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Perception is reality: a dangerous management meme

January 6th, 2010 by Robert Bradman

A recent event over the holidays, the failed terrorist attack on flight 253 from Amsterdam, has predictably resulted in a flurry of activity by politicians and pundits to foist new “security measures” unto the public to assuage our fears of the boogey man boarding airliners. As most people know, these measures accomplish nothing to actually increase security but rather they are an attempt to make us feel that someone is actually doing something. It is strictly public relations.

The other morning I read a terrific piece by one-man security think-tank Bruce Schneier written for CNN. It serves as a terrific introduction to what is known as security theater. From its Wikipedia entry:

Security theater has been defined as ostensible security measures which have little real influence on security whilst being publicly visible and designed to demonstrate to the lesser-informed that countermeasures have been considered. Security theater has been related to and has some similarities with superstition.

Now, let’s transpose this to Information Technology.

Recently I had the opportunity to consult for a start-up company in a very nascent and competitive sector in the virtualization marketplace. Their product is a virtual desktop solution based off of a completely proprietary protocol stack and driver suite. It’s very cool stuff, and very complex. This provided their senior management team with a number of challenges wherein we can draw parallels to security theater.

Since no metrics yet exist to quantify the entirely subjective nature of a user experience or satisfaction index (the first company to reliably demonstrate a workable metric will dominate more than just the virtual desktop market), senior management drew some downright bizarre conclusions about root causes of unhappy users experiencing application crashes, iTunes running sluggishly, Excel scrolling too slowly, etc. Their analysis resulted in a firm commitment to a belief that the software being developed by the engineering team was infallible, Apple and Microsoft products are bug-free, and that the undeniable cause of all issues was that IT personnel did not participate in this illusion.

The problem this created was an entire department, IT, left trying to consider how to inform overly-experienced management (there is such a thing) that managing expectations is entirely different from managing perceptions. Feigning concern for non-existent problems in order to assuage worries about product performance does a disservice not only to employees, but ultimately to the shareholders. However, it does fall right in line with the meme that perception is reality. Once you buy into the meme, it’s not such a leap to start to believe that creating perceptions creates reality; a concept which is very popular, but not even consciously realized, in larger companies.

Perception: The IT department is terrible.
Reality: Brand new, highly complex software still under active development has the potential to crash and create problems.

Perception: Taking my shoes off at airport security makes me safe.
Reality: Terrorists also wear underpants.

The unfortunate nature of this resulted in directives more fitting for mature, large companies than those just scratching the surface of their growth stage. It’s incredibly cynical to say, but it’s also incredibly accurate: Forgo actually solving problems, but make sure you create the impression that you are. If everyone does this, then everybody is covered, and everybody’s jobs are safe. Create the perception, create the reality. This is management theater.

The longer this behavior is allowed to linger (especially in senior management), the more and more institutionalized it becomes. It can be very challenging to dig a company out of its effect.

As a business leader (and let’s never forget that you are part of the team, not the team itself) if you suspect you have a problem, you need to step back and interface with people outside of management. Get a feel for what issues can be addressed proactively before they become severe. Do you have a member of the management team who is blaming rather than addressing? Cut them loose before it’s too late for yourself and your shareholders.

Security theater has been defined as ostensible security measures which have little real influence on security whilst being publicly visible and designed to demonstrate to the lesser-informed that countermeasures have been considered. Security theater has been related to and has some similarities with superstition.
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Experience or education? Talent or resource?

June 21st, 2009 by Robert Bradman

One of the myriad items that constantly arises in the world of IT is the ability for a successful technology manager to be able to accurately judge the quality of possible candidates filling available positions. All too frequently, IT managers or CFOs can find themselves looking to fill functional roles within an organization without a full understanding of what they are hiring for. Consequently, a market has risen to fill the need for installment of warm bodies.

Working with a recruiter is both an art and a skill. Recruiters frequently employ tactics that, to the untrained (or unskilled) eye can be appealing. For example, recruiters often claim that they will work with you to help you determine your exact needs. They will attempt to dazzle you with stories about how they employ armies of third parties to pre-screen candidates before their resumes reach your desk. If you are a leader in the position to hire individuals to fulfill a specific need inside your organization (and you are not already a mature, 1,000 employee, large business), then you should really take recruiters’ claims with a grain of salt — or perhaps not utilize their services at all.

For example, I recently met with a recruiter who boasted about their company’s use of on-line talent screeners. When I asked about their methods, they basically scour social networking and placement sites (such as Facebook, MySpace, CraigsList, et cetera) for the resumes of job seekers. They will use basic task workers to look for keywords in resumes and then send them over as viable candidates. When I pried for details, it came out that their talent screeners are located in another country. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I know that all of us are aware of how difficult it can be to bridge a language barrier presented by many call centers. Now try and imagine how difficult it would be to communicate a skill context to these so-called head-hunters.

I told this particular recruiter that I don’t plan on doing business with them because of these tactics. It’s not fair to me, as an employer, and it’s not fair to the job seeker, who is simply going to have their resume sprayed into several hundred inboxes, hoping that one hiring manager bites.

Keep in mind: these low-quality recruiters don’t care about your business and they don’t care about the candidates. They want to get paid. The bigger the area they carpet bomb with resumes, the better chance that a candidate will stick.

One thing that can aid your search for the right candidate is, and I will step into HR territory here, making sure that you, the leader, truly understand what your business’ needs are.

Are you looking for resource and are you looking for someone who has a degree? Many times, fresh graduates from even top universities can woo prospective employers with mention of their academic accolades and awards. It’s important for us to remember that “book smart candidates” are often useful as functional resources. These are people who have demonstrated the ability to absorb information and retain data as a function of process or procedural outcome. They can be tremendous assets to your organization. But are they truly talent?

Many times, I’ve seen HR departments overlook highly qualified candidates because of the simple lack of a educational credentials or industry certifications. While these individuals were out accomplishing goals and doing, their peers were busily memorizing answers to the next pop-quiz.

It’s a harsh thing to say because nobody likes to feel that their investment in their education was a waste. Of course, there are many extremely talented individuals who have years of education and have been highly successful. But on the other hand, what about those who are naturally gifted?

Many of the most successful individuals in technology came into their own without the benefit of a completed education:

  • Bill Gates – dropped out of college
  • Steve Jobs – dropped out of college
  • Larry Ellison – dropped out of college
  • Michael Dell – dropped out of college
  • Steve Wozniak – dropped out of college

What if these individuals had been overlooked by overzealous HR departments or hiring managers? Would we even have personal computers?

This was recently even discussed in an article posted at SmartMoney.com:

A more inclusive four-year degree isn’t the answer, because the degree itself often obstructs learning. Consider the laid-off sales clerk who wishes to pursue a college education in hopes of finding a better job. If he wants to go to a name-brand school he must study for and take an admissions test, and apply. He must file a financial aid application as long and complex as a tax return. If accepted by a school, he must wait for the right part of the academic calendar to come around, and hope that the classes he wants aren’t full. Suppose all goes well. He’ll be sitting in front of a teacher 18 months after first deciding to learn.

What folly. As I write this, Google is putting every book ever written online. Apple is offering video college lectures for free download through its iTunes software. Skype allows free videoconferencing anywhere in the world. M.I.T. and many other schools have made course materials available for free on their web sites. Tutors cost as little as $15 an hour. Today’s student who decides to learn at one o’clock should be doing it by one thirty. A process that makes him wait 18 months is not an education system. It’s a barrier to education.

Ultimately, the decision on who to hire is yours and yours alone. But before you go discarding resumes, take a moment to look for the diamonds in the rough. If you understand the context of what you are hiring and what the persons you’re looking at bring to the table in terms of talent and not just slips of paper, you’ll be doing your business a favor.

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Gaining Trust and Buy-in is Key for CIOs

July 23rd, 2008 by Robert Bradman

I was recently interviewed by the IT-Finance Connection to discuss some of the common issues facing business leaders when it comes to technology direction and strategy. We briefly hint at our Five Questions concept and how it can help start-up and growth companies better prepare for their futures. You can listen to the interview right here.

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Vulnerability in encrypted disk software? Not so fast!

July 17th, 2008 by Robert Bradman

Today, the information security world was hit with some findings from well-known security researcher Bruce Schneier regarding a method to defeat the plausible deniability features of equally well-known disk encryption software. After reading the full paper, I need to raise some red flags and call shenanigans on Mr. Schneier.

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Nine More Reasons Why IT Personnel Think Their CIO is Clueless

July 10th, 2008 by Robert Bradman

I received an email today from fellow IT pundit Robby Slaughter referencing a previous post of ours which dealt with an article in CIO Magazine. Our original article, titled “Nine Reasons Why IT Personnel Think Their CIO is Clueless”, expounded on some of what we felt were key failings of many CIOs in today’s management environment. Robby took it one step further and, with his acerbic sense of humor, essentially re-wrote the original CIO article to point out areas he sees as actual incompetence instead of principle abstracts.

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Protecting Your Assets: Full Disk Encryption Made Simple

July 8th, 2008 by Robert Bradman

With over 12,000 laptops being stolen every week from airports around the country and with increasingly sensitive information stored on them, Full Disk Encryption makes sense. FDE has traditionally represented a capital expense that made it fairly unattractive to the SMB. Thankfully, this has recently changed.

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Management Style Matters

July 7th, 2008 by Robert Bradman

This last week I was browsing through industry publications and ran across some interesting reporting (one could also call it an op-ed) on achieving success with managing the millennials, or the twenty-something IT crowd. I found tihis particularly striking because we work with clients who have teams of millennials with boomer-generation management. Typically, this is a recipe for disaster.

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IT Budgets Running Out of Control?

July 3rd, 2008 by Robert Bradman

“My company faces technology issues all of the time, but my IT budget seems to run wild with consultants, capital expenses, and personnel training!” For most businesses leaders we’ve met with, this statement sums up their entire view of (and frustration with) IT. Even if they do not immediately see issues and have just a general feeling of malaise with their IT efforts, after we go over our five questions it begins to crystallize. I personally feel that this desperate statement is cried out not only due to a misunderstanding of the role of IT, but can also be due to either lack of or downright ineffective IT management in their organization.

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Nine Reasons Why IT Personnel Think Their CIO is Clueless

July 2nd, 2008 by Robert Bradman

This morning we stumbled across an excellent article from CIO Magazine. While it focuses primarily on Application Developers, we believe it applies to IT across the board. We’ve seen these so-called “9 Reasons” violated at many an organization, much to their detriment and dismay.

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Data Management: Finding Common Ground between Business and IT

July 1st, 2008 by Robert Bradman

Tony Fisher, President of DataFlux, wrote some great material on The IT-Finance Connection Blog regarding the importance of finding common ground between IT and business when it comes to data management.

Businesses are discovering that their success is increasingly tied to the quality of their information. Organizations rely on data to make significant decisions that can affect customer retention, supply chain efficiency and regulatory compliance. As companies collect more and more information about their customers, products, suppliers, inventory and finances, it becomes more difficult to accurately maintain that information in a usable, logical framework.

The data management challenges facing today’s businesses stem from the way that IT systems have evolved. Enterprise data is frequently held in disparate applications across multiple departments and geographies. The confusion caused by this disjointed network of applications leads to poor customer service, redundant marketing campaigns, inaccurate product shipments and, ultimately, a higher cost of doing business. Add to that a sense of unrest and poor communication between departments regarding data quality and you’re at a standstill.

Much of this is directly related to building stronger links between business and information technology. While data stewardship and management are functional aspects which our VCIO program encompasses, it’s but one part in a successful IT strategy.

Feel free to read our article on five questions every business leader should ask about IT for more details.

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