There are people who are on working teams who habitually say things like they are willing to “help” but don’t ever seem to take primary responsibility for the work.  These people really bother me, probably because they are the professional version of the fathers* who offer to “babysit” their own kids.  Fathers: You do not ‘babysit’ your own kids, rather, you ‘parent’ them. You ‘take care of’ them. You can ‘watch them’ if you must. Likewise, teammates: You are not there to ‘help out,’ rather, you are there to do the work.

Ironically, I found myself guilty of almost the same thing and I want to be explicit about it so that I don’t make the same mistake twice. I kept telling my colleagues that I had skills and knowledge in a specific area, but waited for them to suggest ways in which I might put those skills and knowledge to work for the team.  Although probably not the worst offense for someone new to a position, it wears thin once you’ve settled in.

A valuable team member knows their skillsets and social capital and they look for ways to put them to work.  They do their part to make the team great.  They own their place at the table rather than waiting to be called in as if they are an extra set of hands.  It’s really about attitude more than anything else.

Featured Image: Filip Mroz, unsplash.com

*I acknowledge the gendered-ness of my extremely anecdotal statement. I can honestly say I’ve never heard a mother say she is babysitting her own kids.  I acknowledge that my experience may not represent anyone else’s experience.

Hey Laura –

You were raised in music, although not in the way suggested by Paul Simon; your mother really never laughed the way some ladies do, at least not around you.  Nevertheless, her record collection from 1968 to 1972 was killer, and she trained up a music-loving child. Folk rock to pop rock to alt rock to classic rock to bluegrass to classical, I can’t remember a single day of your life that didn’t involve singing and dancing to the radio, the eight track, the record player, walkman, cd player, the ipod, iphone, Pandora, or Spotify.

The Cool Cool River. You instinctively got it, otherwise you wouldn’t have played it over and over again, sweating it out in the backseat of the car at the Waynesboro outlets. That’s your song.  It always has been and probably always will be.

You get music, but you were raised to allow music to get to you.

Everyone connects songs to important events. For whatever reason, your song memories are most powerful when they connect to summer thunderstorms.  Streets of Philadelphia  (Fredericksburg, 1994). If Love Is a Red Dress (Williamsburg, 1995). These Arms of Mine (Toano, 1997). Proudest Monkey (Bland County, 2000).  Maybe it’s the recollected heat and humidity, but these songs make it hard for you to breathe. They make you stop to lean against the wall, waiting for it all to pass. Wait. It will pass.

There are songs that take you further back, to other summers. No One is to Blame (Richmond, 1985). Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (Hungry Mother State Park, 1987); Right Here Waiting for You (Wytheville, 1989), Rush, Rush (Kansas City, 1991). You can smell the chlorine, taste the hot dogs, see the jukebox, feel the sunburn coming off your cheeks. You breathe slower, feel calmer. These make you forget the world. Finally, you understand why old people like to listen to the songs of their childhood.

Music changes your mind; you count on its ability to do so.

End of the Innocence.  You remember the summer it came out (Kansas City, 1989).  You remember standing there in front of the TV, holding half a cheese sandwich, watching the video before setting off for public library. You’ve always liked it, but now you get it. Let’s not glamourize innocence; innocence is a lack of experience, and as such can be obstructing and frustrating. Knowledge isn’t bad, particularly if you use it well. It’s just…sometimes when you focus on what’s lost rather than what’s gained, it can ache a bit.  This song acknowledges the ache.

Nevertheless, remember: You choose which way you look.

Go on.

Signed,

Yourself

Featured Image: Mark Solarski, unsplash.com

This is part of a larger thought.

Some people have very early memories. I remember being in my crib. I thought it was a fine crib except for when I didn’t want to be in it.  My very first memory was at night. My room was dark but the door was open and I could see my mother in her lighted bedroom across the hall, standing there in her white slip and talking to my father, who was out of sight. Naturally I wanted to be with her in the lit room and to be part of the conversation and so I cried out and shook the bars of the crib.  She stared straight at me but stood as still as a tree, hand still raised to remove her earring. I waited to see what she would do next.  She glanced towards my father, who must have whispered some instructions. Then she slowly and silently continued her tasks, careful never to look back in my direction despite my protests. “I am HERE. See ME.” I kept screaming and shaking those bars until a hand out of sight swung the bedroom door closed. After that, I knew there was absolutely no point in screaming.

My next memory was also of that crib. It was a sunny morning and although it’s hard to say what they were, I had big plans. So I went through the same routine I’d practiced a million times. However, this time I was just tall enough.  I nearly cut myself in half on the thin wood of the crib railing, swung a leg over the edge and then found myself hanging from the side of the crib.  “Well, this is new,” I thought.  I weighed my options. I could cry for help or I could fall, but I couldn’t stay there forever. And so after what seemed like forever, I gave myself a giant swing and let go.

I have never asked anyone, but I suspect that many chubby girls raised in the 1980s have lived my story; I’m not special.  The old lady waitress at Western Sizzlin who smelled funny and pinched fat kid cheeks– why didn’t anyone ever stop her?  My mom was in Weight Watchers and would take me to meetings. This was before the point system, so it was always melba toast and cottage cheese for breakfast. By second grade, I was filling out my food diary scantron bubbles as religiously as my mother did.  Two bubbles for fat. Three for protein. Ten for carbs. Eight check marks for water. Us girls were always on the diet, except when we weren’t and then we were ‘bad.’

To be honest, I’m not sure when it happened. Not in middle school, when I would hide the eight cheese slice wrappers under the rest of the trash so my dad couldn’t see what I’d eaten before he got home. Not in high school, when I would starve myself all day only to binge on peanut butter in the pantry.  Not in medical school, when I would limit my intake to 800 calories a day to the calorie…unless I couldn’t sleep from the hunger and then I could have two spoonfuls of mustard because I could make up 20 calories the next day.  Not in residency, when I was worked so hard and came so close to the edge of everything that I just couldn’t. I literally just couldn’t control my eating and drinking, and as a result I couldn’t bear to look at myself. In the first house that I owned in Virginia, I took down all the mirrors. Every single one.

I’m not sure when I made the paradigm shift from dieting to healthy eating. It was after I quit medicine, I know that. All I can tell you is that at some point, I realized that dieting was too harmful and I was done with it. A dieter says “I shouldn’t.  I couldn’t. I won’t. Oh fuck, I did. I’m horrible. I’ll have to make up for it later. ” It’s a form of restriction and self-denial based on the expectations and instructions of others. People go on diets because they don’t trust their own judgement, but somehow they trust a Cosmo.

Compare this to healthy eating.  A healthy eater is a knowledgeable eater.  They know about protein, vitamins, glucose indexes and fiber.  They understand how they feel after a fatty meal as compared to an optimized meal.  They know how to adjust their diets based on activity and they don’t sweat the details because healthy eating is a lifestyle, not a two week sprint.  A person with a healthy lifestyle says “I will. I can.  Oh wow, that felt good. And no worries, it will all balance out in the end.”  People with healthy eating habits know their bodies and needs and they trust their own expertise; they do not inflict the criteria of others on their own selves.

The locus of control, expertise, and trust matters.  It is everything.

I’m not just talking about food.

Featured Image by: Caroline Attwood, unsplash.com

Today I attended Edwin Tufte’s one day course on presenting data and information.  It involved sitting in a double wide airport hotel ballroom from 9am to 4pm; the first hour consisted of a “study hall” in which I was given four (beautiful) texts and a list of assigned reading.  Lecture started at 10a and continued until 1:15p. There is one 10 minute break at 11:30a.  After an hour lunch break, lecture resumed from 2:15p until 4p.

THE BEST: SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE

In terms of offering foundations and inspiration around beautiful data design, Tufte is (obviously) a great subject matter expert. He’s not a bad storyteller, either. Here are some takeaways from the five hours of lectures.

Open mind, not empty head. Analytical thinking is critical to consumption and creation of analytical design. Understand the assumptions and motivations of the data source. Consider the likelihood of accuracy (e.g. are they trying to measure something really difficult to measure?). Consider the potential relationships between information and conclusions. Consider the endpoints: if you can’t model an endpoint from the graph as provided, then something is most definitely wrong.

Content and credentials. A visual is only as good as the content presented and your impact is only as good as your documentation.  Build your reputation for consistent quality.  Include not only the name of your organization but the individuals who created the graphic.  Include links to your raw data.  Make sure the data is interpretable by others.

Always present a flat surface.  Avoid the slide deck.  Avoid the slow reveal.  Don’t try to control the order in which people read things because they are going to prioritize differently or find different things interesting. Humans understand more, see more, create more when they have access to spatial adjacency (My advisor used to call this “screen real estate”).  They also love to scroll.

Get out of your own voice.  Quote the experts who can say things in colorful ways that you cannot.

Data paragraph as your unit of analysis. The most effective combination of visuals, words, and numbers is what you want to create.  Look at ESPN.  Look at the New York Times. National Weather Service. These sites do it well.

Limit the non-data ink. Grid marks?  Only if it helps the consumer and then make them as simple and light as possible. Hyphens, colons, and other repetitive administrative considerations should be deleted. Duplicated data (in most cases) should be erased.

Direct labeling. Good design increases content reaction time and format decryption time. Get rid of “one-off” coding – that is, codes that consumers have to comprehend for just one graphic. Get rid of the legends and label the map.  If you have data that must be labeled in very specific ways, write it in a sentence.

Present. In sentences. I will say it again (Edwin Tufte certainly did): Sentences are one of the best forms of direct labeling.  No bullet points.  No sentence fragments. Present data in sentences, even if they aren’t presented in paragraphs.

Annotate (with sentences). All lines should be annotated by actions, causes or events…preferably in sentence form. While traditional organizational charts and hierarchies tend to focus on nouns, the real world is networked, a complex combination of interactions and feedback. Everything in this world is about interaction. There were direct shout-outs to Tim Berners-Lee, but (surprisingly) nothing related directly to Bush, Englebart, Xanadu, or annotation systems.

Multivariate. Multimodal. Multilayered. Use the design to highlight contrasts, comparisons, causality, correlation: an analytical design is always the result of sound analysis of content.  Find ways to reveal different aspects of the same topic – incorporate information about sight, sound, behavior, context.  Finally, layer data in ways that can peacefully co-exist.  Google Maps layers light color in ways that does not obscure: interstates, streets, places of interest, natural landmarks…all on top of an aerial map.

Openness. Openness was an underlying value. Open access, source, data were frequently present, as were references to the open web and the importance of translational research. Tufte deals in an impressive amount of self-promoting retail in the lobby, but he’s not all marketing and hype. I give him credit for telling us how to get around paywalls for research articles. Also, I saw people taking pictures of his slides during the presentation – none of the earpieced men stationed around the ballroom tried to stop them.

THE WORST: THE PEDAGOGY 

I have difficulty categorizing this experience in terms of my pedagogical expertise. It wasn’t a workshop because there wasn’t a shred of experiential learning included. No moments of reflection.  No consideration of knowledge transfer or application. It wasn’t a seminar because there were no opportunities for interaction, no social learning.  No small groups.  No co-constructed knowledge.  Not even a single question and answer period. Finally, it’s not really a course because there was no assessment, no learning projects, no evaluation, no credentials, and it only lasted for five hours.

Can a five-hour lecture which has no learning assessments or learning products really be called a course?

And I say firmly, no.

Additionally, Tufte had a really interesting approach to people.  Here it is, as best as I can convey it, paraphased and synthesized over the lectures:

Always treat your audience with the utmost respect, because they are successful in reading high level data every day, as evidenced by the success of ESPN.com and NYTimes.com.  However, they will not always be right, nor will they always do the right thing.  Sometimes you must force your audience to sit with the big picture for a while.  You must force them to be patient. It will be better for their overall understanding than allowing them to drill down, zoom in, click the link, get to what they want.  Finally, understanding their reaction to your work isn’t necessary for excellence; indeed, feedback is great for finding problems or gaps, but excellence is an entirely different mindset.

I’m not 100% opposed to this argument.  Respect is good. People aren’t necessarily right. Requiring time with the big picture isn’t a bad strategy.  Understanding the difference between “acceptable to your audience” and “innovative beyond your audience’s wildest dreams” is important.

However, Tufte’s approach to “respect” is one-size-fits-all, and it is his lens of how respect might appear. I heard him mention color vision deficiencies only once.  There was no mention of ADA guidelines.  No discussion of screen readers, alt text.  No mention of those with dyslexia or who may not read well or may not read English.  There were only two mentions of the fact that his left-to-right designs were built for the Western world. Sometimes your audience is not reading ESPN.com or NYTimes.com.  Sometimes your audience doesn’t even have access to the Internet.  Sometimes they are just trying to understand a cancer diagnosis or their bills. I wonder how Tufte feels about these individuals as audience?

I also take issue to Tufte’s pedagogical orientation of “audience.” This was a sage on a stage situation and I don’t think it’s that way just because of the setting (traditional lecture room set up in a double wide ballroom). This is a man who reveres his own authority.

Did I learn something today? Obviously the answer is yes (see above) However, I did so because I made my own active learning experience.  I made my own backchannel with a friend – we were emailing about what I was learning throughout the day.   I made the decision to report out via this blog post.  I made myself come up with applications for my job and my personal life.  If I had not done these things – if I had not put the trouble into writing this up…how much of it would I remember?  Not much, I don’t think.

Edwin Tufte lives and dies on his main argument: the data visualization is only as good as the content.  His argument is incomplete.  Data visualization and this course is only as good as people’s understanding, application, and remembering of the content. In education, you need more than paper-based, slide-based, or even multimodal content. People are content (thank you, Dave Cormier). Process is content.  Edwin Tufte needs to wrap his head around a different definition of content.

And why do people just sit there and take it? Because they don’t know better.

So.  Go to the course, but do it for the books, not the pedagogy.

Featured Image: Brandi Redd

From a successful (female) leader.

1. Work-life integration, not work-life balance.
2. Not everything you do is essential;
3. You must let some things go.
4. I’ll say it again. Pick the battles – at home, at work, with yourself.
5. Delight at being at the table,
6. But never lose sight of what skills you already bring to the table.
7. Be confidently humble.
8. You are smart enough.
9. But ultimately, you can’t control how other people respond what you have to say.
10. Finally – at the end of the day –  be your own best friend. You have to be.

Featured image: Glenn Carstens -Peters, unsplash.com

I was in a seminar once in which the facilitator ran the following exercise:

After breaking into groups of three, a designated ‘leader’ holds a conversation with a designated ’employee.’ The third person acts as a ‘hype person’ for the leader.  A hype person, if you aren’t familiar, interjects into the conversation between the leader and the employee to repeat and emphasize (with great energy) some of the words phrases.

The hype was fun to watch.  However, when debriefed, many participants said they felt uncomfortable being the hype person; they felt intrusive and superfluous to the conversation.

It was interesting to me that no one seemed to understand the power or value of the hype person.

In a professional setting, hype translates to positive feedback + constructive criticism + amplification of message. The hype person offers intentional support, not only to the leader but also to their peers and direct reports.

Important point: Intentional can easily become strategic. By drawing attention to certain messages or behaviors, a good ‘hype person’ can actually drive the narrative..sometimes just as effectively (or more effectively) than the leader.  Additionally, an effective leader will value their hype person as a resource for feedback. What did the hype person chooses to emphasize from their message?  Did that person get the message right?  Did something resonate more than something else?  If the leader has a different agenda than what was hyped, then maybe they need to try to relay their message again or in a different way.

If you can’t be the leader, you might want to try to being the hype person.  It keeps you engaged with the message.  It makes you extremely valuable.  Finally, the skills you learn as a hype person will make you an even more effective leader in the future.

Featured Image: Claus Grunstaudl, unsplash.com

I’ve never sat in an office for eight hours a day, five days a week.  I always forget to mention this quirk when I’m interviewing, but apparently no one assumes that I can sit in an office with any sort of consistency. It all works out fine.

Working with young folk has always been one of the favorite parts of my work, mainly because they tend to  slap me with wisdom so ancient I am left standing there looking like a fool. It strikes me as funny, though, that while my bosses are okay with my transient habits, the savvy young folk surrounding me are the least comfortable. Undoubtedly, some of them prefer me to be at my desk where they can see me.

Working offsite, even with the full understanding of my supervisor, is not a neutral prospect. Context collapse is more uncomfortable when working up the power hierarchy than down it. So I sent the following email: