Okay. First of, let me say that writing a blog entry about managing people is a bit of a head trip. As I eluded to in my previous entry about this new promotion, I have a lot of assumptions and attitudes about what it means to be a manager.

I have no illusions. I am not a good manager yet. I have learned 2 very fundamental pieces of the puzzle here: learning to let go (i.e. delegation) and learning to slow-the-fuck-down. The thing is, everything I am doing, and learning about management is like looking an an elephant in a dark room with a flashlight. I can see bits and pieces everywhere, but what I am looking for is two things:

1. the overall big picture, and
2. the linchpin that holds it all together.

The thing of it is, I cannot really talk about these things without turning into one of those fluffy "personal power" Tony Robbins worshipers that squick me out.

Essentially I am battling two problems, the first is one of ignorance. I know I am ignorant, but I don't even know enough to ask the right kind of questions to erase my ignorance. The second is the stereotypes, prejudices, and attitudes I have about management. So not only do I have a problem with not really being able to ask the right questions, but I also have a problem understanding, and even accepting the answers that I get. I think that the biggest resistance comes from the fact that I want to keep looking at the people I work with as the people I work with, not the people "under" me. I especially want to avoid the kind of attitude where they are not people anymore, but just means for the overlords to get more profit.

What I need is the management equivalent of "Getting Things Done". GTD basically gave geeks the tools they needed to be really geeky about their productivity. I need to find a similar process to get really geeky for managing people.

We had Kris and Karen over tonight, and we all came to this conclusion: The eschatological scenario that we need to worry about the most is not environmental, or nuclear, but rather a variation on the Grey Goo Scenario where the earth is eventually consumed by stuffed animals.

Seriously. As parents, we were commenting on how we were absolutely inundated with plushies, and how we were not the only parents who said so. In fact, every parent we know says the same thing. Usually along with words like: 'garbage bags', 'yearly purge', 'blight' and even 'scourge'. What can you do with these things?