Quite the painful day, I just really don’t know what else to say.

From this morning: I think it’s safe to say we’ve all looked at a Land Rover Discovery and wondered a) how long a piece of wood can you fit in there? and b) How many 2X4 can you get in there? Well today, on what is becoming my weekly trip to Home Depot in Snohomish I got to answer those pressing questions.

And the answers are:

a) you can get an 8 foot piece of timber in there and close the back door, there is about 6 inches between the end and the windscreen. Trust me, it will fit.

b) about 16 to be practical, you could probably squeeze 1 or two more, but that would get even more stupid.

But rather then cut, bolt and play with my new purchase I got a call just as I was leaving Home Depot and ended up working a full day.

It’s been a rather tough day, my emotional reliance has been tested, but with an almost certain inevitability I made it through to Saturday evening. Where the day was finished with good food, great company, and wonderful live theater.

Seattle has a wonderful theatre and music scene, how I feel about it has been well documented here, but tonight was the stage version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at one of the smaller theatres in town.

And a wonderful production it was too, independent theater is able to push the boundaries a little more than the big productions, and the Open Circle Theater did that with their version of Rocky Horror.

As I’ve done for the last three months, I’ve taken a picture from my bedroom window. It won’t surprise anyone to hear it, but it was raining today, but there are signs that spring is on it’s way. The first green buds were on the trees outside the bedroom window.

This is going to be a wonderful summer.

An upcoming movie about the great West Indies cricket team of the 80’s.

As good as Australia have been over the last 15 years, this was a team that was more spectacular. Australia played good, clinical cricket, occasionally briliant. The West Indies went out to crush people. I’m looking forward to this one.

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.

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.

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.