![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 8 of 8. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by fallsfall on February 11, 2004, at 7:47:15
This started as a response to Phil's question about male vs. female posters. But I'm putting my response in a new thread because I think that it asks a bigger question. There are two questions at the end, Dr. Bob, that I would like you to answer.
We DO want to help. We DO love Babble.
> > Didn't you post demographic info here a few years ago?
>
> It's still there:
>
> http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/stats
>
> > Do you know the demographics of the boards now?
>
> Sorry, I haven't checked lately...Is it hard for you to check? How busy are you these days? Is this something that you think you would put on your list of things to do? Could you give a guess as to when you might generate the numbers (or predict that you won't generate them)? In other words, are we likely to get numbers any time soon? Is there something that other people could do to help you get answers like these? How do you prioritize what "work" you do?
>
> You pose some interesting questions. I don't have any answers. Do you have any theories?I think that the theories would be hard to generate without some numbers to start with. Do you want to be involved in the discussion, or should this be a discussion among the board members?
>
> Bob
Dr. Bob,A lot of suggestions can come up on this board. You have a limited amount of time to spend on this stuff, and we understand that. It would help me to know what your priorities are and how big your backlog is. That would let me know if something that I consider important might make it to a spot where you might be able to work on it. I understand that sometimes you might want to say that a given suggestion doesn't meet your criteria for getting done right away - but you don't want to discourage people from making suggestions, and you don't want to make anyone feel that their ideas are not important. One way of doing this is by being vague and seeing who persues their ideas. That way you don't have to shoot ideas down and make people feel badly, the ideas just sort of go away on their own. But this strategy leaves me feeling that everything is unanswered.
I think that we are probably mostly reasonable people and able to understand that there are time constraints for changes etc. to this board. But since we have no visibility into what the priorities nor the time constraints it is hard for us to know what is reasonable and what is not.
In business, people frequently have a list of tasks with a schedule that indicates when things would be done. Schedules often slip, and I think that's OK - but at least the task list gives an indication of what things are important. It also gives other people a chance to comment on the prioritization, so that the order of the list will end up meeting everybody's needs better. Do you have such a list? Would you be willing to post it? I would be happy if the list didn't have dates - just priorities - it is not my intention to "make" you do things - I just want to know what things are in the pipeline.
I think that you have a lot of things to do - I think that we all recognize that. I think that you enjoy doing some of these things on Babble. But it seems like things are a little overwhelming. Would you like to have some help? I know that you have had deputies in the past, and that did seem to take some of the burden off of you. There are other ways that some of us could help, too, if you want. I know of at least two programmers in the Babble community (I am one), would you be interested in having help in tracking down problems or writing new features or collecting data (which is what this thread was about)? There are also people with management experience in this community. They could help with project management or prioritization or coordination of resources. I'm sure that some people would be happy to donate their time if you would like that kind of help.
Additionally, I think that people would be willing to enter discussions on particular topics. In these discussions, all of the questions could be asked (because I certainly agree that questions are important), but some kind of conclusion could be reached that could then be explained to the rest of the community. Perhaps, for each topic, a topic moderator could be chosen whose task it would be to make sure that questions were asked and that a conclusion was reached. You could participate with each one of these discussions (or not), and have veto power - but I guess that if you did veto something that I would really just like a short explanation (i.e. "the software is not capable of doing this", or "This would take more time than it is worth" or "I think that this would destabilize the community because..." or "This is really outside the scope of what Babble is supposed to be"). Hopefully, you could have as much input as you wanted, but someone else would be responsible for driving the issue to completion.
There are a lot of very smart people in this community, and there are a lot of people who care deeply about this community. Many of us would be happy to help in a variety of ways, but there doesn't really seem to be a way to get those people organized.
I'm assuming that you will not answer all of the questions that I have put in this post. So let me boil it all down to one question, and we can work from there:
Dr. Bob, would you be in favor of accepting help from Babble posters for the administration and direction of the Babble site?
Well, I guess it has to be two questions:
If your answer is yes, would you be willing and able to define what types of help you could use, or would you rather have a collection of people present you with a list of suggestions that you could choose from?
Fallsfall
Posted by Phil on February 11, 2004, at 19:02:29
In reply to Can we help, Dr. Bob?, posted by fallsfall on February 11, 2004, at 7:47:15
Fallsfall, Thank you for understanding. I certainly didn't want my words to be misunderstood and strained my depressed brain to be clear.
The last two days have been the most emotional and painful days of my life.
I told my pdoc today that if it weren't for my brothers who I love very much, I'd be dead. No ifs ands or buts. On the other hand, I have to wonder, living crises to crises, if I'm doing them any favors.
This, I think, qualifies as a real bad day.
Man, I hope they are taking care of themselves. : )
Phil
Posted by fallsfall on February 11, 2004, at 22:39:29
In reply to Re: Can we help, Dr. Bob? » fallsfall, posted by Phil on February 11, 2004, at 19:02:29
I'm sorry that things are so hard for you. Please try to be good to yourself (my favorite is ice cream). Thanks for caring about the rest of the posters here. We care about you, too.
Posted by Dr. Bob on February 12, 2004, at 2:10:14
In reply to Can we help, Dr. Bob?, posted by fallsfall on February 11, 2004, at 7:47:15
> We DO want to help. We DO love Babble.
Thanks!
> > Sorry, I haven't checked lately...
>
> Is it hard for you to check? How busy are you these days? Could you give a guess as to when you might generate the numbers (or predict that you won't generate them)?It's not hard, but it does take some time. Very busy. I don't think I should let more than a year go by... But does it make a big difference what the current numbers are? I'd be surprised if any trends reversed themselves...
> How do you prioritize what "work" you do?
If something keeps coming up, it's a higher priority. If it's easier to do, it's more likely to get done. And sometimes I'm just in the mood to tackle a particular job?
> In business, people frequently have a list of tasks with a schedule that indicates when things would be done... Do you have such a list? Would you be willing to post it?
I have a list, but it doesn't have priorities, and certainly not dates...
> Would you like to have some help? I know that you have had deputies in the past, and that did seem to take some of the burden off of you. There are other ways that some of us could help, too, if you want. I know of at least two programmers in the Babble community (I am one), would you be interested in having help in tracking down problems or writing new features or collecting data (which is what this thread was about)? There are also people with management experience in this community. They could help with project management or prioritization or coordination of resources. I'm sure that some people would be happy to donate their time if you would like that kind of help.
Help would be great! But I know you all are busy, too...
> would you be willing and able to define what types of help you could use, or would you rather have a collection of people present you with a list of suggestions that you could choose from?
I think my preference would be for people who were interested to make suggestions.
Thanks for trying to help! :-)
Bob
Posted by fallsfall on February 12, 2004, at 8:39:17
In reply to Re: helping, posted by Dr. Bob on February 12, 2004, at 2:10:14
Thank you for your answers, Dr. Bob. I think that we are actually starting to have a discussion, and I appreciate that.
I have been thinking a lot about your communication style. I respect that you need to choose a style that works for you. But I'm hoping that by discussing the facets of the style, and how they effect the posters that you might be able to see how subtle modifications in certain circumstances might improve communication. As Linehan says in DBT sometime you have to "do what works".
You communicate like a therapist. We all know and love our therapists, and I must say that sometimes I find your comments comforting BECAUSE they are so "therapist-y". Therapists ask questions to help their clients expand their view of the world and to see new possibilities. This can be really helpful when people have tunnel vision, or don't know that the rest of the world sees things differently than they do. Your questions to us bring up things about support and the online environment that we aren't aware of. This is valuable. So talking in "therapist" isn't a bad thing.
The other thing about therapists is that they don't make decisions on what the client will do - that is the client's job. The therapist's job is to expand the client's view so that they can more clearly see the choices that they have to choose from. The therapist expands the view, the client chooses his life's path.
However, all of life isn't therapy (wouldn't my therapist love to see me say that!!!). The administration of this board is not therapy. The administration of this board is Management, management of a business. I have been working in the business world for 15 years and was a manager for 7 of those years. I hope in that time that I did learn a bit about how to make communication effective so that business works. I think that the general idea is to brainstorm for possibilities, evaluate the possibilities, choose a solution, and implement the solution. Sometimes you have to go around more than once (the requirements might change in the middle, or you might find out that it is physically or logistically impossible to implement things the way that you have planned). But the general flow is brainstorm, evaluate, choose and implement.
You could make a case that says that this same flow is used in therapy, but there is a very important distinction. There is more than one person involved both in therapy and (usually) in business. These different people have very different roles in the therapy model and the business model. For simplicity, let's say that there are only two people involved and see how the differences play out. One of the people has some "authority". I think that this is the therapist (in therapy) and the manager (in business). It can be argued that the client in therapy really holds the authority because they must make the final decisions, but I think that it is fairly common for clients to view their therapists as "authority figures". This leaves the second person as the "interested party" - this person has input, and is often the one who will eventually do the work (both in therapy and in business). In therapy, the "authority" expands the field and clarifies the choices. In therapy, the "interested party" makes a decision and implements changes. Business works a little differently (there are lots of models, but I think that this model applies best to Babble). In business the Authority presents the problem. The interested party (and often the Authority) brainstorm solutions. Then the interested party will evaluate the solutions and RECOMMEND a solution (a choice). The Authority makes a decision which the interested party then implements. I think it works well this way because usually the authority has a wider view of the business (world) than the interested party, but the interested party has more knowledge of how things work - implementation details. The Authority works more in a Why and What mode, while the interested party works more in a How mode.
So the contrast between therapy and business is in who makes the decision. In therapy, the client (interested party) makes the decision - it is his life. In business, the authority makes the decision (he has the widest view of the issue).
Another important difference between therapy and business is that it is OK in therapy to have questions that don't get answered (some of them can't be answered) - but it is still worthwhile to talk about them. In business, the goal is to end up with a solution, and in order to do that you have to either answer the questions or find a way to have a solution that doesn't involve that question. In both cases there is closure - either you have an answer to the question, or you *decide* that the question is no longer relevant because you are doing it a different way. If you leave important questions unanswered in business, you can't do the implementation phase and you have no product to sell (or the product is too late for the market window).
The conflict that I see in the administration of Babble, is that it is a business/management problem that is being solved with therapy solutions. And that doesn't quite work. There is a reason that businesses have a management structure and also individual contributors - and the number of individual contributors needs to be larger than the number of managers. The managers see the big picture and can make strategic decisions. Then the individual contributors can actually do the work, while the managers are making more decisions. This lets more than one thing get done at a time by spreading out the work. The managers do what they do best (strategy and decisions), and the individual contributors do what they do best (make it happen). Currently, Dr. Bob, you are both the manager and the individual contributor for Babble. We, the posters, provide input to you for brainstorming, but you evaluate the choices, decide on the solution and implement the solution. No wonder you have so much to do! Babble is not a trivial "business". There are regular supportive tasks to be done (archiving? Reading for civility, answering posts on Admin), there are special projects (add a new board, add features (i.e. spellcheck), fix bugs (my personal favorite...)), and there are strategic decisions (what should the blocking rules be, should we add new boards, what types of information is allowed (i.e. no info on illegal ways to get meds)).
I think that the place where Babble is now is very similar to the place where the start-ups I have worked for have been. There is a "visionary" who dreamed up the whole idea and made it happen (in a garage, usually). People see the product, think it is cool, and business picks up. The company needs to handle more volume, and often expands in scope a little, too. The "visionary" is having a blast and fortunately doesn't need much sleep. At some point, if the business is going to grow, though, the visionary needs some help. The question is how to add the help in so that the business continues to thrive. I think (and have seen) that usually first the visionary adds in some individual contributors who can do some of the work where the tasks are fairly clear. This frees the visionary up to dream up more wonderful things, which the individual contributors then make happen. So now the visionary is really using his unique skills - he's not emptying the waste baskets, or filing or backing up data, or even creating new pieces (OK, he can create a new piece once in a while) - he is "visioning". Steering the company and the product as only he can do. I think that this is where Babble needs to be now. I think that Dr. Bob is the visionary and can dream up new things and see the big picture. I think he needs some individual contributor help so that useful things can be implemented (as well as the critical things), and so that he has more time and energy to "vision".
There is another stage for the company - one that I experienced at my last startup company. I'll mention it briefly because I think it is helpful to keep this in mind as a company grows. Visionaries are really good at visioning, they are "doers" - they try things, they experiment, they look outside the "box". Typically, though, most visionaries are not good managers - their strengths are not in planning and managing the details and making the employees feel good. Eventually, the company grows to a size where someone who does have those management strength is brought in to "run" the company. The visionary is still there - and still critically important. He still steers the company and dreams up wonderful things that make their product better than anyone else's. But once he has decided what direction to go in, the manager draws up the plans and schedules (with help from the individual contributors) and the manager "manages" the projects to completion. Everyone gets to do what they do best.
Dr. Bob. You ARE a visionary, and I'm really glad that you are. I think that it is time to let Babble grow a little, though. I think that it is time to structure (and visionaries don't like structure, usually) Babble so that other people can help. I talk about this a little in a post earlier in this thread. When you add people to the TEAM (paid or volunteer), it is most successful if each member of the team feels that their ideas and skills are valued. This is often accomplished by letting them participate enough in the brainstorming and evaluating phases so that the entire team understands the reason that a certain direction is being taken. That is leadership.
So, Dr. Bob. What do you think?
Posted by Dr. Bob on February 13, 2004, at 23:12:35
In reply to Re: helping » Dr. Bob, posted by fallsfall on February 12, 2004, at 8:39:17
> I think that it is time to structure ... Babble so that other people can help... When you add people to the TEAM ... it is most successful if each member of the team feels that their ideas and skills are valued. This is often accomplished by letting them participate enough in the brainstorming and evaluating phases so that the entire team understands the reason that a certain direction is being taken. That is leadership.
>
> So, Dr. Bob. What do you think?I think you make a lot of sense. But aren't you all participating in the brainstorming and evaluating phases right here? Even though I might not communicate well enough how much I value that?
Bob
Posted by Dinah on February 14, 2004, at 8:40:22
In reply to Re: helping, posted by Dr. Bob on February 13, 2004, at 23:12:35
Dr. Bob.
I can see from several of your posts today that you are trying your best to understand what people have tried to tell you.
I really appreciate your effort, and I like the changes.
Posted by Dr. Bob on March 17, 2004, at 19:19:29
In reply to Re: helping, posted by Dr. Bob on February 12, 2004, at 2:10:14
> > > > Do you know the demographics of the boards now?
> > >
> > > Sorry, I haven't checked lately...
> >
> > Is it hard for you to check?
>
> It's not hard, but it does take some time... I'd be surprised if any trends reversed themselves...OK, here's an update:
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/stats/20040317.html
Bob
This is the end of the thread.
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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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