Technical Advise Week #2 - Exercising Unconditional Love

Hi this is Mabel & Max, welcome back. While you are enjoying your weekend we are hard at work delivering you a bit of sage advise to think about. We have been reading recently about the lack of recognition and access to the top posts by CIO/CTOs. At first, we thought that maybe there might be just something to the lament, until we started to look at how some CIOs & CTOs came into power. Many started like us all, at the very bottom of the technology food chain. With each successive accomplishment, we got promoted to a more responsible position. Eventually, if we spent enough time in place we became the head of technology. While it is unfair to over characterize the people and the position, it is fair to say that some of the traits have not necessarily been acquired through formal channels. Heavens, we would be simply happied if some of what is practiced actually came from published materials. In short, allot of the skills and behavior has been acquired from deep inside the personalities of the individuals. Not all of these are good, and sometimes the CIO/CTO prefers to continue an intense involvement in technology (safe zone with suspect), rather than opt for people or visionary issues. We have also notice that there has been one aspect that has been a commonality that the CIO/CTO has shared with the CEO. Once they are ousted from their positions they often show up in a similiar role in another important organization. One would think that if it doesn't work at one place, then maybe there is a likelihood that it might occur again. I'm sure all of you have heard the definition of insanity, "doing something again and expecting a different outcome". We are all for forgiveness, but really... do you wish to give way to optimism when so much is at stake?

Both Max and I are really big into unconditional love. We ask absolutely nothing of Mom & Dad, in fact it nice to see kindness be given to us without having to ask or expected to give something in return. We see allot of conditional love in technology. Like the CIO/CTO, they expect that this is a right of passage that they might be given a chance at the CEO/Chairman's post. At the sametime consultants expected conditional love through their "community" of common thinkers. Dad remains in contact with some of the leaders in the maturing of the software engineering discipline; Beizer, Miller, Hetzel, Quentin, Graham, Pope... to name a few. They share lively conversations but at the same time it's not with motive, it's out of love for the cranial (... this is Mabel, I listen as an advisor to this group too because I'm cranial) experience and not as a source for building business. In fact, all of these have done quite nicely, not of what they expect but for what they deliver (and continue to deliver).

As technologies pursue your dreams with unconditional expectations, this will release you from the things that bind your creativity and your capabilities. Enjoy the company of colleagues, not for what you can get out of the relationship or in terms of new business, but for the joy of expanding knowledge and capabilities. Max and I feel that we have to do this because our future is dependent upon capability, not based upon expectation of favors.

Until next week we bid you well.