Leadership

Leadership.What is it, why is it necessary?

I am not the classic definition of a leader. I am impatient, don't like to deligate, get lost on tangents incongruent with an ideal path for my department, am self centered and often arrogent, am irritable and sometimes lazy/timid.

I do however get things done, see through the bullshit and call a spade a spade, am leagues ahead intellectually to anyone in our company, work the longest hardest hours and have a passion for proffessional, beautifully working systems.
Some good, some bad I guess.... My opportunity has also come about via my connection to my wealthy Dad, and 90% of people will attribute any success I achieve to that. From my perspective though, I have pushed, toilled and suffered enough not to care what other people think, and since I have achieved many things in my life where other people have perhaps not even tried or simply failed, I know that what I feel inside, is infact beneficial, and progressive and my perception is not simply lip play. I therefore accept my plight and suffer on.

So leadership?
I know this much, you have to be impartial, and treat everyone by the same rules, including yourself. You have to create discipline by creating rules, getting everyone to accept the rules and then punishing non-compliance. You have to lead by example and prove your claim to superiority/seniority many times, you have to be fair, and have a little empathy. You need to get "things" in place that improve the system..
Well thats what I've been upto, and the only phrase I have to use to explain my current existence is "before the phoenix can rise anew, it must be consumed by fire" well, that is at least what I hope the situation is, and must admit that the fire is getting less hot.
Leading is difficult for me in Australia, and I don't know if this is because i am weak, or because the Australian system is too populist / socialist.
Aussi's seem to be largely incapable of independant thought. I think this is because in a place with sooo many rules, people are so governed that when presented with a situation in which they can act freely to reach a goal, i.e the very basic path from A to D is not provided (EG no B or C) They become useless. There solution will be to debate the means, and never act. This blows my mind. Anyways, if you can't lead the donkey to the river, bring the river to the donkey, and that means more rule and system writing, and although I have written allot, there are lots more still to come.

Vision.
This email is infact, the biproduct of me trying to put some vision together for my company. I want my company to be a shining tower of example, proffesionalism and quality. I want my company to be the best in its league in Australia, and therefore do things better than what its competitors are able. The best! That is such a huge statement, and such a committment on my part.
To be the best.
For us to be the best. 1. Our product needs to be the best functionally, that means the most technically advanced. 2. The best quality, that means with the fewest conrollable defects, the highest quality lab and lab personel. 3. The cheapest to produce. 4. The best serviced. Hmmm... Thats a start. The devil is in the detail though. What does that actually mean??

Mount aux sources

Mount Aux Sources (review)
My idea of a camping trip was totally skewed. This weekends past trip, after consultation with the seasoned / Guru campsperts, was the essence of what hiking and camping are all about, and not anything near what I bargained for.
Guys bond when grouped together in situations of adversity where they are pushed out of their comfort zones and forced to admit, due to in this case a moderate level of pain, and fear, that they are in fact human and mortal, and not the supermen that they the rest of the time pretend to, or would like to be. This setting was perfect. Bonding did abound!

The mount aux sources, meaning the mountain of the sources, is where both the Orange and the Tugela rivers start. Its hard to fathom that the comparatively mild trickles of waterfall we did encounter would gradually build to raging province dividing rivers. Located just outside of Phuthaditjhaba, 350km from JHB, the area is sparsely populated, the mountains distinctly juggernautish, and grotesquely vast in their immensity. I have been here before, but my mouth still tended to gape a little longer than normal. This place is simply beautiful. Its peculiar though how beauty and harshness are often linked. This beautiful mountain was the same, beautiful, the harshness still to come. . . I feel like I want to own what I perceive, these deep cavernous, abundantly green gorges, these splashes of fog and sun kissed cloud, these huge cliffs this smell of freshness. My vision is full, the detail infinite, there is the soft luff of the wind on my collar and a quiet inner excitement to be ensconed in what I see. The sting of challenge :- A 20kg backpack for a stroll across the parking lot is a doddle. A 7km hike up ruggerd terrain. Also a doddle. Put the two together.. A doddles arse!Now add a 30m vertical chain ladder, include the fatigue of a 5km, 20kg carrying hike, a monsoon type downpour, some ridiculously close lighting strikes and some marble sized hail. You now have a recipe for a little fear. Then once you have climbed a chain ladder and are all pumped with adrenaline, smashed up with ice cold hail and soaked through to your undies, saddle up for another 2km to the camp site. Then set your tent up in the rain and enjoy the view.. Umm too much cloud not much view! But crack out the Brandy, jaegermeister and Windhoek. We have arrived and look. The rain has stopped!
In our campsite in our little rock seat pow wow, I laughed my balls off. I can’t actually recall what about, but between gas heated foot rocks, bravado, jaegermeister and camp defence strategies the time between the intermittent rain was side-splitting.

2.30am : The click of a 9mm and an opening tent zip… Mountain boys!“Hey, hey hey.. Look there, what’s that… WHO's THERE?”from somewhere in the close distance, “ITS VITO”“There, there, there, what’s that, shine the torch….. HEY WHAT's THAT MOVEMENT?” from the opposite side of the camp “IT’S CAREL”
5.30am : Sunrise. The weather has lifted and the view is indescribable. I am standing 10 meters from the source of the Tugela river. It winds and wriggles down through the valley and then disappears in the distance of the foggy twilight. Yesterday included. This was truly worth it.
Posted by Dick at 11:03 PM

The Camden hole

What a weekend. 

So I was in debt to Leigh, she had envisioned and organized a fun weekend in the Snowy Mountains and I had just rocked up for the ride with a credit card.  There is always a double debt though.  He who does the organizing, and he who drives the farthest.  To drive 2.5 hours to spend time with someone is a big sacrifice.  In South Africa in my Audi, with the open roads, where driving fast is a costly finable offense, but not punishable with loss of license, a long drive was pure pleasure.  In Australia however, driving long distances is a tiring and boring experience.   Everyone drives the same speed here.   They all drive at exactly what the speed limit signs says.  EXACTLY!   The daring ones drive 5km above speed, and what rebels they are!!  All the terrain looks the same.  Blue gums and brush, blue gums and fucking brush..  And heres the problem.. The scenery never changes.  A good simile would be a comparison to looking at a fairly ordinary work of art for 4 hours.   

The cars, regardless of the fact that they are moving at 110kmph, never move relative to each other, nor does the scenery change enough to stimulate the senses.  Its micro sleep accident death waiting at every lamp post.   

Lets digress quickly.  I am a huge fan of quality paintings.  A good example would be a DaVinci like Virgin of the Rocks or recent to my experiences of art, examples that I viewed at the NSW artgallery, the Vive L’empereur by Edouard Detaille and The visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Soloman by Sir Edward John Poynter, that amaze me beyond my senses.  As an engineer, detail is everything.  The amazing focus and personal sacrifice that a  5 year 3.7 x 4.4m oil painting of imaculate and accurate detail, scale and color takes is a wonder to me.  The Vive L’Empereur,  and there are hundreds of similar examples, is a true work of greatness, born of love and passion. 

So lets compare 4 hours of viewing a picture like this to 4 hours driving to Jindabyn... hmmm.

Jindabyn is a D-rate ski-town, as are the snowies for slope quality.  Australia is known for beaches, water activity, and tanned babes, but I guess gets a gold star for completing the Summer - Winter activity possibility circle despite its shit mountains.  Leigh organized getting us there, and a night in the most ebulliently, cute snow chalet.  “Poofy with passion”  is a good way to decribe the Smiggins hole lodge.  Everything was furred up to create a feeling of warmth, and Paul its owner is so passionate about the quality of his business, that his employees had imbibed his service qualities, making the place a definitive breath of fresh air.

I needed to exert some effort into repaying my debt to Leigh.  The extent of my imagination had conjured up a night in Camden with a movie, Bruno, Thai dinner and drinks at the Camden hotel..  A good night out by Camden standards.   4 cocktails into stage 3, and we are predictably woozy, our experiences current status..  horribly insipid.  Enter Correy.  Tall, and loud, and beautifully opposed to the average Australian personality.  His crew was composed of some cute girls and a half Somoan, half Mauri miget with a Night at the Roxabies pink and black saturn long sleeve, a gap between his front teeth and a lascivious pelvic thrust as his only party trick.  The girls thought Miget was repulsive.  I found him cocky-funny and entertaining.  Correy was interesting because he claimed to own the best pool players title of the year at the hotel and talked up big corona stakes pool games. He was perhaps drunk, and disoriented.  He could not sink a ball, or help me to win a game as his partner in crime.  His psychological stratagem, although entertaining were as effective.  Perhaps he was just out to entertain and needed a good frame to work from.

The girls laughed allot, which means I did OK, my debt repaid.    

Project 1. D-day. Where to from here.

So its done.. 2 years of endeavor have come to its end result. This machine can now take some nasty smelling chemicals, mix and meter them, color them, and push them through a retro-fitted salami making machine, and into some beautifully decorated boxes. Off they will be whisked to the grimy hands of sweaty miners and their machines, and thrust up into the cold earthy tunnels of Australian mines, to hold firm rock and the trust of the feet passing beneath them.
There is of course a whole new can of worms spattered across this now newly worn table.. The dreaded break even. My hands are tired and worn sore. This sculpture hewn from a $5million block of figures in a bank account, has been molded into a detailed and precise moving and breathing machine. The lathes, mills, flames and voices of South African machinists, the frustration, anger, sacrifice, honor. The long hours. The camaraderie of smelly work companions, the songs, the swear words, the heart wrenching dismissals… And now this very small fledgling company, unfamiliar in minds of miners, must weather and rise in the seas of the capitalist world. Win hearts, and prove its worth. And soon, as soon as possible… Already it has enemies, mouths to feed, families to keep safe, hopes and dreams to support. What a bloody nightmare!! Part and parcel of this the game of life. It would bore us were it too simple!!

Its Winter and this time I’m cuddling down..

Yes, around this time last year I was up Sunday mornings at 5am for a training cycle or race.. It was cool, but it was lame and I’m torn between the two personalities. Whilst in an unfamiliar but very comfortable and amusing alcohol buzz, Saturday evening, I receive two scathing phone calls requesting alcohol cold turkey and 5am toe numbness… Blunt as an irritated New Yorker I respond in the negative. It is quite bazaar really how I have turned.

Sitting in a hot Jacuzzi declaring how damn tough a dude can be while feeling starts to precipitate from knee to ankle after 3 hours in a 5.30am winter rainstorm, was cool. Shit did we laugh, enjoy the buzz and the camaraderie. We’d cook a breakfast rafter high, eat like kings in a rabid dog hunger and then lay back to hot cappachinos, sport and macho isms… but my game has changed… The trade… Alcohol, late nights and hang-overs..
I like sport and a body buzz, so throwing steel around in the gym with Hulk boy is the other trade off.. Immediately I picture two buff, bum spankers with cocky little pec size chirps and a disturbing image fetish.. And perhaps it is a bit like that, but I do get quite a kick out of it after long hours at the office. And then the girls.. Sorry ladies.. The caveman in me amuses me endlessly. It is somewhat pathetic how chemicals can seize reason from a perfectly rational mind.

Testosterone is a thief, and what self respecting guy is going to say.. “Get a book broad, the bicep curl is complex!”
The gym does hip-hop classes from 6.30 every second night. Its complex, very tight rhythmed break beat. Good Lord can some of those vixen dance.. In my world the most ordinary girl is reincarnated to goddess with tight rhythm and energy… Yes and so, perhaps I am easily distracted, but where strength, energy, rhythm, co-ordination and sexiness cross paths I find sufficient value to be a very happy little camper.

So Booze and Buff. It alliterates beautifully, is so sordidly clichéd, but I get to sleep in Sundays.
Reeno’s Birthday, engine covers, Black and white, black and white, black and white, my gracious lord.. Blue! JD jugs, American Jugs, Gee and allot of macho back slapping, RBVs.. a grope and a hickey.. some memory loss but a cell number..
Rocked home at 3, up a 6 listened to the radio till 9… Bewildered off to business lunch @ JCC, passed Peas as she entered.. Brushed off.. I deserve it. Invited to a salsa dance-off on Friday. I f’ing love Latin dance and was taught my first moves by central American spanish senorita’s (con no anglais) in Costa Rica. They found my boring and brash South Afican self and partners too interesting for their own good.. Ha Ha...
So for Friday.. hmmm.. Partner?? No! Fuck! Idea??? That number? Testosterone, Alcohol, memory, judgement?? Idea? Yes! Good idea?? ...?
Interesting times!!

Moms day...

Not a good idea putting this here.. I am not a big fan of the soppy side, and my poetry is actually trite and not worth the paper it is written on.. A little creativity directed at a loved one does however go a long way to make them feel good.. Moms smile was so enormous and all for just 5 minutes of poetic inflection.

A little patronage to my Mom, for being the stalwart and standing tough against the onslaught of the powerful and sometimes misdirected anger of my Old man..
In the times that were tough, when Dad was so broke that your physiotherapy was paying for my school fees and khaki shorts, and all the times that the fighting hit fever pitch.. Like a Staffordshire bull terrier you bit down and clenched against the slack and whip and tenaciously held on despite the nastiness, difficulty and anguish.
Ha.. Its true she’s the shit!

So enough of the soppy stuff… It was my Birthday this Friday and as is the best thing to do on a birthday. I gate crashed some else’s birthday party.. The hulks, and stole a little of it for myself.. The Hulk is into his ballroom dancing, and all credit to him, he can rumba the hips of the average Joe into dislocation. I’m guessing he chose Rodizio’s because they host a ball room dancing theme with a show-off extravaganza and then a short dance off for a bottle of JC la Roux and apple sours. I gave a full bodied energetic attempt at it, but the Hulk won hands down. The fact that his girlfriend is a Springbok class practicing dance pro did obviously have a chunk to do with this prowess but non the less the dance floor in the immediate vicinity was smoking.. Span then stood up and offered congrats for successfully achieving another year of survival and presented sparkler illuminated fish bowls of decidedly large volume and toxic contents. My high school mates, of which Span is one, are a ridiculously great jol.. I can’t in actual fact compete with their ridiculous ability to consume alcohol relentlessly and through all hours of the night and still make it home alive, and have largely opted out of the clan.. time-wise. But big up. You guys win your paid dues in respect for the liver damage.
As would some fish bowl induced reasoning have it, we wondered hither to the Manslayer.
The beautiful bouncing boobs of quality babes with B was my first recollection. K’s high heels were however trying to embed their stiletto’s into her heels and my Second module completed Zulu exam would happen in 5.5 hours so no real debauchery was catered for.. OH and I had a rendezvous with the cops.
Every fucking time these days. If you want to party you have to do it properly.. The lazy SOBs of the SAP piss off home at 4. So you must if you want to stay safe leave at 4.30. 3.15am just doesn’t cut it. I was stopped twice. Once in Rivonia road and once after dropping K in Jan Smuts. And got the full treatment baring a body cavity search, but they did the same to my car, even checking the spare tyre compartment. The bazaar part was that the only drug I was smuggling was alcohol in my blood stream about which they seemed to have on a secondary interest. Mrs Lieutenant Ndlovu let on her intentions however in Zulu, with Baphuzisa Lo, to which I quick as lightning replied, Hay Khona, Abaphuzi, asithandi uma simatasatasa umshanyele. (Which in broken Zulu means :- We don’t like to drink when we are driving) fostering the largest, teeth exposing smile I have ever seen on a Saturday morning at 3.30 in the morning and giving us our gap to get home.
Zulu the next morning was suffering comparable to a 15km fast cycle climb spread over 4 hours.. But I came through miraculously, inspired and motivated by my 3.30am cultural connection and approbation. And the Rugby was fantastic athough without the crowd of Bulldogs to buoy my sleep diprived lathergy, I would definitely have slept though it.......

I told you so..

Most people are arrogant skeptics until it is no longer possible for them to be. And rightly so I am too, but it is best when you are the wolf. The wolf in sheeps clothing was revealed yesterday when quotes came back for the manufacture of Dick designed machinery, and which unwittingly reduced estimated total project costs by 6%. Sounds like little, but on 20 large bars, heathen skeptics are miraculously converted to believers and smother you with attention and approbation which is f’ing irriatin since a job still has to be done with too few hours in a day…