Yet again …:
[Yes I, this refers to your infosec arrangements – wouldn’t deride the terms ‘management system’ or ‘practices’ by attaching them to what you do…]
[Yes II I did not include a dropcap style in his post on purpose. Thanks you noticed.]
Category: Books by Quote
Glee because of support
All the mavericks of the world rejoice (and Maverisk among them, of course, already); finally there’s new [howzat for a typifying contradictio..?] evidence-of-sorts that the below that had popped into my mind a couple of days ago, is still, more, valid than ever. Being, related but in an angled/vector-transposed way, not about rebels but about other mischievings in general business management culture(s).
[Should I note that the ‘evidence’ already is worth much study and implementation? Yes I should.]
[Edited to add: Be ware of the other side, too; too many mediocre men just drift upwards by lack of weight: here.]
[Yup that’s a re-post from yesteryears, like, 12 March 2015 …]
Two points to make:
* Middle management will be.
* Secretaries should be.
The discussion regarding middle managers being superfluous or not had a slight uptick the past couple of months. With the latter voice having been a bit too quiet. Yes, middle management is under threat. It has always been; only the (history-)ignorant will have missed that. And Yes, all the Disruption things and similar empty barrel half-baked air by a lot of folks who have hands-on experience in the slim to none bin with (real) management altogether let alone this kind, have predicted over and over again that the disruption by Server-with-algorithm-app-that-schedules-day-laborers will make middle management redundant, as the believed task was only that.
Quod non. And as if just an algorithm will capture the full complexity (and incoherence, inconsistency, internally and externally contradictory ..!) of the requirements and work of the middle manager.
OK, we’re not discussing the drone administrative clerk that has Manager on his card (huh?) and sits in an office passing top-down orders and bottom-up reports back and forth. We’re talking the real, 24/7 problem firefighter here. The coordinator of chaos. The translator of lofty (other would say, ‘airhead’) ‘governance’ (quod non) mumbo jumbo into actual work structure and tasks, and translatereporting back. That survives and in doing so, shows great performance. The other ones, will be weeded out anyway, every time there’s an economic cycle downturn. [If the right ones would be kept, and the wrong ones ‘given growth opportunities elsewhere’. Seldomly the case; offing is by the fte numbers, and the wrong ones have being glued to their seats as their core competence, through sucking up or otherwise.]
So, the middle manager stays for a long time to come as (s)he does the kind of non-predictable work that will remain longest. If start-ups don’t have them, see them grow: They will.
Secretaries deserve a come-back. In similar vein as above, the vast majority of managers office clerks (from the shop floor (even if of knowledge workers…) all the way to near the top) these days have to do their own typing, scheduling, and setting up socializing things. Whereas before, economies of scale were many, and there were additional benefits because the good (sic, again) secretaries would e.g., know the best, unrenown restaurants all around and could get you a table even when they would be fully booked, and they would manage (massage away) some internal friction as well, often very discreetly and efficiently. Now, vastly more expensive (by hourly rate, productivity (think switching costs in the managers minds …, and utilisation), cost of ineffectiveness (sic again) and opportunity costs re their actual objectives (if these would be achieved; good/bad manager discussion again)) managers must manage their way around. An impoverished world it is indeed.
To bring back some joy:
[Some colour, but it’s down there… Zuid-As]
Ben still has all the Ayes
There is no end to the need to repeat the, somewhat but simply never sufficiently, quote by the Ben you know best:
Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.
How valid today. How utterly moronic in comparison all that would allow crypto-backdoors (for other reasons, too), and covert catch-all dragnet surveillance. Etc. Etc…
Oh and for the few that are still interested in the United States Constitution, they shall refer to article 1, section 7, clause 2 , that has not ayes and nays but yeas and Nays. Just wanted that off my plate.
Leaving you with:
[You’ll be naked and that will not be pretty; Barça]
Golden Oldie Pic of the Day
Full cite of important stuff
This being a complete citation of important stuff, on various subjects in one – meaning, that the brillantly brief once more applies to various trades and aspects, for your information:
With the sound off or on?
If you watch a well-directed film with the sound turned off, you’ll get a lot out of it. On the other hand, it takes practice to read a screenplay and truly understand it.
It’s worth remembering that we lived in tribes for millennia, long before we learned how to speak. Emotional connection is our default. We only added words and symbolic logic much later.
There are a few places where all that matters is the words. Where the force of logic is sufficient to change the moment.
The rest of the time, which is almost all the time, the real issues are trust, status, culture, pheromones, peer pressure, urgency and the energy in the room.
It probably pays to know which kind of discussion you’re having.
By Seth Godin, as you may have derived from the style and profundity. (As per here, which is literally the same text – told you so – but also add the Head to your daily reading list! [Noticed that Head thing, intended to refer to a List structure, is a pun when you see the image to click on his blog…].)
Which all relates to a. Privacy [yes it does, just think it through] and b. your IAM ideas, ever in renewal since … decades; plus c. the ‘GRC’ eager beavers — that at last are pushed back, softly and hardly noticably, by counterforces-undetermined that want their space to innovate back. And d. <fill in yourself and colour the pictures>.
Oh, and:
[Marketing -, or was it Design, Department at some Toronto institute]
Behaviour is key to security — but what if it’s perfect?
When the latest news on information security points in the direction, away from reliance on technical stuff, of the humans that you still can’t get rid of (yet!), all are aboard the ‘Awareness is just the first step, you’ll need to change the actual behaviour of users‘ train. Or should be, should have been, already for a number of years.
In Case You Missed It, the Technology side of information security has so far always gobbled up the majority of your respective budgets, with all of the secondary costs to that, buried in General Expenses. And the effectivity of the spend … has been great! Not that your organisation is anywhere near as secure as it could reasonably have been, but at least the majority of attackers rightly focus not on technology (anymore – though still a major headache) but on the feckle user discipline. Oh how dumb and incompetent these users are; there will always be some d.face that falls for some social engineering scam. Sometimes an extremely clever one, when focusing at generic end users deep down in your organisation, sometimes a ridiculously simple and straightforward one when targeting your upper management – zero sophistication needed, there.
The point is, there will always be some d.face that makes an honest mistake. If you don’t want that, you’ll have to get rid of all humans and then end up overlording robots (in the AI sense, not their superfluous physical representation) that will fail because those underling users of old held all the flexibility of your organisation to external pressures and innovation challenges.
Which means you’re stuck with those no-good [i.e., good for each and every penny of your atrocious bonus payments] humans for a while.
Better train them to never ever deviate from standard procedures, right?
Wrong.
Since this: Though the title may look skewed and it is, there’s much value in the easy step underpinning the argument; indeed repetitive work makes users’ innate flexibility explode in uncontrolled directions.
So, the more you coax users into compliance, the worse the deviations will get. As elucidated, e.g., here [if you care to study after the pic; study you’ll need to make something of the dense prose; ed.].
So, here too your information security efforts may go only so far; you must train your users forever, but not too much or they’ll just noncomply in possibly worse directions.
Oh well:
[Yeah, Amsterdam; you know where exactly this depicts your efforts – don’t complai about pic quality when it was taken through a tram’s window…]
Tall(e)y facts
Yes, the Quote of the Day. Typically, one that had some ageing but has bettered, qua relevance, for it but may have better had some extra attention half a year ago: Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.
By Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, you know, of 1754-1838 stock. Which may or may not remind you of some current or, at time of publication of this post, past [one can hope, can’t one?] Chief of the Bookkeeping — as the position was intended and crafted at time of creation… Oh how devolved it has become, true-ing all fears that De Tocqueville may have had about it but that’s for another post.
One need not go further than to remind you old Talley of the Périgord-that-produces-some-decent-wines-today, lived through the French revolution (read Thomas Paine for a alternative-facts (sic) report on that) and the Napoléontic period(s) [what a bleeder they were. sorry pun had to be made] — apparently he had mastered the survival game.
Good for him, maybe. And:
[Hidden gem, tucked away in the bustle of today’s action, deserves much more attention; National Museum of the American Indian NY]
Obviously for tomorrow: a rerun of Elk, Moose, Reindeer, Wapiti, Caribou, Deer
As an intermission: Would you know which is which, of the above/below …?
And then, there’s continental differences …
First up, the Elk:
Servus Canadensis, the wapiti indeed. Next up, the Elk:
know as such in Eurasia including those tinny pebbles off the coast called the British Isles. Looks suspiciously like the Alces Alces that is the Canadian (oh well, and US, yes, whiners) Moose, doesn’t it?
Because it is…! But you moose’ent confuse the two with each other nor with the reindeer a.k.a. caribou:
Rangifer Tarandus, since this one’s for Saami and Santa.
Are you feeling elky now ..? Or move to the Caribouan; you’ll never have problems with the above there … Oh deer we’re in seriousness-trouble here…
Ninety percent
Not in any economic sense you may have thought, given the attention oft given to, e.g., the 1% or 99% (We Are-; Occupy-style) where now the 90% might be the disappeared middle class in the US that extended from the bottom 10% – that was around even in the best of times – all the way to the top — excepting the 0.01% that was in charge all the time …
Here, it’s about a quote slash truism:
90% of everything is crap
Have ever truer things been said. This, of course you knew since prep school, being Sturgeon’s Law.
Just putting it there. See the link for a ‘proof’. Or look around you; physically (co-workers), mentally (in your head, and feel free to assume the others’ heads are not necessarily better…), qua your pay check, your significant other [hey here I can testify I’m lucky with a not-90% specimen par excellence; no she’s not reading this], etc.
Leaving you with:
[In the 10%, definitely. Even when it rains, this one. Baltimore]
Summer’s approaching
Sixteen steps to build a campfire [Because there’s not enough attention, or contention, to make it to the List of Lists you’d want to be on]:
- Split dead limb into fragments and shave one fragment into slivers;
- Bandage left thumb;
- Chop other fragments into smaller fragments;
- Bandage left foot;
- Make structure of slivers (include those embedded in hand);
- Light match;
- Light match;
- Repeat “a Scout is cheerful” and light match;
- Apply match to slivers, add wood fragments, and blow gently into base of fire;
- Apply burn ointment to nose;
- When fire is burning, collect more wood;
- Upon discovering that fire has gone out while out searching for more wood, soak wood from can labeled “kerosene”;
- Treat face and arms for second-degree burns;
- Re-label can to read “gasoline”;
- When fire is burning well, add all remaining firewood;
- When thunder storm has passed, repeat steps 1 – 15
Oh, and:
[Feels like a slide; to follow the above link, please do; NY/NY]
