I meet a New Friend Every Weekend

About 4 years ago My Father mentioned that he was having issues remembering things.

Dad was born on the 21st of June, 1924. His name is Delwin Leroy Goheen, he is the second of four children born to Maurice Sebastian and Clara Goheen. He was born in Osborne County Kansas. He was not born in a hospital, but in a house. Dad served in the US Navy during World War II, and his ship sailed the Yangtze river - an LSCL # 73. Dad exemplifies "The Greatest Generation". He was a philosopher in his own way. He set his standards high, and he always tried to exceed his standard.

In my teens I often helped Dad as he hired out at night an weekends to make enough money support a wife and five kids. Back then I expect the food bills were enormous. Dad wired houses, fixed swamp coolers, built things, painted things, fixed lights and more. Each time we went to someone's house Dad made sure we wiped our shoes, or removed them before we went in, and we cleaned up so it looked as good or better than when we started.

Dad is a Distinguished Rifleman, and in fact the Kansas State Rifle Association has a Trophy named in recognition of his accomplishments and support.

But, Dad doesn't remember any of that. At first I noticed his short term memory was not working. We could talk in our weekly phone calls about what he did years ago, but not about what happened the day before. Then that memory started disappearing. Now I call him on Sundays and each time I call it is a brand new conversation with a new person. I introduce myself, and he is polite, but he really doesn't know who I am. We chat about the weather, his health and what he's been doing. He is pretty good on the health part, at that moment in time, but everything else just happens.

I've talked to staff on may occasions and they say he is very helpful, quiet, and polite. When given an opportunity he likes to go for rides in the care center's limousine. They like Del. I enjoy meeting my new fried every weekend, I hope in enjoys the calls.

Yeah I understand - Climate Change

In the past 5 days I have spent over 16 hours shoveling snow. This winter has provided this area of Virginia the most snow in recorded history for a winter season.

Simultaneously, the paper no longer refers to it as "Global Warming". It is now climate change. Do I believe the climate is changing. Yes. Am I the cause. No! I'm sure there are lots of reasons for the climate change. If you put 60 people in a room, the room will get warmer. If you add a billion people to the population it probably will cause a change. The weight alone might change the orbit. And don't get me started on the hot air from capitol hill.

It isn't really cold, there's just lots of snow. For the first time in a week, a plow actually came through the neighborhood and, he did a nice job. Free coffee, Cheetos and a cold coke for the truck drive, and my thanks. He didn't plow it into my driveway. What a guy.

I started planning my next scuba trip. Back to Bahamas on Blackbeard's . Right now I can buy round trip airplane tickets to Nassau Bahamas for $285. Add that to the fact that I'm diving with Greg Justice and his GMU bunch, and it only gets better. Note to self, remember to take some bourbon, I'm not wild about rum, but the Red Stripe is always good at the end of the day.

Ceremony

Ceremonies seem to hold a key in our existence. Just recently we had the inauguration of the President of the United States. Lots of people stood in the cold to hear a few words repeated by an individual, it was a ceremony that signifies a change. Many of these ceremonies revolve around some type of religion, some around traditions and some around family. Think about all the ceremonies you have participated in.

Baptism
Graduation
Marriage

And of course Funerals, all of these are based in religion.

The military has some great ceremonies.

Enlistment
Promotion
Retirement

They are based on needs which turned into traditions.

Families have ceremonies.

Birthdays
Anniversaries

These are based on celebrations.

All these ceremonies have a role in different lives. Ceremonies Signify Change for a group of people. A beginning, a progression, an end. Ceremonies are the signposts for all that attend. Ceremonial sign post allow you to follow an individual’s life. Born, Baptized, Graduated, Married, and Retired.

There are ceremonies that I can watch over and over. A military change of command ceremony, with the parade, is magnificent. It is an old military method that tells the troops that they have a new commander. It is a type of Inauguration for military folks.

In this day and age of electronic communications, most of the troops got an email or an instant message saying they got a new commander, but before now, the change of command ceremony was key to getting out information. The change of command is still a reason for lots of people to gather.

In the Washington DC area, military retirement ceremonies not only inform the masses that someone is no longer in the chain-of-command, but is also advertises that the retiring individual is available to become a contractor.

But what if? What if we stood up and cast off any religious associations. That means we would do away with baptisms, weddings and funerals.

With technology we can get rid of a few more ceremonies. In this day and age, with all the electronic messaging, we could do away with lots of ceremonies. With all the SMS capability we can do away with marriages, and let us be honest, we didn’t need the baptism.

Hop on your Facebook page. Tell the world that you have a roommate/housemate/soul mate. Send me a video when there’s a birth. When the emails stop coming in, I’ll assume the inevitable.

BS! - It won’t work for me! Ceremonies signify magnificent changes. They also provide us time to reflect, to give praise, to gather and renew our ties. Ceremonies also tell you when something begins and something ends within the ceremony.

At a wedding, when a particular song is played – here comes the bride – everybody shuts up and pays attention to the event. And when the reverend says, I now pronounce you man and wife – you know you can go home, the event is over.

At military events you can tell it begins when someone says “Attention!” It usually ends when someone says “Dismissed!”

Think about it just for a minute…. How do you know when something begins and something ends? Is it a statement like “All rise” or “dearly beloved”, or perhaps it is the ringing of a bell, or starters pistol. Ceremonies guide us.

AND (This is pretty important) - In the case of retirements and funerals the ceremonies provide us that opportunity to honor the achievements of the individual. When formalized, these ceremonies mandate that someone spend time, conduct research, and talk about the individual who retires or dies. Some one stands up and reads the sports page of an individuals life – all their successes. Too often I’ve walked out of a retirement ceremony or a funeral hearing people comment “I didn’t know that about him/her.

Admittedly your life will probably not be affected by the fact that someone you know or touched rescued people from a burning building, or administered first aid, or provided mentor-ship to the next generation. But without the ceremonies, no one will take the time to write the best man’s toast, the citation for heroism or merit, or the eulogy. Without some formal ceremony the schedule is lost, the participants wander, the extensive achievements of an individual will only be known by a few and maybe those are the only folks that need to know. Without a ceremony how will we know where the butterfly effect began or transitioned.

Now, let’s look at the other side of the ceremony coin. No ceremony required.

After writing this I thought about some folks, who I consider close, that didn’t have a ceremony, or it wasn’t very big. My wedding was attended by a minister, his wife and two couples who were our friends. It was simple and quick, we had a beginning and end. It was inexpensive and no one had to get on an airplane or find a motel. The downside was that I found out that there were people that wanted to participate in this event. They wanted to gather and renew ties and develop new ones. They wanted to participate in change and help if they could.

So what is the Bottom Line: Every ceremony is a celebration. Even a funeral is a celebration. Celebrations and ceremonies are personal and you need to decide what you want. There aren’t any rules even though I’d like to see some. P.S. I’d like an invite – I might not make it, but I’d like an opportunity to gather, celebrate, and renew ties. With a little luck I’ll get my priorities straight and I’ll show up.

How He Lived

In the movie the “Last Samurai”, in the final scene Capt Algren is presenting a samurai sword, to the Emperor of Japan, that belonged to the last samurai – Katsumoto. The scene ends with the Emperor saying to Captain Algren “Tell me how he died.” Captain Algren responds, “I will tell you how he lived.” Let me Tell you how Curtiss lived.

First I must say, we are not a close family. There aren’t daily phone calls or emails or letters. There are status checks once in a while. I believe there are a multitude of reasons for this. No regrets, it is just the fact that we aren’t a close family.

When four boys and a girl are raised in a three bedroom house, and transported in a two door coupe (Ford), you spend a lot of time together. Living on the edge of town, we became our own community. Once we traveled to Blue Hill Nebraska. We weren’t really headed to Blue Hill, we were headed to Hastings, but the car that had two adults and 7 or maybe it was 8 kids in it broke down. This cadre of 9 jammed into a Chevrolet Corsair with another adult (we found the owner and the car in a haunted house) and went to the nearest town of Blue Hill Nebraska, where we spent one of the best days of our lives. The 5 kids and two parents also crammed into the Ford Coupe with make a circuitous loop through Colorado, to Arizona, New Mexico and back to Kansas.

Now throw into these adventures the fact that these kids, Don, Iris, Curtiss, Myself and Brad are basically 1 year apart on birthdates. Looking at the five of us, in retrospect, there were 5 totally different kids. An outdoorsman, a hippie, a family person, a nerd and a mad scientist. Curtiss was a mad scientist. Who else would buy a device for listening to a baby’s heartbeat to see if it could do something else, or a oscilloscope so he could watch sound, or build electric motors from nails and copper wire, or crystal radios from scraps. Curtiss was willing to try something cautiously, and fix anything.

We were a family. We were raised to believe in God, and know the difference between right and wrong. We shoveled the neighbors sidewalks when it snowed, at no charge to the folks – because that’s what Mom said. We learned it is great to give, and good to receive, and there are some things you shouldn’t charge other people for. We were taught to do more than was asked, and expect little in return. We got hurt, we got tired, maybe we went hungry once in a while, but that memory didn’t stay. We were the benefactors of gifts and love from many people in our hometown of Beloit. We sang in church; with 5 kids we were the choir sometimes. We sat in the back pew of the Evangelical United Brethren Church where Dad taught us how to sew our fingers together with needle and thread. You have to have thick calluses on your hands to do that.

I think that we saw so much of each other, and that we spent so much time together, fighting, laughing, playing around and horsing around, that when we started leaving home we were glad to say goodbye and begin new lives and new adventures. From that point on, our mother was the glue that bound us together. She was the clearing house for information as we moved about the world and about our lives. When mom passed away, Iris picked up the responsibility, but her health now prevents any routine interaction with us. So once in a while, I did a communications check, and our lives continued, not dependent on any other, but tied loosely to each other.

By the time Curtiss left home to go join the United States Air Force he had started to form his view of the world, as he learned in our little town of 4000. This would is very black and white, right or wrong, good and bad. A man’s word was his bond. He traveled the world. He was an electrical guy that repaired power grids in Taiwan after a typhoon. He was a Red Horse, and Prime Beef engineer – these are the quick responders when a AF Base has infrastructure issues, and they usually end up helping the locals as much as they help their own. Later in his career he became an electronics engineer. He retired from the military and took on a new career, which was simply a civilian job that was similar to his military job. He married Cathy, and they raised two children, Steven and Debbie.

Curtiss could complain with the best of them, and many conversations with him were kind of one-sided. If Curtiss said he was going to do something, he did it. If you crossed Curtiss, you knew it. If you had a question Curtiss had answers. Because we are not a close family, there are many many things that I can’t tell you about Curtiss. Like his RV adventures. You need to talk to Cathy, Debbie and Steven to hear those wonderful stories and find out what other great things Curtiss did.

When we were young, one of our grandmothers use to tell us that no man ever walked on the Moon, it was a Disney movie. Curtiss and I once discussed that she thought this because she had seen so many inventions in her life, that it wasn’t plausible to imagine another new invention.

In Curtiss’ lifetime he saw the invention or creation of:

Space Travel

Teflon

Modems

Lasers

AstroTurf

ATMs

Televisions

Kevlar

Solar Cells

Airplane Black Box

Fiber Optic Cable

Pull tab tops

8 track tape players

Compact Discs

Cassett

VHS

BETA

DVD

Huggies/Pampers

Glen Elder Dam

MTV

Mobile Phones

Portable calculators

Electric Typewriters

Personal Computers (32 MB of storage)

Liquid Crystal Displays

Plasma Displays

Leaf Blowers

The Internet

MRIs

CT Scans

POGs

Ipods

Disco

Digital Cameras

Thumbdrives

And so much more.

In years to come, many will never know how Curtiss lived, they will see only some memorial, But if you listen closely you will hear the echoes of his voice as he made his opinions known.

If you look close, you will see his footprints where he stopped to help.

If you open your heart and soul you will feel the breeze of change created by Curtiss’ life.

Every meeting has a goal

If you don't know what you are going to get out of a meeting, if you can't measure the benefit of the meeting, in a positive way, then you shouldn't have the meeting. This does not mean you won't or don't need a weekly staff meeting, it means that there is intent to your meeting, and a desired outcome. Meetings to hand out awards are good, meetings to hand out punishment, might happen once in a while - There is a reason for public hangings!

I have worked for individuals who measure the effectiveness of a meeting by how many people attended, how long the meeting lasted, or how many actions were assigned. What individual thinks that assigning work (actions) is a positive result?

A meeting shouldn't be such a waste so many peoples' time. In one of my jobs the average cost to the customer for the talented support was about $2 per MINUTE. If you have a two hour gathering (I'll avoid using the word meeting, because of how I define a meeting) of 40 people, well lets do the math $2 x 120 min = $240 x 40 people = $9,600. Using a most simplistic approach, the results of that meeting should be worth $9,600. If all you do at this meeting, is assign actions items to the attendees, then you have a multitude of problems. 1) For $2 a minute those folks should know what they are doing and you shouldn't need to tell them; 2) You have wasted two hours of their time, two hours that they could have been doing their jobs; 3) You have wasted two hours of your time, time you could have spent hiring competent people.

If you want to be effective, you need to decide for each an every meeting (inlcuding a single meeting between two people) what is your desired outcome. You should have a measurable outcome. Early on in your development as a leader you should write down your goals before the meeting and review them after the meeting, until it becomes second nature. Do you have a weekly staff meeting? Is it effective? Does something get accomplished as a result of each meeting? Is your meeting short enough? Short Enough? Don't I mean long enough? No, I mean short. I learned that no single topic during the staff meeting should last longer that 3 minutes. If it takes longer than 3 minutes, then there needs to be a separate meeting to address the issue. At the 3 or maybe 5 minute point, everyone in your staff meeting has been exposed to the issue, and all the discussion is now moving in multiple directions and those members of the staff who just have to say something will add, but won't add value. Those that don't care are tuning out. You are losing control of your meeting and your agenda/goals. Table the issue and have someone organize the right people, place and time. As a matter of practice I try to keep all my meetings to 40 min or less. I schedule an hour, I start on time and I work to finish early. So what do I want from my staff meeting? I don't want a single topic to dominate the meeting. I want everyone to have a chance to say what has been important to them in the previous week, what's important to them this week, what is important next week, what is there Number 1 priority, where do they need help, and I probably have some specific topic that might need addressing. With this simple approach you will get a very clear picture on whether or not your staff is headed in the correct direction, if your team goals are being realized, and when. If the most important item on you goals, isn't mentioned, then you have not effectively communicated with your team.

What do you really want?

General Dynamics is actually several companies traveling in a general direction with little or nothing in common. I'm actually employed by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems. For the past several years I have been a GDAIS employee working as a subcontractor to GDIT (General Dynamics Information Technology) who was working as a subcontractor to Northrup Grumman who was working for a US government organization. Well, GDIT and GDAIS were arguing amongst themselves, end result is that GDAIS is no longer a subcontractor to GDIT. Simultaneously, I'm no longer helping a US government organization. I'm "sitting on the bench". I'm on overhead. This is not necessarily a good place to be in these economic times. I spend my days looking for internal job opportunities and working on proposals for new work. I'm not worried, yet. Next year I'll start to worry.

In the mean time I'm doing one of my volunteer things. Several employees of GDAIS support social organizations. We do this by reviewing resumes for people who are looking for jobs. I usually enjoy resume reviews. More often than not, I believe I can add some value to the applicants efforts.

My biggest complaint, when looking at a resume is the objective statement. I would like to see an objective statement, but the statement I see needs to have substance. "I would like a job in a technology company that applies by skills and talents." Bullshit. If this is the verbose piffle you are going to write, don't send me an objective statement. If you send your resume to GDAIS and your talent and skills are driveway repairs, who are we kidding. Your objective statement doesn't need to say you want a job. I figured that part out on my own. What do you really want? Do you want to be as a system administrator in a position that provides potential for future management or leadership? Do you want to be an illustrator? Do you want to pave driveways? If you are an expert at driveway repairs, and you have great references, there is a chance I can find a job for you at GDAIS, but it won't be repairing driveways. So, you better have an idea about what you want to do, and put it in the objective statement. You can start by reviewing the job sites of companies and learn their lingo. GDAIS has facilities people. They get folks to repair driveways, drywall, move desks, etc. If your resume indicates you can work on your own at any task with minimal supervision, then I might get you into this job.

How many resumes do you have? I have one resume that I hand out at the local job fairs. It is a grocery list of positions I've held, success stories by $$ value, as well as training and specialized skills. It gets responses. When I see a specific job I want, I rewrite the resume and "tune" it to the job. If is is a job in Defense, then I emphasize my military background. If it is a job in Intelligence, I emphasis my intelligence experience. I also emphasis different parts if the job is technical versus managerial. Right now, I have 8 different resumes that I have submitted. I only expect the resume to get my foot in the door. I have to sell me.

Selling me involves researching jobs before I go interview. I do an search on similar job openings and look for key trends. I search openings in other companies to find key information. I call friends and ask them if they know what the job is, what happened to the last person, and how is the company doing with regards to their customer? Even in D.C. the community of my skill holders is relatively small. There is information to be had, if you look for it.

OK. That's my 2 cents for today. I need to go search the GD website for openings. I don't have the desire to rant about HR today, maybe some other time.

At Last

At last (insert Etta James singing "At Last" or Cyndi Lauper) the deck/screened in porch is done.  The company did a very good job.  The only exposed wood is the framing.  The decking, screening and railing are all composites.  The doors are aluminum.  The builder even  put screen underneath the deck so the bugs couldn't sneak in.  There is a screened in area, an open area for the barbeque (on the right) and there are lights on all the steps as well as lights over the doors.  The down side is we signed a contract in April and it was 15 weeks before they even started.  I thought we were in a slow down.  You'd think that they could provide a dozen people to do the work.  We had one or two.  I'll admit they had a task because they had to build it over a sunroom.  I don't think it should have taken 3+ months to get started and 3+ months to build it.  What I should have done is included a performance clause.  My hindsight is perfect.   A performance clause wouldn't have gotten the deck done earlier, but I could have financially punished them.   Each of the doors have dog doors.  There is a fan in the screened in area. There are motion activated lights everywhere.  The step lights are on a timer.  This deck should last at least another 20 years.  The last deck lasted just over 22 years.  The deck wasn't done for summer, so we'll have to enjoy the fall and barbeque until the first snow.