People and Process

Been a long time since I posted here! I guess between Facebook and G+ and other platforms it started to seem redundant to post here as well though the long form available as a blogger still has a place. It's been a really busy month with a bunch of travel for work and some major changes at the office. I've been thinking a lot about people I work with and breaking them into 2 groups - the process oriented people who are most concerned with creating and following procedures, and the outcome oriented people who are most concerned with the results achieved. There are places for both types of people in an organization, though I tend to gravitate towards the outcome oriented people myself. What I think happens in large businesses is that the process oriented people get let to create and manage the processes (because it's their inclination anyway). Soon you have lots of rules and structures built to support the business, and for a while things go well. Unfortunately, over time, more and more process gets added to cover more and more picayune things, and the environment changes making some of the processes unnecessary and necessitating new processes. At a certain point you realize that your staff are spending more time on process than they are on productive work. I think businesses should periodically do a process review to identify where they are on this spectrum and root out useless process. The benefits from this would be: 1. A smaller, but more relevant cannon of useful and necessary processes and procedures, 2. Less time spent by employees having to learn and re-learn processes that govern occasional behaviors (I think most of the pain with complex process comes from occasional participants who don't need to follow a specific process often enough to really learn it, but do it often enough that their lack of familiarity is a problem), 3. Better structured processes that effectively support the business, 4. A regular offportunity to reconsider processes and automation to identify chances to make things work better. I suppose this is a short post on a complicated topic - next time I'll try to cover how I think this preference manifests itself in technology through system design.

Raz & Dominick Playing in Leaves

Here are Raz & Dominic playing at Senele's house when we were visiting over Christmas. The boys had a great time together and did not find any fire ant nests.

Who's Watching the Baby

Here's some video of our daughter Zina playing with her cousins Milo and Dominic. I'm not sure if she's trying to teach him to use his pacifier or developing plans for a baby catapult. Dominic is definately working on the catapult... Enjoy.

Zina Greeting Travellers

Here's some video of Zina travelling over the holidays and greeting fellow travellers at the airport.

Raz Piano Concert - The Young Hunter

Here's Raz playing a short piece at his piano recital.

He's been practicing this piece for a few weeks and played well. Here's a video of the performance!

Trip to Texas and Mexico

Over the holidays we went to Texas to visit with family and them to Mexico for a week of fun in the sun. I'll try to add some content and captiopns to these pictures this week, but for now, here is the raw coverage: http://picasaweb.google.com/lawrence.devoe/MexicoAndTexasTrip?authkey=Uw3c13UXMTU&feat=directlink

Halloween 2008

And some random October photos from Zina's birthday are now online here! We had a great time hosting Raz and Zina's friends for trick or treating through the building. Our neighbors were their usual gracious selves and the kids all came back with pounds of candy.



I finally go to dress as my movie hero and role model this year, and Raz went as Luke so there was even an appropriate familial aspect to it.

Milda and Zina were an evil and adorable (respectively) Cruela D and Dalmation Puppy (click the link) and she really enjoyed the trick or treat.

Dad & Sis look on

Here are Zina and I watching the soccer game. It was very tense!

Raz Playing Soccer

Here's Raz going for the ball - he had a good first half, getting one great breakaway and running the ball all the way down the field to almost score a goal.

Raz the Soccer Player

Here's Raz in his Aston Villa team uniform getting ready for his first game. Game time was 8:15am on a Saturday morning so Milda and I were unwilling to be photo'd ;-)

Emerson Hotel - Outside

Here are Raz & Zina on the steps of the hotel lodge - all ready for the wedding.

Raz in Formal Setting

Here's Raz at the Emerson Hotel for OV and Tara's wedding. He enjoyed the posh surroundings very much.

Just a Cute Photo

Not sure where this is, but thought it was cute.

Most of the Crowd

At the Celtic Festival at Hunter Mountain after a very long day of chasing children. I think they won...

Minigolf Pro

Raz played minigolf a few times this summer and got pretty good. He definately enjoyed the game - enough so that he recently told me he thought I should take up minigolf instead of real golf.

Who Says Camels Are Not Friendly?

Raz is feeding a baby camel...

Hot on the Train

It was a hot day and Milda and Zina went for a ride on the kiddie express...

Riding a Camel

Eva and Raz shared a camel ride one day at the Catskills Zoo - not sure if that's the name of the place, but it was definately a camel.

Triangle

Zina found a triangular rock - "Triangle" she said. She was very excited about it and carried it for the next half hour or so repeating "traingle" every few seconds.

Zina's First Hike

Zina decided she wanted to get down from the backpack and walk - so we let her. She managed to walk about a half mile over some very rough trail before we scooped her back up and carried her the rest of the way. She slept well that night :-)

Family Hike by Old Catskills Lodges and Escarpment

Here we are posing by the 500 foot drop on the Catskills Escarpment, the site of several old hotels popular in the 19th century. Woderful views and great light hiking.

Raz & Campfire

Here's Raz first thing in the AM by the firepit. In the evening we had had a good fire going, but in the AM I couldn't get my camp stove going and we were out of firewood so breakfast consisted of a cereal bar and some water. It was only an hour walk back to the house so we had a nice brunch around 11AM.

Raz at Campground

As you can see, it was dark by the time we reached the campground. I set up our sleepingbags and the fire by flashlight and was glad I had brought a candle lantern. The night was very nice - quiet and cool - though in the middle of the night I awoke because something was gnawing on the wooden lean to structure. I had visions of bears, but it turns out there was a woodchuck living in a hole under the lean to and it was just polishing its teeth.

View from the Boulder

Here's the view from the Boulder - looking Southwest.

Boulder with a View

This boulder provided an excellent spot for a view! Here Raz is in his Pajamas after our night camping.

Hiking up Diamond Notch

Here's Raz at our halfway point rest stop. It was getting late and we were getting worried about reaching the top with enough light to set camp, but spirits remained high.

Streams

On the hike up this was one of the streams we crossed - there were a number of springs along the way and we filled our water bottles at the one closest to our camp.

Hiking in Diamond Notch

Here we are hiking up in Diamond Notch behind the house we rented - there was a great trail that climbed around 1000 feet towards the peaks around us with a small campsite and lean-to at the top of the notch between 2 mountains. Raz and I hiked up there and camped one night - cooking dinner over a campfire and sleeping in the lean-to - before hiking down the next morning for a much deserved breakfast. There were some steep patches on the trail and carrying Zina added a greal level of challenge (she's getting heavy ;-).

Hunter House

Here's the house we rented this August with our friends Andrew, Charmien, Eva and Remy. That's them walking down the driveway. The house was about 2000 feet up in the pass behind Hunter Mountain on the way to Phoenecia. The view from the porch was awesome out over the mountains looking west.

Looking for Berries

Raz & Eva exploring the yard at the house we rented in Hunter this summer. There were blackberries and raspberries growing wild all over the neighborhood so we would often go for walks to pick the berries.

Raz Painting from Art Show

Raz painted this canvas this summer in his art program. It's about a 3'x3' oil painting of a jungle scene with a waterfall. We liked it so much we hung it at home!