Jack of All Trades

I received an email a few weeks back that contained the following statement:

“None of us is master of all. (Jerk of all trades, master of none is NOT a compliment!)”

To put the statement into context, it was part of a plea to become part of a development team.

My first reaction was to wonder if I was supposed to be insulted by this statement. I was not insulted, first because the statement is false and second because I reasoned that the writer had not intended to insult because what would be the point in insulting those you were trying to get to volunteer? I have been called a Jack of all trades on many occasions, and I certainly think of myself in those terms. I have always said that, more often than not, it is the breadth of my knowledge, not the depth, that serves me best.

All of this got me thinking about why I believed that emailed statement to be wrong. After all, there is no sense in me saying, “You are wrong” if I can’t defend that position. I could quote other people to support my position. One of my favorite quotes comes from Adam Savage of the TV show Mythbusters who claims that the full quote actually is, “Jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Viv88ZOFA ) But is quoting really the way I should go here? I mean, you can always find someone to agree with you if you look hard enough, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.

Perhaps a more scientific basis for my defense would be useful. When it comes to building teams, observation of Mother Nature could provide inspiration and direction. Mother Nature abhors a vacuum and isn’t that pleased about a monoculture either. It has been my experience that similar rules apply to good teams. Working in a vacuum rarely gets the best results, and working only with likeminded people may be comfortable but tends not to maximize results. Now, that is not to say that you could randomly throw together anybody and expect great results, either. Try planting bananas and arctic lichen in the same field and see how productive you are.

So why is there value in being a Jack of all trades? I have foundational knowledge in many subjects but no towering structure on any one part of that foundation. But I’m okay with that. After all, if you put a bunch of experts on a team, it can often be difficult to transfer knowledge from one discipline to another. To get a letter from the top of one skyscraper to another, someone needs to carry that letter across a common foundation to get to the next building. A Jack of all trades knows enough to understand at a basic level and can relate that basic knowledge from one subject area to another area of expertise. Jack is the glue that holds the tiles of a mosaic together. Jack is the gravy in a stew… Well, you get the point.

I was listening to a physicist on CBC Radio the other day who said that Barack needs to take a course in basic physics. The interviewer asked why the president would need that knowledge considering that he has a stable full of experts. And, the interviewer asked, would a physicist make a better president? The response was a resounding NO. The president did not need to be a physicist but did need to understand the science behind global warming, green power etc. The president, in essence, needs to be so much more than a physicist; he needs to be a generalist. I would like to suggest that a generalist and a Jack of all trades are not that different.

You need Jack on your team to apply the information from one expert to help solve the problems in the seemingly unrelated field of another expert. Jack is the translator between experts. I am proud to be Jack, and I think every team needs one (but perhaps just one). I do take that designation as a compliment, not an insult. Embrace the Jack in yourself and wear the label proudly.

Cookies Continued

The blog entries that people like most is always surprising to me. For instance, I never expected to get much FEEDback (to make a bad pun) from the cookie blog I wrote before Christmas. But, boy, was I wrong! Not only did I get a number of emails, but I also got five batches of cookies! One batch came all the way from Ontario, if you can trust the postmark. In light of the response, many of my colleagues have suggested that I should write about toonies or perhaps the five dollar bill! I strongly suspect the result would be different.

Interestingly, all the batches of cookies showed up anonymously. When they started appearing in my mail box and the story got out, many people said, “Well, that is cool; you asked people to send you cookies, and they did.” The truly cool part is that I didn’t ask—didn’t even suggest!—that people send me cookies. I know that some came from within Olds College but I certainly have not confirmed the source of all the cookies. Regardless of the origin, I never received a bad cookie. (Is there such a thing?).

As each new batch was delivered, the comments in the coffee room grew more and more amusing. Rumors of another batch would start with the mail lady and often made their way to the coffee room before either the cookies or I did. When I did arrive, goodies in hand, and offered people a cookie—being sure to tell of their undetermined origins—the reactions were the most amusing part of the entire experience. Some would ask “Have you had one yet? How long ago? How are you feeling? You seem happy…really happy.” and so on. About 80% of the people in the coffee room would eat one or more cookies. A few people just flat out said “no,” and one or two people would take a cookie and politely put it in their pocket when they thought no one was looking.



I could never recommend eating something from a stranger (We all know what is in the food we buy at the store. Can you say melamine?), but ‘tis the season of trust and good will. To the best of my knowledge, there were no ill effects from the consumption of all those mystical cookies—with the exception of an expanding waist line. To those who sent the cookies, know that you brightened the lives of many with your simple act of confectionary kindness. Thanks to all of you, and don’t forget about me next year, ok?

You Can’t Get There From Here

Well, I have put off buying airline tickets for the Bolivia trip for as long as I could. I guess you just can’t outwait global uncertainty and political unrest. At some point you just have to dive in. I feel for the travel agent because booking tickets is a bit like navigating a corn maze; there are many possible ways to reach the destination, but only one “best” way.
There is never a direct flight from where I am to where I want to be! It is not so much the flying I dislike but the waiting in airports between flights. It will be a real treat to travel with a group this time--much of my traveling is on my own—partly because I have a fear of falling asleep in an airport and missing my flight, or of getting on the wrong plane and winding up “going to Winnipeg.” The chance of these things happening when you are with a group is greatly reduced, and if these things do happen, at least you have company to commiserate with.

The standard route to Bolivia from Calgary is on American Airlines. You spend 22 hours hop scotching across American cities to end up in Miami, then La Paz, before finally ending up in Santa Cruz. Now, I will do almost anything to avoid the Miami airport due to some bad experiences with rats, faulty plug-ins, too-short or too-long turn around times, invariable the wrong gate listed, and significant running. I sometimes question if going to Bolivia is worth suffering through the Miami experience—but here I am about to go again, so I guess I have my answer.
I presented the trip’s daily itinerary to the group last week. It looked a bit skeletal. I am amazed at how much meat has been added to the bones in the week since then! I met with Jake and Marg Hoogland this week, and the event calendar filled rapidly—as I knew it would. Marg and Jake have been living and working in one of the homesteading areas in Bolivia for 3ish years now, and it will be a real eye-opener for our group to experience those surroundings for a couple of nights. I am sure it will be a highlight of the trip for many. I am also convinced that Jake will have no trouble filling all the time we can devote to the area.
Next week I hope to talk to Maria Jose from CERENID to flesh out the rest of the schedule. I have never worried about a trip plan that was too thin, I only hope it doesn’t get so fat that it needs two seats on the plane! One thing for sure, Olds College/A Better World Bolivia Ag Tour 2009 will not be boring!

Change

I have been to a number of presentations about the fear of change, embracing change and dealing with change. Personally, I have never been terribly upset by change, probably because change combats my real problem: a fear of boredom. Further, I see no reason to discuss whether change is good or bad; it can be both. The fact is that change is inevitable. It is the rate of change that deserves our attention and its increase that we ought to discuss.

I spent most of the holiday trying to resolve our cell phone/internet/TV issues. TV has only two options: antenna or satellite. For years, every time the wind blew, I had to get out on the roof with a big stick to move the antenna and get our three channels back. My wife forced the change to satellite before my first trip overseas on the grounds that she was neither going to go climbing out on the roof nor be stuck looking after four kids without TV access. Now, the biggest issue is cutting back the clematis from the dish!

Internet options are not so simple. These have morphed four times in the last six years. We started out with dial-up since that was all that was available in our rural area. I remember talking to a Telus technician at a conference in those days about future improvements. I was told that there really wasn’t anything coming down the pike any time soon. Thankfully, he was wrong! Satellite download with modem upload came first, then satellite up and down, then radio modems, and now WiMax from Cremona. Go figure! And just recently I received a flyer from our local gas co-op advertising that they will start providing WiMax service very soon, as well. Meanwhile, there is still a plan afoot to plow fiber to all county residences, but this plan has been in the works for many years now, and I suspect I will never see it at my doorstep. More to the point, though I would have been thrilled to tears to have seen this within a year or two of the plans’ conception, now I am not sure I need fiber.

Cell phones? Well that is a whole other story! I wrestled with issues of analog, three different digital protocols, four different frequencies and three different data protocols--not to mention the questions of locked versus unlocked and plan versus pay-as-you-go! And those are only the changes that I have personally dealt with in the last six years. I was thrilled last year to know for sure that I could text from any country in which I landed. Imagine my surprise to be in a tent in the middle of the Masai Mara trying to size a solar water pump when Charles pulls out his laptop and connects to the internet! Here I am, thrilled that I finally get to cut my land line, only to realize that many countries have never bothered to use them in the first place. They simply skipped right over the hardwired infrastructure!

It recently occurred to me that we think of change as an event rather than as the continuum it actually is. Too often I hear, “We are moving forward with this change.” This change? No wonder some people get upset with technologies: they don’t even get comfortable with something new when someone begins telling them they need to think about something else. We need to be comfortable with change, not just the specific changes. It does not matter what was just installed or newly implemented; there is a good chance that it will be out-of-date long before you are ever comfortable with it.

Making a change does not keep you current. Changing at the rate of change merely holds your position. You must change faster than the rate of change to catch up. If you are not changing at least at the rate of change, you are losing ground. Merely changing does not mean you are moving forward; it might just mean you are moving backwards less quickly.

"when the rate of change inside an organization

is slower than the rate of change outside,

the end is in sight."

Jack Welch, CEO of GE

Washing Over My Soul

This is the time of year for joy and peace, but, for me, it is also a time of reflection. The world is full of moments of tragedy and triumph, both natural and man-made in origin. Each of these events resonates with us differently, and, I believe, each event shapes us to some degree. I cannot explain why the tsunami of December 26, 2004 impacted me so much at the time, and I could not imagine how it would change my life--land locked as I was in central Alberta--but it did! Because of the tsunami, I met Eric Rajah and A Better World, I realized that I needed to involve the very talented people I know in humanitarian endeavours, and, most importantly, I recognized the importance of creating opportunities for our students to see the real world! It was as though that wave had washed over my soul.

Lessons Learned

Ours was the second team from ADRA (the Adventist Development and Relief Agency) to reach Sri Lanka; a medical team had been in the area before us. Pictures can never fully capture the experience of being on-site, so, in spite of my reviewing many photos prior to the trip, I was not ready for what I saw upon arrival in Pottuvil. When we reached the coast, the extent of the devastation was readily apparent, and there had already been two months of cleanup. I ran on pure adrenaline for the first three days. My mood ran from complete despair through admiration to optimism. I learned a few valuable lessons on that trip:

• Nothing good can happen if you do not have good local people on the ground.


• Not everyone is good.


• Follow the money.


• Leave your preconceived solutions at the airport.


• Listen.


• Make a difference one person at a time.


• The road to hell is paved with good intentions!

There is no question that I saw many examples of greed, corruption and profiteering, but I also saw many examples of giving, caring and personal sacrifice. The trick to helping is to always work with people exhibiting characteristics of the latter group.

One From the Latter Group

On one occasion, two of us were busily building doors to stop the monkeys from stealing the offerings at local shrine when a man brought us a melon. He spoke almost no English, and we couldn’t even identify the language that he was speaking, but I’m sure he was basically saying, “Take a break you crazy white guys. Don’t you know it is the hottest part of the day? We don’t need two dehydrated old men passing out on us; we have enough to deal with right now!” Sagara helped us for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day we learned that Sagara had aquired a simple machine and was attempting to make cinder blocks, one at a time, to support his family and to help rebuild his community. Sagara was a laborer who had lost everything but his family—a family that grew by one on the day of the tsunami as his wife gave birth amidst the chaos. Now, they were all living in a tent in his mother-in-law’s yard. My mind started whirring, plotting, and planning. After doing a quick needs-assessment, asking many questions of many local people, and, most importantly, listening carefully to their answers, our group discussed the idea of supporting Sagara so he could increase cinder block production.

Sagara had asked for nothing. He had given freely of himself. He was not aware of our plan when he arrived for a meeting at his neighbours house. We simply started asking questions of Sagara with the help of a translator, and, after four hours of talking, had a plan that would see him triple his production, employing 12 local labourers. As a bonus, Sagara would be now be producing “Super Blocks” because I passed on what I had learned from Sandy R. in Mech 269 when I was a student at Old College. (It still amazes me how misunderstood concrete is, but that is the topic for a duller blog.)

I went back to Sri Lanka some months later to see if what we had started had gone anywhere and to start more projects if the people we chose during our first trip proved to be the right people with whom to work. The change in the area was amazing. The results of international aid were evident everywhere--some positive and some negative. Buildings were going up all over, damage had been cleaned up, and many people were far better off than before the tsunami. Unfortunately, not everyone was so lucky.

Of Locals and Labour
The best example of aid damaging the local economy involved the rice farmers. Most of the rice crop had been harvested before the disaster struck, but huge amounts of rice flooded into the country from abroad. The media carried footage of people without enough to eat so well-intentioned but misguided foreign agencies did what seemed right—they sent food. But the effect of that food hitting the market was that the price of rice was cut in half while the price of labour doubled. Aid agencies paid more double the going rate for labor, so those who would normally work for a local rice farmer were intisted into taking jabs in construction, and the rice crop for the following year was reduced drastically. Some local farmers lost their farms. In time, the markets sorted themselves out, but in the short run many suffered not from the wave but from the good intentions of other countries. The moral of the story is: if something is needed, buy it locally if you can!

Did we back the right horses? Mostly, yes. We had wells drilled that were producing clean water for residents of newly constructed communities—a very important project and a huge success! Some of the political relationships we had to cultivate produced less bang for the buck, so we minimized our exposure on those fronts. But overall our involvement was a success.

Changing Lives

For me, the greatest success was Sagara. When I returned, he was producing blocks—and lots of them! He was filling orders of 80,000 blocks, 3 blocks at a time. Still, the success was not in those numbers but in Sagara himself. Upon my return, Sagara was still living in a tent and a grass shack. When I asked him why, as a mason and block maker, he had not built himself a house like all his neighbours had, he replied, “I will build my house, but right now my country needs me to make blocks.” He was providing employment for his countrymen, producing a much-needed local product with local technology, and supporting his community by donating bricks for school projects. His loan repayment funded six small agricultural projects which helped some very poor families to get back on their feet.

When I left, Sagara said to me, “Before the tsunami, I had a black heart, but, because of all the help after, I am now a good person. I don’t have a black heart any more.”

For Sagara and I, this wave washed away the silt that clouded our souls, letting both of us see more clearly what is truly important.