Dave Kean

There is something worrying me, it’s been bugging me for a while. I tuned into the England Wales match last weekend, it was online on ESPN-3 and something rather worrying happened. I joined the game at half time and after about 10 or 15 minutes I switched it off to go clean up the garden.

Last night I totally forgot England were playing Ghana. It was not until someone at work mentioned it this morning that I remembered and it was longer still before I went to the BBC website to look for the result.

It’s not that I’m growing tired of the game. I’m still looking forward to watching Seattle play Saturday night in the pub and planning work trips around home dates (and around a couple of away games).

If it’s not the game itself, and I feel pretty safe saying that I love the game as much as ever, I think its England. Last summer I was a true believer, England had a chance, England could do it this time. I had the World cup Wall chart up, my office was adorned with a couple of crosses of St George and I had Three-Lions on my iPod. I was ready, I was a true believer.

Then it all went wrong, just before half time in their opening game. Rob Green (and it’s easy to point fingers, but it’s true) fumbles the ball and it was 1-1. I was in a pub in Redmond and there was silence from the ex-pat two-thirds of the room.

My thoughts at the time were along the lines of “there is plenty of time”, “it’s only the opening game”, “not loosing is far more important than winning”, “the USA are a good side”. You get the idea, but deep down a little piece of me thought “here we go again”.

Every couple of years I buy into the hype, I believed that this time it will be different.

And it never is.

It’s a special ability England has to disappoint when it matters. It does not matter somehow they find a way. Waddle blasting a penalty into the stands, Maradona’s “hand of god” or Green letting the ball bobble into the net.

There is a certain inevitability that some how England will fail to deliver. I can handle a great performance where England is beaten by an even greater team. It’s the 0-0 draws with Algeria that piss me off. Last summer Algeria did not play a stunning game of football, it’s that England were crap on the day.

I don’t want my England to just get through to the second round of a tournament with two draws and a dodgy 1-0 win in the final group game, I want them to do it in style. I want them to go through with conviction and mow down all those put in front of them.

I can tell you which bar or living room I was in for so many of the big games over the last 25 years or so, certainly back to the World cup in Mexico. I’ve missed meetings, taken sick days, vacation and skipped school to be there for a big England game, a dedication I’ve never shown Coventry City or the Seattle Sounders.

Reality is that England today is not a particularly good side; when I dig deep I really don’t believe they are good enough to win Euro 2012. I care, but I’m not going to live and die with them for now, it may come back, but this may be the new state of mind.

I was discussing this today with another one of the expats. I was worried, was my lack of loyalty caused by being away from home for too long?  Pete said no, its OK to like England a little less. He understands and pointed out what they have put us through for the last 40 years.

He’s right, there is something especially English about being a little cynical and bitter about the team. Pessimism is almost the national state of mind, and it’s OK to apply that to England today.

After some interesting discussions today I feel more positive than ever about the future and what I’m building. I am making my house my own, it’s so exciting to have the stability and surety that I’ve been missing.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the creativity I spoke about a few days ago, I am building something just wonderful and feel so positive about tomorrow. I am so fortunate. I have a great career that is getting back on track, wonderful friends and a great family.

OK, I have chosen to live here up to now and it’s easy to complain about the weather, especially this time of year. Yes I know Seattle and the Northwest has a reputation for rain, and as much as people who live here defend it with an “Its not as bad as people think”, there is some truth to it.

Yesterday in the car

It’s almost April, the threat of snow is long gone, but it’s wet and that’s just how the early spring is. The summers are awesome, but when I move I’ll not miss the long grey winters.  This last month or two has seemed particularly bad for the rain, since I got back from Winnipeg three weeks ago it has rained every day except two or three.

Leaden skies and saturated ground in the Snohomish River valley

As is typical at this time of year I do feel the desire to go somewhere warm and feel the sun on my arms for a day or two, pool time with a book would make it even better.

One of the issues I’ve had in my life is creativity, I was looking at this and my hobbies pretty much all revolve around rather structured activities. Racing, football and so all have very comprehensive rulebooks. I’ve said before,  F1 being an engineering/money exercise, there is some allowance for creativity, but that’s done with in the frame of a very comprehensive rule set.

Professionally it’s a similar story. Less so than in past positions perhaps, but none the less it’s all very structured.

One thing I do see is that the more successful project teams and project managers have some level of creativity when it comes to examining and solving problem. True creative thinking isn’t always a straightforward thing to achieve. There are some interesting tools available, I spent an hour this afternoon listening to a pitch on “Idea Mapping” that was given by Jamie Nast and it is a very interesting approach and gave me a lot to think about. Followed by a quick order for Jamie Nast’s book from Amazon. If you want to learn a little more about the Idea Mapping the author has a rather good site at “ideamappingsuccess.com” it’s worth a visit if have even the slightest interest.

However I find flowing ideas and thinking outside the box is not always easy and I’ve been thinking about this a little tonight.

Preliminary

Before we get stuck into the cool free-thinking stuff, we need to understand the boundaries of the project. As Formula-1 has a very comprehensive rule book, every project I’ve worked on or led has some constraints around it so while we are trying to add a little creativity,

Thinking

Take time, but be quick. I get that does not make sense, but… Give yourself a chance to really think in-depth about the problem, but don’t be too deliberate. The creative juices have to flow. I have found carrying a notebook around with me and have started using it to jot down little things through the day. They may not make much sense and occasionally look suspiciously like a shopping list, but I do think little things like this are making a difference.

One thing I do know is not to be slow in asking peers or mentors for their though and ideas. I do have a great mentor who is decently far enough up the food chain that he has a very different view of any particular problem. There have been a number of times that a thought or insight that directed me in a new direction.

One thing that’s been working well in the office is questioning the assumptions. A lot of the process work on my program was done years ago in something of a vacuum. A lot of assumptions were made that are not necessarily correct today. We can change processes, and as time goes on processes may need to change, they should certainly be challenged occasionally. I really don’t think you can come up with a good solutions if you have are starting with incorrect assumptions, so examine your situation and the problem, then have someone else from a different office look at it. Peer review can only make it stronger.

Somewhat related to the peer review is looking at the problem with a slightly different set of ground rules. How would a smaller company handle it? What is we had fewer resources and had to innovate a little, How would we do it? It may throw up innovative solutions that a conventional mindset may not have yielded.

First contact with reality

Yes despite all these ideas (and thousands more) the solutions need to stay within some boundaries, in aero regulatory and certification requirements impose quite a ridged box around how we do things. At some point you have to stack these constraints up against the solutions. I hope you have as much luck with that as I do.

A quick trip into Everett after work to deal with a couple of things. I do love living in this part of the world, but there are so many other places to live yet.

I spoke a month or two ago about burnout and what I was going through. I said my friends called it and they were right,

I’ve been successful at cutting the traveling down a little, delegating some work and enjoying weekends off. I still find the motivation a little difficult to come by at times, but I do have some great people around me.

As far as the traveling goes. I was supposed to be in Wichita next week, but there is way too much to be done in Everett this week. The return trip to Japan has been postponed, obviously.

The work is split into three areas, my leaders, the other leads and my group. All three are very supportive of what needs to be done and being there when I need help.

The leadership understand what is going on, they understand the pressure that is on all of us on the program and have done an excellent job in supporting the leads and engineers. There is understanding that there is more work to be done than we can realistically do. Priorities are set, communicated and then we are left to get it done. If help is requested or a roadblock needs moved we get the support we need.

One of the tasks on my plate is a capacity planning exercise. It’s been an interesting exercise, we have far more “non-scheduled” work than anyone imagined. Work that as a group we don’t get hours for. IT’s the first time I’ve done one of these for a few years and it’s been illuminating to share the results.

My peers form a very supportive group and I think we’ve been doing do a great job at pick up the slack for each other and together understand where we are going. The work is hard, never ending and there will not be time to get all that needs to be done, but we come close.

As for my group, a couple of those working for me have stepped up and give me the space to take care of the process, travel and org wide stuff which is important to tomorrow, yet rather time consuming today.

The last few months have been some of the most professionally rewarding of my career. I feel part of a great team that are making it happen and believe we will deliver the best airplane possible when this is over.

There is no secret to this stuff, it’s about communication and keeping each other informed. This has been particularly important among the lead engineers, and extra meetings suck time, but the results show their value.

A second part was getting more and better sleep, I said that for me a large part of this resolution was taking a conscious decision to spend 10 minutes relaxing before heading to bed.

Reading something that does not involve engineers usually works. I’m not one for “self help” books that are piled on bedside cabinets all over the country, but I have enjoyed the Hugh MacLeod book “Ignore Everybody”, It is about infusing your day with a little creativity. Something I’ve been striving to do for a while. It’s very good and I’ve got his next book “Evil Plans” sitting in the stack to be read.

I’m working on reducing my stress and working less, and I think it’s a made a difference to how I feel. Friends have said I’m doing better, and that’s a way better barometer than anything else. Thanks guys.

It’s not easy and these changes take practice to get right. I’ve felt a difference, it’s worth it.

A busy day, a fun lunch in Seattle, a little fun exercise this afternoon and finished off with dodging the rain for an hour or two wacking some weeds and finishing the clean up started last weekend around and under the deck in the greenbelt behind the house.

Now I was a little upset by what I found, and knew there were a couple of bottles left in the thicker stuff that I left until I could get to them without drawing too much blood. Well today was that day. Today I’m even more pissed off, that people feel it’s OK to throw empty wine bottles off the back of the deck. This is a picture of the rubbish I picked up from under and around the deck today (the white packages are the used diapers).

Well today I discovered another pile of bottles, another one broken down there. And most upsetting of all was more used diapers hiding right at the edge of the deck. That’s just poor form. Open a dictionary, look up White Trash and I’ll let you decide whose picture you’ll find there. While this is upsetting, I know the final laugh is going to come on spectacular summer evenings on my deck.

I have no idea what possesses anyone to think that kicking empty wine bottles, let alone used baby diapers, off the deck is acceptable. The pictures that show the state of the house are else where on this site, it’s quite the body of work that’s being put together here.

There was a lot of change over the F1 off-season. New tires, rear wings, aero regulations, more power for the stewards and of course politics by the truckload. However last night all that mattered for nothing and the cars ran in anger for the first time.

Discovery-one, not much changed. Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull is the class of the field. If his maturity can match the speed of the car then he looks like he will be hard to beat. Not only did he win, he won in style. Vettel took pole by a huge margin, led from green light to checker flag.

Discovery-two, the new regs made a difference. The Drag Reduction System (RDS, or the “flappy rear wing”) is interesting and seemed to allow cars to have a decent run at each other under braking. The purist in me has issues with this, I think you need to earn the place and this aids the overtaking driver. However, in reality, it was awfully fun to watch cars overtake each other.

Hamilton had a great race; he had some undertray problems at the end, but was quick enough to hold a relatively untroubled second place. After the really poor showing in testing over the last 6 weeks McLaren have put in a huge amount of work, simplified a few things and found a lot of time.

Clearly this weekend Vettel was the class of the field.

Third place and maybe the best performance of the weekend was Vitaly Petrov in the very, very sexy looking Lotus-Renault.  Kept away from the drama and stayed in front of Alonso’s Ferrari.

Ferrari looked to be close to Red Bull in testing and have to come away from the weekend disappointed with their performance with Massa unable to do better than eighth. However it was nothing compared to Mercedes race, Schumacher could not even make the final qualifying session and was out qualified by Rosberg. Neither car finished, Schumacher got a puncture early on and eventually retired, while Barrichello’s Williams took out Nico Rosberg.

Another team that looked good on the track was Sauber. New driver Sergio Perez made it a one-stop race, the only driver to do so. The tactic paid off when he finished seventh, one place in front of Japanese driver Kobayashi. Unfortunately the Saubers were later disqualified for technical infringements over the wings.

Lots of overtaking, clearly Vettel was the class of the field, and by some margin too. The circus arrives in Malaysia in a couple of weeks, a very different style of track. Some teams obviously have catching up to do; it’s going to be a busy two weeks for the teams.

I think not…

Another immensely entertaining game at Royal Brougham Park (or Qwest as some insist on calling it), the result was not great, but if Seattle continues to play like they have in the first three games then it’s going to be a great season.

You can pretty much substitute what I had to say after the LA and NYRB games here and be close. Chances, misses and great goal keeping would all be included in what I had to say.

Seattle were ultimately denied by some great goal keeping by Tally Hall, the reflex save to the goal keepers right from White (I think) in the first half was top class. Settle tried the tactic of shooting form outside, then inside and Hall seemed the equal of that idea. It’s difficult to over estimate how masterful the experienced Houston keeper was tonight.

Houston scored first, and rather against the run of play it must be said. Geoff Cameron beat Keller after some good build up play.

Erik Friberg seemed to be part of every Sounders play tonight, he worked tirelessly. Covering back when he needed, probing forward and supporting the attack when he could. A very impressive performance.

Jaqua finally made it onto the pitch, he replaced the largely ineffective White at 61 minutes. His presence was felt immediately with a run at goal. Just being on the field seems to open up Montero’s game. The center backs now had two top class threats to take care of and it seems to create a little more space just in front of the defence.

There is more on the good news front. Zakuani looked close to his best, lots of great runs and scored the first Seattle goal of the year. It came from a badly cleared corner that fell to Zakuani, who neatly put it away. It came during a period of solid Seattle play and the stadium erupted, the spell had been broken and we were back in this one.

Yes there are worries. primarily Montero not scoring again, I think the introduction of Jaqua opened up a little more space and he had a couple of good attempts saved tonight. It will come for Montero, and when it does I think the floodgates will open. He’s too good, but I’m sure the European teams that have looked at him over the last year have noticed the dry spell that goes back into last season.

Seattle has been in all three games so far this year. A little luck and they could be on 7 points rather than the one. Lots of football left to play over the next 7 months.