Checklists: Safety Nets or Strangleholds

Many functions in government are guided, if not driven by checklists. For example, federal information technology management has many checklists for enterprise architecture reviews, capital planning and investment control, IT acquisition reviews, configuration management, systems development life cycle, IT security (FISMA), Privacy, Section 508, and more.

One of the frequent criticisms is that these functions are just compliance-based and are not focused on the real-world task at hand—whether it be planning, governing, executing, servicing, securing, and so on. For example, many have said that FISMA needs to be amended, because our IT security staffs are so busy with their compliance checklists and reports that they are not adequately focused on strategically or operationally securing the enterprise from attack. Similarly, EA review boards have been criticized for being an almost thoughtless checklist of architecture alignment to the FEA and not of real planning value.

Yet, inherently we know that checklists are valuable and that is why they have been so heavily mandated and incorporated into our processes. Without the checklists, we know from past experiences with failed IT projects, poor IT investment decisions, and security issues that many of these could have been prevented if only we had thought to ask the right questions, and so these questions got codified—and we learned from some of our mistakes.

With regard to this, there was a fascinating book review in the Wall Street Journal on a book called “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande.

The author:

Mr. Gawande makes the case that checklists, plain and simple, save lives and we need them. He cites examples of “how stupid mistakes in surgery can be largely eliminated through pre-operative checklists” and how “checklists first became the norm in aviation, where pilots found that minor oversights in sophisticated planes led to tragic crashes.”

Overall, the book’s author maintains that “checklists seem to be able to defend everyone, even the experienced against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws.”

The reviewer:

The reviewer points out the important flip side to checklists as follows: “Bureaucracy is nothing but checklists. That’s part of what’s wrong with government—officials go through the day with their heads in a rulebook, dutifully complying with whatever the lists require instead of thinking about what makes sense.”

The reviewer makes the point that someone in authority needs to use judgment and that means: “relying on individual creativity and improvisation—the opposite of a checklist.”

The review goes on to then try and address the seeming contradiction between the need and value of checklists and the stifling effect that it can have by pointing out that “The utility of formal protocols [i.e. checklists, standard operating procedures (SOPs), etc.] varies with the nature of the activity—some activities are highly systematized, like engineering and other dependent on the judgment and personality of the individual. Spontaneity and imagination are important in many jobs.”

So there you have it—checklists—are helpful in defined, routine, almost mechanized areas where we can identify and itemize the necessary tasks, they are common to its performance, and they are proven to help avoid frequent oversights and mistakes. But where agility and innovation is called for, checklists can lead to either bureaucracy and/or missing the mark in getting the job done.

So are checklists helpful or hurtful with technology?

On one hand, technology is a fast-changing, innovative field that drives organizational transformation and thus it cannot primarily be a checklist function. Technology requires visionary leaders, talented managers, and customer-driven staffs. There isn’t a checklist in the world can inspire people, build meaningful customer relationships, and solve evolving, large and complex business problems.

On the other hand, there are common IT operational functions that need to get done and well-known pitfalls, and for these areas checklists can help us not make the same dumb mistakes again and again. For example, we can check that we are not making redundant IT investments. We can verify that appropriate accessibility for the handicapped has been provided for. We can safeguard people’s privacy with appropriate assessments.

The place for checklists in IT is pretty clear:

· STRANGLEHOLDS—Checklists cannot be a stranglehold on our business performance. They are not a substitute for thinking and doing. They cannot replace dedicated, talented, hardworking people addressing challenging and evolving business requirements with new and improved processes and technologies.

· SAFETY NETS—Checklists are safety nets. They are codified best practices and lessons learned that help us in not making routine, yet costly mistakes again.

Checklists: Safety Nets or Strangleholds

Andy Blumenthal Talks About Social Media

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Andy Blumenthal Talks About Social Media

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Andy Blumenthal Talks About Social Media

A Winner Goes the Extra Mile

I recently came across this poem called "A Winner’s Attitude." I don’t know who the author is, but I really like the poem. The poem has valuable leadership lessons, especially when it comes to serving our customers in earnest, overcoming challenges and obstacles, and always striving for betterment and growth. Hope you enjoy it as I did.
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A Winner's Attitude

A winner always has a program.
A loser always has an excuse.

A winner says, "Let me do it for you."
A loser says, "That's not my job."

A winner sees an answer for every problem.
A loser sees a problem for every answer.

A winner says, "It may be difficult, but it's possible."
A loser say, "It may be possible, but it's too difficult."

A winner listens.
A loser just waits until it's his turn to talk.

When a winner makes a mistake, he says, "I was wrong."
When a loser makes a mistake, he says, "It wasn't my fault."

A winner says, "I'm good, but not as good as I could be."
A loser says, "I'm not as bad as a lot of other people."

A winner feels responsible for more than his job.
A loser says, "I just work here."

A Winner Goes the Extra Mile

Customer-driven IT Management

For many years, we have witnessed the failures of excessively product-driven management, where companies focus on the development and sales of products (from automobiles to toaster ovens) to their customers—whether the customers really want those products or not. This was epitomized by the “build it and they will come” mentality.

Numerous companies faltered in this over-the-top product mindset, because they were focused not on satisfying their customer’s needs, but on selling their wares. Think GM versus Toyota or the Days Inn versus The Four Seasons.

Now however, organizations are moving from product- to customer-focused management, with the basic premise that organizations need to engage with their customers and assist them in getting the most value out of whatever products meet their requirements best. In the world of IT, this is the essence of user-centric enterprise architecture, which I created and have been advocating for a number of years.

Harvard Business Review, in January-February 2010, has an article titled “Rethinking Marketing” that asserts that “to compete, companies must shift from pushing individual products to building long-term customer relationships.”

· Product-driven companies—“depend on product managers and one-way mass marketing to push a product to many customers.”

· Customer-driven companies—“engage individual customers…in two-way communications, building long-term relationships.”

The old way of doing business was to focus on the products that the company had to offer and “move inventory” as quickly and profitably as possible. I remember hearing the sales managers yelling: “sell-sell-sell”—even if it’s the proverbial Brooklyn Bridge. And the driver of course, was to earn profits to meet quarterly targets and thereby get bigger bonuses and stock options. We saw where that got us with this last recession.

The new way of doing business is to focus on the customer and their needs, and not any particular product. The customer-driven business aligns itself and it’s products with the needs of its customers and builds a long-term profitable relationship.

“In a sense, the role of customer manager is the ultimate expression of marketing find out what the customer wants and fulfill the need), while the product manager is more aligned with the traditional selling mind-set (have product, find customer).”

The new model for a customer-driven enterprise is the epitome of what social computing and Web 2.0 is really all about. In the move from Web 1.0 to 2.0, we transformed from pushing information to stakeholders to having a lively dialogue with them using various social media tools (like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, discussion boards, and many more)—where customers and others can say what they really think and feel. Similarly, we are now moving from pushing products to actively engaging with our customers so as to genuinely understand and address their needs with whatever solutions are best for them.

In a customer-focused organization, “the traditional marketing department must be reconfigured as a customer department [headed by a chief customer officer] that puts building customer relationships ahead of pushing specific products.”

I think that the new organizational architecture of customer-driven management is superior to a product-focused one, just as a emphasis on people is more potent that a focus on things.

Similar to customer-driven management, in User-centric enterprise architecture, we transform from developing useless “artifacts” to push out from the ivory tower to instead create valuable information products based on the IT governance needs of our customers.

Further, by implementing a customer-focus in information technology management, we can create similar benefits where we are not just pushing the technology of the day at people, but are rather working side-by-side with them to develop the best solutions for the business that there is.

Customer-driven IT Management

Transformation That Can Succeed

Many organizations seek transformation. They are mired in paper even though we as a society have long moved to a digital age. They are organized around silos, despite the revelation that enterprise can function more effectively as one. They are overcome by day-to-day operational issues and are busy fighting fires, instead of focused on long-term strategy and execution. These are just some of the dysfunctions organizations seek to transform from.

But many transformations fail and they do so big time, leaving dispirited employees, disgruntled managers saying I told you so, and organizations hobbled in outmoded processes and legacy technologies, with the rest of the world seemingly passing them by. If they do nothing, they risk becoming obsolete, irrelevant, and a mere artifact of history.

Why do so many transformations fail and how can we help to convert these failures to successes is the topic of a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled “Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don’t Lose Your Nerve)” by Robert H. Miles in January-February 2010.

Here are some of the major hurdles and what we need to do to overcome them:

· Self Interest (or the “I” factor): Those who control the most resources or institutional assets tend to monopolize discussions, trump new ideas, and strong-arm decision-making, thereby reinforcing the status quo” and the security of their own corporate kingdom. I personally think this is one of the most difficult challenges to organizational change, because you have managers (i.e. they are not genuine leaders!) whose self-interest trumps organizational progress. The author calls for compelling all executives to confront reality and work together, but this isn’t a prescriptive answer, rather it is more of a wish. In my opinion, the mandate for change must come from the very top and everyone needs to be held accountable for genuinely helping the organization changes succeed.

· Organizational capacity to change—“In most cases, the day-to-day management process is already operating at full capacity…there isn’t room within the established systems to plan and launch a transformation.” The author calls for a parallel launch with small visible victories. While, small victories are good, this doesn’t really address how the organization can carve out the time, resources and commitment in the face of already stressed people, processes, and systems. I believe that you must make the investment distinct from your regular operations (this is not a collateral duty!) and form a high-level transformation office that reports to the senior executive. The transformation office is elevated from the organizational silos and works horizontally to make change happen. This means that traditional organization boundaries become transparent for process improvement and technology enablement. However, this cannot be a proverbial, ivory tower effort, but it must be well thought out, focused, and inclusive. The transformation office must engage all stakeholders across the organization in visioning, planning, and executing change initiatives.

· Change gridlock—“Workers capacity to execute will become a choke point if the programs are not prioritized and sequenced.” The author calls for limiting change initiatives to 3 or 4. This creates organizational focus. While I agree that you do not want to overwhelm the organization with too much change too fast, I find this somewhat at odds with the authors notion of “launches must be bold and rapid to succeed.” In my mind, it is not the launches that must be bold and rapid, but rather the goals that must be bold and the transformation should be allowed to proceed in a logical sequenced phases so that the organization can achieve learning, proficiency, and sustainability. Last thing we want to do is build a house of cards. At the same time, I don’t believe there is a magic number of initiatives, but rather that this is dependent on the resources available, the size and complexity of the change initiatives, and the organizational readiness and capacity for change.

· Sustaining transformation—“The more intensive and engaging the transformation launch, the harder it is to sustain the heightened levels of energy, focus, and performance.” The author recommends a “launch redux” to continue the transformation. I’m not convinced you need an annual or periodic revival of the initiative, but rather I believe that’s what’s called for is the following: leadership continuity and commitment, the continued development and nurturing of a shared vision of what transformation means, and ongoing performance management and measurement to see the change through. I believe that people will support the change process if they can see that it is purposeful, reasonable, inclusive, and that the commitment is real and sustained.

The truth is that no major and meaningful change in our personal or organizational life is short or easy. If it were fast and easy, it probably wouldn’t be so darn pivotal to our future.

Transformation is a risky, but necessary endeavor. We should not be afraid to make mistakes and learn from these. The greatest change and growth comes from the striving itself. As others have noted, it is the journey—to the destination—that is truly critical.

Transformation That Can Succeed

Do What's Right--Anyway

I read this amazing poem and wanted to share it. It is wise and inspiring and provides leadership and life lessons for all.

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Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered;

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;

Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

Do What's Right--Anyway

Motivated by Progress

There are all sorts of theories about what motivates people. The two most popular are Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Hertzberg’s Theory of Motivation.

Maslow (1954) believed that people fulfill needs from the lowest to the highest order in terms of physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.

Herzberg (1959) understood that more specifically at work, there were five key motivators to job satisfaction: achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, and advancement. Things like salary and working conditions were believed to not provide satisfaction, but could lead to job dissatisfaction.

An article in Harvard Business Review (January-February 2010) underscores Hertzberg’s belief that achievement is the greatest work satisfier of all, as the article states: “we now know what the top motivator of performance is…It’s progress.”

· Workers are energized when “they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles.”

· Workers are demoralized when “they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment.”

Bottom line is that most people generally want to work and be productive human beings: when we contribute positively to the world, we feel a purpose to life. Achievement and progress means that we somehow leave this world a little bit better than when we arrived, and the whole thing is not meaningless. The daily growing pains of life are not in vain—we are contributing to something greater—something that outlasts ourselves.

Recently, I read that only 45% of workers were satisfied with their jobs (based on finding from the Corporate Executive Board). Even in a horrible economy, people are not satisfied with a paycheck. They want to feel good about what they are doing and that they are doing something.

Something is getting in the way of people’s feeling of progress at work or their level of job satisfaction wouldn’t be the worst in decades.

The authors of the Harvard Business Review article state “the strongest advice we offer [to leaders] from this study…”scrupulously avoid impeding progress by changing goals autocratically, being indecisive or holding up resources.”

The point is that a leader is first and foremost an enabler for progress. If they are holding back their people, rather than helping them, we have dysfunctional leadership at its core.

So in simple terms—effective leaders must:

· VISION: Set and articulate a compelling vision/strategic direction for organization bringing their people into the process through genuine inclusion.

· DECISION: Make decisions with a reasonable and responsible level of analysis and consideration, but avoid analysis-paralysis, wavering, and indecision.

· EXECUTION: Give your people the authority, accountability, resources, training, and tools to execute or as the saying goes, “put your money where your mouth is.”

Progress and employee satisfaction will not be achieved with just one or two of the three: If the employees want to move forward on leadership vision, but they can’t get needed decisions to really execute, the vision is for all intensive purposes, dead on arrival. And even if employees have a vision and the needed decisions to operationalize it, but they can’t get the resources to really see it through, progress is slowed, stunted, or perhaps, not even possible at all.

Perhaps this is one reason for the high project failure rate in organizations that we’ve seen for years now resulting in cost overruns, missed project schedules, and requirements that go unmet.

Yes, workers will always seek job satisfaction, but its not just about more money, more benefits, more recognition, more advancement, like so many erroneously still believe. Rather, the Holy Grail to worker satisfaction is a leadership that knows how to let them really be productive.

I believe that true leadership success is measured in progress, and a sure sign of organizational progress is when employees feel productive. A good metric for “progress” is whether employees are engaged and (to put it simply) happy.

Motivated by Progress

Architecting A Secure Society

Once again, we are confronted with the basic security question of how much is the right amount?

It’s a classic catch-22 that requires us to architect security to meet opposing ends: we expect security to be as much as necessary to stop the terrorists, but as little as possible to ensure efficient travel and trade and maintain people’s privacy and equality.

In the last decades, we have behaved schizophrenically, calling for more security every time there is an attempted attack, only to withdraw and demand greater privacy protections, speedier security processing, and only random checks when things cool down.

The Wall Street Journal reported in the January 9-10, 2010 edition that the U.S.’s handling of security nowadays is an ever-losing proposition. The article calls it a virtual game of “Terrorball,” in which we cannot win, because there only two perpetual rules:

· “The game lasts as long as there are terrorists who want to harm Americans; and

· If terrorists should manage to kill or injure or seriously frighten any of us, they win.”

Based on the above, I believe that we can only win the game by changing its rules. Rather than being reactive to every terror scare, we are prepared with one approach—one that delivers an optimal level of security based on the current level of risk.

I recall when Michael Chertoff was Secretary of Homeland Security. During that time, he was a strong advocate for a risk-based approach that was multilayered, strong yet flexible enough to accommodate changing circumstances. From that perspective, which I think made a lot of sense: security decisions are made on the basis of objective criteria. These include technical feasibility, maximum effect, cost-benefit analysis, and so on.

A risk-based approach, or what I call “optimal security,” clearly makes a lot of sense. Yet it is tempting, when a security situation actually occurs, to let emotions get the better of us. On the one extreme, sometimes hysteria takes place and everybody seems a potential threat. Other times, we get angry that anyone at all is subjected to scrutiny or questioning.

In order to save the most lives and change the terror game, we have to decide to become more rational about the threat that faces us. This doesn’t mean being cold and calculating, but rather rational and proactive in developing a security architecture and governance that seeks to protect the most with the least negative impacts—but not trying to plug every possible hole at all costs.

In optimal security: sure, there is the ideal where we want to protect every American from every possible threat. However, there is also the reality where, because of competing priorities and scarce resources (to address everything from the deficit, health care, education, social programs, energy, science, defense, and more) we cannot—no matter how much we genuinely want to—prevent every terror instance.

So the terror playbook can and should be transformed. We can recognize there will always be terrorists—enemies of the state—who want to harm us and given enough attempts, no matter how optimal our security, they will occasionally get a sucker punch in on us—and we must be prepared for this. Moreover, rather than “freaking out” about this the terror threat, we can grow and commit to doing the best we can and accepting that we will increase security when information is there to support that need, and we will relax when that becomes possible.

Bottom line: We must move away from hysteria and any other factor that prevents us from being objective and make rational choices to deploy protections that are most effective and simultaneously safeguard our liberty.

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” captures the security debate well. We want to safeguard lives, but at the same ensure liberty and we want to be happy and not afraid all the time.

To accomplish this balance, our optimal security realization should be based on highly effective intelligence, supported by the very best technology, and a security platform that adjusts to threats in real time.

While our intelligence continues to strengthen and our technology continues to improve, the greatest challenge is our ability as a nation and as individual human beings to cope with the distress caused by terrorism.

We are ambivalent emotionally about the threat and what needs to be done to combat it. However, once we look inside and understand the emotions that this issue raises, and come to terms with reality we face, we will as a nation be more at peace and less likely to jump from one extreme to another in terms of our demands and expectations from those who protect us every day.

Architecting A Secure Society

Speaking with Integrity

At work, there is often a lot more talking going on than just work issues. There is the office politics and the chatter about staff, colleagues, management, stakeholders, and so on.

“Oh by the way, have you heard what John said to Mary this week?”

Rumors easily get started about office indiscretions, “dumb mistakes,” bad decisions, injustices, nepotism, and even office romances.

Yeah, it goes on everyday.

Some of it is true, but more often than not, a lot is exaggerated, taken out of context, only one side of the story, or just plain B.S.—but for many, it makes for interesting conversation nonetheless.

Speech is a true gift. It enables us to easily communicate with each other and to share feelings, thoughts, and form meaningful relationships.

But speech is also something that needs to be guarded, because words misused or abused can hurt others—their feelings, their reputation, their future prospects, and even their basic human dignity.

There is an old saying that G-d gave us two ears and one mouth, so that we could listen twice as much as we speak. In other words, our speech should be carefully thought and wisely used.

I remember this Talmudic story going something like this…there are various parts of the body arguing about which is the most important—the legs said without me you couldn’t walk, and the eyes say without me you could not see, and so on and so forth. But the mouth says, I am the most important because with just one (or a couple of) word(s), I can get you in trouble and even killed. And sure enough, on some pretense the man is called before the king and from the man’s mouth comes some insulting words to the king who orders that the man be executed for his insolence.

Indeed our words are very important—they can harm and they can heal.

I was reminded of this just recently, a young adult was telling me that a boy in her high school class made fun of her “in front of everybody” and she broke out crying—deeply hurt and humiliated. Sometimes, these are the events that can scar a person long after the event is over and seemingly forgiven and forgotten. Perhaps, this was just another person’s insensitivity or their misguided thinking that they are elevating themselves by putting down someone else, but either way, their words cut like a knife.

I ran into another example of this recently, when I heard of a Star-Trek fan who questioned whether artificial intelligence (e.g., like the character Data) could be considered human, “just like Jews and Blacks.” Whatever the intent, it was a shockingly racist and hurtful use of language.

Words can and do hurt others, and people should be careful with their speech as well as with their actions.

On this topic, I read this week in the Wall Street Journal (6 January 2009) about a movement to get people to stop gossiping—like the Jewish prohibition against lashon harah (evil language).

Essentially the mantra for better speech is kind/true/necessary. Before we say something, we should ask ourselves:

· Is it kind?

· Is it true?

· Is it necessary?

And “every word we utter should pass through [these] three gates.”

One organization called WordsCanHeal.org advocates for this and asks that people take a pledge, as follows:“I will try to replace words that hurt with words that encourage, engage, and enrich.”

This is a great and worthwhile endeavor for us all in the workplace and in our personal lives.

Speaking with Integrity

A New Decade, A New Time For Technology

As we enter the new decade starting with 2010, we should reflect on the last decade, learn from it, and redirect for a better future.

While the last decade surely brought much good to many, for our nation as a whole, it was a decade punctuated again and again by terror—wrought externally, but also from within.

These events range from the horrific events of 9/11/2001 to the failed attack on Flight 253 by the Underwear Bomber on Christmas day and the Taliban attack that took 7 unsung heroes of our CIA on December 30, 2009.

The fear of terrorism has swept through our society this past decade, so much so that we insist people remove their shoes at the airport for screening and are quick to mistake a photo shoot of Air Force One over the Statue of Liberty (just this past April) as another 9/11. The possibility of a terror attack, and especially with weapons of mass destruction, looms always in the back of our minds.

We have also experienced homegrown terrorism, such as the assassination of an abortion doctor in Wichita, Kansas and an attack at the U.S. National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. to name just a few.

As if all of this is not enough already, Americans have been deeply affected by other fearful events and issues:

· The Economy—From the 2001 bursting of the dot-com bubble and recession to the 2007 mortgage mess bringing us the worst financial recession since the Great Depression, we have seen foreclosure rates soar and unemployment rise to 10.2%. Too many of us now know the intense fear and also the reality of losing our homes and jobs.

· Health—Aside from traditional health concerns about cancer, heart disease, stroke and other diseases, this last decade we experienced concerns ranging from lingering concerns of Bird Flu to the newer variant of Swine Flu. We were constantly reminded of the potential of another deadly influenza pandemic such as the 1918 flu that killed 50 to 100 million people globally. People this last year lined up around the block for the H1NI vaccine, and delays in production and delivery of the vaccine caused even greater consternation among the populace.

· Energy—Oil prices peaked at $147.30 a barrel in 2008 before drastically receding. Overreliance of Mideast oil supplies, geopolitical disruptions, and natural disasters as well as peak oil fears all contribute to energy supply shortage fears and the move to alternate energy resources and energy independence.

· Global Competition—With the offshoring of U.S. manufacturing and the outsourcing of our job base, the recognition of the U.S. being surpassed as the economic superpower is on everyone’s mind, as the Wall Street Journal reported on January 2, 2010, “China is both making and eating our lunch.” We fear not only for our country’s future prosperity, but also for our ability and our children ability to earn a decent living anymore.

· The Deficit—With the trillion dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of the Recovery Act and the new Health Care legislation, as well as ongoing critical entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and so on, the national deficit has soared to over $12 trillion dollars and is about to hit the ceiling again. The viability of this deficit spending is sending shock waves through the American public who realize that at some point the bill must be paid.

· Environmental Issues—From addressing global warming to a green economy and the need for conservation, recycling and sustainable environmental practices, we have awoken to the fear of creating an environment that is no longer hospitable to human life, if we do not act to be better stewards of the planet.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather is meant to demonstrate the breadth and depth of issues to which we been exposed to fear, dread, and terror about our personal and national futures.

Further, the fear for the future that we experience is not meant to shut us down or demoralize us, but rather to direct our attention and redirect our energies to solving these critical dilemmas facing us all.

One of the biggest areas of hope that I believe we have is through technology. In fact, technology has been a major offset to the decade of terror that we have experienced. Through technology and the requisite cultural change, we have moved towards a society that is more connected, enabled, and informed. We have achieved greater information sharing, collaboration, transparency, and overall productivity. Advanced telecommunications, e-Commerce, online information resources, and entertainment have transformed our lives primarily for the better. Technology has helped solve some of the greatest challenges of our time—whether through biotechnology, food genetics, alternative energy, military defensive technologies, and hosts of engineering advances particularly through miniaturization and mobility solutions.

While we cannot rely on technology to solve all of our problems, we can use it to augment our intellectual and communications capabilities to better attack and resolve the challenges confronting us.

We are a strong and resolute people and we can overcome terror with religious faith, strong family and community, individual and national determination, sacrifice and innovation, all variety of technology (infotech, nanotech, biotech…), and the paradigm of continuous learning and improvement.

We have a unique opportunity in time to move from a Decade of Terror to a Decade of Peace—a peace of mind, body, and soul brought by a conquering of the terrorists found within and without. I believe that technology can and will be there to support us in this if we can change along with it.

A New Decade, A New Time For Technology

The Forgotten 60%

IT Leaders are often worried (almost exclusively) about the technology—Is it reliable? Is it robust? Is secure? Is it state-of-the-art? Is it cost-effective? And more.

This is what typically keeps IT management up at night—a server outage, the network being down, an application not available, a project off track, or a security issue such as a virus or worm.

While much lip service has been paid to the statement that “people are our most important asset;” in reality, too little emphasis is generally placed here—i.e. people are not kept high on the IT leadership agenda (for long, if at all), technology is.

Hence, we have seen the negative effects of outsourcing, layoffs, cut training budgets, pay and incentive stagnation, and other morale busting actions on our workforce, along with customers who have been disappointed by magnificent IT project failure rates—with projects over cost, behind schedule, and not meeting customer spec.

Our people—employees and customers—are not being properly cared for and the result is IT projects failure all around us (the stats speak for themselves!).

In essence, we have lost the connection between the technology outcomes we desire and the people who make it happen. Because what drives successful technology solutions are people—knowledgeable, skilled, well trained, and passionate people—working collaboratively together on behalf the mission of the organization.

A book review in ComputerWorld (21 December 2009) on World Class IT by Peter A. High identifies the 5 elements of IT leadership, as follows:

1. Recruit, train, and retain world-class IT people.

2. Build and maintain a robust IT infrastructure.

3. Mange projects and portfolios effectively.

4. Ensure partnerships within the IT department and with the business.

5. Develop a collaborative relationship with external partners.

Interestingly enough, while IT leaders generally are focused on the technology, information technology is not #1 of the 5 elements of IT leadership, but rather employees are—they are identified at the top of the list—and the author states that CIO's should tackle these issues in the order presented.

Further, of the 5 key IT leadership elements, fully 3—or 60% are all about people and relationships, not technology. #1 are employees, #4 is business-IT partnership (customers), and #5 is external collaboration or outreach.

So unfortunately for our organizations, people are the all too forgotten (or neglected) 60%.

I do want to note that I do not fully agree on the order presented by Mr. High; in particular I do not think the customer should be 4^th on the list, but rather as the customer represents the mission and the requirements to carry it out, the customer should be unquestionably to me at the very top of the list of IT leadership focus—always. We are here to serve them, period.

Overall though, the key point is that IT leaders need to reorient themselves to people and not overemphasize the technology itself, because if they generally respect and take care of the people and the relationships, the technology will follow and be more successful then ever.

The Forgotten 60%

Lifesaving Technology is User-centric

There is no better technology than one that saves lives. That is its very essence.

Lifesaving technologies take many forms, from medical imaging to hurricane prediction, from biotechnology to food safety technology, from lifecycle energy management to emergency alerting and countless others.

I read with great interest in the Wall Street Journal (31 Dec. 2009) about another new life saving technology in the area of transportation safety. It is a simple iPhone app created for $8,000 called R-U-Buzzed? This free application download helps people determine whether it is unsafe for them to drive because they are drunk.

Individuals simply enter information such as “weight, gender, hours drinking, and a tally of beer, wine, and liquor consumed.” The application then spews our their blood-alcohol content and a color-coded safety message, as follows:

· Gray—“No hangover expected.”

· Yellow—“You’re buzzed.”

· Red—“Don’t even think about it...designate a sober driver.”

In some cities (just in the state of Colorado for now), there is even a GPS feature that helps users call a local cab to get them home safely.

While the use of the application isn’t foolproof, and some caution that users shouldn’t depend on it alone for judging their intoxication level, using social computing to appeal to young people who are drinking is a significant potential lifesaver because so many young adults are involved in fatal crashes. In fact, federal statistics show that more than two out of three (65%) of drunk drivers who died in a fatal crash last year were between the ages of 21-34. Another 17% were under 21.

One user of the application raved that it “felt very solid and mathematical and trustworthy, and nonjudgmental.” Hence, the application may be more acceptable to users than hearing from their friends that perhaps they shouldn’t drive.

Applications such as this one are truly user-centric, and because of this I believe they hold even more potential for saving people’s lives than technologies that are difficult to understand and use. As technology leaders and architects, we need to ensure that everything we create is friendly to the user, remembering that we are solving problems for people—not machines—and that often, lives are very much at stake.

As we celebrate the arrival of 2010 with family and friends tonight, let’s make a special toast for the people whose technology needs we’ve supported in 2009, and look forward to many more years of solving business problems and enhancing and saving even more lives.

Lifesaving Technology is User-centric

What Hollywood Can Teach Us About Fighting Terrorism

U.S. law enforcement officials have thwarted about two dozen known terrorist plots since 9/11 and there are probably lots more that haven’t made the papers. Some of them, like this month’s “Underwear Bomber” have nicknames, like the “Shoe Bomber” (2002), the “Lackawanna Six,” (same year), and the “Virginia Jihad” (2003). Others are known by geographical location, such as Fort Dix (2007) and the foiled plot against synagogues in the Bronx (2009). But one thing they all have in common is their determination to threaten and even destroy our freedom and way of life.

As a person who is deeply dedicated to America’s safety and security, both personally and professionally, I worry about the rise of terrorism that has sprung up in the past few decades. Terrorists are relentlessly determined to destroy our lives even if it means taking their own lives to do it. But what is even more frightening is that despite all the actions we have taken to fight terrorism, our culture remains deeply reactive. Can we really stay one step ahead and lucky forever?

The best example of our relative complacency in the face of a deadly threat is the policy of taking off our shoes for screening only after the case of the Shoe Bomber came to light. Now again, we waited for an Underwear Bomber before talking seriously and publicly about full body screening for all?

There is a saying that you can’t drive a car by looking in the rearview mirror, but unfortunately that seems to be the way our culture approaches the fight against terrorism. The focus should not be on stopping the last threat, but on anticipating and countering the future threat before it ever materializes.

To do this, we need to think like the bad guys do as well as conduct more exercises to expose our own security weaknesses (red teaming), rather than be surprised when the terrorists find our next Achilles heel.

In the particular case of the Underwear Bomber, it was particularly shocking that we knew this person was a threat. His own father warned us, yet we didn’t put him on the terrorist watch list or revoke his visa (as the British did). And just today I read that this individual told investigators there are literally hundreds more just like him, all waiting to strike.

Think about that for a second. There are seemingly endless terrorists out there, and they can have a 99% failure rate and still be “successful.” Yet U.S. and global law enforcement can’t fail at all—not even once—without dire and deadly consequences on a massive scale.

However, instead of gripping that unbelievable reality and treating it as the dire situation it is, there is actually talk about “rehabilitating” the terrorists. As if we have succeeded at rehabilitating “normal” criminals…now we are going to try and “deprogram” people who are religiously “inspired” to commit their diabolical deeds?

To adequately manage the new reality we face today, we must not only stay ahead of known threats, but also proactively envision new potential attack scenarios, prepare for them, and thwart them before they become potentially lethal.

A great place to start would be Hollywood; our entertainment industry has done a pretty good job of imaginatively exposing potential attack scenarios—in dozens of films from Air Force One to The Sum of All Fears, Executive Decision to The Peacemaker, and Arlington Road to The Siege, and many more.

There are also television shows like 24, with now seven seasons and counting, that keep Americans riveted to their seats week after week with terrorism plots that play out before our very eyes. We seem to generally view these as serious threats that are possible in our time.

I respect the President for openly acknowledging the "systematic failure," but it is going to take all of us to commit and follow through with ongoing security measures. It is not a one month or one year event (or even an 8 year event post 9/11), but rather a complete new security mindset that stays with us always.

We can and should learn from the visionary talent in our vibrant entertainment industry and from wherever else they may reside, and adopt creative and proactive thinking about terrorism and make this a regular part of our security culture. I understand that there are many forces at play here, and that most of us are not privy to some of the more sophisticated ways that we fight terrorism every day. But what I am talking about is our collective, public culture, which still seems to shrug off the seriousness of threats against us. For example, just today, I saw a sign in an airport that directed wheelchairs through security screening. It seemed almost an invitation to sew explosives into a wheelchair (although I understand that these are actually screened).

I have the deepest respect for the men and women who serve to protect us every day. But as a culture, it is long past time to wake up. We don’t have the luxury of collective denial anymore. We must embrace security as a fact of life, fully and in an ongoing manner.

Further, as we approach 2010, let us resolve to learn from the most imaginative people in our society about how we may think out of the box when it comes to combating terrorism.

In the real world, we must act now to quickly deploy new, more advanced screening technologies to our airports, marine ports, and border crossings, and employ our most creative minds to “outwit, outplay, and outlast” the terrorists who plot against us—whether in their shoes, their underwear, or wherever else their evil schemes might lead them.

What Hollywood Can Teach Us About Fighting Terrorism