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All right, everybody out of the pool...

I have officially moved this blog. You can now find it at www.bloodandmilk.org. I'll see you over there.

Five ways to fake a good process

1. Host meetings to find consensus on the way forward. Put too many items on the agenda. Put the things you care about last on the list; call it consensus when everyone agrees with your suggestions so you can go home already.

2. Do interviews with everyone who might care about your topic. Exhaustive interviews. Write them up into an attractive report with a title that includes the word stakeholders. Distribute the report extensively. Ignore its contents.

3. Host a working group on your topic. Form sub-working groups. A lot of them. At least 20. Draft an elaborate flow chart of the groups and how they relate. Have every sub-group discuss, edit, and approve the chart. Circulate the changes for approval. Once that’s done, have every sub-group draft a list of priorities for their group. While all this is going on, implement your project. If anyone asks why they weren’t involved, tell them some other sub-working group was.

4. Write a document that says exactly what you want it to. Label it “draft” in big letters. Circulate it to everyone. Tell everyone who receives it that you want their input. When anyone suggests changes, thank them and ask for the changes in another format. If they give you written changes, ask for them at the meeting next week. If they bring them up at a meeting, have everyone discuss the items and then say you need the final inputs via email. After two months, rearrange all your same points into a new order, and publish the document as final and start your project.

5. Have a long meeting, with many presentations, on what you plan to do. Invite all your stakeholders. Have them hold all their questions and comments for the end. Run out of time, and don't let anyone question or comment. From then on, refer to that initial meeting as your “design meeting, where the stakeholders created the project.”

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(photo credit: moogs)

How to cure your PTSD

The other day I was trying to work on a couple projects I really like, and I just couldn’t focus. I just felt uncontrollably twitchy and weird. I also couldn’t edit documents, reformat resumes or enjoy browsing the archives of xkcd. Not being able to read web comics is a red flag, and at that point I realized my heart rate was up, and every muscle in my body was tense, including my face and my toes.

After I started paying attention, I also realized there was a lot of traffic on the road outside. I was once again experiencing the world’s mildest case of PTSD.

See, when I was in Baghdad, I noticed that the sound of distant explosions sounds just like a truck driving over a metal plate in the ground. (well, it does if you are me.) So since then, every time I hear a truck driving over such a plate, it scares me to a really disproportionate degree.

Especially here in Tajikistan, it doesn’t happen a whole lot. Not a lot of plates or truck traffic. But that other day, for some reason, bang bang bang on the road by my office. Not exactly life-destroying, but upsetting.

Yesterday, at lunch with some embassy people, I found myself sitting next to a woman getting her PhD in psychology. And naturally I asked for free medical advice.

Here’s what she told me: what I have is basically a strong bad association. What I need to do, is find a way to experience the same frightening sound in a situation where I feel safe and happy. I could record the sound and play it at home, for example.

I plan to take my son, who makes me happy all the time, to watch the construction site near my house. Trucks and banging galore, paired with happy, happy baby who loves trucks and construction. I’ll let you know how it goes, but I really think it will work.

Normally, I try not to make this blog all personal, but I thought this might be a useful cognitive technique for other people.

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(photo credit: Titanas)

Chosen because it's an appropriately discomfiting and scary truck.