This positions the original department to better tackle its emerging burdens, and clears work for which it was not optimally suited.  Many organizations shuffle burdens, resources and people during major reorganizations, and reorganizations are necessary from time-to-time.  But what we’re talking about here are things that can be achieved between departments, without a lot of research and analysis.  These are things that are large enough to be viewable through a common sense lens.

Often times organizations find that they’ve placed work, not according to where it is supposed to reside, but rather where the organization “found” someone willing or able to do it (perhaps forcing the issue).  Over time, these sorts of placements wobble out of balance as personnel change or move up in the organization – the original good-hearted person who took on the work, or perhaps had a natural talent for it, is no longer in the position.  That’s a problem.  These placements of work are not even prudent at the outset – placing work based on personalities, or a reason other than appropriate business discipline, is shortsighted and does not build a solid foundation.

“I’d just like to say that tomorrow is my brother’s birthday. Lieutenant Colonel John Smith, of Oshkosh, Maryland is 50 years old.”

It’s interesting to note that we have a fair amount of info for piecing together… identity theft:

Name
Rank
Date of Birth
City and State

If you think this is being a little paranoid, remember this saying: Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean no one is out to get you. The real trouble here is the efficiency involved. It’s one thing to mention this information to a small group of people – perhaps some of whom you don’t know well. It’s quite another to divulge this information nationally, to millions of people (and that is this particular show’s audience numbers).

With a little diligence, an identity thief can cruise past this person’s mailbox, and steal even more critical identifying information. As a start, the info above is enough of a foundation to make that cruise a good investment in time. Also, “spoofing” then becomes more easily leveraged; the contact of this person, either via e-mail, USPS mail, or even in person.  One example is a spoof whereby someone poses as the representative of a veteran’s organization, and asks to “verify” information:

“Hello Colonel Smith, we have your city and state as Oshkosh, Maryland – is that correct?  Thank you.  We also have your date of birth as 12/16/62 – is that correct?  Would you please provide your Social Security Number for verification?  Thank you Sir.”  You get the idea.  It happens quite frequently.

The newscaster could have said, merely, “I’d like to wish my brother a Happy Birthday… tomorrow is his birthday” – and left it at that. However, if it were me, I would say nothing. In the first place, a national news audience doesn’t particularly care, and while the mention “on air” might please his brother, it’s really not worth it. It’s not that big a deal in personal terms – being that it’s likely that a phone call will be made (or can be made, in lieu of the on air greeting) later.

It’s time to think very carefully about what you do: What you reveal; to whom; where; and when (are others nearby who can overhear? Online – are systems truly secure?).

In divulging personal information, regardless of the reason, always ask yourself:  Is this something that I have to provide? If it is truly necessary, is this the superior way to do it?

What this newscaster did is fine… for the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s… etc. – maybe. But in today’s times?

NO. WAY.  Be careful out there.

IT security in any realm involves logical security and physical security.  Logical security is the integrity of data (content), precision of associated processing, and the delivery of coherent, accurate, content.  In other words, data that reflects reality; data that does not mislead or distort various actuals by virtue of distortion/errors of input, process, and output.

Physical security is such things as locked doors on computer rooms.  It’s the safety and surety of infrastructure; protection against overheating, for example.  Physical security is often mundane; don’t set your coffee on a server, for example.

Mobile is especially vulnerable within the realm of physical security.  Devices are constantly transported, their owners on the go, and they can be lost or stolen.  Ensure that users make immediate reportage of loss or theft.  Consider strong encryption, as any content risks exposure.

As to logical security, determine whether users access organizational resources via a virtual-private-network (VPN), or the internet.  Also, ensure strong malware protections are emplaced on devices.

In BYOD environments, that last is especially important:  It’s hard to know where users will be surfing, and what manner of personal downloads will be transpiring.  Regularized scanning for viruses, malware, and unauthorized intrusions is imperative.

[Please see Part I and Part II of this series if you haven’t yet]

Let’s discuss some specifics in determining whether your IT structure is optimal, and if not, how to get it on the right footing.  Essentially, you should be able to perform a review according to the simple model below.  You can extend and apply this view to your own organization’s IT structure.  Look for any misplaced work, gaps, uneven distribution of load, and general inefficiencies.

¨      Assess current positions by relevancy and number.

¨      Match your positions to standard “field definitions.”

¨      Eliminate, add, combine, or separate positions as necessary.

¨      Adjust individual positions as necessary.

¨      Redistribute work as necessary.

¨      Ensure a balanced load.

Let’s take a more detailed look at each of these:

Assessing current positions by relevancy and number:  Positions should be surveyed against organizational needs, and against the positions’ standings against standard field definitions.

You, or someone prior, may have apportioned specific duties and loads based on something other than an optimal structure for your particular organization.  Often times the original reasons for distributions of effort no longer apply – if they ever really did.  It’s important to fix any imbalances and inequities.  Compounding problems can sneak up on an organization over time.  Not only do the internal requirements change: the outside field of IT itself evolves around you.  Coming will be new scales of computer hardware and architecture, supporting ever more powerful software applications; new leveraging of the Cloud; entirely new focuses and disciplines.  Evolving supports and disciplines are not only enabling, they establish dependency and vulnerability, and therefore burdens of support.  Too, other equipment or products may reduce or otherwise shift burdens.

As the climate of business changes, your organization’s burden in meeting outside expectations can change radically.  Your environment will need new scales of skill, talent, and imagination in maintaining your environment.  There will be an immediacy that makes new demands of Business – and thus Business’ demands of Technology.  We’ve mentioned the Five-Year Plan in these regards – it should have a template item regarding your evolving burden and type of work, and its influence on your positions and support posture.  You’ll then have a proactive collection of salient facts, coming into sharper relief as the years click forward, and you’ll be less reactive and far better situated to make necessary job and position changes. 

Match your positions to standard IT definitions:  Try to keep your position descriptions within the bounds of accepted IT standard job definitions.  This creates efficiencies in managing and supporting your IT environment and business environment.  It also lends to efficiencies in managing the structures of jobs themselves, and the people in them.  You have ready reference on the Internet to a variety of job descriptions for known job categories, and these can serve as your templates as you fine-tune your own internal job descriptions.  You’ll also have ready access to the standards to which these jobs should be performed – and, you’ll have matching professional training resources for when you need to send people to training.  Too, it becomes easier to replace people as they exit the organization, or move up.  Interviewing candidates for positions is far easier when your positions adhere to known, “industry”, standards.  Staffing is a smooth, efficient, process.  In the modern organization, this must be a tenet:  That which can be routine, must be made routine.  Anything less is inefficient, and therefore, expensive.

The positions should fit together like puzzle pieces to create a seamless structure of support to the Business environment.  Over time, you may start to experience gaps between the pieces (the positions); that’s when you determine the correct course of action to close the gaps (to cover the new area[s] of support):  either through assignment of the work to an existing position, creation of a new position, or the determination that the work belongs in the Business sphere. 

Add, eliminate, combine, or separate positions/duties as necessary.  Take a careful look at each position in IT.  Compare the described duties within each position with standard job definitions.  Many of us have seen network managers who were performing programming on behalf of programmers, seen HelpDesk technicians tuning databases, seen programmers performing HelpDesk calls – not as an overlapping backup between positions, but as a matter of routine. 

A lot of times this happens because individuals within the user body start to develop “favorites” – people whom they prefer for support.  This favoring is independent of what a support person is supposed to be doing in the larger sense, and may mean that the support person has to dig for details or knowledge that are already known by the appropriate support person.  It’s tempting to go to your favorite IT person with every request, whether that person is the primary responder for the type of assistance you’re seeking or not.  This can exert a slow gravitational pull, whereby everyone in IT begins to assume a “jack of all trades, master of none” kind of posture.  SMB are particularly vulnerable here.

Business leaders should help to ensure that calls for help by staff are made through the appropriate avenue.  They should call a HelpDesk number, as opposed to specific individuals, and the HelpDesk can dispatch appropriate help, or escalate the issue as necessary.  The IT leader has to fully explain the process to Business, and the IT leader has to enforce the discipline necessary to ensure an efficient use of support resources. 

At the same time, work may be flowing against the grain of your position definitions for very valid reasons.  Work may actually be settling into a correct alignment, but across the lines of positions (even departments on occasion).  You may very well determine that the manner and flow of work needs to be codified as it is, with new position descriptions that reflect the correct order of things as they already informally stand.  As necessary, get the primary responsibilities where they belong, and defined correctly, so as to manage, document, acknowledge and reward people properly.  This will become increasingly important as each job position takes on new responsibilities within its specific scope.  I aids in planning the future of the position, in seeking better cost efficiency, in contributing to security, and so on.

There does need to be an effective overlap of some knowledge between jobs, obviously – but not to the point of diminished returns and inefficient redundancies. 

We’ll wrap up in the next article.

NP:  I Remember You, Coleman Hawkins, jazz24.org.

Not to sound too forward-thinking, but McAfee just released an interesting report:  In the Dark:  Crucial Industries Confront Cyberattacks.

It’s rather amazing that whole industries, as well as the entities that populate those industries – large, medium and small business – are lagging in the face of crucial threats.

Those threats not only comprise cyber war, cyber attack, and even “inside jobs” mounted by dissatisfied employees, or preventable breaching incidents manifested through human error, but also enterprises face peril from large-scale threats to infrastructure as manifested by terror attack or destructive weather events.

Consider a pre-Katrina business in New Orleans.  Yep – be sure to lock those doors, set the nightly backup, and while we’re at it, let’s minimize all the single-points-of-failure elements we can…  In the meantime, all that care and concern – and business –  washed away in the comprehensibility of a flood  because no one heeded the warnings about under-spec’d levies.

What of sole-proprietorships?  Given all the tornados in the mid-West at the moment, what is a prudent plan for business continuity if the house blows away?  Life does go on… and so must business.

I felt the gap between awareness for potential of large-scale bad events (both internally sourced, and external), and solid security postures, even in Fortune100 environments.  Here, you might expect best awareness and allied practices, but no:  Often, the business element, IT’s governance, would be unwilling to engage, and then only grudgingly make budget available for the thinnest of security standings for recoveries.  It was a vulnerable feeling, I must tell you.

I like to think that I’m a little ahead of the pack.  In the last chapter of I.T. Wars:  Managing the Business-Technology Weave in the New Millennium (Ch:  What’s at Stake) I discuss large perils to enterprises, and what the “local” organization (that is, yours) should begin to think about doing.  I propose regional BizSec teams (business security), comprised of leading minds from a variety of regional organizations.  Solutions always start with discussion by proactive people…

It’s something to think about doing in this, still, new millennium.  Stay safe!

NP:  Blue Rondo à la Turk.  Jazz24.org.  Brubeck – ‘nuff said.

IT and Business folks:  Whether you’re a C-Level executive, or positioned at, say, a HelpDesk, or you’re a network manager, account executive, etc., you can help with something very important these days given the economic climate.

You can help to make budgets more efficient. 

Today, efforts to reduce cost in the face of difficult economic times cannot be handled with temporary cuts, or episodes of suspended or revolving service – at least not entirely.  Further, once you’ve eliminated the obvious budget “fluff” and other “nice to haves”… we find that we really get down to the skinny.  We have to put on our thinking caps… we have to get truly imaginative.

Let’s also mention:  The smart organization provides incentives and (usually cash) awards to those who help to make the organization more efficient and cost-effective.

In scrubbing for savings and efficiencies, look to similar organizations to see what they’ve done.  Also, participate wherever possible in strategic groups, inside and out, that not only can help to create your future – but to create that future as economically and as powerfully as possible.

Keep these traits firmly fixed in mind when reviewing expenditures against that which must be done:  Quality, effectiveness and efficiency… and necessity.  Ever run across something that runs great, is perfectly sized (in terms of optimization and reliability), and does a great job of production… of something… that no one is using??  Or that gets produced elsewhere, in a discreet, tandem system?  Or that comes from one area, and with minor re-purposing, could serve other areas?

I’ve seen that plenty – and likely so have you.  Regardless, watch for redundancies and wasted efforts and resources.  So –

1.    Survey for reusable frameworks and solutions that can be repurposed, or whose deliveries and services can be widened, for other areas.

2.   Look for strategic partners and constituent groups who can partner with you in leveraging ideas, resources, and solutions to the common good of the whole – granting economies of scale.

3.   IT leaders:  Lead discussions in “business language” in seeking negotiation, acquiescence, collaboration, and potential compromise between business units and departments in capitalizing on best leverage of resources and best returns.

4.   All should be looking to understand as wide an enterprise context as possible in seeking to capture best quality, efficiency and effectiveness; within practicable limits (that is, in view of your authority, available time, etc. – don’t enter a zone of diminishing return).

5.   Watch for opportunities to educate external controlling or influencing bodies, such as boards and governing agencies.  Seek their help, or at least their understandings, regarding your efforts for budget efficiencies, thereby thwarting inadvertent harming circumstances that can damage your efforts of spending control.

6.   Ensure “right sourcing” of core services, procurements of product, etc.  If there is something you haven’t shopped in awhile, shop around!

Also keep in mind that, for some areas, there are likely new directions to go in reaching destinations of “new normals.”  New normals that are more effective and efficient.  These will differ according to your organization’s mission, size, and related suite of products, services, and other resources that enable the conduct of your organization’s business.  Again, look to like-organizations for ideas, and churn through the list above.

Effective budgets are always in fashion, but now more than ever there is real opportunity to shine in this area.  I hope you score some great ideas, and… I hope your organization is savvy enough to provide meaningful rewards.

August 28^th:  On this day in 1922, WEAF in New York City airs the first  radio commercial (Queensboro Realty – $100 for 10 minutes).

IT leaders – CTOs, CIOs, Directors, Managers, et al., who want to shine need to deliver according to business expectations. IT leaders who want to be heroes – that is, viewed as virtually indispensable to the organization - need to deliver on expectations and beyond.

Competing for your enterprise’s top concern is the issue of Business Productivity/Cost Reduction: In short, doing more with less. In fact, when surveyed it rolls in and out for the #1 concern along with Business-IT alignment. [Source: Society for Information Management].

Of course on its face, the “with less” part seems counter-intuitive to the “doing more” part. If we have less, spend less, have fewer people to do something, are we not then facing a constriction in what we can do?… produce?… deliver? Too many IT leaders default to this sum, as do too many business leaders and general staff.

Often times, having more money and resources actually leads to the delivery of duplicitous, competing systems.  Organizations and various elements within feel that they have to expend a budget so as to avoid having budgets cut the following year (government is a great example of this area of waste – and the resultant doing of less with more, for that matter).  Too, there is the pressure to constantly deliver something… anything – and deliveries within the wrong motivators are of dubious value.

Deliveries should fulfill value to business, and fulfill (fully vetted) business expectations.

Otherwise, organizations face an embarrassing wealth of “assists” to business – often bleeding across the line of diminishing returns: Training burdens, staff avoidance, silo’d systems – and a tax of sorts on the legitimate core systems by removing focus from them. Watch too for “pet” systems that have a business person’s  sponsorship, and their resultant feelings for vested reputation by virtue of whether that system lives or dies – no matter how cumbersome or ill-serving!

I am presently consulting at an organization that has made very poor demands of staff for fully utilizing core assets. Prior to my involvement, the organization’s take was to provide a bouquet of collateral products in assisting staff in performing their jobs, at staff’s request – until there was a dizzying fracture of reinforcing content, tons of hardcopy report output for delivery and share between departments, and a huge training burden for new, and even existing, staff. It was sort of like an anti-matter swirl of anti-ERP.

Incredibly, staff was quite receptive to a message about culture and some associated change: That is, to be a little more proactive in delving into core system’s robust online Help resources, to access authorized reference info on the web, and to be a little more self-sufficient in widening their facility within, and use of, systems and programs.  A monthly roundtable knowledge share is working quite well too, with a business person as leader with IT assist.

You can drive your organization to do more with less. But you have to be smart about it: praise staff’s present facility (even if it’s not particularly good) – soften all the blows. Then seek some willingness to explore, and to step up. However, be certain to gain sanction and support from your senior executive class – make certain they understand what it is you’d like to do, and what the payoff will be. It is they, with the true power, who must backstop the expectations for other leaders and staff in their best use of systems and resources.

When doing more with less, things not only become simpler, but easier. “Simpler” by definition is not the same as “easier.” Here what I’m speaking of is pairing a less-complicated – simpler – environment with staff’s capitalization on it by making themselves ever-more qualified to capture efficiencies and full-use, thus making their lives easier.

Mistakes should go down, interactions should be smoother and more efficient, and time saved can be leveraged to better oversights and ever more self-training and formal training. An accrual of returns.

I’m actually a hero (at least for the moment) – I don’t mean to brag, but if they’re calling me that, I’ll take it!

Want to be a hero?

July 17^th: On this day in 1867, the first permanent university dental school opens in the U.S., at Harvard.