Whoever initiated the contract probably did what (s)he was told to get best practice thinking on “on ‘IT cost optimization.’ That report included supporting documents on IT contractors, domain utilization, printer consolidation, software asset management and suggestions for reducing costs in each area.”
Whoever authorized the contract apparently had no idea that at the very least this could get politicized and spin was going to be put to the underlying situation into the position of being ridiculed. Irrespective of its other merits.
The consultant partner that took the contract should have also considered how this might play out with this spin. (It has reflections of an old Jackie Mason bit about finding the real you… [go to 8:00]) Just a little “whore-ish” maybe…
Tempest in a media teapot resulting from people trying to make political points in a politically divided environment. What’s left to say?
For more fascinating observations check out the whole site.
Radical transparency is in demand; that much is obvious. Anti-vaxxers and the “Fredum” thugs, anti-business anti-government anti-[insert what bugs you here] and conspiracy theorists all demand greater transparency just in case (or because) somebody’s trying to pull one over on us.
Of course, none of them actually believes the information provided. So there’s that.
Transparency is the new black
I got to thinking about this again seeing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene reveal classified information during a public committee meeting. Her unabashed reasoning was that she thought Americans should know [operational boarder information]… On another front, I’ve been seeing a lot of Sarah Kendzior’s book, They Knew (mostly as she promotes it). I believe—as I haven’t read the book—her theme is: you’re not paranoid if they’re really out to get you, and I have the receipts. By her reckoning, there are provable (government) conspiracies in the USA with different, complicit participants in each instance. The conclusion is apparently that (a) “they” knew a tragedy was coming and (b) it was largely to “their” gain and at “your” cost.
I’m not a fan of either. It goes without saying there will always be groups with privileged information they keep to themselves. In business, it’s called “trade secrets.” Investors hoard and use information for trading advantage and profit. In affairs of state there are countless reasons for keeping things opaque, shall we say. Military and defense activities among an alliance, such as NATO, is a good example. Justice is another.
There are good reasons for this behaviour, which is perfectly reasonable and normal. Besides, information typically requires context to be meaningful and tracts of it requires skills, training, and comprehension that eludes most of those “doing their own research.”
(Valuable) Information can resemble a Rorschach blot: (a) sure to be misunderstood; (b) revealing more about its analyst than the underlying subject; and (c) raw material to manufacture disinformation—rarely for a good purpose.
What good is transparency if what it reveals is at best meaningless and at worst combustible?
Secrecy, Conspiracy, Collusion…
Information itself and conspiring to hold it from others is not in and of itself untoward. It can be sane and sensible. We can’t all be polymaths and expert at every esoteric area of expertise. (Except, of course, Elon Musk and Donald Trump.) We don’t all have a direct say in how the government operates. We get our say periodically to elect representatives to represent us. We certainly get no say in the human resources and processes by which modern states operate any more than one-share stockholders can demand a say in corporate structure and operations. It has never happened before; it will not happen now, and; it will not happen in the future.
The division of labour, a foundational Capitalist principle, compels us for efficiency and effectiveness to leave tasks and the necessary carrying out of those tasks, including choices about information (disclosure), to nominated or designated people.
This bedrock principle upon which the Western, democratic world (and arguably every other part of the world) bases itself and its affairs is dependent on one of two things. In North America anyway, these are rapidly changing.
The first is trust the second is fear. Fear, in this context, is much to fraught to tackle here, so let’s focus on trust. In a social context this is trust in institutions and the people that populate, particularly lead them. Social trust is in tatters on its way to being shredded.
For some justifiable reasons, the populous has lost trust in the institutions of government and the representative politicians (of the other tribe). In the USA, the political tribes have fully separated and certainly the Republican party has done everything it can to actively drive mistrust of not only Democrats but government in general.
Side note: Probably because it spends much more and has accumulated better PR, “business” luxuriates in higher levels of social trust. This is bizarre when a substantive record of how and why trusting “business” has failed the masses. But, whatever.
Absent trust, credibility is an early relationship casualty so every institutional error is perceived as having ulterior motive. That leads to genuine withholding of information for good reasons. Thus the doom cycle commences and continues.
Sometimes it behooves leaders of all sorts—business, government, families—to withhold information for the broadest benefit of the whole. Using a tired philosophical saw, yelling “fire” in a crowded auditorium results in pandemonium. People—in herds—responding to information they may not understand or have the tools to effectively address, are known to panic… regularly. The crowd will stampede and many will not make it out.
(This used to be axiomatic: given today’s level of “doing my own research” rejection of authority, who knows how many would rampage—perhaps for altogether different reasons—anticipating more palatable facts to surface.) A leader may not mention the fire, using a ruse or some other oblique rationale for orderly withdrawal. More people are unharmed. Is that so bad?
Transparency on what’s more cancerous than benign: Corruption
One of those justifiable reasons for trust diminishing I mentioned earlier is the overwhelming evidence of corruption and (their tribe’s, of course) self-dealing. Withholding information, even as a syndicate, should be expected. What may also be expected but is definitely beyond the pale is self-dealing, benefitting unjustly, and harming others—those others who have given their faith to the “good faith” of those empowered. (Let’s also not restrict ourselves to politicians and governments; this applies to businesses and other organizations be they charities or labour unions or…)
We have stumbled into the area of corruption, not conspiracy or secrecy or withholding information. The legal phrasing generally contains, “…conspiracy to….” The word “to”—not “conspiracy”—is the operative one here. The conspiracy part merely refers to a group; “to” leads to a crime.
The issue is not conspiring or colluding or anything else until they become instrumental to implementing and executing a crime. At this point the rabble rousing and transparency demanding has a crisis: the choice forces many to create the artifice of crime out of whole cloth.
When bankers, oil & gassers, other industrialists and oligopolists collude to maximize movement of wealth from the masses to the few, that warrants uprising. When chemical companies conspire to influence regulation or cover-up lethal toxic impacts of their making to avoid culpability, that might warrant pitchforks. When the government and the political leaders (of their tribe) self-deal by pocketing hundreds of thousands or billions of dollars by virtue of their privilege, that warrants blowback.
Competent, employed professionals entrusted with a particular division of labour, making good-faith decisions for the greatest good based on imperfect and shifting information, probably is not. Certainly anyone or any organization holding operational information without a criminal intent has no obligation to disclose all of it just because “one shareholder” wants to see it. Even government bodies.
If there is a crime at hand, pursue the crime. Prove it. There are rules for information disclosure with provable probability of crime. (Caveat: Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s a crime. Corrollary: Just because you do like something doesn’t mean it it isn’t a crime. You know who I’m talking about.)
Incidentally, Sarah, none of this suggests or recommends NOT being vigilant about potential crimes—especially coups d’état, which are inarguably social harms… and crime. But yeah, “they” probably or maybe definitely knew! They’re there and you’re not. And Marjorie: some things don’t need to be radically transparent just because you—loosely said—think so.
So apparently scientists at Lawrence Livermore Lab, in California, managed a fusion reaction that generated net energy–that is, more energy than went into generating the reaction. There was 3.15 megajoules energy output from the 2.05 megajoules that were input by the laser to fuse the atoms. Of course, the laser drew 300 megajoules to initiate the process. Still, it’s an huge development with the potential—in 30-50 years—to provide unlimited, non-carbon energy.
I’m of two minds on this.
On the one hand, I am amazed by the creativity and persistence that led to this. It may be a solution to our carbon-created climate problem. Which leads me to the second hand…
Way more climate change resisters were not denying the problem and maybe not even the unfortunate end-state to which it would inevitably lead than there were denying the situation. (Our focus has mainly been on the deniers. This is, in retrospect stupid because they are idiots.) And this only lends strength to their underlying belief that science will solve the problem. In other words, the vast majority of those opposed to the “climate change movement” were not denying it so much as they were blithely ignoring it because (a) any climate remedying action would negatively impact their economics or comfort or both, and (b) somebody (aka science) would come to the rescue.
My issue with this is that it’s kind of a weak argument and not a guarantee. Maybe this path of fusion energy will help us dodge this bullet. (Maybe. Jury’s still out. And there’s that little unknown about the timing of the solution…) But eventually there will, in fact, be a problem that science will NOT be able to come riding to the rescue like a white night to our civilizational damsel in distress.
“Whom the gods want to destroy, they send 50 years of good luck.” Your mileage may vary.
Something prompted me yesterday to dig into the “red pill” phenomenon that is at the root of just about all social upheaval in (at least) North America. In my imagination, I was going to deconstruct the ridiculousness and inconsistency of those who use this shorthand to justify their antisocial positions. I was going to spend some time considering how it is decontextualized even from the movie universe in which it arose. Then I remembered, It’s FICTION. MADE UP. LOGICALLY ATTUNED TO ITS OWN ILLOGICAL CONTEXT. It doesn’t matter how much one points out the flaws in raise it–even as shorthand for some kind of awakening and realization–it will remain a useful tool in the hands of idiots. That was it: “idiots.” And I moved on to another stream of thought.
Like long forgotten songs on a K-Tel compilation, Intrapreneurship, the notion that employees of large organizations can hustle and scramble like entrepreneurs to create innovation and radical growth, is back! Of course, its day in the 1980s sun was a failure. But today’s promise is the success of Silicon Valley’s disrupting wunderkind.
Should intrapreneurship actually catch on, again… it will fail. Again. Smart executives of targeted enterprises and government departments ought to remember why it failed before and take a pass this time. The flawed assumption is that entrepreneurs thrive in any environment. Except, everything that makes entrepreneurship admirable is suffocated in the low oxygen atmosphere of the large organization.
The entrepreneurship allure is palpable: a dream of agility, disruption, and outsized growth leading to dominion over new and even undiscovered frontiers. With unicorns on every horizon, it’s hard to ignore. But for large organizations, it’s a mirage that will squander resources and frustrate everyone.
The larger the organization, the more its strength weighs upon it. It can no more be an entrepreneurial entity than the growth business is a colossus bestriding the world. The pitch to turn an eighteen wheeler into a Tesla is ridiculous and counter-productive.
Large organizations need not ogle enviously at the upstart entrepreneurial organizations rapid, often false growth that captures market and media attention. Appreciate your own qualities. Large organizations are mostly slow and steady. They have to be. Oscillating around opportunistic pivots would rend the behemoth from seam to seam. A material mistake by a small business constantly changing anyway is bad but recoverable. A material mistake for a large organization could prove mortal (without government intervention). Demands of governance and responsibility befitting its stature command the organization to be circumspect. One role of large organization is to stabilize tempestuous seas.
Sounds banal compared to the romantic entrepreneur. But, this gummy stateliness belies vast virtue. Large organizations have the power to change markets and industries. That they may choose not to because they’re comfortable has nothing to do with intrapreneuring. The taxi industry did not have to actively ignore its suzerain being upended while focusing on rigging regulation. Moreover, a start-up did not succeed in digitizing music nor create the consumer smart phone industry. Apple did. Ultimately, large organizations control innovation and disruptive change.
Your favourite innovation guru will have written that when industries heave with revolution, some venture-backed entrepreneur has used a technology or method to disrupt a cozy environment. But even where that is the case, it’s because the large incumbents were sleeping. As often as not, industries are turned inside out because competitive, large organizations acquire or introduce changes to the competitive environment and evolve the marketplace. In effect, they reinvent themselves and their worlds.
This has little to do with being entrepreneurial. It has everything to do with being observant, smart, and courageous. These mark the entrepreneurial character but are not exclusive to it. Most organizations require innovation of some sort, not all need the peculiar and destabilizing qualities of the entrepreneur.
This intrapreneurship fad is but a means to a desirable end: innovation, which in turn leads to growth (and maybe reinvention). A large organization does not have to weaken its chances pretending to be something it is not and cannot be. Of course, large organizations should do things to remain vital and purposeful. But they should play to strengths.
Large organizations should get and be strong at anticipating changes to their world as has Royal Dutch Shell. They should strive to innovate. That will necessarily keep them apprised of near and distant (technology) innovations around them. Large organizations have the resources to do something better than be entrepreneurs: they can buy entrepreneurs—at the right time.
Large organizations have been known to get fat and lazy, ferreting out challengers, buying them, and burying their technologies to maintain control of their worlds. The world no longer allows that. Enterprises need to tack: don’t buy the start-up or growth company to shelve it; buy it to grow it and, maybe later, internalize it. I say maybe because the choice could be to shape the smaller organization to benefit from and provide benefits to the large organization. This is a different skill, but one a large organization could more probably create.
Many enterprise organizations would be better off creating a farm system of minor investments and expertise at observing real entrepreneurial action. Supporting and keeping them alive, all the while creating the internal conditions to ingest entrepreneurial output and do what enterprise organizations do best: serve scale.
Large organizations have to be stable, not ossified. An aircraft carrier is no PT boat. It is built for stability in even the roughest waters. To be the indispensible centre of many critical operations, ths largest of naval vessels must be stable. Necessarily, it doesn’t move nimbly. It would be absurd to expect it to operate like a frigate. But even with the responsibility to provide a dependable platform, the aircraft carrier and its personnel are always prepared and vigilant for stormy seas or competitive attack from the sky or under the waves—from other navies or even pirate flotillas.
Think about that. Maybe the idea of a carrier group fleet would serve large organizations well in structuring themselves to do battle in their own corporate oceans.
I use “f-words” in mixed company. Well-bred professional, management, and executive types recoil in disgust. One might think that they would be inured to f-words. But they seem to hold themselves above all that.
Of course, the most troubling f-word is not the one on the tip of your tongue now. This one sounds “eff” but starts “ph.” Try saying philosophy in the company of busy career people; just be prepared for rolled eyes and that piteous expression that says you just don’t get it.
Those blank faces better “get it” soon themselves. Our privacy and maybe even democracy could depend on it. After all, not every tectonic shift is as blatant as the revelations of Edward Snowdon or as arrogantly, publicly contemptuous as the Fair Elections Act. Pay attention to the every day stuff!
Today’s transactional immediacy of business and government work is not an historical novelty. There was no time when these practical people were more inclined to think deeply about what they were doing. What may be different now is the measure of disdain for anyone who challenges business or government plans and actions more deeply than what the pervasive “value proposition” pap answers.
If we refrain from contemplations of epistemology and such, and stick to ethics and the sunnier(!) side of existential questions, philosophy is about purpose. That has to be clarifying for professionals, and is about as close as most organizations get to schwerpunkt (a typically consonant-ridden German word that means concentration point or main effort).
When I say philosophy in this company, I often mean, “What do you believe?” Not as in, “We believe the world wants a device that will allow them to…” That’s actually, “We think…” Rather, as in, “We believe that people need to remain connected to other people; we believe our purpose is to provide devices that…” Despite reading and abiding by directives such as Start With Why (Sinek, 2011), this kind of descent to expose the core assumptions of “Why” is one nobody really wants to take.
So why is that kind of philosophical pondering held in such disregard?
First, it’s hard. It requires rigorous thought, due consideration, and alternative points of view. None of which is acceptable in an environment of HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) rules or unconsidered braying of partisan vitriol.
Second, it’s still hard. It demands a sense of right and wrong. That then presumes you might stand for something, ideally something that can be argued rationally from some principles. Rampant specialization and narrow awareness does not lend itself to this capacity.
Third, it’s unnecessary. After all, whether its Mill, Burke, Rousseau, or Jefferson, there are philosophies a plenty to choose from and no need to waste time on such things now.
Fourth, well… it’s hard. Given the preference for action—any action!—to indicate ability, quality, and value, taking time to muse over that action gets indicted as regressive to say the least.
It’s true that some fundamental underpinnings of philosophy are timeless—give or take a millennium, otherwise we wouldn’t still look to Plato. But other philosophy is more set in a time and place—give or take a millennium or continent, so it needs to be refreshed from time to time.
Given the rate society is evolving in technology’s wake, we need to take a little time to continually consider whether our core values remain operative in practice. At the very least, we should give a modicum of respect and an ear to those who do it professionally, casually, or within the confines of their daily toil.
The problem with not thinking about these things and, worse, discouraging those who will, is that these things are affected by rapid innovation and change anyway.
The seemingly outrageous privacy invasions by governments is not the product of a sea change in method. It was a steady dripping of unconsidered change that allowed the method to metastasize into what it’s become: something odious. And, it all took root in so many innocuous “consumer benefits.”
The outrageous bill that is to be the Unfair Elections Act (2014) is only possible because over time we have largely become so blasé about hyper-partisan drivel and the corruption of governance by politics that many people see nothing especially egregious about the bill’s content. And so it now threatens a foundation of our society. That represents six years’ effort on the part of Canada’s New Government.
So let’s all throw around the f-word until it’s so common that everyone does it. We’ll all be better for it.
I fly fairly consistently though by no means am I row 13 troll racking up 100,000 miles a year or more. That said, I’m on enough to know that airlines squeeze people into too small a space for actual comfort.
More than that, people flying on business tend toward pulling out laptops to make productive use of the time in the air. That laptop has to sit in the already unsuitable space on the meal tray. So when the person immediately in front of the worker exercises his/her right to recline the seat back for greater comfort, it not only invades the already cramped space but makes using the computer all but impossible. I, personally, have had the clamshell lid cracked because it got sandwiched when the seat in front of me was thrust back.
So when two 48-year olds come just short of blows because one guy, sitting in the worst seat (middle) uses a little piece of plastic that costs 14-cents to make but is $22 at retail called the Knee Defender to prevent the seat from coming back, forcing the plane to be diverted from destination, you can do nothing but say, “Yeah, so what?” (See BBC story here)
Have to say that because it’s inevitable and has probably happened without such media fanfare many times. You also have to say it because both of these people were being douche bags (though I sympathize more with the guy using the device than with the gal who wanted to recline). Douche bags they might be, likely very self-righteously protecting their position and logic.
The airline, on the other hand, never mind the regulators, are culpable and should be punished. Here’s why. They create and foster the situation.
They create seat pitch (the gap for knees and breathing space) and squeeze it as tight as they can get away with. They do this because over 30 rows, 1-inch adds up to another row of seats which adds up to more revenue at a solid marginal profit. Notably, this fight broke out in a part of the plane that already had a larger pitch than cattle class.
They install seats that recline. Frankly, I think this whole notion is ridiculous and warrants physiological testing. The amount of recline the seat affords is not enough to be really any more comfortable; only enough to be irritating, imposing, and beyond annoying to the person behind you.
They make (and sell) the space and time on the plane to business travellers as a time to get things done. For crying out loud, they’re installing wifi on-board. Wifi is useless without a device to connect and trying to do real work on a tablet or smart phone is preposterous.
So, it’s the airline that creates the conditions that create the possibility for nobody’s wrong, self-righteousness.
Reclining passenger says, “Hey, the seat reclines and it’s my right to get more comfortable (or at least have the feeling that I’m getting more comfortable) by reclining completely. As far as I’m concerned, given the structure of the seating, that space MUST be mine to recline into.
The passenger being reclined into says, “Whoa, hold on, this space between my nose and your upright seat is inadequate to begin with. As soon as you recline, especially if the person in front of YOU isn’t reclining, you’re getting more space–MY space, which I need to work in. Back off. Reclining is a privilege, not a right.”
At the end of the day, the douche bag who pushes her seat back is probably more in “the right,” but in any case, the airline is in the wrong. And who suffers? The recliner, he being reclined upon, and EVERY OTHER PASSENGER who didn’t get to Denver as promised or has to listen to the kerfuffle.
Today’s politically correct vogue is to wring one’s hands and fulminate about how dangerous the world is and how dire the need to protect one and all from its perils. Mental health disabilities and concussions are, among other human traumas, serious stuff. But it all seems a little overdone.
While the incidents of mental health claims and sport-related serious injuries are as high as ever in raw volume, a doubter might question its significance. Is there really more? Or are we just searching for, noting, and recording it now? This challenges the premise of greater danger, and the argument applies as readily to mental health injury as to cancer and allergy epidemics. It’s harder, I think, to argue that concussions went unrecognized and so could have been under-reported 30-years ago. That suggests greater danger. It does not mean it’s not ridiculous. Not the injuries; the circus of problem-solving.
The same day newspapers carried the story about Minister Clement’s pronouncement on mental health action, I saw a fellow on a bike wearing what looked like a 40-year old Cooper™ hockey helmet. It wasn’t a zippy cycling helmet, so it caught my attention and took my thoughts to the ongoing, very public finger wagging about concussions in hockey. I recalled that there was a time when that flimsy piece of plastic with an eighth inch of Styrofoam was the only wrapping on kids’ heads. Yet, so many of us live to reminisce about it.
What bothers me most about the well-meaning debates and pronouncements, be it about depression furloughs or kids’ cranial collisions, is that they are just so typically focused wrong. It is, of course, easier and more socially acceptable, never mind profitable, to push protection and palliatives than it is to deal with real problems. We leave uncomfortable stuff alone.
Regarding employee mental health issues untenably impacting labour costs, what we really don’t want to talk about is that we’ve done and keep doing it to ourselves. We avoid how mobile devices and PCs before them inconveniently changed what it means to be working. Not only are we all expected to be available within the hour if not actually responding in the moment, it doesn’t end at 5:00PM or Friday at the pub. That is fact.
Instead of acknowledging and debating the incompatibility of commercial efficiency and human frailty, we are treated to paeans to the “new reality” or some derivative. It’s liberating, they say. Not so much unless fetters factor into your definition of free. But it is an efficiency gainer, so it’s not going anywhere. That leaves the chattering classes to accept the root issue wholesale and babble on about the deleterious effects.
What about the hollowing out of the organization? It’s good for organizations because short-term productivity is high. It’s not good for people, because no machine runs at the yellow line for years on end without burning out. People in “management” are being overworked, the demands on their time extend well beyond what was traditionally work time, and they know that they are always one false move from not having to worry about it at all. Why would anyone be stressed or depressed?
Then there’s this business of sports injuries, with concussion trending right now. Of course being concussed is bad, especially for a brain still being formed. Then again, so is pushing a teenage body to meet the demands of an adult body. Speaking only of hockey, what we don’t want to talk about is that WE are the cause of the problem, one that we’re not eager to cure.
Back to the Cooper™ helmet. Hockey is a pretty rough sport. It was when I played as a kid. But it was rough within limits. Bad helmets and other variants of plastic, felt, and sponge left a lot of opportunity to feel pain, which took some spirit out of the boys. You didn’t try doing too much harm to others because, among other things, it was probably going to hurt you too.
Over the past forty years, we’ve outfitted our little gladiators with Kevlar and ballistic protection that makes them (feel) practically invincible. When over-protected, the most important organ in the body doesn’t work effectively. Because there is no pain escalation to indicate it’s time to back off, one can forget that one is, in fact, going to get hurt. And when it inevitably does happen, it won’t be just a little owey either! Add a persistent hockey season. Unlike the few boys that went to one-week, summer hockey camp in the 1970s, now every child has pre-season training and development prior to the try-outs that precede the season, which gets followed by a post-season work-down, etc… In other words, kids have the protection needed to detach them from the reality of being hurt, plus we train them to be stronger and more aggressive earlier. Never mind the parents who demand that little Mikey behaves like the NHL star that dad wishes he’d been, and then encourage aggression by behaving like lunatics in the stands.
Hockey today isn’t more dangerous, nor is cycling or skiing or any other sport. Work and life is not harder than a century ago. What we’ve done to ourselves in the name of progress, though, is create everything we need to push ourselves and our children up to and past the breaking point physically and mentally. Contrary to my first employer’s view, people are really not machines. You can’t merely grease them and replace worn parts.
They can’t work at their limit all the time. They can’t be expected to always self-heal from the inevitable injuries. But every employer knows that there is plenty of supply. So, ultimately, they can be replaced when worn out. It’s just costly; and not very pleasant salon conversation.
Meantime, we can all talk about how children are being physically injured and adults are being mentally tormented, and about what paternalistic safety equipment and palliative programs we can enforce. It makes us feel like we’re doing something valuable. And that’s good for our mental well-being.
* I wrote this a few months ago and submitted it for op-ed… nothing.
The National Post headline says, Canada’s language watchdog probing John Baird’s Twitter account over lack of French posts. Sadly, the headline says it all. There is, of course, a story that challenges the requirements for a “public” account to be in both official language. That is, as opposed to a “personal” account. Implicit, of course, is the recognition that Twitter has a growing and overwhelming institutional side equivalent to broadcast media. After all, that’s what the parallel would be.
That challenges the entire notion of Twitter, a question or dark secret that ought to come out into the open: Twitter has been co-opted by the corporatists (as is everything eventually). All you Libertarian technologists take note.
In any case, isn’t this situation (i.e., a federal government minister, elected in a riding in the nation’s capital, who ought to be communicating with constituents in both official languages as appropriate for this circumstance) something that “the market” should address. And here, of course, “the market” is the electorate which can determine whether he is offside or not. Do we really need a public office to tilt at this windmill?
