Archive for the ‘book’ Category

Fearless Change – book review

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

On the flight to San Francisco I had plenty of time to read a book. Fearless Change by Manns Rising is about introducing new ideas. They recognize patterns which are described in the book, with idea introducing process studied (which pattern may be applied on actual process step. Book consist of two part, first is process description with this steps

Organizations and Change
shows that innovation are hard. We can divide people regarding their engage into “new things”: Innovators (2.5%), Early Adopters (13.5%), Early Majority (33%), Late Majority (33%), Laggards (18%). We should convince proper groups but also we should be open for critique, it may improve our innovation. This chapter also recognize three different roles: Maven, Salesman and Connector.
Strategies or Patterns
This chapter introduce patterns, and how they add value .
Where Do I Start?
This is truly the first chapter, the previous two was introduction. It guide us, what we should do when we start. I like two quotes :
  • The longest journey begins with a single step by Lao Tsu

  • Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together by Vincent van Gogh

What Do I Do Next?
We should ask for help, involve others (people easier adapt innovation if they are part of it). And always say “Thanks” after all!
Meetings and More
is about, how to make your meeting more rememberable (eg. Do Food pattern).
Take Action!
Don’t procrastinate, just do it.
It’s All About People
People are most important in every innovation.
A New Role: Now You’re Dedicated!
is how important is time for innovation, we cannot introduce innovation only through our spear time.
Convince the Masses
is how to convince more and more people
More Influence Strategies
some more tricks to convince more people.
Keep it Going
once we “convert” a lot of people it is important to keep things going.
Dealing with Resistance
The last chapter is how to deal with resistance, take opportunity to improve innovation and find a way to overcome people resistance.

The second part of the book are experiences descriptions and description for all the patterns. Really interesting book for reading. Breakfast was awful (coffee, tee, muffins – choose from that three and make yours breakfast), I’m going to WWDC registration desk.

about me

My name is Sebastian Pietrowski. I've finished Warsaw University as Master degree. I started my journey with Java 1.1 with Thread and JDBC programing in 1998 as I worked for merlin.pl. In 1999 I've passed Java Programer Certificate for Java 1.2, and was solution architect of merlin.pl infrastructure when we was moving from pl/sql to J2EE. It was great performance optimization with 10 times more req/sec than in requirements and 85 times faster as original solution.

Currently I work as Expert Software Development Java at F.Hoffmann-La Roche. The company was founded in 1896 and today, Roche employs over 80.000 people. After work I'm involved in activities related to Scala/Lift, Ruby/Rails/Merb, Python/Django. This is because I try to be pragmatic also I'm focused on application performance and tuning with success in my daily work.

My Yoda's motto: Do, or do not. There is no try.