What could be more helpful to a leader than having nearly 24/7 real-time access to an experienced coach who literally follows him or her around throughout the day? That’s what many organizations are providing in an effort to enhance leadership effectiveness and shorten time to productivity.  And it’s called ‘caboose coaching’. Understanding the Engine Here’s how it works.  A seasoned coach shadows a leader, following her through meetings, interactions, individual work and more. The beauty of the approach is that the coach is present at key points in the day, available to intervene, correct, and give in-the-moment direction to ensure the best possible results. The coach solves problems, makes decisions, and instructs the leader on the actions to initiate each step of the way. Additionally, because the coach has witnessed the leader’s full day, he’s in a position to engage in a detailed review of the 25-30 key ‘crossings’ or moments of truth during which the leader struggled or fell short.  These ‘crossing conversations’ close out each day and can last anywhere from 90 minutes to three or even four hours depending on the skill of the leader and coach. Finally, because the coach is privy to everything done by the leader, he can help cover the leader’s, organization’s, and even his own caboose by resolving and fixing issues not properly addressed during the day. April Fools! Caboose coaching doesn’t (or shouldn’t) exist!  In fact, it’s the worst and least helpful approach available to supporting leadership success.  Effective coaching is all about helping and facilitating insights, growth, and development.  It’s about asking versus telling. It’s about guiding versus intervening. Effective coaching allows people to make mistakes, struggle, even fail… and extract powerful lessons from the experiences. Talented coaches don’t need to follow others around because they’re skillful at helping those around them reflect on their activities, challenges, and accomplishments themselves.  And their conversations need not be lengthy… in fact, a few good questions can unlock tremendous insights and inspire focused action. Finally, effective coaching is never about doing for others, fixing their issues, or solving  problems for them. It’s about providing the support required so they can grow and learn to do for themselves in an ever-expanding way. So, let’s make sure that we stay on track…. letting leaders remain the conductors of their own work lives. No caboose coaching! What about you? What other foolish coaching should we make sure to avoid on April Fool’s Day and every day? The post The Latest Leadership Craze: Caboose Coaching appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

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Today’s managers and supervisors are under tremendous, and often competing, pressures.  They’re challenged to balance short-term results with long-term focus. They must keep costs down but drive ever-increasing levels of contribution and value. They must follow directives and think outside of the box. And they have to do it all at once. Analogies abound. A manager’s job is akin to spinning plates, juggling chainsaws, herding cats, or navigating the whitewater rapids of change. It’s also akin to a trending app in the Apple Store, Nerdy Workout. (Yes, I do have kids… and in the spirit of full-disclosure the developer of this app is Joe Rothenberg, a brilliant young man and my son’s former college roommate.) So Many Moving Parts This new game requires carefully-timed movements to avoid risks and achieve results. To me, it immediately resembles the life of a manager in a typical organization… and the many moving parts they orchestrate with precision and care each day. Multiple tasks must be executed in an ever-changing and frequently unpredictable landscape. Projects must move fast to leverage openings and opportunities… or slow down to sidestep problems. Resources shift (or are eliminated), requiring energy and effort to adjust. Done well, it comes off as a well-choreographed dance… or a well-played game of Nerdy Workout. Nerdy Workout players (primarily new GenY entrants to the workforce) also recognize the leadership analogies and lessons: "Dealing with the alternating responsibilities (arms) while avoiding the distractions (monsters) mimics my own professional experience."   - Paul "While it may be faster to deal with one thing at a time, in order to get the greatest results (score) you have to keep a balance of variables." - Diane "Sometimes it’s the simple solutions that yield the greatest results." - Brett "Don’t underestimate the ability for seemingly simple distractions to derail your plans. In this game - and in life - the best laid plans can be foiled by small monsters."  - Nick Winning the Game So, how does one win the game (of management or Nerdy Workout)?  It comes down to four key principles. Know the end game. Take pains to clarify and keep a keen focus on your goals.  Distractions will always present themselves. But you will be able to quickly put them into perspective and respond appropriately when you understand what you’re striving to achieve. Work the parts while keeping an eye on the whole. Being a manager can be dizzying for many reasons…not the least of which is that you must constantly attend to the micro and the macro. You must work the day-to-day details while also remaining focused on the big picture. Let either go and both are in jeopardy. Use the resources available to you. Wishing for more budget or lamenting the loss of a headcount adds little organizational value.  Instead, carefully consider the resources you do have at your disposal and deploy them strategically. Have some fun. Failure is not fatal. Learn from each round and use that knowledge to perform better next time. When you’re enjoying yourself, others will too… and the results will follow naturally! The post The New Game of Management appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Mike Arney commented on Sean Brennan's blog post Awareables: The Technology of Superhumanism

Esteban Herrera's blog post was featuredThe Incredible Shrinking Incumbent’s AdvantageJust five years ago, incumbent outsourcing service providers retained their contract at the point of renewal more than 80 percent of the time. A provider had to be a complete disaster before clients would consider tossing them out. Today, not even 50 percent of incumbent providers retain the business, according the most recent ISG Outsourcing Index. In other words, if you are on either side of an outsourcing relationship, there is an equal chance you won’t be in it when the term expires.Here’s what has happened:Pricing has declined. Today, you can get so much more for your IT dollar than you could five years ago! In a buyers’ market, incumbent providers that don’t proactively offer significant reductions, ideally well ahead of renewal time, and offer updated, state-of-the-art solutions will likely find themselves replaced.Costs of switching have dropped. Conventional wisdom used to be that it was too expensive to change providers. The pain of losing the institutional knowledge and suffering through the draconian wind-down terms weren’t worth the effort. No longer. Mature companies have figured out that while switching costs are material, they are definitely not prohibitive. Moreover, hungry challengers are happy to help absorb some of those costs in exchange for taking a new logo away from a competitor.Multi-sourcing has become the default strategy. Years ago, people like me advised to never split up IT infrastructure, for example, across providers. Sourcing maturity and the evolution of the solutions have caused a diametric shift; when possible, most large enterprises prefer a multi-provider solution for its best-of-breed capabilities and built-in competitive tension. Application services have always been better candidates for sourcing to multiple providers, with many companies having split their portfolio along logical lines for years. The exception to the trend seems to be BPO, which is increasingly industry-specific and increasingly sold as a platform, inclusive of the software, hardware, labor and network required to run the process. Providers who offer these platforms and do it well will be the sticky ones for the next decade.The devil you don’t know might be better. Unfortunately, many sourcing relationships are set up to be adversarial, and the wear and tear on both the buyer and provider teams can be irreparable. Many times, companies are just interested in a fresh start with a new team that they haven’t been arguing with for the past five to ten years.Incumbent arrogance. Often, clients want to stay with their existing provider, but the provider’s refusal to implement new solutions and come to the table with better approaches than those used in the past ultimately costs them the business. Or worse, the incumbent provider fails to notice the undeniable data regarding the loss of their advantage and fails to provide a spirited defense of business that was theirs to lose.The big winners here have been enterprise buyers who have more options available to them than ever before. The big losers have been the western-based IT services providers, which have seen their market share erode more than 20 percent over the past four years.If you are a buyer, you owe it to yourself to understand the current market and the opportunities it affords you. If you are a service provider, you must first make sure your head is fully out of the sand and then go to work every day as if you were competing for the business all over again. Find improvements to the solution and make it stickier all along the way, not just at the end of the term.Many fields offer nearly insurmountable advantages to incumbents; outsourcing is no longer one of them.Esteban Herrera is a Partner with ISG.See More

Leadership is life. As a result, we can find lessons all around us that inform our ability to inspire, motivate, guide and deliver results through others. In the past, I’ve shared the connections I experience between leadership and my favorite avocation, paddle boarding.  Sandra Mills shares her connections between leading and running in today’s guest post. Effective leadership is important for successful team performance in business, education and sports. Personally and professionally, the ability to take control of the reins and set an inspiring example can benefit both the leader and those being led. Individuals who are seasoned runners probably already understand the parallels between running and leadership; if not, here are 10 powerful ways that running can help to make someone a better leader: 1. Focus. The top runners always know where they are going and are focused on reaching their goal. The same is true for all great leaders. If you’re not sure where you’re headed, how can those you are leading know where to go? A strong focus and the ability to stay the course are keys to success in both running and leadership. 2. Passion. The best runners have a true passion for the sport, and it’s this passion that allows them to persevere and break through comfort zones to new levels of success. The most inspiring leaders are the same way; a passion for and belief in the goal at hand is one of the most contagious and inspiring things a leader can bring to the table. 3. Confidence. This one is pretty straightforward: If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. Confidence in yourself and your abilities is key to being both a great runner and a successful leader. 4. Decisiveness. Whether it’s a speed goal, a distance goal or the decision to alter your course due to a change in terrain or weather conditions, running sometimes calls for the need to take make a quick choice. Effective leaders are adept at assessing a scenario thoroughly and then taking action in an efficient manner. 5. Clarity of Purpose. Clarity goes hand in hand with decisiveness and confidence. Just as runners should know their strengths, true leaders know where they excel and how to "stay in their lane." Clarity helps a leader know when to say yes and when to say no. 6. A fearless nature. The best runners aren’t afraid to push themselves once in awhile, and the greatest leaders are the same way. They know that taking a big risk can often pay off in a big way. 7. Determination. Running can require speed and endurance, but most of all, it requires determination. Even when it’s tempting to stop or give up, the best runners can draw from an inner well of determination. The same is true of great leaders, who then inspire their people to do the same. 8. Integrity. Whether it’s being honest during a race with team members or with themselves, the top runners have a deep integrity about the sport and hold themselves accountable. Likewise, leaders who have integrity generate loyalty and respect among those they are leading. 9. Humility. While confidence is important, a dose of humility should be present to balance it out. Runners know that when confidence becomes inflated to the point of hubris, mistakes and injuries can happen. Both great runners and great leaders temper their self-assuredness with the ability to be humble when the situation warrants. 10. Self-aware. The famous Greek phrase "know thyself" remains one of the most elemental but powerful pieces of advice ever packed into two words. Runners who are clear about their strengths and weaknesses are far more likely to thrive in the long run. Being self-aware allows you to play to your strengths while finding ways to build up or compensate for weaknesses. Great leaders are adept at doing this for both themselves and the team members they are leading. Sophisticated leaders know that not everyone thinks and acts like them; they support this diversity and use it for the benefit of the team. It should also be noted that both running and leadership styles can vary. For example, while the Millennial generation (or "Gen Y") has been called the "me, me, me generation" (selfish and unmotivated) those who actually spend time with them may find many of them to be quite motivated and determined - leaders in their own right. Ultimately, the true litmus test is in the results, and there are many paths up the mountain that will get you there. Author Bio: Sandra Mills is a freelance health and career writer. She often writes about how people can stay fit and advance their careers. Image: freedigitalphotos.net The post 10 Ways Running Can Make You a Better Leader appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Kevin Petrie's blog post was featuredNavigating the Ocean of Computerized ThingsWe’ve all seen enough science fiction, and new gadgets coming to market, to envision the approaching world of smart homes, cars and appliances that can automate our personal lives.In reality, the Internet of Things (IoT) holds perhaps the greatest potential for corporations.The concept is not new - telemetry, for example, arose in the 19th century. But widespread broadband and new narrowband options, increasingly small and cheap sensors, and new machine-to-machine connectivity are creating powerful possibilities for organizations to fine-tune or even revamp their business.The IoT is an opportunity, but it’s also a mandate. Manufacturers, retailers and other companies whose core business involves producing or handling physical objects must adopt IoT to compete effectively over the next 5-10 years. According to Baseline Magazine, about two thirds of corporate IoT adopters seek to reduce cost, 22% to manage risk and 13% to innovate or grow.The IoT will force substantial changes to how IT works today. Reasons for this include the following:Data containers (i.e., software-based digital files) are proliferating, in part because RFID tags and other sensors have so few bytes. The EMC/IDC Report on the Digital Universe noted in April 2014 that "the number of "containers" is growing faster than the number of petabytes, from 28 quadrillion in 2010 to 4,200 in 2020." Consolidating the data within them will require new skills and technologies.The time value of data will be even higher, prompting the need for faster, even real-time analytics. IoT is based on sensors that capture moments in time: consider factory pressure gauges, traffic patterns or point of sale transactions by an identity thief. The real-time imperative means that organizations must quicken and ideally automate their data loading and analytical processes.The Internet of Things extends beyond the cloud or Data Center. Data collection, analysis and the resulting actions will require close teamwork with field technicians or other stakeholders that might not have engaged IT professionals in the past.So how should IT practitioners and management approach IoT? While this trend cuts across verticals and geographies, here are three standard best practices to follow.Base your IoT strategy on corporate strategy and not vice versa. This mantra, used in many other technology discussions, bears repeating. The temptation for departmental science experiments can run high given the hyperbole surrounding IoT. But as with Big Data and opportunities to innovate, business objectives and strategy should dictate the plan for IT. If a business unit is going to test an IoT theory, they should do so with a decision tree and funding that executives have blessed.Invite your line workers to brainstorm. More than ever you’ll need the insights of staffers that have a variety of technical insights about how your company can play sensor-based data to competitive advantage. Mechanical engineers that run oil rigs and other heavy equipment might not be typical partners of IT, but still have the best ideas about how to combine data to improve operations.Use the most flexible repository possible, and invest in mobility. New IoT data sources and formats are harder to handle. Companies will need more flexible repositories to be able to extract intelligence from all the pieces. Hadoop Data Lakes can be a good starting point because Hadoop can receive data in its raw format. But Hadoop has some limitations, as Michael Hausenblas with MapR points out in a recent article in DataInformed, and some analytics exercises will require distinct repositories. Work closely with your IT organization to align your target data, their formats and your analytical goals. And shop for software solutions that can automatically move data across a wide range of platforms.Established tech vendors are investing heavily to help enterprises navigate the complexity of the IoT. SAP announced new HANA Big Data Intelligence capabilities for enabling organizations to rapidly ingest and analyze data from a variety of sources, using the HANA platform with its Event Stream Processor, SAP IQ software and Apache Hadoop. While HANA’s in-memory processing is a natural fit for in-line analytics, SAP clearly understands the need to embrace new IoT data sources and platforms.As you invest in IoT, focus on corporate strategy, enlist your broader workforce, and stay flexible with your infrastructure.Kevin Petrie is the senior director of marketing at Attunity.See More

Last year, the Aberdeen Group conducted a research study exploring the business impact of building learning capability. Using three key performance criteria to distinguish best-in-class companies, it was found that: 83% of employees in these companies received performance ratings of ‘exceeds performance expectations’; 13% experienced year-over-year improvement to revenue per full-time equivalent; and 78% of key roles have one or more ready-and-willing successors. It’s that last statistic that caught my attention. Best-in-class organizations enjoy a steady stream of talent, being grown and developed in the wings. With this kind of robust pipeline, transitions occur with ease, the negative effect of unexpected occurrences and surprises are mitigated, engagement grows, and high levels of performance can be sustained. Given the powerful and positive impact of cultivating successors, perhaps it’s time to begin evaluating leadership effectiveness based upon this important job requirement. Rather than subjectively assessing a variety of competencies and other factors, why not look objectively at the most crucial output for which leaders are responsible: the quality of their followers? Well-intended forms and leadership evaluation processes could be replaced by an assessment of follower readiness to assume his/her next role.  A full succession pipeline could lead to ‘exceeds expectations’ ratings and increases.  All of this would telegraph the value the organization places upon development… and encourage other leaders to prioritize employee growth. So, how well-populated is your pipeline? How many of your employees are ready-and-willing successors? How committed are you to their development?  A few small steps on a leader’s part can drive disproportionate results.  For instance, consider: Making sure you are clear about each employee’s snapshot of career success and how that fits into your organization’s structure and future needs. Engaging in ongoing dialogue through quick, on-the-spot conversations that keep development front of mind. Ensuring that each employee has a least one development plan or activity in process at all times. In today’s environment, if people aren’t growing, they’ll quickly find themselves falling behind. What would your performance rating be if it was based largely upon having one or more ready-and-willing successors? Elevating your personal rating reverberates through others and the organization as a whole. So maybe it’s time to prioritize our pipelines. What about you? What are you doing to ensure a steady stream ready talent? The post How Well-Populated is Your Pipeline? appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Shawn Dickerson's blog post was featuredHow to Go From Project Manager to Project LeaderProject managers play a vital role in every organization. But, despite their importance, they’ve traditionally been commoditized and compartmentalized, perceived as merely traffic cops focused exclusively on keeping their specific projects and teams running smoothly.As businesses become more integrated across departments, project managers are being asked to develop a broader view, to understand how their projects impact other departments and the entire business, and to operate with a more holistic approach. This mandate requires a more advanced skill set, updated tools, and a strategic perspective that is new territory for many project managers.While challenging for some, this evolution actually presents a unique opportunity for project managers to develop both the tactical and leadership skills they need to transform into project leaders. In return, this opens the door for project leaders to increase their value to the organization and expand their career opportunities for advancement beyond "traffic cop" status. What separates an ordinary project manager from an extraordinary project leader? These four key differentiators provide a crucial starting point.1. Visibility across the enterprise. Gaining broader visibility throughout the enterprise—across every department, into future projects coming down the pike and the overall strategic goals of the company—can give project managers an incredible advantage in managing their own projects, as well as providing strategic support where it’s needed in other areas. Of course, this holistic viewpoint and involvement requires management support and buy-in. However, the forward-thinking project leader might just find himself leading the charge to get tools and systems in place that give teams, managers, and executives better visibility into what’s being done.In addition to adding strategic value, this visibility also provides tactical advantages, like enabling extraordinary leaders to prioritize effectively, maximize resource utilization, and avoid overwhelming the team. Projects flow more smoothly and on-schedule, winning the admiration of management and team-members."As the manager of the PMO, I'm supposed to know every issue on all 90 projects and what we're doing about them," says Tiffany Schepens, Manager of PMO at Tampa General Hospital. "Gaining visibility of everything across the department means if I don’t know about the issue, I can look it up, and right there I've got the issue. I know what it is. I know what the status is and who's working on it."The ability to see what each team has on their plate and understand the trade-offs of working on one project versus another has enabled Schepens and her team to reduce the time spent in staff meetings by 66 percent and increase their project success rate by 11 percent in just three months.2. Strategic resource management. Having adequate resources at your disposal is critical for both project and company success. While certainly resources may be limited by budget and personnel availability, extraordinary project leaders have the ability to achieve optimum utilization of the resources they do have to work with. Amid stiff competition for resources and the need to do more with less in a lean operational atmosphere, project leaders must be careful and calculated in allocating assignments, staff skills, and time.With the superior visibility gained in mastering the first skill (above), project leaders can anticipate needs, make realistic assignments and prioritize tasks appropriately. Tracking work status in real time can also help the leader—and the entire team and organization—to stay on top of progress and identify and rectify obstacles to reduce unexpected deficits and last-minute surprises."We have eight project managers in the field. Now, we can actually see their project workloads, and when they get too many projects, we make that one sit out," says Ed Budda, senior manager of Implementation Services at Draeger Medical. "They’ll raise the flag and say, ‘I just have too many on my plate. Can this one be reassigned?’ And we’ll look for the project managers who have a little less."By managing resources more efficiently and not overwhelming the team, Draeger’s Professional Services group has increased their on-time delivery ratings by 125 percent.3. Team-wide alignment to strategic business goals. Creating a team-wide laser-sharp focus on a clear business strategy is vital to ensuring everyone works together toward the same goal. By getting everyone on the same page, deadlines and objectives can be met much faster and with less friction.Exceptional project leaders start by working with stakeholders to identify the overall business goals that relate to each project or work request. Projects that don’t map to strategic goals are pushed to the back burner, tabled until time and resources allow. The next step is to communicate with team members about how individual project objectives align to the overall company goal. This gives the strategically aligned team the ability to focus on tasks that deliver maximum benefit for the organization, while justifying the need to set certain projects aside for now. When everyone agrees on the strategic alignment from the start, projects run smoother and deliver better results, with less stress, chaos, and catch-up.University Hospitals has taken alignment mapping to a whole new level, by creating a scoring system for each project. "It allows us to take a step back and compare a business project to a clinical project to an infrastructure project, which all could be requiring the same resources. It lets us rank projects as we go into governance discussions," says Andy Kinnear, Director of PMO.Ensuring strategic alignment can dramatically increase the amount of time spent on strategic projects by as much as 150 percent, eliminating time wasted on busy work and doubling or even quadrupling project capacity for some companies, allowing them to do more work with the same amount of staff and resources.4. Efficient collaboration and seamless communication. We’ve all heard stories about the mailroom clerk who came up with the brilliant idea to solve a big company challenge. But, this isn’t just a novel ideal—collaborating with and seeking input from fellow team members and leaders across the organization is critical to achieving both project and company-wide success. With visibility, resource management, and strategic alignment in place, project leaders can understand how and where projects, priorities, resources and expertise connect across the organization.This provides new opportunities to bring cross-team or cross-departmental resources to bear in new and innovative ways to solve challenges and devise novel solutions. But, to support this type of broad-scale collaboration, seamless, integrated communication is a must. Everyone must be on the same channel, using the same system to share resources, ask for input or assistance and discuss obstacles and strategies to overcome them.Too often, organizations use multiple tools and channels, like email, phone, voicemail, instant messaging, social networks, etc. to communicate, making it difficult to keep up, which allows critical details and tasks to slip through the cracks. By centralizing and streamlining all communication onto one system, the entire organization can keep up and move forward.At Trek Bicycle Corporation, streamlining communication and collaboration onto a single system has dramatically improved time management and productivity. "Each week, 40 percent of my time was spent chasing down how projects were going, what information does a manager need, contacting other teams globally on how things are going, and phone calls at night, sending a lot of emails," said Kris Lamp, director of program management at Trek. "Now I can go into a project, open it up, see the notes in there, and send it off to my manager, saying, 'Here it is.' Or he could even do it."As a result, team members recovered 30 percent of the time previously lost to maintaining spreadsheets, and on-time product delivery increased by 80 percent, adding millions in new revenue.Developing outstanding leadership skills and proficiency in advanced work management techniques and tools can empower project managers to enhance their strategic value to the organization and prevent being perceived as ordinary, commoditized traffic cops. Demonstrating leadership, strategic foresight, exceptional resource allocation, and collaboration skills improves job effectiveness at the tactical level and enhances career growth and advancement opportunities. By transforming from a project manager, project leaders can become role models and valued team members within the organization for their ability to boost morale, productivity and profitability.Shawn Dickerson is GTM ​​Director at ​Workfront.See More

Leon Fayer's blog post was featuredMaking the Right Technology Decisions in the Changing High-Tech Landscape"Thou shalt not worship shininess." --10 Commandments of Scale, Theo Scholssnagle, Surge 2010With increased availability of new technological choices, people tend to make the mistake of jumping on "hot" technology without a compelling business reason. Reading industry blogs and aggregators, engineers and managers alike hear about "the next best thing" and jump on whatever that is without considering the consequences (or need), justifying the move with a lot of fluff. For example, one of the largest media companies in the world made a decision to replace all existing web platforms, serving hundreds of millions of people, with Django.  The decision was made a week after the release of version 1.0, without a single engineer familiar with Django or Python. In addition the company had just invested a significant amount into its current architecture that worked like a well-oiled machine. What was the "official" reason? The success behind the launch of The Washington Post's new, also Django based, platform. What wasn’t thoroughly examined at the time is that this was the only production success at scale at the time and the Washington Post hired one of the creators of Django for that initiative, to ensure it succeeded. One success story was enough to pitch and get approval from, management. There is a saying: If a man jumps off a 10 story building and survives without a scratch, what do you call it? An accident. What if he dusts off, climbs back up and jumps again with the same result? A coincidence. But what if he does it for the third time? A habit. My point is, make your decisions based on repeatable success, not on an edge case. Another similar saying that comes to mind in a midst of technology choice conversation is "If everyone jumped off the bridge, would you just follow?" I had a conversation with the founder of a relatively successful startup, who was looking to add profile management to his suite of online applications. We went pretty deep into an architecture design discussion, talking about the best way to leverage Single Sign On (SSO) and tie the profile into a multitude of offered services. Eventually the conversation turned to the technology stack of choice. He told me that node.js was a strong candidate (for all the right reasons), but to my surprise, he also thought MongoDB was a right fit.Given his application suite was already using a RDBMS, and the nature of data to be stored was highly relational, why would anyone introduce a new, non-relational storage component to the list of existing tools in this situation? His answer: "I heard that node.js works well with MongoDB." Now, to be fair, it is a better response than "I've read on that blog from that guy who said that MongoDB is webscale," but not far from it. I am not denigrating MongoDB, in fact at my company we run some of the largest MongoDB clusters in the world; but some of our high volume node.js deployments, supporting 100,000 requests/sec, were backed by Riak and PostgreSQL. Why? Because those technologies provided a better solution for this specific challenge. My next point: Always select each of the architecture components to fit the role they are going to play, not just go with the newest or shiniest solution or the one that people claim is the best.Another part of that point is that people often make their technology choices based upon marketing materials that usually have very little to do with the reality. There are the infamous MongoDB performance benchmarks, supporting the company’s claim that it is the fastest database. These benchmarks were performed without actually writing the data. Think about it. The database doesn’t guarantee data storage. Once you turn on guaranteed writes, performance plummets. Yet, people make assumptions solely based on those product marketing numbers, negatively impacting whole organizations — from IT to finance. Here is another example,  a company, with an architecture of a couple of hundred servers, needed file system encryption for all the application and data storage nodes to comply with security regulations. They selected a "promising" product, installed it, configured it based upon the product company’s recommendations, and noticed about 25% performance drop impacting core business flows. Not surprisingly, the company found this unacceptable. In conversations, the company executives mentioned that they expected 4% performance decline, which I found to be a strangely precise number. As it turned out, the company never had file system encryption running on any instances of the application, not even development (not that it would be sufficient or comparable), and the performance benchmark expectations came straight from the marketing pamphlet that the product company provided. This harsh realization came after the company invested money in this product, made promises to their own investors and set a budget for hardware — all based on a theoretical number in a brochure. Pro tip: As a general rule, the only performance numbers that matter are the production performance numbers. "It worked fast on my laptop" is not a valid argument for. . .well, anything. Benchmark numbers written in a marketing brochure, or on a bathroom wall for that matter, are also not acceptable. A very positive takeaway in the industry is that large enterprises are adopting emerging technologies and contributing back much faster than in the past, which brings validity to the technology itself and promises good things to follow. But there are those who give all the wrong reasons for technology selection and adoption, which cheapens the achievements, as impressive as they may be, and devalues the technology choice itself. You really cannot take seriously any testimonial on the awesomeness of a decision to switch to newer programming language if it is based on the fact that "now, it takes much less than 18 months to change background color for all the web properties." Similarly, if you claim that your application is faster in on the new platform without CDN than it was in its previous incarnation with CDN, people cannot take you seriously. In case it's not obvious: the problem is not with a poor technology selection to begin with, the problem is with the decision-making process and poor architectural decisions. You can't blame technology for your poor decisions. Similarly, you can't praise a technology because you didn’t repeat the same mistakes the second time around. All it means is that you've learned something from your own mistakes. Or hired smarter people. The "shininess factor" and pseudo math both do damage, and in the tech industry, you need to keep up with everything. But, with the number of different technologies that hit the market every month (if not daily), each backed by media hype and promoted by investors, it is easy to fall into a trap of buying into a promise of a product instead of the product itself. My last word of advice: Don't base your decision on success stories but rather on the stories of failures. Those are told by people who had to deal with similar choices, experienced the pains firsthand, had to overcome them, and can provide the only factoid that matters—production experience and performance. So do your research, challenge assumptions, and remember the wise words of Bruce Lee: mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.Leon Fayer is Vice President at OmniTI.See More

A prospective client asked to talk with me recently. (To protect her identity, we’ll call her Lara.)  Lara’s executives wanted to clarify and begin driving a leadership brand throughout the organization. What unfolded during our conversation was a plan whereby their values, credo, code of conduct, and core competencies would converge into a leadership profile that would drive all recruiting, selection, training, and succession strategies. Their objective: to establish a consistent expression of leadership that would be recognizable worldwide. I had a strong reaction to the request. I think I was offended. Or maybe I was just experiencing sympathetic claustrophobia on behalf of the leaders in the organization… the ones I started to envision in my imagination as ‘Stepford’ leaders or futuristic little leader-bots.  As Lara spoke, every fiber of my being wanted to scream: What about authenticity? What about diversity? What about a situational approach to leadership? After the meeting, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the idea of an organizationally-imposed leadership brand. Is it appropriate to overlay this sort of expectation on leaders? And, equally importantly, is it even smart? I’ve arrived at an emphatic ‘no’ to both questions and have come to the conclusion that this sort of myopic leadership branding is a significant threat to organizations. Ours is a connected society. Most leaders find themselves working nights and weekends because access is so easy. The lines between work and the other parts of one’s life are increasingly blurred. The old ‘leave your personal life at the door’ mentality is laughable…. for many remote workers, there is no door. As a result, authenticity has taken its rightful place on the leadership stage. Because leaders take the home person to work and the work person home, the only way to remain sane is to remain authentic. Myopic leadership branding threatens this authenticity. It also threatens diversity. We enjoy the most diverse workforce in history. Most organizations dedicate tremendous resources to cultivating, promoting, and leveraging that diversity. And it’s not just slogans. They know that it drives innovation, improvement, excellence, and results. But organizations can’t have it both ways. They can’t value diversity on one hand and snuff it out on the other by asking all leaders to wear the same leadership cloak. Instead of top-down leadership branding - where the profile is dictated and uniformly adopted - what about a bottom-up approach? What if organizations hired the best leaders possible… provided the systems, development, and other support required so they could bring their best to the job? What if organizations cultivated authenticity and different thoughts and approaches? The net effect would be a vibrant, energized, and powerful band rather than brand of leaders. (And doesn’t that sound better than a bunch of leader-bots?) This post originally appeared at Lead Change Group in November 2012. The post Brand Boring appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Tal Klein's blog post was featuredCloud Encryption TruthinessLast month, Box announced a new product called "Enterprise Key Management (EKM)," the service puts encryption keys inside a customer’s own data center and in a special security module stored in an Amazon data center. The Box service still must access customer’s data in order to enable sharing and collaboration, but with EKM, customers can ensure that only happens when they want it to.After nearly a decade of existence, Box has built a huge user base—claiming over 180,000 businesses by offering cloud storage and collaboration tools alongside with security and regulatory compliance controls. Box protects the confidentiality and integrity of customer files in transit and at rest with layered Encryption: In transfer with high-grade TLS and multi-layered encryption at rest with 256-bit AES.There is, of course, significant value to encryption as a component of a SaaS platform. For example, Box CEO Aaron Levie stated in a 2003 interview, "Our differentiation as a company is to take security and combine it with a very simple user experience around working with information."Beyond such vendor provided private key encryption, the focus in SaaS should be attestation, not encryption - What’s needed is a clear and actionable audit trail of all user activities in SaaS applications with direct correlation to which data (structured and unstructured) has been respectively interacted with.While the Box platform may be robust to most criminal hackers, Box users are not, which is why an attacker focused on extracting data from a Box account would likely focus on the customer rather than the platform. Indeed, according to the 2014 Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report, credentials are the number one attack methodology.As the recent Anthem breach should remind us, if the attack vector is the user and the user is compromised, then from the vantage point of the encryption control, the attacker and the user are the same entity - failing the charter of the control. Enterprise managed encryption doesn’t solve this problem because encryption is a preventative, not mitigative control. That is, when someone encrypts data, the intent is to limit access to the data to those with a key, not to prevent a malicious third party from compromising one of the parties with legitimate access to that data.In short: Encryption, whether provided by Box or a third party, is not a control designed to know if a user’s credentials have been compromised - it’s a control designed to restrict access to data. There are mechanisms, like user behavior analytics that may be able to tell the difference between the attacker with the user’s credentials and the actual user through heuristic analysis, but from the vantage point of the encryption control, the aforementioned attacker and user would be the same entity as long as their credentials matched.So what does that mean in terms of compliance requirements to protect data for public companies?When it comes to protecting data in the cloud, encryption is handy for building checklists, but not much more. The theory favored by auditors is that only authorized personnel and programs see decrypted information, while all others have no access to the data. Encrypting the data ostensibly creates a "clear" attestation trail, because if only users who are allowed to access the data can access the data, then it’s easy to attest for when data was touched and by whom. But if the attack vector is the user and the user is compromised, then in the context of encryption-based attestation, such a breach would not be marked as a deficiency, thus failing the regulatory requirement, and landing the impacted company in hot water.Compliance regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA are designed to provide assurance and attestation, and encryption in that context provides neither.For example, here’s the meat of what HIPAA says about Protected Health Information (PHI):The covered entity must decide whether a given addressable implementation specification is a reasonable and appropriate security measure to apply within its particular security framework. For example, a covered entity must implement an addressable implementation specification if it is reasonable and appropriate to do so and must implement an equivalent alternative if the addressable implementation specification is unreasonable and inappropriate and there is a reasonable and appropriate alternative. This decision will depend on a variety of factors, such as, among others, the entity’s risk analysis, risk mitigation strategy, what security measures are already in place and the cost of implementation. The decisions that a covered entity makes regarding addressable specifications must be documented in writing. The written documentation should include the factors considered, as well as the results of the risk assessment on which the decision was based.Specific internal security controls need to be identified for protecting this data and, most importantly, auditing must take place to attest for the efficacy of the controls. But in the context of cloud adoption, especially SaaS, choose a cloud vendor, like Box, that builds encryption controls into their platform. But keep in mind that the most important regulatory output is attestation (not synonymous with encryption).Enterprise security postures must be regularly re-assessed. The security value of encrypting data at rest in the cloud is nominal when a user with sufficient access privileges has been compromised, which is increasingly the preferred attack vector. Modern compliance best practices should shift resources away from prevention and towards attestation. Thus it’s an important consideration that in many cases encrypting data in SaaS platforms, whether through private or vendor-held key will likely not yield significant security benefits.Tal Klein is vice president of strategy and marketing at Adallom.See More

While most organizations expect great work, we don’t necessarily take the time to identify what actually contributes to it. In his book, Great Work, David Sturt has done that for us. Drawing on the research of O.C. Tanner and a Forbes Insight Study of over 1,000 individuals, five key skills or behaviors have emerged: Ask the right questions. See for yourself. Talk to your outer circle. Improve the mix. Deliver the difference. While driving great work, these behaviors also create a framework for great career development. Ask the right questions. Career development is not about paths, promotions or moves…it’s all about conversation.  And the currency of great career conversations is questions. Whether coming from the manager or the employee, thoughtful questions sustain an ongoing development dialogue. Managers might consider questions like: What have you always been naturally good at? What makes life worth living? What do you wish you had more time to do? What kind of work do you typically gravitate toward/away from? And employees can keep the conversation going as well with question like: Which of my skills are most valuable? What can you always count on me for? What behaviors have you observed that might get in my way? Under what circumstances do I make the best contributions? See for yourself. Career development, just like great work, requires a reality-based look at today’s world of work.  Understanding the needs of the business as well as the needs of the customer are not passive activities. They require active exploration and interaction with the environment. Ride alongs. Customer observations. Competitive shopping experiences. These provide ways for you - whether you’re a manager or an employee - to see for yourself the changing complexion of the workplace and to recognize the broad range of career opportunities that exist. Talk to your outer circle. Investing in a broader network drives performance and career development. It only makes sense. Expanding one’s contacts and purview opens new possibilities for employees looking to learn and grow. It also helps managers who want to support their employees in doing so. The defined boundaries of silo-based organizations limit possibilities. But managers who are able to reach beyond departments and functional borders are in a great position to source and create developmental opportunities and experiences. Stretch assignments in a different department. Cooperative job rotations. Informative meetings and client presentations. Possibilities multiply exponentially when managers and employees alike are able to tap a more expansive resource pool. Improve the mix.  When it comes to career development, the ‘mix’ refers to the countless ways to learn and grow. Too frequently people (managers and employees) think of career development as a promotion or a lateral move. But move-based thinking is inherently limiting.  New roles won’t necessarily be available when someone is ready to develop. You can improve the mix dramatically by considering in-job development. What activities or experiences can occur within the context of someone’s existing role?  This is an area that can be mined to spark great work and great development. Deliver the difference. In terms of great work, this skill refers to staying with something through its execution, implementation excellence, and persevering in service of results.  Career development requires the same focus. It’s easy to let the busy-ness of work, crunch periods, and short-term objectives obscure one’s longer-range goals. As a result, it’s important to develop a rigorous but flexible plan that ensures that career development gets the attention it deserves. Make a plan‘[1]’ that is: Documented - Putting it in writing signals that this is significant and that the manager and employee are taking it seriously. It acts as a reminder and helps to drive follow-up. Write it on paper or online -  rather than in concrete.  That way you can treat it as the living, breathing, and changeable tool that it is. Employee-Owned - Without buy-in, you might as well opt-out. Employees must take responsibility for their plans to generate the commitment and energy required to implement. Ownership skyrockets when the plan is personalized to the individual, focused and specific, and doable in light of other activities. Aligned with the employee’s goals. Linking the plan to short-term and long-term goals tests that the activities are worth the effort they will take. When the going gets tough, this overt linkage can sustain focus and energy forward and toward one’s bigger career objectives. Linked to the needs of the organization. Let’s get real here. We all know that resources are in short supply and support can be fickle. Both can be pulled at any time. Don’t jeopardize your development efforts. If what someone is doing to learn and develop directly contributes to the bigger picture, everyone is on safe and solid ground. In a time-starved, pressure-filled business environment, it’s helpful to understand that great work and great career development are driven by the same key behaviors. Cultivate skills in one context and you’ll see results in the other… which makes for the ultimate workplace win-win! [1] Excerpted from Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want by Julie Winkle Giulioni and Beverly Kaye and published by Berrett-Koehler. The post Great Work = Great Career Development appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Stefan Bernbo's blog post was featuredVirtualization and Moving to the Next Generation of Storage ArchitectureLegendary Intel co-founder Gordon Moore’s eponymous law holds that the number of transistors per square inch of chip will double every two years, a prediction that has held remarkably firm as incredibly tiny devices have been made increasingly powerful. In recent years, that assertion could be used to apply to the creation of data as well. An IDC study in 2011 showed that the amount of data created by every device and person in the world would be doubled every two years, with a staggering 1.8 zettabytes (1 billion terabytes) created in 2011 alone.A significant driver for this trend in the enterprise sector is the explosion of virtual machines. In virtualization, a software program is used to simulate the functions of physical hardware, offering new levels of flexibility and hardware cost savings as more and more hardware functionality is virtualized. Yet, as might be inferred, the rapid popularity of virtualization is allowing organizations to run substantially more applications at a given time, requiring near unheard-of levels of storage and renewing a focus on elegant management, flexibility and efficiency.To paraphrase the red queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the entire storage ecosystem must therefore adapt to a virtualized world as fast as it can just to stay competitive.The Rise of VirtualizationVirtualization has become a significant trend for a number of reasons, chief among them cost savings and flexibility. One main benefit of virtualization is its ability to make more efficient use of the data center’s hardware. Typically, the physical servers in a data center are idling most of the time. By installing virtual servers inside the hardware, the organization can optimize the use of its CPU and make more use of the hardware, a solution that makes ideal use of virtualization’s benefits. That drives a company to virtualize more and more of their physical server that is one aspect, to save money.The other main benefit of virtualization is its ability to allow for more flexibility. It is more convenient to have infrastructure as virtual machines rather than physical machines. For example, if the organization wants to change hardware, the data center administrator can easily migrate the virtual server to the newer, more powerful hardware, getting even better performance for a smaller expenditure. Before the use of virtual servers was an option, administrators would need to install the new server and then reinstall and migrate all the data stored on the old server. That is much trickier. It is much easier to migrate a virtual machine than it is to migrate a physical one.Not just any data center is interested in virtualization. Data centers with a significant number of servers - somewhere in the range of 20-50 or above - are seriously beginning to consider turning these servers into virtual machines. First, these organizations can reap substantial levels of the cost savings and flexibility benefits described above. In addition, virtualizing one’s servers makes them far easier to manage. The sheer physical challenge of administrating a certain number of physical servers can become challenging for data center staff. Virtualization makes data center management easier by allowing administrators to run the same total number of servers on fewer physical machines.New Storage DemandsYet for all the clear benefits of virtualization, the trend towards greater adoption of virtual servers is placing stress on traditional data center infrastructure and storage devices.In a sense, the problem is a direct result of the popularity of VMs in the first place. The very first virtual machines made use of the local storage found within the physical server. That made it impossible for administrators to migrate a virtual machine in one physical server to another physical server with a more powerful CPU. Introducing shared storage - either a NAS or a SAN - to the VM hosts solved this problem, and its success paved the way for stacking on more and more virtual machines, which all became located in shared storage. Eventually the situation matured to today’s server virtualization scenario, where all physical servers and VMs are connected to the same storage.The problem? Data congestion.A single point of entry becomes a single point of failure very quickly, and with all data flow forced through a single gateway, data gets bogged down swiftly during periods of high demand. With the number of VMs and quantity of data only projected to grow to ever-dizzier levels, it is clear that this approach to storage architecture must be improved. The architecture must keep running to keep up with the pace of data growth.Early adopters of virtualized servers - such as major service providers or telcos - have already encountered this issue and are taking steps to reduce its impact. As other organizations start to make their data center virtualized, they will run into this issue as well. It is a growing problem.Yet there is hope. Organizations seeking to maximize the benefits of virtualization while avoiding the data congestion issues caused by traditional scale-out environments are able to ensure that their storage architectures are keeping pace with their rate of VM usage; specifically, by removing the single point of entry. NAS or SAN storage solutions today inevitably have just a single gateway that controls the flow of data, leading to congestion when demand spikes. Instead, organizations should seek solutions that have multiple data entry points and distribute load evenly among all servers. That way the system retains optimal performance and reduces lagtime, even with being accessed by several users at once.While this approach represents the most straightforward fix, the next generation of storage architecture is suggesting another alternative as well.Merging Computing and StorageArising to meet the storage challenge of scale-out virtual environments, the practice of actually running VMs inside the storage node themselves (or running the storage inside the VM hosts) - thereby turning it into a compute node - is fast becoming next generation in storage architectures.Essentially, in this approach, the entire architecture is flattened out. For example, if the organization is using shared storage in a SAN, typically the VM hosts from the top of the storage layer, essentially turning it into one huge storage system with a single entry point. To solve the data congestion problems this approach creates, some organizations are moving away from the traditional two-layer architecture that has both the virtual machines and the storage running out of the same layer.The trend towards greater virtualization of infrastructure is not slowing down anytime soon. Indeed, more and more companies will adopt virtualization, and will run into the performance lag issues described above. Yet by taking a cue from the early adopters who have created the best practices above, organizations can develop a successful scale-out virtual environment that maximizes performance while keeping infrastructure costs low.Stefan Bernbo is the founder and CEO of Compuverde.See More

As mid-year approaches, it’s the ideal time to step back and reflect on some of the most profound Human Resources trends, patterns, and challenges… and, more importantly, identify what organizations could/should do to respond to them. Some of the best thinkers in the field share their observations and recommendations that HR - and all leaders in all functions - may want to seriously consider as they build plans to bring home strong results this year and beyond. You’ll be informed by authors, practitioners, and experts who are grappling with these challenges everyday.  And you just might be inspired to respond by sharing a few trends you’re seeing emerge.  Enjoy! A Bird’s Eye View Amit Bhagria’s post is a great starting point, as it offers an overview of his take on the top five trends in human resource management - from recruitment to outsourcing. Recruiting James Ellis discusses social media recruiting and tracking trends, and highlights the most important key to successful interaction with candidates. Follow James at @thewarfortalent. Danielle Weinblatt interviews Will Thomson, Global Sales & Marketing Recruiter at Rosetta Stone, on some of the latest recruiting trends he’s seeing, and the ways in which he uses them to find and hire top sales and marketing talent in a challenging market. Follow Danielle at @dweinblatt. Stephanie Hammerwold addresses the growing use of mobile devices in the application process to meet applicants where they are and make the process engaging. Janine Woodworth outlines some of the challenges associated with having multiple recruiting teams and multiple workflows. Her post helps employers understand ways in which they can realign recruiting organizations so that they can better leverage their existing technology and improve processes.  Follow Janine at @janinewoodworth. Engagement Douglas Arnold reminds us of a seasonal pattern that can negatively affect creativity and business results: summertime. He offers cool advice that savvy organizations use to beat the heat. Will Thomson points out the  importance of engagement in this new era of technology, and finds old-fashioned methods of communication are not to dismissed. Workplace Dorothy Dalton recognizes a problem that you likely have personal as well as professional experience with: the overwhelmed employee. And she examines the question: Does excessive after hours contact need legislation? in her insightful post.  Follow Dorothy at @DorothyDalton. Leena Thampam comments on the workplace reality that geography doesn’t matter anymore. Remote workers are the way of the future. Follow Leena at @Wagepoint. Stuart Rudner observes that HR professionals and HR lawyers spend much of their time dealing with the potential for and the handling and assessment of investigations and corresponding reports. In his post, he shares his in-the-trenches perspective on this trend. Follow Stuart at @CanadianHRLaw. Leveraging/Optimizing Content Mary Wright highlights the time and expense associated with creating a strong internet prescence and details 6 ways that HR can protect the return on their social media investment. Shannon Smedstad show us how creating good content up front and reusing it in multiple places can become a major employer brand asset. A Closing Note Ian Welsh suggests that despite emerging trends and patterns in the field, there are some core HR activities that absolutely require immediate attention and improvement. Follow Ian at @ianclive. The post Carnival of HR: The Emerging Trends Edition appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Greg Dickinson's blog post was featuredSEC Report Shows the Supply Chain Is More Like an Attack ChainFlawed security protocols that govern third parties spell massive trouble as hackers sniff out the weak links. Breaches have reached crisis proportions, yet enterprises still struggle to secure their third-party connections.In fact, a Risk Alert released on February 3, 2015, by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) shows:Many broker-dealers and investment firms do not require cybersecurity risk assessments of vendors with access to their networks, nor do they maintain policies and procedures related to information security training for vendors and business partners authorized to access their networks Many registered investment advisers do not incorporate requirements relating to cybersecurity risk into their contracts with vendorsNow is NOT the time to be lax about third-party risk when 32 percent of all breaches last year occurred as a result of external attacks targeting a third-party supplier (a Top 3 attack vector), according to Forrester’s Business Technographics Global Security Survey, 2014.The Target and Home Depot breaches sounded a warning call to organizations everywhere, but unfortunately there’s still a great amount of room for improvement as this Crowe Horwath LLP study of chief audit executives points out:90 percent of study participants reported using third-party technology vendors 78 percent of study participants said they had "some concern" or "high concern" about difficulties with monitoring third parties’ risk management 82 percent devote less than 20 percent of their internal audit resources to assessing third-party risksWith widespread confusion and lack of visibility, there’s a need for discussion on this major problem of mismanaged third parties and concrete advice on how to fix it. Corporate IT security can only protect risks they are aware of: the problem is much broader than just IT.Here are six best practices organizations should keep in mind when managing third parties:Know Your Third PartiesThird parties can deliver up to 60 percent of a company’s total revenue and also account for the majority of what it spends. Unfortunately, while it’s easy to outsource work to third parties, it’s not so easy to know who you’re actually doing business with and who is delivering the goods or services. Companies often default to only completing due diligence and managing a limited number of "high-risk" third parties. Review whether your policies and technology allow you to identify, assess and manage all of your third parties and keeping the information in one place, tracking exactly what they do.Know Their BusinessIt is not enough to hire third parties to help your company - you also have to know what business they are doing on your behalf. Ask yourself this question: If today you had to pull a list of which of your vendors or business partners have access to employee or customer personally identifiable information (PII), or to your IT systems, how long would it take? If you had to contact those companies for additional information, do you have accurate contact details?Did you know that the majority of companies lack accurate (or any) contact information for the majority (north of 75 percent) of their third parties? This means that businesses may have incomplete, inaccurate or outdated information about the work that their third parties do and where and why they do it. Not knowing this information increases the chances of exposing your enterprise to risks and breaches.Know Their RiskLess than half of companies regularly conduct due diligence on their third parties. While all third parties pose some level of risk, the risk and the level of seriousness differs dependent on the role of the third party. For example, third parties that deal with payroll or taxes usually pose a higher risk of security to your company’s data than the cleaning crew that comes in at night. Managing your third parties based on the risks that they pose requires knowing the risks in the first place and then having policies and procedures to control those risks throughout the life the contract.Know Their AccessNot knowing that a third party had access to system passwords is not a valid excuse when your client’s records are stolen. Understanding what each party has access to - and why - will ensure that you have control over their access and can limit or deny access to sensitive information as appropriate.Know Your Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption (ABAC) ObligationsWith increasing worldwide interest in and enforcement of anti-bribery and anti-corruption legislation, companies should assess the levels of risk they face and make sure they have appropriate controls in place. While it may be a daunting task, the initial questions are relatively straightforward: Does our company do business in foreign markets? And, do we, or our third parties, interact with government agents or officials and, if so, do we understand these points of contact?Learn from the Latest Data BreachesHome Depot, one of many retailers breached in 2014, was targeted by hackers who stole credentials from a third-party vendor that had access to their payment system. Organizations should use past breaches to educate themselves and ensure that they understand which vendors or business partners (and not just the obvious IT ones) have access to IT systems, double check security measures, assess third-party risks, and make the necessary changes to ensure a higher level of security and scrutiny.Greg Dickinson is CEO of Hiperos.See More

Ali Rebaie's blog post was featuredBig Data: One Thing to Think About When Buying Your Apple WatchMateria: A latin word that describes anything "Physical substances in general", as distinct from mind and spirit which I'd like to describe here as "Data."Let’s play the Matryoshka doll toy. But hey, I have quiz for you. Can you fit the large dolls inside the smaller dolls? Seriously? Let’s see…When we talk about "Materia" trace, all smaller dolls should physically fit in the larger dolls but when the smart phones were introduced, we were able to fit larger devices into smaller ones. Indeed, the smartphone replaced a camcorder, walkman, calculator, tape recorder, gps, AM/FM clock radio and encompassed them into a single smaller device.On the other hand, the "Data" trace was just becoming larger. Smartphones today have different sensors like motion/accelerometer, proximity, gyroscope...But eventually, our small tiny doll is still small physically but generating more and more data! And it’s not just a wooden toy anymore. It’s a smart toy that knows so much about ourselves and our behaviors.As Apple launched the Apple Watch this week, with its built-in sensors (heart rate sensor, accelerometer...) that can trace and monitor a lot more about our overall activities and movements across different environments and channels, we will continue to make the "data trace" bigger. It is transforming the way we engage with "things".As this watch become a user-friendly remote control for the environment around you, it can then gather huge amounts of data about you. Think about controlling music while walking, controlling lights in your house, getting quick reminders about detailed life chores such as cooking and laundry, paying directly via your watch, opening your hotel door, directing you according to your interests in a touristic city visit etc… As the smartwatch obtains more data about you, it will understand you better and become your very own personal assistant, helping you in your everyday activities.In addition, when Buckminster Fuller, an inventor, who coined the term "ephemeralization", which means our ability to do more with less, until eventually you can do everything with nothing. This means by being more efficient and accomplishing more work with less and less materials, our entire economies will change. Thus, as we improve the ways we utilise materials, we will need less of their quantity.This is being proven now through Big Data, where jet engines are decreasing in size because of them containing sensors that generate huge amounts of data regarding the engine’s performance in order to improve its efficiency. In 1956, we needed to forklift a giant box into a plane to transport only 5 megabytes of data. Today, we can store several gigabytes of data with tiny flash memories.The ephemeralization of technology using Big Data and Internet of Things will continue to move us from a "materia trace" to a "data trace" and to gradually replacing specific-purpose devices. This transition will be accelerated by today’s innovative nanotechnologies that are present. The question remains, "Can we do everything with nothing?" Why not! In the future, we might not even need a "smart" watch at all!Ali Rebaie is an industry analyst and consultant of Rebaie Analytics Group focusing on Big Data, Analytics, and emerging technologies. See More

Walk down Mahogany Row in most corporate offices and you’ll be able to read a lot about what the organization stands for. You’ll likely see plaques that outline core values, posters that tout a commitment to the customer. Some examples: Guiding Principles • Mission • Leadership model • Philosophy • Vision • Code of conduct • Our commitment • Goals • Roadmap to results • Credo • Value proposition • Culture statement • Who we are • Our responsibility The work of Tom Peters and Bob Waterman three decades ago caused executives and leaders to take seriously the idea of using corporate values to intentionally drive culture. But in 2012, many organizations are discovering that when it comes to this particular task, more isn’t necessarily better, and that too much of a good thing is definitely not good. Some recent unscientific research I conducted with a handful of organizations found that those surveyed offer an average of 23 instructions to their employees about what’s important, who they should aspire to be, and how they ought to behave. Look at your own organization. Count up all the points on all those corporate commandments. How many instructions are you working under? More importantly, how many can you really remember and implement at any given time? Cognitive congestion Well-meaning attempts to provide guidance, motivation, and pride to employees in many organizations are instead contributing to a kind of cognitive congestion. Research suggests that seven is the magic number of things the mind can hold, juggle, and work with. Yet the average organization offers more than triple that in terms of its instructions to its employees, who are frequently overburdened and lacking in resources. So, what happens? Some employees actively blow it all off as "rah-rah" and "blah-blah" (to quote my friend Stan Slap). Some employees gravitate toward a few items that resonate and let the others fall by the wayside. Too many employees do nothing, paralyzed by too many directions about what to do and who to be. Additionally, over time, many employees find themselves facing not only too many but competing directives. Perhaps it’s time for organizations to step back and look at their tenets and taglines with clear eyes, and then do a little house cleaning. Less is more The pressures, complexity, and pace of today’s workplace demand streamlining on all fronts, including with corporate values. Employees need a few consistent and compelling principles that will guide their behavior, decisions and interactions. And when all employees are demonstrating these few principles, suddenly the corporate culture becomes unmistakably clear — internally and externally. Here’s a straightforward process to reconcile the rallying points within your organization: Collect all of the versions of corporate commandments that exist. Dissect them into their components, identifying individual elements and instructions. Create a comprehensive list. Identify who will have a voice in the process. The safest strategy is to engage only executives. Riskier — but also considerably more powerful — is to engage the entire organization. Apply a nominal group technique, asking those involved to "vote" for the three to five ideas that are most consistent with the organization — what it is and where it’s going. You may need to repeat this process a few times until the final set emerges. Hold the presses This streamlined set of guiding principles can be a powerful tool for clarifying your culture and for communicating with employees and customers alike. But remember that actions speak far louder than words, or posters, mugs and T-shirts. Instead of memorializing your shortlist on yet another poster, consider how to make sure it’s modeled by leaders and others. Consider how to help employees understand and embrace the essence of what’s most important in the organization. Consider how to take it off the wall and infuse it into every interaction. Only then will you see the real value in your corporate values. This post originally appeared in SmartBlog on Leadership in December 2012. The post Plaques and platitudes can lead to paralysis appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Nathan Sinsabaugh's blog post was featuredDesign-Led Companies Work, But Not Without DesignersIf "design-led" is the gospel in the Valley these days, it isn’t one that’s preached with much consensus. While many recognize it as a critical competitive advantage in this age of nearly instantaneous product parity, how design and designers should be integrated into a business remains a decidedly foggy issue.Design ends up looking a lot like corporate culture; different everywhere. Apple design is driven from the top down, by Jony Ive. Google’s teams adhere to a common design language, but function more autonomously. Facebook brought Nicholas Felton on board to focus on a specific product: Timeline. Airbnb has a dedicated user advocate on every project team. And we’ll see what Capital One does with Adaptive Path.From the companies listed above, to agencies like IDEO, and an array of groups and institutes, the good news of design has been spreading for years. Even so, it remains a black-box discipline to many, difficult to understand and explain.It Isn’t MathIn some ways, it shouldn’t be surprising that we haven’t arrived at a singular understanding of what it means to be design-led. Design is more like anthropology than physics; more of human science than a hard science. Humans are irrational, unpredictable, emotional and messy. Consequently, approaching a design process like a calculus equation doesn’t work—there is no formula.Traditional business looks to the hard sciences to solve problems: Quantitative data, demographic research, focus groups, surveys, etc. In a predictable environment, that approach can work. But we’re operating in a world that’s anything but predictable. Competition is fierce, consumers are empowered and vocal, and customers are often irrational in their preferences and decision making.Design offers an alternative path: Understanding people in the context and culture they live in to develop genuine empathy, and testing and iterating solutions with customers to explore the validity of decisions. Often this means relying on intuition to guide decision making when the data isn’t clear, a skill that the principles and methods inherent in design have a uniquely positive impact on.In the DNAA lot of the questions around what it means to be design-led have to do with the roles designers should play. For example, Airbnb’s head of design, Alex Schleifer, said in an interview with WIRED that design-led companies can put designers in an unnecessarily privileged role; putting the rest of the company in a position of always having to react to their point of view. He’s opted, instead, to put a project manager on every team whose job is to act as a user representative and advocate.While Schleifer avoids the design-led label, he’s doing exactly what design-led companies ought to do: graft the methods and principles of design into the DNA of the company—in Airbnb’s case, primarily empathy. It’s a smart decision, as the alternative, rule by design oligarchy, is a setup not many organizations will succeed with. Giving every employee the tools they need to think and act like designers themselves is a much better option.Making Ideas RealBut getting a majority of employees to think like designers doesn’t eliminate the need for those who formally hold the title. You may have a company full of people dreaming up brilliant ideas, but an idea doesn’t reach its potential until it’s made perceptible, be it as a website, device, soundbite, app, book, logo or some other kind of artifact. This may be the axis that being design-led turns on; designers take ideas from the abstract to the concrete, enabling them to produce real value.Consider the growth of Twitter as an interesting example. While the company started garnering attention in 2007, its meteoric rise began in early 2009, just a few months after the launch of Apple’s App Store, and at the same time the swarm of third-party Twitter clients began appearing on the scene. No matter how great the technology it was built on, Twitter as an SMS client was too abstract of an idea for many of us, largely invisible. Well designed apps and an eventually reworked web experience made the service tangible. App design can’t take all of the credit for Twitter’s success, but its role in making the service accessible to a broader audience is undeniable.Bridging The GapWhile there’s no single way to lead with design, it absolutely requires strategically positioned designers. They are the connective tissue that make design-led companies work. They are the bridge that spans the gap between idea and execution. They are the difference between a brand, product, or service that’s half-baked, and one that’s a homerun.Nathan Sinsabaugh is Design Director at the consultancy Studio Science.See More

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Dan Kinsella's blog post was featuredShould CIOs Be Concerned About Consumer Technology Trends?Normally one wouldn't expect consumer trends to drive business trends, but that’s exactly what’s happening with the convergence of A/V, communication, and IT in the workplace. Clearly, many "innovations" in business communications during the last decade have come from consumer adoption of technology first. Not unlike during the PC revolution, users continue to drive the proliferation of technology in the workplace, especially via consumer based A/V enabled communications devices.Of course, rapid advances in technology and ongoing cost reductions have helped fuel the evolution. But significant change in how people communicate is really behind major adoption in the workplace. Some would argue that even communication tools like email and voicemail are quickly becoming obsolete in the ever changing business technology landscape.How many companies adopted WIFI in their offices because their users complained that they were already using the technology at home? Certainly text messaging garnered a broad base of consumer acceptance long before businesses started using it to communicate with colleagues and customers. Even consumer use of AOL helped drive the creation and implementation of simple email tools in offices worldwide.For more evidence of consumer technology driving business trends, consider Facebook. Facebook spawned LinkedIn which is quickly becoming the preeminent social media communication tool for businesses. Beyond making connections and posting information, businesses now use LinkedIn to fill important jobs, business development and customer relationship management.Some of the most important CIO initiatives today revolve around corporate implementation of what were originally consumer based technology solutions. Why did Apple introduce the iPhone and iPad to consumers and schools first? Apple would have met with considerable resistance in the corporate space had they targeted CIOs, much like they did with the Mac. Consumer passion for the Mac, iPhone, iPad and other devices is forcing many corporations to support these devices in the workplace. Today, integrating mobile devices (mobility) and securing confidential text messages are top priorities for most CIOs.Likewise, although video teleconferencing and online collaboration have been available for quite some time, Skype has led to massive company adoption. Microsoft didn't buy Skype for $5.8 billion to expand consumer use of the product. Likewise, Cisco’s purchase of WebEx for $3.2 billion and Citrix’s development of GoToMeeting are attempts to capitalize on the huge anticipated growth in these markets.So, what’s the take away for CIOs? As companies move to the cloud to host their IT solutions via pseudo-mainframe models like SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS, remember that many business IT trends come from consumer products. Even today’s cloud interface designs are being modeled after paradigms like the App Store. It’s wise to pay particular attention to consumer trends when formulating corporate IT strategies to stay ahead of the technology curve.Dan Kinsella is a 25 year technology veteran and consultant at SeeChange Technologies.See More

Sustainability gets a lot of attentions these days… and rightly so. As a society, we’re bringing greater consciousness to the preservation and endurance of the environment, energy, and more. Yet, there’s one precious natural resource that rarely gets the same attention. And for too many people, it’s reaching dangerous depletion levels. How sustainable is the personal energy you bring to the focus you deploy against your goals, mission, and purpose in life? Throughout our upbringing, school and work experiences, many successful individuals have learned and honed a potentially destructive form of focus: the forced and fierce variety. You may recognize it as a sense of intensity and drive that propels you forward toward your goals… and toward complete burn-out. Be honest…what does focus feel like to you? If you’re like most, the following words and phrases might come to mind: Determination Discipline Force of will I know for myself that despite how joyful my goals might be, it frequently feels like a forced death march toward achieving them. (And forced death marches by their very nature are totally unsustainable.) What if we could cultivate a sustainable, softer - not harder - focus? This is not an argument for becoming lazy or sitting around waiting for your goals and purpose to take care of themselves. Instead, it’s an invitation to find the place within you where joy, receptivity, fun, and lightness can actually clear the way and enable the rigor and persistence required to see your results through. And here is the key… based upon interviews with leaders who have successfully navigated the good and bad, the ups and downs to achieve long-term goals: They figured out how to elevate the path they were on or process they were going through to the same level as the purpose or the goal they were pursuing. When will we understand that the ends don’t justify - or sustain - the means? Many of our goals are big and, let’s face it, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be here to see them realized. But even when we are, achievement is SO fleeting. We cross the finish line in the blink of an eye… so we’d better have something to show for it in terms of pleasure along the way. What can you do to make sure that you’re bringing joy to the journey… that the process delivers as much pleasure as realizing the purpose? Sustainability of your personal energy and focus frequently comes down to ‘small stuff’ that yields big results: Intentionally sprinkle the activities you enjoy into every day. Spend time with the people who make you smile. Celebrate the little things. Routinely step back and away from the work associated with achieving your purpose. Take up a hobby. Have some fun. ("Wasting" a little time is frequently exactly the softness you need to be able to focus clearly and stick with your goals even longer.) Your purpose and goals are important. Not just to you… but to a world that’s waiting for and needs your contributions and achievements. Focus softly and bring sustainability to your own precious natural energy resource. Photo credit: Liz Price and www.freedigitalphotos.net This post originally appeared at Lead Change Group. The post Sustainability and Focus appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.

Colin Strong's blog post was featuredAre Data Scientists Earning Their Salaries?There have been murmurings that we are now in the ‘trough of disillusionment’ of big data, the hype around it having surpassed the reality of what it can deliver.  Gartner suggested that the "gravitational pull of big data is now so strong that even people who haven’t a clue as to what it’s all about report that they’re running big data projects".  Indeed, their research with business decision makers suggests that organisations are struggling to get value from big data.Data scientists were meant to be the answer to this issue. Indeed, Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google famously joked that "The sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians". He was clearly right as we are now used to hearing that data scientists are the key to unlocking the value of big data. This has created a huge market for people with these skills. US recruitment agency, Glassdoor, report that the average salary for a data scientist is $118,709 versus $64,537 for a skilled programmer. And a McKinsey study predicts that by 2018, the United States alone faces a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytical expertise and a 1.5 million shortage of managers with the skills to understand and make decisions based on analysis of big data.  It's no wonder that companies are keen to employ data scientists when, for example, a retailer using big data can reportedly increase their margin by more than 60%.  However, is it really this simple? Can data scientists actually justify earning their salaries when brands seem to be struggling to realize the promise of big data?Perhaps we are expecting too much of data scientists. May be we are investing too much in a relatively small number of individuals rather than thinking about how we can design organisations to help us get the most from data assets. The focus on the data scientist often implies a centralized approach to analytics and decision making; we implicitly assume that a small team of highly skilled individuals can meet the needs of the organisation as a whole.This theme of centralized vs. decentralized decision-making is one that has long been debated in the management literature.  For many organisations a centralized structure helps maintain control over a vast international operation, plus ensures consistency of customer experience. Others, meanwhile, may give managers at a local level decision-making power particularly when it comes to tactical needs.   But the issue urgently needs revisiting in the context of big data as the way in which organisations manage themselves around data may well be a key factor for brands in realizing the value of their data assets.Economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek took the view that organisations should consider the purpose of the information itself. Centralized decision-making can be more cost-effective and co-ordinated, he believed, but decentralization can add speed and local information that proves more valuable, even if the bigger picture is less clear.  He argued that organisations thought too highly of centralized knowledge, while ignoring ‘knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place’. But it is only relatively recently that economists are starting to accumulate data that allows them to gauge how successful organisations organize themselves.One such exercise reported by Tim Harford was carried out by Harvard Professor Julie Wulf and the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Raghuram Rajan. They reviewed the workings of large US organisations over fifteen years from the mid-80s. What they found was successful companies were often associated with a move towards decentralisation, often driven by globalisation and the need to react promptly to a diverse and swiftly-moving range of markets, particularly at a local level. Their research indicated that decentralisation pays.And technological advancement often goes hand-in-hand with decentralization. Data analytics is starting to filter down to the department layer, where executives are increasingly eager to trawl through the mass of information on offer. Cloud computing, meanwhile, means that line managers no longer rely on IT teams to deploy computer resources. They can do it themselves, in just minutes.  The decentralisation trend is now impacting on technology spending. According to Gartner, chief marketing officers have been given the same purchasing power in this area as IT managers and, as their spending rises, so that of data centre managers is falling.Tim Harford makes a strong case for the way in which this decentralization is important given that the environment in which we operate is so unpredictable. Innovation typically comes, he argues from a "swirling mix of ideas not from isolated minds". And he cites Jane Jacobs, writer on urban planning- who suggested we find innovation in cities rather than on the Pacific islands. But this approach is not necessarily always adopted. For example, research by academics Donald Marchand and Joe Peppard discovered that there was still a tendency for brands to approach big data projects the same way they would existing IT projects: i.e. using centralized IT specialists with a focus on building and deploying technology on time, to plan, and within budget.The problem with a centralized ‘IT-style’ approach is that it ignores the human side of the process of considering how people create and use information i.e. how do people actually deliver value from data assets. Marchand and Peppard suggest (among other recommendations) that those who need to be able to create meaning from data should be at the heart of any initiative.As ever then, the real value from data comes from asking the right questions of the data. And the right questions to ask only emerge if you are close enough to the business to see them. Are data scientists earning their salary? In my view they are a necessary but not sufficient part of the solution; brands need to be making greater investment in working with a greater range of users to help them ask questions of the data. Which probably means that data scientists’ salaries will need to take a hit in the process.Colin Strong is the author of Humanizing Big Data, released by Kogan PageSee More

Guest Post by Janhavi Hunnur I’m honored that Janhavi Hunnur asked to share this guest post that candidly addresses a challenge rarely talked about but shared by many leaders: personal biases around work approaches and styles that ultimately affect performance.   In the corporate world, the term ‘performance’ is often misunderstood. At its core, we can evaluate performance based upon the answers to simple questions like: How well are we doing? Are we meeting our goals? Are our customers satisfied? But as organizations have become more sophisticated and processes have become more complex, measuring performance has grown increasingly complicated. And, understandably so… because not having a rigorous and objective approach to performance management and measurement can lead to problems as I’ve personally experienced. Looking back, I now realize that I was inadvertently thwarting my team’s efforts and undermining their development and growth because I was evaluating others based upon subjective comparisons of how they approached their work to my own approach to mine. I felt greater rapport and connection to team members who shared my same work patterns and behaviors.  I have to admit that I enjoyed the feeling of camaraderie and went the extra mile for these team members. My bias didn’t just affect my reviews and feedback. It affected my employees, leaving some feeling devalued, side-lined, and unwelcome to share their suggestions or ideas.  How many groundbreaking innovations, new customers, or great insights were not allowed to flourish or come forward as a result? Gratefully, I recognized this opportunity in time.  Rather than relying on my subjective impressions, which are never a good barometer, I knew that data would provide a better, more objective basis for evaluating and coaching others, and ultimately driving performance. I started first with myself and developed a process to measure my own performance and work habits.  I started quantifying my work based on such things as: Undivided time spent on each activity Number of breaks taken during the day Energy levels during the day and complementing activity Prioritization of ‘important’ vs ‘urgent’ Mindful delegation Effective planning and organization After consistently assessing my own performance/behavior for a month, I had an objective evaluation of myself.  I found the results personally illuminating and felt it would be advantageous for my team to do it as well…and the benefits have been great.  Not only have they gained awareness of their own work habits and patterns, they have become more focused, motivated, and inspired to perform.  Because they now have quantifiable metrics, they challenge themselves to continue to improve and have had some significant results.  Although I never asked for this data, some have actually volunteered. In fact, one employee shared an increase from 13 to 33 minutes of undivided time spent on a task! The exercise built a sustainable process for employee development, individual improvements and team results.  Being constantly in ‘self-improvement mode’ on an individual level has led to increased productivity, benefiting the entire organization.  And being in a similar ‘self-improvement mode’ has helped me to approach work and people more objectively. About Janhavi Hunnur Tech marketer, born to write, edit, bang head on wall and then finally hit send. Interested in Technology, leadership, rebel arts and wildlife photography. The mantra that keeps me going now is "You cannot improve what you cannot measure". Connect with Janhavi on Twitter and let’s talk. The post Opinions, Data, and Performance appeared first on Julie Winkle Giulioni.