Chris J Wilson

I’ve noticed two main responses to any problem at work.

1. Blame distribution
2. Solution implementation While most people employ both to varying degrees, we also seem to tend towards one or the other.

Blame distribution is where we sell to find the person to be blamed. It’s not about find the responsible party but that may happen as a lucky consequence.

During blame distribution, you should expect to see email chains resurfaced with sections highlighted or underlined. People will point out how they “did their job” (usually to the letter) or that this issue didn’t fall under their remit.

Blame distribution can affect managers (who do I need to be upset with) and lower-level staff (how can I make sure I’m not blamed).

Usually, the actual problem remains while no one addresses it.

Solution implementation is all about fixing the problem. It doesn’t matter what (or who) caused it unless that information relates to fixing the issue. After the immediate issue is fixed, there may also be a process of finding out the root cause of the problem to avoid any repetition.

Someone solution implementation involves challenging staff to raise their standards, highlighting manager mistakes, and maybe even disciplinary action, but that’s not the first thing; It comes later.

I hope that I’m more of a solution implementer than a blame distributor but I know that I fall prey to the later too.

When someone wants to start a creative project, they usually mispredict what will be their challenges and what they need to focus on.

Several months back I told myself “you think this is your biggest challenge, but it’s actually…” and then my mind filled in the blank (space was actually my challenge.) So I spent time working out how I could have more space and set up equipment faster. Then I started to buy myself some toys. If I’d bought the toys first, I wouldn’t have got far at all.

Sometimes, while I’m on Micro Blog, I get a glimps of a whole world here that I am completely unaware of. Usually it’s from the discovery feed, where I see a post on a topic that I would never normally go searching for, but is interesting regardless. Other times it is from a comment that appears in my feed and I explore the coversation. I’ve heard people discribe different forms of “twitter” (i.e. black twitter, politics twitter, Christian twitter etc) and I wonder how much that applies to Micro Blog? Certainly, the most common trends I’ve noticed are a gravitation towards Apple products and a dislike of mainstream social media (in particular Facebook). But after those two characterists, which aren’t universal, there’s a lot of different here. It’s a great reminder of just how diverse the world is; on Micro blog and everywhere.

One of my big challenges at work now is stopping ideas falling through the gaps.

We’ve had a lot of ideas for ways to improve what we do, but sometimes they get forgotten in the day to day running.

So I’m moving to close those gaps. No more “cool idea let’s do it later.” But “okay, what’s next? What does this actually look like? Who is responsible?”

Part of sharing this is to hold myself accountable if we don’t close the gap.

I’ve been finishing a little review of my new camera and I had a realisation. As I wrote about the mobile app, which is far greater than my previous camera, I realised that there are other cameras which are supposed to have superior apps. I’m sure they do and I might even like and use those extra function. Still, this camera is an improvement and in the ways I needed. While it may not be the best, it’s good enough for me. I don’t want to dampen my enjoyment by comparing it to the best.

The same is probably true of my mechanical keyboard (an Anne Pro 2 with Kalih white box switches). It’s probably not as good as some of these ridiculously expensive keyboards but it’s also probably good enough for me.

You bar for “Good enough" may be different (especially in different fields) but knowing that mark (and not getting caught up in someone else’s definition) is really important.

I’ve had this thought for a while that my job is

1. Make a plan and start working on it in the morning.
2. Spend the whole of the morning finding out that the plan has changed and there are ten new things to do.
3. Adapt plan and work on the new most urgent tasks.
4. Wake up the next morning and repeat.

It annoyed me that people would continually start fires and then leave me (and the rest of the team) to put them out, but I realised today that we get paid to put those fires out fast and get a new plan in place soon.

A terrible blogging writing mistake (I hold my hand up and admit that I do it all the time) is to restate a subheadline as the first sentence of that section.

Here’s an example Subheading: What’s good about (topic) First sentence: There are many good aspects of (topic) which we should consider.

It’s pointless and waffle.

Let’s get into the heart of the topic or at least provide some extra information.

Again, I do it all the time but that’s part of the value of editing.

For a while I’ve wondered about combining my two sites Sketchnote Classroom and Learn Create Share into one site.

Reasons

• I want to focus on one site, not two.
• There is a lot of overlap between the two. They are both about creativity.
• I share sketchnotes on different topics on LCS so almost all the content is sketchnote based really.

The reason I started LCS was to encourage myself to share more sketchnotes (and content) that weren’t about sketchnoting but other topics. The only issue I have is that Sketchnote classroom is very clearly about sketchnoting and solves a very clear problem for people (using sketchnotes to learn…and learning how to sketchnote) whereas LCS is a lot less well defined (It’s a process… that is good?).

Why does it matter?

I’m getting ready to launch some new stuff (updated courses and something very special) and so I’m wondering if I should merge the two sites. I have thought about merging them into LCS but part of me thinks it is more sensible to merge them into Sketchnote classroom (I have a clearly message and better SEO).

What do you think?

I’d love your thoughts. Which name is better (in your opinion)? OR do you think I should stick with both!