Category: Leadership

‘Do what’s necessary to fix this fast’ – Would you be up for the challenge?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership, Learning

Here’s a situation. A contractor has a large fixed-price contract to develop a major system (hardware and software) that’s crucial to the client’s business. The project is in serious difficulty. Contracted deliverables to date have been of poor quality and late. Lots of software has been developed but there are severe test and integration problems. Hardware from a subcontractor is also late, exacerbating the difficulties. The client has constructed a new building which has been sitting idle for six months waiting for the new system to be installed. They are threatening punitive litigation. The project is causing the contractor significant, company-level, financial damage and resolving the situation has become a business-critical issue. Client and contractor executives have agreed that the contractor has one last chance to deliver the system and avoid litigation, ostensibly because unrelated matters within the client’s wider enterprise have delayed for some months when the building must become operational.

If you, an employee of the contractor not associated with the project, were asked to ‘Do what’s necessary to fix this fast’, what would your reaction be? The Badger once pitched this scenario and question to a group of IT sector project managers. Their responses were interesting. Most of those with cost-plus project management experience said they wouldn’t take on the challenge because being associated with a problem project might damage their career prospects. Others said they’d accept the challenge but only if it were accepted that their need to review the project, establish committees, and rebuild stakeholder management meant it was unlikely the project could be ‘fixed fast’.

Only one person, someone who had run a couple of modest fixed-price contracts, said unequivocally that they’d take the challenge. When the Badger asked them why, their response was – ‘If you’ve successfully run software and hardware intensive fixed price projects then you’ve learned that you’re a highly focused, demanding, disciplined and decisive individual with limited patience. You’ve learned that you need to be respected by your team and your client but not necessarily liked. You’ve learned the importance of dynamism, belief, team spirit, and having a positive attitude, and the importance of looking forward and taking speedy action to head off emerging threats to success. You’ve also learned that decisions must be good ones but not necessarily popular, and that ‘No’ is an immensely powerful word. Having learned all this, taking on the turnaround of a seriously troubled project threatening the company seems like a great personal opportunity rather than a foolhardy thing to do’.

The Badger smiled. Here was a kindred spirit! Fixing troublesome projects is always a challenge and a great opportunity to expand one’s capabilities. The contrast in attitude between those with cost-plus and fixed-price contract PM backgrounds was stark. If you were asked to ‘Do what’s necessary to fix this fast’ today, would you be up for the challenge?

Identifying the cleverest person in the room…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Meetings, Project Management, Psychology

IT professionals have experienced rapid innovation, constant engineering process evolution, progressive professionalism and quality improvement, and the commoditisation of technology and services over the last five decades. As an IT professional, the Badger’s worked with many clever and intelligent leaders, managers, and technical people who thrived on this continual dynamic change. Clever and intelligent people have always been at the heart of IT, but clever people don’t always have the greatest intelligence, and vice versa!

While fixing a dysfunctional project decades ago, the Badger had to attend a meeting involving the company’s Managing Director (MD) and other senior company staff and their opposite numbers from the customer to decide the project’s future. It was the Badger’s first time attending such a senior-level meeting. During the pre-meeting briefing, the MD sensed the Badger’s nervousness and reassured him that others would be doing the talking. As we entered the room containing the customer’s team, the MD winked at the Badger and whispered, ‘Tell me afterwards, who’s the cleverest person in the room?’  The meeting was difficult, but it concluded with agreement on a way forward. Deciding on the cleverest person in the room was also difficult. Afterall, how do you tell who is cleverest in a room of clever and intelligent people?

After the meeting, the MD playfully repeated the question and the Badger answered with what he thought the MD expected, namely that it was the MD! They chuckled, shook their head, said it was one of the customer’s team, and then went on to tell the Badger that cleverness and intelligence are different, but related, traits and that he should understand the difference to judge people and situations well. Cleverness is about speed of thought, ingenuity, emotional insight, adaptability, and creative problem-solving, while intelligence is about deep understanding and learning capacity. Clever people can think quickly, improvise, and solve problems in novel or unconventional ways, characteristics that are valuable in dynamic situations like debates, negotiations, or tricky interpersonal circumstances. Intelligent people, however, can acquire, understand, and apply knowledge in one or more domain, characteristics that are valuable in the likes of scientific research, planning, and the mastering of new disciplines. Clever people can be intelligent, and intelligent people can be clever, but the cleverest person in the room is always the person who has the best blend of both traits.

Learning more about the distinction between cleverness and intelligence over the years has been extremely useful. Since people are at the heart of the operations of any organisation, learning more about the difference not only arms you to pick out the cleverest person in the room, but also changes your perspective of those with impressive job titles who, the Badger’s learned from experience, are often unlikely to be the cleverest person in a room of other clever and intelligent people!

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….

Do acquisitions disproportionately shed older staff?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Acquisitions, Business, Education, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership, Learning, Legal matters

A youngster about to join a large enterprise after completing a degree at University asked an interesting question last weekend. ‘Does an enterprise that acquires another company use the purchase as a smokescreen to shed older, long-serving, higher-paid employees?’  That’s an interesting and unusual question from someone at the very start of their career. So why did they ask it? Well, firstly their new employer has acquired another substantial company and restructuring activities are underway. Secondly, they knew the Badger had some experience in navigating a number of mergers and acquisitions. Lastly, the tech-savvy youngster had come across online chatter that his new employer’s older staff with long service were being disproportionately targeted during restructuring. The youngster, with no experience within large enterprises, anticipates a long career with their new company, but they were a little perturbed that their new employer might possibly be engaging in age discrimination, something that’s prohibited under the UK Equality Act 2010.

Answering required words that were balanced, honest, and rooted in personal experience of post-acquisition integrations. So, what did the Badger say? Firstly, that acquisitions often lead to reorganisations which can legally justify redundancies based on performance or role duplication at any age or level of seniority. Loyalty and long-service counts for nothing in such a scenario, and older employees may be more vulnerable because they typically have higher salaries and benefits, which means shedding them can significantly reduce payroll costs. Secondly, an acquisition can be a vehicle to change an enterprise’s culture, especially in fast moving industries subject to rapid innovation pressures. This always favours the retention of younger, tech-savvy staff and those with in-demand skills. Thirdly, not every acquisition is a smokescreen for eliminating older, higher-paid employees, but, in reality, some acquirers do quietly use their purchase to shed older, higher-paid employees because they know that it’s normally difficult in these circumstances for individuals to prove age discrimination for their redundancy. Do acquisitions disproportionately shed older staff? Some do, some don’t.

The youngster nodded, reaffirmed their intent on a long career with their new employer, and asked if the Badger had any advice for the long term. Yes. Maintain skills that are current and valuable outside your company, as mergers and acquisitions rarely reward loyalty or long service. As you get older and more experienced, watch out during acquisition integration activities for a) silence about future roles for you or your peers, b) performance reviews, and c) role redefinitions. These often signal something is afoot that affects you personally. Also, never forget that HR works in your employer’s interest, not in yours.

The youngster grinned and said they obviously had lots to learn! The Badger smiled too, pleased that he’d sown a few seeds of awareness in a youngster who will soon learn that things are never quite what they seem inside organisations when it comes to workforce matters.

Nuclear reactors on the moon – a geopolitical investment in future dominance of Space…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Leadership, Life, Nuclear Power, Satellites, Space, Technology

The building of software and systems for Space missions, and to control satellites and process associated data, was an interesting and  fascinating area throughout the Badger’s IT career. Today it’s easy to forget that the imagery we take for granted with the weather forecast is produced by systems and software created by developers with excellent science,  engineering, and computing credentials, most of whom have little interest in working outside the Space sector. The Badger observed, over the years, that developers in this area often preferred to leave for another Space sector company rather than be assigned to a project outside the sector if there was a lull in available projects.

The Badger thus had two initial thoughts when the US announced an acceleration of its plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon. The first was ‘Great. More opportunities for developers in the Space sector if AI hasn’t taken their jobs’. The second was more philosophical and about the tension between visionary ambitions and pragmatic, grounded responsibility. The US plan, and the equivalents of Russia and China, is driven by a mix of strategic, technological, and geopolitical motives. However, is it sensible and in humanity’s interest for the Earth’s most powerful nations to spend huge amounts of money on Space endeavours when there’s a pressing need for it to be spent resolving problems on our planet? Should there be investment in long-term Space infrastructure that might, a long time from now, redefine humanity’s future? The answers depend, of course, on your perspective on life and our world.

Some see Space endeavours as a driver of innovation and ultimate human survival, whereas others see them as distractions from addressing real problems here on Earth. To the Badger, all plans for a nuclear reactor on the moon simply illustrate the shift away from an ethos of inquisitive exploration to one of establishing national strategic dominance making Space a domain of economic leverage, diplomacy, and warfare. Regardless of who does it, putting a reactor on the moon is an outright geopolitical investment in establishing future dominance. The prospect of the geopolitical tensions we see on Earth playing out on the Moon and beyond seems, at least to the Badger, grotesque.

Investments in Space endeavours push technological boundaries, reshape thinking, and stimulate innovation, but the fact is that humans are biologically unsuited to the environment beyond our planet is undeniable. So, in an age of automation, robotics, and AI, why spend huge sums sending and supporting humans on the Moon and beyond when robots can do the same job and the savings can be used to address humanity’s issues here on Earth? Is that idealism? Perhaps, but all it would take is leadership on behalf of all of humanity rather than individual nations. And there’s the rub, the likelihood of that ever happening, of course, is…er…zero.

Late payments to subcontractors and suppliers…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Digital Transformation, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership, Processes and Practices, Project Management, Supply Chain, Technology

Enterprises often hold an annual leadership conference to review the highs, lows, and lessons from the year, and to align their leaders with the business objectives for the year ahead. The Badger first attended such a conference decades ago when all attendees were gathered in the same place for an intense couple of days of formality and informal networking with peers. Enterprises today are increasingly sensitive about the logistical costs and environmental issues associated with gathering people in one place. Many such leadership conferences have thus become more hybrid in nature with smaller, distributed gatherings connected using online video streaming services. This very modern, tech-based approach has many benefits in terms of cost and convenience.

Although the Badger’s first annual leadership conference was a long time ago, he still remembers vividly a particular point made by the company CEO during a presentation lamenting the difficulties of being an IT subcontractor delivering  projects into client’s major programmes. The point was ‘Being a subcontractor is great, but being the prime contractor controlling when a subcontractor gets paid is much, much, much better!’  For some of its projects, the company had been struggling to get prime contractors to pay valid invoices for achieved milestones within contracted terms. The prime contractors had played all kinds of games to pay their subcontractors and suppliers when it suited them, rather than to what was written in their agreed contracted terms. They knew that apart from chasing and whining, subcontractors and suppliers were unlikely to take more forthright action because they wanted to avoid lasting damage to the client relationship in case it excluded them from potential future work opportunities.

Since then, UK legislation in 1998  has made provision for interest on late payment under commercial contracts. However, recent information suggests that only 1 in 10 subcontractors/suppliers enforce this right by actively charging interest, claiming compensation, or seeking debt recovery. This suggests that some level of reluctance remains due to concern about damaging customer relations,  especially for smaller businesses who are, after all, the majority of the UK economy and often heavily dependent on a small number of clients. It may be decades later, but the CEO’s point noted above remains relevant.

Cash flow difficulties can cause liquidity crises and even collapse for any size of enterprise, and so when the Badger heard that the UK government is introducing tougher late payment legislation his first thought was not alleluia, but why hasn’t AI and automation revolutionised payment processing in enterprises to ensure that payments  against valid invoices are always fully paid within contracted terms?  After all, digital technology has been transforming everything for years, and so perhaps this new legislation will add momentum to making a payment revolution happen faster. Let’s hope so. By the way, if you’re interested, you can check how well an enterprise does in paying within terms using the government tool here. 

Work-life balance…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Business, Delivery, Human Resources, Information Technology, Leadership, Life, Wellbeing

Work can be all-consuming. Organisations emphasise values like ‘employee well-being’ and a ‘people-first culture’, but most really operate with deliverables and timelines as their overwhelming priority. HR departments may advocate for ‘work-life balance’, but business leaders, project, programme, and service delivery leaders always push staff for huge effort and heroics to meet a deadline or milestone. In the IT sector, for example, do organisations ever willingly miss a deadline or milestone because of ‘employee well-being’ or their ‘people-first culture’? No.

The Badger’s just had some downtime in Morthoe on the UK’s North Devon coast. The apartment in which he stayed had wonderful coastal views, and it was while nibbling a scone on its balcony in the afternoon sun that thoughts turned to work-life balance. Life on the North Devon coast still provides access to all of today’s online services, but the sounds, the sea, the geology, the flora and fauna, and the local lifestyle forces relaxation and puts work-life balance into perspective. What did the Badger conclude about work-life balance? Simply that it matters. It isn’t just a trendy phrase. It’s a necessity for sustaining energy, protecting mental and physical health, and keeping one’s mind sharp. It matters because burnout reduces productivity and clouds judgement. Downtime helps the brain reset improving creativity, motivation, and decision making. It also matters because quality time away from work helps to build a broader perspective on life as a whole.

The Badger concluded years ago that there are three certainties regarding people. The first two are a) people and not machines, and b) they are all different. Some thrive on having really intense work periods followed by breaks of really deep rest, while others thrive with a daily structure of predictable routines, boundaries, and pressures interspersed with regular shallower rest periods. We are all different, and so the key to a good work-life balance is simply to adopt a personal rhythm that fuels and refreshes rather than drains your capability. Finding the rhythm that works for you within the terms of your employment contract is important. There’s a paradox, however. Employment contracts normally include a holiday entitlement to rest and recharge, and yet many people don’t take all their entitlement. The reasons for this are numerous, but sometimes it’s because a) the work culture rewards hustle more than rest, and b) that an individual misguidedly thinks that everything will collapse if they take a break. So, what’s the Badger’s third certainty about people? Simple. No one is irreplaceable.

If you accept these people certainties and find your rhythm for work-life balance then you will be healthier, sharper, more productive, and more resilient, and the organisation you work for will perform better too. So, use your holiday entitlement. As the Badger was reminded while nibbling scones in the North Devon sunshine, a break is good for you…

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….

Three pillars for success – a rule-of-thumb…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, International Relations, IT Project Management, Leadership, Project Management, Tariffs, Transformation

If you run a company, business unit, programme, project, or service, then you want it to be successful, don’t you? Of course you do. Many sources can guide you on what to do to ensure success, but in simple terms there are, in the Badger’s experience, essentially three pillars to get right. These are Objectives (clarity on what you’re setting out to achieve), Approach (the approach you take to communicate and align others with your objectives), and Plan (the schedule to deliver your expected beneficial outcomes). Having encountered many IT business and delivery successes and failures over the years, the Badger has a simple rule-of-thumb that if all three pillars are set well, then success will follow. If, however, one or more pillar is dysfunctional then turmoil and disappointment is inevitable.

Applying his rule-of-thumb to the current tariff war initiated by the US suggests that the success of this endeavour is far from certain. Are the US administration’s objectives clear, well-founded, and well-articulated? Is an approach based on bullying, bluster, and distorted information, the right one? Is there a thought-through plan that has factored in the risks? You’ll have your own view on the answers. The Badger, however, senses the current ‘gunslinger’ approach points more towards ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’ answers. When the US claims that all countries (allies and foes) have ‘raped, pillaged, and plundered’ the US economy when its giant tech companies have ‘raped, pillaged, and plundered’ everyone’s data globally then, whatever the tariff war outcome, it’s clear that things will never be the same again.

This democratically elected US administration took office just a few months ago and has bullied allies and foes alike ever since. Public pronouncements have been bellicose and relationships with nations around the world have undoubtedly been shaken by the US’s brutal, opening tariff war salvo. Erstwhile friends and foes alike are in the throes of protecting their national interests knowing that the geopolitical and trading landscape  is changing significantly. Capitulation to US bullying tactics seems unlikely, especially when other countries know that the US public will likely to feel great, self-inflicted, pain.

The Badger’s feels a) that at least two pillars of the US administration’s tariff endeavour are wobbly, b) that this US administration will declare success regardless of the eventual outcome, and c) that the US is already a loser. Why the latter? Well, the US may be the world’s biggest economy, but respect for the country has been damaged, and once lost that respect is difficult to rebuild. If you ignore the inevitable spin and bluster, announcements in the last 24-hours suggest some US back-pedalling in the light of market chaos and growing global economic disquiet. History shows that world superpowers rise and fall, and it feels like the US star is waning and China’s is rising. The most satisfying thing for the Badger, however, is that his pillars rule-of-thumb still seems to work pretty well!

2025 – A year of ‘Strain and Change’…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, Leadership, Life, Opinion, Public Institutions, Risk, Technology, Transformation

The festive season is over, and most people are once again embroiled in the routine of normal life. Many start the year mentally refreshed, physically rested, and game for the next challenge, but some do not. And there’s the rub, to use an idiom from Shakespeare, because those starting the year unprepared for a challenge will surely find this year difficult. Why’s that, especially when every year presents challenges that must be dealt with? Well, the omens for 2025 suggest it’s going to be a particularly testing one across a broad range of fronts. As a relative put it over the holiday period, the world order’s changing fast, there’s disgruntlement with political leaders, AI and disruptive advances in digital tech driven by huge corporations continue unabated, retrenchment from the globalisation that’s been a norm for years  is underway, and so ‘Strain and Change’ will be everywhere in 2025.   Those stepping back into life’s rhythms expecting the status quo and unprepared for challenges are thus likely in for a rude awakening.

With this in mind, the Badger found himself chuckling as he read what the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World TV programme predicted in 1995 for 2025. When Professor Stephen Hawking told that programme that ‘Some of these changes are very exciting, and some are alarming. The one thing we can be sure of is that it will be very different, and probably not what we expect’, little did he (or the Badger) know that the Badger’s last post for 2024 would echo the same sentiment! The Badger started wondering what advice Professor Hawking, who produced many pearls of wisdom, might have given us at the start of a year of ‘Change and Strain’. After a little research, the Badger decided he would simply concatenate two of his memorable pearls of wisdom to say:

‘It is very important for young people to keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why. It’s a crazy world out there. Be curious. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at’.

This seems apt in many ways, but especially for today’s always on, social media dominated, digital world where Hawking’s sentiment can be expressed as  ‘Don’t take anything you read, watch, or hear at face value. Be curious, ask questions, and always believe that you can take action to better your situation’. The Badger thinks that ‘Strain and Change’ is the drumbeat of 2025 technologically, nationally, geopolitically, commercially, and economically. Accordingly, whatever challenges lay ahead, they must be faced with the mindset embodied in Professor Hawking’s concatenated words above. As for the Badger? Well, he’s motivated, refreshed, and well prepared. The only status quo he’s anticipating in 2025 is the continuation of timeless, good, vintage music of which ’Living on an Island’ is a good example…