I’ve been toying with the idea of SYINC project leads thinking aloud for some time. For want of a better working title, I’m calling this “internal communications” for now.
Here’s how I’ve roughly envisioned for it to work:
Project leads need to communicate their thoughts.
Their thoughts need to be communicated early in the project, continuously throughout the project, and communicated honestly.
They can do this through blogs, through vodcast, written notes, coffee sessions, or whatever means a project lead feels comfortable with.
The thoughts need to be honestly expressed to his/her team members, with some level of humility in receiving comments and criticism.
In these communications, what needs to be expressed, is the vision of the end-goal of the project, the methods by which the team could get there, and the general mindset behind the decision-making.
The goals for this expression of thoughts are two-fold.
Increasing ownership amongst all members
Domain leads (e.g. Logistics, Community Engagement, Marketing leads), knowing the intent of their lead, can make independent decisions without having to constantly get affirmation from the overall lead.
Being able to see the early formation of the thoughts (remember, leads to communicate EARLY.), members automatically take part in the decision-making. Leads and their team members all partake in this process. So in essence, they make those decisions together. i.e. They take shared responsibility for all outcomes.
Improving sustainability of the project.
With a common goal, properly enunciated, teams will generally run a tighter ship (after all, expectations are all set, people know their jobs). This ensures that people are less likely to fall out of SYINC, and increases the likelihood of success, at least in fulfilling the common goals of the project.
It is conceivable that team leads, from time-to-time, need to come in and out of a project. Having been enlightened on the final goal, and having a shared goal with others in the team enables the team to still function during periods of absence. This is not a substitute for replacing leaders, but it ensures that the projects keep going for a longer period before the leadership absence causes issues.
I’d write more, but I’d like to know your thoughts at this moment… What do you think of the idea so far? Airy-fairy or actually achievable?
I got married in between my last post and now, which explains the long absence. Somewhere in between, Karen and myself disappeared for a fortnight to South Africa. We landed in Cape Town, toured the wine regions, and then drove, via Knysna on the Garden Route, to Kwandwe Private Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape. Everything was organised by &Beyond, an agent recommended by Paul and one I’d heartily recommend to anyone else thinking of travelling there as well.
A lot of people have been bugging me about this… so here it is, finally…
Hung out with TC, Erika, Hui Sin and Karen at the track today… it’s supposed to be a stag party, but it kinda turned into a double date =) If anything, I caught some pretty good pics from the top of the Bay Grandstand.
Went with Karen to send Shirley Surya off today … So I took my camera along to snap some pics while waiting at the airport… I always wanted to shoot T3, just never really got down to it. One of these days, I’ll go by early in the morning when it’s all empty (5am?). That’ll be pretty cool…Details in the descriptions and meta tags.
Snow Leopard was delivered right on the dot yesterday and I’ve been giving it a whirl. As expected, the system apps are a fair bit faster, and everything feels quite a bit more responsive. But I digress.
While doing a mass export of photos from Lightroom 2.0, I noticed that the fans had wound up quite a bit, so I poked into the Activity Monitor (somewhat like Windows’ Task Manager).
Lo and behold, I found Lightroom using well over 100% of the CPU! So… what’s up? Is there some secret sauce in Snow Leopard, or has the Activity Monitor gone bonkers?
Nikon just announced an update for 2 lenses which I own : the 70-200mm f2.8 and 18-200mm. In both cases, the VR was upgraded to VRII, supposedly giving a 2 stop increase in stability over the older version. Not sure whether the optics are better though.
There isn’t enough going for these 2 updates for me to upgrade to either. Their predecessors were too good, I suppose.
I set up a google alert some time back, that emails me whenever my name comes up … and was kind of amused to discover another Dale Tan’s blog. I mean, I’ve always figured that there were at least 2 other “Dale Tans” out there (one in KL, one in the US), but today, I discovered the blog of the one in KL. Not only is this guy in the creative industry, he also happens to own the same camera body and flash (Nikon D80 and SB800 respectively). I also happen to have the 70-200mm on his wishlist.
Random interesting article for budding photographers:Â Pay vs Exposure -Â Is it a valid trade-off?
Moral of the story – no matter how much of a novice you are, if you’re on assignment, make sure you ask for appropriate compensation.And when you do this paid job, be professional. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
