Isn’t that great as I sit here typing this my house is overrun by mice.  On the upside at least I have something to blog about.  Yes my house has mice in it.  I will leave you with a classic line from Flying High (Airplane).

[turns to the camera after being dissed by Elaine]
Ted Striker: What a pisser!

*stolen from imdb.com

I have had my fair share of back stabbings in my short life… more than I would want to count.  Given that I am typing… I can’t count and I too overweight to see my toes.  It has been my experience that the road to hell is not paved with good intentions… it’s paved with people trying to steal my stuff.  People trying to take my job… (get off it’s mine!) and people undermining me at every turn.  People murdering other people and so on and so on. Where is the good intention in that I tell you!  Sure, this saying has merit.  Many a good deed does actually backfire and create hell for the intended.  But most of the time my dear friends you find people are, as the great Nick Cave postulates, just no good.  The good intentions people may have had usually end up in something that has small consequences even though sometimes it does not.

We live in a world where ambition rules over love, good taste is blinded by mass appeal and people like Ghandi are shot in the street.  This world leaves a taste so foul in your mouth at times that you want to surgically remove your tongue so at least it can be clean.  Sure, I am ranting and sure it’s late.  But you know what I find myself shortchanged more often by people who mean me harm as opposed to people who’s heart is in the right place. I could labour this but you know what I think I made my point.

I am amazed at how many times during the week I am asked if I would like a larger penis. What about a dose of viagra? How about buying some “quality” software? The truth of the matter is the more you see something the more you want it. And let’s face it who would like some quality software .

Spam is annoying because it’s so damn persistent

I wonder if there is a spammer code? Do you think they sit around sending these pointless emails just to annoy us?  No there’s a dollar in it. I wonder who the GENIUS is behind the business model? Bill Gates? I don’t think so. Although spam infuriates me – you have to admire the persistence of the spammer. They never give up asking or sending or intruding us with their annoying little “grow your thing bigger” emails. I wonder if the world took on the persistence of the spammer what would happen? What if we were MORE persistent in our life goals… as persistent as the spammer? What would happen?

If spammers weren’t persistent we would have no spam at all

Stop and think about this for a moment. A spammer writes something from the top of their head to get you to read it. Granted most blog spam these days is less about car insurance than it is about large wangs. But I digress. Just how many hurdles does a spammer have to overcome? Email address filters? HEAPS! They never give up. The law changes and they tilt their black hat at it. They don’t care! They persist until they flood your inbox with more and more spam. Here is the text that got through two layers of spam filtering and God knows what else to get to me this morning.

Become a God in your lassie’s bedroom with our new enhancement preparation! You don’t need to take severe measures! It’s all safe and natural! faraway places? His operation had run smoothly since 1988, when henot to cooperate with me on my book.always asked whenever he was about to jump in and make a splash. Is

It’s not Hemmingway is it? It’s bloody jibberish is what it is. Still it got through. I am annoyed that so much filtering doesn’t stop it. I have even seen spam get through the Uni filter and offer me a high paying “job” in Italy. Unfortunately it almost always starts with: “Dear;” or “Hello Prospect”. This is unfortunate because I have never been offered a job I didn’t apply for!

I would urge you all to take a lesson from a spammer. If they weren’t persistent they we would not have medicine bigger “things” viagra  insurance lottery so much rubbish in our inbox.

I have a few social networking platforms I use… although I am really only a fan of two.  Delicious and Stumbleupon.  Why?  Delicious because I like to bookmark stuff and stumbleupon because it’s so damned intuitive.  I have never in my life had so much fun and learned at the SAME TIME.  I have over 1,100 stumbles now so my guess is that it will continue to grow as I find more stuff I like.   Every now again I get a rush of traffic from stumble which is also nice. Enough pleasantries… this is my stumblepage…

You can add me as a friend if you like and I will respond in kind:

My stumble page.

I am not a prolific digger or a reddit… person but I do enjoy them on occasion.   So if you are in the area why not check it out.

A while ago I was set a task. To drive to the Gold Coast every Thursday and try my hand at teaching a subject about information. Hey why not? The Gold Coast is an interesting place and the people there are quite nice. The interesting thing is that in five years of teaching this subject elsewhere I have found that people really don’t like it. We have tried everything from standing on our head to juggling in class. Many years ago a friend of mine even dressed up like a witch and handed out minties to increase student engagement. Alas, it didn’t work.

It’s easy to teach something people love… try teaching something people hate

I remember five years ago turning up to a class and introducing the major assessment to the class. After one hour of reading on a big screen a student came up to me and asked… what was that about? No, I am not joking. I am being serious. I asked her what she meant and she told me she wasn’t watching for the past hour and wanted me to explain what I had just said… again. During my time this experience stands out but is far too common in my courses.

People hate this course. It’s about ‘information’, informatics, information systems and so on. Boring? Students in the class range from my friend above, to mavens, critics, trouble makers and the occasional paradigm shifter. Overall this has been however, a part of my life that has brought me a lot of growth but a quadruple measure of frustration as well.

How do you hold your head up when the majority of students don’t want to learn… they just want to earn

95% of the people I have taught in any of my courses almost always don’t give a crap about what I have to say. Now, if you are reading this and you were in my course you may be in the 5%. If that’s you then God bless you. If you are reading this and remember me you may have liked me or the course but can’t remember what I said. That’s probably my fault. But what can you do when you are stuck with subjects like knowledge management? For goodness sake, I don’t even know what that is.

Most of the people I meet are on the their way to the sausage factory. By that, I am of course referring to the giant machine that sucks the living creative spirit out from us and makes hamburger patties with it. That machine. The evil corporate beast that brings you the lottery, things like ‘the systems development life cycle’ and so on. Why am I harping on about this? Well … why not?

So how do you cope with students who just want a ‘pass’. Granted I believe a lot of the time in what I teach that it’s A). useful and B) helpful. But I am stuck with this bullcrap idealist mentality I inherited from someone. Can I tell you that most people don’t want to learn about information… even though I want them to? Why should I bother?

When I started teaching I had a concept of what I thought teaching would be like. Sharing ideas, collaboration you know the sort of thing you see on those Lotus advertisements. But who the hell am I kidding? How do you hold your head up? You either forget about being a teacher or you push hard, make them hate you and move on. Neither option is good… there is probably a third when my head pulls itself out of this daze I will remember it.

Amongst the gloom: there have been shining lights?

Of course. I am by nature an optimist. So there have been many people who I helped who were incredibly nice. Overall my assessment is however, that most of time you are simply repeating information for those who ‘want to get through’. Through to what? Through to corporate sausage maker.

A friend of mine put it this way: we are feeding meat to the corporate sausage factory. I think he is right. I have no power to change the way society chooses to run it’s business. You don’t have to run business that way. Read Maverick (Ricardo Semler) if you don’t believe me. Things can be different. Yet, we stick to the Fordian principles of ’scientific’ management which insist we develop ‘plans’ whilst never questioning the underlying motives of our ’superiors’.

The system is not good for people who care

If you are like me and you have a heart you simply can’t switch off when it comes to these things. I have heard it said that you the author is separate to the page. I am sorry but that simply is a load of rubbish. You can be diced up into little bits and fed into the sausage grinder unless you want to be. If you care about your teaching and want to help people learn … it will cost you. There’s a price you must pay if ‘learning’ is the aim of any course. No matter if it’s basket weaving at your local school or quantum mechanics… you will have to pay the price. If you put effort or time or energy into what you do then be prepared for the sausage people. They are part of life.

An optimistic view

I am the kind of academic who believes in knowledge but I don’t REALLY think the endless streams of meta-information we call ‘journals’ are really going to improve society. After realising during my PhD that most knowledge streams never interact I have become more than a little concerned about problems and society. For example when I was reviewing the problem solving research literature I went to all kinds of disciplines. Education, humanities, science, information systems, information technology and social science to name just a few. Do you know what I found? I found the same argument mentioned at least 30 times. Exactly what was that argument?

We need to find better ways to fix messy problems

They all said the same thing but in different contexts. Yet none of them spoke in the same voice. It’s like being in a room with 30 people from different nationalities while they all speak the same sentence in their own language. How can so many different people have the same conversation with themselves? And anyway could you please tell me how any of that is improving society? People can’t because overall it’s about promotions, journal rankings and impact factors. Is that really improving society? Well you might say, ‘I got into Academy of Management Review but if it isn’t working or improving things who actually cares?

I am not saying that I don’t care. That’s precisely the problem I do care. But why? A theory is only as good as it’s validity or usefulness. But I digress.

I would like to end my rant here on a positive note. I have had many wonderful students. Too many to name actually. These people have enlightened my life with their brilliance, challenges and wit. I have met great teachers, fellow thinkers and carers on the path of knowledge who made my life wonderful… for a while. Most of them wind up in trouble with the sausage machine, sacked or moving on. How sad.

So what’s the positive point? There are people who want to learn and grow. These ones are rare but make the journey worthwhile. Yes, it makes up for all the stupid university politics (hat tip to Peter Checkland), the disciplinary meetings and the endless reams of ‘research’. Why because somebody cares and was bothered enough to look beyond the surface level. These people teach me that sausage maker can’t get to everyone, oh no there are some who for the sake of learning have shunned it’s shiny metal surface. So for these I say it’s all worth it!

I was sitting in my office the other day with my supervisor came running in. We got to talking about Griffith’s new performance metrics when he said something that caught my attention. In not so many words he told me … to shoot for average.

I got an email the other day from a colleague in South Australia who had read a paper of mine… he told me to “shoot for average”.

I am not sure if it’s God or what but maybe, just maybe I need to “shoot for average”. After all, when you are just getting started (at least in cricket terms) you need to get the runs on the board. If you don’t perform consistently at a “respectable” level often enough you may just wind up being left out in the cold. This did get me thinking about how people become extraordinary… how do they do it? What makes this blogger stand out and have more visitors than this blogger (me)? The answer… they are not average. They stand out. As for me I am Mr. Average. In our performace metrics there are four tiers:

1. Tier A*

The super Tier… if you combined Jimi Hendrix, Einstien, Hagel and some other famous person and made them into UBER academics they would publish in these journals.

2. Tier A

Many academics kindly refer to these as Good but not great.

3. Tier B

These are above average but not quite average as average goes… (does that make sense?).

4. Tier C

Average – my goal

Anything else in our metrics is relegated to supreme obscurity. *coughs* So why do I want to shoot for average? Because the bigger tiered journals are out of my league at the moment. Through development and willpower if I could give a crap… I might try. Now this “quitter” attitude may surprise you. But to me if you want to play the game, it’s better to be consistent in the beginning and THEN become remarkable than be instantly remarkable. Now, the only thing to work out is if I want to play the game or not. I am against the corporate sausage maker!

I am on a path of potential development… let’s see if I can discover what I am remarkable at. Sorry, I watched a Seth Godin video recently.

Be free! Be free!

At the time of writing this post I am over committed. So I thought I would share with you 5 signs that I have discovered that let you know you are over committed. In true problem solving blog style… I will also present solutions to get you back on track.

You wake up in the morning feeling tired

This can be the symptoms of many things… however when you are over committed you simply feel tired all the time. You sleep 10 hours and you are tired… you sleep 24 hours and you are tired. Personally, when this happens to me (as it is now) it’ s time to think about what I am doing. When you have a big commitment you can’t escape (i.e. work) then it’s difficult to bail out as I will discuss later. You can however, wind back over time which will gradually release the pressure.

You find it difficult to get in the car/bus/train and go to work?

As you walk to bus (for example) or go to the car you feeling a sinking feeling at the realisation of the day you have ahead of yourself. As the day drags on you find yourself becoming more and more lethargic. No matter what you do, you keep getting more slower and feel less like working than you did before. One of the main reasons you feel this way is because you have too much on your plate. I find that if I have too much to do it overwhelms me and I get almost nothing done. Getting stuff done is important but so is quality of time. You may secretly love your job but hate doing so much of it.

Sudden bursts of anger

For no apparent reason you find yourself randomly angry. This can be another symptom of working too much and being over committed. There are a billion reasons why you are angry with life and I am in no wise saying that over commitment is the only one. It is however, one of the things that drives us to anger because we have to work so hard to achieve so little. Just thinking about that right now makes me mad!

You feel a burning pressure

As pressure and stress take hold of you, you will feel it. The stuff I mentioned above, other things like loss or increased appetite, a desire to ‘break free’ of the corporate sausage maker and more than likely the feeling that you just have to work this hard are symptom of pressure. After all… if you don’t do it who will? I mean they are paying you the big money aren’t they? No!

Your body begins to tell you

You might get sudden backaches, rashes, itchiness, headaches, tension pain and so on because of over commitment. This is usually the last thing that happens before you fall over and die. There comes a point where your mind, body and soul start to take over your desire to do a million things at once. We call this burnout. Don’t let it get to the point where this happens. Here are some of the things I do to keep it at bay:

Don’t say yes to things you have no time to do

I am spanking myself here as well. There are times when you think you will have the time to do something but in reality you don’t. If you say yes… you will have to trade something off (like family time) in order to get there. Here is the lie that I almost always fall for:

If I do this it will give me more money to spend on my kids

In a word that’s nonsense because if your kids care more about money than they do you… you have a problem. Sure a good education is nice as is a flashly house… but what price are you willing to pay to have those things… your soul? Next time something comes along and you want to do it remember something has to move out of the way so you can do it. That’s life.

Working smarter

Work can be hard and you may be in a position where you can’t change. One thing you can do is begin to think about ways of streamlining your work. Put it this way: What can I do now that I could faster if I had the right tools? This may mean an investment in software, delegation or outsourcing (if you can). The alternative you keep going until you burnout. Once you go there… it’s gets pretty hard to come back.

Making life choices

A non-materialist way of looking at this is to say: I don’t have to own a house, Jaguar or BMW to be happy. I can however have peace and joy from those that love me. Sorry allow me to come back to reality for the moment and address the heading. You can work in jobs where the pressure is reduced and there isn’t as much asked of you. You can find vocations that pay less for less responsibility… you could also win lotto or fly to the moon in a self-propelled raft! There are choices (jokes aside) that you can make on a daily basis to make your life better. You can build a strategy to improve things over time. Decide to leave at 5pm instead 10. If you are asked to do something ‘extra’ for someone and you don’t have the time… don’t do it. Begin to make these kinds of choices on a daily basis… it will make the world of difference to you.

At the end of the day there are really two kinds of variables life throws us. Those which we can control (minimal) and those we can’t (everything else). The key thing is to learn about those you can control and do something and leave everything else up to God. One of these things you can control is the choices you make about your life and the direction it’s going in. If you are over commited can I encourage you today to begin to wind back? Getting up the ladder lickity split is not what life is about. Make the right choices for you and you will find a great deal more peace flowing into your life.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending a day and a bit at Armidale, New South Wales about five and a half hours drive from Brisbane. I was there to attend the graduation ceremony at the University of New England and I must say it was a very pretty town. So what was so good about it?

The food at Armidale

I am not a pub man by any stretch of the imagination. I did however, have the chance to sample the food at Armidale’s Grand Hotel in the centre of town. I had one of the best steaks I can remember in a long time. Maybe it’s because I have been living on a associate lecturers wage too long! It was fantastic.

The place I stayed

I had the pleasure of staying in a little bed and breakfast called ‘Creature Comforts‘. The rooms were immaculate, the hosts were friendly and the rooms were stocked with all the necessities I could imagine. We had fresh country bread for breakfast and took off to the University of New England for the ceremony.

The drive home

Although on paper 10 hours up and back in a small drive seems like a short journey. I can assure you it’s not! I stopped off at Stanthorpe to buy some excellent quality apples on the way home. What a country I have the privilege to live in. We also stopped along the way and checked out some hand crafted ugg boots. I couldn’t really afford it but I can say they are the best ugg boots I have ever seen. So well crafted! It’s no wonder the place was full of people.

What I wish could of happened

On the map this doesn’t look like anything special: View Larger Map But in real life it’s a really pretty drive. There are tons of poplar trees, rolling green (and brown unfortunately) hills, cows and a species of black kangaroo my mother’s boyfriend called a scrubber. We saw Tenterfield (Peter Allen’s birthplace), Glen Innes and a heap of other ‘Glens’. Come to think of it every town between Warwick and Armidale was probably ‘Glen’ something. The only thing I can find the time to complain about was the cold. I am from Brisbane where it rarely drops below 20 during the day and stays in the teens most of the night. I didn’t mind that however, the air was fresh, the food was great and the people were wonderful. I enjoyed the trip and if I was a rich man I wouldn’t hesitate to make more time to see more of the ‘Tablelands’. This article from the age says it all. I would recommend a trip if you get the chance.

I love the movie field of dreams.  You know what… I have built plenty of things and the people never come.  I have made websites, books, software and the like and people never came.  I think I have reached the stage where I can say, “If you build it – you better have a plan to get people there otherwise they are likely not to come”.  There is no magic here.  Only work, promotion, SEO, people (thanks to all my readers) and the like.  It’s like people who become good at something they say, ‘I just suddenly knew that I knew that I knew’  What the steaming hell does that even mean?  I call it the breakthrough moment… but I digress.

Can I encourage that if you build something… you need to create clever strategies BEFORE YOU BUILD IT to ensure that people will come.  It has to be something people want to talk about for goodness sake.   If then won’t or can’t then as sure as the sun doesn’t set in the east they won’t come.

Luke out.

I recently got my PhD. It was a horrible experience and unless you are passionate about a subject I would recommend that you think twice about doing it. I can say that the title “Dr.” is nice to have … but the price is really high. That aside, there is something I learned about self-worth when I was doing it.

People have a certain idea of what you should be… ignore them

I can’t count the amount of times people spoke down to me, called me names or put me down because of my rank. This is silly because the worth of somebody is not described by their personal monetary value or rank in some stupid ladder. It’s determined by you. The problem is only you can say what you worth and you exude it by your actions.

Under the guise of helping you… people often make themselves feel better by putting you down

In this strange arrangement called society we have all kinds of ranks and files. There are literally plagues of people getting their sense of self-worth from their position or their rank. You will hear all kinds of abusive nonsense from people who are in power above you but don’t let it get to you. I handle it by venting, relaxing and refocusing. So they put you down? You really have two choices… stand up to them and tell them what’s what or walk away. Option 2 works best for me though I don’t always follow it. Hey I am as human as they come. Sometimes I will yell and scream… but more often than not I walk away. It’s easier and makes the other person responsible for what happens next.

People who hug their rank and steal your joy are really soulless life sucking vampires from hell

The title says it all. People who think they can dominate you through overpowering you with their rank are very insecure. Their is a flipside or two to this subject as well… they are dangerous. People that have no clue as to leadership and how to be a cool person will almost always slam you down to the ground just to do it. Your choice is to be a person that people remark about in a positive way. You don’t want to be in the same group as people who are bootlickers of the machine empire of doom. No, you want to be a person who is a creative light unto the world, bringing joy and peace with you. Not some sense of worth derived from wealth, money, rank or something artificial like that. Robots are robots… never forget that. They will always do what the machine wants. See my post about ants if you need more info there.

So what is a bastard?

A bastard in my dictionary (you won’t find that on the internet) is someone who dominates someone else for the sheer joy of keeping the ’status quo’ or dominating people. Don’t you ever just want to wake up and see what’s going on around you? Dammit! Break out of your machine-like cubes and run for justice. There is a door that leads to freedom here somewhere I just have to find it. But I digress.

If you are in situation with a bastard who is dominating you can I suggest the following: you are the victim of a sick relationship. If life is about career, performance and such things then you are only looking at ‘material’ things to adjust to your self-worth. Eventually, these things will come to let you down and you will be left wondering (as you sip your chi-latte) exactly where did I go wrong? Here’s something cool I gained from my time in church:

Treat others as you want to be treated and love others as you learn to love yourself

This never works for me because most people I meet (including myself) are filled with a sense of anger and frustration at where their life is heading. How many people (bastards) have you met that are using you to vent their anger on you? Lots. The choice is yours… you can let them get you down or walk away. Here are some cool techniques I use to cope. Hey, I am an emo-right brained person who feels it when he is slammed so zip it and read the list sweetheart:

Be like Flanders

Look them square in the eye and put a positive spin on it. Say things like, “I am glad you think I am an BLEEP now I know who not to ask for advice. THANKS!” By diffusing the situation and being positive you remain in control of reality.  There are many things you can do here.  Smile and nod is my choice.  It’s funny how irritated people get when you do that!

Use your imagination

Switching frames (perspectives) is a really good way to get over this. I would say this has helped me the most. When a moron is in your face with their blah blah blah do this: Imagine their face blowing up like a balloon. What I often do is wait until they have finished then go into my room, shut the door and imagine them falling over or watching their face twist out of shape. It takes the seriousness out of the situation and makes you get your peace back. Life without a sense of peace is horrible.

Agree with them

When they are on the rant stand up and agree. It will confuse the crap out of them and then they will have nowhere to go. So if they say, “you are lazy” say… “you got my number!” Then they have no way of venting their anger towards you. What you can do then is have the upper hand by walking away because they have nowhere to go except to crawl up the corporate anus!

Make random noise while they speak

This has only worked for me once. Usually people who hear it wonder what the hell is wrong with me and walk away. Here’s the key: people who pick on you have a low sense of self-worth and they are looking to give you the same disease. Stuff that! I would rather sit at home in my glorious mansion (okay so it’s 89 square metre dump… I am dreaming!) and be content then listen to some old BS about productivity or efficiency. Michael Porter can kiss my ass!

Run away

This is an option you can take when your the victim of a bastard. Run. Yeah the tank is empty this is the last one. I have used this and it works.

Don’t let some jerk steal your self-worth. You are worth it.  A really good friend of mine told me not to let people steal my self-esteem.  You can take it and look gracious or get revenge (not a good idea – it only ends up making you like the evil machine of doom I call “work”).   Let me encourage you saying you are worth it… you are a person who has integrity, dignity and self-respect.  A job is not part of your identity … it’s something you do because you have kids to feed or cats to feed or a habit [sic] to feed.  Work steals the soul along with the heart of people who take it too seriously.  There is something good about working… if you love it and your spirit is being fed.  Look up the day is getting brighter all the time because you are a person who is a winner.

In my country (Australia) we very rarely encourage each other.  We are hard workers.  It’s just not in the Aussie culture to go up to someone at work and say, ‘you are doing a great job… keep it up’… or to pat some one on the back and go, “well done”.  I can count on my fingers the amount of times this has happened to me.  Why don’t you buck the trend if this is the case for you in your workplace.  Encourage people, be kind and if you are a boss (like I am more often than I would like the responsibility to be totally honest) treat your people like they mean something.  Don’t be a jerk like your boss is to you.  The final thing I want to say today is this: if you let the bastards get you down then the machine of doom wins.  It can’t win unless you let it.  Remember, it may steal your soul but it can’t steal your spirit.  Thats you in that meatsuit.    I hope that you learn to cope with difficult people who are bastards.  I am getting there… each day more strength and more ability to cope is coming my way.  It’s my hope that it’s coming to you too.