Category: Business

A ‘Budget for Growth’ for smaller, tech-centric businesses?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Change, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Offshoring, Technology

Digital technology – the electronic systems and resources that help us communicate, work, play, travel, and live today – is everywhere. The Badger recently conducted an experiment, not one that meets the rigours of professional research, by asking those he’s met over the last week about what they thought of when hearing the phrase ‘digital technology’. A young checkout operator at a local store, for example, said social media, the internet, their smartphone and its apps, online shopping and online banking. That was pretty much a summary of all the responses from young and old alike. Why the experiment? Simply to test a perception that the general public associates ‘digital technology’ mainly with well-known mega global corporations and big brands. The experiment essentially affirmed that perception.

But here’s the thing. The UK has many medium-sized companies with <250 employees, many of which fall under the umbrella of ‘digital technology’.  Such companies, many entrepreneurial family businesses, get little profile even though they are not only part of the UK’s economic bedrock, but also have digital technology which is used globally but invisible to the general public even though it touches them every day. The Badger knows, for example, of a company whose technology enables, controls and cures printed text and images on the packaging used for foodstuffs, medicines, chemicals, and even Christmas wrapping papers! It’s a global leader, employs <250 people, and it’s systems are built in the UK, installed worldwide, and managed and maintained from this country via the internet. It’s innovative companies like this that are crucial to our rhythm of life and the country’s success.

One of the Badger’s neighbours, who’s mid-career with children at school, is part of the leadership team at a different tech-centric, smaller company. While chatting recently, the Badger asked them how the recent UK budget would impact their company. ‘We’re used to challenges’ they said with a grin, adding that recruitment had been frozen, leavers were not being replaced, maximising automation had become the top priority, and work was being moved to lower cost offshore locations. They then added, ‘Now my pension pot is subject to inheritance tax, there’s little point in striving for more success or providing longer-term financial security for my family. I expect to leave the workforce within a decade to ensure I spend whatever wealth I’ve accumulated because there’s no point doing otherwise anymore’.

The Badger flinched. It seems a) that the recent budget isn’t a ‘budget for growth’ as far as smaller, tech-centric companies are concerned, and b) that the mindset and priorities of strivers in such companies is already changing. Has the UK  government’s budget damaged this country’s smaller ‘digital technology’ companies and their employees’ desire to succeed? Time will tell, but the omens don’t look good…

‘A crisis’ – the name for a group of dysfunctional experts.

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Consulting, Delivery, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Risk, Software, Systems Integration

Many years ago, the Badger took a late morning phone call from his boss asking him to pop into his office for a chat. A reason for the chat wasn’t mentioned, and so it was with a little trepidation that the Badger took the lift to the floor where his boss’s office was located. On approaching, the Badger saw his boss through the open door with elbows on the desk, head in hands, looking morose. Sensing the Badger’s arrival, his boss sat back, smiled, asked for the door to be closed and waved the Badger to a seat.

‘What’s the collective noun for a bunch of experts responsible for designing a huge software intensive system on a fixed-price contract?’ the Badger was asked in a relaxed manner. His boss didn’t wait for an answer. ‘A crisis’, they said with irritation and a flourish of colourful language that would cause apoplexy today. They explained that this answer derived from problems on a multi-tens of million pounds, fixed-price IT development project with a dysfunctional Design Authority (DA) team. This team, apparently, was full of acknowledged experts who seemed incapable of agreeing or deciding anything that was crucial to the progress of the overall project team’s software developers. At the start of the project line management had apparently insisted on staffing the DA team with experts who’d been between assignments and non-revenue earning for some time. The Badger’s boss admitted that, in hindsight, it hadn’t been wise to allow this to trump an individual’s technical and personal suitability for the project.

The Badger was then asked to sort this out and get the project back on track! He joined the project with an open mind and quickly assessed the situation. There were some leadership and management dynamics to adjust, but the DA team was indeed the key problem. Its members were all respected experts with specialist knowledge, but each was focused on expanding and protecting their expertise rather than the big picture and the project’s fixed price delivery. Teamwork, within the Design Authority itself and with the rest of the project, was poor. Experts can add enormous value to any team if used correctly, and so the Badger carefully considered how to rectify the situation. He repopulated the Design Authority with good people drawn from other parts of the project. The experts were released to their home units to be used a couple of days a month for consultancy if required by the new DA team. The experts and their line managers grumbled, but the project went forward to success.

The point of this tale? Simply to highlight that experts who keep their egos in check, never lose sight of the big picture, and have both specialist knowledge and the personal characteristics for teamwork, are valuable assets on tough delivery projects. Those that don’t have all of these attributes are more suited to short term specialist consultancy…

Knowing when to speak up, and when to stay silent…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Learning, Training

People attend meetings in their work environment on a daily basis. Moans about the time meetings take up and their encroachment on an individual’s productive work activity were commonplace during the Badger’s career, and they still are today. That’s hardly a surprise because meetings are a key element of the operational rhythm at every level of an organisation. Meetings are crucial for decision making, sharing important information, problem solving, innovating, building and maintaining relationships, aligning people with expectations, and holding people accountable for achieving goals. That’s why training in meeting-related skills is usually a prominent feature within enterprise training programmes.

Meetings can be gatherings of people in the same room, video or telephone conferences, or hybrid setups involving all of these at the same time. The Badger’s attended a huge number over the years, so what’s the most important thing he’s learned from doing so? This very question was, in fact, recently asked by a family member while bemoaning ‘interminable meetings’ in their own workplace! The Badger’s answer was simply this – know when to speak up, and when to stay silent. It’s something he learned early in his career from participating in a difficult meeting about a failing project.

The meeting had client and supplier representatives in the same room to decide on the future of the project. The Badger was present because he was part of the supplier’s team trying to fix the project and its commercial difficulties. The client and supplier leads, both experienced in dealing with troublesome situations, engaged in a direct but business-like manner. One of the client’s team, however, frequently interjected with vitriolic and negative comments which rankled with some of the Badger’s colleagues, one of whom responded in kind every time. That is until a senior colleague prodded them and whispered, ‘shut up, keep quiet, listen and watch’. The meeting eventually ended with an agreed way forward. In the debrief afterwards, the supplier’s leader pointedly told the team that ‘We all have two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. Use them in meetings to listen, watch and speak in that proportion’. They are wise words.

Knowing when to speak up and when to stay silent is an important skill, particularly in difficult and important meetings. Being a good listener, a good observer of participant  body language, and having good control of the urge to speak for the sake of it are important competences for face-to-face meetings, video and teleconferences, or hybrid meetings alike. Knowing when to stay quiet and when to speak is a good discipline and a trait of good managers and leaders. Remember, while every meeting has a mix of different personalities, the smartest and most influential person present isn’t necessarily the one doing all the talking. It’s often the one doing the watching, listening, and being careful about when they speak and what they say…

Gamesmanship and getting an invoice for a milestone paid…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Learning, Processes and Practices, Project Management

Important lessons arose early in the Badger’s career from experiencing the stress, effort, and time taken to get an invoice for a contractual milestone paid in full. The Badger learned about the importance of rigour when invoicing, and the need for detailed, verifiable, proof that all deliverables were delivered and contractually compliant. He also learned that clients may play games to delay payment if it suited them or provided useful leverage over their supplier.

This stemmed from particular dynamics encountered after completing software Acceptance Testing on a client’s site. It was an important contractual milestone with a sizeable payment attached. Its achievement also marked the point whereby a) control of the software transferred to the client to roll it out to their users, and b) the contract’s warranty and support phase started. Testing had been successful and on its completion the client agreed the milestone had been met, they took control of the software, and they agreed the start of warranty and support. Relationships were good and the invoice for the milestone payment was submitted. Then things became difficult!

The client claimed the invoice format was wrong, that all contractual deliverables hadn’t been provided, and that relevant documentation and certifications were not contractually compliant. They continually demanded more and more material to support the invoice. Relationships soured. The Badger’s line management, fearful of jeopardising future work for the client, simply said ‘do what they want and get the payment in pronto’. The Badger did as he was told! Eventually the client said everything was in order and that payment would arrive in line with contracted terms. The money, however, did not arrive!

It emerged that the client’s user rollout programme was suffering delays and so they had decided to withhold payment to ‘keep the supplier on the hook’ until it was back on track. A frustrated Badger wrote to the client pointing out that contractually there was no transfer of software to the client without payment for the milestone, which meant their user rollout activities constituted a breach of contract. It was not a popular move, but a contract is, after all, never an irrelevance! Payment happened a few days later.

The young Badger learned lessons about the real dynamics of business from this experience. Sometimes clients don’t pay because they choose to preserve their cash flow at the expense of suppliers, they don’t have the funds, or they really have lost an invoice. Sometimes, however, they simply engage in gamesmanship and choose not to pay. Today the proportion of invoices not paid on time by large UK businesses can be checked here, but business fundamentally revolves around people who have diverse characters and behaviours. Gamesmanship will thus always have a part in business dynamics, so it’s worth remembering that, as the Badger learned then and over the years since, suppliers need to be just as good at playing games as their clients…

Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Learning, Technology

It’s not unusual when having met a senior leader or company executive for the first time to come away feeling either impressed and respectful, or underwhelmed and sceptical. Of his many such encounters, the Badger always remembers one because it involved ‘age’ and ‘wisdom’ !  

The CEO of a niche tech company approached the Badger’s CEO to ask if they could talk informally to ‘someone with experience and wisdom’ about IT delivery. The two CEOs knew each other through being on the same committee of a trade body. Out of good will, the Badger’s CEO asked him to meet with the individual to share some wisdom gleaned from his IT delivery experience. The Badger duly met the tech CEO, and after a few opening pleasantries, was told by the latter that he was probably too old to provide the kind of wisdom they were looking for! The 35-year-old CEO believed that wisdom provided by anyone older than themselves was outdated and irrelevant. The Badger, a decade or more older with some grey hairs, managed to suppress his irritation!

The CEO was polite but dismissive of the Badger’s experience and guidance. They believed that someone younger and focused on every facet of the latest hot trends would provide more valuable input. This rankled, but the Badger simply pointed out that if they didn’t want his advice, then that was, of course, their prerogative. The meeting soon ended. The Badger’s parting shot was to say that he was proud to have reached an age, maturity, and independence that’s so neatly expressed in Einstein’s quote, ‘I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to’. The Badger reported back to his boss that he was unimpressed. His boss wasn’t surprised, admitted to disliking the individual, and expressed an opinion that the tech CEO wouldn’t last long in their job. They were right!

The US Presidential Election has put age in the spotlight. Both candidates are much older than the averages for Fortune 500 company chiefs, FTSE 100 CEOs, and 2024 UK Members of Parliament (59.2, 55, and 50 years old, respectively).  The average age of workers  in tech and IT is much closer to that of the 35-year-old tech CEO, and so for those working in these dynamic sectors, it’s worth remembering that we aren’t born with wisdom, age alone doesn’t imply wisdom, and that those who have it acquire it over time through work, personal, educational and social experiences, and exposure to the behaviour of others. That’s why for a long career and to acquire wisdom  you must continually expand your real experience and real skills rather than academically fixate on the latest hot trend. Einstein, after all, said that ‘Information is not knowledge. The only source of knowledge is experience. You need experience to gain wisdom’, and he was right…

People – they are always a challenge…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Recruitment

How would you answer if someone at the start of their IT-sector career asked you ‘What’s the most challenging thing you’ve encountered throughout your career?’  Your answer might be something personal like, for example, a family, financial, or health matter, or it might be something purely professional like a task that proved especially testing, getting the right people into the right roles to deliver project or business objectives, or coping with change during rapid organisational transformation or growth. You will have your own answer, but what’s the Badger’s? Well, it’s one word, and that word is ‘people’.

In the Badger’s experience, people are crucial for success, but they are a never-ending challenge! Why? Because people have unique backgrounds, experiences, thought processes, perspectives, fallibilities, strengths and motivations that make them a melting pot of unpredictability and surprises! An illustration from the Badger’s first role as a project manager is pertinent. A graduate programmer, a lady two years out of University, had been recruited by the Badger’s employer. Her CV looked good, and she’d done well during the recruitment process. The Badger’s line manager charged him with using her to fill a vacant programming role on his project team. She seemed like a good fit, and she appeared to have settled in well by the end of her first week with the team. Within a month, however, the project team were mutinous! Her work was poor, she had not completed any task, her attitude was surly and self-centred, and her timekeeping was appalling.

Chats with the Badger to encourage improvement and explore whether there were any hidden underlying personal problems proved fruitless. Formal HR processes came into play, during which it became clear that this person wasn’t interested in programming, being part of a team, or a career with the company. Employment with any company, she ultimately admitted, was simply her way of obtaining money for expensive holidays! She was exited from the company. The Badger learned that there’s more to people than is visible, that they are complex, have values that might differ from your own, and that they can take up lots of valuable management time!

The fact that people were the Badger’s most challenging thing throughout his career is not surprising when life is dynamic, circumstances change, and individuals are always adapting to new personal and professional situations. The Badger always rose to the challenge, because people from the most junior to the most senior matter if you want to succeed. With the relentless progress of automation and AI, it’s easy to think that dealing with people is becoming less relevant. Not so! AI may change everything, but it’s people who are crucial to harnessing its potential to making a difference. People will always be a challenge, but knowing more about what makes them tick will be essential for handling the challenges of the foreseeable future…

Air Canada and the ‘hallucination’ of a chatbot…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Business, Chatbots, Information Technology, Legal matters, Technology

An email arrived from the Badger’s car insurance provider recently. It advised that a renewal quote was in his online account. Logging in revealed a 25% increase in premium! A check using market comparison sites provided quotes for the same cover within a few pounds of his existing premium. The Badger thus used the provider’s chatbot within his account to signal his intent to take his business elsewhere. The chatbot dialogue, however, ultimately resulted in the Badger staying with his provider with the same cover at the price he currently pays!

This is a commonplace renewal dynamic, but the Badger found himself musing on his experience. Apart from being irritated by his provider’s attempted 25% price rise when they were obviously prepared to retain their customer for a much lower price, using the chatbot was easy, efficient, and quick. However, it  wasn’t obvious at any stage in the chatbot dialogue whether the Badger had really conversed with a human in the provider’s organisation. This meant that both he and the provider were implicitly accepting the validity of the chatbot’s deal. A number of ‘what if’ scenarios regarding customer use of AI chatbots started bubbling in the Badger’s brain. And then he read, here and here, about Air Canada and its AI chatbot!

An AI chatbot on the Air Canada website advised a passenger that they could book a full-fare flight to attend their grandmother’s funeral and claim for a discounted bereavement fare thereafter. Guidance elsewhere on the website was different. The passenger did as the chatbot guided and subsequently claimed for the bereavement discount. Air Canada refused the claim, and the parties ended up at a Tribunal with the airline arguing that the chatbot was ‘responsible for its own actions’. The Tribunal ruled for the passenger and that the airline was liable for negligent misrepresentation. The case not only establishes the principle that companies are liable for what their AI chatbots say and do, but it also highlights – as noted here – broader risks for businesses when adopting AI tools.

The amount of money for the discount claim was small (<CAN$500) but the Tribunal’s findings will reverberate widely. The case also exposes something which is commonplace with many big companies, namely the dominance of a legalistic behavioural culture regardless of common-sense within an organisation. This was a bereaved customer complying with advice given by the company’s AI chatbot on the company’s own website, and yet rather than be empathetic, take responsibility, and apply common-sense, the company chose a legal route and to hide behind ‘the hallucination’ of its chatbot. So, bravo to the passenger for fighting their corner, bravo to the Tribunal for their common-sense judgement, and yes bravo to Air Canada for making sure that we all now know that companies cannot shirk responsibility for the behaviour of their AI chatbots…

Fun using Microsoft Copilot (Bing Chat with GPT-4)…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Business, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Life, Online Services, Tech for social good

The 2024 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting at Davos ended last week.  It’s where business, government, and civil society leaders meet to discuss global issues, share ideas, and collaborate to find solutions – according to the PR machinery. The Badger’s always rather sceptical about Davos as it seems to have similarities with the annual senior leadership/management conferences that big corporations hold. The Badger attended many such corporate shindigs during his career, but he always returned a little unconvinced that they really made a difference. The conferences had themes, presentations, speeches, and breakout workshops involving attendees, but, in reality, the most important topics were addressed quietly and privately by a small group of corporate stakeholders behind closed doors. Davos, an event for powerful and wealthy elites with enormous egos, appears little different.

One of this year’s Davos themes was ‘AI as a Driving Force for the Economy and Society.’ The mischievous Badger thus asked Microsoft Copilot (Bing Chat with GPT-4) the question ‘Does Davos actually make any difference?’ The 150-word answer, mostly contextual fluff, culminated in ‘The effectiveness of the meeting is subjective and depends on the perspective of the attendees and the outcomes of the discussions’. Hmm, this is surely validation of the Badger’s scepticism! He then asked, ‘Is AI more hype than substance?’ Copilot’s answer ended with ‘While there is certainly a lot of hype surrounding AI, it is clear that there is also a lot of substance to the technology. AI has the potential to transform many industries and change the way we live our lives. However, it is important to approach the technology with a critical eye and to be aware of the potential risks and challenges associated with its use.’ The Badger smiled; it was the type of benign answer he’d expected.

The Badger’s next two questions were ‘Will AI replace lawyers?’ and ‘Will AI replace software engineers?’, ostensibly because both professional groups are crucial to the functioning of the world today and also relevant to Davos’s ‘AI as a Driving Force for the Economy and Society’ theme. In both cases Copilot answered that AI will likely augment their work making them more efficient and effective, rather than replacing them. Increased efficiency and effectiveness implies the need for fewer people in these professions, but time will tell whether this is the case.

After some fun asking more questions, the Badger sat back and considered again whether Davos makes any difference to life for the vast majority of the global population. No, it doesn’t, because it’s just a talking shop for billionaires and elites and has no executive power. It’s the constant and speedy advance of diverse technology, and AI in particular, that makes the difference for most of us. Davos is, therefore, not the dog that wags the technology tail changing our lives, it’s the other way around…

I read the news today, oh boy – The Post Office and Horizon…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Public Institutions

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was playing as the Badger read some of the recent information about the UK Post Office scandal (here, for example). At the heart of the scandal is the Horizon software from Fujitsu and the fact that between 1999 and 2015 the Post Office wrongly prosecuted (and convicted) over 700 sub-postmasters for theft, false accounting, and fraud when there were shortfalls at their branch. The shortfalls were, in fact, due to faults in Horizon. The miscarriage of justice is huge and, in the Badger’s opinion, a national disgrace.

In 2020 a statutory public enquiry was initiated to establish a clear account of the Horizon failings at the Post Office. It’s ongoing, and lots of material from its public hearings can be found here. At the heart of the scandal, however, is more than just software faults, it’s also the actions of government ministers, senior Post Office executives and employees, and Fujitsu, over more than two decades. As the first line of the final track on Sgt. Pepper’s, ‘A Day in the Life’, rang out while the Badger read Computer Weekly’s guide to the scandal, he greatly empathised with the wronged sub-postmasters who must have read the news every day for the last twenty years and thought, oh boy!

The Badger’s maintained some peripheral awareness of this debacle for a long time, not because he’s ever worked with or for the Post Office or Fujitsu, but because his lengthy career in building, leading, and delivering major IT systems has baked a professional curiosity into his psyche. Basic questions about the contract, the software development process, testing, acceptance, readiness for Go-Live and rollout, and the linkage between service desk and fault identification and fix, have long bubbled in the recesses of his mind. The public enquiry might ultimately answer such questions in due course.

But here’s the thing. Software and systems always contain faults. When the Post Office first introduced Horizon for use in 1999, it was at a time when software practices were mature, organisations were focusing on ensuring their systems were ‘Millenium Ready’, and there was significant momentum in outsourcing and offshoring. If the evidence was that Horizon had at that time a large number of outstanding faults, then the professionalism, competence, and motivations of everyone involved in its Go-Live/rollout decision are questionable. This decision, after all, started the ball rolling on the woeful events and disgraceful corporate behaviour that ruined innocent people’s lives over subsequent decades.

Horizon is still in use with the Post Office today. This is a reminder for us all that many systems that make our world function today use software written decades ago. Faults will always happen, and most organisations deal with them and their consequences professionally, responsibly, and fairly. The Post Office debacle, however, makes you wonder ‘or do they?’

Expect the unexpected; when the unexpected happens, respond rather than react…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Project Management, Psychology

The very first Project Management training course the Badger attended early in his IT industry career seemed of questionable merit. It was a residential course for Project Managers drawn from across all the business sectors in which his company  operated. Attendees arrived on a Sunday afternoon and ultimately departed mid-afternoon on the following Wednesday. At the time, it was common for people to be actively performing a Project Manager role before attending any associated training course, and so everyone on the course was already actively managing software and systems projects under a variety of contractual arrangements.

Most of the course sessions focused on the process and practice of managing a delivery/development lifecycle, risk, finances, and the basics of contracts and change control.  The format was rather dry but provided some useful reminders. At the end of the course, however, most attendees questioned whether being away from their projects had been a useful use of their time. There were, however, two overwhelmingly positive points of feedback, namely a) the usefulness of meeting peers and sharing experiences, and b) the closing, hour-long, Q&A session during which a senior business leader answered wide ranging questions from attendees.

Whilst the Badger came away rather ambivalent about this course, it had provided a useful reminder that Project Management is as much about people, as it is about structure, lifecycles, processes and practices. In fact, the primary thing that has stayed with the Badger from the course ever since are the wise words of the senior business leader in the closing Q&A session. When asked to give one piece of advice that everyone present should take on board, they said ‘Expect the unexpected, and when the unexpected happens, respond rather than react’. They explained that no one can avoid the unexpected, that some people are better at dealing with it than others, and that some people react emotionally, feel anger, panic and fear, become agitated, and initiate  knee-jerk moves to action that compound matters and alienate others.  Others respond rather than react. They stay calm, focus on the facts and what they can control, assess the options before progressing a plan of action, and unify and encourage those around them.  The business leader told the audience to remember to respond rather than react.

Throughout his career, the Badger encountered many leaders and managers who had to deal with the completely unexpected. Many reacted rather than responded ! This was a constant reminder that everyone is different, and that being a leader or manager doesn’t provide immunity to the core traits of your personality. Perhaps that first Project Management course was of more value than seemed at the time, because it sowed the seed of awareness that to be a truly successful leader or manager, then you must learn how to respond rather than react to the unexpected…