Applicable to business – Page 28 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

New category: Miss Quotes

Quite literally, literally. The quotes, of motivational nature or other, that you meet every time again — but aren’t, since they are garbled versions of the original. And the original had much more profound wisdom, or was even true where the misquote isn’t.

OK. The first one, then. A favorite of mine, since it is so often True and demonstrates the futility of the busybodies’ eager beaver detailed roadmap approaches:
“Even the best strategy does not survive first contact with the enemy.”
As said, this is true.

But as also said, this does not capture the fullness of the original, which is:
“No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.” [Von Moltke the Elder]
Which is a bit more elaborate (though still an extreme shortest of sound bites, for the period and original language), and for one focuses on the plan of Operations, for a second mentions (no) certainty, and for thirds talks about the enemy’s main strength, not just any lost recce squad.
This, to be interpreted as to say that strategy has no place when it comes to operations, execution in the hostile terrain out there (a.k.a. marketplace, blue ocean, or whatever), really, just completely fugeddaboudit — not quite the elucidation you expected, right ..?
And, instead of the original rather absolute (and slightly pessimistic), here we have a true risk-based approach: Scr.w It Let’s Do It (© Richard B.) has quite a probability to work, to result in positives.
Third, indeed, it’s the main strength that should concern you. What comes before, one can ‘control’ quite precise, in a Sun Tsu sense, right? And (in mirror) may or may not have any bearing on the main force.

So, we all agree that the original Quote was the better? Better enough to diss the latter-day shorthand? Or keep both ..?
I welcome your suggestions, by the way, for the next round of Miss Quotes.

Oh, and of course this:

[Here Be silly mistakes. And Pickett’s Line.]

Some quotes, out of context

Indebted to David Graeber’s Debt here, for the following which for a change is just a bunch of quotes completely out of context, even worse on the representativeness point, and to make matters … worse, maybe, … some remarks from Yours Truly…

Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began “comparing power with power, measuring, calculating” and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt. (p.79) — This may be why so many bureaucrats, and many an auditor behaving within the worst corners of that category, appear to behave as if in debt ..?

If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, “Hand me the wrench,” his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, “And what do I get for it?” — even if they are working for Exxon Mobile, Burger King, or Goldman Sachs. … One might even say that it’s one of the scandals of capitalism that most capitalist firms, internally, operate communistically. True, they don’t tend to operate very democratically. Most often they are organized around military-style top-down chains of command. But here is often an interesting tension here, because top-down chains of command are not particularly efficient: they tend to promote stupidity among those on top and resentful foot-dragging among those on the bottom. (pp.95-96) — The rest of the discussion over the natural tendencies in corporate internal/external behavior echoes society’s many comments, including mine on this blog…

Exchange, then, requires formal equality — or, at least, the potential for it. This is precisely why kings have so much trouble with it. (p.109)

Rabelais places the encomium in the mouth of one Panurge, a wandering scholar and man of extreme classical erudition who, he observes, “knew sixty-three ways of making money — the most honorable of which was stealing”. (p.124) — I may want to rid my LinkedIn profile of some niceties …

[Comparing Chapter Eight, Credit versus Bullion (p.211–) with ‘Piketty’ might make a great grad+ thesis ..?]
[Similarly, p.383– may be read and viewed, analysed, in light of “blockchain currencies’ ” lofty promises of money without recourse to state fiduciants but to anonymous (and masses of) trustees.]

OK then, as a final one, important for those that still consider Adam Smith’ Wealth to have some modicum of value still:
For Smith, the pursuit of wealth beyond a point where one has achieved such a comfortable position was pointless, even pathological. (p.399)

Which indicates the point I’m still aiming for… And:

[Why you’re looking at the ceiling of my garden shed ..? Palazzo Nicolaci, Noto again]

Your valued info at risk

Ah, just noted: A great many of you may have switched (or, c’mon don’t be a laggard or too late, will soon switch) to self-assessments of risks, even to the level of detail of data security (as part of information security, part of IRM, part of ORM, part of ERM, part of just-freakin’-perfectly-normal-or-are-you-kiddin’-me mundane run-of-the-mill average daily management of which ‘governance’ is the most preposterous windbag label).
Which is all very well, to determine at the shop floor levels, that apparently are the last hold-outs of actual business knowledge beyond the mumbo-jumbo of meddle management (sour joke intended), what the risks, and particularly also, Value of information (data…) processed might be.

But … You’d miss half or more of the picture, then. The value you attach to the info, may very well be what you’d be prepared to fork out to protect it (balancing estimated frequencies of intermittent losses versus continuous costs flying out the window), but you then forget that the attacker isn’t after the value you attach, but the value to the cracker. Which may be completely different. Think, e.g., Sony (and the many others alike): comparatively, there was hardly a nickel value in the ‘stolen’ (exfiltrated, or egressed since it was lying around so obviously) data from the Sony perspective. But the value was enormous from the hacker perspective — whatever the innocuous data was, the mere exposure was of such import that APT’ ing around apparently was worth it.

Now, how’zat (women have deliveries, men have Balls) for all the other info throughout your glocal enterprise/empire ..? Similar to same, I presume.
So, … what about the budgets to be made available to counter data theft/robbery/whatever comparison to physical-world expropriation you’d like to use? And still not trying to overshoot in comparison to the value you yourselves establish for yourselves by yourselves, or you’d run the risk (chance close to 1) of splattering any flexibility and usability under tons of ‘controls’ (quod non, BTW). But then, not protecting ‘regular’ data enough, might expose it too easily — which might be rational but will cost you, e.g., through EU data protection fines … ;-|

So, you’ll not only have to do the multiplication of this and this, but extend in other dimensions as well…
Oh well, the world gets more complicated every day… and:

[Your data protection; Noto]

Bunch of quote’lets

Just a short list of quotes (#2…), from someone after a life-long study:

“Institutions are the enemy of creativity.”

“So Codes are the mental limitations of short men, short of experience, short of imagination, short of courage, short of common sense. … Inevitably a bureaucrat is a short man, however long his legs may be. His is a mind only fit for a bureau. He is undersized in most respects. … Here is the fatal weakness of Democracy: the bureaucrat. The fatal weakness of Democracy does not lie in gangsterism or political chicanery [both more intertwined than visible on the surface in NL these days; ed.] or civil disobedience or anything like them. It lies in this dumb sheep-like submission to Authority, “the drinking of the vanity of office.”

One need not subscribe to all of the man’s ethics or morality, but have anything of non-temerity to see the truth.

Fittingly:

[Again a tossing out of Codes…; Racine WI]

Information does(n’t) Matter

Another consequence of the analysis mentioned before about answers flowing upward through infosystems and command and inquiries/questions flowing down: When the latter get viewed as anti-data or even anti-information, we see Information Theory in action.

Where without the creation of potential (difference) by an inquiry standing ready at, say, a sensor [abstracting for a tiny moment away from the complexity that could be in any sensor, assuming it a math point] to capture some data it may produce, the potential may not pull away the data created by a Heisenbergian creation (-by-measurement ..!?) of the data/anti-data pair. Leaving the anti-data, the uncertainty behind. Is this the creation, the maintenance, or the destruction of a Schrödinger’s measurement ..?

More operationally: In what way does this interpretation induce metaphoric (?) insight into the connection between physical world, ‘signals’ (as in Shannon and other Info Theory), and continuous (!?)/discretised sensor-data streams..?
[For once skipping the bullying of those not understanding the fundamental nature of the continuous/(math-)discrete divide]

Well, there’s also this:

[The gift of far-sightedness. SE Sicily you recognize of course]

KVZP’ers

Euhm, er is nog steeds de grote waterscheiding tussen enerzijds ‘vaste’ dienstverbanden en anderzijds per-uur inhuurbare/dumpbare ZP’ers, lijkt het wel. Ja, er zijn wat moeizame tussenvormen gevonden; het tijdelijk contract (vast tot het niet vast meer is), de urenopdracht (ingeschatte inzet — waar de opdrachtgever met een …smoes wel onderuitkruipt), etc., maar echt zoden aan de dijk zet het niet. Problemen te over; pensioen’verplicht’ingen, sociale zekerheid(sopbouw, -rechten en –solidariteit), inkomenszekerheid (waar een ‘vast’ dienstverband, hoewel absoluut even snel op de tocht staand als een vaste opdracht, wél een hypotheekzekerheid is en een grotere financiële reserve niet), enzovoorts enzoverder.
Vraag is nu of er al eens is bestudeerd hoe het idee van kort-verbandvrijwilliger uit defensiekringen zou kunnen worden vertaald buiten de sector. Want het lijkt alsof ondanks het trage imago juist defensiekringen organisatiekundig alwéér mijlenver voorlopen op de rest, de oh zo veel flitsender verklaarde kwijlebabbelzelfverdedigingshulpelozen.

Arme KMKTDOs (KanslozenMetKuddesTeDrijvenOndergeschikten) … en:

[Uitkijkend over, zonder grip; Noto]

Meldt uzelve, out of control

Met al die seminars en cursussen over de Wet meldplicht datalekken lijkt het wel of het meldplichtprocedurenaarbinnenrammen dé oplossing is voor al uw privacy-problemen.
Terwijl het natuurlijk niet meer is dan het perfect regelen van het naar buiten toe rondroepen van de totaal transparante schuld zodra (niet als) er iets misgaat.

Over het voorkomen dat beter is dan genezen (en dat is implementatie van de meldplicht-procedures nog verre van), horen we een stuk minder. Hooguit bij degenen die nu én zometeen de kous op de kop krijgen; dat alles anders moet terwijl het a. nu vaak al best prima geregeld is, b. zometeen niet beter zal zijn (feit bij voorbaat), c. a en b gelden binnen de kaders van de nu en dan geldende organisatorische belemmeringen van budget, tijd en wil van boven, om de zaken beter te regelen.
Het kan ook anders anders: preventief. Leest en ziet.

En ook:

[Zonder privacy, een saaie wereld …; Zuid-As maar da’s duidelijk]

More valid today than in 2008

Because everyone and their dog noted the Good Ol’ Days of housing price ridiculousness have returned and the bwankers’ moronity has never gone away, the following vids are of more import than ever:
Part 1: here;
part 2: here;
part 3: here;
part 4: here.

That’ll be all for now; recovering from my Abrams birthday party still. And:

[Trend’s just a matter of perspective. Mo’ money, no problem equals Zuid-As Amsterdam]

RCSA is close to BAU

Close, as in no cigar yet (has the US ban on Cuban import been lifted already?).
But definitely, Risk Control Self-Assessments would, if carried out properly, be that major part of management’s daily (sic) chores that wouldn’t need annual get-togethers coaxed by outsiders (sic) but would be Business As Usual in operational practice. Maybe needing some periodic (weekly? monthly? certainly more than as now weakly annually) departmental review gathering but not a stage show as if this is the holy grail of business information flow. After which the ‘second line’ (as the back not even middle office function) receives the (right) info and acknowledges that the ‘first’ line has so much better sensors since they’re the first line par excellence, integrates the info into the upward report flow and reverts to fine-tuning the tools they provide to first-liners, and furthermore does … nothing. Second line is helpers, not dictators-by-soft-smothering. When it would turn out that all the high-quality hence qualitative (the reverse for quantitative) risk pics cannot be easily integrated into one pic, that’s too bad for the integrators but an appropriate (!) reflection of reality.

And if, on the other hand, first-liners need to be taken away from their actual productive work to sit in some song-and-dance by second-liners because it was so decreed by ‘governance’ levels (emperor’s clothes!), the very objectives will not be achieved. Since the ‘do something’ by deep-lying incompetence has lead to the wrong turn into a blind alley whereas the broad avenue (something like Younge Street) between wilderness and high (?) culture.

[I scheduled this post a couple of weeks ago for release in a couple of weeks but new developments seem to speed things up. For my many posts against Form over Substance … just search this blog for ‘TLD’ or bureaucracy …]
Won’t rant (too much) on; keep it to RCSA = BAU + quite some ε still, and:

[Distorted? Only your picture is, here for a change, by standing too close; true reality is not at the Edinburg Royal Mile!]

One IoTA FYI

To close off [almost, since @KPN fraud themselves away from bankruptcy by series of outright lies to customers and tort] the year with a wild shot, ahead:
There is value in the information analysis in IoT, as described in Gelernter and many since, of the two-way flow of information. One, flowing up are information in the form of answers as aggregations or pattern matched tuples(ets); the other going down, being both commands and inquiries/questions.

This fits the IoT world snugly, and should be taken into account when developing IoTAuditing frameworks:
What we’re after of course in all of auditing — and this we consider self-evident or else go back to study auditing fundamentals, from agency theory! — is the controls that keep the quality of the back/forth i.e. down/up information flows within (client-!)required margins. No more! But be aware of who the client really is, not the one doing the actual paying. So, we may focus on the integrity of the information flows first and foremost, then the continuity (availability), and then confidentiality as an afterthought.
With neat break-downs to isolation, appropriate input/output buffering (anyone still aware of the difference between an interrupt and a trap? If not, take a hike and learn, and weep), integrity controls above all. And some thing on (establishing) the quality of aggregation and of the questions being pushed down — when the wrong questions get asked e.g. by lack of understanding of the subject matter (sic), as is so very commonplace in the vast majority of organisations today, the wrong results will turn up from within the data pool (reporting ‘up’wards).

And of course there’s the divide between
the operational world where actual business is done (either administratively in offices though one could argue (i.e. proof beyond recovery) that this isn’t actually doing anything worthwhile, or producing stuff), and
the busybodies world ‘above’ (quod non) that, which thinks (wrongly) to be able to ‘control’ and ‘steer’ the productive body, sometimes rising itself into the thin air levels of absolute ridicule (by) branding itself ‘governance’.
But do re-read all of last year’s posts and weep. But do also see the implications for variance in the integrity, availability, and confidentiality needs at various (sub)levels.

And:

[The 2016 way is up; Cala at Barça]