Month: February 2023

Categories
Reflection

A new era of creativity

I am a runner, and an early riser by nature, so getting out to run a trail at sunrise is just about the happiest I can be. The sunrise was gorgeous this morning, and I found myself meditating on the creativity of science, engineering, mathematics…we think of poetry and art as the creative arts in our society these days, but when one thinks of the history of these “hard” disciplines they are no less creative. Cuvier had to invent natural history from studying the earth and her bleached-out fossils, Mendeleev invented a methodology to organize the elements of our planet helping us predict the existence of things which had not yet been found, Euclid formulated universal truths about the relationships of physical bodies and then we as humans expanded that through observation to an entirely different field of orbital dynamics and ultimately sent people into space…these are creative arts as much as mathematical truths. We teach these disciplines as truths and forget their inventive history, which I believe discourages the very mindset that breeds engineers to be their most effective selves. For me, I only really began to learn and love my profession in the practice of it. Through working I have seen and been a part of solving some of the most exciting problems in the world of hardware, and I am confident science and technology will continue to solve some of the most difficult problems of our world (global warming, cancer, etc.) through creativity and ingenuity if we can continue to engage and unlock our future technologists.

I guess I started thinking about this because I have heard so many dystopic conversations of late where folks are worried that ChatGPT and similar AI models will displace humans doing complicated knowledge work. Why learn to code? Why figure out circuit diagrams? All of this will be automated! Me being me, it is likely no surprise that I believe these models will unlock even greater creativity and autonomy for humans through automation of the increasingly complex tasks our mounting levels of abstraction are requiring. Code still does and will always matter, being able to understand the physics of how a pump works will always matter (to a doctor trying to understand the human heart and a systems engineer trying to understand the optimal approach for liquid cooling, whether or not surgery or servicing of those servers are conducted by human hands or robots). I fundamentally believe this is the most interesting time to be alive for a technologist (and arguably a musician, artist, teacher, student, etc.) The technology that is being built today has the capacity to unleash human potential in a way formerly unimaginable, and we are the lucky ones who will see what universal truths and opportunities it will create.

I’ve also been thinking about the power of human potential and how work is or is not serving it because I recently finished Drive: The Surprising Truth of What Motivates Us. While I’ve read a lot of pieces in this vein before (Designing Your Life incorporates a lot of the aspects of flow and how you can optimize for that in your career, and several parenting books I’ve read have hammered on the disincentive of “pay to play” scenarios since they decrease the natural curiosity and propensity to learn that children are born with in favor of “unlocking the reward” behavior), I found revisiting these concepts given the current economic conditions, readjustment happening for workers in technology, and rise of more powerful AI models in our world particularly interesting. Some of the key takeaways from the book is that an incentive leads to short term results: e.g. “eat your vegetables and you will get dessert”, but less positive outcomes in the future: e.g. they don’t learn that vegetables help them feel healthier and grow stronger vs. eating dessert, which tastes good, but may ultimately make them feel sick if they eat too much, or even feel out of control negatively impacting relationships. One of the analogies used in the book is if you pay your kid to take out the trash, they will never do it again unless they are paid. It is good to have an allowance to help kids learn how to manage budgets and save. It is good to have kids do chores to help their family out of a sense of belonging and contribution to the communal needs of the family. If you correlate their chores to their allowance, then they learn to only do chores for money in perpetuity, which likely won’t help them much when they have to build their own homes and families.

This thought then make me think about my journey into engineering (the natural wonder of building my first server and playing with robots and gadgets as a kid, and how poorly my formal education fostered that same wonder), and then how my experience in work actually made me fall in love with technology and learning all over again through mentors and advocates who enjoyed what we were building. Honestly the worst parts of work have been the rote activities (writing verification tests with walking 1s to make sure there were no sticky bits–THESE TESTS SHOULD BE AUTOMATED! And then I moved to a company who built tooling to do exactly that!), and it is the complex problems, and puzzle pieces “clicking into place” where you know you are on to something and you make it WORK that make work fun. If we believe that AI will help automate the rote tasks in knowledge working (not the creativity of thinking through the problem and formulating the algorithm, but maybe the scripting to ensure that you are accessing all the right databases for the right information) and continue to expand the capacity of humans to find those big picture “aha” moments, quite possibly the future will be brighter for the individuals working to solve these problems than ever before.

Categories
Book Club

January Book Club

For our January Book club session we read Crucial Conversations. I was first exposed to this book over a decade ago as part of a training session on communication skills at Synopsys, but it was good to revisit it since I find what you take away from this book often depends on what you are dealing with when you are reading it. Since I already had the book from my previous session, I re-read the first edition, which has mostly US-based examples, and a lot of recommendations about in-person communication for the most important discussions. My understanding is that they have added content around different cultural backgrounds and remote work conditions in subsequent editions, so I’d highly recommend editions 3+. That being said, fundamentally the skills are the same: recognize when you are being triggered, ask yourself questions to help transition into an intellectual place vs. a reactionary one, and don’t get caught in a silence or violence cycle. To stay in dialogue you need to maintain psychological safety: you have to focus on what you want to get out of the discussion and use techniques to get back on track (if you see negative reactions, try apologizing for making the other person feel unsafe, use contrasting techniques to help them understand what you were trying to say vs. what they seem to have reacted to, establish mutual purpose for the discussion, etc.) I think the value of the newer editions is really around sensitizing yourself to reading queues of others who are not the same as you. Obviously techniques differ based on the medium of interactions as well as cultural backgrounds, so keeping that in mind is incredibly helpful.

On the Crucial Conversations website there are seminars as well, and of course experiencing this as a class with a cohort is probably the most ideal methodology to practice the teachings. Reading is great, but we learn through application, so especially if this is one’s first exposure to these approaches, a class would be great.

My biggest personal takeaways from the book were:

  1. Beware the stories you tell yourself. Start with “why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person act in this way?” This question helps me understand what stories I am telling myself vs. focusing on the facts. We often observe an action and assume a meaning, but in reality there are other interpretations of a person’s actions. Rather than reacting to my story, start by questioning why a person has entered an agitated state, or why you yourself are getting agitated. If you figure out how things went off track, then you can try to reset. If you get caught up in your own reaction, you cannot reestablish trust and safety.
  2. Engage in active listening–make sure I am hearing their words vs. thinking of my response. If you were clear on the goal of the meeting before the session, then the most important part of the discussion is listening to the questions, concerns, data and insights from the other parties. If you are thinking through your response or rebuttal, you are not actually listening. Never forget the goal is connection and dialogue, not a pithy response.
  3. Seek input. Especially in positions of authority, don’t speak in absolutes, which will hinder those who are more hierarchical in their disposition/culture to engage and lead to withdrawal from dialogue. As a leader, offering your opinion first almost inevitably sends the message that the decision is made, and really why are you coming to the team if that is the case? Sometimes tops-down decisions have to be made (and if that is the case, then document why the decision was made that way and don’t waste folks’ time), but if the goal is to get alignment with other stakeholders or solve a tricky problem where you do not know all of the challenges or risks, then seek input first and foremost.

I highly recommend this book, as much for discussions at home with your family as with your coworkers. When I first read this book, I was not yet a parent, and this time around I found many of the examples I thought through in my head were with respect to negotiations with my children than with my coworkers. Ultimately, when we assume the good intentions of the people around us, and show up with an open mind, we all can accomplish so much more. Happy Reading!

Our next book for book club is Michelle Obama’s The Light We Carry, which really is an acknowledgement of the times we are in, and how we manage ourselves, inspire others, and keep moving forward in times of uncertainty. I hope you will join us.