Information Sorcery

Examiner.com

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:06:00 +0000

Faithful subscribers (Ruben),

I'm now writing as an SF Information Technology Examiner for examiner.com. Here's my page:

http://www.examiner.com/x-40630-SF-Information-Technology-Examiner

and here's my RSS feed:

http://rss.examiner.com/RSS-40630-SF-Information-Technology-Examiner.rss

The "Information Worker"

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:41:00 +0000

Sometimes I take a step back and think about what people like me in my field actually do. What a lot of it comes down to, is taking concepts, applying other concepts to them, and then making something new with those same concepts to potentially have an outcome of some other concept.

I started my career doing warranty repair on Dell and Apple laptops - and that was actually having a physical issue, figuring out what was wrong, and then replacing parts until it worked as (mostly) good as it did before. I had immediate feedback and satisfaction into what happened. But don't get me wrong - doing that work was not my favorite thing in the world and I got out of there as fast as humanly possible.

But what about when I moved out of that kind of work - and started doing more business analysis and system design? I wrote about those things, in some cases made little pretty drawings, and even wrote about people's behavior surrounding those physical byproducts. It's a step removed, you know? You're talking about a physical process, you're describing ways to improve it, but you aren't doing it yourself. Drawing a diagram for a client/server architecture of a system isn't the same as going into a lab and running assays to generate data. But the client/server architecture supports the knowledge and the process around that action.

For optimization, must one become removed from the process itself, and only then can the opportunity be presented where something can truly be made better? Is this why it seems that so many folks who do the day-to-day operations type jobs and tend to have great ideas never seem to get past that stage of trying to solve world hunger? Why do their supervisors ignore them and just view it as bitching? What breaks that circle?

And going back to what I said before about loathing the warranty repair work - is that just my view on the type of work, or do I have a natural aptitude that is suppressed by repetitive work like that?

Ruben, I know you're dying to comment.

The Perfect Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Nature is the perfect machine.

In all of our endeavors to come up with technological innovation and feats of engineering, we only have to look in the mirror to see an example of a perfect machine. A combination of cells, organs, tissue and nerves make up the human body. The human body is one of the most efficient machines out there - and it is duplicated billions of times over on our planet. Anything that is wasteful on the human body is simply evolved away slowly. Everything has a purpose, and if it doesn't - it will disappear as time passes.

But humans are pretty boring. We can't fly or breathe underwater or do anything beyond the feature set of our current system's release. But there's plenty of things out there that can - and we do a great job of mimicing how they work.

We fly in the same way that birds do, and we even dive and swim in the ocean the same way whales do. In fact, we even looked to them to see how to do it. And then after that, we take it a step further - such inventing crazy rockets to shoot us to the moon. When a whale shoots itself from the ocean to the moon, we'll have to kick it up a notch.

So - why reinvent the wheel? Why not outsource to nature? Seriously. Look at the way IT organizations are run. Decentralized vs. centralized, remote locations, etc. Well, how are we setup? A single brain controls all aspects of the human body. Decision making is done at the top with input via senses from the rest of the body. This translates into a centralized IT organization - which in my opinion should (almost) always be the way to go.

We don't have multiple brains controlling our one system - the hand doesn't pick up something if it feels like it. The brain decides that something is hot as hell and then makes the choice to go or no go. The hand might not like it - and it will definitely give great pain feedback for the brain to consider in the future, but that's how it works.

I'm no advocate of unquestionable loyalty in a military style chain of command - however, I do believe in strong decision makers who are open to all manners of feedback and criticism. It takes someone who is naturally apt to the role to be able to do this.

Our bodies don't have to choose. The brain is easy because it was born that way and is situated right in the head. But our IT departments are different. Our leaders aren't gelatinous masses of pink and grey - we have to actually choose them, and they more or less look the same. I believe leading and inspiring is a natural ability born out of a combination of charisma, social skills, subject matter expertise and trust. Not all people have this, and attempting to shoehorn people into this role will only lead to a fragmented organization. Brains developing in the fingertips and toes is not the right way to go.

You can sense leadership qualities in someone without being a leader yourself. And there is absolutely no truth to a "leader" being better than everyone else and should be where one gets promoted to in order to have a prosperous career. It is quite the contrary - the leader inspires everyone around him or her to go beyond their potential and drive the body to success.

For IT, Technology is a "Bad Idea"

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:03:00 +0000

I know - weird title right?

Technology kind of sucks on its own. Seriously. It tends to:

Overcomplicate things
Invalidate your existing skillsets
Have its own requirements that your company may not already meet

If you look at IT in the general context of most companies, it is a "Service Organization." A "Service Organization" can have a lot of different meanings. It can mean here's the vegan whopper soaked in pickle juice and then wrapped in a tamale like you asked, or it can mean "that's a stupid idea, here's a tamale."

You can't solve organizational issues by introducing new technology. You can't solve people issues by introducing new technology. And you certainly can't solve technological issues by introducing new technology.

So, what's the technology good for? I don't know. Ask your business. What do they do - what's their core competency? How can technology aid them in achieving the organizational goals without shaping those goals to just be slaves of a technology?

More simple than that - ask your people. What do they do? What will make their job easier?

"So, let me get this straight. You apparently:

have a macro initiated via a blank spreadsheet that reopens Excel, parsing out columns which you have to manually download every morning at 6:57 AM (not 6:58 AM, because it gets deleted as the auditing of file share size happens and our spreadsheet goes over the limit)
which then requires you to launch a separate executable which prompts for credentials, launches Outlook and sends an e-mail to a service account's mailbox
that someone else opens and downloads
then runs a freeware utility to convert it to a CSV file
then double-clicks the ftp command line batch file someone on the Helpdesk made to send critical consumer info to a bank
and then have to wait a day to see if it worked.

Wow, sounds like your job sucks."

Spend 400 grand to upgrade a technology platform to a newer version that never explicitly fixes your issues, or actually talk to people and find out what they do, and figure out ways you can make it "not hilarious?"

No brainer.

Efficiency

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:36:00 +0000

I like efficiency. I'm one of those nerds that thinks the idea of no friction in space is way mindblowing and the fact that something can keep going on forever is ridonkulous.

By the same token, I believe that processes can be perfected and engineered to a near 100% efficiency - creating an amazing harmony of minimal waste, perfect repeatability, and rock-solid metrics. Especially in IT - you never need to buy a new product in order to create a value-added set of processes or make your IT infrastructure renewable. You always have the tools available and at hand.

The only thing that stops business processes fueled by technical underpinnings from being 100% efficient is politics. But politics are what get you the support and the funding to be able to pursue those endeavors. Weird.

The "Alerting" Concept

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:13:00 +0000

This has kind of been one of those things that has been tugging at my brain the past few weeks. When it comes to maintaining an infrastructure - for purposes of this post, we'll talk about Desktops and Servers - I strongly believe in the concept of both preventative maintenance and non-client facing alert mechanisms.

The idea of production operations, in my opinion, should really be hidden from the end-user 99% of the time. Patch notifications, maintenance notifications, any kind of infrastructure alerts do not belong in the hands of non-IT personnel and really aren't the kind of thing that I believe should be distributed out there. While it is true that not enough information is hazardous, too much information can have exactly the same effect.

The number one priority in any kind of IT infrastructure should really be as minimal disruption to the client as necessary - and in many cases, this actually should mean withholding information. These are the top things that have come to mind:

Alert Saturation - Too much of an "alert driven" infrastructure causes saturation of "alerts" and lessens the importance of the act. The "boy cried wolf" scenario. Alerts should be so fine tuned that the only time you ever get one is when there is something actually legitimately wrong that requires action in order to be made right. This negates hundreds of e-mails, in which maybe only 1% of them are actual alerts, from going into filtered spam boxes.
Self-Remediation - If an alert is going to go off, or if not an alert some kind of action that requires correction, it should be scripted or made to correct itself automatically. This is crucial. Many products out there that are capable of generating alerts can actually trigger scripts as well. I personally have experience with Citrix EdgeSight, and you could essentially run any command you wanted (at one point I had it using psexec to change the desktop background of a coworker when the print service died on one of our Citrix servers.)
Preventative Maintenance - This should absolutely be a priority - once you have your alert-driven self-remediating infrastructure humming along, being able to spot trends to provide preventative maintenance should be done routinely. Database grooming scripts, defrags, cache cleaners, etc.
Metrics - Above all, you should have down to the percentage per sample, accurate metrics of each of these steps in order to report to management. Dollars can be associated with exact incidents a lot easier than ballparks.

The premise of these points is that the technology to do all of this is not new - it has been available for a long time. It requires more process than technology in successfully setting up a self-healing infrastructure. It's not hard to write a script that can read an error or do a disk space check - but to actually do something about it automatically, silently, and in an auditable fashion is a true work of art.

The Routine

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:11:00 +0000

It's been a few months since I posted - primarily because I got a new job, and I actually really enjoy my new place of employment. So with those initial acclimation experiences out of the way, and life not getting any less busier, it's time to try and fall back in a routine again.

Which is my topic for tonight. Routine.

There's safety in "doing something the way you always have." It's familiar, easy to do, and can always be defended simply because it is the incumbent method of doing things. It served and still serves a purpose - meeting a need. It may not be the most elegant way of doing something, but hey, it works, and has worked for x number of years. But, sometimes, it's just time for a change.

Like triggering breeding in animals by slightly changing their environments, change often comes about in mystical ways. Maybe the weather, a new product release, a new hire - or just the right question asked at the right time. Change can be triggered by lots of things. But, the drive for change is a delicate spark of a fire - it requires quiet nurturing by those with just enough influence to push it through.

I've never been a fan of "top-down" decrees - lighting a small fire and giving it all the fuel in the world will soon present you with a roaring inferno of creativity, motivation, and efficiency.

Spotfire

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:00:00 +0000

So the awesome folks at TIBCO Spotfire let me know they have per-month hosted subscriptions of their applications at a much lower cost than a full on package. If you're looking for an unbelievably simple out-of-the box tool for business intelligence applicable to all areas, then give this a try. It's an incredible bargain. If you have a job that even remotely touches metrics or could be improved by visual representations of data and trends, at least check out the demo on their website.

Being able to link databases, files, data feeds, dumps, etc. for near-instant business intelligence without hiring a horde of integration programmers to work for months on a project that constantly changes scope ought to convince you that this is worth it.

Check it out: http://spotfire.tibco.com/Webstore/

Seeing Information

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 19:56:00 +0000

There's something quirky about people's brains that lets them make connections in data when it's seen in different ways.

Not to be advertising or anything, but there is a data visualization program out there called TIBCO Spotfire, which is absolutely unbelievable when it comes to visualizing data. In my line of work I've seen it used for drug research, but it's cross-industry applications are limitless. I've luckily had the opportunity to understand how it works in-depth and see some really amazing things come from how people operate the software.

Anyhow - showing data in concise, easy-to-read visualizations is a very valuable thing. Microsoft Excel is pretty much the standard for showing graphs of data samples, but I find it to be arachaic and anything but intuitive. It's simple, basic, and a little limited. (Granted Excel 2007 is an improvement, but it's a little limited.)

With something like Spotfire, you're able to poll disparate data sources in real-time. You can link together things and make artificial spreadsheets from an unlimited amount of sources. I mean, think about hooking up your Helpdesk system's incidents with some kind of weather feed. Wouldn't it be hilarious to find out that you get more calls when it's crappy weather outside over a 5 year period? Hilarious stuff.

I suppose that's what "business intelligence" is all about. I've never held a position in that field, but I find it to be interesting. Gathering data is all well and good, but being able to actually present that data is an art form. It's useless to have millions of points of data and present those millions of points in a pretty bland spreadsheet. But a webpage, with nice colors, or perhaps some very descriptive labels makes all the difference in the world. They may seem like ancilarry stuff, but the more organized and presentable your data looks, the more impact you can make.

The problem with new jobs...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:25:00 +0000

When moving to a new job - I tend to get this anxiety that slowly builds up. "Am I able to do the job" or "will I be able to do the job effectively" - which do get proven wrong, but it's almost as if my brain is challenging me and providing me with a healthy dose of self doubt.

I'm not sure if these are doubts that are more for the technical / groundpounder type that are required to exercise a certain amount of analysis and/or creativity on the job, or if it's for everyone. It's probably something that has dawned with the era of the information worker - a competition to create, so to speak, in an industry typically governed by people who view information as a closely guarded secret - even when that information is widely available on a free medium.

I guess, then, that the anxiety is more toward the work environment, or meeting the people. It's an anxiety toward figuring out the boundaries of your job, the amount of trust given to you, and what you can expect your duties to be. In IT these tend to vary from job to job, and are never the same - no matter the title. I used to think that the size of a company would dicate things like that - but honestly, I'm now convinced that it's entirely dependent on a cross-section between your boss and the company's culture. It keeps things interesting, at the very least.

Automation

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Isn't it funny the more things we try to automate, the more of a pain it ends up being? At one point does a "workflow" become a "crapflow" of broken and over-engineered features? I see them constantly in my line of work, and the way to prevent that is good communication and analysis skills - as well as being able to talk openly to people to figure out what they want, not what your resume wants.

Directions

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:01:00 +0000

Things tend to go in directions. Not moving cars, or paths of walking people - but trends, technologies, and even ways of life.

With the dawning of the MMORPG genre (Ultima Online, EverQuest) - there was a direction toward simulating your real life as much as possible in a virtual life. Obviously, your simulated virtual life had cool things like spells and weapons, but it was very much geared toward making it as "close to real" as possible.

I wonder where technology is going - specifically the use of personal computers and computing devices. A few years ago someone could say "smaller" or even "faster." I think these days that's a given, though.

I tend to think that technology is going nowhere unless it actually becomes easier to use. But by virtue of becoming easier to use, you have to be incredibly more complicated. Take for example an articulated action figure. It can pose in any way a human can, making it a very simple replica of a human body. But, it requires so many moving parts, and so many exceptions to be able to make those movements possible.

The more flooded your piece of technology is with options, features, and functionality - there is more of a challenge in making that technology intuitive, easy to use, and presented in a way that demonstrates pure utter simplicity. This often requires having eyes on board that aren't classically trained in technology - artists, writers, musicians - that can provide that aesthetic touch and bridge the gap between technology and usability.

Bartering

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:21:00 +0000

So I've been watching Six Feet Under lately and it's a pretty good show - has some interesting moments and seems to generally put some tough issues on the table.

One of the episodes showed that the old funeral director would offer funerals in exchange for other goods. You know - good old fashioned bartering.

So that got me thinking. We all do stuff for payment. If you're looking to get a service, most of the time it's a little complicated dance around the fact of "how much are you going to pay me" and "is that enough for me to do what you require."

It seems to boil down to the fact that we're all just prostitutes. Prostitutes for a paycheck. At what extent does it stop, you know? Someone I used to work with said that his boss used to have his employees wash his cars for them - they're hourly, and getting paid, so what makes the difference - right?

Whenever I trade a good for a good, a service for a good, or a service for a service, there is some kind fo unquantifiable mental satisfaction that arises from the transaction. Getting money from doing something is temporary - it lasts for a little while until you spend it on something stupid. But providing a service and getting something in return seems like a much healthier way of doing things. You forge relationships with people, you develop honesty, and overall you feel much more valuable.

The Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:30:00 +0000

Sales is an incredibly interesting career path. You get the opportunity to be someone's worst enemy, someone's best friend, a living saint, or even the biggest dick in the world.

It's all about charisma - the ability to make people realize they have a need, and that need can only be solved by you. Is it deception? Or is it just a clever way of breaking through someone's psychological barriers?

Well, I don't think it's deception if you're selling them a legitimate service that will actually save them money. If you're a slimeball and are getting the check and running, then yeah, it is deception. Maybe that's why people hate salespeople - because they view them all as deceptive.

Or is it just because they view them as mental ninjas that are able to quickly analyze and pierce barriers that have been erected for self-defense? I imagine there is a lot of psychology to be learned when in sales - and not just smooth talking and dinner buying.

Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:49:00 +0000

My phone talks to me

It has really odd voices

Can't sleep clown'll eat me

Stability

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:28:00 +0000

I wonder if stability is just an illusion that suppresses real urges inside people. Cookie cutter suburbs, the fear of change, a specific car, specific house with a certain square footage, a certain job, a certain title, a specific income.

Is it all really healthy to suppress your natural urges? Or is civilization just a method of control? Should you be happy sitting in a cubicle from 9 to 5, commuting to work every day?

It's a very Generation Y kind of thing to have a need for connection and/or purpose in the workplace. The feeling of changing an organization and having a say in the way things are done is unparalleled - but it certainly isn't something that is new. Maybe it has just been suppressed for so long.

Commencement

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:47:00 +0000

So, I sent this e-mail to my coworkers today, and I'd like to share it here:

Hi all,

Last Friday I participated in my commencement down in Southern California to officially receive my Bachelor’s degree.

It was a long and interesting road – originally I had moved up here for college at Sonoma State University in the far North Bay, and soon after that it hit home that a History major had nothing to do with my true passion – being a professional computer nerd. The college only offered programming classes and I never felt a calling to actually do programming. Really – how was it possible to get a degree in something as fast-paced and changing as the type of IT I was interested in?

So, I ended up dropping out of college to get hired full-time by the college working in their IT department. I took classes for free and continued my general credit requirements, but that slowly tapered off and I dedicated myself to my career.

It always bugged me that I never finished my degree. It was one of those things I knew I had to do, but never thought I would actually do. One night a few years later I filled out an online survey about college education and was matched up with “DeVry University.” I thought the place was a joke and it just existed to take money and pass all its students as long as they paid the ridiculous tuition. I was definitely wrong about that.

One of the admissions advisors, Tiffany Garcia, called me a few days later. She spoke to me for hours, addressing what happened in my quest, what I wanted to do, how I felt about my degree, etc. She told me about the Technical Management program they had – which was a mix of Business and Information Systems, and she told me I could do it completely online or go to one of their many campuses around the Bay Area. She also told me it was a fully accredited university and that it was a true Bachelor’s degree, much to my doubt. I let that sit for about a year and she called me once a month, and eventually asked me to come down to her office in San Francisco and enroll. I thought about it and then went ahead and did it, enrolling for my first class in January of 2007. All 30 of the credits I had from my time at SSU transferred.

Since January of 2007 I have been taking two classes every 8 weeks online full time with no breaks, and as of two weeks ago, finally completed my 125^th credit for graduation for a Bachelor’s of Science in Technical Management with a Project Management concentration. The education was top notch – the professors were 90% of the time still employed in their respective fields (project managers, business analysts, information security analysts) and taught their courses. They were always available by phone and e-mail and were very dedicated to their jobs.

To this day my family doesn’t quite understand what sort of degree it is because it isn’t from a traditional state school or in one of the more normal sciences or arts, and I think that is going to be one of the challenges for any of us in these types of IT careers. It was never something you could go to school to really learn up until now – and the type of school you do learn it from is so radically different than tradition that oftentimes the quality of the education can get overshadowed by the perceived lack of establishment.

I promised Tiffany I would try to do good where I could in return for how much she twisted my arm, so if any of you ever encounter a DeVry graduate on a job interview, please know that it was truly a challenging yet rewarding curriculum and the things they learned apply to everyday life in the corporate IT world that oftentimes people have to discover on their own, outside of the nurturing environment of a classroom.

Mike

The Path Well-Traveled

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:59:00 +0000

It amazes me that there is this "path" through corporate America that somehow gets ingrained in our heads. Especially in IT, it's "do what you like doing for a while, then forget all of it to become a manager because managers aren't technical - as that is the only way to make money."

I've been thinking about that "path" a lot because I had admitted to myself that I was on it - but I think it's a bunch of crap. I don't know why it is such a mental obstacle for people to believe that they'll get paid good money to do what they love doing. I don't necessarily think its a bad thing to be on Desktop Support if you're happy doing it, have the appropriate amount of responsibility, and are getting paid well.

I think what makes people miserable is the people who get fast-tracked out of doing what they like in to Manager roles, and then when they become a manager and they suck, they make everyone else's life horrible for whoever works for them - completely demotivating a group of people that had the same responsibilities that manager actually enjoyed. And of course, you can never demote a Manager. Right?

Requirements

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:29:00 +0000

Why do companies continue to implement software solutions just for the sake of the technology? Is it a testament to the effectiveness of a good sales pitch, or are IT departments really getting weaker? Why do you need to have something as an Amazon Virtual Machine in a cloud? As an amazing mentor said to me once, "Cloud is just a business model. Figure out what you really want to be able to do." And it's true - it's a business model surrounded by hype.

With a floundering economy, you'd think that there would be a focus on "doing more with what you have" and utilizing the technology you already own to perform cost and time saving miracles. The biggest buzzphrase of the millenium - "ROI" - is all about this. Yet users continue to drive technology requirements, and not actual user requirements.

A user should never say we need to implement Sharepoint. A user should say, "this is my set of requirements, this particular set of requirements really means a lot to me." And IT should then guide them toward an acceptable solution.

Going further, this illuminates another potential area of why IT tends to fail - no communication with the user. There's no analysis performed, no actual "so what do you do exactly?" questions being asked. If a user is using a single table in Access to store static text values, why would you embark on a multi-thousand dollar project to upgrade your entire infrastructure to be able to handle a newer version of Access when it comes out? Why not find out what they are using it for, and offer a simpler, more elegant solution.

The Best Way

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:58:00 +0000

The best way to do something is honestly the way that makes you the laziest.

Think about a tweak you have to do to a server, or something that is a registry key entry. Why do it on each server? You'll have to ensure that every time a new server is deployed, or if something happens to that server, that that configuration is present on everything from that point forward.

Good documentation can take the place of that - but come on, we're all in IT. Who actually reads documentation?

The best way to get something out there is to do it once and just forget about it. Write a custom group policy that applies the setting to a bunch of servers in a specific OU. Add something to the logon script. Become a scion of laziness, and you will succeed in ultimate efficiency. As ironic as it is, it's the best way to go.

This applies to making images, too. Don't put things on images that can be done with policy. Honestly, the only thing you should ever have installed on an image is security updates. Keep the rest as a deployment package template on a per-group or per-department basis. You don't have to have SMS to do it - batch files are still good. VBScripts are even better.

Some people argue that when you do these kinds of things you threaten your own job. I tell you, negative nancys - if you can never be replaced, how will you ever move up?

Losing your Humanity

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:20:00 +0000

Fear is one of those things that cripples people from being effective. Fear of losing a job, of being wrong, and even of going out on a limb and taking a risk. Fear sickens me because it drives people to be less than human - to be sheep, to be ant drones that only exist to serve the whims of the queen.

Risk, as Sir Anthony Hopkins said in the film masterpiece "The World's Fastest Indian," is the spice of life.

I've seen fear cripple people into making horrible decisions that do nothing but promulgate stagnation. I've seen people in authority breed a culture of fear which actually causes the effectiveness of their subordinates to enter into negative territory. Yes, actually making people devolve into something stupid. Devolve into "resources" without independent thought. Sickening. A human is not a resource. A human is a human.

Fear is the literal Flowers for Algernon. It makes you stupid. And, it makes everyone around you stupid.

If you never admit that you are at fault or at wrong, you are not human. The only way you can never be wrong is if you are a tool - an insignificant unimportant piece of a machine. A gear, designed only for one purpose - to turn, and to turn only when the gears around it turn. You serve only one purpose - the whims of your watchmaker.

And all the watchmaker cares about is what time it is.

The Aversion to Risk

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:49:00 +0000

Risk is one of those weird things that people tend to isolate on one end of the benefit/detriment scale. In my opinion, it's kind of like a lot of people's understanding of 21 CFR Part 11 and SOX requirements - unclear, paranoid-driven, and overzealous to provide complicated processes due to a fundamental lack of understanding.

Risk is defined as "uncertainty" in whatever you're looking at - projects, process, etc. But it's the uncertainty of something that could cause harm (via cost overrun, schedule delay, etc.) as well as the uncertainty that it could cause extreme benefit (cost savings, ahead-of-time implementation, etc.)

What if you could cheat with risk? What if you knew the worst possible outcome and mitigation possibilities of each decision, and as such, every risk was just suddenly a scale on the amount of positive it brought? It's true that - yeah - it's kind of like betting black when you see 5 red rolls on a roulette table in a row, but wouldn't that make life a lot easier?

The whole PMBOK project management philosophy is providing tools for planning, as opposed to reaction. The more you plan for risk - the more you embrace it, and the more you see that all plans are malleable and are subject to alteration, meaning that in the end, it's all about the positive.

Shining lights in dark places is scary, but it's a lot better than getting your head bitten off when you don't turn on the flashlight by something that was afraid of light to begin with.

Standardization

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:03:00 +0000

Chaos breeds growth, resistance, and advancement. Always improving and always being able to destroy that which you have built can be an extremely nourishing environment.

But, chaos can not exist without order - especially in the IT industry. Standardization is good, stability is even better - but only if it allows for chaos. A stable hardware platform with a stable operating system environment is one of the most coveted things any company can achieve. It's like one of those "congratulations on passing the white belt course in karate" gold trophies made out of fake plastic.

But, what's even better, is having such a robust imaging and deployment system in place that your users can do whatever the hell they want and understand that going back to the corporate standard is an incredibly easy and pain free process.

If you could jump out of a plane all day every day and never worry about hitting the ground, wouldn't you try to fly at least once?

Floating to the Top

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:30:00 +0000

It's interesting to think about what you say when you meet up with relatives, or you are trying to make a first impression on someone at work. There's always the inevitable "What have you been up to?" or "Tell me about yourself" kind of deal.

More often than not I tend to blurt out something that is somewhat of a new development in my life, or is something that I think is very important to me - even if I haven't necessarily put enough mental capital into it to actually rank it as a priority. Those little side-projects that you're completely psyched about, or even something you read that very same day that got you excited.

Why do these things tend to float to the top? Well, I think it's because they stimulate your natural motivation. They are things that you, at your core, find completely interesting and are willing to spend time on with the sole reward of satisfying your own curiosity. It's these kinds of things that drive people to excel and venture to places thought impossible.

Good managers pick up on things that motivate their employees and do everything in the world to cater to that. Even if it doesn't fit their immediate agenda.

Employee Feedback

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Gaal) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:16:00 +0000

It's always tough to tell someone they need to improve or that they're doing something wrong. But, it's tricky. How do you know that they're wrong and you're right? Is it arrogance that drives you or is there something that is generally being done wrong? As Vice President Daniels said at the end of Season 6 of 24, "You think you have all the right answers when you aren't sitting in this chair. You have all of the answers and none of the responsibility."

I think that's one of the traps in giving people feedback. You don't give someone feedback unless they've specifically asked for it, or something in your gut tells you that something needs to be said or done.

The "gut" factor, I suppose, is a mixture of your logical and emotional conscience - more or less. Most people out there in the workforce are smart. They wouldn't have the jobs they have if they weren't smart, honestly. The problem comes about when it is the norm to behave a certain way - or to respond to situations in a certain way. This is, again, defined as the company's culture. The problems come about when you introduce new people into the culture. They have a completely different viewpoint based on experience within a different culture, and that period where adjustment has to happen where one culture has to clash and integrate with another can be very turbuluent.

A company's culture is more powerful than doing the right thing. A culture of lax acceptance of standards, slow execution of processes, shift of blame, or even vulgarity in the workplace will overpower any law or right way of doing things. Among other reasons, this is why you can't introduce a quality / six sigma program into the workplace the day you arrive. To implement quality, you need to have a culture that believes in quality.

Anyhow - feedback is delicate. I believe that all feedback needs to be constructive and focused on the business. Feedback needs to never incriminate, point fingers, or name names. The positions, the entities, the dimensions and the processes need to be exposed. Weaknesses in these are what the business can change. You accomplish nothing if you insult your boss. The second he reads that you have just submarined your argument and eradicated any respect you may have gained.

But, why come to the point where you have to "formally" give feedback? Why is it such a process filled with trepidation? Well, honestly, I think it's because the person asking for the feedback has to establish a relationship with you - one of two-way communication that proves they are willing to do two-way conversation. You can not simply tell your employee your door is always open and they're always willing to talk.

Part of being a manager is playing the games out there, and giving things to your employees. Shoot the shit with them. Give them dirt. Talk a little harmless trash about something. Show them you're a little frustrated with your boss. Stick up for them in a meeting or take the blame for something they know you don't have to. They will open up to you in a heartbeat and you will have a very healthy relationship. Every boss that has done this with me I am happy to say has always been informed about my frustrations the second they happen. Once you reveal yourself to your employees and show them that you work for them as much as they work for you, you will have a much easier time managing them, and the business will benefit. Feedback won't be so scary.