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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Revisionism is the art of waiting until everyone who knows better is dead, then interpreting events through your ideological filter.

Consider this response to my September 9th column, Crisis management: “Though FDR often erroneously gets credit for ‘putting people back to work,’ his successful efforts to expand the federal government past its constitutional boundaries is his real legacy. He should be acknowledged as a father of illegitimate government, and the resulting federal fiscal bloat.” It’s bad revisionism because not everyone who knows better is dead yet.

What bothers me isn’t that my respondent challenged my assessment. If everyone agreed with me I’d be bored stiff. No, what bothers me is how often people assume the worst about those who had to deal with a daunting situation without first learning the facts. FDR simply provides a convenient example: Many people today criticize his establishment of Social Security. I wonder how many of these critics have the slightest knowledge of why he did so, and why he made it a pay-as-we-go system instead of using a deferred annuity model. If you know the history and think you could have done better, I’d be interested in your solution to the problem. I know I don’t have one.

But, you may be grumbling, this isn’t a column about public policy — it’s about effectively leading IT. What does criticizing FDR have to do with that? Lots.

Someone who knows nothing about why FDR created Social Security as he did but is certain his unsavory purpose was an unconstitutional power grab will assume the worst about colleagues or direct reports whose solution to a business problem doesn’t line up with his or her preconceived notions. One of the many bad habits of highly ineffective leaders is a preference for ignorant criticism over informed discussion.

So ask yourself this: When an employee or task force reports back to you, do you assume incompetence if “your gut” doesn’t like their recommendations? Does the word “didja” — as in, “Didja think about this? Didja think about that?” — form a significant part of these conversations? If so it’s a danger sign. “Didja” puts people on the defensive instead of letting them tell their story.

So whenever you’re evaluating a solution, whether it’s to establish a federal retirement system or to upgrade to a new server platform, just ask, “Tell us the process you went through, what you’re recommending, and why.” It’s the logical sequence: Understand first, then criticize the results.

Or maybe you’ll find you don’t have to.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Two years ago I predicted hard times for Palm. Hard times have arrived, in the form of plummeting marketshare and negative profits.

It was not a difficult prediction. When I wrote the column, Palm hadn’t given customers any reason to buy a new PDA in years, and there are still only two reasons to replace a Palm PDA: (1) You dropped your old one; or (2) you want to upgrade to something better, which means either a Windows CE-based device or a Symbian-driven PDA/telephone combo.

Palm’s meiotic “strategy” is to reorganize, separating its devices and operating systems into two separate businesses. Which, although this is probably too obvious to bother saying, means Palm is exiting the device business. The problem, of course, is that in a marketplace driven by innovation, the Palm OS is the least innovative of the contenders. Even the upcoming Palm OS 5 is basically a me-too offering, providing a subset of what Windows CE and EPOC/Symbian have offered for years. Yesterday’s features tomorrow — impressive.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a lot of IT organizations are equally backward, at least if Gartner Dataquest is to be believed. In Wireless Newsfactor, Gartner analyst Todd Kort said, “IT managers have generally been dragging their feet in endorsing the use of PDAs.” It’s a year-old story but given the events of the past year I doubt many IT managers have aggressively embraced new end-user technologies. More likely, most have been battening down their proverbial hatches.

It’s like a bad habit: End-users bring in technology they find personally useful; IT says no. Why? “Do you know how often we have to recover PCs that were destroyed by end-user-installed software?”

Actually, I have a pretty good idea. While the anecdotes are colorful, the numbers aren’t large, and PDA synchronization software is rarely the culprit. Is it worth it, when refusing to endorse PDAs gives IT an image of being sand in the gears of progress?

In the interest of providing solutions, not just criticism, here, for your use if you’ve been one of the foot-draggers, is your new PDA support policy:

“Install anything you want. Call for help if you need it and we’ll make a reasonable effort to get your PC up and running. If we can’t, we’ll restore it to a standard build.”

It’s an old saying: If you can’t lead and can’t follow, at least get out of the way.

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