Author: The Information Badger

Every generation blames the one before…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Life, social media

Last Sunday was Father’s Day, an occasion for children to acknowledge the contribution of their father to their lives. On Sunday, the Badger spent a few moments in contemplation at his father’s graveside before having lunch with his children and grandson. There were no gifts, just the company of loved ones, lively chat, and an amusing moment when the Badger was described as a ‘Dinosaur Dadasaurous – which is like a normal Dad but more awesome!’

The song ‘The Living Years’ by Mike and the Mechanics’ sounded out from the playlist providing the background music for the meal. It’s opening line of ‘Every generation blames the one before…’, and the rest of the lyrics seemed not only apt for Father’s Day itself, but also for a world in which the younger generation seems eager to blame the older generation for all of its woes.  This latter point became central to light-hearted discussion over lunch. Everyone had the same view, all be it expressed in different ways, that what’s wrong with today’s world is indeed the fault of an older generation! Why? Because it’s a truism and it’s been that way for millennia! Everyone felt that the question of whether today’s older generation really deserves the blame it currently gets will only really be answered decades hence when it can be seen whether the youngsters have screwed up any less than their predecessors!

Solutions to today’s economic, environmental, technological, and cultural problems will never be found by blaming the past and chastising those who happened to live through those times.  There’s nothing to be gained from inter-generational conflict, especially when there are always winners and losers in the real world. At this point, the Badger emphasises that it really was a light-hearted discussion over the lunch rather than a deeply serious and philosophical debate. Nevertheless, there was, however, unity in  feeling that the mob dynamic so often evident throughout social media is divisive for inter-generational relationships and also one of the world’s current problems that the younger generation need to face up to.  

As lunch finished, the Badger wondered what his own father would have made of a generation born this century who know more about the World of Warcraft or Call of Duty than they do about World War 2 and the austere, non-digital life that his generation endured.  Having lived through the war and its aftermath, he wanted subsequent generations to be free, to have better education than he had, and to face life’s problems with resolve, fortitude, and action rather than complaint because, as he would often say, ‘that’s life’!  A shudder went up the Badger’s spine. The playlist had moved on playing Frank Sinatra singing ‘That’s Life’!  It appears that fathers wield a special power on Father’s Day that transcends today’s technology. If only it could be harnessed to stop inter-generational blame games so that we concentrate on the future and not the past…

Assume nothing, Believe no one, Challenge everything…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Life, Project Management, Security, Training

More years back than is sensible to think about, and while still in short trousers in the IT industry, metaphorically that is, the Badger was sent on the company’s in-house project management course.  In those days, project management courses for software and systems development were delivered by those from within the organisation whose day job was actually delivering systems.  The first hour of the course provided a nugget of wisdom that the Badger’s carried with him ever since. It came from the company’s Managing Director (MD) who gave a memorable opening address.   

As the course attendees settled down on the first day, the MD stood up, settled on the edge of a table, welcomed everyone, and then spoke eloquently without notes for forty minutes. Those present felt important when the MD told everyone they were humbled to be addressing people who not only delivered complex things for clients, but also made the real profits of the company and were the bedrock of the company’s ‘can deliver, will deliver, come what may’ reputation.  The MD went on to talk about their own experience as a project and then a business leader, emphasising that the best people in these roles had A, B, C, D, E built into their psyche. They explained this as ‘Assume nothing, Believe no one, Challenge everything, Decide based on fact and data, Execute decisions to completion’. The MD urged his audience to remember this and to apply it in everything they did if they aspired to be the best project manager they could be.  

Assume nothing, believe no one, challenge everything…is at the heart of police, forensic, and any type of objective work requiring the analysis of information to make important decisions. The MD’s point was not that everyone should be a policeman and distrustful of everyone they meet, but that the best delivery and business leaders have these attributes built into their psyche even if they’re not conscious of it.

These attributes in the Badger’s own psyche were activated this week when an SMS message arrived purporting to be from IPSOS MORI, a well-known polling organisation.  It said it was following up a letter inviting the Badger to register his child for a COVID-19 test kit, and that this would help monitor infection rates for new variants. It also provided website details to register. The Badger quickly cycled through A to E and did the right thing – which did not entail complying with the instructions in the message! There had been no letter, there are no children in the Badger household, and IPSOS MORI has no reason to have the Badger’s contact details.  

The point of this tale is that in today’s online and instant communication world having A.B.C.D.E in your psyche isn’t just important in the professional world, project management, and business, it’s important to be in everyone’s psyche in order to stay safe and secure in daily life.   

All-lane running motorways and electric car breakdowns…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Electric cars, Opinion, Risk, Smart & New Technology, Smart Motorways

The Badger often flicks through the television channels before retiring for the night. It’s a habit, and it’s rare that something grabs the attention sufficiently to delay bedtime. One night recently, however, the ‘Smart Motorway Committee’ on the BBC Parliament channel proved an exception. A yawn was stifled as the channel was sampled, but the Badger was suddenly hooked when one of the politicians on the committee asked senior representatives from the Police, motoring, and haulage organisations, a clever question. It was this: ‘If your loved ones were driving on the motorway, or you were driving with your loved ones as passengers, which would you prefer it to be a) a controlled motorway with a permanent hard-shoulder lane, or b) an all-lane running motorway with refuge areas that could be more than 800 metres apart’.  

The politician asked for their personal opinion, not that of the organisation they represented. The respondents each plumped for (a), explaining their choice in terms of the human reality and anxiety of breaking down surrounded by live traffic lanes when young children, the disabled, or elderly parents are on board and refuge is some distance away.  To ensure smart motorways are safe, Highways England, of course, are currently implementing the 2020 Stocktake and Action Plan, and their recent report continues to make the case for all-lane running, all be it with further technology-centred  safety improvements. However, as the respondent’s answers illustrate, it’s obvious that people remain unpersuaded that foregoing a permanent hard-shoulder lane is wise.

Although it was late, the Badger’s programme delivery, IT, systems, and risk management experience and instincts kicked into gear with the following point bubbling to the fore.  Smart motorways were conceived mainly to increase traffic capacity and reduce congestion. It feels like ‘safety’ is being bolted on to avoid facing up to a possible uncomfortable truth, namely that all-lane running motorways may not have been such a good idea in the first place. With this point on his mind, the Badger turned off the television and retired for the night.

The next morning a chance conversation, when the Badger was told about someone’s experience of a new electric car that stopped working on a railway crossing, seem to reinforce this point.  The Badger hadn’t really appreciated the difficulty, which can get a sense of here and here, in moving electric vehicles if they stop functioning for any reason. It appears that the days of getting people to help you push it to a safer place are gone!  What will happen when the mix of electric cars on all-lane running motorways is substantially higher than today and more of them breakdown?  Even more expensive technology seems to be the answer to everything these days, but it feels like it would have been better, safer, and cheaper never to have ditched permanent hard-shoulder lanes in the first place!  

To impress at an interview takes more than qualifications…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Education

Well-established companies often cooperate with the careers or employment services functions of universities. Such liaisons can raise the company profile with students considering their career options at the end of their course, and also help with achieving annual graduate recruitment objectives. A comment by a friend’s daughter on a practice interview at the end of her degree course, reminded the Badger that he and his company’s Human Resources (HR) Director once participated in an ‘interview practice day’ for final year Information Technology students arranged through an established company/university liaison.  

The format was simple. The Badger and the HR Director jointly interviewed each student as if it were for a real job.  Each student had been told the week previously to approach the session as if they were really trying to get an offer of employment. A university staff member observed each interview and then met with the interviewers at the end of the day for an overall debrief.  Feedback to the students happened the following day.

It was an interesting day, and the diverse personalities, attitudes, and approaches of the students brought home that everyone is different! With a couple of exceptions, most did themselves proud. To the Badger’s surprise, most wore smart attire for their interviews. For a few, however, a smart appearance proved no protection against weaknesses exposed by the experienced and skilled interviewers.  

The most memorable interview was with a young man wearing combat trousers and a tee-shirt with ‘I’m the Boss’ emblazoned across the front. This young man was highly intelligent, academically gifted, articulate, domineering, and permanently in transmit-mode!   He evaded every question and spent the entire session telling the interviewers how successful he was academically and how incredibly successful he was going to be in the future. At the end of the session, he stared at his interviewers and pompously asked, ‘I’m going to be hugely successful, aren’t I?’   The HR Director winked at the Badger and simply replied with ‘Perhaps, but not with our company’. The university observer laughed out loud!  At the post-event debrief, it transpired that tutors were already worried that the young man’s personality would hold him back from achieving his full potential.  

The Badger looks back on that day fondly.  It was an example of mutually beneficial company/university cooperation. It was a reminder that students, just like people everywhere, are all different. Some were idealistic, some realistic, and some were just plain deluded, but that’s the way it’s always been through the generations. Finally, it was a reminder for students that to impress at an interview requires soft-skills, preparation, and not just academic qualifications. If you don’t prepare holistically for a real interview, then you’re wasting your time…and time is precious in today’s world.

Four wheels and a motor…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Climate & Environment, Electric cars

The UK government announced in 2020 that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would be banned from 2030. Electric cars, powered by batteries or fuel cells, are the future but there’s a very long way to achieve their mass adoption by the public. The marketing of current rechargeable, battery-powered, electric models trying to persuade us to buy one seems to rise weekly. So far, however, none of it seems to have triggered a truly massive step-change in mass demand from the public who, like the Badger, are still a long way from giving up their existing vehicles for an electric alternative.

New figures show that the average age of cars on UK roads is 8.4 years, that only 1.3% are plug-in hybrid or battery electric, and that more than 60% of cars are 7 or more years old.  Indeed, the Badger’s own trusty vehicle is 10 years old, and fossil fuelled. It’s comfortable, practical, reliable, economic, easy to maintain, 95% recyclable at end of life, and it’s used in a climate-friendly way. Electric car evangelists may think this is heresy, but there’s currently no hard-nosed economic case for the Badger to relinquish it for a used or new electric vehicle. Many people appear to have come to the same conclusion and a recent OFGEM announcement about putting ~1800 new ultra-rapid charging points across the UK motorway network’s service stations  is unlikely to persuade people otherwise.  

The transformation of society to electric cars is a marathon rather than a sprint. We may have started on this marathon but there’s an awfully long way to go with lots of opportunity for bumps on the way. Battery technology continues to advance rapidly and batteries with a 5-minute charge time could be in mass production by 2024. If that’s so, then it shouldn’t be a surprise if people decide against spending their money on new or used electric cars that use today’s battery technology. Range anxiety and effective and convenient charging infrastructure remain barriers to adoption. There are also strategic and geo-political issues associated with sourcing many of the materials necessary for battery manufacture. There are also significant recycling challenges  – see here and here – regarding the recovery of valuable elements from end of life batteries.  Whereas the recycling of fossil-fuelled vehicles, where ~70% is of ferrous metals, is well established and straightforward, electric vehicles contain a far greater variety of metals that are much more complex to recover.

There’s much more to the electric car picture than just zero tail-pipe emissions, and that’s why there’s a very long way to go in this marathon transformation yet. That’s also why the Badger’s own trusty vehicle, which still fulfils its primary function of taking occupants from A to B safely with maximum flexibility and minimum fuss, has some years left before it takes its final journey to the scrap heap to be, perhaps, reincarnated as the bodywork of an electric vehicle…

Noise…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Life, social media

The subsidiary’s numbers for the month didn’t look good. The decline over six months was continuing, and the CEO had convened a leadership team meeting to take some major decisions. Most attending believed that some market repositioning and restructuring needed to happen. The Human Resources (HR) Director, however, was resistant because staff wouldn’t like it. The CEO, unruffled and calm, simply asked, ‘What exactly is worrying staff at the moment?’ The HR Director said that in one region staff believed they should have a pay rise, in another there was upset that refreshment points often ran out of coffee in the afternoon, and that there was a general feeling that they should have better IT equipment.  The HR Director also said that the CEO was unpopular.  

The CEO smiled wryly and reminded the HR Director that whereas acting in the best interest of the whole company was in their job description, popularity was not. The CEO then reminded the HR Director to focus on the big picture and the company’s overall needs rather than pockets of noise which had little bearing on the major decisions that needed to be taken. The HR Director said little for the rest of the meeting. If you’ve had a leadership role then you might relate to this tale, because decisions are always taken against a background of noise containing a spectrum of comment, opinion, hearsay, and questionable information.

Noise, a word that first appeared in the 12th Century, has described the hum of daily life’s background information and tittle-tattle for a long time. In today’s world, social media produces much of this noise. The background level is the highest it has ever been because newspapers, online news sites, celebrities, politicians, and many others, feed off social media content to create the stories and content needed to fill airtime and their own objectives.  Today’s noise seems more important than it is, especially for recent generations who are not afraid to say what they think about anything using social media.

What’s the point of contributing your thoughts and feelings on social media platforms when it’s just adding to today’s background noise? Is anyone interested for more than a few seconds? Does adding to life’s noise make any difference when the best leaders make decisions in the interests of whatever entity they are leading, regardless of the background noise?  The Badger chatted to his teenage nephew about these questions, and it was soon clear that the answers depend on your age, your values, and your life experience.  However, the youngster noted that although many of their friends spent more time feeding social media than spending quality time with each other, they did wonder what their life really gained by contributing to the noise of the modern world. Perhaps teenagers have more wisdom than we give them credit for… 

Petulance in a mad world

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Education, Life

In a world driven by immediacy, social media, instant news, and instant opinions, it’s still possible to relax serenely with an interesting book. That is, of course, if you have the personal discipline to concentrate without using a keyboard for a sensible period of time. The other day the Badger was lounging at home immersed in ‘A Good Ancestor’ by Roman Krznaric. The radio was on and the Badger’s baby grandson was on the floor at his feet playing with a set of keys. The calmness of the scene was, however, broken when the Badger’s wife tried to swap the keys for a toy. The toddler’s noisy eruption of petulance coincided with the song  ‘It’s a Mad World’ playing on the radio. The Badger sighed; his concentration broken. In that moment, the book, the petulance, and the song seemed like an apt reminder of the petulant, self-centred, mad, mad world we live in!  

Petulance can be seen everywhere – on the street, on social media, in current affairs and politics, in journalism, in business and during our life at work. It is something we are all guilty of on occasion.  One memorable display the Badger has witnessed happened at the conference dinner of a company leadership event held in Washington D.C, USA. The dinner started with a tour of the Capitol building. This was followed by a group photograph on its steps, and then the meal itself in a nearby location. The entertainment at the end of the meal involved giving every person a musical instrument so that a compere could teach the assembled multitude to play a part in performing a tune that was the finale of the event.  The Chief Finance Officer (CFO) was given a tambourine and erupted with a spectacular display of petulance. There was foot-stamping, table-thumping, and yelling until they got what they wanted – a drum!  This public display of bad temper became the talking point in the bar at the end of the evening. The CFO’s reputation was damaged for a very long time.

Petulance is part of the human condition, but if you don’t recognise that, and you don’t control it at work, then you risk being labelled by your bosses and colleagues as ill-disciplined, unreliable, and temperamentally unfit for your role. Everyone gets asked to do things they don’t want to do at work, but if your reaction when this happens is mostly petulant then you should anticipate having a short career, at least with your current employer. If you want a long and successful career, then recognise that you have petulance and learn to manage it!  Petulance is rife and more visible than ever in today’s mad world, but that’s no excuse for adopting it as a norm in your life. The best people manage their petulance…and what the world needs more than ever today is for more of us to strive to be one of the best.

Connection lost, please move your display closer to the meter…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Internet of Things, Security, Smart & New Technology, Smart Meters

Domestic Smart Meters installed as part of the UK rollout programme come with a small monitor providing the consumer with information about their energy usage. This little device connects to the meter via a wireless network. It’s normally positioned in a place that is both convenient for the consumer and where there is a strong wireless signal with the meter. In the Badger’s home, the monitor has never been moved from where it was put last autumn when the smart meter was installed. It functions there happily for the vast majority of the time.

Occasionally at the weekend, however, it stops working and displays the message ‘Connection lost, please move your display closer to the meter’. This isn’t a big deal because powering the device off and then on re-establishes the connection and normal service. The message appeared again last weekend, but this time it took a number of off-on cycles for service to resume.  This, and seeing the Smart Energy programme’s Albert Einstein advert extolling the virtues of digitising the UK energy system, made the Badger cogitate on a couple of questions.   

Firstly, has a Smart Meter made much of a difference in the Badger household? Not really, ostensibly because we have always been disciplined and never profligate in our use of energy. While the little energy monitor provides useful information, it did not take long after it was installed to realise that it just confirmed what we already knew, namely that cooking, cleaning, and heating dominates consumption and thus the bill. Using a PC or watching TV have a much smaller impact in comparison. The novelty of regularly looking at the energy monitor thus quickly wore off. Indeed, the Badger knows many people who have eventually turned their monitor off completely and banished it to a cupboard with other unused devices!  

Secondly, is the ‘Connection lost…’ message a reminder of something important that we all take for granted? Yes, it is. It’s a reminder that wireless and wired networks are the plumbing on which the modern world relies. Today a device is, at best, limited in its use without some kind of network connection, and, at worst, it’s useless!  Networks are a rather hidden part of the tech landscape in the general public’s psyche, but given how life would be impacted if they were down for weeks, months, or even years, they deserve more public awareness of how life would change in their absence.   

Networks are critical infrastructure and not immune to a diverse range of threats. It is foolhardy to think that this infrastructure could suffer some kind of seriously disruptive event in the future. Whenever that happens, let’s just hope that it brings out the best in humanity, rather than the worst.  Gosh! Isn’t it surprising where a simple monitor losing connection with its Smart Meter can take your thoughts…

Beware of the downsides of the ‘Bandwagon Effect’…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Education, Smart City, social media, Technology

‘If you act too fast and don’t think things through then your mistakes will be difficulties long into the future’.  This is what the Badger’s father would often say if he thought someone was acting with haste or being overly influenced by a popular bandwagon. Three things caught the eye this week that somewhat obtusely reminded the Badger of these words.

The first was the lecture, reported here and here, by Jeremy Fleming, Director of the UK’s GCHQ. He warned of a tech ‘moment of reckoning’ and the real risk that the West might no longer be able to supply the key technologies on which we rely. He used Smart Cities and their threat to security, privacy, and anonymity, to illustrate his point. He also pointed out that it was decisions taken a decade ago that has meant the West has few companies able to supply the latest key technology components underlying 5G.

The second was English football’s announcement that it will boycott social media over the coming weekend in a protest over online abuse. Social media is pervasive and has been a concern to many about the voice it gives to the many undesirable aspects of human behaviour for a long time.

The third was the ad tracking spat between Apple and Facebook caused by the imminent arrival of Apple’s IOS 14.5 operating system which bakes privacy into its systems and could significantly damage Facebook’s ad network earnings.  This vitriolic locking of horns by two of the digital world’s money-making behemoths shines another light behind the scenes on how they make money from us all.    

So, why did these things remind the Badger of his father’s words? Because in a small way they are all a manifestation of the downside of the ‘bandwagon effect’ which has spurred the digital world on over recent decades.  Social psychology tells us that people tend to align their beliefs and behaviour with those of a group, and this has certainly been evident with the growth of big tech and social media companies over the last 20 years.  When people see others adopt a product, service, or technology, then they think it must be good – or at least acceptable – and so they jump on the bandwagon!  Even IT outsourcing and offshoring have not been immune to the effect. When jumping on a bandwagon, the downsides of doing so emerge much, much later. One way or another, the three items that caught the Badger’s eye illustrate this point and also the dangers of having acted too fast years ago without thinking things through properly.  

Today’s younger generations are not immune to the ‘bandwagon effect’, which is why the Badger takes every opportunity to echo his father’s words. They should learn lessons from the past and especially that it is often perilous to act fast because mistakes will emerge long into the future and not be correctable.     

Pride…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Life, Opinion

A long time ago, in fact a couple of years after the anti-climax of the ‘Year 2k millennium bug’, the 9/11 atrocity, and the collapse of the dot.com bubble, the Badger attended his employer’s annual international leadership conference in London.  The Badger has participated in many of these events throughout his career. They happen, in one form or another, in most sizeable organisations to ‘align’ leaders and managers with strategic objectives, business priorities, and key messages and themes for the coming year.  Such conferences often involved gathering large numbers of people in the same place, but the last two decades have seen more creative and cheaper ways of achieving the same objectives by using global video conferencing.

The particular conference to which the Badger refers was a face to face gathering with a predictable format involving lots of corporate presentations and orchestrated workshops. From the Badger’s perspective the real value of the event lay in the ability to network with seniors from around the world. This particular conference took place at a time when the IT services market was the toughest it had been for decades. The company was in the doldrums and morale across the whole organisation was extremely low.

Although presentations at these conferences are rarely memorable, at this one there was one from the Global HR Director on ‘Pride’ that stood out.  It was the best presentation the Badger had ever seen them give! Its theme was the importance of having and showing pride – that feeling of deep satisfaction derived from not only your own achievements, but also the achievements of those with whom you work – in overcoming low morale across the organisation. The message was simple, namely, stop wallowing in the gloom causing the corrosive low morale, and start celebrating all the good things that people did at every level in the organisation every day.

With a key role in the company’s delivery community, the Badger already knew about having and demonstrating pride!  Good leaders of delivery teams inherently know that you must have and show pride in your own and your team’s achievements, no matter how small or difficult they have been. Good delivery leaders know that their own success depends on their team, and that celebrating the small achievements as well as the bigger ones is good for the team morale that is crucial for success.   

Delivery is done by people who take pride not only in their personal standards and work, but also in playing their part in teams getting the job done successfully. This was clearly the case with those involved with the funeral ceremonials for Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, last Saturday. Everyone involved in producing and delivering the ceremonials of this sombre, historic, but fitting event should be proud of their individual and collective achievement.  They did themselves, the Duke, the Royal Family, the Queen, and the country proud.