All Posts in Leadership

|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Timely advice, forwarded from reader Griff Rogers, who says “I bounced this off of a few attorney buddies. Basically the feedback I’ve received is that the advice is sound. The only other input was that before taking action #2, check with the holder of your charge card …”

ATTORNEY’S ADVICE—NO CHARGE Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company.

1. The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name put on them. If someone takes your checkbook, they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name, but your bank will know how you sign your checks.

2. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put “PHOTO ID REQUIRED”.

3. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the “For” line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won’t have access to it.

4. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks. You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have it printed, anyone can get it.

5. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We’ve all heard horror stories about fraud that’s committed on us in stealing a name, address, Social Security number, credit cards.

Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieve(s) ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here’s some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:

1. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.

2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).

But here’s what is perhaps most important of all : (I never even thought to do this.)

3. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done.

There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away This weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, etc., has been stolen:

1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285

2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742

3.) Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289

4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271

Disclaimer: While this sounds like great advice to me, I’m not an attorney. Apply your own judgment.

The author of this advice gained no business advantage from writing and distributing it. It was simply an attempt to make the lives of the employees in his company a little bit better. Which, I imagine, they appreciated. Which strengthened their relationship with their employer. Which, come to think of it, is a business advantage after all.

As you concern yourself with strengthening your internal processes and technical architecture, take a few moments to also strengthen your relationship with the people in your organization. If you need an incentive, the payback is much greater than what you’ll invest.

Comments

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

If you’re a fan of the future, it’s time to write a letter.

K. A. Boriskin, a long-time correspondent, reports that there is a movement among science fiction readers to get the USPS to issue a stamp commemorating Isaac Asimov. Click here for details. Mr. Boriskin adds, “Unfortunately we’re dealing with the Postal Service here, so there’s no email address available, only snail mail.”

My 37 cents worth? Ask for the big three: Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, who together transformed the field. Send the letter to: Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, C/O Stamp Development, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW, Room 5670, Washington, D. C., 20260-2437. And don’t complain that the USPS requires a letter. It is, after all, in the snail mail business — why would it encourage you to use its competition?

No, don’t answer that …

Speaking of the future, the future of IT (the organization, not the stuff) is that it will go away. That, at least, is the gist of a recent Gartner exercise in futurism, as reported and critiqued here last week. The quick version: Because tools for configuring and reconfiguring workflows are becoming user-friendly enough to transition to business units, IT will become unnecessary. The here-on-this-planet version: So what? Business units don’t reconfigure workflows very often, because have you ever tried to change a business process? If you have, you know it’s hard to do no matter how good the information technology.

The hard fact is that designing a good process is an engineering task, not just a matter of dragging connectors in Visio. The harder fact is that once you do, you have to actually get employees to do their work differently. And the hardest fact of all is that once you do that, you have to fix all the gaps in your process design, because no process designer has ever anticipated everything that can happen once actual work starts flowing through.

You just don’t want to go through this all that often.

But while Gartner-bashing might be fun (and “might be” is a pale description of the joyful reality), it isn’t fair to criticize without offering an alternative. Luckily, I am (to quote Asimov) “a keen-eyed peerer into the future,” and so, I will.

What’s the organizational future of information technology?

From a business planning perspective, anything beyond three years or so is little more than science fiction without the science. Within that window there are no obviously transformational technologies or trends that suggest a need for radical change. For most businesses:

  • IT operations will continue to be semi-automated. Systems management tools continue to improve; systems complexity continues to increase; the likelihood of true “lights out” operation is still far away. Savvy CIOs already know their job is to shift budget out of operations, but only as much as they can without harming the quality of service they provide.
  • IT’s bread-and-butter work will still be application maintenance and enhancement (small non-discretionary and discretionary changes, respectively). Today’s rules won’t change: Organize talent into teams that know the major applications inside-out and sideways; batch changes into scheduled releases; and make sure you’re very, very good at integration and regression testing.
  • Most companies will continue to organize their technical architecture around one or a very small number of enterprise applications — usually an ERP suite. Integration will be hub-and-spoke with those applications. If it isn’t already, make it so. And integration will continue to be more about data than about business logic: The former is a necessity, the latter is a convenience. ERP suites will continue to simplify the process of integrating peripheral applications into their architecture. That’s great news — but not the stuff of organizational change.

In the next three years, IT will transform in one very important respect: Its role in the business. At the risk of flogging even further a horse that’s already been tortured in this space, IT, in most companies, will stop trying to be a supplier to its internal customers, and will start being a partner and collaborator in the achievement of business change.

The change will hit business analysts the hardest. Much of what they know today will become irrelevant. Much of what they don’t know will become essential. More than anything else, they will have to become experts in the disciplines of process design, and in designing large-scale change programs that translate strategic intent into achievable action.

Are they ready for this? Ask them. They’ll probably tell you, “We’re doing that already.” If they do, it’s possible they’re right. It’s more likely that they don’t know what they don’t know.

Yet.

Comments