Author: Jason Cox

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2024 Vote and Seasonal Decor

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to getting past US election Tuesday so my cell phone can get a break from the texts and telemarketers, and we can get on to being flooded with black Friday ads instead. It does occur to me that it would be extremely hard to forget to vote with all the media channels blasting reminders to us. I love how the State of California even sends out notices, including step by step “your ballot is in the mail to you” to “your ballot has been counted” updates. They have better ballot tracking updates than Amazon does for shipping! Anyway, if you are a US citizen, do democracy a solid and make sure you vote.

Trees and lights! Our annual ritual begins. I know, you probably complain about the way-too-soon sprouting of Christmas trees next to the Halloween decor at your local retailer. I laugh about it myself, but I confess, we religiously open the attic on November 1st to unleash the holiday cheer for our home too. Down comes the tree boxes. Plastic bins packed with lights, ornaments, greenery, golden treasures, and silver bells all parade down the steps to the main hall. Popping sounds are heard across the house as the boxes unleash their seasonal joy. Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Michael Bublé paint the air with their familiar festive vocals. The Keurig sets aside the coffee pods and begins churning out hot chocolate, heavy on the chocolate. Slowly the scent of jubilation can be felt everywhere!

Pass me the ibuprofen! This weekend I strung the lights on the house, across the back woods and onto the fence. It takes a solid day and about a week to recover. I’m pretty much a wimp. Lifting, wrapping, hanging, draping, and zip-tying all that specular magic in place pushed me past my regular “I can push the J key” hard work. But oh my goodness, as night fell last night, our yard erupted once again with the multi-color sparkling madness that is the seasonal decor. That’s right! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I’m sure our neighbors love us.

The holiday season can be stressful. We have so much we want to do. There are things to buy, people to see, tasks to get done. But don’t lose sight of the joy! If you feel overwhelmed or anxious, pause and reflect. The miracle of merriment presents itself when we get a chance to enjoy our labors, savor the beauty around us and spend time with the ones we love. So, yes, if you are crazy like us, pull down those boxes. Hang up the delightful decor. Cuddle up next to some cozy memories. Reminisce and appreciate the season. Share time with your loved ones… oh yes, and vote.

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Be a Danny

Last Wednesday was my brother’s birthday. Well, technically he was really my stepbrother-in-law. While Danny was 15 years older than me and didn’t enter my life until I was almost a teen, I was proud to call him my older brother. He was a technical wizard. He introduced me to electronics, taught me how to solder, program and troubleshoot. I spent a few summers with him installing large HVAC systems in aerospace manufacturing plants. We built computers, framed houses, repaired cars, ran network cables, and even built an automated furnace control system using a PC and a game controller for the local glass plant (no joke!). Danny was more than a brother. He was a mentor. He took projects and took off work, just so he could spend time with me and teach me.

Eight years ago, we took Danny to Disneyland along with my sister, niece, and her family. We had a great time, but Danny grew tired quickly. We initially got him a scooter to ride, but he was too proud to use it at first. Eventually, the exhaustion won, he gave me his signature eye roll grimace and rested himself on the seat. The recently diagnosed cancer was wearing on him. He looked good and told me that he even felt good too, but the fatigue was overwhelming. My big brother was always active, always a helper. It was hard to see him succumb to the illness that was invading his body. We made wonderful memories that October, exploring the parks, laughing, reminiscing, and spending time together. Little did I know that it would be our last time. The cancer would soon take over. He would no longer be able to travel and all too soon, his body would give out.

I miss Danny, but I’m grateful for all the happy memories, the fun times and even the work times. He blessed me with his time, his talents, his wisdom, and his love. Our friends and family that surround us, shape us. They propel us, lift us up when we are down, and challenge us when we are behind. A light nudge. A lesson given. A sympathetic hug. They show us new things and remind us to cherish the old. Those small investments become the brick and mortar of our lives. We thrive because they cared. Danny was that for me. I’m forever grateful for his life, his impact, and the time we shared.

Who is your Danny? I suspect there is someone who has been a big impact in your life as well. If they are still with us, thank them. If like Danny, they have graduated from life, remember them. You don’t need to wait for Día de Muertos, you can start today. Pay respect, cherish, and celebrate their life and the blessing they were to you. And most of all, look for the opportunity for you to be a Danny to someone else. Pay if forward. Pour your time into others around you. We need you! Friends and family need you. You can make a difference in someone else. The time we have is short and precious. Don’t wait! Invest and create those memories today.

1984 – This was shortly after we met for the first time. I was 13 and eager to learn from my older brother.
Danny and Jason, 2004
Jason and Danny enjoying Disneyland on Oct. 19, 2016. This would be the last time we would spend together before his passing on December 3rd.

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Prepare for Turbulence

Turbulence. Frequent flyers can tell you tales about sudden and unpredictable changes in air pressure and airspeed that caused the aircraft to shake, wobble, or drop unexpectedly. I’ve been on many flights like that. When the turbulence hits, passengers will gasp, yelp, or add other colorful commentary to the situation. I just laugh or cry uncontrollably like I’m on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. 

In December 2022, Southwest Airlines hit serious turbulence. But this time, it wasn’t just in the air. The crisis was at the peak of the holiday travel season and is referred to in the news media as the Southwest Airlines holiday travel meltdown. What had gone wrong? Severe weather had resulted in some of the first flight cancellations. That meant planes, pilots and crews were not where they needed to be. The software systems Southwest used to track all of that was woefully outdated and was unable to respond to the weather disruptions and massive holiday travel load. Flights were getting delayed or canceled due to business process problems, missing aircraft, or missing crew members. It continued to spiral down. Their technology couldn’t handle the fluid turbulence of rapidly deteriorating conditions. Eventually, the carrier was forced to cancel more than 15,000 flights. Passengers and crew members alike were stranded, frustrated and furious.

Turbulence leads to learning. Last week in Las Vegas, Lauren Woods, CIO of Southwest Airlines, took the stage in front of a crowd of technology leaders at the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. She explained how the meltdown was the result of antiquated systems and processes. They were too slow and never designed to handle this level of change. But navigating turbulence forces you to learn and grow. They streamlined their business processes, insourced their IT and migrated their systems to the cloud, leveraging a serverless multi-regional highly resilient approach to build their new fare search, airline, and crew scheduling systems. They saw a 400% speed improvement over their previous solution. The crew scheduling system was replaced with a new tool with advance algorithms and specific capabilities to manage disaster scenarios and quickly adapt to scheduling turbulence. It could quickly track and optimize flights, planes, and crews. They called this new tool, Crew and Aircraft Integrated Recovery and Optimizer (CAIRO). The result? When recent turbulent moments hit, their system was able to respond quickly, adjust to unexpected conditions and ultimately deliver their passengers and crews to their rightful destinations. Southwest now has the lowest cancelation rate of any airline, thanks to this investment.

Turbulence happens. Are we ready for it? What is going to shake up our cabin and disrupt our businesses? Whatever it is, we need to prepare for it. That means investing time and resources into making our process and systems more reliable, resilient, and ready. Are we ready? Where do we have opportunities for improvement? Let’s talk… before the turbulence hits. It’s time to fasten our seatbelts and prepare for takeoff.

Have a safe flight!

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A Blueprint of Encouragement

The floor creaked when I walked into the foyer. Above me hung an old gas lamp that had been converted to electricity. The spirt of the flames cast warm pools of light on the old wooden floor. I glanced to my right and saw a row of desks and an executive office suite tucked away in the corner. A familiar laugh burst through the door, along with my dad. “Jay-boy!” He exclaimed. Enduring, but slightly embarrassing, especially for an eleven-year-old. His long arms wrapped me in a bear hug way. “Let’s get you set up!” He led me around the staircase, past the kitchen area to a door that plunged down into the basement. It was lit with overhead office florescent fixtures, but the dark walls seem to absorb all the light like a cave. We walked around the corner to a small room with a huge machine that took up the width of the room. 

My dad flipped an electrical switch, and the beast came to life with an intimidating hum. Big hidden fans started quietly whistling and winding up like a jet engine. My dad got busy twisting knobs, adjusting metal shields, and moving across the metal monster like he was playing an instrument. “Here we go!” He twisted a metal valve. What was that? My wonder was soon removed as the answer came to me like a punch in a face. Ammonia! My eyes started watering immediately and I coughed. My dad burst out laughing. “You’ll get used to it! Help me with this.” He directed me to the metal drawer and pulled open a black plastic package. He pulled out a large sheet of paper that had a faint yellow tint all over it. 

“Here, align this drawing on top of the yellow paper.” He instructed as he put a translucent engineering mylar drawing over the top of the paper. “Make sure it is perfectly aligned and then feed it into the light roller here.” I noticed that the machine was starting to glow. It seemed to have a blue tint. I could feel the heat radiating from the clear glass cylinder. I followed my dad’s direction, aligned the sheets, and fed them into the machine. It rolled up and over and appeared in the tray just above the light. 

“Notice how the yellow is gone where there was no line work.” It was true! The light had burned off the yellow. He continued, “Feed the yellow paper into the developer. Keep it tight against the conveyor belt.” We curled the once yellow paper into the top part of the monster. It took its time but finally started feeding out into the top tray. The ammonia round-two hit me again. I’m pretty sure I had tears coming down my face by now, but I couldn’t stop looking! The paper was full of blue lines. “See, that’s the blueprint. That wasn’t too bad, was it?” My dad asked, ignoring my gasping and wincing from the smell. “I need to go back upstairs to make some calls. Run the rest of the prints for me.” He started walking out of the room and glanced back at me. I must have had my mouth open because he burst into his signature laugh. “You can do it! I know you can. I’ll be upstairs if you need help.”

Now it was just me and the ammonia dragon. I shook my head and half-heartedly encouraged myself, “That’s right, you can do it, Jay-boy.” Well, it turned out not to be that difficult. I managed to get all the prints he needed and would subsequently run hundreds, no, thousands of prints on that machine over the years. It was magical every time, or maybe it was just the ammonia.

That metal dragon retired many years ago. That old office house is gone, demolished to make room for a new highway. My dad is gone too. I miss him but will forever remember his trust in me. “You can do it, Jay-boy.” It was fuel to face the ammonia behemoth at the time, but more importantly, it taught me the power of encouragement.

Have you encouraged someone else recently? I need to do more of that. We can all use some encouragement and so can those around us. Take a moment today and think about someone you know, a team member, a loved one, or a friend. Encourage them. I know you can do it, and hopefully you can do it without ammonia. 

Have a great week!

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The Enchanted Stream

It was like liquid ice. I could feel the cool stream forming swirly eddies on my face, bubbling and kissing my cheeks with each frosty splash. As I lowered my head deeper below the surface, I could feel watery fingers tug and pull at my hair. It was floating and waving in the cool liquid bliss. The gentle flow saturated my senses. I could only hear the water. All other sounds were gone. I could only feel the river. The cool flow and majestic rocks pressed up against me. My soul was transported. In that moment, I felt myself flying beyond the glassy surface to a magical portal of serenity and peace.

There’s a quaint little bridge in Sligachan on the Isle of Skye. Below the ancient stone walkway flows a tiny crystal-clear stream. It’s fed by the nearby emerald-green mountains that are continually washed by the highland’s life-giving foggy mist. Nestled deeply in the delightful Scottish scene is a mystical lore and an enchanted legend that welcomes visitors to this very day.

Nobody was quite like Scáthach. She lived on Skye and was known as the greatest warrior in all of Scotland. Her renown spread to Ireland and landed on the ambitious ears of Cú Chulainn, Ireland’s greatest fighter. He challenged Scáthach to a battle to prove his own strength. The epic battle raged for weeks, reshaping Skye, moving mountains, and carving new valleys. Animals and life itself began to leave the Isle.

Scáthach’s daughter was heartbroken and weary of the war. She fled to the stream at Sligachan and began to weep. The fairies of the river heard her and beckoned her to dunk her face into the stream to gain knowledge to end the war. As she did, the fairies blessed her with wisdom. She rose and set on a journey to gather herbs, meats, nuts, and every delicious thing she could. With that she prepared an incredible meal in her home. The scent of the meal covered the land, melting the hearts of the fighting warriors. Scáthach and Cú Chulainn couldn’t resist. They made their way to Scáthach’s home and feasted on an incredible meal. By eating in Scáthach’s home, Cú Chulainn became a welcome guest and in the rules of Celtic hospitality, you can never fight someone who has hosted you for dinner. Ever. The battle ended, but the river of Sligachan would forever be disturbed. As the myth goes, the stream would forever be enchanted and bless all who dip their face in its cool watery portal with endless wisdom and beauty.

As we concluded our tour through the Isle of Skye, we ended up at this charming stream and story of Scáthach. Our guide told us the story and welcomed us to connect with the legend if we desired. It was optional, but I wasn’t going to skip the moment. All fanciful myths aside, the scene was spectacular and the opportunity to immerse myself physically into a fantastic story was too irresistible and refreshing to miss. The cool water. The crisp air. The unbelievable highlands captured our hearts and escorted us into the Scottish tale. My family and I still remember that moment. That beautiful stream we touched let us leave the battlefield of this busy earth behind and transported us to a vital and peaceful land with the ones we love.

We don’t need a stream in Sligachan or a story of the famous Scáthach to pause the daily battles and enjoy eternal beauty. We can do it right now. For a moment, dip your face into the serenity of the now. Take a moment and experience the wonders around you. Appreciate the crisp life that is powering your every breath. Soak in the magic of creation and be renewed even today. And don’t worry if you never make it to Skye to see this tiny little stream. I think all of you are already eternally beautiful.

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Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are! Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky.”

Where I grew up, elementary school was grades 1 through 6 and when you graduated from 6th grade, you were promoted to Junior High school. For the first time in your educational career, you were introduced to the responsibility of managing your class schedules, electives, and hallway lockers. Do you recall those days? At thirteen years of age, uncoordinated, unpopular, timid, and slightly attention challenged, it was often a recipe for disaster for me. But I somehow managed. I even signed up for my electives. I picked journalism because they got to use a computer, but beyond that, I had no idea what to pick. I rolled the dice and signed up for band. 

I decided to try the trumpet as my instrument. As with every member, we were given special attention by the instructor. We began practicing on day one and it was a sonic disaster. Squawks, buzzes, squeaks, and raspy rattles were heard across the auditorium. I questioned my decision more than once but kept practicing along with my peers. With our instructors help, we finally began to learn proper posture, embouchure, breathing and finger placement. Like some sort of miracle, after a while, real notes started to appear. We were no way close to competing with Louis Armstrong, but we could really blast “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” like nobody’s business. 

I recall how we all thought we had move up into the major leagues when we hit almost every note and occasionally even had the timing right. Some notes were extra special. They require a bit more skill to hit so when you finally did, you liked to hold it a bit longer, perhaps too long. With a help of a metronome, we eventually moved past the “finally got it so hold it” tendency. The trumpet concerto finally had those stars twinkling. 

The band teacher assembled everyone together. We had been practicing and performing separately but now it was time to play together. Our trumpet section joined the flutes, clarinets, trombones, saxophones, and percussion. The entire band came together and was ready to perform.

Have you ever been in a car accident? There is a weird feeling where all control is pulled away from you and the world boils in chaos all around you. Well, that is how it was when we first started playing together. It was awful! We were all blindly playing through the notes on the sheet music in front of us, unaware of being out of sync and out of tune with everyone else. 

“Stop! Stop! Stop!” the instructor tried to wrangle the stampede. “Let’s start slow. Hold each note until I tell you to move on. Watch me!” The conductor raised his baton, and, on the downstroke, the room erupted in the “Mary” note. It started rough but as we held it, something amazing happened. We finally heard each other for the first time. It was actually quite remarkable. The instructor smiled. Seeing us each awaken to this new connection he moved on to the next stroke, “had”, then “a” and the double beat “little.” When we finally reached “go” there was a bit of awe in the room, and we were even a bit emotional. We had done it! It was no Concerto Magnifico, but it had unlocked a key lesson in life. Paying attention and listening to each other would allow us to make beautiful music together. 

We all have a part to play. We carry different instruments in life. We each have unique abilities, talents, passions, and perspective. Something incredible happens when we come together, listen to each other, and focus on a common outcome. Our individual notes become a chorus, resonating, and amplifying each other into something that we could never achieve on our own. Individually, we are all amazing wonders, but together, we are magnificent, like a diamond in the sky!

Play your notes with all your heart! But listen. Connect. Feel the majesty of what we can be together. Let’s keep playing!

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Joy

Joy. It’s a great thing! But do you feel it right now? Has it been in short supply? Well, I confess, there are times when life seems rather joyless and barren. But maybe it’s time for a change. What do you say, ready to find some joy?

Joy is an amazing emotion. It gives us a sense of happiness, contentment, well-being, and wonder. It has a positive healing effect, connecting us to optimistic outcomes, bridging us over stressful difficulties, binding us to each other and unleashing wells of creative potential hidden deep within us.

Joy is highly contagious. Just watch when a joyful person enters the room. A sense of lightness and fun starts to emerge. A smile might even sneak its way across your face and onto others in the room. Eyes will start to beam with glee and hope. Joy arrives and profoundly motivates us. It gives us a sense of flow, meaning and awe. Studies have even shown that joy is linked to improved physical and mental health. It can help lower blood pressure, boost our immune system, and reduce anxiety and depression. We need joy.

Good news! Joy is close at hand. But it is a choice, our choice. How do we choose? It has been my experience that joy is released when I celebrate gratitude and reflect on the myriads of good things that illuminate my day, no matter how small. Joy visits when I take time to pursue my passions or surround myself with true and positive friends. It surges into my soul when I grab hold of the present moment, breathe in the atmosphere, and feel the magnificent earth pushing up and supporting me. Worry, problems and despair take their seats in the back of the room as joy makes its brilliant presence known. It is light. It rescues us from the darkness and transports us a land of hopeful delight.

It’s time to get some joy. Take matters into your own hands. Tune in. Like and subscribe to joy. You will be glad you did. 

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Wind the Clock

TransAsia Airways Flight 235 had just departed from Taipei Songshan Airport in Taiwan on its way to Kinmen Airport in China. Moments after takeoff, an alarm sent a wave of panic through the cockpit. Engine number-2 had failed. At only 1,630 feet, there was very little room to act. Panic mode hit the crew. In a rush to react to the crisis, the pilot made a fatal mistake. Instead of adjusting the controls to remedy the failed number-2 engine, he accidently reduced power and subsequently shut down the operative engine number-1. Stall warnings filled the cockpit. He was unaware of his mistake and continue to try to regain control. But the loss of power from both engines was unrecoverable. The aircraft rolled and barely missed hitting an apartment building but struck a taxicab with the tip of its wing. The outboard section of the wing was torn off when it struck a concrete guardrail. It continued its roll and eventually struck the water upside down, breaking into two main pieces. Sadly, most of the passengers and crew would be lost. 

“In an emergency situation, first, wind the clock.” James Tatum, an SRE leader on my team, pointed me to this sage advice used in military flight training. While a lot of the controls are now digital, it used to be the case that that in the array of displays, switches and buttons, there would be a manual clock timer in the cockpit. As the pilot was trained through many emergency situations, they were given the advice to “wind the clock.” It didn’t do anything or remedy the problem. Instead, it was to fix the pilot so they could fix the problem. The idea was to say, take a moment. Pause. Relax. Gain situational awareness and formulate a plan before acting. If the crew of Flight 235 had followed that advice, there is a possibility that they would have avoided the fatal error and could have recovered the situation, saving the lives of their passengers and fellow crew members.

Emergency! Panic! Our world is full of that. We are all going to face emergencies, crisis situations and crucial moments where our decisions must be immediate and correct.

As SREs on-call, my team is intimately familiar with demands of the job to restore services, react quickly to incidents and remedy failures. How do we react to alarms? When the call comes in, the pager siren rings or the dashboard goes red, what do we do? Before acting rashly, pause for a moment. Assess the situation. What is really broken? What is the best course of action? Proceed with thoughtful and calm determination.

Life is going to throw problems at you. You will need to react, and your actions will matter. But before you do… wind the clock.

Dashboard cam footage clips of Flight 235 hitting a taxicab and crashing in the water.
Clips from Dashboard Cam that captures the crash of Flight 235 – https://x.com/AirlineReporter/status/562823846290808835
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The Blue Screen of Summer

This weekend I heard, “This week has been the longest year ever!” I think we can all appreciate that sentiment!

First, thank you all for your tireless efforts to help mitigate the impacts of the global CrowdStrike related Microsoft system outages last week. As technology first responders, many of you were on the case, triaging the incident and looking for cures, even before many of us were even aware. I saw my teams swarm the incidents, creatively look for mitigation steps, and support each other to ensure we had the fastest path to resolution. I know many of you were on till wee hours of the morning getting our highest priority systems running and some are still working other impacts, even today. Thank you!

Second, in addition to globally impacting events and news that hit this week, we are starting to see an uptick in COVID cases and other illnesses. If that includes you, please take the time to rest and recover! For all of us, this is a good reminder that we should take care of ourselves. Make sure to prioritize your health and well-being.

The dog days of summer are upon us! What are you doing about it? My family and I have been taking walks around our neighborhood just after dusk, just when the heat of the day has lifted, and the cool night sky starts to appear. It is so refreshing and renewing. I encourage all of you to find something like that to do each day. It can be so helpful to ground you and recharge your spirit. Of course, make sure you are getting enough sleep, plenty of water and eating well. The stress of life and the heat of the season can wear on you, often with little or no warning.

I have a challenge for you. Stand up and stretch. Take a breath and if you can, grab a cool glass of water and gaze outside. Notice the summer glistening sun and those tiny details painted across the terrain. Exhale. You are part of this summer celebration. Appreciate this moment, the refreshing pause and connection with all creation in all the seasons. Take another deep breath, taste the life-giving oxygen, and savor the prospect of our glorious future.

We are here to make a difference. Take care of yourself and each other!

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Wiring for Outcomes

“Come back in half an hour,” the host at Brix Italian Restaurant in Belleville, New Jersey, said with a sympathetic smile. The catering order for the wedding rehearsal dinner for about 100 people was not quite ready. When I had been sent to pick it up, what I didn’t know was that the restaurant was waiting to make a call back or see a “real person” show up for the order before starting on the final preparation. My daughter and I fancied a trip to Starbucks while we waited. I know, those of you who know me, are shocked to hear that. When we returned, tins full of food and utensils were waiting for us. We packed up the food and delivered it to the dining hall just in time to discover that there was an error with the order. Several, actually. My brother-in-law started on a list of “Oh no! Where is this?” questions. Critical items were missing, demanding a journey back to Brix. Arriving back at the restaurant, I learned that there had been several miscommunications between the person ordering and the host. Both sides misunderstood things. A few calls and transactions later, and another trip to Starbucks (of course), and we were ready for final delivery back to the venue. Urgent text and calls were coming in. We were late. We carried in the last dishes as the first guests started to arrive. It worked out, eventually.

Two weeks ago, my family and I made a trip to New Jersey to attend my niece’s wedding. My wife had helped her sister plan the event. As you can see from the story above, I had the audacious task of being the gopher, picking up supplies and orders. I wasn’t involved in the planning or decisions; I was just following orders. I didn’t mind. I got to spend time with my kids, even if it was just doing errands around the city. And yes, on many occasions it involved a coffee stop. But during this whole experience, I couldn’t help but see the inefficiencies and problems with this system. I was getting instructions to do things without any context as to why. Blindly following orders often means information gaps, inefficiencies, and lower quality, suboptimal outcomes. I saw that play out a dozen times. 

Information is gold, but if you don’t have access to it, it is no different than any other rock in the mine. Empowering the person doing the work with the information they need to do the work is critical. For example, if I had understood the dietary plans for the rehearsal dinner or had been given insight into the rest of the menu, I would have been able to make decisions and double check the order before even leaving the restaurant. We were not operating as a team, but as siloed functions. The same thing happens in organizations. We often create towers of expertise and create transactional methods between those groups to get the work done. But sadly, there is often catastrophic context loss between those silos that results in a lack of clarity, misunderstandings, and errors. Tickets bounce back and forth between groups like ping pong balls. Multiple meetings are scheduled to close the gaps. Deliveries are delayed. Estimates are breached. Service is reduced. Teams are frustrated and outcomes are barely adequate. Sound familiar?

I’m a big proponent of aligning full-stack teams around outcomes. Enable low latency collaboration through proximity. Embed expertise close to the problem and enrich those team members with the greater context. In my example, if I had been embedded in the planning team, I would have understood the nuances needed to ensure alignment with the goals. When supply issues at the restaurant resulted in the need to pivot away from the written requirements, I could have easily and quickly made the changes that would have aligned with the menu goals because I was part of those plans. The same applies to our engineering teams. Don’t just understand the tasks in the user story you pull off the backlog, understand the why. When the technical or demand landscape changes, the engineer is empowered to apply problem solving skills that are relevant and contribute to the final outcome. By being embedded in the product team, each team member, regardless of their functional expertise, understands the goals, the common purposes, and each is able to quickly adapt and solve for unexpected complexities and changes. Gene Kim and Dr. Steven Spear call this “wiring for a winning organization.”

“Part of wiring an organization to win is to ensure that leaders at all levels are able to create conditions in which people can give the fullest expression to their problem-solving potential, both individually and through collective action toward a common purpose.” 
- Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear, Wiring the Winning Organization

I’m a big fan of embedding engineers into business and product teams. It promotes proximity powered empathy engineering, unlocking information flow and enabling all the engineers and the rest of the product team to move fast. With context powered agility, team members can react to complex and problematic occurrences with elegance and innovation. I’m also fully aware that we all still have work to do. There are gaps we can close and other things we can do to make things better. If you find yourself driving around New Jersey blindly delivering wrong things at the wrong time, I can relate. Let’s collaborate! Let’s rewire and make it better. Oh, and of course, let’s stop by Starbucks on the way.