Project Junction

Box cutters = metal detectors.

Bomb in sneaker = everybody take your shoes off.

Bombs in underwear = full body search.

The current approach to airport security is “defense in depth,” i.e. reacting to and every new threat as it surfaces by buying new equipment and implementing new procedures. This just adds layers on top of layers of complexity and increases the costs of air travel.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to find and defuse the bad guys before they get to the airport?  Impossible, you say? The recent DARPA network challenge makes me think that early identification of bad guys might just be possible.  They moored 10 red balloons across the US to see how people would organize and use viral networks to find them.

MIT took less than one day to solve the puzzle.

Change the contest from find the  “red balloon” to “find a potential bad guy.”  Add an incentive.  Use business intelligence analytics to sort through the real time data streams coming in to filter for key bomb making materials, countries whose citizens may be more statistically predisposed to do such cowardly acts, certain behaviors and so forth.

The key is to provide a forum for every person in the world to collaborate.  Defense in depth is eventually going to cripple the air travel industry as it results in excessive cost and inconvenience.  We’re spending billions of dollars to protect against a few bad guys.  Let’s take a different approach.

Recently, I was asked if I could recommend for parental control software. I thought I’d share my response with a larger community.

From: John
To: Concerned Parent

I installed Optenet web filtering software two years ago. Click Here for more info My daughter took great pride in circumventing every other program I installed prior to this application. She couldn’t crack Optenet, however, as it installed itself in the kernel and it couldn’t be uninstalled without an admin password. Why did I lock her down even though the computer is in a public place in our home? Well, whenever she was on the computer, she got short with her mom and me. She wouldn’t talk with us, only grunt. In addition, she was spending far too much time chatting and surfing the web. Optenet let me set a weekly time allotment for her web surfing. It also let me completely shut down instant messaging and access to certain sites (MySpace for the first site on my blacklist).

My daughter hated me for months which is perhaps the best recommendation for the software. Her attitude changed when Dateline started televising the “Catch A Predator” series. She appreciated the lock down even more when friends at school started getting sexually explicit invitations to meet “sick people.” One friend from school got in trouble after posting pictures of a party with underage drinking on MySpace.

I uninstalled Optenet last year and told Katie that she was now “free.” No restrictions. She said that she was bored by MySpace now. Apparently that trend came and went during her lock down. She did, however, install AOL instant messaging in a nanosecond.

I trust her … but I still pray that she uses good judgment. Because there are many wicked people still trying to harm our children. Shame on them.

I’ve been buried by a blizzard of emails from a manager who always requests that the task/deliverable be completed “Today.” The “today” prompt shows up in variety of amusing ways. The funniest variant was the note written at 10:00 pm requesting that a trivial assignment be completed “tomorrow.” Of course, when I opened the note over coffee … it was due today!

I am wondering if some brilliant consultant once recommended that high performance managers include a clear deadline for any request (which is a good practice), but then took the logic over the edge by further suggesting that you add the target date “today.”  Is there any valid management theory behind it? It reminds me of the late night infomercials that scream at you to “act now!”

At Shorpy you can meet people who worked hard, built things, and died anonymously long before you and I entered the world scene. Shorpy knew the difference between a want and a need.  Can you imagine telling him that you had a tough day at work?

The long forgotten faces at Shorpy would marvel at our technology, but they would never shell out a sawbuck for the latest gadget.  I am sure that they would call us frivolous with our money.

• “Why do you have three TVs in your house when you can only watch one at a time?”
• “How can you afford to eat out at a restaurant more than once a year?”
• “A car with air conditioning? Roll down the window!”
• You should buy on layaway not credit.”

Shorpy was around before the McDonald’s sign said “100 served.” I suspect he would find our lifestyles in this century a bit lazy and irrelevant.

Look around your own house and I’m sure you will find many things that Shorpy would find inconceivable, amazing and frivolous.  Share your find(s) with us by pressing the comment button below.

I’m fielding calls from family and friends this week: “Are you still employed … I heard IBM is laying everyone off.”

The short answer:  Yes … I’m stilling working for the man.

I do appreciate everyone’s concern.  I’m a little mad at Lee Conrad, however, for whipping up the media to disrupt my life and scare my family. Mr. Conrad, national coordinator for Alliance@IBM and his pro-union group gets far more press than they deserve.  What credentials does Lee have to be considered a voice for IBM employees?  He’s not my voice.

My buddy Eddie and I determined to never join a union after we took our first economics class at Rollins College. Unions broke the back of General Motors and other companies by exerting leverage to negotiate benefits that were out of line with market forces.  Personally, I’d readily accept a pay or benefit cut in return for a pay check tomorrow.  Do you think a union would represent my personal interests in that negotiation?

Big Head in Field of Love Flowers by Craig Carlisle

My Plan to Get a Big Head of Human Capital

I can’t control whether or not I will remain with IBM. If I get a pink slip … so be it. I view myself as a tightly wound golf ball of human capital that can bounce around the marketplace. As Napolean dynamite would say, “I’ve got skills.”  And that in a nutshell describes my plan to remain gainfully employed in the future. Dr. Hill, my economics professor at Rollins, convinced us that “education is the one thing you’ll never lose. You may lose money in the market, you may lose your job, but your education will be safely locked away in your head.”

Railing at IBM or the government isn’t productive. On the other hand, spending our limited free time gaining education, skills, and talents is highly productive. I wish Lee Conrad would use his bully pulpit to preach this message. Human capital is precious and always will be.

If you are a parent, extol the merits of education to your kids.

If you are still in school, take your studies seriously.

If your company offers education opportunities. Take them.

IBM has paid me a fair wage for a fair days work for 25 years. We’re even. On second thought, I’ve gotten much more from IBM than they will ever wring out of me because they can never take way the education and lessons I’ve stored safely away in my head.

I’ve completed my lesson plans for the Econ 201 class that I’ll begin teaching in a few weeks.

I’m particularly excited to teach a theory I’ve developed around the “conditioned consumer.” Buyers, particularly in the consumer space, have been conditioned to expect lower prices:

• Sale!
• Buy one get one free
• More for less
• Always low prices
• We pass the savings to you
• The internet free rider effect
• The open source community

The basic question all firms must ask is this: “How can we uncondition the consumer to pay higher prices?”  The answer to this question will reveal their ability to  satisfy Form (emotion jobs) and Function (core jobs).

Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI) approach to satisfying user needs can help you articulate functional and emotional jobs, but it cannot help you push through the maximum price ceiling for the job.  See module #4 in my Econ 201 lesson plans for a further discussion of this topic.

I played this Carling Black Label Beer commercial for my wife and casually commented, “Those were the days.” She said I could make myself cereal for dinner tonight.

I’m an idiot … a hungry idiot.

MS Project assumes that you are loading a “closest to the pin” estimate for task duration. fn That means the duration has a 50% chance of coming in ahead of schedule and a 50% chance of finishing late. There’s a twist to this game that many project managers fail to recognize: Very few people give you a 50/50 estimate when you ask for a task duration. Unless you train the estimators each person will give you their personal estimate based on his/her risk tolerance. It might be a 90% estimate from Ms. Risk Averse and a 30% estimate from Mr. Everything’s Easy.

Tip: Take the time to teach and convince everybody on your team to provide a consistent 50/50 estimate.

Now that everybody has given you their closest to the pin estimate, what is the probability of the final schedule date? That’s right, 50% … you paid attention in 5th grade math!

For some executives, that’s like saying that your project may or may not hit the delivery date.

Executive: “Are you telling me that your schedule has a coin flip chance of occurrence?”
Me: “Yes, I am!”

Don’t you just hate being the first person to educate the huddled masses? How will they respond? Can you escape the executive review in one piece? To keep your job, what can you / should you do to bound the estimate?
__________

fn. Here’s proof that MSP assumes that you are loading a 50% estimate: your duration is automatically loaded in the “most likely case” column of the PERT table.

EA sports designed a brilliant football video game with a feature called “momentum.” After you score or force an interception momentum shifts your way. With momentum your players are a bit sharper, you drop fewer passes, and you make bigger hits. You hear the term momentum discussed regularly during sporting events. Have you ever tried consciously to get it and keep it with your project team?

What does it look like?

How does it feel?

Is it even real?

Have you ever said to yourself, “Nothing good happened today?”

You were wrong.

Discuss.