Koby’s Kaos

There’s Intellectual Property, and then there’s intellectual property. When I was growing up in the starch mill town of Argo, Illinois, there were two places I really wanted to see—the just created Disneyland, and the fabled Argonne National Laboratory which, to my imagination, had to be the “Fantasyland” of Science. Both seemed impossibly far away, on other planets really. In my imagination white-coated, bespectacled researchers mixed easily with robots, wizards, spells, spacecraft, time travelers, and dragons (though I resembled Herbie Popnecker more than Harry Potter). All were to be wondered at. All were impossible.

Not only can blocks of IP add interfaces to budding SoCs, they can describe the complex balls of assumptions and biases that are the building nodules of our personalities. We use them to interpret (and misinterpret) our social environments. Vision itself, after all, is an illusion.

When I came across a press release on an Open House at Argonne (see Something Different ) I recalled my childhood wonder and Googled the center, only to discover this far away place was only 15 miles away from the town of my birth. Geography is misleading, so thoroughly did they belong to two different universes, societies, realms of existence when I was growing up. I suppose not even having a bicycle helped my world view, nor did I ever see a Cubs or a White Sox game, but I could have walked to the Labs! (And made a big hit with site security!) I simply assumed it couldn’t be, therefore it wasn’t.

In those days my life began and ended in a few square miles radiating out from the mill. There was good, and there was bad, but the horizons, skies and sidewalks all faded into grey an hour’s walk away. The blinking star of discovery called Sputnik had not yet risen in the sky.

For all of our moans about lack of science in the schools, we live in an age of Nova, soccer/piano/French/karate class minivans, civic Discovery Centers, and My Mad Scientist toys. Distances continue to shrink, except in human relationships. Our mental IP can still be as self-deceiving and self-defeating as the Darkest of Ages.

I would have loved to have a nerd break between the universes by walking into my classroom, waving a slide rule, and explaining his pocket protector (I suspect I would have loved to have a geek come in and talk about biting the heads off of chickens too, but that’s another story). Yes, I would have liked anybody to have walked in, other than the bullies shoving us around on the playground, and link our lessons to real life and “D’uh,” actual careers. But just as kids growing up in our cities and towns still lack plausible role models, we grownup geeks lack the concept that we might be actually be one.

Now I have given a tour or two, and I will admit that little kids can seemingly miss the point of everything. So what? If Little Jimmy had been trailing in the back of the pack, afraid to raise his hand, or even look me in the eye, I know he still would have been grateful for the glimpse into a wider world. But he would never have thought enough of himself to guess that I, or anyone up front, would appreciate his interest and approval too. I guess I’m just saying to get involved at church, temple, school, shelter or community center in lives other than your own. You have more to give, and receive, than you can guess. It’s a cycle, people. Whether we break it, or ride it to perdition, is our choice.

I hate having to recant.

This started out a couple of years ago in my editor’s notes in the FPGA Developer newsletter (now called the Programmable Logic Device Designer newsletter). I had been trying out one of my new rants on some friends, namely that the Newest Generation is the most techno-savvy and least techo-interested of any since the bronze beer can opener (You try opening a bronze beer can with a flint sometime). And yes, my conclusion was that we’re all going to hell in an iPod. But since some unenlightened types dared to dissemble, I decided to try the premise on the few professors and principal scientists who still willing to talk to me. I figured how could the brightest people I know not agree totally with me?

Premise: The more techno we get the dumber we become

I’d been reading about the young’s rise in technology usage and its decline in technical-mindedness. Four year-olds seem to have better gadget skills than I’ll ever have but less wonder as to why things work. There are reports of a continuing erosion of student science skills, a steady decline in engineering and science enrollments and, anecdotally, a lack of élan. Most students seem to be serving time on their way to a job (which they might or might not be prepared for) rather than trying to think clearly. As for responsibility, I trotted out the usual suspects, an educational system based on crowd control and a young consumer technology that insulates its prey from reality. The first teaches them to walk by giving them shoes with wheels; the second ensures they stay hip, exclusive, and uncaring as the world spins down to perdition. “It’s magic, Dude” is not an answer.

Response: Nothing New

Eric B, a math professor, tried bringing up my points with his peers, but found that they all fell into repeating “pre-programmed rants.” Skip, a researcher in experimental psychology, confused me with his chimps when he asked me if I was “his father,” saying it was the same parental gripe we were bombarded with in the 60’s. He stressed that not understanding the transistor didn’t stop us young cannibals from plastering little radios (pause while we explain to the kids that transistor radios were kind of cloud computing MP3 players which you could select but not predict) to our ears. His point was that it took the moon race to get many of us actually interested in Science. He did not predict what the next dramatic symbol might be. (Maybe the moon again?)

Response: Nothing Wrong

On the whole they weren’t worried about society forgetting its own technology (Asimov spinning in his grave). Lyn Hibbard, a principal scientist, pointed out that “successful technology hides its inner complexity from the user.” Charley Eidsvik, a professor who works with computer-aided animation, said his gift was no longer in understanding how his lab worked but in hunting and hiring the next whiz kid, and then leaving him or her alone while protecting them from the system.

Response: Well, Maybe Something

But where that whiz kid was coming from was a bigger concern. Dr. Tomas Martin, a German design engineer, worried that early PC use actually harmed childhood development. He believes that children need to learn reality first by touching, sensing, grasping. But as young people isolate on the PC and the game machine (let alone status defining personal electronics), they loose that connection. This was a common worry for some of my friends.

Response: It’s Getting Worse

This isolation was also observed by Professor Skippee. He recalled that the discussions and arguments we would continue long after the class stopped forged interconnections between disciplines and created new friendships (we’re still disagreeing happily decades later). I specialized in getting classes to think ANYTHING but what the prof wanted them to conclude (and when I taught I didn’t want anyone to dare agree with me until they earned that right). I know Skip still works hard at challenging his grad students and forcing them to rethink assumptions (in times of dementia he’ll even quote me). But now when the clock ticks their release, his students drop their brains, raise their phones and walk out of class on their thumbs, just as isolated as they walked in.

Response: And They Don’t Even Know It

Colin, a professor in the UK, worries that the popular educational message of “you can do anything if you try” is creating “experts” that aren’t. Young people avoid the unpopular message that “actually you are almost wholly ignorant” and that it will take work and dedication to change that. Charley E. worries about the ability of most universities, where “more and more faculty are temps, brought in at (expletive) wages to teach lots of big classes,” to provide the background those students would need. Most were united in the hope that the shortage of real talent would raise wage levels for scientists and encourage development. The Americans believed that the U.S. was still ahead of Europe in that respect. The Europeans didn’t.

And Yet?

As to what can be done to better our global brains, there was no clear answer. Skip did point to the Silicon Valley model being applied to medical research as a hopeful sign (learn more about that at www.myleinrepair.org). Lyn H calls on corporate technology leaders to “nurture research and risk-taking because it is the only way for them to continue successfully.” Skip points out that getting a PhD “takes more sacrifice than brains at times” and that “fat and happy people are not interested in sacrifice.” But Charley insists that new whiz kids “are still out there” and that “makes me an optimist.” Finally Skip talked about his students that impressed him the most, the ones who worked full time jobs and still showed up and worked hard. They were often recent immigrants or children of immigrants and that he in turn tried to shake them up, force them to think in new ways, and excel. He talked of the many notes he’d received over the years thanking him. That to me was the most hopeful sign.

Two Years Later

So what has changed? Real wages for scientists and engineers, for all of us worker bees, continue to fall. The recent graduates, prepared or not, are not finding jobs. Ponzi schemes, a no-holds barred measure of wisdom and acumen, seem more successful and vicious than ever. Trusting in financial derivatives no one understands sounds analogous pretending we understand and will control layers on layers on layers of technology. Will $100 notebooks as rugged as transformers forge resilient democratic societies or snuff out the last human relationships? Will pop culture take the last fizz out of the world? Or will fundamentalist reaction dictate an entropy of the spirit?

But Wait, There’s More

Much of my scorn has been reserved for Twitter and “social networking,” which I think counterfeit and trivialize relationships. But then events in Iran overtook me. People cared, organized using social media under violent repression, and paid the price. These are the first blossoms of a new future, short yet even of a Prague Spring. Social movements I will never understand are gestating in places I’ve never thought about.

Yes, people raise themselves up by excluding others. But Twitter briefly did connect them. I recall that when a Swiss company developed a quartz watch circuit, it didn’t bother to patent it. They just made a display for a show. The technology tourists saw the potential and leaped ahead.

Maybe our time on the stage, the developed world, is coming to an end. In the next act, the young, unburdened by wondering WHY, will see WHAT can be done. And do it.

Therefore

I recant. I know nothing. I have my popcorn, my soda, my box of jujus. My seat is ill-placed but I can see light between the hairstyles. The curtain is rising on a new and unpredictable age.

Contemporary science is reductionist. The idea is that everything that happens can ultimately be explained as the interactions of fundamental particles. According to “Breaking the Galilean Spell,” an essay by Dr. Stuart Kauffman (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman08/kauffman08_index.html), Simon Pierre Laplace described reductionism as “a sufficient intelligence, if given the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, could compute the universe’s entire future and past.” What does that mean? Well, Dr. Kaufman also quoted Nobel laureate physicist Stephen Weinberg as saying “The more we know of the universe, the more meaningless it appears.”

In other words, if you know enough of everything, you can work backward to explain the origins, or forward to lay out the future. Bingo! Game over. Reductionism as a world view has been very good to science. Dr. Kaufman points to Einstein’s general relativity, much of quantum physics, and molecular biology as products of reductionism. It is also profoundly depressing.

It describes a worldview where Surprise is only a product of ignorance. If you know then…. you’d know. For example, how can there be freewill? How can there be good or evil? “Guilty? No one is guilty, Judge. Don’t you see? I’m the victim. It was the photons that made me do it.”

For his part, Dr. Kauffman maintains that reductionism, while very useful, also forms a straight jacket on how we think and what we do. He believes instead that many things are also partially indescribable by natural law. And there in that indescribable cloud, for me, lies the excitement of life.

Dr. Kaufman was in Portland last week giving a talk for the Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy. The institute brings in experts from around the world to give challenging lectures and to hold informal talks in the local schools. These events are sponsored by area schools and technology companies and especially by Mentor Graphics, which has been kind enough to invite science journalists such as myself along for the ride.

One of Dr. Kaufman’s ideas I pulled from his lecture (and I’m sorry if I’m misstating this) is that events can lead to more events—unpredictably more events. He sees evolution as coming in part from systems poised at the edge of the “adjacent possible.”

Our current economic downturn comes to my mind as a parallel. The more I read economics writers, the more I suspect that not only don’t we know what’s going on, but we still don’t know how the Great Depression worked—or how we got out of that. And that part of our problem comes from thinking we knew what was going on more recently (or thinking that our experts did). Yes, there were doubters, though not necessarily understanders. Simply saying we were in a bubble gets you some points, but not a prize. (If Chicken Little keeps clucking, he’s going to be singing opera at least some of the time.)

As I think I understand Dr. Kaufman, evolution is self-organizing as much as anything. It’s not that any change makes a big difference. However each change makes possible so many other things, that these exploding (adjacent) possibilities lure life into making more changes. Change begets change, but in a self-organizing way, as if by an agent.

His hope is that in this view of possibilities there is room for affirmation and love. It can be a world of mutual gain instead of locked in zero sum conflict. He thinks there is room there for both the theist and the atheist to celebrate. It does not have to be one way or the other to explain the universe. We don’t have to fight to live.

Now I have my own laws for the organization of the universe, but I’ll spare you for now. I will say that the Adjacent Possible puts a rather hopeful spin on where we are now. Many of the models we have depended on, from real estate to venture funding, are in disarray. But we aren’t broken, so much as the straight jackets that restrict how we look on our goals, our worth, and our future have been ripped off.

Yes, I’m wracked with worry about our world too, but that is not going to help me find solutions. You don’t have to understand the music to begin to dance. You need to make mistakes to grow. There are surprises ahead and choices to enjoy.

Not every conversation has to be dominated by gloomy economics. Sometimes common sense can be very refreshing. Part of the fun of holiday events, after all, is meeting people one doesn’t know from way outside the industry (“Chips, huh? So what’s Frito-Lay like to work for?”). The challenge is finding things to share that don’t revolve around politics, plunging 401K’s, or surrogate sports teams. Sometimes it seems impossible, and all one can do is wonder what planet the guy next to you came from.

One night, after hearing too many “Awesome’s” from an individual across the table, I typed the quick, compact man as some kind of career skier or boarder. Great for him, I thought, but we’ll have no passions in common (yawn). Still, I listened. It seemed the only courteous thing to do (and remarkably inexpensive).

Then Mr. Awesome said something that woke me up. He was a smoke jumper during the summer (yes, even I admire that), and during the winter he did something very different–he “created” skiers. Why use the word “create”? Why not say he “taught” skiing? Was there a difference?

Yes. Huge.

In his world view a student might reach a hundred levels of success in skiing technique. Big deal. Simply learning the next skill did not make them a “skier.” Yet usually that’s all the skiing instructor would offer–the next skill. That’s too bad. Because the real question is “will he or she enjoy skiing enough to do it again?” (Or to try a fishing metaphor, what would it take to “hook” them.) Mr. Awesome’s specialty had grown beyond teaching skiers; he had become expert at teaching instructors how to “create” the next crop of skiers. That makes perfect sense from a practical and an economic point of view.

Think about learning a tool. Your vendor can throw the book at you–go through button by button until you are sick of the keyboard and forget why you sunk your budget into purchasing it in the first place.

Or your vendor can keep the carrot of “why” you want to do it always in front. They can get you over that initial hump until you are skilled enough to keep learning and succeeding by yourself.

Whether hardware, software or service, the goal is NOT to simply SELL a product, but to CREATE users – SUCCESSFUL users. Users who have learned what they need to start and be inspired to keep learning. The measure should never be today’s sale, but what they’ll be specifying tomorrow (and convincing their colleagues about).

Why is this so hard to learn? Yes, headlines (specifications) sell. Yes, price builds or breaks barriers. But a successful user stays with the vendor, and is willing to work with them to enhance their products (and enrich their own experience). Classes, development kits, thoughtful and practical documentation, and just plain honest communication, all play a part in how engineers use the product and whether they will exclude or encourage that vendor next time.

This state of mind–thinking about what the user needs to succeed–impacts almost every relationship. It is critical when communicating within project teams and work groups. It can be crucial when you are trying to communicate with anybody–your kids, your teachers, your (gulp) parents.

Take a classic and often political divide–Hardware and Software developers. Well, if either side “wins,” they both lose. To really be successful, each needs to educate and learn from the other. They need to CONSCIOUSLY explore what they can do to make the other’s job easier. And they need to recognize and reward their sometime adversaries when that help is returned. The Meta goal is to make cooperation self-sustaining. It’s been shown over and over again, if you just toss bits over the dividers, you limit your success. You will never be able to take advantage of the diversity of experience and training that YOUR group can already offer.

As my new friend expressed his frustration in getting the concept of “creating users” across to the new ski instructors, I found myself sharing my own frustration–and an occasional triumph. We were both struggling to guide very self-confident experts in that one aspect of their jobs that they all dreaded, working with other human beings.

Okay, it’s going to be a tough year. But one cheap solution each of us can try is to find simple ways to serve others and to help them serve us. This can work with vendors, co-workers, and even our own maligned “users”–those end customers who never appreciate how wonderful our creations are. Maybe we’ve forgotten what it is like to be them, to use our own products.

Of course, I may be up the slope without a ski, but I’d like to hear from anyone else who shares my passion. I would like to hear the comments of anyone in any walk of life who is trying to create “users” instead of teaching them to death.

Awhile back, I attended a lecture by Sir Roger Penrose, an English mathematical physicist, which was part of a series by the Institute for Science, Engineering and Public Policy in Portland, Oregon. Mentor Graphics is the principal sponsor. The Institute sets up public lectures and visits to the schools by renowned speakers, such as Sir Roger, and is, I’m glad to say, still going strong. Next week I’m looking forward to a lecture by Dr. Brian Greene, the guru of string theory. Like Sir Roger, I expect Dr. Greene to thoroughly shake me up and compel me to reexamine some of the things I so smugly assume I already know.

One of Roger Penrose’s books was “The Emperor’s New Mind” which challenged the strong AI viewpoint that human thought was algorithmic–and therefore could be duplicated by a complex computer. Roger Penrose has received many prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking.

At his lecture, however, Sir Roger went in a new direction. He gave a contrary perspective on what might have existed before the Big Bang. The prevailing thought is that the Big Bang was a singularity and that the question of “before” is meaningless. He freely admitted that what he discussed was a radical departure from what he thought just six months before. His presentation wasn’t so much a complete theory as it was a proposal for renewed investigation and development – in effect he invited us to join him on a great adventure. But he did more that night than just inspire schools kids and give their elders a conceptual workout, he made a case for crazy ideas.

Crazy ideas come whenever you step away from the crowd and say “Yeah, but what if?” And the ideas stay crazy if you or anyone else can’t come up with supporting evidence. (One of the problems with being a contrarian is that the herd usually is right. There are certainly good reasons why some theories are built on as if “fact–and valid reasons why you shouldn’t waste time debating it. But what is the fun of that?)

Crazy ideas are necessary because there are often nagging exceptions that the crowd rushes past (if only because it’s highly impractical to know everything about anything). In Roger Penrose’s case he listed some of the problems that he claimed contemporary theories didn’t address and that most physicists have ignored (him included). He reviewed alternative theories that did account for some discrepancies but which created bigger ones. He even dismissed a few of them as “crazy ideas” before he gave his own proposal – which also stirred up new questions, including the need to find (if I recall correctly) a weightless charged particle. Presumably these ideas will seem just as “crazy” to many of his peers.

Now I’m looking forward to the way Professor Greene will “string” his audience along. Life’s getting too worrisome and depressing. I need to renew my sense of “wonder.”

I maintain that crazy, by the way, should never stop at the lecture hall. It has a role to play in every interaction, whether you are talking to yourself, your family, or a roomful of your peers. It is a part of everyday life.

In team meetings, for example, there always seems to be at least one assumption that just seems too negative, too positive, or just too bleak for me to accept at face value. Maybe it’s a new timeline, maybe it’s a new process, or maybe it’s the decision NOT to try something new. I’m usually more of a facilitator than an expert, and tend to be hesitant to take the lead. But I’ll cheerfully encourage someone with more expertise to question the assumption.

Even if wrong, a crazy idea can provoke valuable thought and exploration. It can highlight other assumptions that aren’t being tested but really should be. The ensuing discussion can even deepen the group’s commitment to the original, better idea. Or it can remind us of logical safety concerns that our herd mentality has blinded us too. Think of financial bubbles and lending practices of the last few years!

WARNING: Of course, if you tilt at too many windmills, you will dissipate too many resources that are urgently needed elsewhere (and even tilt yourself out of a job). But, hey, maybe the sky is falling….

So when do you point out the transparency of the Emperor’s new clothes, and when do you just blush and cheer along with the crowd? When do you push for a backup plan, or urge a riskier leap for the brass ring?

After that lecture, a woman asked Sir Roger why he changed his mind six months prior. His answer was that the prevailing theory just made the universe seem too dull–and that the universe is anything but dull.

Too bad my 401K agrees.

Management Secrets of Captain Bligh: Part the Second

Why does the infamous Captain Bligh stand out from any bright, new project manager? He doesn’t. But how he lost control of his project and, maybe, how he redeemed himself can suggest some guidelines to think about.

1) Accept Every Objective

Bligh was smart and enlightened for his Age. He had direct South Seas experience under the great Captain Cook. He had worked his way up by merit, though he had to marry well before they would name him an officer. But in the peace-time British Navy of the 1780’s, assignments, let alone promotions, were hard to find.

Bligh had lobbied for a high profile project, such as the Breadfruit Project — bringing breadfruit plants from Tahiti in the Pacific to the plantations of the West Indies in the Caribbean, but he didn’t ask for the HMS Bounty. Bligh had been at sea captaining a merchant ship when the project was set up. The objectives of the project were many, including charting huge swatches of the Pacific, and (fitting Bligh’s personal goals) the chance to circumnavigate the globe.

He saw that the ship supplied was too small. The crew had to be tiny, even the captain’s cabin would become a plant nursery, and there wasn’t space or budget for any marines — key to keeping personnel in line. Bligh would even have to re-enter the Royal Navy as a lieutenant.

Bligh protested, but not for long. Like many a project manager, he assumed he could manage his way through any hardship. From the Admiralty’s point of view I suspect it was “Take the Big Chance you’d been whining for, you pencil-pocketed, 18th Century techno-geek, or buzz off.” (Translation mine.) Bligh leapt at the chance.

Hope Springs Eternal

He thought that if he was lucky, he could do it all — catch the right winds across the Atlantic, round Cape Horn, catch more winds across the Pacific, grab the breadfruit, sail those uncharted waters (maybe even uncharted LANDS), splash his patrons’ names all over his new maps, keep catching the right winds to cross the Atlantic again, deliver the breadfruit (plus pick up undiscovered flora and fauna at every stop), and skip back to London to accept the acclaim. Of course, if every project was that lucky, you’d just toss random IP into a blender, skip verification, and still hit specs and silicon every time.

The enlightened Captain Bligh planned to take advantage of all the science he’d learned. He would provide fresh food, demand they eat fruit, and order them to jump up and down to music (does your company have aerobics classes?). For his concern for their health the crew decided he was a nutter who was embezzling the salt pork and weevil-spiced bread they expected (try yanking the doughnuts out of an engineer’s hand and substituting grated cabbage).

Reality Sets In

Bligh’s luck didn’t hold. Adverse winds and storms slammed the Cape shut. He had to give up on circumnavigation (Missed Goal). It took ten months to back track, sail around Africa, and finally reach Tahiti for the breadfruit (Met Goal). However, the much delayed ship had lost the seasonal winds needed to chart the unknown area (Unmet Goal) let alone deliver the plants to the West Indies (Unmet Goal). Like a sail-powered space shuttle, it would take another five months to get everything back into alignment and re-launch. Meanwhile Bligh was taking out his frustrations the same way many troubled bosses do, on his crew.

Storm Flags Flying

Conditions on a late 18th Century ship were harsh and dictatorial by design. Communications were poor, revolutionary ideas beckoned, and petty grudges simmered. People with different skills and agendas were thrown together and bullied to be productive. Good thing our high tech, high-pressure project teams are not like that. Modern teams never fail to come together, do they?

Tahiti’s very welcoming society offered the hardened jack-tar’s vistas that regular life never could. (You’ll have to look them up yourselves; this is a family website.) They had instant status and were invited into the inner circles of the society. They were offered freedom and temptations beyond their dreams. But who would give up hard tack and humiliation for a life in Paradise? Discipline began falling apart. The Breadfruit Project workers were going native.

Meanwhile Bligh was living in denial. He seesawed back and forth, giving the crew freedoms and then taking them away. He screamed at any failure, regardless of fault. Even though he got over his temper tantrums quickly, the sailors and officers he treated like stupid children didn’t seem to forget.

A Call for Solutions

I’ll concede that his official project objectives (given his limited resources), may not have been his choice. But how he tried to follow them was. Have you ever been on or led a failing team? What do you do with overwhelming goals?

Next installment, we’ll look more closely at what Bligh methods and how they affected his crew.

The Mutiny on the Bounty is a seminal tale of freedom versus unreasoning tyranny. There have been at least five films, several novels, a Jules Verne short story, two Bugs Bunny cartoons, and a Simpson’s episode. All portray something of the 18th century heroics of Fletcher Christian as he’s reluctantly forced into mutiny by the capricious and villainous Captain Bligh. Floggings! Keel-haulings! Why, it’s hard to think of a more cruel and unreasonable martinet to serve under, except perhaps for your last boss. You know, the one where the whole team was one cutlass short of tying him or her to a giant silicon wafer and floating the pointy-haired tyrant down the mill race.

Which is kind of apt, really. Because once the politics and bad PR are peeled back, Captain Bligh may have not been worse than many a project manager with too few tools and too much responsibility.

History depends on whom you read, but many suggest that the real Captain Bligh was more scientific and less bound by class distinctions than most of his contemporaries. He was enlightened in protecting the health of his crew, even if they thought his obsession with fresh food and exercise was daft. He is said to have been enlightened in discipline, tongue-lashing when others would have flogged, and flogging when others would have hung. If you were flung onto that quarter deck, the only commissioned officer on a small ship with a daunting set of orders, very limited resources, and no marines to back you up — well, even you might find yourself acting remarkably like the perfidious captain. Even to asking your old shipmate, Fletcher Christian, to help out and join the project team.

On April 28, 1789, Bligh’s project failed horribly and the mutineers consigned him and the loyalist team members to a small open boat with no charts, five days of supplies, and a 4000 mile voyage to the nearest Starbucks.

But where did Bligh go wrong? How did he turn into the villain? Why do promising projects fail anyway? The usual answer is not enough tools, not enough time, or not enough budget. And that is often the truth. But maybe, sometimes, the only villain we find in the wreck is us, and misuse of our human tools seems the most probable cause.

Check on the primary sources if you would like (I’m fond of Bugs’ impersonation of Charles Laughton’s Bligh in “Buccaneer Bunny”), but my suggestion is to simply consider what you see going wrong — and right — all around you. Next installment we’ll go into detail how the human element can help your next project come safely to port, whether you’re serving as Fletcher Christian, Captain Bligh, or just another able-bodied cubicle-on-deck.