What systems mean to me
January 31, 2012 at 12:17 am | Posted in Blogroll, Systems Thinking | Leave a commentI am no expert on anything, but I am interested in everything conceptual. I am especially fascinated by a few of those concepts; one of them being “Systems thinking”. The reason is two-fold. On one hand, it helps me to drill down any thoughts or experiences to a very generic level and then try to apply them to specific situations. On the other, I always find it a somewhat elusive concept and more I read & think about it, more shades become visible; it provides a challenging and exhilarating journey.
Let’s start with the dictionary definition of system which is “set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network”. I feel this definition comes more from the physical sciences. Other definitions are, “Combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole” “Ordered and comprehensive assemblage of facts, principles, doctrines, or the like in a particular field of knowledge or thought” So it is not limited to physical things but also applies to virtual elements like facts or principles. And all these definitions agree on its complexity.
Initially I also used to view a system as made up of parts but slowly veered around to an alternate way of treating the systems as indivisible; they can’t be broken in parts. The moment we do it, the system loses its wholeness and integrity. When we consider it as indivisible, each system gets lot more freedom once it is taken out of the hierarchy of systems. After all systems are conceptual constructs and we can define them whichever way we want.
For example, rather than treating individuals as parts of a bigger system called family or employees as parts of a bigger organization, I prefer to treat individuals & employees as independent systems in their own right interacting with other systems like family or organization. Family and organization are concepts and not collections of individuals or employees. In a given organization, all employees may be replaced by robots and still the organization remains an organization.
This is a fundamental shift in approach. Each system has its boundaries. If we consider it as collection of parts, these parts are inside the system boundary. When we consider a system only as a concept the interacting systems are outside the boundary of the system. In one view, employees are inside and customers outside. In the other view, both are outside. It leads to very different outcomes when applied to specific situations. Instead of systems being bigger or smaller which automatically means more important or less important now puts every system on equal footing.
Another aspect is difference between individuals and roles. When individuals are considered as part of the family of organization, we tend to mix the roles. For example, an individual who is an employee of an organization may also be a shareholder of the same organization. But the management would treat him as a single individual and get disturbed, annoyed or enraged when his behavior as one role may be very different from expectation of the organization from the other role. Similarly, two brothers may also be partners in family business. If they mix the two roles, there are endless tensions and problems. Whereas if they are clear that their interactions as brothers are part of a different system from their interactions as partners of a different system and keep them completely isolated, there would be no problems.
Another aspect of systems is their complexity. A common approach is to treat it as inevitable and deal with it accordingly. I feel complexity is relative to how much we know about the system and the dimensions of the environment in which it operates. A system is complex as long as we don’t know enough about it. We may not be even aware of certain dimensions on which it operates. The moment we become aware, the complexity starts vanishing. In addition, as we become aware of new relationships in a given dimension, the system starts losing its complexity. So apart from taking indirect routes to deal with this complexity, we can also try to look for other dimensions or relationships which exist but are so far not visible to us.
I have shared above one way of viewing systems. I don’t propose it as the only way but since I find it quite useful to understand as well as sometimes predict the behavior of systems I as a system interact with. I would like to know whether any of this makes sense to you and whether it is helpful when you try to apply it.
Next 10 years of agile
January 23, 2012 at 5:20 pm | Posted in Blogroll, Scrum and agile | 1 CommentIn last 11 months there is a flood of material about “Next 10 years of agile”. Do we need one more? I think I do, because a blog is like a private diary which is publicly shared. I have been closely following views expressed by the authors of the agile manifesto as well as other experts in the field. A layman like me gets overwhelmed by the variety and richness of the thoughts, and needs to digest it all to make sense of it for himself before he can use it in his work. So here goes what it all means to me.
Let me start with the unanimous agreement during the retrospective on 10 years of Agile software development at Snowbird Utah last Feb, about four key success factors for the next 10 years.
- Demand Technical Excellence
- Promote Individual Change and Lead Organizational Change
- Organize Knowledge and Promote Education
- Maximize Value Creation across the Entire Process
Let me share some exciting possibilities to work on, as I see them.
Let us start with “Maximize Value Creation across the Entire Process” and “Promote Individual Change and Lead Organizational Change”. As Jeff Sutherland said, “individuals adapting to change is not enough, organizations must be structured for agile response”. At Impetus, when we tried to extend Scrum beyond software to other areas of the organization, the immediate roadblock was the specific terms used in Scrum for different roles practices and events. For many non-engineering teams, there is no product that they directly work on and the terms like product owner or product backlog are confusing to them. However, being part of the organization they need to be agile and Scrum can be quite useful to them. So we need a more generic terminology which does not lose the original intent and at the same time makes sense to a wider audience across the organization. This provides a great opportunity to clearly & unambiguously understand the underlying concepts, which will help not only the wider audience but also help us in software development itself.
Scrum is currently used for software product development which means it is used for taking the product from its current state to a new and more desired state. In short it is about effectively managing this change. Every business organization is involved in creating & supplying products and / or services. To keep pace with market & competition, every business organization needs to keep changing its product / service offering. Similarly, every part of the organization is also playing this role for the rest of the organization. So there is no reason why Scrum can’t be useful to manage these types of changes in short increments and frequent feedback. If we use more general terms like “Change owner” and “Change backlog”, they would fit all such situations.
Scrum is useful for software product development because currently there is no way it can be completely automated and therefore people are essential. Unlike physical systems, human systems are complex and their behavior is not completely predictable. Any attempt to control such systems can lead to disappointments. Scrum relies on self-organizing capabilities of complex systems to manage this unpredictability. But there is a thin line between self-organization and anarchy. If it is not managed properly, the outcome can be worse than the days of close monitoring & control. Leaders at the team level need to work hand-in-hand to patiently bring about this transformation.
Scrum encourages being realistic while planning as well while reviewing the daily status. It encourages transparency and making the latest update visible to all concerned. This would become extremely important when Scrum is applied to the whole value chain. In the absence of latest and reliable information, the proactivity and quality of work suffers.
In the current context, technical excellence relates to large enough backlog being available in a ready state with definition of DONE clearly stated along with good practices in place to ensure proper testing within the same sprint. The emphasis on quality & excellence needs to be brought to all the practices the team adopts.
Last but not the least; right organizational structures for agile response are very important. An organization has structures of different types, like hierarchical, legal and cultural. Structures are difficult to form and even more difficult to change even after they become outdated. The concept of structured freedom from systems thinking can be effectively used for this purpose.
To summarize, there are great opportunities to take Scrum to the next level by using it not merely for software development but applying it to different parts of the organization. But to do this effectively,
- We need to understand the underlying concepts and use appropriate terms, which while not losing the original intent of the Scrum terms, makes them comfortable to use.
- We can use self-organization far more widely and effectively. But for this to happen, the leadership must understand what is involved and put right structures & mechanisms in place to make sure that self-organization does not lead to anarchy but frees the leadership from need to spend their time on close monitoring and controlling. When this happens the team leaders can spend their time helping & empowering the teams to fully tap into the immense human potential.
- We need to understand importance of being realistic and making the latest status widely visible across the whole value chain, so that different parts don’t merely act as cogs in the wheel but proactively drive communication actions & decisions both upstream & downstream.
- Both technical excellence and practice excellence are important.
- Structured freedom is a useful concept to manage structures within an organization.
Freedom OF choice or Freedom FROM choice
January 16, 2012 at 10:19 am | Posted in Blogroll, Out of my mind, Practice Excellence, Scrum and agile | 2 CommentsWhenever we talk of freedom, the common assumption is that it is about situations when we are not allowed to choose what we do or don’t do, where we go or don’t go, with whom we will talk or won’t talk and similar such choices. In short we wish to have more control on our actions and decisions. When we don’t have enough freedom, we crave for more. As it is true for individuals, it is equally true for groups of people as well as for whole societies. So there must be something common about what restricts our freedom. A better understanding about these underlying causes would help us to deal with such cases more effectively.
In my opinion one of the most importance reasons is what are others’ expectations from us as well as how safe or risky they feel about letting us do what we wish to do. Their expectations from us are directly determined by what are their needs goals and objectives and how they perceive our actions will help in fulfilling them. How safe / risky they feel depends on how they view our capabilities and by their past experience when dealing with us in similar situations. If they feel safe they will give us more freedom, if not they would restrictions on us if they have the power to do so else they will try to create hurdles for us.
How we use this information about likely reasons depends a lot on situations and context in which we work as well as what choices we have in those situations. However, it helps to be aware of the common causes and keep them in mind while dealing with specific cases.
There is an entertaining soap currently running on Sony TV titled “Bade Achhe Lagte Hain” starring Ram Kapoor and Saakshi Tanwar. I distinctly remember one scene from a recent episode where Priya (Saakshi) a middle class girl is married to the business tycoon (Ram Kapoor). On her first morning in the new home, Ram’s butler Bansi kaka asks her choice by beverage from coffee, tea and many varieties of juices. When she prefers coffee, he rattles off names of ten different varieties. She is not accustomed to so many options and overwhelmed she asks him to bring whatever he wants. We have all come across many more choices than we care to have. For example, when we are planning for a vacation, if we have to take all the decisions, from where we should go and mode of travel, stay arrangements, places to see and so on, we would rather leave majority of that decision overload to the expert like a travel agency. We may give some broad preferences and leave the nitty-gritty to them. Time & attention are the scarcest resources we have and we would always like to conserve them for things that matter to us most.
In short, we do look for freedom OF choice where we don’t have it and we also seek freedom FROM choices where we don’t want to be bothered. Policies & processes are both empowering as well as restricting depending on how well they are aligned with our needs. Hence, it is very important for those who frame the policies and design the processes to understand the needs of those who would be using them and sensitive to their preferences. Sometimes, it may be even better to give up the idea of a new policy / process, or to modify / get rid of an existing one if it has become outdated and is not serving the original intention any more.
The thoughts shared above are applicable in all walks of our life; In short they seem to be applicable to all human systems. Have you also experienced similar situations? If yes, you may like to share.
Closer home, they have a significance for software development as well, especially agile software development which encourages the teams to be self-organized. Such teams expect lot more freedom than what traditional teams are used to. It is normally assumed that teams want more & more freedom OF choice. However, I have come across situations where the team members like to be spared too much freedom and want the protection provided by rules, both defined by Scrum as well as by the organization. The leaders have a responsibility to design such rules carefully so that they provide freedom of as well as from choices as appropriate.
Is my integrity same as yours
January 9, 2012 at 10:30 am | Posted in Blogroll, Out of my mind | 1 CommentThese days we often hear and talk of integrity. More the attention more is the questioning and doubts. Dictionary defines “integrity” in two ways; as “The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness” and as “The state of being whole and undivided”. We are told that “integrity” is not same as “morality”, which makes sense. So let us explore integrity as being whole and undivided.
The question that often bothers me is what integrity is in case of say crooks. Similar to the famous Amitabh Bachchan dialog in the film Namak Halal, the crooks would say “I talk crookedness, I walk crookedness…” Born crooks live crookedness in all walks of their life. They have complete internal integrity. How about external? They successfully pretend to be honest and dependable, because without it they can’t con others. Here again their external behavior is completely aligned and whole with their internal crookedness. So they are complete and whole; true epitomes of integrity 
Remember the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog? Given a chance, a scorpion will always sting because it is its nature. A frog would be a fool to assume otherwise. Only in movies and serials, the good trumps over the evil in the end; real life is different.
Is that bad? Not necessarily. From a systems perspective, any system needs all shades of diversity to remain whole and maintain its integrity. Too much homogeneity and it would be doomed to extinction. Diversity helps the creative tension, which is essential for change and growth. Civilizations need both peace and wars.
Closer home the software teams need the diversity, especially the self-organizing agile teams. Rapid and apt response to change needs a wide range of skills and attitudes. This in turn needs the culture of tolerance for the opposites. It is not easy, but certainly worth cultivating.
Your views and inputs are valuable; please share.
2012 – New Year commitments
January 2, 2012 at 10:02 am | Posted in Blogroll, Self Improvement | Leave a commentIt is quite common to make New Year resolutions and forget them soon after, as the New Year turns into the current year. I have also done it from time to time. However this year I want to try a different approach. Instead of resolutions, I am making commitments to myself. We can try to fool the whole world but we can never fool ourselves. Hence there is a better chance that I will keep these commitments
Main objective of making these commitments is to live life to the fullest by my values, while increasing contribution through my actions & interactions.
My first commitment to myself – I will be careful before making a promise to others; but once I make that promise, I will ensure keeping it.
My Second commitment to myself – I will firmly yet politely say “No” to the temptation of getting pulled in activities which neither interest me nor I have time or talent for. I will especially watch out for small requests which turn out to be a thin end of the wedge. I will use the space thus created for really contributing something worthwhile for which I have interest time and talent.
My third commitment to myself – I am basically an introvert and tend to limit myself to the known. So I will open out more to explore new ideas and experiences. However if something does not interest me even after trying it, I may not continue with it.
My fourth commitment to myself – I prefer bonding with others through shared work rather than through social interactions. Hence I will seek out and utilize more and more opportunities for short stints of meaningful work
My fifth commitment to myself – Whenever I notice something unusual, I will promptly share it with others who can do something about it, and follow it up with patience and perseverance. Every day I come across more and more cases where such sharing is able to bring about permanent changes for the better, where everyone concerned benefits.
And my last but not the least commitment to myself – I commit to keep all the above commitments, Amen.
Scrum – Challenges with self-organizing teams
December 26, 2011 at 10:02 am | Posted in Blogroll, Scrum and agile | Leave a commentRecently I presented a webinar on “Managing Self-organizing Scrum Teams”. I would like to share a few highlights.
Self-organizing teams are empowered, rather than being directed and controlled from top. They are encouraged to participate actively & collectively in all the Scrum practices. Naturally this leads to enhanced expectations of freedom, especially amongst those who come from non-Scrum backgrounds and enjoy the new found freedom. However, this creates a challenge for the leaders at all levels to balance this freedom with reliable & predictable outcomes.
The webinar explored in detail these challenges as they are faced at the time of assembling a new Scrum team as well as thereafter to sustain the self-organization. For full details of the challenges and possible solutions, you may like to visit http://www.impetus.com/archived_webinar?eventid=52
The presentation was followed by a lively Question & Answer session. These can be found at http://www.leadformix.com/ef1/files/812/Q&A_Managing_Self-organizing_Scrum_Teams.pdf
Talent plus passion with preparation equals excellence
December 19, 2011 at 4:59 pm | Posted in Blogroll, Out of my mind | 2 CommentsHaven’t we all come across cases where a person is put in a new role, may be because of his successful stint in another role, and slowly he starts struggling. It is assumed that a successful person would do well in any role. Even the person concerned himself never expected this outcome and feeling guilty struggles even harder. But alas!! Apparently he does not have what it takes to show results in his new assignment. Slowly his earlier successes are forgotten. Nobody wants to remember or care about a failure and he gets shunted out to the sidelines. The person himself feels isolated, especially if he does not have a support system either within the family or friends. He becomes an emotional wreck.
Should it be allowed to happen? Is it inevitable? I don’t think so. But why does it happen in the first place? At least I have seen enough cases to conclude that to be successful and maintain your success, the twin elements of talent and passion are essential. Talent is not skills or knowledge, though they help. Talents are what a person intrinsically possesses. We can endlessly debate whether a person is born with talents or he acquires them, without coming to a conclusion. What is more important is that either the person has the required talents or he does not. Some talents are easy to spot, others are not. But they no doubt matter.
Same is the case with passion. It is not just motivation or drive or enthusiasm. Without passion you can move forward under ordinary circumstances. But when the going gets tough, even the tough do not go far. It takes passion for what you are doing to really keep going without losing hope. Rather, when a person is passionate about something, he is not even aware of the obstacles. Some invisible force seems to keep driving him forward and he actually enjoys it. Here again, either a person has passion for something or he does not. You can’t fake it.
Only when we have both the talents and passion for what we do, can we ever think of or hope to move towards excellence. But excellence is not just flash in a pan. To continuously excel at anything, we need to be prepared. What does being prepared mean? Is it about being prepared or ready for certain specific situations? No, because life has such an endless variety that it is impossible to be prepared for all kinds of situations. And end result of any activity involves not just one or even few activities but a complex chain of interrelated actions & decisions. Any one of these steps can go wrong and take us in a wrong direction. We often talk of finding a weak link in the chain and working on it to make the whole chain stronger. It does work at a level. But reality is much more complex than that. I always remember of exits on a freeway in U.S., where you take one wrong exit and you had it. If you are lucky, you can come back on your original path soon enough. If you are not, you may go miles & miles before you are back on track. And God only can help if you were on your way to catch a flight back to India. So a small mistake or an error of judgment can have totally unexpected outcome. In short, it is impossible to be prepared for every single situation.
However, there is a way out. System thinking comes to our help here. At systems level, we are forced to look at a few fundamental concepts which are applicable to a wide variety of systems, and in turn to very large individual situations. At this level, being prepared really boils down to the four basic dimensions; namely information, communication, decision and action. There are a few basic principles in each of these dimensions. If we understand them and religiously put them in practice till they become a habit, then we can hope to achieve excellence.
We will go into each of these four dimensions in detail, in the future posts on this blog. For now, we can summarize the above, in a neat little mathematical formula,
(Talent + Passion) x preparation = Excellence
Every member of the team is important
December 12, 2011 at 4:12 pm | Posted in Blogroll, General | 2 CommentsWe were pained to hear about a tragedy in a Kolkata hospital where 89 persons died, most of them patients, due to a fire. We were even more shocked when we read a story in the Times of India that many of them could have been alive today only if the guards had responded more quickly and positively. From different stories narrated by relatives of the patients, the guards asked them not to raise an alarm and assured that it was a minor blaze. When one of the relatives pleaded to let him in, they were adamant and refused him even to go near the gate. When people from nearby slums scaled the boundary walls and were trying to get into the hospital, the lights were switched off.
We are not privy to the guards’ side of the story, but the utter callousness is so obvious. We can safely assume that if only the guards had thought & acted differently, the outcome may have been quite different. Under normal circumstances, the guards are supposed to be strict to protect the hospital and its property. However under such rare and abnormal situations as above, they need to think and add differently. In the absence of any senior person, they had to act swiftly and appropriately on their own.
After the initial shock and anguish had subsided, my thoughts turned to the wider significance of this incidence to different walks of our life. Whether at home or work and for people of all ages the main focus is on normal routine transactions. How often do we think of and prepare ourselves (and others) for the unusual, the exceptional. Isn’t the preparedness really critical for such rare incidences where absence of an appropriate response can have a huge cost?
As I was writing these lines, I saw a news flash on TV informing about two nurses working at the hospital who saved lives of half a dozen patients though in the process they sacrificed their own lives. This was in stark contrast to the attitude and actions of the guards. Obviously this depends on individual qualities & values. But there may be one possible lesson for us in this difference. The role for nurses is to care for the patients. Day in and day out they are their thoughts & actions are directed by this. So in case of danger to patients their instinctive action would be in line with caring for the patients. The guards’ case is different. While performing their normal duties, their thoughts & actions are on protecting the hospital and its interests. The patients are not their focus. At times some patients may come across to the guards as trouble-makers and in an adversarial role. This possible difference brings out the need for extra attention while preparing for unexpected eventualities, in cases where the demands in special circumstances are quite different from the behavior under normal circumstances.
What about the role of leaders at all levels; whether it is as parents & grand-parents at home, teachers & principals at schools & colleges or as managers & leaders in business organizations?
There are three possible approaches a leader can take towards those whom he leads.
- Believe that he knows what is best for those he is leading, and therefore take actions to ensure that they do what is told to them or expected from them
- Believe that he may or may not be the best person to decide what is good for those he leads, and therefore focus his attention on helping them to help themselves
- Believe that once he has told what is expected from those he leads, and therefore leave it to them to figure out how to go about delivering the results
Generally it is found that both the first and last alternatives have their flaws and can lead to clashes & confrontations; whereas the second alternative takes much greater maturity patience and tolerance but produces better results and greater harmony.
As more news about the hospital tragedy is pouring in, it is becoming apparent that there were problems with many parts of the overall operation. If and when more details are available publicly, it would help to take a systemic view which may provide additional learning from this incidence which we could use in other walks of life.
Scrum beyond Software
December 5, 2011 at 1:33 pm | Posted in Blogroll, Out of my mind, Scrum and agile | 1 CommentScrum is one of the most popular agile software development methods. It has some important concepts that can be useful even for other business organizations dealing in a wide variety of products or services. Some of the distinguishing features of Scrum are,
1) Continuous improvement of product features and / or quality through short jumps from one stable state to another
2) Clear-cut division of responsibilities between product management, product team and the team leadership
3) Importance of self-organization for the team which enables it to quickly respond to changes as also brings out full potential of its members
4) High level of visibility & transparency of operations which does away with need for elaborate measurements and control mechanisms
5) A light weight process with a handful of mandatory rules which appear non-intuitive at first but are very essential for success
Let us see why these basic concepts could have general applicability to a wide variety of business situations. But before we do this, it is important to mention that modern software development involves change for the better to either the features or quality of the software product when it is already in use. So it primarily addresses effective management of improvements to an existing stable product in use, though Scrum can be used to start a completely new product as well. Second, modern business software has to successfully work in rapidly changing market conditions and it can’t wait to start delivering till everything needed from it is known in advance. This requires an empirical rather than a rigorous approach. The rapidly changing market dynamics is relevant not only to software development but to most of the business operations.
Now let us see importance of each of the above concepts in this context.
1) Many improvement initiatives take too long to see light of the day because we want to be sure that every possible situation is covered before we offer it for use, even for trial use by a small group. Instead of trying to grab everything, it would certainly make sense to start small, choose a few features or few aspects of important features and deliver them to get a quick feedback.
2) It is also important to choose these features carefully and set the right expectations to all concerned so that they are prepared to wait for the short duration when it is in an unstable state and also to make sure that we quickly get it back to the next stable state so that those using it are not adversely affected. This calls for a clear prioritization of what comes next and it must be acceptable to all concerned. As Scrum suggests, it is good have a single person owning the product; similarly it would be good to have a single person named as owner of the improvement initiative who has both the accountability for success and the required authority without undue interference. Secondly, the team involved in the initiative should have a say in how much work it can do for a given increment and not be forced or pressurized to accept what they would not feel comfortable to commit to. Lastly, since the responsibilities for managing the product and those for managing the execution are clearly identified, it helps the team manager to shift into a facilitator role (a servant-leader as per Scrum) rather than using a command & control approach. This can be quite challenging for a person not used to it.
3) Too much time and efforts are spend by the managers in planning & execution details and allocating & closely monitoring the work of the team members, in the mistaken belief that the manager knows best. This hardly uses the immense human potential and diverse set of skills & talents the members bring to the table. Scrum has found helpful the approach of self-organization for the team where the members do all the planning & execution It is helpful both for the team productivity and moral. There is no reason why it can’t be tried in other business scenarios as well.
4) Scrum encourages high level of visibility & transparency to the operations. Everybody concerned has access to what is taken up for each increment and even for the exact state of each task on a daily basis. Team focuses on what is still remaining to be done and how long it will take rather than being busy with collecting lots of data about what has already happened and in any case is too late to change.
5) Clarity, focus, trust and commitment help the progress and there is little need for elaborate processes and control mechanisms. Scrum relies on a very light weight process which just focuses on the essentials needed for success. But it insists on the few “rules of the game” as it calls them. Many of them appear counter-intuitive at first glance especially for those who come from a different culture but if we use them faithfully, the benefits are soon apparent.
To summarize, there is a strong case for trying the Scrum concepts in other business contexts since there is a lot in common as regards the environment. In any case, if the leaders at all level from the software industry use a different approach for software development and a very different approach for all other business activities, there is a danger of their developing split personalities
Have a look and try out where possible to see if this makes sense. It would be interesting to know what worked and what did not, so please share your experiences.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
November 28, 2011 at 10:05 am | Posted in Blogroll, Real-life experiences, Self Improvement | 1 CommentFrom time to time, we read / hear quotes or sayings which sometimes are amusing and other times could be even boring. Unless we experience their real effect on us, they come and go without much impact on us. To illustrate let me share an incident that occurred a few days back.
In the stream of mails that we keep receiving I noticed one particularly because it irritated me. As all of us do, he had forwarded a long conversation thread of which so far I was not part of with just an ‘fyi’, which is a commonly used short form of “for your information”. I was in the middle of a busy day with lot of things yet to be completed for the day and I had to dig deeper in the mail thread, spending a few precious minutes to figure out what was the information he wanted me to have.
Later in the day when majority of the chores were done and behind me now, I could think of the incidence more peacefully. It suddenly hit me that I have been doing the same thing to others without thinking about the recipient, how much information he already possessed and what additional information I want to provide him with. There was a moment of guilt quickly followed by the need to change my practice. From that day, I am careful to consider whether just ‘fyi’ is adequate or I can help the other person by pointing out what additional information I am trying to share. I presume and hope that it is helping others. But in any case, I feel good that I am caring for others’ need and acting on it.
Whoever said “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” had a point which I realized only after experiencing it myself. Do you find it happens in your case too?
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