​You might know of some “open-house” events hosted by universities to get kids interested in math and science. I volunteered as a guest presenter once because I thought the idea was really cool.

The event is run by a few professors, many student teachers, and several guests like me. There were 2 volunteer coordinators and nearly 100 volunteers. Some of these volunteers set up activity booths so families can do STEM (science / technology / engineering / mathematics) related activities. Other volunteers were not stationed at a particular booth; these teacher candidates’ roles were to go to booths that needed more people and to help out while learning how to teach kids.

Now let me tell you how the event was actually managed: one volunteer coordinator had all the information and there was no task delegation. Nearly 100 volunteers and 300 families had to go through that one person to get any sort of information about the event (where a certain activity was held at, which booths had too many or too few people, where the coat/bag storage room is, etc.). There was no communication going on between the volunteers because nobody had any idea what was going on (they all had to ask that one person and it takes so long to get the answer that many people give up).

My activity station was in a room that didn’t have any signage so I suspect that most families had no idea that there were activities going on in this room. Furthermore, the room started to get used as a coat/bag storage space and there was nobody designated to monitor the space. When the event was over and I had to leave, there was nobody I could hand over the task to. Meanwhile, there were volunteers who clearly looked bored and clueless wandering in other rooms and hallways. Apparently they didn’t know that the room I was in had activities going on, or that the room was also used as a storage space.

Let’s think about the opportunity cost for a moment: the professors, student teachers, and guest volunteers are literally volunteering their time on a Saturday where they could be doing something else instead. Students have assignments and projects to work on. Professors typically have research projects and/or courses to run. I could’ve spent my time preparing for my workshops for the upcoming week. We’re all busy. How many people were overwhelmed that day? One, certainly. How many volunteers ended up wasting their time? Probably many.

This isn’t new, and this isn’t even the thing I’m upset about. There are plenty of events that have really good intentions that end up not running so well due to the lack of proper event coordination.

So the other day, I addressed the event coordination issue for this event to someone who knew about this event, and was involved in it in previous years. The response was:

“At the end of the day, as long as we get more kids interested in pursuing math and science, the goal has been accomplished.”

While I agree with the main goal… this statement suggests that as long as the main goal is accomplished, the means used for accomplishing that goal does not matter. In this school open-house case, it implies that having one colossal information bottleneck and a 400-person queue does not matter. …Really?

My concern is that people who think using this structure might think the same way in other contexts too. Let’s say the school was a company, the volunteers are the employees, and the families are customers: At the end of the day, as long as we get more customers to buy our product, the goal has been accomplished. It doesn’t matter if one manager is clearly overworked and is consequentially really slow at getting things done, 100 employees have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing, and the 300 customers are getting frustrated because they can’t get the support they need.

It is important to have an overarching goal, but it doesn’t make sense to fixate only on that because events, organizations, and pretty much everything that we do have people running it (let’s put aside the robots for now). And if the people who make up the event or organization aren’t doing well (overworked or bored out of their minds), I’m not convinced that the event is well-run or that the organization is doing well. (Note: Conversely, if the people in an organization or event are doing fine but if their efforts are not contributing to achieving the overarching goal at all, that is also definitely a problem.)

Going back to the school open-house case, people may argue that chaos is to be expected because it’s not a business. But doing things like event logistics and team management isn’t about running a business. It’s about respect. It’s about respecting people and the time and effort they put into their work.

For me, good management is the behavioral instantiation of the respect you have for yourself and others. So when I see an event that severely lacks good management (and therefore the apparent lack of consideration for the people involved), I cannot help but question the actual success of that event. This is not to say that the event was bad, period. I just separate the concept and execution when I think about it. So for that event I attended, the execution was sub-optimal but the concept is still a great one. In conclusion, I think it is worth doing more of – and additionally refining how it is managed so that the people involved in it can get the most out of it too.

In my last post I wrote about where I came from. In this post I write about where I want to go, and what I aspire to do.

My goal is to help organizations that are...

1. well managed and want to manage growth
2. growing ad hoc and need practices developed
3. new and need to establish practices
4. having problems with management

...build and/or refine their infrastructure and processes in the following ways:

1. Hiring: Getting things matched right in the beginning—bringing the right people into the right places.
   Why? If there’s no hiring protocol, then different people could make hiring decisions based on different ideas on what is a good candidate (I'm not saying that multiple perspectives are bad. But I've seen some cases where the lack of standardization wreaked havoc). Someone might even hire somebody (who is clearly not well-suited) on a whim. I witnessed that quite a few times, and I’m sure you have too.
2. Onboarding: Getting things started right with proper onboarding and context setting.
   Why? If the new hires are not properly onboarded into the organization, then it will take them much longer to figure out where the resources are and it can stifle their productivity as well as confidence.
3. Robust-ing (next-level transitioning): Making operations robust by maintaining a balance between specialization and redundancy.
   Why? If there is zero redundancy in what people do, then one person’s leave of absence can quickly become disastrous as the other team members cannot cover the hole in the operations. On the other hand, if there is 100% redundancy in what people do, that is also unhealthy because accountability can become blurry and important issues will remain untouched. My rule of thumb is to have a primary and a secondary person for every role.
4. Transitioning (in situations where Robust-ing was not implemented): Making career transitions smooth by implementing and refining a succession plan and knowledge transferring protocol(s).
   Why? If succession plans and knowledge transfer protocols don’t exist, then somebody leaving the organization can leave a gaping wound not only in knowledge but also in culture. It leads to the organization frantically trying to find a unicorn who can patch that wound.

I started my management career in a place where people would probably not expect – a vision science research lab. (No, not the one in the picture... but I must say that my research supervisor does have a lot of plants. Plants rock.) I haven’t had ‘formal’ education in management, but learned entirely through practice. (So if someone tells you that you must go to school before becoming a manager, that's false by the way.)

In university, one of the requirements of my undergraduate program was to do directed studies at a real research lab (to gain research experience) so I was looking for potential labs I could volunteer at in my 3rd year. I found two labs that were interesting to me, mainly because I was starstruck by the professors (I am still starstruck by those people). One was a neuroimaging lab and I did my directed studies there. The other one was the vision science lab that I didn’t end up doing directed studies in, but stayed for much longer because I fell in love with the lab’s culture there.

The thing that I liked about the vision science lab was that it struck a neat balance between order and chaos. The way things were run was organized and orderly, yet there was a lot of autonomy and flexibility. Another thing I liked about the lab was that the people there were fun to work together and hang out together. As I was working on projects with these great, scary-intelligent people, I started thinking of little ways that I can help these people do even better. And I started doing little things (that consisted of mainly organizing) that would save people a little bit of time and labor here and there. Apparently that was one of the things my manager liked about me, and I was appointed as successor.

So what does a lab manager do? I suspect there's high variance among different labs, but some of the things I did were: counting money and refilling the safe (so that we can pay people who participated in our experiments), organizing the lab space, organizing lab meetings and socials, and bringing the right talent in as volunteers and directed studies students.

“COGS 402 – Research in Cognitive Systems” is one of the weirdest courses I took in university. Instead of learning from lectures, you learn from apprenticeship. In other words, it’s a glimpse of real life disguised as a course.

Here’s the official description of what COGS 402 is: Students in this course must pursue a supervised, collaborative research project in a laboratory or research environment relevant to your interests. Students are expected to independently seek out a laboratory in which to volunteer, and contribute to the ongoing research or to instigate a project that integrates with the research goals of the supervisor/laboratory.

From the outline, you’ll see that you get assessed on:

• 1st oral presentation within first two weeks of term – 15%
  Should be no more than five minutes and should address the what, why, and how of the proposed research.
• 2nd oral presentation at end-of-term – 10%
  Should be 5 minutes and clearly present the what, why, and how of the research, as well as provide a brief summary of the main result(s).
• Final deliverable (submitted during Finals) – 30%
  The final project should produced in the medium appropriate to the chosen research — e.g., research paper, website, computer simulation, musical performance
• Laboratory work (weeks 1-12) 45%
  Assessed by person-in-charge from that laboratory or work site. Students are expected to spend a minimum of 9 hours per week in the laboratory.

That is pretty much all the guidance you get.

After doing COGS 402 myself and supervising students on their COGS 402’s, I might be able to give a bit more guidance…

Q. I don’t know whether or not I’m fit for COGS.
A. Let me start with a metaphor: Imagine there’s a road; a highway or something that goes somewhere. You know where the destination is. Off the highway, you see a little trail that looks like it was made by wildlife. If you follow that trail, you'll end up in a dense forest. You don’t know where the destination is. You might end up at someone’s cabin. It might lead to a rocky beach. There might be a lake you can swim in. You might end up on top of a hill and find a marvelous view. Or… the trail might end in the middle of nowhere. What would you do: taking the highway to your destination or the trail that you have no idea where it will take you?

I know some people who were in the program who weren't actually fit for it because their expectations didn't match up with reality. COGS is not a program that automatically grants you success in life (although there are many successful COGS grads out there). It's about putting all the pieces together in a way that makes sense for YOU, and it's not easy because you need to do all the work!

One thing to try out to see if you might like the content discussed in COGS: check out "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson. To me, this is the spirit of COGS. What is a cognitive system? (Turns out meat can be! ;D) If you're fascinated by this idea, you might feel like COGS is your home.

Q. What’s the difference between B.A. Cognition and Brain stream and B.Sc. Cognition and Brain stream?
A. Let me start off with similarities first:  you will take all the COGS core courses (200, 300, 303, 401, 402). You will also have some degree of freedom with your module courses (off the top of my head I think it was 2 PSYC courses, 2 non-PSYC courses, and 2 any as long as it's in the module list). The difference is in the FACULTY requirements. It's actually quite different so I recommend you compare (BA brain stream vs. BSc brain stream) and see for yourself. Satisfying the program requirements is important, but so is satisfying the faculty requirements. If you forget to satisfy the faculty requirements that will stop you from graduating.

Q. What was your favorite course?
A. COGS303: Research Methods in Cognitive Systems. It was terrifying when I took it but the value I got from it triumphs the terror. I can ramble on forever, but to keep it short, COGS303 gave me two vitally important things: 1) the bullshit detector and 2) argument etiquette.

Q. What is COGS for you?
A. I’m in concordance with Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson (founding COGS Director)’s definition: “It’s what you want it to be.” Since COGS isn’t straightforward in terms of what career paths are available afterwards (because people go all over the place afterwards), it forces you to take ownership of your degree and spin it your way, instead of the other way around (imagine your degree dictating the way you live your life – that would be really sad). Tuum est.

Q. What advice would you give to someone who just joined COGS?
A. Get to know your people. Befriend them. Nerd out with them. One of the many things I love about COGS is the people: students, TAs, profs, alumni… they’re awesome. Most importantly, have fun. If you're not having tons of fun, COGS is probably not the right place for you. And that's okay because you need to find what's the best for you.

Q. What advice would you give to someone who is about to graduate from COGS?
A. If you still feel murky about where this COGS-coaster is going to take you…

1. You’re not alone. I was like that too. I’m still wondering where it would take me, because I know my COGS-coaster ride is nowhere near over. (I would be surprised if you totally knew where you were going actually.)
2. You’re not flawed. It’s perfectly normal to not have a crystal clear idea of what you want to do. The finding-what-you-want-to-do process lasts a lifetime because you change and the environment changes over time. It’s okay.
3. It’s also totally okay to change your mind. It might be difficult to face your own aspirations seriously because of the expectations of the people around you, but all I wish for is that you are satisfied with the way you live your life.

Special shout-out to Miya Zhang who inspired me reach out to the COGS community!

In the past, I've experienced quite a few times where I'm anxiety-stricken because someone else is getting punished. There's stress coming from all directions - frustrations and fear from both the punisher and the punished, and those emotions are very sticky. It's like having paint splattered everywhere, and once it gets onto me it takes a lot of time and effort to wash away.

Usually, when people notice that I'm anxious, they say the following:

"You're doing well."

Although I believe the people who say this mean well, it doesn't improve my anxiety at all. What am I being compared against? The person who just got yelled at?

To me, even if I'm performing "well" if the rest of the organization is shaken - if employees are getting fired, if the employees who didn't are quivering thinking "am I next?" and if everyone is frustrated and fearful, I can't separate myself from that. I am part of the organization after all, and I care about the wellness of the organization as a whole compared to myself only. Are we doing well?

"You need to compartmentalize" is also something people told me in the past. After giving this some thought for a few  years though, I have decided to not follow this suggestion. Yes, it will be emotionally overwhelming. But the connection between the self and the organization is something that feels natural to me.

It's like looking at a biological organism. Sure, you can look at each organ as its own separate entity - the brain, the heart, the lungs, the liver... but they're all part of the same organism. And when one organ is unhappy that could very well affect all the other organs because they can talk to each other. Even if the system is not biological, like a machine or a program, I think the same thing still holds. If one part of the machine is damaged, or if one part of the program has a bug, that's probably going to affect the output.

I'm not saying that the notion to separate the self from the organization is wrong. It's merely not my cup of tea. I do find the differences in the way we think interesting though, and I am curious to know how the differences emerge through the different experiences that shape us. (For me, I suspect that the COGS program played an instrumental role.)