Business Agility consultant/coach, applying human-centered systems thinking to complex engineered systems & regulated industries. Congruent Compliance LLC.
Rochester NY
Joined January 2011
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Hey @GhostLifestyle , @optionsuncapped introduced me to your product and I purchased my first one. You should sponsor him.
SOMEBODY TACKLE JOSH ALLEN #nfl #nfledits #joshallen #buffalobills #edi... youtube.com/shorts/c4fxxyfb6… via @YouTube
Griffin Jones retweeted
wearethemighty.com/mighty25/…
The trouble with a generous article like this one is that it makes a long series of questionable career decisions look like a plan. I’m tempted to take the credit, but too many of you have been here long enough to know better.
Big thanks to Jessica Manfre and @WeAreTheMighty for making me sound considerably more organized than I am, and for drawing attention to the work we’re doing at mikeroweWORKS—including opportunities for veterans to learn a skilled trade. Sorry it took so long to share, but I've been busy, making it up as I go along.
If you’re unfamiliar with We Are The Mighty, they’re a veteran-led media company dedicated to informing, entertaining, and supporting service members, veterans, and their families. They tell the stories of that community and help the rest of us better understand the people who serve. It’s worthwhile work, even if their editorial judgment occasionally leads them to highlight a former opera singer who became marginally famous for crawling through sewers with no discernible mechanical ability.
As always, the people worth lionizing are the ones who actually know how to build the stuff we all rely upon, and I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of them, and smart enough, occasionally, to get out of their way. That's the only plan I've ever had, and I'm sticking to it....
I’m in the lottery
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Griffin Jones retweeted
A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life.
At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday."
He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy.
Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system.
He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting.
He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."
The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.
Griffin Jones retweeted
DUKINFIELD POSTMISTRESS
In 2012 the @PostOffice hired outside forensic accountants to investigate complaints about its Horizon computer system. That same year, it got Della Robinson convicted using Horizon figures.
If you have never heard of the Post Office scandal, here is the short version. The Post Office is owned 100% by the UK government, which makes the government the owner of everything that follows. Your taxes are in this story somewhere. It used a computer system called Horizon, supplied by Fujitsu, to record the money in local branches. Horizon showed shortfalls. The Post Office blamed the people running the branches and prosecuted them. More than 700 were convicted. A High Court judge later found Horizon could produce wrong figures in branch accounts.
Della Robinson ran the Post Office in Dukinfield, near Manchester. She took it over in 2006. In January 2012 auditors turned up, counted the cash and said she was £17,000 short. She was suspended on the spot. Post Office security searched her home and her car. Her contract was ended in February. She was charged with theft and false accounting. Horizon was unavailable for comment.
She says she was told that if she pleaded guilty to false accounting, the theft charge would be dropped and the Post Office would not chase the money. She pleaded guilty in late 2012. She received 180 hours of community service and a £5,000 legal bill. Then a letter arrived telling her to pay the money back.
Here is the bit I cannot get past. @ComputerWeekly published the stories of 7 postmasters with Horizon problems in May 2009. That is more than 3 years before Della Robinson's conviction. A campaign group, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, formed that year. The Post Office prosecuted anyway.
She did her community service in an Age UK shop, where many of her old Post Office customers did their shopping. A buyer who had talked about paying around £120,000 for the branch disappeared. Two rental properties were repossessed. She says the stress made her epilepsy worse and she lost her driving licence.
Not long after her conviction she heard Alan Bates on the radio, phoned him and found out she was far from alone. The Criminal Cases Review Commission received her application in April 2015 and sent her case to the Court of Appeal in July 2020. In April 2021 the court quashed her conviction along with 38 others. It said the Post Office's failures were so serious that prosecuting these people offended the conscience of the court.
Press coverage of Della Robinson is thin, so I dug it all up and put it here.
The Post Office kept telling everyone Horizon was robust. Della Robinson was handed 180 hours of community service to match.
Sources: @ManchesterMill @ComputerWeekly @PostOffInquiry @ccrcupdate
Griffin Jones retweeted
My daughter is being transferred out of Fort Bragg, and she's leaving a piece of equipment behind.
"I took this ruck to Afghanistan. I handed it off to (a friend) when I left (the 82nd Airborne) division the first time. She handed it back to me when I came back (to the 82nd) and she left. It’s been a lot of places, made a lot of jumps. Moved a lot of miles. I’m handing it off to the next generation so she can keep it alive and in the fight ... I have a (Ranger) tabbed female who is going places, (who I am going to give it to.) I talked it over with (my friend) and she’s our pick. She’ll get to pick who gets it" after her.
Griffin Jones retweeted
My daughter and her husband, both captains in the 82nd Airborne, took their last jumps as paratroopers yesterday. They are being transferred to Fort Sill, where she will teach in the Artillery School and he will take command of a headquarters company. As part of their leave taking from active paratrooper status, they jumped together and then buried their wings -- literally burying their parachutist badges in the drop zone -- with their children watching. A sergeant in the battery my daughter commands took this family portrait.
Griffin Jones retweeted
A number of people have asked me if the attached video is AI. It is not. That’s really me, fifteen years ago, testifying before Congress about the need for some kind of national effort to reinvigorate the skilled trades (The suit is also real, but alas, no longer fits the way it used to). Since the original video of that testimony has resurfaced and is currently making the rounds, I thought I’d use some of it to shamelessly plug BuildFreedom.US
As you may know, The Pentagon and mikeroweWORKS have partnered around a simple initiative to highlight a few hundred thousand AI-proof, six-figure jobs currently open in the defense industrial base. The campaign is called Build Freedom, because that’s exactly what it does, and we’re expanding every month. We’re currently in six states and hope to be in twelve by early next year. And half the country soon thereafter.
The jobs at buildfreedom.us are truly essential, and in desperate need of being filled. They do not require a four-year degree, but they do require training, and I’m happy to tell you that mikeroweWORKS has received a check from Build Freedom for $10 million, which we’ve set aside to pay for the training you’ll need to land one of these essential jobs. I’m even happier to report that the check, (like me,) is not AI, and that the money is very real, and waiting to be claimed, at: bit.ly/ApplyForAWorkEthicSch…
To review, find an AI-proof, six-figure job at:
bit.ly/MRxBuildFreedomUS
And apply for a work ethic scholarship at:
bit.ly/ApplyForAWorkEthicSch…
Griffin Jones retweeted
NY ELECTION ISN'T ABOUT TRUMP
It's not about Trump.
In New York. It's not about Trump.
It's about you. You, and how the governor is screwing you.
You and your family and your state.
In New York, the election is about the least popular governor in America and the most expensive and dysfunctional state government in the country.
It's about holding a governor accountable for five years of failure and fatigue. It's about understanding that the chaos in Albany is separate from the chaos in Washington, and while you can't do much about Washington, you can make a change in Albany.
And if you don't, you're going to keep getting screwed.
Your neighbors will keep moving away, your jobs will keep disappearing, your poverty rates will keep rising, your streets will continue to be unsafe, your schools will continue to fail.
Poverty? In New York City, it was 18% when she took over and it's 26% now, with similar numbers across the state.
Taxes? Business rates were 6.5% when she took over and they're 7.25% now, taking some $20 billion a year out of our employers' pockets. She has raised the MTA payroll mobility tax twice and folks in New York City are a combined 9.43% before local taxes are factored in.
Energy? Electricity rates have gone up 68% since she became governor. Natural gas prices have gone up 25%. And both of those are the result of state taxes and policies -- state taxes and policies signed into law by the governor.
Housing? Housing costs over much of the state have increased some 50% since she became governor -- compared to 30% nationally.
Education? Most expensive public schools in America, with middling outcomes in our best schools and horrific results for students in our cities -- and some of the lowest literacy rates in the country.
Health care? Health insurance is 40% more expensive in New York than in the rest of the country -- because of taxes and mandates signed into law by the governor.
Outmigration? During each year of this governor's term, more than 400,000 people have moved out of the state, far outstripping the number moving in. And those moving out have largely been tax payers and those moving in have largely been tax users.
Management? This governor had a wildcat strike in her prisons and two inmates savagely beaten to death by correctional officers and yet has done nothing to replace her failed commissioner or make the prisons safe for inmates and employees.
And the Tax Foundation says this governor's New York is dead last among the states when it comes to places to start or run a business.
And none of that is about Trump. All of that is about Hochul. It doesn't matter whether you hate him or love him. This is about her.
More of her constituents tell pollsters they disapprove of her than any other governor in the country. Her state is troubled and trending downward.
And it's her fault.
And it's your choice.
You can't fix Washington, but you can fix Albany.
Griffin Jones retweeted
Today is the third Friday of September, also known as National Tradesmen Day. To celebrate, a young and cheeky editor at mikeroweWORKS has assembled a video to remind the world about what I looked like 18 years ago, back when I boldly proclaimed my intention to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some sort of ad hoc PR initiative.
Looking back, I think you’ll agree my performance – delivered after several beers on Labor Day of 2008 - was a fairly cringe-worthy spasm of uncharacteristic earnestness. It was, however, well-intended, and useful I think, in rallying others who shared my sentiment. In fact, a few years later in 2011, when Irwin Tools decided to launch National Tradesman Day, they called upon me to announce the occasion, which I was delighted to do. In return, Irwin donated $10,000 to my newly formed foundation, which I used to help fund our first round of work ethic scholarships.
Since then, lots of other likeminded companies and organizations have asked me to help them launch similar efforts to reinvigorate the trades, including the latest initiative from the Pentagon called BuildFreedom.US. I agreed, and in return, Build Freedom has donated $10 million dollars to mikeroweWORKS, which we’ll spend on the next round of work ethic scholarships. And so, we appear to be trending in the right direction.
Anyway, enjoy the attached video, a genuine blast from my past, and hopefully, an accurate look into the future. Better yet, share it with it someone in the trades, and help us commemorate National Tradesman Day by reminding the country that many excellent opportunities in the skilled trades are waiting to be filled, and that mikeroweWORKS is here to pay for the training you need to get started.
Apply today at mikeroweWORKS.org
Carry on,
Mike
Griffin Jones retweeted
I can’t nominate this gentlemanly patriot fast enough to be the @BuffaloBills Fan of the Year.
Griffin Jones retweeted
In 2021, @BuffaloBills OT Dion Dawkins (@DDawkins66) described the team and their fans as one big family: “Alright so flash back, it’s 2017: I’m 23, an absolute weirdo, I’ve got this loud personality, I’ve got blond hair. Can’t really tell me nothing — I’m just that classic ‘brash rookie.’ And I think a lot of the older guys, they don’t quite know what to make of me. I’m definitely an outsider.
But then for Thanksgiving of that season, our whole O-line crew, we get together for dinner. It’s this big thing at Eric’s house, he does it every year. And of course it’s classic O-line sh*t: we even have a contest to see who can gain the most weight by the end of their meal. There’s a legit scale set up in the kitchen and everything. (Eric wins. He always wins.) It’s the best time, man.
Anyway, there’s this moment I’ll never forget. At the end of that dinner, the vets kind of take me aside for a chat. And Eric — he tells me, ‘Dion, we really think you’re a unique kid. We don’t gravitate to every rookie that comes along, but we see something in you. We see in you the type of player, the type of guy, who we’re going to be able to pass the torch to here pretty soon.’
And I’m looking at him, like, I’m sorry — what?!? Get out of here. Pass the torch?! You’re in your prime here!! You’re E-WOOD. Ain’t no torch getting passed.
And he’s like, ‘Man, I’m serious. You’ll see. It’ll happen. Pretty soon, us vets — we’re just going to be these old f*cks, sending you text messages, saying good luck this week. And you’re going to be in our shoes by then. You’re going to be that guy who’s leading this unit, who’s finding a greater purpose in this culture that we’ve built. You’re going to be the guy who finishes what we started.’
And for as much as those words obviously meant to me in that moment — I still wasn’t 100% buying it. Part of me was still, like, NAH. Come on. Quit playing. You’re not going anywhere.
Of course, it turned out he was right. E-Wood retired a few months later....
It’s like: there’s these generations of fans, this lineage of amazing Bills supporters from over the years, that I feel like we’re trying to make this RUN for. But then on top of that, there’s also these same generations of players. And I feel like this run is for those guys as well.... That sh*t goes out to my vets. But also their vets, and their vets’ vets, and so on and so on.
That right there is what it’s about, you know what I’m saying??
Like, yeah, we’re playing football. This is a football thing.
But it’s also a family thing.” playerstribu.ne/DawkinsBills
For everyone, especially the young:
If You Only Watch One Investment Video, Make It This One youtu.be/vYXK0Fknsto?si=WQz9… via @YouTube
Griffin Jones retweeted
At Ground Zero, after the last living person was pulled out, the search dogs stopped eating.
So the police did something nobody had written down in any manual.
They climbed into the rubble, lay down, and pretended to be alive.
More than 300 dogs worked the World Trade Center site. They came from every corner of the country, on trucks and in cargo holds, with handlers who had been trained to do one thing. Find people who are still breathing under the ground.
That is what a search and rescue dog is built for. Not bodies. Life. They are trained on live human scent. When they find it, they bark, they dig, they light up, and the handler rewards them, and the whole thing means something.
The last living person recovered from Ground Zero was a woman named Genelle Guzman-McMillan. She had been buried for 27 hours. A dog found her.
She was the last.
After that, the dogs kept going out on twelve-hour shifts, across sixteen acres of smoldering steel, at temperatures that burned their paws, and they found nobody.
Nobody.
Day after day.
The handlers noticed it first. The dogs were changing. Their tails were down. They were not eating. They would come off the pile and lie flat and not look at anyone.
A veterinarian named Cindy Otto, who spent ten days there working night shifts to care for the animals, put it plainly. The dogs had been sent to find life, and every day they were finding the opposite.
It was breaking them.
An NYPD officer named Famiglietti described what happened next.
They pulled everybody off the rubble. Then they asked for volunteers.
The volunteers, police officers, went out into the debris and hid themselves. Under beams. In voids. Curled up in pockets of concrete. They were told to lie down like they were hurt. Then the handlers sent the dogs in.
Picture that.
A grown man with a badge, a man who had spent the last week pulling friends out of that same pile, lying down in it on purpose. Face down. Holding still. Waiting for a dog.
And the dog comes over the top of the wreckage, and catches the scent, and barks, and digs, and finds a person who is warm and moving and alive.
And the handler says good girl, good boy, and the whole team celebrates.
They called them mock finds.
They did it for the dogs.
They did it so the dogs would remember what they were for.
One of those dogs was a two-year-old golden retriever named Bretagne. She came from Texas with her handler, Denise Corliss. It was her first deployment. They worked ten days at Ground Zero. They found no survivors.
But firefighters would come off the pile, stone-faced, not speaking, and see the dog, and something would break open in them. They would kneel down. They would put their face in her fur.
One day a man walked up to Bretagne and started petting her. He told Corliss his best friend loved golden retrievers.
Corliss asked where his friend was.
The man pointed at the pile.
"He's in there somewhere."
He kept petting the dog.
Bretagne went on to work Hurricane Katrina and Rita. She retired at 10. She was the last known surviving search dog of 9/11.
On June 6, 2016, at age 16, she was carried into a veterinary office in Texas to be put to sleep.
Outside, a dozen firefighters from her fire department stood in a line in their dress uniforms, in the heat, and saluted as she went past.
They draped her in an American flag on the way out.
Three hundred dogs went into that pile looking for the living.
They found one.
And when they could not find any more, the men they worked beside laid down in the rubble and let themselves be found, so the dogs would not lose heart.
That is the whole story of Ground Zero, really.
Nobody could save the dead.
So they saved each other. 🇺🇸
Griffin Jones retweeted
On September 11, 2001, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell was working on the second floor of the Pentagon's E-Ring (the outermost ring) when American Airlines Flight 77 struck the building. He was just 15 to 20 yards away from the exact point where the nose of the plane penetrated the structure, making him one of the closest people to the impact to survive.
Moments before the crash, Birdwell had stepped out of the restroom. When the aircraft hit at 9:37 a.m., he heard a sound louder than anything he had ever experienced. The explosion tossed him "like a rag doll" down the corridor and instantly set him ablaze. The intense heat and fuel vapor melted his polyester military uniform directly onto his skin. Trapped in pitch-black, toxic smoke, and unable to breathe due to searing air and jet fuel vapor, Birdwell collapsed. Believing he was about to die, he prayed, said a silent goodbye to his family, and "accepted his death". Suddenly, the Pentagon’s ceiling sprinkler system activated right above him, extinguishing the flames on his body. This gave him just enough strength to crawl and find help.
A group of colleagues found him in the smoke, pulling him to safety. Because the burns were so extensive across his body, a medical team at a makeshift triage station inside the Pentagon had to administer an IV and morphine directly through his feet, which were the only parts of his body left unburned. Birdwell suffered burns over 60% of his body, with nearly half of them being third-degree. His most critical injury was an intensive internal inhalation injury. The scorching air and toxic fumes had severely seared his lungs, requiring him to be placed on a respirator for several weeks.
Doctors initially gave Birdwell less than a 1% chance of survival, prompting him to say what he thought were his final goodbyes to his 12-year-old son from his hospital bed. Against all odds, he survived. He spent 92 days at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center Burn Unit and underwent 39 reconstructive surgeries over four years of agonizing rehabilitation to regain his mobility. He was awarded the Purple Heart for the wounds he received that day.”
--
Almost 25 years later, I met Brian at the Pentagon, not far from where he cheated death. That’s him, all the way on to my right, barely in the frame. The guy in the green tie with a big smile. We met in The Hall of Heroes, where I had just accepted a check for The mikeroweWORKS Foundation, on behalf of everyone at Build Freedom - including The Honorable Brian Birdwell.
“My name is Brian Birdwell,” he said. “And I just wanted to say hello and thank you for all those dirty jobs! And for what you’re doing with your foundation. I think it’s terrific!”
“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your support and I promise to spend the money wisely. Oh, and thank you for your service.”
It was a rather assumptive thing to say, since I didn’t know at the time that Brian Birdwell had been a Lt. Colonel in the Army, much less what he’d endured 25 years ago. But there was something about his bearing. His posture. The flag on the lapel. The scars on his hands. He seemed like a man who understood sacrifice.
“This is the greatest country in the world,” he said, “and it’s my privilege to serve it. Now keep on doing what you do, Mr. Rowe!"
There were many other hands to shake that day, and lots of other people to meet, including the fine Americans standing with Brian, all of whom have stories worth sharing. But on this day, I’ll focus on Brian Birdwell. Partly because I really appreciate what Build Freedom is doing for our country, and partly because I really am grateful for the service and the sacrifice he made for you and me. But mostly, because 25 years after those murderous swine tried their best to kill him, Brian Birdwell is still standing. Still smiling. Still serving the country he loves.
I realized all of this several minutes ago, after I boarded a United flight from LAX to San Francisco. As we waited on the tarmac, I saw a link in my newsfeed to the article I quoted above, and learned about the man who somehow survived the attack on the Pentagon 25 years ago. A man I last saw in The Hall of Heroes, wearing a green tie and a big smile. A man called Brian Birdwell, who didn’t bother to tell me about himself the day we met. Hopefully, he won’t mind too much if I tell you about him today, before wising all of you safe travels, in friendly skies.
Griffin Jones retweeted
‘COYOTE VS ACME’ director Dave Green has released a thank you letter on the film's opening day.
“This is a celebration, it's proof that movies don't just go away. We make work so it can be seen and shared - that's the whole reason we do what we do.”
Griffin Jones retweeted
@Griff0Jones It's time. See the movie critics call 🧨an absolute blast 🧨
Get your tickets now! coyotevsacme.com/
