Dear Fissure Friends,
It has been a very hectic year end and year beginning for Fissure. 2005 was a very good year with a lot of very important accomplishments and changes. Read the "Fissure News" for more detail on some of these changes. One especially significant change became official at the end of the year and is related to what I will talk about here.
The Fissure ownership and management team since incorporation has included my long-time friend, mentor and "boss", Ed Tilford Sr. With Ed "moving on" I thought it would be a good time to reflect on some of the things I learned from Ed over the years.
When I was first hired by Sperry Univac (many years ago) Ed was my first supervisor and soon after became our site manager and soon after that became my golf partner, friend and mentor. For most of the 17 years I worked at Sperry/Unisys Ed was my boss, but he was always my friend and mentor. It is the mentoring part of our relationship I want to talk about. I feel very strongly that having a mentor is extremely important to a person's development, probably because I have had such a good one. I learned how to lead and manage a team from Ed. Not so much because he told me what to do, but because he showed great confidence and trust in me and because he "lead by example". Let me give you an example. I was hired with a group of about 10 very capable 22-23 year old college graduates. I didn't have any leadership experience up to that point (I had been a Boy Scout patrol leader, but always believed it was because no one else wanted the job and I was the oldest) and was completely surprised when Ed and the other managers made me the leader of our "new-hire" team on a project we were assigned to help us learn the development and operational systems we would be using on our real projects. He saw something in me and gave me the opportunity and the trust to test and grow my leadership capability. As a result of that experience, within a year I was attending an MBA program and my career was heading in a management direction.
Over the years, Ed guided me in career development and in career decisions. He encouraged me to take on challenging assignments, knowing that the more challenging the assignment, the more the learning. That is why there was no other answer for me 17 years ago when Ed and his son visited with me one Sunday and asked me to join them in Fissure. I have learned more and changed more in the last 17 years than at any other time in my life as a result of that challenge. It is with the same learning expectation that I now take on the challenge of leading Fissure without the assistance of my original partners. I know I will be successful and I know I have a lot to learn, but I also know my mentor will be there if I need him.
Susan Heidorn, one of our guides and a current Ph.D. student has her computer up and working again and our benefit is her article on "Applying Cross-Cultural Concepts to Project Management. As we are well aware, project managers deal in a world of people. People who act, think, and feel differently from one another, often because of their cultural values. She makes the point that success as a project manager may depend on ones ability to apply cross-cultural concepts in analyzing, understanding, and influencing both a team's culture and an organization's culture.
Geof Lory's article talks about two of my most favorite personal and project management techniques - reflection and the positive 3-step approach to improvement. I have personally used these techniques at work and at home. If you are serious about learning and improving yourself and/or your team or family read Geof's article. Of course he uses his daughters and a family vacation to help us understand and relate to the techniques.
Our upcoming public workshops are in the left hand panel - our computer simulation based workshops are an effective and fun way to learn AND EARN PDUs. Make sure you also check out what's happening at Fissure (Fissure News).
Thanks for reading and have a great quarter,
Jesse Freese
Fissure, President
