Likely a good idea to scrub the entire db clean with the details from my previous post.  Then keep sanity with Launch  Pad Control.

What are all of these emotions people bring with them?  I’m not emotional you say.  Oh, yes you are. In 2001 a team lead by Roy Baumeister published a research paper titled “Bad is stronger than good” where they explored and supported the theory that negative events outweigh positive ones at a far greater rate.  These negative events can be anything; a person encountered, information, an experience or just a bad day.   According to Baumeister our language supports negative emotions far greater than positive emotions leading us to recognize and experience negativity more often.   All of these negative and sometimes positive emotions are present in each interaction with have throughout the day.  Sometimes the negative emotions can have a positive impact though.  Our bad mood can bring forth more careful information processing although the negative effects of a bad mood outweigh this positive one.  It makes sense then that we try harder to avoid and escape our negative emotions than we try to positive emotions.   Our memories have been trained to remember the negative emotions better and thus we bring them with us to our business dealings and have to deal with them.

Our logical intuition can easily calculate the profit equation of revenue less expenses equals profit.  We immediately start segmenting ideas and operational work flows into the format of this equation.  Thinking in terms of “I can hire this position which will increase wage expenses but this position will allow me to increase revenue so profit goes up”.   It is natural for all of us in business to perform this calculation rationally or even subconsciously throughout the day.  It is something we just do by nature of being responsible for the bottom line.  There is little ambiguity to the method or process that is used to calculate profit and it is by nature an agreed upon fact of existence.

When the ordering logic driven profit motives mix with the soft and subjective intangible of emotions we create conflict in our lives.  It is from this conflict we do stupid things.  The email rant to our boss, the disparaging remarks about a co-worker, the water cooler bitch sessions.  They are all driven by emotions arising from the conflict between our logic knowing for certain our path with yield the greater profit or personal gain and the impact of negative emotions that are cast into our day by experiences and our own perceived reality.  The study of behavioral economics shows that we do not always act rationally and it is our emotions that get in the way.  Dan Ariely articulates this well in his HBR article “The Long-Term Effects of Short-Term Emotions”  When we allow our emotions to override our logic we make poor decisions.  The prior ill decisions becomes a reference point for future decisions only to had us repeat the same mistake agin and again.

Taking ownership of our emotions and knowing they influences everything we do throughout the day is the first step to breaking free of the conflict.  Depending on your demur it may mean a lot of countdowns from 10 to cool off.   Overcome the negative bias by bringing realistic optimism and a positive energy to the day.  It is not advisable to be the lucky go happy guy in the office but viewing the world as a glass half full is a start.  Norman Vicent Peale’s book titled The Power of Positive Thinking great primer on changing one’s outlook on life.   Reach out and learn from other people and build professional friendships that can start to challenge your bias.  This will allow you an opportunity to validate their emotions.  Remember that emotions are never wrong, the deviation from their logic is what has landed them here.  Finally take a break and clear your head.  The potentially frustrating topic of the moment may appear a lot different after a short break and the reset button has been pressed in our mind.

We cannot ignore the emotions that exist in our day so we must embrace them, welcome them, then overcome them.   Start by recognize that your emotions are ruining you and leading you to make bad decisions that do not fit with logical economic behavior.  Realize this is true for everyone around you as well and validate their emotions then work to persuade them see your logic, not to agree to your emotions.  Rational decisions are when we are most often right and our economics friend have been telling us this for years, so stick with it and suppress our emotional miss-guidance.   Being positive and overcoming the natural tendency to be negative with frequent mental breaks will keep us on the path to logical profit driven decisions.   If we each work towards this grand goal we can all enjoy better success and self development.

The definition of freak flag from Urban Dictionary:

Freak Flag:

a. A characteristic, mannerism, or appearance of a person, either subtle or overt, which implies unique, eccentric, creative, adventurous or unconventional thinking.

b.  Unrestrained, unorthodox or unconventional in thinking, behavior, manners, etc. One who espouses radical, nonconformist or dissenting views and opinions that are outside the mainstream.

Regardless of how annoying, weird, abrasive, or disruptive to the status quo we find these people they are critically needed to push forward the ideas that lead to real innovation.  They challenge us to think beyond our current mindset for what is acceptable or more importantly for what is possible.   When you choose to dig deep and try to understand why this person is segmenting themselves from the norm you will learn they have a real passion that drives them.   To harness this passion and make it a productive force in your organization is the ultimate challenge.  Be too tight and you will stifle their creativity; Be too loose and it can truly cause havoc in your organization.

The best example of successfully allowing the creative passion of your organizational ‘freaks’ drive innovation was detailed by Gary Hamel in his 2001 HBR article Waking Up IBM: How a Gang of Unlikely Rebels Transformed Big Blue.   Hamel details how David Grossman waved his freak flag by extolling the virtues of this new fangled thing called the internet.  Grossman’s discontent with IBM being passed by on this new technology drove him to wake up the organization and ultimately lead to a makeover of IBM.

How to deal with the Freaks in your organization.

1. Don’t treat their mis-haps has failures, rather learning opportunities.  There will be times that they let the freak flag fly a little too high and push you over the edge.  It is important to remember they are only expressing their passion and maybe got a little too excited trying to achieve the best result possible for the organization.  Any moment can be a learning moment, make it one.

2. Learn and understand what their passion is, what is it that is driving them.   Only by understanding the concrete that this freak flag is planted in will you be able to engage them to drive innovation in your organization.   Of course you will also find out if they only wear green because they believe everyone should eat brussels sprouts for lunch.   Unless you are a produce farmer this may not fit in your organization and you will be able to know this for sure without speculation.

3. Write a manifesto together.  This does not need to be the next great work of the publishing world but five to ten bullet points about what is driving the passion and how it impacts the organization. Consider this the boundaries or rules you can live with. 
David Grossman’s manifesto:

1. Start simple; grow fast.
2. Trial by fire.
3. Just don’t inhale (the stale air of orthodoxy).
4. Just enough is good enough.
5. Skip the krill (go to the top of the food chain when you’re trying to sell your idea).
6. Wherever you go, there you are (the Net has no bounds).
7. No blinders.
8. Take risks; make mistakes quickly; fix them fast.
9. Don’t get pinned down (to any one way of thinking).

4. Be open to change and adaptability.  This is a grand experiment you are leading and you need to be able to change quickly to new developments, successes and failures.  Don’t over react to any movements good or bad, just keep and open mind.

5. Focus on small, achievable wins.  Your organizational freak will be pushing for big wins which is what gets them excited in the first place.  Focus their energy on small wins so the organization can come around to new ways of thinking.  It is unlikely that just one freak is able to come up with this great idea on their own.  However once they put a few wins on the board you can start to bring others into the process and gain from their creative ideas.  As IBM found you can establish a positive feedback loop rather quickly that will spur some great innovation in your organization.

This incident reminded me of a article by Don Schmincke and Darryl McCormick titled “Is Politeness Killing Your Profits?”  In the article the two argue the point that when we are overly polite we end up avoiding open and honest constructive criticism which then in turns destroys the performance of the organization.  To take this concept further it seems that it is possible for the organization to value ‘politeness’ above all else which will then reward managers for the backhanded complement, and leads to passive aggressiveness behavior. Ron Ashkenas refers to this as conflict avoidance in his HBR Blog post “Is Your Culture Too Nice?”  Again Ashkenas argues that being too polite is going to stifle creativity and growth of the organization.

The utopian balance sought is to create a culture that is polite, engaging, collaborative, and thrives from conflict.  The conflict though must be rooted in the belief that each party is trying to grow the organization rather than protect a personal insecurity or revenge a prejudice.   Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes engage this thought in their HBR article “Want Collaboration?: Accept—and Actively Manage—Conflict”.  Messrs. Weiss and Hughes advocate building culture around embracing conflict to gain the performance advantage for the entire company.  The crux of achieving this they offer is establishing a common set of standards or protocol for how the organization responds to conflict.  In this way everyone has been trained and indoctrinated into the “right way” of dealing with conflict.  This best practice for conflict that the organization adopts details the approach, when to compromise, and when to estate the conflict higher in the organization where the process will repeat itself.

Theory of Constraints offers a solid framework to establish a culture that embraces conflict.  If every employee has the tools of the conflict cloud in hand they can embrace the conflict with the peer and find a win/win solution.  The conflict cloud starts with a common objective and builds upon the assumptions each party is making.  Together breaking the conflict to find a win/win will drive better solutions in the organization.  The process is very non-confrontational which is why most of us avoid conflict to begin with.  Tthe virtue of ‘polite’ is disarmed by the conflict process and each party is free to disagree and explain why of course without being rude.  It is no longer an attack on the person but a difference in method to achieve the same common objective.  By using the TOC Conflict cloud the conflict is no longer personal and talking about it becomes easy.   Using a tool like the TOC conflict cloud allows everyone in the organization can speak to a common set best practices as Weiss and Hughes suggest and still maintain a cordial, even call it polite interaction with co-workers.  It is only from this universal behavior towards conflict that the organization will grow and flourish.

It will be interesting in the coming months as the events at UBS unfold and become public to see who knew what and when.  Maybe had Kweku’s manager stepped up and had a conflict conversation using a conflict best practice, UBS’s shareholders would be $2.3B better off today.

I started off the year trying to use my HP Laserjet All-in-one printer to scan my documents and store them in an electronic archive.   Wow, a lot of work.  In order for anything to be useful it must be easy. I ended up giving in and buying a Fujitsu ScanSnap.  This is an expensive piece of hardware for such a limited function but it is proving to be well worth it.  To be fair you do get a Pro copy of Adobe Acrobat which does not come cheap either.  The ScanSnap couldn’t be easier to use.  Steps are:

1. Open the ScanSnap software on your computer (2 seconds)
2. Place the document in the scanner (3 seconds – I’ve done larger documents of 30 pages or so and literally dropped it in)
3. Press the Blue scan button on the scanner (1 second)
4. Wait for the document to scan – do something else while it does.  The scan time is reasonably fast. Certainly faster than the HP Laserjet
5. DevonThink will prompt you and ask you where you wish the document be filed – this is a personal setting.  It is possible to automatically file at a set destination without being asked.
6. DevonThink will prompt you to name the document and add tags if desired.  I’m leaving most of my documents the default name.  I am also OCRing every document which does take longer but allows for really nice search results.  This saves me time from naming every file.

The OCR does slow down the process, although it is not necessary to wait for each file to be done to do the next.  I have found it useful to scan four or five documents at once in a batch then move on.

With the ScanSnap in place now, the process is easy to complete.  The only remaining question is will I do it.

Rather than using a “master port” like most Dell or IBM docking stations do to clip into the Henge Dock merely utilizes the ports already on your laptop with normal cables.  You pick the cables you need and can use the ones they provide (nice extenders) or provide your own.  I do not use my mic for example so I didn’t need to bother hooking that one up.  You line up each port and there is a screw that securely holds each cable in place.  Then you just slide your laptop into the sleeve and seat each connection gently in place.  Voila! Your done.

I bought my first Henge Dock for the office and it worked well.  After about 15-20 minutes of tinkering to get each cable to seat properly I was golden.  I then bought a 2nd dock for at home and after spending 2-3 hours tinkering I still could not get the display port to seat properly.  I contacted Henge’s support and they sent me a nice help document that suggested everything I already tried.   Having two docks, same computer with different results was not a good experience. One of the suggestions is to leave your laptop in the dock to help the dock form to your specific laptop.  I’m not sure physics of a solid object work this way but I’ m giving it a try.  For now I have a nice holder for my laptop and I put each cable in myself (seating the laptop 180 degrees from the normal direction).

I upgraded to Lion and was curious about Launchpad, the new iOS like program to organize all of my apps.  At first, I thought it was a good idea then the organizer in me kicked in and I immediately became frustrated.  Apple pre-builds your Launchpad for you with all of the applications installed on your computer. This is a literal use of the word ALL.  Every utility, uninstaller, helper app and other piece of junk found on your computer.   I have a Windows 7 install on my machine which exponentially increased the number of applications I have.  All of this rendered Launchpad worthless in my opinion.

To save the day I found Lion: Deleting apps in Launchpad, and starting clean. This simple set of instructions saved the day.  I did have to run each sql command by itself but it did achieve the same result.  Open up Terminal and run these commands.

> mkdir ~/Desktop/DB_Backup

[makes a folder on your desktop to back up the data files]

> cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db ~/Desktop/DB_Backup/

[copies the database]

> sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db 'DELETE from apps;'> sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db 'DELETE from groups WHERE title<>"";'> sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/*.db 'DELETE from items WHERE rowid>2;'

[deletes the app records from Launchpad's database, and restarts the Dock process; you'll see  your minimized windows pop back to the screen.]

Then with a clean Launchpad  you simply drag each application you really want to the Launchpad icon in the dock and begin to organize.  I'll keep you posed if I have any negative consequences for doing this.

Check out Coda: http://www.panic.com/coda/

Check out Tower: http://www.git-tower.com/

Check it out:  http://www.razorsql.com

After a long search it turns out I wasn’t.  Postbox is the answer to this little problem. It is a little JV but is a viable contender for a serious mail application. It has tabs and most importantly an “archive” and “delete” button.   There is an interesting post in on their support site about ical integration not working if you buy it via the Apple App Store.   I have found ical integration to be weak and the biggest hurdle for me with this program.

Check out Postbox at: ?http://www.postbox-inc.com/