Small, Extraordinary Acts

I posted how Anpanman by Takashi (嵩) Yanase (柳瀬) is my role model. Turns out John Maeda has similar sentiments.

What a noble aspiration to act under the belief, “That if you had more you could always get by with less.” One I find very hard to live up to.

Anpanman by Eric I.E.

In the workplace, I hate to assume responsibility for decisions I did not make. I’m not talking about anything illegal. I’m talking about the daily harms people inflict on others — particularly those over whom they hold power.

There is an industry around how to confront such situations but let’s admit there are people and events we cannot change.

Having no participation or influence over the decision, I want to stay out of it.

But as a human being of good will I have to acknowledge harm and live with my action or inaction in the face of it.

So what can you do when you have no means within your role or recourse to outside authority?

Consider the person and respond as an individual. Give of your personal time and resources.

I aspire to this and very often fall short. But I am challenged and inspired by an absurd and beautiful Japanese children’s character.

I am also inspired by the actions of others including my wife, Kathie, my former employer, Peter, and my friend and co-worker, Luke. Small, extraordinary acts of good will by good people.

Team

At Oxygen, we have a team. Knot

Building this team has been the collaborative work of years.

Our CTO, Steve, made IT a strategic asset and championed a seat at the table for software development. I introduced agile principles, carved out space for agile development practices and built a product team.

Our dev director, Luke, and coach, Kris, built a disciplined XP practice. Our product team, Ilio and Suzann, and our Scrum master, Salim, built our Scrum practice.

With Luke’s lead, the team built itself by adding exceptional talents and engaging human beings. Wendy, Oksana, Lee, Robert, Daniel and our first UX Designer, Bob. Each brings experiences, specialties, passions and humor that spurs creativity in our products and simplicity, quality, and expressiveness in their underlying implementation.

For the last year, our team has included our CEO, Gerry, an inspiring and audacious product owner.

Over almost eight years together, the core of us struggled through bad practices and mediocre projects. We taught ourselves better methods and brought in great talent providing the best fit. We grew, we availed ourselves of experienced coaches, we matured, we hit our stride. Now we contribute to our field through open code, writing, presentations and mentoring.

This team is a competitive advantage. We share values, practices, and history. We have complimentary strengths, camaraderie and spirit. We are inventive, versatile and fast on our feet. Our dedication to each other is our strongest retention and recruiting tool.

I care for these individuals and I love the team we’ve created.

The Oxygen Team