2018 Summer August 29 Wednesday

2018 Summer August 29 Wednesday

83 degrees this morning 60% humidity, Walk 34:01 minutes

Overall nice morning for a walk.  In spite of the temperature is slightly coolish as there is a cooling breeze.  

Sitting out on the patio, enjoying the coolish weather.  Hard to believe it seems cool when it is 82 degrees (actually 83 now), but it is.  Of course, once it gets sunny….

The moon, a little lopsided, hangs almost directly overhead, a few degrees to the west.  Next year it will be 50 years since a persons first walked on the moon, I feel still an amazing feat, somehow not followed up on.  

Pace was 1 second below my goal, which was somewhat satisfying.  However the lightning to the north may have been an incentive to walk faster!

I see no sign of any lightning now.  

Listening to the biography of Robert Moses, the author emphasizes the danger of not keeping up with the times, insulating himself from the public and new ideas etc.  So many “leaders” become stagnant by failing to listing to people and especially to listen to ideas that don’t support their ideas, so they have no new ideas or any concept of the changing environment.  

I have come to think that the biggest danger of any Manager or Leader is thinking they are right, and not listening to other opinions or discouraging conflict and disagreement.  It leads to bad public policy and projects.  

I think that may be what led to “term limits”, is the failure of the elected officials to continue to listen to the people and only listen to their staff, donors and lobbyists who are telling them what they want to hear, and to their benefit  

The failure of any elected official, manager or supervisor to listen to conflicting opinions  or discourage disagreement or conflict (conflicting ideas) is the first sign of an incompetent policy maker, whether elected official, manager, supervisor or staff (such as engineers, architects, attorney’s, planners etc.).

On another subject, I read something the other day that said something to the effect the experience indicated that customers/users love “self service” until it fails and then they have zero tolerance and become highly irate.

I can testify to that. 

The story concerned an unexpected demand for bank tellers etc. They had expected the demand to decrease due to ATM’s etc, but found they were even more important to be accessible when the “self service” broke down.

In a form of “Neo-Luddism” people love technology but hate it when it doesn’t do what they want, which leads to the demand for people.

Based on my experience, it really makes sense to me!  Nothing feels better than to have a “person” to talk to when technology fails, as it will at times.  

That’s it for now, Wednesday, August 29, 2018.