Integrity is Integral

 

I really resonated with this longform X post on how the advent of AI in coding changes what adds value for software developers, and especially this quote:

The companies winning today aren't the ones with the best products. They're the ones with the most direct relationships with customers. The product is just the artifact through which you serve them. Your audience is your moat. Your email list is your moat. Your community is your moat. Your reputation is your moat.

I've never been in the software business, but I have been in the professional services business, and I think it is very applicable. Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, or (like I was for 20 years) an economic consultant, the technical aspects of what you're doing are getting turbo-charged by AI tools so that you can produce work faster and of higher quality and accuracy, and not just on the margins but by orders of magnitude.

But, that also means your customers and competitors can also attempt the same. Maybe you're better than they are, but maybe you're not, and even if you are, maybe it doesn't matter because the savings in cost or time or convenience more than makes up for the difference in quality or accuracy.

But the professional services business has never just about better, faster, stronger at the technical tasks. Oh sure, you have to be top-notch at AI tools (just like spreadsheets and calculators before them). But that's not really the value-add. 

What is, as the post suggests, is the connection to your customers. And to be more specific, not just any connection, but one in which they trust you to lead them to the right answers in the right way.

"Trust" is far fuzzier than tax law or software code or multivariate regressions. But it is the very foundation upon which a successful practice is built, as well as a successful employee in that practice. 

There is a relatively easy part of this and a very hard part of this, although both of them take effort and intentionality. The relatively easy part is something I used to tell my co-workers, which is that before you dive into any sort of analysis, ask yourself what the problem is that I'm trying to solve, figure out what work can help answer that question, and venture a hypothesis as to what a likely result is. We get so tunnel-visioned in our training and tools that we can do a massive amount of work that is impressive and precise and yet completely wrong. And, if we don't take a little bit of time to do some initial thinking, we will not only waste a bunch of time doing the work but we will also have no idea if the result of that work makes any sense or not. Which is a dangerous place to be, to give your client (or, if you're an employee, your boss) a bunch of work you've produced, which may be impressive looking and thorough in coverage but you don't even know if you went in the right direction let alone landed on the bullseye.

Which brings me to the harder thing, which is where trust really comes from, which is having the sort of reputation that customers instinctively know to come to you because you will provide value to them. Which is related to the first point, since of course if you send your customers garbage answers they're not going to think very highly of you. But of course it's more than that. It's having a personal relationship with them. It's having helped them in the past, both formally and informally. It's living your life in a way that is consistent with the kinds of values your customers benefit from and want to be associated with.

And, ultimately, it's about keeping your word. If you say you're going to help, you help. If you say you're going to ship by end of month, you ship by end of month. If you say the trend is up, they can take to the bank that the trend is up; if you say they should do X, they can take to the bank that having done X they will see the benefit of it.

That's what I call integrity. It takes a lifetime to build up. And it takes 100 percent of your energy to maintain, both because it is an always-on trait and also because the potential to ruin it all in seconds is ever-present.

AI has disrupted and accelerated and reshaped, yes. But it has always been true that there was an aspect of work that could be done by almost everyone, and aspect of work that involved customer relationships and personal integrity and ironclad trust. That remains the most important thing.

What is Canon

 

You know about my travel bucket list, but I am also working on a content bucket list as well. We all have our personal preferences and guilty pleasures when it comes to the entertainment we consume. But I do think there is something to be said about what may be referred to as "canon," which is to say what are the authoritative items in our civilization that one simply must be aware in order to understand our civilization.

And so, while I may gravitate to my individual favs when it comes to books, movies, and TV, I also want to be aware of what is truly "must-consume," and then make intentional effort to get to it. These are, after all, by definition, the stories that define our age, and to not know them is to miss a little of what our age means.

This summer may afford me the opportunity to curate, finalize, and publish my take on what these items are. Although I suspect that, not only will there be new entrants every year, but I will invariably miss older stuff and need to add it to the list. So, even if I do put it out there, you must consider it an evolving, fluid thing.

You may wonder why I'm limiting myself to books, movies, and TV? Music is probably the most glaring omission, since music absolutely defines an era. One can argue the same for theater, visual arts, and speeches. I may get there, because I don't disagree. But I feel like I'll have my hands full with just books, movies, and TV. 

At any rate, I welcome your suggestions and invite you to join me in the consumption. Let's get to it!

Selective Memory Goes in Both Directions

 

"Memory" is a fraught thing. Cherished memories, traumatic ones, memories that help you do well in school and work, and those that put others behind bars. So there's a lot at stake when you try to recall something that went through your brain before, whether a minute or a lifetime ago.

I've been brain-dumping memories of mine from different times of my life, using this time between jobs to record moments and anecdotes and observations, to see if patterns emerge that help my self-awareness and ultimately guide and support whatever I do next in my career. At times, I find myself laughing out loud, or on the verge of tears, or sitting in stunned silence. Memories literally take you back, and some do so quite viscerally.

Of course, rare is the human with total recall, to have access to every single interaction in their lives dating back to childhood. Instead, our brains shed content all the time, and we're left with some strong memories and other trace ones. 

It occurs to me that this culling, in a weird sort of way, goes in both directions. We are wired in our Western world to view time as an arrow, and so we go from past into future, and stranded as we are in the present at any given moment when we look back we hold certain memories from our past. So it seems strange to say that selectivity of memory runs both from past to present and from present to past.

But this is what I mean. In our past, our future at that time contained a multitude of possible paths. As we moved into the future, of course we were only able to take one. Many memories were impactful enough to our lives at the time that they were part of what helped us to determine what that path might be. A positive experience in sports forms in us a framework for how we will handle teamwork and discipline and success and failure, and as a result we shed certain ways we might think and behave and lock in on a specific way to think and behave. Conversely, a bad experience in school gives us a vivid lesson in what direction not to go in, and we shut that door off along with all the paths that could've been built from that. Memories, in short, are experience along our path which help us figure out where to go next, which is to say they guide us as to which paths not to take going forward.

But the culling does its own time-travel, too. What do I mean by that? The present version of ourselves is built on the experiences we had in our past. But it in turn represents a frame of reference by which we look back into the past. Memories are moments that help us select one direction over another. But memories are also selective, in that what we remember when we look back is not perfect recall but rather what we want to remember based on who we are now. 

Extreme versions of this are certain memories that we have, for good or bad, walled off from thinking about in the present. In an act of self-preservation, we are avoiding that which is traumatic or shameful or otherwise too hard to hold in the present. But there are less dramatic versions of this, in which we choose to remember what the hard lessons taught us and neglect the more mundane ways in which we were shaped for the present, or where we choose to think ourselves a slightly more noble version of ourselves while conveniently neglecting ways we were jerky to others along the way.

Whether from past to present or present to past, remembering memories, writing them down, and trying to draw some themes from them has been an interesting exercise. You should try it sometime! You may be similarly informed about what you do and don't remember, how memories teach you what foundations your current identity is built on and in turn how your current identity informs what you remember and how you remember it.

Impatience is a Virtue

 

I'm a naturally impatient person, and I am self-aware enough to know this is a bad thing that I need to work on. Impatience is, in my book, literally a sin, in that it acts like I have a better handle than my God on the timing of something. It is also a jerky way to act to and around others, as if you're better than them because your time is more important than theirs. So it is right that we call it out in our lives and make effort to root it out of our behavior.

And yet. There is a way in which patience is an excuse for inaction, in ways that are not good for us or others. Having a predisposition for action can be a good thing, when that action is beneficial and when the default is to procrastinate or be cowardly. So this too is something I'm trying to work on, which is that when something needs to be said or done and others are being waffly, being willing to be uncomfortable or unpopular and launching out into whatever needs to be said or done.

Patience is a virtue. But impatience can be too.

Perspectives on Different Faith Perspectives

 

This is more of a placeholder than a post, in that today I want to dive into a topic that will require more thought and more posts in the future, which is what my particular faith perspective is and how it has been shaped by the circumstances of my life. This blog is entitled, “The Musings of an Urban Christian,” after all, so it is natural that in this space I will express a specific worldview and that that worldview will be informed by my unique set of experiences and environments. 

Before getting biographical, though, let me contemplate how else this works, and then God willing I will have time and inspiration to go deeper on different facets of my own journey: 

1. For some, faith is a moral guidebook that governs how we ought to live and why. Such a perspective is governed by things like ethics (rules which we should follow) and the afterlife (post-life consequences based on how we actually lived), and can look more bookish to the world around it. 

2. For some, faith is the context in which we play out a certain role in society and assemble with others like us. So, everyone in our worship services dresses alike, acts the same, and inhabits a similar status in our community. This can run the gamut, from upper-crusters living out a country club existence in a church setting, to rebels cutting against the grain of what is deemed respectable. 

3. For some, faith is a mission, a calling on one’s own life and a purpose for one’s group to come together to achieve. Whether that north star is more spiritual (saving souls) or physical (serving the poor), it dominates our sense of belief and organizes our expressions of that belief. 

4. For some, faith is about redemption, individually or as a people. God is approached with more than a little hint of desperation, for we fall woefully short and require great mercy to be made whole again, and worship service is about exalting either present graces received or future salvation secured. 

5. For some, faith is defined by musical style. Worship is made central to faith, and the particular chosen form of worship considered to be the zenith of faith expression, whether contemporary or classical. 

6. For some, faith would not be explicitly stated as not important, but it essentially is a lighter touch in one’s life. A loosely held sense of rights and wrongs, and a few traditions in which that faith is observed in public, but otherwise a deeply personal sense of inner peace or internal compass in an otherwise faith-light life. 

7. For some, faith is an even lighter touch than that. The rational dominates, science has completely squeezed out the divine, and all that’s left is a sense of ethical code by which people can reasonably coexist, without any space for wonder or prayer.

 8. For some, faith is similarly a very light touch, but not quite as light. Life is lived apart from any sense of faith guidelines or divine judgment, but there is a sense in which life does in fact conclude with some form of judgment, and the hope is that when life comes to an end, enough good has been done and enough bad avoided that eternity is spent in a good and not bad place. 

9. For some, faith is deeply personal, not to be shared with or expressed to others, and in some ways not to be articulated even to one’s own self. It is by definition, in this way, something that is abstract and internal. 

10. For some, faith is the opposite of abstract and internal, but something that is understood, experienced, and expressed in community. In this context, which governs most of the world besides the more independent-minded Western world, it is literally impossible for someone to have a set of beliefs apart from that of their family and community. 

I tried to express these different viewpoints as neutrally as possible, even as I’m sure you can see my biases creeping in. Perhaps you resonated with some descriptions, found my words unfair for others, and recoiled with horror at still others. I’ll hope to pick up on this thread in the future, as far as what I believe and why I have come to believe what I believe. I encourage you to do the same!

Out of Office

 

For the first time in 20 years, I'm no longer employed at Econsult Solutions, Inc. I'm proud of what I did there, especially to have seen our younger principals mature and take on more of the mantle of leadership. And now I am in a mix of job search, travel, and leisure writing. Will keep you posted with new developments, I'm as eager as you to know what they are!

Main Character Energy

 

Last week kicked off with my roast and also included retirement parties for two colleagues of mine who I look up to. All of this happening in the span of a few days helped me to see how easy it is for me to tell others they are esteemed and how hard it is for me to receive it for myself.

But let me not beat myself up too much. It is a good thing that I delighted in embracing each of these men and telling them "hey everyone's here at this party because we love you," because it is good to be overflowing in gratitude for people who have been helpful to you and overflowing in the expression of that gratitude. And, it is a good thing to have some humility when you are the recipient of such praise, because it is true and not false humility that the reason for that praise is you but also many other people and circumstances and lucky breaks that made it all possible.

But, most of us do need to allow ourselves to receive the acclaim, and experience true gratitude for the kind expression, as well as an acknowledgement that "hey, I actually did that!" "Aw shucks" may feel appropriately modest, but it's unhealthy to be unable to sit in the recognition of a job well done and a life well lived.

Of course we all know people who are too full of themselves, and it is off-putting, and so it is natural to want to deflect praise and be demure. But sometimes we are the main character, and we should allow ourselves that spotlight. 

Writing About Writing

 

You know about my travel bucket list, which I am eager to indulge in a little this summer in this time between jobs. And of course I need to put in the work to research job openings and pursue employment opportunities. But I also hope to do a not insignificant amount of writing. So I want to share a little bit about that today.

Writing for me is creative expression, but it is also for figuring out what I'm thinking. So now is a time that critical for understanding what is important for me, so I can process career moves in ways that are true to me and impactful for wherever I end up.

With that in mind, I've decided to spend a fair amount of time each week writing autobiographically, without intent to publish or even polish. I'll list below the prompts I plan to use to do this.

Then, once I've barfed everything out of my head, I will review for patterns. Are there through lines that I would not have otherwise seen had I not put everything down on paper? And if so, where might those through lines go next, that would inform my job search?

Whether these musings ever see the light of day, either in a blog or a book, is to be determined later. I'll probably keep most of it close to vest, at least during the creative process. But don't be surprised if I leak a few things out, whether to test some content out or to invite others to recall a shared memory that is funny or poignant.

OK, having established all that, here's how I'm going to organize my writing time. First, I'm going to stream-of-conscious different phases in my life, describing different things I remember from those phases, without regard to whether they make any sense, hold any deep meaning, or connect to anything else. So, that's probably going to break like this:

1. Childhood (1973-1984)

2. Middle school and high school (1984-1991)

3. College (1991-1995)

4. Post-college pre-wedding years (1995-2000)

5. Post-wedding pre-parenthood years (2000-2005)

6. Grad school, 1st 2 adoptions (2004-2007)

7. Pre-Principal years (2006-2012)

8. Making partner, adopting Asher, not adopting a 4th child (2013-2017)

9. School Board (2018-2021)

10. Becoming president, post-president years (2020-2026)

Second, I'm going to stream-of-conscious different topics that are important to me, again without regard to comprehension or polish. Of course, there will be a lot of overlap with the first list, which is intentional. I figure approaching my life in two different ways, and then looking it all together, will be a good way to see the connections and themes. Specifically:

A. Adoption 

B. Cities 

C. Consulting 

D. Economics 

E. Faith 

F. Friendship

G. Leadership 

H. Marriage

I. Parenthood

J. Personal Habits 

K. Politics/Society 

L. Pop Culture 

M. Race/Culture

N. Real Estate 

O. Upbringing

In closing, I should note that this blog, "Musings of an Urban Christian," is borne of a sort of inflection moment similar to the present one, in that I took a pseudo-Sabbatical from my first job seven years in, working from home to stand up the organization's nascent consulting practice, and the distance from the day-to-day in-office hustle and bustle afforded me some time to reflect through writing. From which this blog was first conceived and launched. Who's to say what outward-facing writing project this year's project will yield? You'll read about it here first!

Last Week on the Job

 

It's my last week at the firm. Twenty years ago this Saturday, I walked to work for my first day in the office, excited about starting up only my second job in my life, having worked 10 years at my first. It's been a good run. I'm going to miss it dearly. But I feel really good about what I've been able to contribute and learn. And I feel at peace that now is a good time to go.

I still don't know what's next for me. Which is terrifying and exhilarating all at once. Obviously, having worked 20 years in one place, I don't have a lot of experience finding a job, even if I've given a lot of people advice on how to do just that.

It occurs to me that, while this transition is new ground for me, in some sense it is not. I graduated from college without knowing what I would be doing after, since the place I wanted to work (The Enterprise Center) required a government grant to afford to add me, a grant I worked on and prayed over which we did not get until a good two months after I got my diploma.

Fast-forward nine years, and I had given my one-year notice there, continuing to work full-time while taking on a graduate degree program at Penn, and then duly leaving that job a year later to complete that degree program, again not knowing what was next for me career-wise.

Faith is truly the evidence of things not seen, so says the Good Book. Sometimes we plan, and God knows my default is to do that. And sometimes we wait in the haze of uncertainty, for some doors to close and others to open. And He is faithful in these transition times, to not only get us from Point A to Point B but to teach us a little bit about Himself and ourselves in the in-between place between Point A and Point B.

So that's where I am right now. I will be sure to keep everyone posted!

What Are We to Do with the Rich in our Cities

 

Income inequality is an important topic of our day, and it finds its highest emotions in our cities where the juxtaposition is greatest. So it is telling that within the past month, on this very subject, we've heard from two of the far left's most prominent leaders, Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson, representing big-city mayoralties on both coasts.

Wilson, mayor of Seattle, chuckled as she waved "bye" to millionaires who threatened to leave the city and state over a proposed "millionaires tax" being advanced in state government. Mamdani, mayor of New York City, cut his own ad to announce his pied a terre tax, and singled out billionaire financier Ken Griffin by filming the piece in front of Griffin's pied a terre. In both cases, the message was clear both in terms of what the intent was - the rich should be made to pay more - and in terms of how the messengers felt about it - gleeful and triumphant.

These policies and sentiments are quite popular, and since politics is a popularity contest - and I say that descriptively and not pejoratively, since the way we do things in this country is we elect people based on majorities and then those people have to form coalitions and take actions in accordance with those majority preferences - I can understand and respect what Wilson and Mamdani are saying and how they're saying it.

But, while politics is a popularity contest, the public sector is not, particularly at the local level, where local governments have to worry about meat and potato issues like snow removal and homelessness and human services and public safety. So, somehow, the popularity contest dynamics of politics have to meld with the "get sh*t done" mandate of the public sector, to bring in revenues in a way that is reasonably efficient and equitable, and then execute expenditures in a way that is also reasonably efficient and equitable. 

So, from a messaging standpoint and practically speaking, what are we to do with the very rich among us in our cities? Many feel strongly that they should be made to pay more in taxes to fund the services we need for our cities. This is an argument based on fairness - the rich have more resources, the larger payments are a counterbalance to the unjust system that allowed them to get rich in the first place, and so on - and that is a good argument to hash out.

But, it doesn't take much effort to realize that adding new taxes targeting the rich and then dismissively waving them away when they leave is incompatible. Of course in this country we are free to move about, and this is particularly so when it comes to local policies. And that's because avoiding an individual municipality's policies can sometimes be as easy as moving down the street and otherwise not having to change your life, while conversely, moving in response to federal policy would require leaving the country altogether and applying for citizenship elsewhere. So, if the rich don't like one city's policies and move away, an important reason for those policies - to obtain resources from those who have them to help those who need them - is significantly diminished. 

One may argue that the rich won't leave, because there is more than just fiscal policy that tethers them to a place. Whether or not that's true, being gleeful about "bye, we don't want you anyway" doesn't seem to help in any way.

I don't have a good answer to all of this, just making observations. To delve into the pied a terre tax for a minute, it is my understanding that Griffin is rarely at that residence, pays a ton in property tax on the place, and consumes very little in the way of city services, so for him to decide to have a pier a terre in Manhattan seems like a huge win for New York City finances. On the other hand, as noted above, Mamdani ran on "eat the rich," the pied a terre tax is a pretty clear manifestation of that, and he won the mayoral election so he gets to do what he campaigned on.

In time, people will vote, both at the ballot box for who will represent them in city halls across the US, as well as voting with their feet in the form of moving away from places they no longer feel are attractive and moving to places they feel are. So, let's keep an eye, on Seattle and New York City, as well as on Austin and Minneapolis and Miami and Boston.

Roast Reasons

 

The TV show "Popular" has been off the air for 25 years, but it tells a story as old as time, which is that going with the crowd is preferable to standing out from the crowd. The teen com-dram was immaculately cast, acted, and shot to accentuate the glaring gap between the ins and the outs, and the lengths to which the ins worked to keep the outs out and the outs worked to get in.

These shows are set in high school, because we equate that peer pressure with that time in our lives. But, I would argue popularity is far more pernicious in our adult existence, though we dare not admit so. Easy to dismiss our crazy adolescent attempts at fitting in - big hair! ripped jeans! - and harder to fess up to similarly desperate impulses when we are grown-ups.

It takes some courage in our divisive, fake-news, vibes-are-everything climate to be an original. To seek truth, wherever it takes us and whoever it causes us to agree or disagree with. Said another way, in life we will be asked to say and do things that are decidedly countercultural, unpopular, and perhaps cancel-worthy. Will we shrink back or stand up?

And so it is that I love roasts, so much so that I subjected myself to one as a going-away gift after 20 years at my current job. Last night was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs, for which I'm thankful to my roasters and my event planner. You can watch the video if you missed it, I'll link to it as soon as it gets posted.

I hope this is a metaphor for something deeper than getting scorched for an evening. Popularity can be seductive but ultimately it is unfulfilling. We may crave to be in the in-crowd or at least not outcasted. But what we truly crave is meaning. And that search for and defense of meaning will necessarily mean standing alone, weathering ostracization and opposition and ridicule. It is worth it.