks

From before

I will like to continue on the blog I started yesterday on the response of Atul Gawande to the question about why he left the politics of being a policy wonk in the White House to return to medical school and take up surgery.

Blog – Thought Picnic: Becoming less dependent on the fortunes of others

“I wanted to be less dependent on the fortunes of others in making my own career; I wanted to be able to develop and voice my own ideas. And then there was this desire to have some skill besides just being at the abstract level of policy and work at that level. So I returned to medical school instead of taking up the offer to work on welfare reform.”

He went on to say about surgery, “I loved the sense of skill. And it reminded me of politics in some way – that the really good surgeons had to be like really good politicians in being willing to take chances, deal with risk, know that your knowledge and your skills are uncertain.”

Of skill to do

“There was this desire to have some skill besides just being at the abstract level of policy and work at that level…” Here, it is apparent that Atul Gawande had to make some serious life-changing and career-defining decisions. Whilst he did not knock the idea of being involved in policy making, he realised he needed to have other skills such that when the need for policy derived from his being dependent on the fortunes of others dried up, he will still be fully able to chart his own course.

It is also quite revealing for him to suggest that policy work was quite abstract rather than practical, even though policy has a way of affecting people’s lives. Yet, it was clear that if he had stayed, he still had ample opportunity within that political setting to be involved in welfare reform.

“I loved the sense of skill…” Yet, in leaving policy work for medical school and specialising in surgery, he had found a new vocation and calling, a sense of skill that went well beyond the abstract.

The excitement in the sense of skill is captured in his applying his acquired policy knowledge to his growing medical skill that he found ways to conflate politics and surgery in the following response.

Of chance and risk

“It reminded me of politics in some way – that the really good surgeons had to be like really good politicians in being willing to take chances, deal with risk, know that your knowledge and your skills are uncertain…” In essence, no knowledge in all his fields of endeavour was lost, rather the whole body of knowledge had become uniquely his own experience.

This experience is what now allowed him to understand the similarities between good politicians and good surgeons, and one might even say any profession where ability, skill, expertise and experience matters.

For we all have to be willing to take chances where there choices are not as obvious or the course is uncertain. In that, there is risk, some calculable and in other cases quite unquantifiable that is becomes somewhat adventurous, because from another viewpoint, noting ventured is nothing gained.

Knowing the uncertainty of skill

Many of us may be risk-averse, but without understanding risk and exploring the possibilities beyond what we know for certain, we risk living unproductive, mundane and boring lives with sadly unpromising careers to boot.

In all this is the ultimate lesson of knowledge and wisdom, that is to know what you know and what your skills can achieve whilst being very cognisant of the limitations of your knowledge and beyond attempting to bluff your way past issues where you have no ideas, you are geared to learn, to research, to reach and to extend yourself to acquire new knowledge and chart new courses.

The awareness of the fact that our skills even when well-honed might be uncertain to dealing with particular situations that we might have to adapt or withdraw to reflect and relearn is one of the greatest gifts of self-development.

My experience

Having worked in the Information Technology industry for about 28 years, I am well aware of the limitations of my skills, however, more importantly is the fact that I do not always have the answers or solutions to problems or challenges to hand.

In many cases, the knowledge to tackle an issue has only come from being presented with a particular situation that requires a resolution and since not all situations are the same, the solutions will differ.

Yet, all this knowledge becomes part of the body of knowledge uniquely mine that is a subset of my wider experience beyond just my profession and when presented with a similar set of circumstances again, I will probably be better equipped to provide a resolution much quicker than when I first encountered that setting.

I have never feared not knowing, nor have I been held back by not knowing what to do, rather, I have seen such challenges as new opportunities to broaden my knowledge and then return to resolve that conundrum, and doing the next thing. There is excitement is not remaining stagnant, but in pressing on and moving on.

These responses laid the ground for the beginning of the lecture on the subject – Why Do Doctors Fail? [PDF Transcript]

I hope to cover that lecture in some detail in another blog.

Europe: The wetsuits from Calais that humanised the migrants

The Calais of our times

Yesterday night, a full understanding of the so-called Calais crisis dawned on me. In fact, it is now known as the Calais migrant crisis and it is seen through the eyes of business and tourism.

Business by the reason of tailbacks of traffic consisting of lorries needing to cross the English Channel between Calais and Dover in either direction. On the tourism side, it is about British holidaymakers unable to cross to mainland Europe and thereby a crisis of sorts in the Kent countryside.

The migrants in Calais consisting of people fleeing from areas of conflict and unrest as Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and Libya along with seemingly economic migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa number up to 5,000 living in the most inhumane conditions in Europe and all trying to cross over to the United Kingdom.

A fantasy, at best

The draw to the United Kingdom, has elements of reality and fantasy, many do think they can easily be subsumed into the system through the black economy which we must accept thrives despite protestations to the contrary and the idea that we have an easy and accessible welfare entry threshold compared to other European countries.

Besides, many of these people come from countries where whatever standard of English they have is passable and will be useful enough for them to get by.

Yet, to view this through the lens of our convenience is to miss the greater issue of the humanitarian crisis on our borders, the fact that a possible majority of these people are desperate, fleeing conflict and danger whilst seeking any opportunity for a life that has a modicum of peace, stability and the ability to provide for themselves and their families.

Our peace is a draw

Peace in Europe is a more than a draw for those willing sometimes without any other choice or opportunity to embark on life-threatening, dangerous and risky journeys from their ravaged homelands for the opportunity of a new life – that is an undeniable draw that is just human in all its ramifications and something anyone in their position will probably do without hesitation.

The English Channel is just 33.1 kilometres (20.6 miles) at its shortest width and standing at shores of Calais it is easy to view the White Cliffs of Dover which are quite visible from Calais as deceptively closer than they really are. Many people have swum the English Channel crossing, the fastest being in 6 hours and 55 minutes, but is it not a feat for the faint-hearted.

Two young men in wet suits

This is how Mouaz al-Balkhi and Shadi Omar Kataf from Syria bought wetsuits and plunged into the busiest shipping lane in the world of the English Channel from Calais in order to swim to England only to perish in their attempt and wash up on the shores of Texel, an island of the Netherlands 465 kilometres away and the coastline of Lista in Norway some 850 kilometres away, respectively. [Their Story]

The lives and deaths of these two young men shows not just the desperation of the migrants, but the risks they are willing to take to make it to the United Kingdom, even if it costs them their lives. Thanks to the Dagbladet newspaper of Norway, these two young men did not end up just another migrant statistic of misfortune, the coincidence of two bodies in wetsuits found on foreign beaches, but they are people like you and me who might have had a different story if their homelands were as peaceful and as comfortable as ours.

This is the case of each and every migrant who has embarked on a perilous journey from the turmoil of war or any other uncomfortable circumstance in their homelands to seek a new life in Europe. Meanwhile, our politicians are suffused in rhetoric and constituency-pleasing banter as the migrant reality is toyed with as a poor reflection of our humanity.

We can do better than this, we surely can.