Solitude and Leadership: an article by William Deresiewicz | The American Scholar

“solitude is one of the most important necessities of true leadership”

“what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, ‘excellent sheep.’”

“excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. … Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going.”

“We have a crisis of leadership in this country, in every institution.”

“We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of exper tise. What we don’t have are leaders.

What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army—a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.”

“there are a lot of highly educated people who don’t know how to think at all.”

“what makes him [General David Petraeus] a thinker—and a leader—is precisely that he is able to think things through for himself. And because he can, he has the confidence, the courage, to argue for his ideas even when they aren’t popular.”

“true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions”

“people do not multitask effectively. And here’s the really surprising finding: the more people multitask, the worse they are, not just at other mental abilities, but at multitasking itself.”

“Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think.”

“You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating.”

“Leadership means finding a new direction, not simply putting yourself at the front of the herd that’s heading toward the cliff.”

“Once the situation is upon you, it’s too late. You have to be prepared in advance. You need to know, already, who you are and what you believe: not what the Army believes, not what your peers believe (that may be exactly the problem), but what you believe. How can you know that unless you’ve taken counsel with yourself in solitude?”

Number of Engineers that Interviewed Me at Those 6 Companies

• 30+
  • 12 at one company, 10 at another

I have found those 3 years taught me more about software, system administration and technology than most get the opportunity to experience that early in their career – as I was learning and working on the job, tutored by someone who was incredibly intelligent and had years of knowledge and experience to share. He also provide me with invaluable insights and suggestions on what technologies and platforms to follow. It was he who suggested Java (when it was at version 1.0) was what I should focus on, not C – and that has served me well to this day – when the schools were telling me to learn Pascal.

I loved it and sucked up as much as I could learn. I also built software that did real things. Now I recognize how poor the code was – it was very bad. The point was that I was learning through doing real things in an environment where I couldn’t do significant damage and could receive instruction and guidance – and eventually as I progressed I could truly understand the benefits of design patterns, object oriented design and what it meant to be “in production”. It wasn’t theoretical – or some forcefully memorized and quickly forgotten trivia – I knew it.

I didn’t complete college/university – because by the time I got there it bored me to tears, as I had spent several years being apprenticed already and learned quickly on my own through books and experimentation. If I could have, I would have skipped to 3rd year and enjoyed myself, but our society and academic programs don’t work that way.

I believe apprenticeships are the ideal way to learn software development, as I see software as a craft – not an engineering or scientific skill where rules are learned and applied the same way every time.

I wish our society and industry would look seriously at its academic and theoretical approach to training – which I feel does not work very well – and consider a model more similar to apprenticeship.

I also really enjoy mentoring others who have raw talent and desire. Some of my most rewarding work of the past 5 years has been that which has resulted in colleagues progressing and growing, such as a good friend of mine Adnan Memon.

Perhaps I’ve accomplished the “master” status in certain aspects of my work, in others I’m still a “journeyman” I’m sure. I hope to find others who can continue to mentor me as I try do so for my juniors, as I think that’s where the best talent in our industry comes from.

I am comfortable now with XCode, Interface Building and Objective-C – enough that I can build code to do what I want it to do, compile, run, debug, test and install on my personal iPhone.

I’ve connected to web services via Objective-C and built a user interface to interact with the services.

All in all it was a good experience and great way to learn – and the pair programming was very useful in speeding up the learning process. Unlike 10 years ago where I plenty of time to learn through trial and error, it was much more effective to sit and watch someone and see how everything worked together. I was able to pick it up very quickly that way.

Of course, 10+ years of object oriented programming in Java translates over well to the thinking and expectations – but the syntax and different ways of doing things were far from natural for a java programmer (especially one who had respectfully ignored the C way of doing things), so the demonstration received through pairing was immediately beneficial. (On second thought, ignoring C probably helped since I saw Objective-C as an OO language from the start – not as C)

A 2 hour session with Kent Beck sold on EBay for $405. That would be quite the experience – would love to do that and see how he or someone else at his level does their craft.

Being a programmer, developer, architect etc does not in my opinion constitute being a “computer scientist” or working in “computer science”.

Perhaps the most general definition of science can be used for “developers” if we stretch:

- a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws: the mathematical sciences.

But that doesn’t describe the whole of it like these definitions do:

- systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.

- knowledge, as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study.

As programmers we don’t do this – we use technology (the “applied science”) to build things and solve problems.

We may sometimes pretend to venture into “science” as we “research solutions” – but we’re just looking for knowledge and facts the “scientists” have figured out and then applying them in unique and novel ways.

Calling a programmer a scientist is like calling an artist a chemist because they use chemical compounds (paint, graphite, clay, steel, glue whatever).

Why does this matter to me?

Because by training our programmers in theoretical “Computer Science” educational programs, we are not actually creating employable or productive people. Sure, they have basic skills and theory that can then be applied through further effort – but unless they are one of the rare few to study, analyze and experiment with computer science theory – most of the knowledge gained serves little to no value in applying the techology of software development in real-world programming of software.

The document is approaching 150 pages and beginning to approach something that properly describes the vision and needs so that business and technical folks can have a solid understanding of scope, requirements, priorities and how it will work (plus general direction on how it will be built).

It takes a lot of effort and time to sit down and not only read, but understand the scope of this system. It’s not a simple thing. As much as we try to keep it conceptually simple, there’s a lot going on and a lot of details.

In a few weeks I’m to sit down with a partner team to review and collaborate. My plan was to send over the detailed document for review so we could have a productive meeting to truly discuss missing requirements, strategy, execution planning etc.

However, I’ve been told they don’t “want” to read the detailed version — just a summary — bullet points with perhaps 10-15 pages.

These are senior developers and architects. Not high level business folks.

Attention to detail is in my opinion an absolute requirement for technical people. Decision making without details is dangerous and fairly useless.

My opinion is not high for people who do not care or have the attention span to be detail oriented.

An executive who’s not directly involved in the operations of something – a summary makes sense.

A team or person who is supposed to directly impact the design and delivery of something and its ongoing operations – if the details aren’t part of their focus, they don’t deserve to be involved.

If they don’t have the time to be detail oriented, then either they shouldn’t be working on the project, their time needs to be re-prioritized, or the project isn’t worth doing.

• the ability, coming from one’s knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well
• competent excellence in performance; expertness;

Trust is defined as:

• reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

Two common themes are ability defined as:

• competence in an activity or occupation because of one’s skill, training, or other qualification
• power or capacity to do or act physically, mentally, legally, morally, financially, etc.

My experience unfortunately is that skill and ability in people are not abundant – and therefore it is hard to have trust.

More problems are caused by lack of skill than anything else I run into.

Making mistakes and learning from them is part of life – it’s the human experience.

However, there is a reason world class organizations have “senior” people  and restrict the impact of “junior” people’s mistakes by limiting what they are allowed to do and affect until they have gained trust – by demonstrating their ability and skill.

Trust nowadays is given away much too freely – desire, eagerness, willingness do not replace ability and skill.

Trust should not be given unless someone has earned it. People should not expect to be trusted until they’ve earned it by showing they deserve it.

I had someone tell me (after failing on something) that I should trust them more and give them “opportunity” so they could succeed (by giving them the ‘keys to the kingdom’). This is backwards. Prove to me on small things incrementally and trust will be earned and greater opportunities given.

Trust does not work like “innocent until proven guilty”. Trust must be earned. Trust stems from skill, honesty, aptitude, competence and most importantly – time.

If business operations are failing, my opinion is it’s generally due to placing trust and unfair expectations on people who do not have the skill or ability to deliver.

Put the money and time on having the right people – and restrict the impact of “junior” people – and operations will improve.