Launch a 1,000 Ships

When in a leadership position, words spoken can be very important. That has been the traditional thought, at least.

One of the things that I learned early on is that individuals often have multiple voices (personas) that need to be differentiated. At times, care needs to be taken to declare which voice you are using.

For example, I was over the architecture group of a software company. I frequently reminded my architects to speak precisely. One associate worked for me that was very familiar with many different database platforms. Our company was a (pure) Microsoft shop, using Microsoft SQL Server. One day, we were troubleshooting a performance issue and he commented about how Oracle handles this problem. What people heard was we’re changing to Oracle (some like, some not liked). In reality, he was just drawing on his experience and brainstorming various solutions. But because of his position and perceived authority, it was taken as a direction change.

So proud of my daughter graduating today.