Category: Business Continuity

AI – A ‘Macbeth Moment’?

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI, Business Continuity, Information Technology, Leadership, Risk

The Badger was browsing in a shop when Hubble Bubble (Toil and Trouble) by Manfred Mann featured in the piped music. It struck a chord with the recent warnings by JP Morgan’s CEO, the Bank of England, and others, that an AI bubble could pop. Later that day, while clearing a cupboard, the Badger found his old school notes for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, part of the English Literature syllabus of the time. Scribbled notes about the three witches uttering ‘Double, double toil and trouble: fire burn and cauldron bubble’ caught his eye. The coincidental combination of the song title, these scribbles, and the AI warnings triggered some contemplation on the AI bubble.

During the dot.com debacle of the early 2000s, the Badger was a senior member of a UK, stock-exchange listed, IT services company. Such companies, investors believed, would benefit from the dot.com boom. The company’s share price thus rose ~tenfold before collapsing back to its original level when the market realised that dot.com companies were massively over-valued, and many had little real revenue let alone profit. For years following the crash, doing business in the IT sector was tough. The NASDAQ, for example, crashed from around 5000 to 1100 and it took ~15 years to recover. Many dotcoms disappeared, but the likes of Amazon, eBay, Google and others rose from the ashes to become the powerhouses of recovery. Having worked in IT throughout the debacle, the Badger’s instincts are alive to tech bubbles. Today they ring alarm bells.

Whether AI’s a market bubble that bursts, or a transformation that sticks, depends on whether company valuations are grounded in real, scalable, business fundamentals, or  speculative optimism. Either way, AI is unlike anything seen before, so when JP Morgan, the Bank of England, the World Economic Forum and others have some anxiety, then we should take note, especially as, for example, Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI’s market values have risen many-fold in just two years. There’s unprecedented spending on computational infrastructure, massive bets on future productivity gains, and belief that AI will revolutionise everything. The actual return  on investment, however, has not been impressive so far. When the UK National Cyber Security Centre advises organisations to have plans to operate their business without access to computers following a cyber-attack, the hype of an AI dominated future seems a little questionable.

The Badger’s learned from his dot.com era experience that it’s prudent to be wary. If market valuations become detached from fundamentals, or the availability of computational infrastructure stalls, or the promised productivity gains for organisations don’t materialise, or geopolitically driven export controls cause disruption, then any AI bubble will pop triggering a huge domino effect. AI is facing a ‘Macbeth moment’. Witches making prophecies surround the bubbling AI cauldron uttering ‘double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble’. In the play, Macbeth felt a sense of foreboding…as do more and more of today’s leaders….

Fuzzy information? Still make decisions…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Delivery, Information Technology, Leadership, Risk

Twenty years ago on the 7th July 2005, four suicide bombers targeted London’s public transport system during the morning rush hour. At 8:50am three bombs detonated within 50 seconds of each other on Underground trains at Aldgate, Edgeware Road, and Russell Square, and a fourth detonated an hour later on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Almost 800 innocent people were injured and 52 lost their lives. The Badger remembers that day clearly. At the time of the bombing, he was attending a UK leadership meeting in his firms Great Marlborough Street office completely oblivious to unfolding events.

The UK CEO had started the meeting at 9:30am even though the UK Sales Director was absent and hadn’t called to say they’d be late. They eventually arrived at 10:20am,  perspiring heavily having walked from Waterloo because no Underground trains were running. They said ‘Something serious is happening. There’s sirens everywhere, the Underground isn’t running, and mobile phone networks aren’t working’. The room’s TV was tuned to a news channel, and everyone present scanned the internet, tried their Blackberry devices, and looked at their corporate emails for information. No one could connect to a mobile phone network. When news of the Tavistock Square bus explosion appeared on the TV  there was instant recognition that the meeting could not continue, not least because Tavistock Square was just a 4-minute walk from the company’s main London office housing some hundreds of staff.

The Badger, the company lead on business continuity crises, activated the company response to the unfolding event. The meeting room became a rudimentary crisis management centre. It’s tools were just a conference phone, laptops providing access to corporate email, the news channel on the TV, and Blackberry devices with, at best, intermittent mobile network connectivity. The Badger and a subset of his colleagues spent the next 10 hours in the room dealing with a maelstrom that involved monitoring the terror incident, mobilising business continuity contacts and processes, establishing the well-being of staff and visitors to the company’s London offices, ensuring the continuity of projects and services, making and communicating clear decisions relevant to clients, verifying the continuity of business operations, and dealing with the needs and well-being of staff.  

It was an intense day full of fuzzy, confusing, and often conflicting information. For the Badger and his colleagues, the experience reinforced the importance of having cool, unemotional heads to make decisions during crises, especially when information is highly fluid. It also reinforced that fuzzy, confusing, or conflicting information should not be used as an excuse for prevaricating on decision-making when there’s overwhelming pressure. Make a decision, move on, and change it if better information emerges was an important dynamic. We eventually went home exhausted having made many more good decisions than bad. It hadn’t been the routine day in the office the Badger had expected. It had been truly unforgettable….

Systems failure? keep calm and carry on…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Service

Fred (not his real name), an 80-year-old retired civil servant, walks past every morning on his way to the local supermarket for a newspaper. He does this regardless of the weather. Fred walks slower on his way back because the round trip to the supermarket is the limit of what he can manage in one go. On his return leg, therefore, Fred and the Badger often chat if the opportunity arises. Fred has a passion for modern history, current affairs, financial markets, and public service, and while he may be slowing up physically, his mind remains sharp, informed, and impressively analytical. Our conversations are always enjoyable and enlightening.

On Sunday, we had one such chat. Fred knows the Badger’s background is in IT and so he asked about the previous day’s delivery order and contactless payment problems at a well-known UK supermarket chain. ‘In IT there’s always going to be unexpected failures due to software defects, hardware and system problems, human error,  or any combination of the three’, the Badger answered benignly. ‘Didn’t affect me; a good old-fashioned visit to the supermarket and cash will always be my preference’, Fred responded, adding that it didn’t reflect well on the state of society when shrill hysteria and blame floods social media and the news whenever there’s an outage of online services. Fred thinks people take online services for granted and have lost the ‘keep calm and carry on’ spirit that’s normally a strength of the British character! Whether you agree or not, it’s an understandable point of view.

The conversation moved on when Fred mentioned that he’d been reading books about Mr Putin, cyber security, and artificial intelligence. He reckons humanity’s future is bleak, not because of technology, AI, or cyber warfare, but because younger digital-native generations are already slaves to algorithms, aren’t interested in facts and share comments before thinking, have a first response to everything which is a search for blame, and are too willingly ‘followers of the herd’! Again, it’s an understandable point of view. Fred added that Mr Putin doesn’t really need sophisticated cyber tools or AI. He just needs his supporters in key IT roles in some supermarkets, banks, fulfilment and distribution companies, energy suppliers, and network providers to coordinate a simultaneous ‘human error’ moment when making changes to systems! Fred thinks this would cause national mayhem.

Fred’s an interesting guy whose views are shaped by his eight decades of life and what he sees, hears, and reads on a daily basis. Our conversation reminded the Badger that he learned early in his IT career that systems will fail, often in unexpected ways, at an inconvenient time, and disruptively. When they do, it’s important for everyone to ‘keep calm and carry on’. Sadly, calm, patience, and individual resilience seems to be in increasingly short supply in our digital-dominated world…

It takes more than a job title to be good in a crisis…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Risk

Crises can take many forms and happen quickly. They are inevitable at some stage for any organisation. They can be triggered by internal or external factors. Examples of the former are delivery difficulties on a crucial major project, bad decisions by corporate, subsidiary, or business unit leaders, and merger or acquisition integrations that go off the rails. Examples of external factors include a key client organisation collapsing, international turmoil, military conflicts, and disasters involving wind, fire, flood, earthquake, or pestilence. The Badger had some responsibility for crisis management during his IT industry career, which meant he learned a lot about the behaviour of senior people in emergency and crisis situations. In particular, he learned that some in senior leadership positions with impressive job titles, who one would assume are used to high-pressure situations, in fact struggle to be good in a crisis!

The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland reminded the Badger of dealing with the response to the ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in April 2010.  The ash created havoc by closing European airspace for five days. Many of his organisation’s key leaders, managers, and technical staff were stranded outside the UK unable to return to work after business trips or Easter breaks with their family. Clients, unsurprisingly,  clamoured for reassurance that the delivery of contracted  IT services and projects would continue normally. The first crisis management meeting was memorable due to the behaviour and attitude of one particular business unit leader. They had their head buried in their hands throughout in full-blown panic mode! They were negative about everything, blamed others for inconsequential things, and functioned in self-preservation mode rather than being collaborative and focused on finding solutions in the best interests of the whole organisation. Their behaviour exposed the fact to all present that they were irrational and unreliable under pressure!

Being good in a crisis takes more than just having a leadership job title! It requires a blend of skills, experience, and mindset. Training helps, but experience and mindset are crucial attributes. Leaders with hands-on crisis management experience handle emergencies better because they instinctively apply their learning from previous situations. They listen, think clearly, analyse information objectively, communicate clearly, adapt to circumstances, make sensible rational decisions, and inspire confidence. They remain calm under pressure, resilient to setbacks, and compartmentalise their feelings and emotions to stay focused on the job in hand. They acknowledge the feelings and emotions of others but keep everyone grounded in reality. Their job title alone is never a good indicator that they are good in a crisis!

Crises tend to reveal latent strengths within individuals, so don’t be fearful if you are asked to manage one. You’ll learn a lot about yourself, and you might even do a much better job of it than someone with a more senior job title than your own!

A world without Google…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Smart & New Technology, Technology

A feature entitled ‘Where would we be without Google’ appeared on the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) website last week. It’s an insightful, entertaining article that takes a wry look at how Google (or more properly Alphabet) has become part of today’s critical infrastructure and why we must let it stay that way. The Badger nodded in agreement when reading the author’s words that the world created by Google should more accurately be described as the world that we – consumers, society, and legislators – have allowed Google to create. The Badger also sympathises with the feature’s conclusion, that for the sake of humanity Google must never be allowed to stop because  nobody knows what might happen if somebody switched its services off. The consequences would be awful in ways that we haven’t envisaged.

Since every facet of personal, public, and business life involves risk, believing that Google could never be ‘switched off’ seems foolish, especially when big tech wields more power than governments, and global instability is on the rise. Switching Google off would be a digital earthquake that shakes the very heart of today’s connected world. Its likelihood may be low, but it’s clearly an identifiable risk and so it’s worth thinking about the impact if it were to happen? Do you know what the consequences would be? Do you know what you would do if you woke up one morning and Google wasn’t there? Probably not, because it’s doubtful that most people have this eventuality on their personal radar. To tickle your thoughts, therefore, here’s a brief sense of the impact if Google was ‘switched off’.

Our go-to source for answers, information, translation, scholarly articles, and academic papers (Google Search, Translate, Scholar) would vanish. A billion or more email inboxes, virtual meetings, and chats would fall silent (Gmail, Google Meet,  Hangouts). Travellers and delivery drivers would become disoriented and wander aimlessly (Google Maps). Online collaborative work would grind to a halt and documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and critical business files would disappear (Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides). Similarly, YouTube creators and viewers would lose their stage and access to content, smart homes would lose their brains, and thermostats, house cameras, and doorbells would lose connectivity. Marketeers and advertisers would find their strategies undermined, and businesses using Google Cloud would be disrupted. Your Android phone would need a new operating system. Just imagine the turmoil as you and a billion others try to adjust at the same time!

It’s unthinkable that Google would ever be switched off, you say. Maybe, but thinking about the unthinkable is at the heart of good risk management. What can we do to minimise the impact on ourselves? Well, the saying  ‘don’t have all your eggs in one basket’ comes to mind. It’s as relevant today as it was before big tech dominated the world…

Communications networks; one day the unthinkable will happen…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Risk, Smart Meters

Almost two years ago the Badger wrote an item entitled ‘Connection lost, please move your unit closer to the meter’, text which appeared on his home energy monitor when wireless connectivity to his domestic smart meter was lost. Today, the energy monitor and smart meter are in the same locations, the energy suppliers are the same, but energy has become a precious and expensive commodity due to world events. The Badger, like many, has been using his monitor in recent months to influence his energy usage, and he’s noticed that the ‘connection lost’ message has been slowly rising in frequency.    

Is the monitor faulty? Investigation suggests not. After eliminating possible sources of wireless interference, the Badger thinks the message might be triggered as a consequence of remote update activity associated with the smart meter and its communication network. It’s no big deal in the scheme of things, because powering the monitor off and on after the message appears usually re-establishes normal function. The message, however, has prompted the Badger to wonder more expansively about the wisdom of life that has digital communication networks at the heart of everything we do.  These days we seem to take things labelled ‘smart, ‘online’, ‘live’, ‘digital’, ‘streaming’, ‘driverless’, ‘cashless’, and ‘AI’ for granted and forget that they are all critically dependent on unseen communication networks.  What if catastrophe befell these networks? It’ll never happen, you might say, but have you given any thought to the impact on yourself or your family if it did? Probably not.

Our dependence on such networks is ever rising. Today, for example, the Badger cannot just turn up at his local community swimming pool, pay cash, have a swim, and pay cash for a post-swim coffee. A visit must be booked and paid for online in advance, and all refreshment and retail services at the pool are cashless. The Badger and the pool operator are thus already completely reliant on the unseen communication networks that are the ‘critical infrastructure’ of modern life. Most people assume that a truly catastrophic failure of this infrastructure is unthinkable because governments and enterprises know their importance and have policies, processes, and plans in place to mitigate the risks.  However, this assumption may be erroneous because, as events in recent years show, the unthinkable happens and plans may never be quite what they seem.

So, if you have a few minutes spare then give some thought to what you would do if a catastrophic network failure rendered everything ‘smart’, ‘online’, ‘live’,  ‘digital’, ‘streaming’, ‘driverless’, or ‘cashless’ unusable for weeks or more.  The Badger’s no doomster, but a life totally reliant on digitally connected services feels akin to placing all your eggs in one basket. That’s never a good idea because, as sure as eggs are eggs, one day the unthinkable will happen and we will all have to cope.    

Returning to balance in supply chains…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Business Continuity, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Supply Chain, Transformation

Every commercial enterprise and every public sector organisation has a supply chain. When the supply chain works well no one really notices, but when it’s disrupted, for whatever reason, all hell can break loose unleashing all kinds of reactions, realisations, and changed behaviours to deal with the situation. The Covid-19 pandemic and conflict in Ukraine illustrate this rather neatly. They have shown to governments, businesses, and the general public alike, that global supply chains cannot be taken for granted, are  fraught with risk, and can have dramatic economic and inflationary impact when seriously disrupted.

Global supply chains are at the heart of the functioning of the developed world, and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply highlights some of their advantages and disadvantages.  Globalisation has meant greater exposure to the risk of economic, political, and financial instabilities, health and natural disasters, and to the logistics,  communication, security, and lack of direct control risks that come with far off places. This truth is plain to see as governments and businesses, and we as individuals, deal with the ramifications of the pandemic and geo-political events. It’s unsurprising,  therefore, that much is going on in governmental and business circles to return supply chains to some better balance in order to reduce risk and improve economic resilience. As pointed out here, supply chain reshoring, where this is possible, and the establishment of multiple supply paths with overtly ‘friendly’ countries are being actively progressed to improve future business and economic continuity.  

The Badger’s harboured a feeling for some time that our reliance on complex global supply chains was a problem waiting to happen, and that some kind of ‘event’ would force some retrenchment. It seems that the pandemic and Ukraine have been the trigger  ‘event’, but if this hadn’t been so then it was probably just a matter of time before climate-change weather disasters or military belligerence between superpowers had the same effect.  There have, of course, been global supply chains for centuries – think back, for example, to the Silk Road and the Spice Route. What’s happening in the world today is not their death, but a ‘returning to balance’ that should provide a more balanced, baseline template for the future.

Decades ago, the Badger ran a project that included building hundreds of bespoke computing devices whose LCD screens were produced by just one company in Japan. All went smoothly until the Japanese company unexpectedly stopped manufacturing the screens. The ramifications took months to sort out. The subsequent review and lessons-learned report not only highlighted flaws in the Badger’s company’s approach to managing suppliers the other side of the world, but also recommended that the company’s approach to international supply chains was overhauled to ‘return to balance’ . The phrase is worth remembering and seems very pertinent to what’s happening on the world stage with global supply chains today.

Serious internet failure – never say never

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Learning, Life, Risk, Security, Technology

For the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, everyone was together recently to celebrate the Badger’s grandson’s second birthday. It was a memorable occasion. All the adults, however, felt a little chastened by the suffering of Ukrainian  families with children at the moment. As the toddler opened presents, the Badger felt not only uneasy about the world he will grow up in, but also uneasy that his life will utterly depend on the internet. At just two-years old, the toddler is already powering-on the Badger’s tablet, swiping its screen, and watching the Teletubbies on YouTube! The little one will only know of life before the internet from stories told by his parents and grandparents, books, and content from the internet itself. Well, that’s just the way it is. Progress is progress, and those born this century are already full-blown digital and internet-reliant natives.  

The toddler went off for a pre-bedtime bath towards the end of the party, and the  Badger, resting on a comfy sofa, began to muse on how the little one’s generation would cope if there was a dramatic, prolonged, serious failure of the internet in the future.   Conventional wisdom has it that the internet has no single points of failure, and is too big, too decentralised, and has too much in-built redundancy to fail. The prevalent view is that a serious interruption that impacts our lives for a prolonged period will never happen. As the Badger began to doze, he remembered what he had learned during his IT industry career, namely to ‘never say never’, to expect the unexpected, and to remain cool, rational, objective, and focused when the unexpected happens. He concluded that it’s not a question of if, but when such an internet event might occur.   

Reflections on failure of the internet pop up regularly over the years – see here, here, and here, for example. All they really do, however, is reinforce the ‘never say never’ point. In complex computer systems and networks there’s always scope for unexpected human actions and technical events to have unforeseen and dramatic consequences. The Russian threat to vital undersea cables that carry internet traffic between Europe and North America (see here, here, and here) illustrates , for example, why ‘never say never’ is a sensible position. If Mr Putin has gone ‘full tonto’ and the Russian Navy performs a coordinated attack on these cables then the internet’s resilience and fault tolerance, and our life routines, will be tested like never before.  

The Badger’s grandson, about to go to bed, climbed on the Badger’s lap and shouted, ‘wake up, grandad’. Everyone laughed. The Badger opened his eyes and made a mental note to teach his grandson some of the self-sufficiency life skills needed to function without the internet…just in case he needs them in years to come.    

‘Finger trouble’…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business Continuity, Online Services, Outsource, Public Institutions, Technology

Some days, no matter how hard you try, your fingers just don’t seem to do the right thing when interacting with a computer. Other days they accurately do the right thing every time. Most days for normal people, however, your fingers do a mixture of the two.  The Badger experiences the same phenomenon when playing his electric guitar, although in this case you can hear the finger trouble!   

When news broke last week, see here for example, that records in the UK Police National Computer (PNC) database had been wrongly deleted, the Badger, conditioned by decades in the IT industry, immediately suspected that ‘finger trouble’ would have played a part. It nearly always does somewhere along the line when operational services have issues. It was, therefore, no surprise that the UK policing minister said ‘…down to human error, some defective code was introduced as part of that routine maintenance earlier this week and that’s resulted in a deletion of some records …’.

The minister’s words trigger many questions about what happened and why, and why recovering deleted records is more difficult than one might anticipate.  The Badger was  immediately drawn to three things – possible complacency in routine maintenance, testing, and mechanisms for backup and recovery.  The media has concentrated on political points and ‘woe is me’ about the impact on arrests and prosecutions, but the uncomfortable truth is that events like the PNC will occasionally happen. The IT that is behind every facet of daily life is complex, handles huge amounts of data, and has been built and it is maintained by highly skilled and professional people, but there is no such thing as a guarantee of perfection. There is no immunity to finger trouble, and neither is there a crystal ball to predict ‘defective code’. The Badger therefore feels some sympathy for whoever pushed the button that deleted the PNC records.  

We’ve all had finger trouble and accidentally deleted things from our computers.  When it happens, it often provides a reminder that you should have backups!  In today’s world the amount of data created every day is staggering and the whole concept of backup and recovery for major IT systems, and the legal rules for retaining data, is very different to that of the Badger’s formative years in IT. It’s not a surprise, therefore, that deleted PNC records cannot simply be restored from a good old-fashioned, off-site, backup tape!

Nevertheless, the PNC issue should be a reminder for each of us to take regular backups of information that you never want to lose. These days it’s cheap to do and one day you might be relieved that you did. After all, the heavenly alignment of finger trouble, defective software, and/or defective hardware can align to cause a problem at any time.  

The 6 Cs – Control, Care, Commerce, Community, Consumption & Communications

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Business Continuity, Climate & Environment, Education, Online Services, Opinion, Psychology, Risk, social media, Technology, Uncategorized

Long days of pandemic-related lockdown do strange things to your thoughts. We obviously think about our personal circumstances and fears, but simple things can trigger thoughts that can take you to unexpected conclusions. The Badger, for example, has noticed that simple observations trigger thoughts that meander to a conclusion that barely relates to the observation itself, as illustrated below.

The Badger recently noticed his wife’s growing irritation with mainstream TV News. She increasingly asserts ‘TV News has more dinner party chat dressed as analysis, complainers and people with an axe to grind, spin, and scaremongering speculation than straightforward factual news.’ Hmm. ‘A Story’ is what drives journalists, which in today’s instant communication era suggests that no TV broadcasters, print or social media/internet platforms can really provide reliable, factual, spin-free news.

Anyway, that’s a digression, because observing the wife’s rising irritation triggered the Badger to think about what he would do if he were leader of a country when the current crisis has abated! The Badger cogitated under a fruit tree in full blossom over a couple of cups of coffee. The answer – to initiate an independent ‘lessons learned’ review to identify improvements and inform the country’s future policies and direction – soon emerged.

The review would cover six pillars:

  •  Control – What improvements in command, control and logistics mechanisms are needed to be better prepared for this type of future crisis?
  • Care – What are the lessons for the country health and social care system and how can weaknesses be addressed in an economically viable way?
  • Commerce – What are the economic and operational lessons for Public Services and Business? What do these mean for future workforce planning, productivity, business activities, financial prudence, and supply chain policy?
  • Community – How has the crisis changed social attitudes, behaviours and the priorities and demands of the general public? How has the public mood changed regarding nationalism versus internationalism and globalisation? How does this compare between demographics and with other countries?
  • Consumption – What have consumers and businesses learned about what their demand for goods, commodities, and services has on life, the climate, the environment, and sustainability? What impact will greater consumer enlightenment have on country priorities and wealth?
  • Communications – What lessons emerge from crisis communication direct from government to the general public? What can change to reduce misinformation in printed, broadcast, and internet-based media, and on social media platforms? How have public attitudes to regulation and privacy changed due to the pandemic?

Tech crosses all 6 pillars. It has mostly been a saviour in this crisis, especially when you realise that if this pandemic had happened 10 to 15 years ago when tech was less mature, the impact on our lives would have been orders of magnitude worse.

So, there you have it. A simple observation can trigger an unexpected train of thought. Fortunately, the Badger’s not a country leader. One thing’s certain, however. The world has changed and things really can’t be same as they were. Our leaders must know that?