Thought Clouds
The Digital Bender

I seek everyone's advice. Im in a situation where I am working on a project and I have a partner in that project. We both share the vision of the goal, and we are both unsure how exactly we are going to do it. However, my team partner doesn't want to stick to the rules. He always finds ways to break them and workaround them. Although I am very sure that he understands why the rules are there, and understands that we can only get to what we need if we stick to the rules. I've talked a lot to my friend here to make sure we do stick to the rules. Every time I do this he agrees and we go back to sticking strictly to the rules. But only for a few weeks, at best. I think he does this because the rules are difficult and its easier to break the rules. And to that we have a huge project to accomplish, one that requires dedication and work. Why would the rules be easy? It only makes sense that they would be difficult.  It seems my friend needs to decide. Either stick with the project...

I just had an epiphany. I know now why working from home doesn't work. I colleague got sick and couldn't come to the office today, and while he said he would be available on mobile and email, it is still not the same for completing job tasks. When he is in, I see something in my email and I want to talk to him, I pickup the phone, dial his extension and he is there. Question answered. If not, I will just walk into his office and get my answer. And while I do get my answer through email if he is not in, it is not the same. You loose your string of thoughts and things become lazy and unresponsive and eventually you loose your momentum. There is a certain added value in physical presence that makes sense when you need to make decisions quickly. Which I believe is 80% of daily work. Still, if you're going to spend 2-3 days writing a document. It would actually make more sense for you to do it at home, uninterrupted.

I just have to write about this. I was reminded yesterday while in a meeting of a fact of my daily work routine that I found especially interesting. And that is that I work in a widely diversified environment. The aforementioned meeting was between four of us. My self a Jordanian, one South African, one German and one English man, all working on a project who's team is just as diverse. The project is run in a division run by a Singaporean. The program manager is Qatari. The project owner is Greek but lived in Austria and married to a German (who's sun by the way speaks 5 languages fluently). The project team contains two Nigerian/English guys, a Syrian/Iraqi/English, a Lebanese, an Australian, an Irish, an Indian and three English guys one of which speaks English so posh that you think the Queen is about to walk through the door. When preparing for this project back in December 06, I remember a lunch we had. One Russian who lived in Brazil. The afore mentioned Greek/Austrian. O...