I’m amazed at how finely tuned people’s BS meters are. I’m also amazed at how much BS is out there.

Over the past year I’ve become deeply involved in the sustainability movement, a return to my roots, really. And with each passing day the gap between my “work” and my passion has grown wider.

This is one of the major reasons I’ve been finding it so difficult to write here. Every time I started a post about traditional recruiting/talent management dilemmas I ended up trying to respond from a traditional corporate capitalist perspective, and every time the content rang false. A traditional corporate capitalist I am not. But I have been acting like one for a number of reasons, bifurcating my professional and personal identities to avoid the inescapable clash of cultures and philosophies. In retrospect none of those reasons seem compelling, but they may have been necessary for me to get here.

And here is where I stand now, firmly embracing my personal convictions as they relate to business in general and “talent management” in particular. The time for a new approach is come. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go water my garden.

1. Communication
• The most important criterion for a successful project is communicating effectively at every stage
• Effective communication is not just timely communication, you also need to consider
o Audience—who are you communicating with?
o Urgency—how important is this communication?
o Relevancy—who should know about it?
o Frequency—how often should they know?
2. Organization
• To ensure that you are communicating in a timely and effective manner you must be well-organized
• Task management is critical
o Maintain a task list and manage it daily
o Magage tasks against milestones and data
o Set priorities and reassess them frequently
• Create agendas for every meeting/training
o Assign action items with due dates to relevant participants
• Appraise time commitments as accurately as possible, and avoid overcomitting
o Don’t be afraid to delegate
3. Proactive Problem Resolution
• No project is perfect out of the box, so watch for problems to arise
• If you aware of the possibility of problems, you can often catch them before they become major issues
• The problems can be process or people driven, or both
• Seek consensus whenever possible, but don’t let the project suffer because of disruptive elements
4. Engagement
• Commit to the project both publicly and privately
• Be honest and open
• Admit mistakes and be forgiving of others’
• Stay positive!

He also spoke quite animatedly and passionately about programming. I asked him what a good language for someone in my line of work might be, and he waxed poetic on Ruby on Rails. I now have a couple pages of notes to help me get started on my programming career.

In the process of giving me advice, Dan (we’ll call him Dan, though I never got his name) filled me in on how computers were a hobby of his in high school and college, and that he learned some HTML and Java while he got his degree in photography. So, to be clear, Dan works at Apple, which is his second tech job after working fir the City of Austin for four years, with no formal degree. He has a few certifications, but no formal degree.

How did Dan land such a sweet gig without the résumé bling to even get him in the door?

A recommendation.

One of his coworkers at the C of A was a former employee at Apple and wanted to go back. They made a deal that whoever got hired first would help the other guy in the door. Two months after his buddy got hired, Dan was working for Apple, too.

What does this mean? Two things:

1. The best hires are referrals
2. Network your ass off

The end.

Americans may admire beauty, but they are truly dazzled by bigness…. Europeans prefer complexity, the Japanese revere minimalism. But Americans like size, preferably supersize.

Okay, so I am decidedly NOT American. Which makes me wonder about where my parents are really from. Maybe I’m adopted? Because my brother loves supersized. Me, however, I prefer complexity, and I love minimalism.

Is that even really possible? Can something be complex and minimal? What is that? Minimally complex? Complexly minimalistic? Minimalisitically complexificated?

Whatever. I know I like my arguments, my furniture, my friends, and my worldviews complex, and I like my technology, my clothing, my relationships, and my finances beautifully streamlined and simple.

Maybe this is why my dream home is a straw bale Japanese Mexi-Mediterranean adobe fusion. I’m drawing the plans up right now.