I want a team of superheroes!

I remember one of my mentors once telling me that I should "Hire a team of Superstars", I remember this first and foremost because it's one of the few areas that I still disagree on, and it's primarily because of my personal belief that instead of getting a bunch of superheroes, "I should be enabling normal people to achieve abnormal results".

Superstars like comic book heroes are more likely (gross generalisation alert!) to have deep personality flaws that prevents them from becoming good team players, look at the classics, Batman? Socio-path! Superman? Goody Two shoes Boyscout! Thor? Arrogance!

The "normal hero" typically has insight into their weaknesses, knows their limitations and their boundaries and is more likely to team with others who are stronger in areas that they are not and inherently trust others (though sometimes they can be overly dependant) to do what they can not, rather than thinking that they can save a universe single handed without anyone helping them.

The key is how to enable the normal hero to perform superman feats.


The Blogger who wrote this post is Iron Man

Iron Man 95% Hulk 90% The Flash 60% Green Lantern 55% Catwoman 55% Spider-Man 50% Supergirl 50% Superman 45% Batman 30% Wonder Woman 30% Robin 12%

Inventor. Businessman. Genius.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

The only constant in life is change

1 month ago I and my team got outsourced to a Managed Services Provider, I have to admit it came as a bit of a shock, since I did not see it coming, but one of the common threads that came up was that my Executive Staff were not conformable dealing with the overhead that new technologies were placing on them and wanted to focus on their core competency of running a business.

The great thing about IT is that there's always something new to learn and the bad thing about IT is that there's always something new to learn. And this constant chop and change puts pressures on everyone involved.

Even though my team and I got outsourced unexpectedly there is a huge plus to this and that is that we have greater career progression opportunities in a company that sells our skills as a service, we immediately move from a cost to a profit center and we are become part of a organisation that places a higher degree of value on our knowledge as a mean to making extra revenue.

Me? Well I'm looking forward to the wider future opportunities this will bring!

Fried Monkey Brains!

Just completed the Prince2 Practitioner course and my brain is completely fried, will blog about it later when I feel a little less like Johnny Mnenonic!

A funny thing happened on the way back to work....

Some of you may have caught my earlier blog post on the reasons why I choose Cisco equipment over everything else i.e. I can throw a brick out of the window and hit someone who knows it.

Well would you believe it? I threw a brick out my windows and hit.....well no not really but...

Here's the story I was driving back from my Cisco exam this morning and I was stopped to do a roadside census, I wound down my car window and the census taker asked me a few questions about my journey, he then spotted the CCNA book in my front seat and asked me how my Cisco studies were going!

I was a bit taken aback, I mean a census taker knowing about Cisco certifications! What are the odds? Last time I checked they weren't quite the "in" thing. He then told me he was a CCNA himself and he was working as a census taker while his visa got sorted out.

Life is funny like that!

Keep Learning

Learning is not compulsory but neither is survival (W. Edwards Deming)

Unleash your inner Creative Laziness!

“Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things”

— Robert A. Heinlein

I have a special talent it's called creative laziness, it's a strange skill because it's driven by the tentative possibility of not having to do something monotonously in the future by putting near herculean effort in right now.

Why would you be crazy enough to do this?!? Well here's why:
I hate monotonous tasks! They tend to:

• Have highly complex routines and rituals ;
• Are extremely susceptible to error and;
• Take up time that could be better utilised on more important things.

Example?

Well if I find I'm doing a task more than three times (Remind me to blog about my 3 time rule!) successively, I instantly think... "Hang on! Can't this be automated somehow?" and 99 times out of a hundred it can be with enough effort and a "Can do" attitude.

In fact yesterday I was doing some operations across multiple systems and it was the 3rd time I was doing this within 2 weeks, I instantly stopped because even though the operation only takes about 3-5 minutes then that's 3 to 5 minutes of me doing something that I could [read should!] be saving by automating the process.

So I set about automating the operation and it took me over an hour of writing, testing, optimising and fine tuning the script so it could all be run at the proverbial "flick of the switch", when it runs the entire operation completes in under 2 minutes.

You may say, "You fool! You invested over 60 minutes to save yourself a couple of minutes, what a pointless waste of effort, you should be put against the wall and shot! In fact where did I put that rubber hose!!!"

But wait! In my defense, yes I did put in all that effort, however it doesn't require any mental distraction to run the script over and over again, so I don't actually lose those 2 minutes in fact my input approaches near zero and the process can be easily delegated to someone else who does not need to have the high level skill or knowledge that the original process required, and those 2 minute savings start to mount up over time, and if god forbid I ever had to do that operation over 30 times I'll get back my hour!

Now I know my strengths!

I took the Strengths Finder test from http://sf2.strengthsfinder.com and here are my top themes:

• Deliberative
• Command
• Significance
• Relator
• Analytical

The results were so spot on I found it almost scary!

If...

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, and - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

Personal values

What do you stand for professionally and personally? And at the end of the day and would you stick to them thick and thin?
Once upon a time I was asked one of the most thought provoking questions in my life at a job interview.
It's been over 10 years but it represented one of the most important points in my career as an IT professional and though I didn't take the job at the time and in hindsight it probably would not have worked out if I did (they didn't make it and were bought out by a competitor), even knowing all this I often wish I had taken that role because I was asked one of those questions that would have made me walk through fire for the person who asked it, the questions was "What would you like put on your gravestone when you die?", I thought for a heartbeat and said "All around good guy", the person who asked me was called Phil Tee and at the time he was running a Networking company called Riversoft, he may not remember me but I surely remember him for creating that singular defining moment, when all is said and done and at the end of the day, how do you wish to be remembered?

Learn about the industry that you are in

It often amazes me and don't be too surprised about this statement though since I'm often amazed, about the lack of interest some Information Technology professionals have about the sector that their company is in. It shouldn't make a difference right? I.T. is I.T. right? Wrong! It makes all the difference.
One size does not fit all
Competitive advantage varies wildly between different sectors
The situation typically dictates the approach i.e. What does your company do? What is it's business model, how does it get its products to market.

How can you prioritise when you do not know these things? It's like asking for a gold fish to prioritise what happens in an Emergency Room, a gold fish knows what's happening at this particular moment in time but a Professional can assess what has happened before, is currently occurring and what should be done next, past, present future, experience, triage and pro-action.

My OS is better than your OS!

I work in an multi-operating system shop, we use Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X and we almost always get into the which OS is the best debate.

I admit I'm a bit of an anomaly though since I'm a Linux guy who does everything from the command line via a Windows desktop because I can use my PuTTY (secure connection software) with my X-StarWin x windows client (it lets me Unix open graphical software on my Windows machine) while putting my Powerpoint presentations together, while all the time craving for an iPhone.

I work with guys who don't know what a command line is, Apple Mac die-hards and others who only need a VT220 terminal (now I'm showing my age!) and curse graphical interfaces.

Funnily enough this turf war has also moved on to mobile phones! Symbian, Apple, Palm, Blackberry and Microsoft mobiles.

I often get asked to choose one and create a policy to enforce it and my choice is typically as instead "what are you most productive using?"

Hmm, what is going to get you up and running with the least amount of support? Now this might sound really satisficing (which it is!) but there is reason to it, people who use what they are happy with typically have a lower support overhead in my experience.

Whenever you force someone to use what they are not happy with you will get problems, they are used to manual/stick and give them automatic, they are used to chocolate and you give them vanilla, it will initially seem great for you but in the long run everyone loses, they are less productive and you have a higher support and training burden.

Sometimes you need to do a quick analysis of the situation and remember that you are there to provide a service and sometimes that service may mean compromise and compromising isn't so bad in my honest opinion.

In a world of constant change and multiple paths...

In a world of constant change and multiple paths. sometimes it's great to have certain decisions fixed.

Sometimes too many options are a bad thing and limits to the ability to totally customise your processes or software may be a blessing in disguise because it may force you to adopt standard processes that are common across all business units and typically be corporate best practice, it also eases your upgrade path.

Adoption of a core technology and choice of the leading services that plug directly into it, limits your options sure, but as long as you have a solid core and while you may not have the best of the best of solution for the problem at hand, you may however be way "up there" in the best of class solution for your business.

So before you grab the best solution for X problem, look at the big picture and see how it integrates with "Y", the overall business needs & "Z", the core systems that it will need to interfaces with.

Sometimes you'll find that point solution that you thought was the silver bullet will become an albatross around your neck.

Kai-zen! The Clash between Judo and IT!

I do Judo (the Gentle Path is it's English translation from Japanese but my back is telling me something a little different today!) , I love it! It's been good to me even when I left it for 20 years and came back, then and only then in a moment of great epiphany did I finally realise that... from the moment I initially stepped onto that tatami and did my first throw to when I came back to the mat years later, what it had taught me...

The Japanese have a word that embodies the search to perfect oneself and one's skills to become better, stronger and faster at what you are and what you do, to strive for continuous improvement and that word is Kai-zen.

Kai-zen means "Change - Good" every change should make you better, it's slow, but it's cumulative, by rejecting what doesn't work and accepting that which does, by taking every failure as a lesson in what should not be done and an opportunity to search for that which will, by not succumbing to the insanity of trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It's a lesson in seeking what is good and what works in life and in business, it teaches you to never accept what is not optimal, what will hurt you over and over again and instead create a collection of experiences and knowledge of that which works and is good.

Now before I get too spiritual it has some real practical purposes as well:

• When something goes wrong take it as an opportunity to change things so that it won't go wrong the same way again!
• Don't limit yourself or your processes to what is, think of how it should be and make it so;
• Believe that things don't always have to be this way and you can make it right.

You can make things better and sometimes with just this belief you can set yourself on the right path.

In Outer SaaS no one can hear you scream

In my current IT strategy if an Enterprise Software Vendor doesn't have a "Software as a Service" story then I'm not really interested in what they have to say.

Sometimes you need to be free to make mistakes but traditional monolithic software is not quite the suitable playground in which to make them, mistakes in the enterprise software world are costly.

I once worked for a company that invested in a new Supply Chain Management system only to watch it spectacularly fail and take the jobs of the CIO and IT Director with it, unfortunate for them but fortunately for me, I learnt some exceptionally good lessons at their expense, however they didn't make any particularly bad decisions since they:

• Selected two of the top players in the market place i.e. in the top 5 and to be really specific one of the top 3 hardware vendors and top 5 SCM at that time;
• They were cost conscious and negotiated one of those once in a life time deals;
• They consulted and involved their people, they may not have followed the overall consensus but they involved everyone.

With all this going behind them how could it all have gone so horribly wrong? Well there were a number of reasons but the primary one was "risk", too much risk was involved and it was not suitably mitigated or transferred, and risk is a clear and present danger in the implementation of today's enterprise systems.

There are way too many variables to account for in such complex systems and typically there is too much skin in the game for people to easily pull out when something goes awry.

"The problem with momentum is that it can either take you up a hill or over a cliff, it's agility and responsiveness that can make all the difference in the path that you take"

This is why I like SaaS, you can commit to a monthly fee and use the service tactically until you have a strategic solution and either stick or switch depending on how it works out.

• The implementation risk has been transferred to a 3rd party whose core business and competencies depend upon on them getting it right first time.
• My company gains the ability to do their jobs from anywhere from any internet capable device.
• I have lower requirement for internal systems in terms of lower data, licensing, backup and administrative overhead.
• I have a lower skill requirement internally, I no longer need the all singing, all dancing support person who can roller skate backwards with a kitchen sink tied to his back.

And last but by no means least "Just keeping the lights on" is someone else's job, I get to do the real cool stuff of making it all happen.

On Outsourcing

About a year ago I took the opportunity to completely outsource my network function to a partner organization.

Why? Well to paraphrase the great Peter Drucker:

"...maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence."

Basically we weren't using our networking skills enough to keep it in-house and our network isn't large/complex enough to warrant a full-time headcount, so when we did make changes it took us a long time and the results could not be guaranteed, now I wouldn't say we were incompetent but I definitely would not go as far as saying we were networking experts either.

My deal on these kinds of situations is to take a cold hard look at what we are doing and ask ourselves the following questions:

• Does it add to our competitive advantage?
• Are we the best people to be doing this?
• Can this be done better by someone else?
• Does this process add value?

If you can't answer yes to all these questions then you should really take a look at outsourcing.

Break out the Cookie Cutter

In the last 12 months my company has been busy and I "really" mean busy!

We moved our 2 largest corporate offices, merged one branch office, acquired 4 companies in 3 different countries, all while implementing a Global Disaster Recovery project and during those periods the war cry was "Zero downtime, faster integration and on target delivery!"

A mentor once taught me that there is opportunity in chaos, it would have been easy with all this change going on to simply run into a corner and hide but it was also an amazing opportunity to re-architect our core network infrastructure.

Well I'm not one for hiding so I with the help of my team and some trusted partners we set about the task of redesigning our core network infrastructure in order to make it easier to understand and secondly a scalable and re-usable template.

A Re-usable Template? What's that you may say!

We'll here's the thing, linking up and architecting networks for future growth can be a tad difficult. However if you have a standard template in place you can easily replicate the network design somewhere else making it:

• Faster and easier to deploy (I already know what it's going to look like before I've started or been engaged);
• Faster to document (search and replace anyone?) and;
• Requiring minimal knowledge overhead i.e. If I know the Storage Area Network details on one site, I instantly know that it's going to be in a similar range and have the same configuration on another site.

I also know exactly how much a acquisition of a new site will typically cost, the estimated lead time of equipment and resources needed, I and my vendors call this the standard acquisition kit and I can give my vendors the heads up that we'll need one ahead of schedule as soon as we've completed the IT assessment.

With this template we have lowered our integration implementation time of new acquisitions to sub 72 hours and we hope to reduce this down to less than 24 hours in the future, so if your organisation is big into mergers and acquisitions it may be time to breakout the cookie cutter!

Throwing bricks out of windows

I often get vendors and colleagues coming to me and asking why I standardise my networks on Cisco from the front to the back end.

I hear:

• But "Brand X with added secret sauce" switch is cheaper!
• I don't need all that power;
• What the hell is a VLAN?
• Have I got a deal for you!
• Psst! It's end of quarter and I'll throw these in for you;
• Hey look what I found in the stockroom! A XYZ switch let's plug that in!
• Cisco doesn't have that killer app, whiz bang, disruptive technology feature that you'll kick yourself in ten years time if you don't have it now.
  

However in the face of this questioning and persistence, I hang on like a old dog with a new bone and summarise my reasoning in this one sentence:

"If I throw a brick out the window odds on it's going to hit someone who knows Cisco"

The pool of candidates and suppliers is large enough that the skill set is a non scarce commodity, I will always be able to find someone who has Cisco skills and because of the extra functionality they will be able to maintain them from anywhere in the world.

I also won't have to find the all singing, all dancing network superstar with the brain the size of a planet who can understand the nuances of how multiple vendors kit can play well together.

I can enable the common specialist and allow them to produce uncommon results with greater speed and efficiency at a lower cost.

In a down market I can switch to second-user Cisco gear from authorised dealers and that typically saves me a 3rd off the list price while still maintaining this strategy.

So if your going to make that next big purchase ask yourself,

"If I throw a brick out the window, what are the odds on it's going to hit someone with skill XYZ ?" You could save yourself a lot of time, effort and money.

Living with my Shadow

Like most IT organisations, mine has a shadow, an underground IT department that is the first to find and try out new gadgets, identify just the right products that make their business units operate more effectively and implement solutions so fast it'll make your head spin.

They are quick, they are nimble, they are smart and guess what they are as well? They are willing to come to you and discuss what they are trying to do to ensure it is right for the business, as long as you have an open door and are willing to give them a fair hearing.

This partnership does not happen overnight though it takes and will continue to take a lot of work but here are some tips to keep all parties on an even keel.

Don't ignore what's going on
It's good to talk, ask them what they are doing and how you can make it good for both them and the business as a whole, remember the old adage "Think Globally Act Locally" well you can bring the big picture to their ideas and help them flesh them out out more fully.

Help navigate them though dangerous waters
These systems may well grow faster than anyone had planned or quickly become insecure Heath Robinson contraptions that are doomed to be abandoned sooner rather than later, so help develop a "Support Ecosystem" for them to ensure their long term viability.

Refuse no reasonable request
Don't be known as Dr No, fully qualify why the solution is not viable and together with your Shadow IT representative find one that is. Remember "Collaboration" is the watch word of the day not "Command and Control"

Treat them as an extension to your team not separate from it
Share your detailed strategy, goals and thoughts with them this can help both you and them for a number of reasons including:

• They may be able to help you implement some the technology by being advocates, champions or consultants;
• They will appreciate knowing what you are working on and may even save time and energy in case they were planning at looking at the same problem;
• They will tell you if your completely way of base! They may well be a lot closer to the business process in question than you are and will correct you if your assumptions or data is wrong;
• They will help you identify solutions to problems you can't figure out yourself.
  

Remember they may know than you do
Working in an IT Department does not mean you know everything, your Shadow IT counterpart's expertise in the technology domain being looked at may diminish your own. Be humble and defer to their knowledge you may just learn something!

Know when to call in SWAT
If your both out of your depth you may need to bring in the consultants, try not to let pride and ego get in the way.

Treat policies as guidelines not as hard and fast rules
Sometimes there's something really comforting about a document saying you can't do something, even when it is outdated and makes absolutely no sense in the current climate. Periodically look at your policies with a critical eye and challenge the areas that don't make sense and adapt them accordingly.

Go Skunk!
Sometimes it will be better to just let them run with the concept alone and see what they come back with as a proof of concept. In these cases treat them like a Skunk works, give them resources, autonomy and a date to synch back up and share their findings and results.

Information Technology is moving at a rapid pace, appreciate and leverage the resources around you don't alienate them.

Will the iPhone be the new Corporate Standard?

Since the iPhone came out last year there has been many disputes as to it's viability in the enterprise.

Key issues raised against it was it's inability to easily connect to Microsoft Exchange and lack of remote push and wipe features, well looks like that's all a changing.

Apple has opened up it's iPhone Enterprise Beta Program with a bunch of features clearly targeted at Business including:

• Push email
• Push contacts
• Push calendar
• Global Address List
• Certificates and Identities
• WPA2/802.1x
• Enforced security policies
• More VPN protocols
• Device configuration
• Remote wipe
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync Support
  

Now I could just stop right there but there's another bit of good news coming down the pipeline and that's with Apple's recent release of their SDK.

Truphone a UK VoIP company who wants to abolish roaming charges by routing your calls via the Internet rather than over the normal mobile networks announced on their blog that they are currently looking at the iPhone SDK and hopefully this will allow them to get their software fully integrated with the iPhone soon.



If these two technologies arrive soon they have the ability in my opinion to place the iPhone as the Numero Uno phone to have, it will work with the number one corporate email server and also allow you to travel across continents without having to pay any roaming charges.

If you're anything like me, you will be always on the lookout for ways to drive down operational costs while enabling business to operate more efficiently so here's hoping in 6 months these two products will be on the market.

What is the IT Department Afraid Of?

In a world where the rules of engagement are constantly changing and the boundaries are constantly in flux it's sometimes easier to hang steadfastly on to what we've done in the past.

In this new world we believe we are right because we "know better" that is in the past this was bad and therefore now it must still be bad right?
I remember aeons ago one of my previous bosses demonising email access unless you had a VPN, a work supplied laptop and a work supplied router.

After I took over his role I considered his resistance and I couldn't find any reason to maintain it. Why? Well consider the following:

• Does easier access to email systems enable the flow of information, enhance communication and collaboration? Yes
• Are the rewards greater than the risk? Most likely
• What is the risk of someone actively targeting our company that they would tail our staff around in the hope that they would go to an internet cafe , log into our networks, not log out and give away some critical piece of information? With Educated users? Pretty low I'd say

Now this may appear as blasé but I've worked in the security game in the past and know that to penetrate someone's systems this way takes 3 things, persistence, skill with a mixture of luck and bloody mindedness, it's not like in the movies because your average high level Executive's password is not the name of his favourite pet.

Today I was challenged by one of my guys that we should restrict a method of access to systems to other employees because it was classified as an exception to our security policy, it bypassed our standard method of access and even though it was audit-able would not be initially tracked in our currently run of VPN metrics.

Now I admit I felt a little pressured, I initially thought well I don't have a problem with this, what is it that makes it's so wrong? Is the world going to end if I do this? What is so wrong since another member of staff (including myself has this access).

Now I initially paused to reflect and assess if what was being asked of me was such a bad thing. The only think I could come up with was this decision was motivated by fear, fear of lack of control, have we got to the stage that we do not trust our colleagues so much that we think that giving them additional control will cause our companies to come down in flames?

Be Free

Be free! Fly away birdy! Yesterday I set my Wi-Fi network free, I removed the password policy on the router and allowed anyone within range to access the Internet without having to log in, give me their network card address, or throw the voodoo bones on the table.

Now now before you all go crazy and lose your minds citing security, hacking, fire and brimstone, dogs and cats sleeping together and general total anarchy, I'll explain my reasoning here.

One of the Globally Nomadic Execs at my company got themselves an iPhone (*I WANT ONE*) and it is truly one of the coolest, easiest to use devices on the planet, he can use it for almost everything "except" in order to use it effectively he had to come to my team to get a password on the captive portal, log into the captive portal, authenticate and then after all that he can get in and do some productive work.

Does that make sense? Doesn't that seems to be a lot of hoops to jump through in order for a colleague or business partner to get access to the Internet on link that is totally isolated from our internal network for the sake of security?

I thought what are we afraid of? So I told my guys to set the Wi-Fi bird free from it's cage, they looked at me aghast and promptly went to closet where we keep the the straitjackets, luckily before they managed to secure, gag and call for the men in white coats for me they came up with their core issue "But someone will still steal our Wi-Fi!"

So that was the trade off, Ease of use vs. Fear of someone getting a freebie on Wi-Fi access!

Today guys, I chose to set my Wi-Fi bird free.

See Bruce Schneier Security Matters Commentary on Wired - Steal This Wi-Fi

Got Blog?

Wow and it only took a minute!

Welcome to my Blog "Uncommon Sense IT"

My Mama's favourite saying to me as I was growing up was "Common sense ain't all that common" so I figure uncommon sense must be abundant right!?!

So I'm starting this blog as of now to show that my own particular brand of uncommon sense in the IT world can help myself and others to learn that just because that's the ways it's always been doesn't mean it always has to be done that way!