Do You Know How To Avoid Catching A Bug?

As some of you who follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus know, I frequently share articles on cyber security and the potential threat of infection. Malware of all kinds are appearing and they run rampant on the internet. Authors predict cyber attacks will result in everything from identity theft to the annihilation of mankind.

On any given day you can read about new threats discovered, a variant of an older piece of code modified to be even more clever and evade detection. These programs hide in the background of computers, poking and prodding, collecting information and even delivering the electronic goods to the bad guys.

Companies and governments are very concerned that cyberspace is the new battleground and increasingly sophisticated malware is the new weaponry. Corporations are afraid of losing trade secrets and governments are afraid of losing control.

Programs like the now famous Stuxnet have been devised and successfully targeted to another country where it caused weapons related manufacturing equipment to self-destruct.

Companies spend millions of dollars to erect solid defenses including firewalls and various intrusion detection systems. Every computer is outfitted with malware detection updated regularly to ward off the most recent threats. Government networks are even more secure with no physical connections to the outside.

But the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weak link will always be the people using the computers.

I am continually amazed at the level of investment in hardware, software and the cost of remediation, as compared to the paltry amount of education delivered to employees and the public. We're frequently warned about diet and exercise, smoking, drinking and drugs. Yet, have you ever seen a public service announcement about the latest zero day exploit? A breakout of the flu or a bad batch of canned peaches will be plastered all over television news.

Perhaps we need an "amber" alert for computing systems. How about a couple of corny slogans such as "if you see something behaving oddly on your computer, say something," or perhaps "always make sure your memory stick is virus free before inserting it in another person's computer."

If there are as many serious threats out there as one would be lead to believe, it is going to be incumbent on each and every computer user to be fully versed in how to avoid threats, how to spot potential problems and what to do to quickly alert others when they are discovered.

Computer security should be addressed in the same way as public health.  Teach everyone how to engage in safe computing, how to obtain safe and effective remedies, and how to avoid spreading the disease once they have it.

Captain Joe

 Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

An Ounce of Prevention

In my many years as a technology professional, one of the worst trends I have observed is the preference for the quick fix. This is the patch, the work-around, the extra step or two that compensates for an otherwise flawed process.

There is an old adage that suggests there is never enough time to do it right, but there is always enough time to do it over.  This is clearly now the order of the day.

How many times does a road crew have to fill the same pothole before realizing the street has to be repaved?  We have become so adept at creating ways of avoiding problems, we forget to back and fix their root cause. One of my favorite road signs is the one that says BUMP ahead. If you know there is a bump, don't hang a sign, fix it!

This mindset carries over into technology. Apparently it is  easier to dump raw data into a spreadsheet and massage it until all the missing or incorrect values have been resolved. But do we ever take the time to track back to the source of the bad data and put new processes in place to avoid storing them in the first place?  No, instead we dump the same flawed data month after month into a spreadsheet. In fact, we build macros to automate the correction process.

I've observed in some of the new programming tools we have lost the ability to check a return code. Those of you who may have written programs will recall these special variables set to specific values after an operation. A return code of zero (0) usually meant success, while other values would indicate a reason for the failure. Looking at these codes would enable you to take the appropriate action to recover from the failure or warn of bad results.

Even if error codes are available, often it appears they are not being used. It makes me wonder if error checking gone the way of memory optimization.  Now it only matters that the process ends, whether it did what it was supposed to or not.

An employee of mine many years ago reported that he had completed his assignment to write a piece of code. He had entered and compiled it successfully, loaded and executed it. It ran, he told me, so he was done. He then went on to mention it produced the wrong results, but he still considered his assignment complete. You can't make this stuff up.

We have to return to the discipline of getting it right the first time, or addressing the source of problems. Let's not continue to focus on mitigating the symptoms, let's instead get in there and cure the underlying disease.


Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

A New Beginning

Since taking a full time job, it has been difficult to find the time to devote to writing. As I look back over the year, it has been interesting, exciting and rewarding, but somehow lacking one crucial element. As much as I try to put the blogging and daily social interaction behind me and out of my head, it has left a small but persistent void in my life.

This has brought me to my 2013 New Year's resolution. I must return to writing.

It will be difficult and there is no way I can produce a daily column, but I will make every effort to post at least two or three original columns each month. Those of you who have been most loyal followers will understand the quality of any post depends on the amount of time one has to devote to it. I am determined to keep the quality as least as high as it has been in the past and so this means limiting the numbers.

Choosing topics may be difficult, too, as clearly I will not write anything about the company, the job or current projects.  I will continue to draw on my past experiences, or independent thoughts and ideas that wander to the surface from some deep, dark place in my brain.

Of course, I will also post guest columns as I have in the past few months providing ample reading material and filling in those weeks when I can't bang out one of my own.

So. my fondest hope and dream is that we continue our voyage together, cruising in new directions, and some old, familiar ports.

As always, I look forward to your feedback, comments and opinions, and I welcome suggestions for topics of interest to you.

Best wishes for smooth sailing in the coming year!

Captain Joe  

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

The Customer Experience Race Is Out of the Blocks

My good friend Andrew Spanyi has been a faithful and supportive reader and asked if he could share some of his "views" from the bridge. He permitted me to reprint the following column for your review and reaction. Andrew is a senior consultant at the Cutter Consortium.

The title of a recent article in The Economist reads, " Companies Hope That "Chief Customer Officers" Will Provide Better Service. Yeah, Right." The article reports not only that some firms have started appointing chief customer officers (CCOs) to serve the customer more attentively, but that some of these CCOs have many assistants, such as a "vice president of customers-for-life" (Salesforce.com), or a "vice president of customer advocacy"(NetApp), and even a "director of customer listening" (Cisco). Add this to the slate of "vice presidents, customer experience" at companies such as Fidelity, Intuit, Healthy Directions, and others. It's pretty clear that the race is on.

While such appointments of key executives to take charge of assessing customer experience are certainly a step in the right direction, there are grounds for a healthy dose of skepticism. Even though the idea that the primary purpose of business is to create and retain customers goes all the way back to Peter Drucker's 1954 book The Practice of Management , many organizations have struggled in shifting management attention from traditional financial metrics to the critical few measures that really matter to customers. And it's not just about metrics; fundamental changes in culture are also needed for optimum results. So, action has lagged rhetoric.

The first step in viewing the business from the customer's point of view involves measuring and monitoring the firm's performance in terms of delivering what customers really want. What customers really want are the following:

1. On-time delivery (ideally when customers asked for it, or at least when it was promised to be delivered)
2. Accuracy (the exact items/services they ordered)
3. Completeness (no back orders or call backs)
4. Responsiveness to inquiries (first time right)
5. An accurate invoice
6. Value for money
7. Flawless service/support (both during and after product/service delivery)

A tight collaboration between business and IT is needed to make any progress in automating the collection of critical-to-customer metrics. That's easier said than done. A surprising number of companies continue to monitor metrics such as when orders are shipped as opposed to when these are received, the average time needed to respond to a customer inquiry as opposed to the frequency with which customer inquiries are resolved correctly the first time, and so on. Even when the right metrics are monitored, they often don't make it to the scoreboard that the senior leadership team (SLT) monitors and are buried deep in the bowels of an analytical group. Further, an end-to-end process-based view is needed to find the root cause when performance dips below a certain level and this view of business is frequently missing, or at least not transparent, at the SLT level.

While some progress has been made in the area of customer-centric measurement, largely due to an increasing emphasis on Big Data and process analytics, it is not yet clear whether this will have sufficient impact to shift management attention to a more customer-centric and systemic view of business. Organizational culture is sometimes tagged as the culprit. Yet, culture is dependent on what the organization measures, manages, and rewards. To shift culture requires not only attention to customer-focused metrics, but also on models, governance, and reward systems, as summarized below:

• Model: The use of simple, visually compelling schematics of a high-level process-based view of the business and a one-page schematic for at least each customer-touching process is needed to maintain a focus on performing for customers and the need for cross-departmental collaboration.
• Governance: Given the development of the right models and metrics, establishing a process-based governance framework to emphasize value creation is necessary to embed a new way of "how we do things around here."
• Reward systems: This involves aligning reward and recognition systems to acknowledge the efforts of individuals and teams that enable performance for customers.

How is your organization doing in these areas? I welcome your comments about this Advisor and encourage you to send your insights to me at aspanyi@cutter.com. 



Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Recruiters Not Calling? Five Reasons & How To Fix It

Here is another article contributed by my friend Deborah Walker, career coach. This is great advice and so I am delighted to be able to pass it along here on the bridge.

You’ve been hoping for a new job, but your phone is silent. No recruiters calling, no job offers;it’s so quiet you can almost hear the crickets outside. Maybe it’s time to reassess. Does this sound like your job search efforts?

• 

  You’ve sent out hundreds of resumes to countless job postings but received little or no response.
• You’ve left dozens of voice mails to recruiters explaining why you are a perfect fit—and they never return your call.
• You’ve tweaked your resume so many times you no longer recognize it.

If this describes your situation, you are not alone. Many talented, qualified job seekers get ignored by recruiters and hiring managers simply because their resume has one or more of the following problems.

1. Your resume highlights your lack of industry experience

Most recruiters are looking for a point-by-point candidate match when screening resumes. Industry background usually ranks high on the list of qualifying issues. If you don’t have experience in that industry, your resume is going straight to the circular file—unless you can give them a compelling reason to keep your resume in the stack. If you lack specific industry experience, but you know you have the basic skills for the job, try highlighting your transferable skills instead. Job seekers who lack industry experience can make it past the resume screener by proving their ability with skills they have that transfer from industry to industry. Examples of transferable skills include expertise gained in sales, customer service, finance, accounting, negotiation, cross-functional communications, and/or team building. Look at the skills they need, then figure out how your background is a match.

2. Your resume shouts “Overqualified!”

Nothing scares off a recruiter faster than a candidate who is obviously overqualified for the job. The two main concerns are (1) that the candidate would soon get bored and leave at his earliest convenience, and (2) that the candidate would be too expensive to hire. Even worse is the assumption that the over qualified candidate is on a downward career slope—a has-been with all his best years behind him. There are, however, many valid reasons job seekers wish to downsize to jobs with fewer responsibilities. Whatever your reasons, tailor your resume to fit your current career objective. This means you’ll want to play down your prior responsibilities, list only relevant education (don’t list a PhD if you are applying for a mid-level management position!), and emphasize tactical experience over strategic planning when appropriate.

3. Your resume is crammed with information, but not the right kind

Pity the poor recruiter who must get through 200 applicant resumes before lunchtime. If your resume is in the pile, it will get a quick scan and pass over if she can’t find what she is looking for in less than 30 seconds. If you have a resume that is disorganized or full of dense blocks of text, how will the recruiter learn anything about you? You’ll catch the recruiter’s attention if you have a clear, easy-to-read resume that highlights your skills and accomplishments, even at a glance. The first rule of resume effectiveness is relevancy, so edit out the past data and redundant facts that aren't relevant to your current career path. Fill your resume only with the skills needed for that particular job, and you’ll go a long way toward getting a recruiter’s attention.

4. Your resume has too little information

While the “strong, silent type” may be attractive in men, it just plain flops in a resume. A resume that looks more like an outline just doesn’t give the reader enough to work with. Recruiters don’t want to guess what you did at your last job. You need to include enough information to give prospective employers a vision of the possibilities if they choose to hire you. If you struggle with what to include in your resume, use job  descriptions to help you understand what recruiters will want to find in your resume. Then review your  previous jobs to determine what skills you have that will be a good match.

5. Your resume doesn’t include accomplishments

If you haven’t thought lately about how your employer has benefited from having you as an employee, it’s a sure bet that your resume is lacking in accomplishments. Remember, as a job seeker you are selling your talents, and you are competing with many others who have the same qualifications as you do.  Accomplishments give recruiters a reason to choose you over others for the interview short list. Give screeners ample reason to select you for interview. Highlight how you have saved time, increased efficiency, cut cost and increased client satisfaction. After all, if you don’t tell them, nobody else will!

If you use this five-point checklist to restructure your resume, you’ll soon hear back from recruiters who appreciate qualified, articulate and confident candidates. The time you spend enhancing your resume could shave off months of fruitless labor and frustrating effort in your job search.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC