Followship

Many so-called leadership positions are followship positions.

One way musicians learn to conduct is by conducting recordings. We did this at drum major camp back in the days of vinyl albums and cassette tapes. That’s OK for teenagers who are just learning the basic motions of conducting, but it’s not how real conductors are trained.

When you conduct a recording, you’re not leading, you’re following. Conducting recordings teaches you implicitly to expect to be ignored. Real conductors train by conducting a pianist or a small ensemble. They expect to be followed, and they learn the consequences of their actions.

I use followship to describe inverted leadership. This happens when someone appears to be leading when in fact they’re following. Conducting a CD is followship. So is managing a team by keeping records of what the team has been doing rather than giving direction. Supposed leadership positions in business are often followship positions.

Followship is reactive, not interactive. Imagine an orchestra recording a CD. The musicians in the studio follow the conductor in a fundamentally different way than the music student following the CD. The musicians interact with the conductor. The student doesn’t interact with the CD.

Followship is not simply bad leadership. Followship is passive. Bad leadership is active.

When I was drum major in high school, one night I started our half time show way too fast. The color guard dropped their rifles several times during the performance and it was my fault. Their routine could not be performed at the tempo I had set. That was bad leadership on my part, but it was genuine leadership because the band followed my lead.

Leadership mistakes are embarrassing, but followship is even more embarrassing. It’s easier to admit a mistake than to admit being ineffectual.

Related post: Engineering route to accounting

Most popular programming posts of 2011

These have been my most popular programming-related posts this year.

My favorite on the list is #5.

Post #4 was written in 2009, but it got a lot of traffic this year.

Thanks to everyone who shared these posts on Hacker News, Reddit, Twitter, etc.

How to know it all

The way to know it all is to change the definition of “all.” Schools do this, for example, by defining “all” to mean everything on a test. Then it’s possible for someone to know it all. Schools create the illusion that the world is finite. You may not know everything, but someone does.

The desire to know it all is pernicious. The only way to accomplish it is to shrink your world. That may be OK for a while to focus your attention. The danger is that you can succeed and forget that you started by drawing arbitrary boundaries.

When I was very young, I thought that if I read every volume of the World Book Encyclopedia, I’d know everything. Of course I wouldn’t know everything, only what the editors of the encyclopedia chose to include.

If you want to learn English by first learning all the vocabulary, you’ll never speak English. Even if you learn every word in a particular dictionary, you still haven’t learned every word in the language, or even every word you may run into.

Computer languages are orders of magnitude simpler than human languages, but they’re still too complex to learn exhaustively. If you want to learn every nuance of C++ before writing programs, you’ll never write a program. And if you think this is because C++ is a large language, it’s hardly possible to understand a smaller language like C exhaustively either if you take into account all the subtleties of how features are actually implemented on various platforms.

A common problem in math is how to select a finite sample from an infinite space. Maybe you have a function defined at an infinite number of points and you want to approximate it by sampling it at a carefully chosen finite set of points. This is a good metaphor for life.

Even when things are finite, it’s often very practical to think of them as being infinite. (See Infinite is easier than big.) Many aspects of life are effectively infinite.

Related post: Evaluate people at their best or at their worst?

Gutenberg + Readability

Here’s a very simple idea: Use Project Gutenberg for content and Readability for style.

Project Gutenberg has a large collection of public domain books in digital form. The books are available in several formats, none of which are ideal for reading. Project Gutenberg provides text without much styling in order to make it easier for people to use the content as they please.

You can go to the HTML version of a book on Gutenberg and use Readability (or Instapaper) to format it for easier reading. Importing the HTML page to a Kindle similarly improves the formatting.

* * *

Has anyone made a style sheet to approximate the look of Readability or Instapaper? I’d like to use something like that to improve the appearance of the static HTML pages on my site.

Houston Public Library, 1976

Behold the architectural splendor of the Houston Public Library building that opened in 1976:

Contrast with the Houston Public Library building that opened in 1926:

Maybe this isn’t a fair comparison. There are slightly more interesting views of the new library. However, both photos represent what comes to mind when I think of each building.

See also Houston Public Library, 1926.

Houston Public Library, 1926

In 1926, Houston completed construction of a new public library. This building has been restored and reopened to the public this month. My wife and I visited the library yesterday and I took a few photos.

When you visit the library, now known as the Julia Ideson building, the staff recommend you begin your tour on the third floor to see the ceiling.

Then on the second floor you’ll see something like this.

The reading room opens next week and so I could only photograph it from outside.

The children’s library also opens next week and so I could only photograph it through the door.

Finally, here is a meeting room.

My photos of the building’s murals and tapestries turned out poorly and so I’ll spare you from seeing those. (I’ve hardly ever used a camera. Someday I’d like to learn how to take decent photos.) You can find more photos of the library, current and historical, on the website for The Julia Ideson Library Preservation Partners.

In 1976 a new library opened next to the 1926 building. The contrast between the buildings is stark. No historical society will ever lobby to preserve or restore the new Houston library building. It’s just a typical, bland, modern box. The old library feels like a library. The new library feels like an office building. The old library makes you want to stay and lose yourself in a good book. The new library makes you complete your transaction and leave.

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