Uncategorized – Page 29 – IS Survivor Publishing

Sometimes, insight arrives a couple of decades later.

I’m referring to George Will and his recent column, “Think you’re living in a ‘hellhole’ today? Try being a billionaire in 1916.” (Washington Post, 5/5/2017) and research he cites from economist Don Boudreaux, who makes points identical to those made here more than twenty years ago (“A holiday card to the industry,” InfoWorld, 12/16/1996).

Beyond my chronic whining about how little I’m appreciated by folks like this is a point about human psychology that has broad applicability in your dealings with everyone you work with in the humdrum world of business. Namely, luxury is comparative, not absolute.

To understand the point, look inward: Given a choice, would you prefer to live John D. Rockefeller’s 1916 lifestyle as Boudreaux describes it, or your own? Even, better, ask the question inside out: Given how much better your life is today than his was back then in so many different ways, why is this even a hard decision?

It’s a hard decision because as Rockefeller, you (or I; I’m hardly immune from the syndrome) would have been the envy of everyone else, while today you’re just another schmuck.

Luxury is comparative, not absolute.

How can you use this insight?

Start with program governance. It’s well established that, as the figure shows, when projects are fewer and fully staffed, they all complete earlier than any project does when project staff are spread thin. Businesses that schedule projects this way receive, not just their first benefits, but all benefits earlier than those that rely on multitasking so as to make progress on more fronts all at once.

Everyone benefits. Even business managers whose pet projects launch last get their benefits earlier than they would if everyone’s projects had been approved to launch at the same time.

And yet, this style of project governance is, in my experience, extraordinarily rare. Why? It’s the Ursine Comparative Velocity Strategy in action: I don’t have to outrun the bear, just you, which is to say, I don’t care if everyone does better. I care that compared to everyone else, I’m not last in line.

Luxury is comparative, not absolute, so if you have any influence over your company’s project governance practices, this insight is the starting point for making them more effective.

Example #2: Much to everyone’s astonishment, Microsoft’s Surface Pro line of detachable computers has, according to my informal surveys, become the top I-don’t-care-if-I-need-it-I-want-it end-user device in corporate America. (In case you’re curious, at the bottom of the list are virtual desktops, where the not-personal computer in front of you only provides the keyboard, mouse, and monitor, with everything else happening on a server in the data center.)

If you’re responsible for end-user provisioning, you’d best remember the point about luxury being comparative: If I hold a high-clout position in the enterprise and I want a Surface Pro, you’d best give me a Surface Book, which I’ve never heard of but which is the Bentley to the Surface Pro’s BMW, which in turn is more luxurious than the MacBook’s Lexus, let alone the virtual desktop’s Dodge Neon.

What’s best for the corporation? What do different types of user actually need to get their jobs done? This only matters for those whose positions don’t entitle them to luxury.

Then there’s the ever-popular help desk. In many enterprises executive perks are part of the landscape — executives expect luxury and you’re in trouble if they don’t get it from you if you’re in a position to deliver it.

CIOs in companies where this is part of executive culture know to include an AEE (automated executive escalation) function in their help desk ACDs. The AEE routes calls from known executive telephone numbers to the most senior analyst available, or, failing that, jumps their call to the front of the ACD queue.

Further, help desk analysis are instructed to always ask AEE callers if they’d like an in-person visit to resolve their issue.

If one of these executives asks the CIO if this is standard operating procedure for the help desk, the CIO explains that it isn’t, but that a small list of executives receives “white glove” treatment because, given their role, downtime has a higher impact than it would for most employees.

Does it really? That doesn’t matter. Telling the exec she’s among the exclusive few — that’s what matters.

And it will matter even more come budget season, when the CIO needs executive support for the proposed IT budget.

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On an entirely different subject, my daughter and webmaster Kimberly Lewis recently posted a nice piece on the business value of 508 compliance. Worth your time. You’ll find it here.

To Douglas Engelbart, who got there first

In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz invented calculus more or less concurrently. The question of who published first raged for decades.

In the 1800s, Sir Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace both figured out how new species could arise from existing ones through the force of natural selection. Aware of each other’s work, in 1858 they presented their work together to the Linnaean Society.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray submitted patent applications for the telephone within hours of each other.

But in 1968, when Douglas Engelbart, who passed away recently, presented his live demonstration of a computing system that included the use of a mouse, videoconferencing, word processing, cut-and-paste, hypertext, revision control, and collaborative editing, he was the only person in the world who had put it all together (thanks to Randy Cunningham’s Honorary Unsubscribe for providing, not only the details, but a link to a video of the presentation).

Not the only person in the world to have each of the ideas separately, though … Ted Nelson, for example, had been writing about hypertext since 1963.

We celebrate those who invent something important first. We celebrate those who make important scientific discoveries first. And yet, there’s a certain inevitability to all this. From the inside, these inventions and discoveries are more like races, in which the only question is who will cross the finish line first, than they are like the actions of lone explorers, boldly going where no one has gone before.

Maybe this is why we lionize great leaders more than great scientists and inventors: Without Washington, England probably would have defeated the colonists in the Revolutionary War; without Lincoln, and Grant, the Confederacy probably would have succeeded in seceding; without Roosevelt and Churchill the outcome of World War II would almost certainly have been very different.

Those specific, unique leaders were required. It’s doubtful that, with different leaders, we would have ended up with similar results. Take Lincoln: Had Stephen Douglas won the 1860 election the Confederacy might never have formed and slavery might still be legal. Or, more likely, a very different Civil War might have been fought at a very different time and in a very different way.

This is not true of the great scientists. Take Einstein: Had he never published, the current state of physics would be unaltered.

It’s a hard thought to swallow. Collectively, it’s the scientists of the world who have made our modern world possible. Just look around you and start subtracting everything you depend on that wouldn’t exist had the community of scientists never figured out the laws of thermodynamics, the aforementioned calculus, information theory, and another few dozens or hundreds of disciplines. It’s their byproducts that allow the world to operate with more than 7 billion inhabitants.

The secret is that scientists form communities, and it’s these communities that collectively deserve credit for what we as a species collectively know. The individual scientists who get the most credit are the ones who are just a bit smarter, just a bit quicker, and who work just a bit harder than the rest.

And, to be fair, in some cases are better politicians: Modern physics, for example, is a very expensive discipline; in order to make the big discoveries you first have to gain access to the big equipment.

Understand, I have nothing but respect for the great scientists, and you should too. While there’s no doubt many were and are driven by a sense of competition, they are far more driven by the desire to understand the universe just a bit better than anyone has understood it before.

Just as the great inventors, like Douglas Engelbart, were driven by the desire to make the world just a bit more capable than it was before.

The world of business has more in common with scientists and inventors than with the great political leaders: Should a company fail, while it’s hard on its employees and shareholders, otherwise it doesn’t matter a bit. If a department store closes its doors, shoppers will just buy the same merchandise from someone else; the same is true of just about anyone or any business in the market for goods or services.

Perhaps that’s why the self-importance of some CEOs is so amusing. Even those who help their companies win are, for the most part, simply shifting revenue from another company’s coffers to their own.

It’s just a race. What matters isn’t who wins it. What matters is that enough people are willing to run.