Identity and Values

Values

I value honesty, timeliness, doing what you say you will do, sticking to a plan, curiousity, determiniation, kindness, open mind thinking.

Identity

I am an open minded, kind hearted, white guy from the US. I see myself as a creative, a skateboarder, a dad, a loving partner, a Mississippian, an entreprenuer, and handy.

Strengths/weaknesses

I am determined, able to understand and solve complex problems, kind, able to provide structure to teams, a patient teacher, and a good dad :) - My weaknesses include, impatience in many aspects of work and personal life, internalize mistakes, and punish myself, quick to anger, quick to sadness, move to quickly, causing easily avoidable mistakes.

An achievement I am proud of

I have many things I am proud of, like building my own business from the ground up, but the thing I am most proud of is taking myself from -$30,000 in debt to having over a year of living expenses in the bank. I had to totally change the way I was living and the change has been transformative for my life. I no longer have the typical financial fears, losing a job, getting sick, an expensive bill or accident. I think my only fear now is losing that safety net.

Narratives that help describe where my values come from

• I grew up on a small cattle farm in Mississippi, USA. The son of two Veternarians, and brother to two sisters. It was a safe place, with parents who always encouraged us to take chances and to explore the world. Now, that I live in NZ they probably wish they hadn't encouraged us that much :grin:. It was a charmed childhood, with all kinds of things to explore. Hanging out with my dad meant, learning something new, solving the new problem of the day on a farm. A time I often think about is when my father and I laid 400m of supply plumbing to the water troughs in the pastures. We dug trenches, we glued together pipe, we both had our jobs to do. We obviously were not plumbers but, on a farm and especially with my dad you figure out how to do the things you want to do. This experience taught me I didn't want to be a plumber, but what it really put into my mind is that I can do anything, I just have to figure out how to do it.
• My parents were extremely active people with lots going on in their lives from kids, social lives, a veternary practice, a cattle farm, plus a whole heap of other activities. What this meant was my parents were often late. Ok, they were always late, which for me as a kid was very frustrating a bit embarassing. I don't know if these experiences are what shaped who I am today, but what I know about myself is that I hate being late. I always show up 15minutes early, and I get anxiety if I think I am going to be late. Likewise I also appreciate when people are on time, and think the bigger thing to all of this is I want people to do what they say they will do.
• At University, I took a business ehtics course, and I remember the first chapter asked the question, "how as a society do we decide things are ethical or not ethical?" In this chapter we went on to study the ethics of various religions and determine the ethical principles of most religions have a large overlap between them. The take away we were supposed to get is that ethics tend to be the things a super majority of people agree are ethical or not ethical. I am not religious but I was raised as a christian, and my parents are christians and we're raised as christians, and so on. I do believe many of my personal ethics come from christianity as it was the model I was raised with. It informed how I saw the world for what is now only half of my life, but an important half. My values have changed as my life has gone on, but my ethics I think still echo my childhood.

Explain a situation where you have made an ethical decision. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made and how you reflect on the decision now.

Maybe I've never been truly tested or that I am so strong in my ethical stances that they've never felt like hard decisions, but the more likely is that I am unable to remember any that aren't, contrived for this exercise. The only thing I can think of that feels like an honest assessment, is my experience walking down a path. When I come to a piece of rubbish I feel compelled to pick it up and place it in a bin. Sometimes I make the decision not to pick up the rubbish, but it is always a decision for me. Something deep down feels a responsibility. In a split second I'm measuring the inconvenience to myself, to reality that if I don't do it, it's unlikely someone else will, what I am deeming is acceptable by not picking it up, and every person's individual responsibility to care for our environment. I know that's a lot to think about in one second, and I often make that decision on both sides of what I think is right. When I reflect on these instances, mainly when I have not picked up the rubbish, I feel that I have let myself and the people that share this place with me down. I know most people don't really care and don't hold me responsible as they would likely make the same choice, but I think that's why I wanted to share this, as I don't feel societal pressure to pick up the rubbish, I feel compelled by something I can only describe as a deeply held ethical value.

Describe how your culture and the people around you have influenced your values and identity.

Hitting us with the hard questions. I grew up in a very conservative part of the US, in a very liberal (for the place) family. I think I've always had a tension in my identity, as a person with deep roots in a culture that's values are often misaligned with that of my own. From my culture, I have gained what are important identity traits to me, like treating others with respect, and being kind, the kind of music that I am drawn too among other things. On the flip side I also see the culture I am from as the mirror image of what I consider as respectful and kind when expanded to a larger spectrum of people. Growing up and having the opportunity to live in many different places and developing friendships along the way has only expanded those values, I guess what I am saying is my upbring instilled in me a values in me that are still important to me, but my life experience, has grown and reshaped those values, and how I identify myself today.

Identify your strengths and how they will support you during your learning journey.

- I'm able to think critically and find creative solutions -Seems Software development is all about solving problems so I think I have come to the right place! - working collaboratively - I think this will serve me well when working with the other individuals in my cohort. - determined, don't let obsticles stand in my way, though that doesn't mean afraid to ask for help -I think this will be helpful with what I believe will be many moments of struggling to do something hard. - kind - Strong opinions, but loosely held. I have conviction in my thoughts, but am willing to change them when given new information. - I think this will also be helpful when working in a group. Having an opinion, but being open to what other people have to say.

Evaluate your limitations in terms of your learning and career development. How might these affect your learning journey?

I have a threshold on my stamina. I need to make sure I don't push the gauge into the red, so to speak. As long as I keep an eye on where I am at and adjust as needed, I will be golden. In the past I have run myself to hard for to long, and end up running out of steam, not out of frustration, but out of exhaustion, and not taking care of my complete self mind-body-spirit kind of vibes. I also, have a partner and a 1 year old, that I get to give my attention to. These aren't limitations so much as considerations of how much I am able to give. It will be important for me to make time for both, and not let the other impede upon each other. Seems like a silly thing to say, but I think it's a thing if I don't consider carefully could easily end up with me not getting my work done efficiently, and eroding the time I should be spending with my family. It's also important that I communicate with my partner the requirements of my study, so that everyone expectations are matched.

Share an Example of when you were trying to work productively with others, but they was resistance or tension. Discuss strategies you tried at the time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now and why.

In my last role I introduced a framework called lean manufacturing, which was met with a lot of resistance. There were a lot of entrenched ideas of how things should be done, and the lean methodology is somewhat counter to what our assumption of what the most efficient way to do things is. At the time, I fortunately had full buy in from the owner of the business, and was given plenty of space to try things out. The strategies I started with to move the needle to understanding was education.

Instead of pushing this system on everyone, we spent 20-30 minutes every day learning about it, I learned it one day, and taught it to my team the next. This helped me get my first ally on the team, but it was clear I wasn't winning anyone else over. We then started implementing the smallest kernel of the lean methodology. This was mostly met with eye rolls, but because this little kernel was to empower people to improve something about how they do their work, it quickly became something people wanted to do, because it meant they had more of a say in how things are done than it felt like they did before. This took a very long time, but two years later we were making massive changes to how we were working, and even the biggest hold outs had come around and in fact one had become the biggest contributor to the process.

When reflecting on the ups and downs of this big culture shift, The lessons I learned were that you can't make people do anything, they have to want to do it. Education is the key to understanding, and it requires stacking one brick at a time, and diligently and patiently stacking those bricks until the wall is built.