Electronic Pearl Harbor could do 1 trillion dollars damage

If you want a quick and high quality update on the state of cybersecurity you should watch this episode of Ideas In Action.  Thousands of companies have been compromised, our government is spending billions, but are we doing enough?  Do we think there is a real threat?

If foreign governments are gaining access to our computer networks and stealing everything from designs of weapons systems to the formulas for drugs, is it an act of war?

Earlier this year I was at a conference where a cyber crime panel proclaimed that 50% of all credit cards are compromised and the banks know it -- but they don't want to say anything for fear it would destroy the marketplace for credit card services.  These compromised credit card numbers are routinely sold on the black market for 10% of the available balance.  So whoever is buying them plans to use them.  

Just yesterday I wanted to send some iTunes money to my daughter and found that Apple no longer does email iTunes gift cards -- I suspect because of the fraud.  

Many experts are waiting for the cyber crime equivalent of Pearl Harbor to wake up America and bring about the changes necessary to secure our systems from attack.  

We probably should all be thinking more about this.

Expectations and the Uncanny Valley

I find myself lucky to be exposed to the most interesting issues as I work on our RetroDex event.  In particular the intersection of virtual worlds and the real world.  Most recently I came across the subject of the Uncanny Valley on one of my favorite radio shows (podcasts), NPR's On the Media.

The Uncanny Valley is the name animators give to the negative correlation between audience acceptance of their craft as it approaches perfection.  In other words, as viewers we much prefer an animated being that looks animated enough to clearly not be human.  For the last decade or so, technology has enabled the creators of animated beings to enter the Uncanny Valley and render an image so lifelike that it disturbs the audience.  As a result, ever since Dreamworks created the first Shrek movie in 2001, technology ceased to be the limitation and the artists had to intentionally back off on the realism of their creations.

What a wild idea.  We like the way animations approximate the human form and are constantly asking for better and better animations.  But at some point the image generated leaves the realm of great animation and enters the realm of a human with flaws -- and we get nauseous.

There are many ways this translates into business.  One is linked to the common quip "Even the worst day [insert favorite activity here] is better than the best day at the office."  We work hard at CSG to create a great place to work and are making pretty good progress.  However, if we slip into a warped expectations zone like the uncanny valley we will never succeed.  After all work is work and not soaking up the sun on the beach.

The People Have Voted: Wall Street Still Not Safe

In our country government is less powerful than business.  This is probably the most visible in the military industrial complex, but there is evidence that the lobbyists call the shots in other areas as well.  A few months back I wrote in this post that Wall Street would not be regulated until it decided it was in its best interest to be regulated. 

Since then our representatives in Washington passed the financial reform bill in an effort to manage the forces that lead to the last melt down and possibly prevent a repeat.  During July, the very month the legislation passed, individual investors took $15 billion more out of equities than they put in, and so far this year, the total cash flow out of the stock market has been $33 billion.   The people are voting with their wallets and the verdict is that the stock market is not safe for the individual investor - reform legislation or not.  

If you don't know who the sucker is at the poker table -- it is probably you.  A couple more years of this and the Wall Street firms may just start asking for real reforms to reassure the public that the market is regulated and safe.

Intel Wants the Consumer

The grass is definitely greener on the consumer side of the fence in 2010.  Companies that have built their businesses on their ability to sell to the enterprise, or that are a step or two removed from direct access to the consumer, are looking for a the gate through the fence. Increasingly mobile is that gate, and it appears that Intel thinks McAfee is their best shot at getting over there.

It is much more fun as a writer to be negative on announcements like this -- and the business press is having their share of fun with Intel.  Anyone that wants the business press to be positive should remember not to surprise them.  A few good leaks will get some of the journalists onto your side ahead of the announcement.  With the exception of Steve Jobs, who gets to play by a different set of rules, scoop equals page views, page views equals happy writers, happy writers equals "this is a brilliant idea".

Intel depends on the PC makers to get its chips to market and has managed to dominate that business over the years through business tactics that just keep getting them in trouble with the Justice department and the EU.   The top PC makers in the world control over half of the sales of new PCs including HP (18%), Dell (13%), Acer (12%), Lenovo (10%), and Asus and Toshiba tied (5% each).  The industry is on the rebound, up 22% in Q2, so everyone is growing.  However, HP and Dell are growing only slightly, and the other guys are smokin' with growth rates up to 87% (Asus).

The deal to buy McAfee may or may not be a good idea, but it does signal Intel's concern over its traditional route to market, and its corresponding desire to find a new route.  Their best domestic friends are getting pounded by the guys in Asia, and they are increasingly prevented from pulling monopolistic stunts, so I would guess there will be more deals to follow.

Other coverage:  

BusinessWeek

WSJ Digits Blog

Daily Finance

Read Write Web

CNet (for the PC industry numbers)

Events Have Dates

The thing I like the most about events is their concrete connection to a specific date on the calendar.  An event is not an event unless it is actually scheduled for a specific date.  Sure an event can be moved -- but not without considerable pain and public notice.

Little things get accomplished in time for a weekly meeting, medium sized things get accomplished in time for the quarter end, and big things get accomplished in time for events.  The annual sales conference, or the big annual industry trade show, are the Superbowls of business.  Everything somehow ties into those dates.

As time marches relentlessly towards the date of an event, amazing people raise their level of performance to match the challenge and the most incredible things are accomplished.   The next time you really want to get something accomplished -- tie it to an event.

Real Meets Virtual

Yesterday we announced Retrodex, a live event in Seattle to compliment Comdex Virtual in November.  This real world and virtual world story gets more interesting every day and I find new examples regularly.  At what point does the virtual reality GPS display in the car get to be more useful than looking out the real window?  There have been bad weather days on my boat where GPS and Radar became the primary inputs of reality, and pilots have been flying IFR since the 50s.

National Geographic has a short piece running this month on augmented reality - which demonstrates the possibilities of a converged real and virtual experience.  Anyone with a camera equipped Andriod phone can put this type of capability today with Google Goggles.  I for one am looking forward to the day my phone whispers peoples names in my ear as they approach.  

Over the past two years we have virtualized all of our servers at CSG -- cutting the number of physical machines to a tenth of the prior number while increasing availability, uptime, and redundancy.  This very real example of the virtual machine skipping to a place ahead of the real machine in line is yet another example of the many layers of the real meets virtual world.

We all have the opportunity to use these new capabilities to improve our world.  Telemedicine and Distance Learning are just two examples of ways virtualization technologies can be put to practical use improving lives and the world.

We are delighted to be in the middle of this convergence.  In the event you are interested in following this story, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed of the Retrodex blog, or follow Retrodex on Twitter.

Another Golden Age?

A golden age is rarely appreciated in the present tense.  This could be because a golden age only becomes a golden age once the not fun parts are forgotten, and the memory of the fun parts expanded.  It is unlikely that early pilots and passengers were lamenting the end of the golden age of flight as the FAA was created.

54 years passed between the Wright Brothers first flight in 1904 and the creation of the FAA in 1958.  I doubt any of it was really the golden age.   Just last month the Wall Street Journal had this article on the Golden Age of Flight and how it may not have been so golden.  As someone who has gone through the process of getting a pilot's license, I am quite glad for the 50,000 people who work for the FAA and have experienced first hand how they make flying safer and more efficient.

Two years before the FAA was created, Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act into law. This kicked off what may have been the largest public works project ever:  $25 billion for the construction of over 40,000 miles of interstate highways.  These interstate highways, along with most other roads, in our country are highly regulated, and for good reason.  It does not take much imagination to realize that without standardization of the vehicles, regulation of speed and safety, enforcement of HOV lane use, and regulation of oversize loads, few of us would be able to rely on these highways for safe travel or commerce.

Even with the Federal Highway Administration, some processes associated with the governance of the interstates is cumbersome.  A quick look at the page on Wide Loads reveals that each individual state controls wide loads differently.  Making the moving of a mobile homes across the country quite a project -- even without having to worry about being chased by a tornado.  Making wide loads difficult may in fact be a good thing.

The roads in our country work because everyone drives on the right hand side of the road, cars are generally six feet wide and 15 feet long, weigh under 8,500 pounds, have four whees, bumpers that work and so on.

This brings us to the internet.  As far as I can tell, there is no regulation of the internet at this time.  Any computer connected to the internet can manage traffic any way it wants and any traffic on the internet can do anything it wants.  This works more or less because the internet has many routes from point A to point B and if one route does not work, another one will.  The size and number of the routes is always expanding as more fiber, routers, and computers are brought online every day.  The volume of data being moved on the internet is expanding even faster as we move from a time dominated by text to a time dominated by images, audio, and video.  

The belief that all network owners treat all traffic the same is illogical.  Network owners are free to manage their networks and they most certainly do.  The FCC has no way to know if a preference is given to some of the packets, and even if it did, it has no laws to enforce to ensure that the internet is being administered in a neutral way.  We must by now realize that some regulation is necessary.  In 2006 John Dvorak wrote in PC Mag about the end of the Golden Age of the Internet stating that a combination of factors is bringing the free for all to an end.  Whether or not as cranky as John Dvorak, I suspect even casual users of the internet have experienced the negative impact of either poor or inadequate regulation.

Just this week, Google was widely castigated for its negotiations with Verizon and subsequent recommendations to the government about the regulation of the internet.  They clarified their intentions in this post on Net Neutrality.  I think they are on the right track.  The internet will become regulated at some point and Google, and others in our industry, should use whatever means available to bring about a regulatory structure that works.

Without it, we will have a very real Tragedy of the Commons with everyone driving a wide load truck and no one getting anywhere.

Those of you that are interested in more reading on the topic should check out this post by Doc Searls.

The Scoble Effect

If you think you are a big time tech blogger, google your name plus the word effect.  Good chance you will get nothing.  Then google "the scoble effect" and notice that the every one of the first 10 items are links to articles about the impact Robert Scoble has on the tech industry.  

So in my quest to figure out if Comdex Virtual is going to be anything in November I sent out this tweet yesterday:

@Scobleizer How are you going to cover Comdex -- now that it is virtual?

You probably already know that Robert Scoble gained his big time reputation because he is in the front row with his live audio or video feed running at literally every significant tech event .  Conversely, in the turn about echo chamber that is the tech industry, a tech event is not big time if Robert Scoble is not there.  His answer:  

Hmmm.  UBM has some work to do.

Comdex the Verb

Some would say that the adoption of your brand name as the accepted description of an action, preferrably the action of using your product, is the pinnacle of branding.  Xerox did it, Google did it, Kodak almost did it, although with a Kodak Moment, the brand is really an adjective modifying a moment. 

Sure it could be great if it happens, but an overt effort to make it happen could backfire.  Are we really ever going to say we Binged it?  Trademark lawyers advise companies to do whatever they can to avoid the adoption of their brand name as a generic description of an action -- because at that point protecting the trademark becomes difficult if not impossible. In fact, Xerox did for many years invest heavily to discourage people from using their name as a verb.  What an interesting world we live in.

Comdex is making a comeback this year after six years of dormancy.  Like many technology companies or even the technology industry itself, Comdex had an unbelievable rocket ship ride from 1979 to 2003.  The event topped out at about the same time that the internet bubble reached its peak in 2000 -- with over 200,000 people attending the main event in Las Vegas, plus the organizers staged many other events scattered around the world throughout the year.  At the end Comdex was the show everyone loved to hate -- and there was plenty to hate about fighting it out with a hoard of fellow geeks -- just to get a hotel room or a taxi.  I suppose that during its time as a must attend event, people eventually came to chafe at the must part.

United Business Media bought the carcass of Comdex in 2006 and has elected to bring the event back this year.  The setting is still Las Vegas, but this time it is a virtual Las Vegas.  No lines, no crowds, and much cheaper for everyone.  This virtual (and green) version of Comdex will really be something to watch.  The spectacle of the real Comdex had a way of dominating the tech news.  Strangely, we are 93 days from the virtual event, and the tech media is amazingly silent.  Google it and you get the press releases from March, search on Twitter and you get references to the MCX Comdex commodities exchange, search on valleywag - nothing, search on techcrunch - nothing, digg - nothing, techmeme - nothing.  Even a search for comdex on the UBM site  produces zero results.  Amazingly, a search on techweb -- the event producer -- no results.  (bear in mind that these links are live searches on those sites, so if content has been added after this posting -- search results may vary)

The other UBM company behind the event, Everything Channel, does not have search functionality on its web site, but does list Comdex on its events page. 

Given this media vacuum it would not be accurate to say that the whole industry is waiting to see what happens on November 16th and 17th.  It will be interesting however to see if the popular adaptation of "to Comdex" as a verb is different on November 18th.  

Book Review: The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick

I quit using facebook in May.  I have also written many posts about facebook, and I have also promised not to rant about facebook anymore.  

Count this post as the point in time when I break all of those promises at once.  I have just turned my facebook account back on and will likely start using it again.  It is hard to argue against facebook's performance and usefulness.  

There is a conflict between the natural inclination to add friends (because everyone wants the biggest number of friends possible and nobody wants to be rude and unfriend people) and the simple fact that facebook is the most useful when your friends really are your friends.  Just about all of the anguish about facebook can be traced back to this issue.  David Kirkpatrick makes this point convincingly and I agree that if you want a good facebook experience, only accept friend invitations from people you want to share your personal life with.

Mark Zuckerberg does come off as a very smart, hard working, and self assured person.  Most importantly, he is aware that he has a great deal to learn and he has sought out some of the smartest people in the business and they have agreed to advise him.  From Marc Andreessen to Bill Gates to Steve Jobs, Mark is hanging out with some very smart people.

The book does not mention Donald Rumsfeld, but it would not surprise me if Mr. Zuckerberg has talked to him too.  Our former Secretary of Defense knew that embedded reporters need not be instructed to put a positive spin on the actions of the military units they are embedded with -- because the personal relationships formed during the action take care of that.  Same is true in this case.  The author had very good access to all parts of facebook, and by the time the book was finished, the cool aid had been consumed.  

Balanced account or not, the story is unbelievable.  From 0 to 1,400 employees and 500 million users in five years is a rocket ship ride an author could only dream of and Kirkpatrick does a good job of getting the story down on paper.  The early bidding war at a $1 billion valuation and Mark's ability to resist it -- absolutely a once in a lifetime thing for the author and his subject.

So whether or not you are a facebook fan, user, or detractor: this book is one you should read.  I still do think that facebook will eventually fail, because I think all closed systems will eventually fail.  Accordingly I will continue to invest most of my energy in building an identity outside of facebook.  But there is no denying facebook is useful and will be around for a long time.

One last note: I "read" the book by listening to it on Audible.  Unfortunately the author read it himself.  This is almost always a mistake -- if you can get the printed version -- do so.

Elegant Solutions

Hang around me long enough and invariably we will end up talking about how even seemingly intractable problems have solutions and how those solutions can be simple.  I believe that with the application of enough creativity and brain power an elegant solution will come to the surface.

To me the test for elegant-ness is whether or not experts and the uninitiated both respond by saying: "Wow, what a cool idea!"  I find exposure to elegant solutions to be one of the most inspiring things in life and I do what I can to expose myself to this type of greatness as much as possible.  Here are a few of my favorite examples:

Rotary International Overhead Funding:  All non profits struggle with the same problem:  how much donated money should they use to pay for overhead?  This is one of those double impact things because any money that goes to overhead does not go to the cause -- and also discourages people from donating.  As a long time Rotarian, I am inspired by Rotary International's policy of placing all donations in the bank for three years before spending them, and then using the interest earned to fund overhead.  With this policy, Rotary can truthfully state that 100% of your donation goes to the cause.  

HBS Case of the Slow Elevator:  While it is mostly an urban legend, there is the story of a business school class with the assignment of justifying the installation of faster elevators.  The best answer -- install mirrors in each lobby so the customers will not mind waiting for slow elevators.  

MicroFinance:  Many organizations worldwide have now copied the model established by Grameen Bank to help raise the standard of living of the poorest people on earth.  Simply, loan small amounts to women with a business idea.  It works and Grameen Bank has now loaned over $7 Billion to 8 million people (in 2009 97% of the recipients were women) in over 83,000 villages.  

Gamers Help Science:  As reported in The Economist, Seth Cooper from the University of Washington created Foldit, a computer game that uses non-scientists to do useful scientific work.  He has attracted 57,000 users who donate their time (while playing the engaging game) to do work that the most sophisticated analytical software tools cannot accomplish.  

Wow, what a cool idea!

My Photo Sharing Education

Digital cameras have done a great deal for photography and it is time the web services end of the photo industry get its act together. I take several thousand pictures per year and do what I can to keep them organized.  Here is a short history of the things I have experienced when it comes to taking, sharing, and organizing pictures.

On the Mac:  In around 2003 I went to Macs big time with the thought that if anyone was going to figure this out it would be Apple.  I used all of the Apple tools like iPhoto, iMovie... and was having a great time.  I could sync all of my photos with my big iPod classic in full image mode -- so I had a regularly synced backup too.  All was good.  Then the wheels came off.  I got a new Sanyo Xacti HD video camera -- but the video format was incompatible with the mac.  There were converters, but the quality was terrible.  What is the point of taking HD video if you have to convert it to another format that looks bad?  Shortly after that the hard drive on my Mac G5 desktop failed and I lost all of my pictures.  I could get them back on my iPod -- but the folders (iPhoto's version of tagging) were all gone.  Ouch.  10,000 organized pictures now unorganized.

Windows Photo Gallery:  So I switched to Windows Photo Gallery.  The main reason was that the meta data is in a standard file format and independent of the Windows Photo Gallery software.  So if I ever decided to switch -- all of the work I would do organizing would go along with me.  Also, the organizing by date, the tagging, the integration of video and stills together, and the close integration with Windows Movie Maker -- were all attractive.  It turns out that I had just blown out of iMovie on the Mac because a new version left all of the past versions orphaned -- what was that?!?!

Video Formats:  I am still on Windows Photo Gallery but am not all that happy and am looking for another solution.  I now have a second HD video camera, this one from Sony, and the HD format is different and requires more converting before the video can be used in Windows Photo Gallery or any other software.  Somebody has got to figure this stuff out.  The codec thing is driving me crazy and my Windows machine is giving me the goofy "COM Surrogate has stopped working" error all of the time.  I have no reduced functionality and I cannot figure out what causes this, but I just minimize the error to the toolbar and call it good.  If I"X" it out, it just comes right back but if I minimize it -- it just sits there talking to itself and more or less leaves me alone.  Just a constant reminder of how screwed up computers can be.

Sharing:  I don't share photo's on Facebook because I want to control who sees them.  I am also trying to figure out how to allow my friends to get full image files of my photos.  I like Shutterfly for the private web sites it makes so easily and how the members I invite can add comments or contribute pictures.  But Shutterfly does not have image download.  I am just now trying Picasa -- but without downloading the desktop app -- the functionality is quite bad.  It seems to me that every photo sharing site either wants to you use their photo printing service (Shutterfly; Kodak Gallery...), download their software (Picasa...), or take away control of who sees you photos (Facebook...).  This area of the computer experience is very broken and should present an opportunity to someone.

Microsoft:  It would not surprise me if Microsoft has a solution to this somewhere in the Live thing.  But everytime I sit down to try to figure out what is up with Live I just cannot get my head around it.  I think it is because Microsoft wants you to be all in and therefore integrates hotmail, Messenger, and other things I don't use regularly into one experience and I just cannot figure out how it works.  When I gave it another try today was presented with a friends list (which I don't ever remember setting up, but could have over the years somehow) and they were not really any of my friends.  I could add friends but not remove them, not easily anyway... so that trail is dead too.

So for now I am sharing photos with Picasa.  Someone I invite can get the full image downloaded, but they must install the desktop application first.  

If anyone out there has a better solution -- please save me!

I Bet Mark Hurd Wishes Women Would Get Off the Elevator Too

Harry Truman reportedly would get off an elevator if a woman got on it.  I don't think it was discrimination, but rather he thought it too great a risk to be in a confined space without others around where he would find himself in a he said, she said situation.

Yesterday's widely covered resignation of Mark Hurd from HP due to legations of poor judgement in the context of mixed gender relations demonstrates that some sixty years and several waves of liberations later, the interaction of men and women in the workplace is still complicated and explosive.

As the father two incredible daughters, two individuals that are every bit as capable as any male, my response to the Hurd incident is disappointment.  I am disappointed that one of the best performing CEOs in the tech industry got into this situation, and I am disappointed that my daughters may still have to deal with high profile men that will get off the elevator in fear instead of treating them as equals.

Here is the incendiary part:  that still nameless woman, who when exposed to Mark Hurd's poor judgement did not get off the elevator herself, but instead continued to dig the hole deeper and then file a harassment case -- has participated in setting back the march towards gender equality -- no matter how justified she might be.

Here is some of the coverage in the NY Times and WSJ.

Who Talks on the Phone Anymore

Clive Thompson has a great piece in wired magazine right now about how minutes talking on the phone have been on the decline since 2007.  He points to the rise of other means of staying in touch, and the rising practice of text, email, or chat precursors to a call asking for permission.  I would imagine that caller ID helps us to not answer calls that we don't want -- further reducing the volume of calls.

I remember a time a few years back when I would come out of an hour long meeting and have 5 to 7 new voicemail messages -- in just one hour!  I had to clear out the box multiple times during a single day just to make sure callers were not presented with the voicemail box full message.

Now I have my voicemails delivered to my email box with caller ID info in the subject line.  Most of them never get listened to and I also get to listen to the ones I want in the order I want (like email).

The one thing that I would like to add to Clive's post:  I have more scheduled conference calls than ever before.  This must map to the expanded geography of the people I am working with, but I find myself doing this even for people close by that I would have otherwise met in person.

I wonder if this is tracked in the survey referenced, because often we will have ten or more people on these calls for a full hour -- something we never would have done before.  Also, does the tracking capture VOIP services like Skype and Google Voice -- there could be a rotation to that mode that is not visible to the phone data trackers.

Next up:  Video calls.  We are currently expanding our calling capabilities to have conference calls enhanced with video.  So don't count the phone as dead just yet.

Re-Entering Civiliziation

I have been out on vacation for the last couple of weeks and to my surprise was able to just about disconnect from the news stream.  Today I am reconnecting through one of my favorite activities -- reading the Sunday NY Times.  This has sparked a string of maybe a dozen blog post ideas, some of which I will just rip out here and then come back and dig into deeper in the days ahead.

What is China Going to do in Afghanistan?

China is not even in Afghanistan!  Well, the British were there a hundred years ago, and it contributed to their fall from world leadership, the Russians were there in the '80s and it drained their coffers, and we are getting humbled there now as detailed in the Wikileaks story of last week.  So could it be that China's rising star will land there next?

Waste and Corruption are the Same Thing

Following this thought, if we were to assess corruption by a the single measurement of money wasted, the US would be the most corrupt country on the planet.  The big numbers of course are: $1T on military spending and unneeded wars, $1T on the half of healthcare that makes our system cost twice as much as the next one on the list and without any incremental benefit, $1T of bail outs of banks and other institutions that don't reform, and $500B in trade deficits created by buying more from others than we can convince them to buy from us.   I am not sure how to parse the interest we pay on past debts, and undoubtedly there are many smaller numbers to add up.  So let's just call it $5 trillion wasted every year -- no one can top that!

The Internet as Border Town

From the NY Times piece on Mexico today: "In 1958, Orson Welles used the border as backdrop for his classic noir film “Touch of Evil.” (“This isn’t the real Mexico,” says the character Mike Vargas. “You know that. All border towns bring out the worst in a country."  

The story goes on to list all of the bad stuff you can do in Tijuana -- all of which you can get on the Internet quite easily: porn, sex, gambling, danger... maybe not drugs so much but I am sure if you looked hard enough you could.

Apple and Facebook are underway building the new AOLs to protect us from our attraction to a quick trip across the border for a little fun.

Alarming the Alarmists

The BP oil spill may have been avoided had the crew not disabled the alarm.  When was the last time you got up to see if the neighbors home or car alarm actually meant there was a robbery underway?  Not a day goes by without someone trying to tell us that we should pay more attention to the global temperature alarm.  Our economic indicators for GDP and unemployment are at a constant full volume. Now that we are so overloaded with alarm inputs -- how are we possibly going to focus our attention on the important things?

Often vacation is referred to as slowing down.  This high temperature re-entry into the news atmosphere leads me to believe that my vacation somehow released me from the usual confines and now I am returning to earth. 

Signs of the Future

Attracting customers to a business has involved putting an image in front of the largest population possible with the hope that some of them will come to your physical store.  This proved to be such a popular business tactic that municipalities started regulating retail signage with building codes and city ordinances.  It seems that voters like retail signs about as much as they like junk mail.  But we still have plenty of both -- so they must be effective.

 

(Credit for this photo goes to the blog Ephemeral New York)

Now that an increasing number of customers come equipped with GPS / mapping smart phones, the need for physical signs could become a thing of the past.  Search for what you want on the web, get directions, watch yourself blink across the map on the way there and you can find what you are looking for without ever looking at a sign in the physical world.

(Credit for this photo to the Observer.com)

One of these days we may find ourselves telling our kids that back in the old days we had to find things with the phone book, printed map, and signs posted on the side of buildings.  

How Good is Good Enough?

When building a product, or delivering a service, quality is a very big contributor to buyer/user satisfaction.  Anyone who has ever sought zero defects in either a manufacturing or service delivery context will tell you it is not possible.  True, custom one offs can get pretty close -- but I would argue that a volume of one unit does not a manufacturing process make.

I am sure there is a study out there (let me know if you have one) that shows the increasing investment required to capture each additional percent of quality.  I would bet that once you get over 90% the cost curve turns up pretty hard, that over 95% it is too steep to climb, and that as it approaches 100% it goes nearly vertical.  

So knowing that the extreme cost prevents an outright avoidance of defects, what next?  Here are three ideas:

1. Communicate that you know the facts of life. It is hard to be credible while saying that you strive for 100% quality.  Such statements do not empower the people in your organization that handle the exceptions.  If five of every 100 products is returned -- just say so.  
2. Don't pocket all of the money.  Cutting back on the pursuit of 100% quality can sometimes lead to a budget windfall.  After all, each percentage point on the way back down the quality cost curve will reduce costs dramatically.  Make sure to invest some of that money in other customer satisfaction initiatives.  You could even reward customers for finding defects -- i.e. shifting QA cost to the customer.
3. Be extraordinary at exception handling.  Nordstrom accepts returns of products they don't even sell, Costo accepts returns on electronic items, make sure that when the roulette wheel of defects calls your customer's number -- you are there to make the experience as good as possible.

Customers know products or services cannot be 100% defect free.  They can be satisfied with an exception handling process.  Just admit the problem,  give them something, and do it like a pro.

MetaWork

If metadata is data about data, then I say metawork is data about work.  I am sure this is not most accurate translation, but go with me just for this post.

When working on a team information about what you are doing is almost as important as the work itself.  Your team needs to know what you are accomplishing and when you are accomplishing it in order to synchronize the work of the team effectively.  The faster the pace of work, the more important information about the work becomes -- because more of the work is being done in parallel.  

There are many new tools available to make documenting work in progress as easy as possible.  Blogs, microblogs, and wikis are great ways to capture information quickly and make it accessible to the people you work with.  The two things working against efforts to capture information about work are perception about what work is, and security.

What is Work

I count myself as a person who used to think that writing reports, sharing information about work in progress, going to meetings, and other "corporate" mumbo jumbo is a waste time.  I was the first one to say that stuff was not real work.  Real work was making deals and ringing the revenue bell.  

Every organization has a person or two that does the meta part to the extreme.  Their emphasis on building the file for CYA, or trying to win favor from execs by taking credit for the work of others, is enough to turn anyone off on good documentation.

Somewhere between the gun slinger that wants to ride in with the big deal at the end and the all talk no action kiss up is the person with just the right balance of work and metawork.

Security

Those that want to kill off open communication usually sound the security alarm.  Their organizations have barriers to the free flow of information erected to protect IP, or prevent competitors from gaining an advantage, or something of the sort.

Sensitive information, or even not so sensitive information out of context, can be used by enemies or competitors to do harm.  

I think that if there is someone on your team that wants to do harm -- security measures are not going to do much good.  Loyal employees treated well don't broadcast sensitive information.  Open communication uninhibited by security measures build loyalty in a paradoxical answer to the security naysayers.

Some Quick Rules of Thumb

* Spend a tenth of your time documenting

* If you think a team mate can re-use your work - document

* If you think a team mate is counting on your delivering something - document

* If you want to get feedback on your thinking - document

* If you want to get buy in to your thinking - document

* When in doubt go open (open = trust and loyalty)

* Don't wait until everything is settled to openly communicate

* If you find yourself keeping secrets -- ask why (and then communicate).

What are you NOT going to do?

Leaders spend a good deal of time talking about what they or their organizations are going to do.  At times more effort should be put on what they or their organizations are not going to do.  Everyone listening will code and decode the messages and decide for themselves what the leader is saying.   Without a concrete and credible declaration on what is not happening -- controlling the message is difficult.

Cortez Burned His Ships

When Cortez landed in Mexico his first order was to burn his own ships.  He had long ago proclaimed they were going to Mexico to conquer it, his men already knew that.  Without the ships it was pretty clear they were absolutely committed to winning the conquest.  Do:  Conquer.  Not Going to Do:  Retreat.

Palmisano Sold the PC Division

When Samuel Palmisano took over as Chairman and CEO of IBM in 2002 he engaged in a company wide debate over the values of the company.  He then wrote an email to the entire company proclaiming their newly articulated values.  Then in 2004 he sold the PC division.  Sure IBM had many product lines before the PC.  But for 20 years the PC had been a big part of IBM's image.  For many years the PC was called the IBM PC -- just like copiers were called Xerox machines -- even when made by Ricoh.  Do: Follow our Values.  Not Going to Do: Exempt any part of the company.

When deciding what you or your organization is going to do, articulating what you are not going to do is just as important.

Bank Shopping

Lately I have been shopping for a new bank.  The last time I did this was about seven years ago.  The comparison of the things I consider important in the decision says a lot about how fast our world is changing.

in 2003 my number one criterion was personal service.  I was leaving a large bank's private banking group where I had been for ten years or more.  The service had been amazing, and probably very expensive for the bank.  At that time the service took a noticeable turn for the worse; so either the bank had decided not to continue to invest in amazing service, or not to continue to invest in me as a customer.  Either way I was leaving in search of a replacement.  I also wanted my new bank to have online banking -- this was a Yes/No thing -- either the bank had it or it did not. 

Now my number one measure is online banking, second is security which is closely related on online banking, and third is branch locations, and customer service is fourth.  

Online Banking and Security

We all now know that all online banking experiences are not the same.  We also all know that everyone  "has online banking".  We have also been exposed to many online banking systems as our credit card companies have changed hands.  From this alone, I was able to try out the Bank of America online system because of my Alaska Airlines Visa card, the Chase online system because of my Amazon Visa card, and the US Bank online system because of my Travel Perks Visa card.  This demonstrated that all online experiences are not the same.  

Here is where security comes in.  I want my online banking to be secure.  I also want to be able to use it.  If the security measures are so extreme that I can't understand them -- or cannot get them to work -- that is a problem.  If they are too easy -- then I have to wonder when the Russians are going to get into my account.  I am sure security is a very hard thing to do well.  The measure is simple though.  If I can get in -- then I can use the system.  If not -- not.  

It was over security that I eliminated US Bank for the simple reason that it could never remember my machine -- and made me re-enter my extra security information every time.  I probably would have been OK with this -- after all I can remember 2 passwords and 2 makes it more secure.  But they put that check box about remembering this computer -- so I was trained to expect a better experience and they did not deliver.  There were other smaller functionality things that pushed them out the door.

It was over functionality that I eliminated Bank of America.  Their online banking system is like their bank.  A conglomeration of acquired units that really don't work all that well together.  The checking account group is different from the credit card group, every state is different, business and personal are different fiefdoms.  What a mess.  If you ever get on the phone with someone to help -- it is always the wrong person.  In addition, some parts of the online experience just don't work and without explanation.  At Bank of America it seems that online dysfunction follows real life dysfunction.  Not for me.

So Chase was left standing and I still had not graduated past my first two factors.  

Branches -- Really?

These are modern times, we do most of our banking online, so why do branches matter?  Two reasons:  kids and travel.  I want to teach my kids about banking and I want to do so by walking into a branch with their cash and handing it over the counter.  It is unlikely that they are going to be getting direct deposit of their allowance anytime soon.  

It is true that ATM cards work everywhere and should take care of any banking need that could occur while traveling.  However, being able to walk into a branch anywhere and have my issue addressed is still important to me.  Whether I need to get cash, notarize something, send a wire, get my credit card turned back on -- it seems like these days travel equals credit card suspension-- or exchange currencies, I want a large branch network.

People -- Still Make a Difference

So I opened an account to try it out.  After all, you never really know until you experience it first hand.  The people at Chase were great.  They even gave me their cards with direct phone numbers on them.  They got me all set up and were eager to win other business from me.  A very good experience.  Someone who knows what is important is running that company.

Business Lessons Learned

The business lessons that were reinforced for me through this experience were:

1. Partnerships matter:  The only banks I evaluated were ones I had been introduced to through the bank's credit card partners.  
2. Be careful of the Y/N:  Many bank executives probably still think of online banking as something they have. (i.e "We have that").  New innovations tend to get adopted in that way.  The difference in quality is important.  Having a car is different than having a BMW.
3. People Still Matter:  Customer service fell to number four on my list because my expectations had dropped so far that I was not inclined to make a decision based on it.  I don't think I would be a satisfied customer if I had signed up at Chase and had a bad in person experience.  And I definitely would not be writing this blog post