A few of my colleagues would invariably make some reference to “circles of influence” if they would hear you say these things 😉

An odd reference comes to my mind: my son has been playing pokémon games for the last five or more years. Of course, as a dad – not because I like gaming myself, I had to play along and inevitably I’ve picked up a few details about various species and their skills and abilities. One such skill is “echoed voice”, explained as “This move increases in power when used by different Pokémon”.
I’m absolutely sure that your voice is echoed more than you can see or observe. Sometimes resonating from what you’ve triggered, sometimes from a different source. But the call for change, especially a change from the industrial era style of management thinking, is all around us. Perhaps the change is going slow but I’m convinced it is beyond a point where it can easily be stopped.

Not shouting in the desert so much as becoming more comfortable with the idea that telling people to e.g. change has little to zero positive effect and some amount of negative effect.

– Bob

It is bloody hard to change the path of the corporate juggernaut of software development. I’m a passenger on one such juggernaut but your writings (along with those of other software dev and test bloggers) have shown me that it doesn’t have to be that way. I can ‘think different’ even in this restricted space and work toward meeting folks’ needs as best I can with the tools that I have (both soft and hard tools).

It seems like you need to meet your own needs differently. This is good! I look forward to your next posts

Dave

Your writings have directly changed how I approach my own work, and I’m now starting to share this knowledge within my various teams at work. I’m very grateful for the time you spend on your sharing, regardless of the format, as it has really helped me meet my need for personal development and help meeting the needs of others in my personal and professional life.

Note, this is not a plea to keep with your format so far, just an expression of thanks and encouragement to do whatever meets your needs best.

In my last paragraph, “mean” should read “me” 🙂

I agree that personal stories are often the most compelling things to write about, but I also think a mixture of stories and points of view is fine. I know that your points of view are personal, and don’t experience them as an crude attempt to change me (though they might.)

One of the things we need to come to terms with when being effective while wearing consultant or blogger hats is that we have to give up taking credit for anything that happens while we’re around. (If people are thanking me profusely, that actually means I’m being less effective, because they’re assigning credit to the change they’re making to mean rather than themselves.) You have made contributions to the kinds of change you talk about in ways that you’ll never know. Evidence for this is invariably subtle and fleeting—hard to notice and believe. Such change may seem like small potatoes, but, hey, we’re doing the best we can. Yes?