Well, it’s official: I am an “author at Google.” Gave the presentation this morning to an enthusiastic and welcoming crowd. Many thanks to Alex and Shannon for making this all happen.
One of the Principles of Applied Stupidity is, “for every goal you see there is another goal that you don’t see.” And this happened to me in a major way today.
After the talk, my buddy Alex took me to lunch and a bunch of Google folks came and joined us. They gave me some absolutely awesome feedback on my presentation. What very often happens to me of late is that I am talking about stuff that is, well, not necessarily new, but is just not usually talked about openly. There are many reasons for this, but very often, very new ideas just don’t get discussed because the average person lacks the vocabulary to even understand what it is you’re trying to tell them.
So after I gave this talk on “principles of applied stupidity,” one of these software engineers told me about something called “agile software development.” I had never heard of this, and I have yet to google it so I won;t talk about it here, but basically he described it as a process of developing software not in the usual deadline-as-a-goal format, but simply understanding that failure will constantly occur and you simply publish what you have done when you have it. Or something like that. It also has a lot more delgation of authority.
Please don’t hold me to that definition of agile software development, I need to go learn more about it. But there was a clear parallel between what he was talking about in this agile software development world and what I always saw going on with the best conductors in major orchestras.
My current issue is, these fabulous “old-school” conductors that I had the privilege of playing for are dying out. So while I can, I want to share the experience of having worked with these guys. You see, what is happening to me more and more is, when I talk about top performance in the orchestra world, people in my audiences come up to me and talk about parallel fractals in other realms and professions, where folks are departing from the “classroom conditioning” mode that holds back top performance. So I am not talking about anything new, but I do think I am instigating the sharing of vocabulary, as well as reinforcing the seemingly unrelated experiences, many of which are often seen as merely chance phenomena.
It was great fun for me today to essentially reinforce the sometimes fragile seemingly strange ideas in other professions by finding common vocabulary to explain these dynamics of highly effective leadership.
So cast my bread upon the waters, as they say… I learned as much today as I shared. Great fun, great people, and great food at Google corporate. I will certainly let everyone know when the video of the presentation is available, it may be as much as a month.
© Justin Locke
