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Steak Tartare is a French dish of raw minced beef served with a raw egg and seasoning. It’s a dish that made an impact on the Badger soon after joining the IT industry many, many moons ago.

The situation was this. The Badger, jaded with some aspects of being a university researcher/lecturer in Materials, decided on a career change and joined a growing UK IT company at the forefront of building clever new systems and software for many different industries. Within a few days of starting at the company, the Badger was assigned to a project developing a relational database product. The project team were already well established, close-knit, highly intelligent, motivated, extremely skilled and had an extraordinary team-spirit – helped, in part, by a monthly, company funded, ‘Friday team lunch’ at restaurants in London’s Fitzrovia district.

Shortly after joining the team, the Badger attended his first ‘Friday team lunch’ at a quality French restaurant in Charlotte Street, London. Being new, the Badger was apprehensive. Visiting good restaurants wasn’t something the Badger did often and the whole menu was in French! Most of the team ordered steaks of one form or another, so the Badger followed suit and ordered Steak Tartare in the belief this would be just ‘normal’ steak but with a different sauce. The Badger’s plate of raw minced beef topped with a raw egg was the last to be served, and its arrival caused the hub-bub around the table to cease! All eyes turned to the Badger who somehow managed to conceal his own shock! The team conveyed their amusement and respect for the Badger’s choice, but wagered the Badger would not clear the plate. The Badger, of course, ate the lot… and hasn’t eaten Steak Tartare again since!

So what learning did the Badger take from this episode? Firstly, it broke the ice with the team and it speeded up the development of relationships with other team members. The Badger learned that doing something that makes you stand out or generates comment can help speed up your assimilation into an established group of people. Secondly, the Badger learned never to be reluctant to ask questions or seek clarification, and to always ensure you fully understand what you’re getting from the outset. Thirdly, the Badger learned to brush up his French.

So, overall what’s the message? Simple. Don’t be afraid to be different, don’t be shy, ask questions, learn about yourself and learn how to make an impact on others. Don’t be frightened of trying new things. Try Steak Tartare yourself – you never know, it might have an impact on you that you’ll remember for years to come too…

Commentary on advancing technology and its impact on work and life is everywhere. There’s so much that it’s becoming tedious! However, as the Badger awoke from a night’s sleep recently, a radio interview with Yuval Noah Harari grabbed the attention. It was one of those radio items that you’re not really listening to, until something’s said that triggers mental faculties to speed up the journey from slumber to consciousness.

The interview had facets that resonated with apprehensions about the power of FAANGs (see here). It triggered a stream of Badger thinking that couldn’t be shaken off and culminated in the stark appreciation that the commodity of power this century isn’t gold, cash, natural resources, size of military forces, or nuclear bombs…it’s our data. Hardly a revelation, but it’s sobering to think of it in these simple terms.

Just think about how much of your data – personal info, comments, photos, videos, what you buy, what you browse, who your friends are, who you communicate with, what publications you read etc – is captured when you use today’s technology. Just think about what mega-corporations like FAANGs can tell about you, your family, your life, your habits, your interests, and your political allegiances by analysing your use of their services and the data you provide. With biotechnology and advancing personalised medicine, it’s not irrational to think that the mega-corporations will ultimately have your DNA too! History suggests it would be prudent to harbour some anxiety about mega-corporations wielding this century’s commodity of power to manipulate people to achieve whatever outcomes suit corporate interests.

Is this just paranoia? May be, but that’s for each of us to decide. So, is there anything you can do to help minimise the potential for being manipulated? Yes…think before you provide! Don’t shirk from taking personal responsibility for what you provide, share or exchange on any platform. Parents should not shirk from educating their children about online privacy awareness, using social media and modern technology sensibly, and the need to ‘think about consequences’ when sharing or exchanging data.

Finally, the Badger has a question. Do you just glibly accept the meaty ‘cookies’ pop-ups on websites since the advent of GDPR? Chances are you do – and you shouldn’t! Have a look at the alternative links in the pop up which often take you to the detail and settings of what you’re agreeing to, including the companies you agree can process data. You may be surprised at what you find. Whatever you decide to do next is your choice, but make the choice knowing you will be influencing this century’s commodity of power… your data.

The Badger received training during his career and participated in developing company level training strategy and policy. On the latter, there were many debates over the years on the merits, effectiveness, and benefits of e-learning for the employer and also for the employee. These aired strong views but never really culminated in clear conclusions. So, is it possible to answer the question posed in the title above? No.

So, why’s the Badger posed the question? Ostensibly because the Badger’s feels that traditional Instructor-led Training (ILT), which educates with more group face to face interaction, is becoming rarer – at least in the IT industry. E-learning seems to have become a convenient ‘first choice’ in many enterprises, but possibly at the expense of truly embedding deep learning in recipients. By the way, if you want to read a short and balanced item comparing e-learning versus ILT then just click here.

Training strategy and policy is usually informed by a needs analysis supporting strategic business objectives. In the Badger’s experience these analyses are often highly constrained by ever-tighter budgets. There’s nothing wrong with that – it’s always sensible to live within one’s means! With ever-tighter budgets and perpetually advancing technology it’s hardly surprising that enterprises have strongly embraced e-Learning for delivering training to the workforce. But does e-Learning provide diluted learning for its recipients compared with ILT? Specialist academics, no doubt, have the answer. So, having posed the question in the title which side of the fence does the Badger land?

That’s easy – Instructor-led Training (ILT). Why? Firstly, because the training that had the greatest and most long-lasting impact on the Badger was always where an instructor and a group of people were in the same room. The ability to interact with each other, share experiences, collectively understand, ask questions, and listen to others whilst watching their body language was very powerful in embedding key learning points. Secondly, the Badger’s experience of e-learning in recent years was coloured by dynamics that instructed recipients to comply. Recipients tended, therefore, just to concentrate on passing the online test at the end of the session. Retention of the learning thereafter  tended to be shallow.

So, there you have the Badger’s answer to the question! Of course, the best training is ‘on the job’ – learning from others in your line of business, project or team just doing your normal day to day job. By the way, the Badger isn’t anti e-Learning, just more pro as much face to face, group-centred learning as possible otherwise it could become extinct! One final thought though. Should e-Learning in enterprises be overhauled? After all, why reinvent the wheel when training videos on YouTube already provide lots of the same subject matter content…

Yesterday evening the Badger enjoyed refreshing cold beverages in the garden of the local hostelry, watching the sun set, listening to the song birds starting to roost in the trees around the local pond, and watching ducks marshal their youngsters to the protection of the small island in its centre. It was divine! To say the Badger was relaxed is an under-statement. However, it was also bizarre. Why? Because the Badger’s brain in this idyllic setting turned to reflecting on the results published over the last two weeks by the major IT service providers. Sad, but true.

What the Badger reflected on wasn’t so much the numbers reported, but the buzzwords CEOs used in their webcasts. All the webcasts were pretty standard corporate fayre, contained the usual rhetoric and predictable messaging, and the numbers were well-rehearsed and conveyed with positivity. What struck the Badger, however, was that the words Digital, Digital Transformation, Cloud, Consulting and Systems Integration dominate narratives way more than the term ‘outsourcing’, even though this continues to be an important bedrock within most IT service provider’s business. It was this simple point, oiled with creativity from a cold beverage, that moved the Badger’s thoughts to some murky visioneering and speculation of future ‘outsourcing’ business opportunities.

So, what did the Badger conclude from this murky thinking? First, and most obviously, outsourcing of IT services by major and medium size enterprises is well established and will continue in one guise or another for many reasons. Second, outsourcing for small or tiny businesses – which is influenced by many factors, as the neat little Tenfold item here illustrates – is an increasingly powerful and viable option and this area is destined to continue growing. And third, the piece-de-resistance, the blue-sky handwaving result – families will be attracted to outsource their IT!

Families typically have internet connections, desktops, laptops, tablets, games consoles, smart phones, printers, storage devices holding precious personal information, and so on, scattered around the home and used by different family members. There’s always some incompatibility or something unfathomable wrong causing frustration, and many find it daunting and difficult to ‘join up’ the technology to provide something that could loosely be described as a  service for the family across the plethora of devices. More and more technology is coming into the home, so integrating it and looking after it in a coherent, cost effective way suggests family ‘outsourcing’ for a sensible monthly fee could be viable, attractive and perhaps inevitable. At least that’s what the Badger concluded!

So, there you have it. Cold beverages at a local hostelry on a warm Summer evening have a lot to answer for…

This is a well-known saying with wide applicability. Inside big corporates, for example, individual business units go through periods where they grow, can do no wrong, and their success influences the whole corporation…until they ultimately decline and are surpassed by another unit. The decline is often rapid, painful, and caused by arrogance, complacency, a focus on internal matters rather than clients, or failure to act on clear adverse operational trends. You may recognise these dynamics if you’ve worked in a large corporate.

The saying also applies at a human level. The Badger, for example, learned early in his career that if you are a project manager then you are only as good as your last project. If your last project was perceived as being problematic then that’s what people remember, not the run of delivery leadership successes you had before that. Indeed, when the Badger became a delivery gamekeeper to lead company delivery/risk reviews, any endeavour run by leaders with impeccable track records received a little extra attention. Why? Because one of the underlying questions was always ‘could this be the one that is this project/service manager’s nemesis?’. So, it’s a very good saying which is just as applicable to our career ups and downs and personal lives as it is in business. The trick is to realise this, to keep the saying in mind and think before rushing to follow the crowd, and to realise that business colleagues may have it in mind when they interact with you.

The Badger read recently that the combined value of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (FAANG) exceeds the entire value of companies in the UK FTSE 100. FAANGs also exceed the entire value of companies in the Japanese Nikkei. To the Badger, this rings alarm bells. FAANGs are enormous money-making machines – empires, no less. But are they now too powerful? Can social media platforms be trusted? Hmm. The Badger has always been cautious with social media, ostensibly because ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’. Facebook’s recent Cambridge Analytic woes just illustrates that. Furthermore, Google’s recent fine from the EU highlights historic practices but also begs the question about where effective FAANG regulatory oversight is coming from.

FAANGs reported their quarterly results to the market last week. Facebook and Netflix wobbled but Amazon continues its march to world domination. The Badger’s all for the free market, but do FAANG valuations and power ultimately bode well for people, democracy or society? We should all think about what the answer is to this question. Anyway, let’s get back to ‘what goes up must come down’. FAANGs are not exempt and the Badger’s message is simple. If whatever you’re looking at or engaged with has a perpetual march upwards, then just keep in mind that at some stage there will always be a reversal of fortunes…

Over the last 20 or so years lots of software development and IT/Business Process services for North American and European markets moved offshore, typically – but not exclusively – to countries like India, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. Today many IT services companies employ more people in offshore locations than they do in their home territories. The IT industry functions globally and changes fast, and in a quiet moment recently the Badger pondered on whether the current heightened nationalistic trends in many Western countries might ultimately lead to politically driven policies to repatriate IT skills and services to home turf. You don’t need to look far in the media to appreciate that many countries know they have IT skill shortfalls, that security and privacy requires crucial local IT expertise, and that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is apparently going to impact employment everywhere. So, do the runes suggest offshoring is in for a fast and dramatic fall? Well, that was the question at the heart of the Badger’s ruminations.

About 20 years ago, the Badger was involved in the acquisition of a small (<100 people) Indian software product development company and then its subsequent growth into an excellent global IT services delivery centre of more than 5000 professionals. (A second centre was eventually opened in the Philippines). Getting Western teams to work effectively with the offshore centres wasn’t easy. Many human and technical problems relating to cultural differences, time-zones, communication, language, and IT infrastructure for seamless global collaboration, were painful but eventually overcome. The Badger’s admiration and respect for offshore colleagues grew in leaps and bounds as these challenges were addressed. Their enthusiasm, ambition, hunger for success, thirst for knowledge, top-notch technical skills and desire to please was impressive and refreshing. Today, of course, onshore/offshore teamwork is routine, largely straightforward and successful embedded as routine across the industry. If it wasn’t then customers wouldn’t keep coming back for more.

So, is a reliance in home territories on IT skills, capabilities and services from offshore countries a problem? Is offshoring in for a dramatic fall? No. Not if international relationships between home and offshore countries remain mature and stable, and technological impacts from the likes of AI are well managed. But there’s the rub. Trade wars with the USA, BREXIT, EU internal strains, China’s relentless progress, Russia, North Korea, Saudi Arabia modernisation, Iran and the Middle East, all seem to suggest global business dynamics and international relationships are changing with nationalistic agendas being reinforced. But let’s travel hopefully. Offshore will continue to play an important part in the IT services industry. The Badger remains optimistic, but Badger instincts are producing some nervous twitches! The aroma of disruption seems to increase everyday…but maybe that’s just the Badger having dodgy thoughts on an unusually hot and sticky day!

Many years ago, a business unit leader asked the Badger to review a project delivering a small but important system to a Space sector client. The unit leader was receiving frequent escalations from the client who felt the project manager (PM) was unsuitable and delivery was going to be late. From the unit leader’s perspective, the PM was doing a good job, progress was on track, and finances were healthy. The PM had previously delivered similar projects successfully. The unit leader wasn’t therefore unduly concerned but asked the Badger for an independent delivery practitioner’s opinion as a tactic to ease client concern.

The Badger called the PM to arrange the swift review. On the phone the PM was helpful, upbeat, and confident that all was well, but there was something about the call dynamics that made the Badger’s nose twitch! The review subsequently commenced with a face to face kick-off meeting at which the PM was in transmit-only mode, waxing lyrical about having exemplary processes, tools, and records that proved concerns were unfounded. The Badger’s nose twitched even more!

The review’s findings? Well, the project had an exemplary trail of documents with all the fully approved baseline, foundation and plan documents you’d expect plus full traceability to the contract. It reported comprehensively and on time internally and to the client and had a good suite of tools to track progress against plan, finances and produce forecasts. The project had everything required to comply with the contract and internal company standards. This was a model project, at least administratively!

However, what was wrong was clear from talking with team members and the client. The PM was an exceptional administrator, but a poor manager and leader. One team leader put it vitriolically as ‘He’s a process junky. He doesn’t listen to anything I tell him. He just processes the data he’s told me to provide to get the answer he wants’. The PM wasn’t listening to his team or assessing any risks and threats to progress. The team was becoming alienated, and the client was escalating because they could see the tensions.

The Badger reported this and some recommendations to the unit leader, highlighting particularly that the PM wasn’t listening to his team, that progress metrics were thus unreliable, and that delivery would be late. The unit leader seemed reluctant to accept this and did not take any action. Two months later system delivery was delayed 6 months, the project moved into loss, the project manager was replaced, and the business unit leader was moved from his role!

And the Badger’s message is? Simple. Listening is a crucial skill. Listening objectively is key to making good decisions and shaping the right outcomes. It’s an essential and vital skill for anyone in any kind of managerial or leadership position at any level – but be aware…not everyone has it!

The Badger’s never been a member of any political party and never will be! There. That’s got that important piece of context for this piece out of the way!

The Badger was trained to think independently and objectively, to analyse facts, learn from life and career experiences, and formulate personal opinions while respecting that the opinions of others might differ. Over the years the Badger’s found that rational independence, rather than allegiance to a particular ideology, has been a beneficial because no ideology has a monopoly on being right. Why is the Badger making this point? Because this week the ‘my way is right’, ‘It can’t be done’, and ‘they won’t agree’ rhetoric, gamesmanship and speculation from politicians and the media-savvy chattering class seems to have been particularly pronounced. The Badger has thus found a tinge of irritation infiltrating his thoughts, especially when what can be done with technology has featured in political debate.

The Badger, who believes firmly in democracy and healthy debate, wondered if levels of misinformation and media shrill has got out of hand. In the UK, posturing over negotiations with the European Union on Brexit has been particularly high because there’s an important meeting of the UK cabinet on Friday 6th July. Frictionless trade with the EU and the nature of the border between Northern Ireland and Eire – the UK’s only land border with the EU – have been hot topics in EU negotiations for months. On the Northern Ireland border issue, many domestic and EU politicians have lined up to rule out a solution which uses technology to keep the border as it is now. Having listened to many items on why a technology-centric solution won’t work, the Badger has concluded first that the positive case for it hasn’t been well presented by politicians or the media, and second that politicians appear to have an intractable ‘can’t be done’ mentality when that suits their individual or party-political objectives.

The Badger’s thoughts crystallised in a very simple – and some may say naïve -conclusion; namely, that technology can and must play a big part in frictionless trade and making the Northern Ireland border with Eire work with little if any change. If major cities can use automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) for congestion charging, ANPR can be used to automatically fine you for speeding or not having vehicle tax, and you can buy goods on-line track and track the location of your item in the delivery chain, then it’s not credible to assert a technology-based solution at a border is impossible. What makes it impossible is only the posturing of politicians and those who need a media story. Every time the Badger hears a politician of any persuasion or country say something can’t be done and cites technology as one of the reasons then the Badger says ‘Oh yes it can’ out loud! Career politicians might need a wake-up call. Mr Trump. Do you have any spare time?

The Badger’s thoughts turned to call-centres this week, triggered by a conversation between three pensionable ladies overheard in a local coffee shop. It seemed that one had a good experience with a call centre, one an Ok one, and the third a particularly unhelpful experience leading to a ‘never going to call again’ comment.

The Badger pondered on his own experiences, both as an end customer and from having some relevant experience as a business and IT professional. Call centres of varying types, of course, feature in our daily lives for almost everything. Whilst many interactions with banks, government departments, health services, utilities, insurance companies, retailers and so on, can be done online, there’s always a number to call and a series of buttons to press on your phone if you want to speak to a human being.

So, what emerged from the Badger’s cogitations? Simply that call centres seem to fall into one of three categories – the good, the bad or the downright ugly. The good tend to be very good with well trained, friendly, customer-centric staff supported by well-integrated IT systems that work smoothly to provide the call handler a complete picture of you as a customer. The bad tend to be disjointed and inefficient, with agents that aren’t well trained who just regurgitate their scripts and have poorly integrated IT systems providing a fractured view of their customer. ‘I’m just going to put you on hold while I check on another system’ tends to be a frequent and rather tedious refrain. And then there’s the ugly. These have annoying and unhelpful call agents who sometimes introduce themselves with implausible names, and seem hell bent on upselling other services rather than dealing with what you want done. The Badger doesn’t stay long with organisations whose call centres fall into the ugly category!

The size of an organisation doesn’t seem to be a direct indicator of which category its call centre will be in. Bigger sometimes isn’t the best, often because of the difficulties interfacing with long-standing legacy IT architectures and systems. Smaller organisations who are likely to have more limited legacy IT estate issues often seem to provide the best experience for their customers, which no doubt helps with customer retention and the important dynamics of growth through repeat business and customer recommendations. The Badger also wondered about the much-vaunted impacts of Artificial Intelligence, only to conclude that there’s still lots to do in most organisations just to unlock customer information from IT systems and make it comprehensively available to front-line staff before any AI vision is truly viable. So, let’s hope things improve on the joining up of IT systems front so that more call-centres move into the ‘good’ category before the robots even get close to taking over. There’s something humanly reassuring about the dynamics, antagonisms and nuances of interacting with another human in a good call centre, so long may it continue!

An earlier Badger musing, which you can read here, pondered on the effectiveness of TSB’s Go-live readiness assessment and leadership decision-making relating to their calamitous migration from Lloyds Bank to the systems of Banco Sabadell, their Spanish parent. Well, this week IBM’s report on TSB’s IT problems was published (see UK Select Committee: TSB-IBM report). The Badger found it an interesting, but depressing, read. In a nutshell, many of the readiness basics you’d expect for such a major, complex, and business critical migration seem to have been obviously missing. Why this wasn’t obvious to those in TSB and its parent raises all kinds of questions, but the themes from the published report clearly imply that Go-live readiness processes and evaluations were not as comprehensive, rigorous, or evidentially based from a business and an IT perspective as they should have been.

Comprehensive, probing, objective, evidential Go-Live readiness processes that encourage honesty regardless of any internal pressures for positive outcomes, are essential to making the right Go-Live decision. These should cover, as a minimum, stakeholders, business areas, media handling and public relations, customer and customer service, management of change, IT (especially functionality, data migration, defects, test, build and release, performance, resilience and capacity, infrastructure, and technical support), partners and subcontractors, and risk. A focus on each as well as the interlinked totality is essential to ensure the overall picture is joined-up, gaps are identified and mitigated, and that risk is minimised. Assessments should always validate the readiness of viable mechanisms to deal with the unexpected or problems after Go-Live. Not doing this represents misplaced optimism and significantly adds to the risk profile at the point of making a final Go-Live decision.

This all seems obvious to the Badger! So why do things like TSB still happen? Because no matter how good the processes are, people, personalities, behaviours and internal organisational culture remain key factors. Regarding the latter, the Badger has found over the years that the internal culture that organisations tell you they have doesn’t always translate to what’s truly embedded in the workforce!

The Badger ends this piece with a wry smile. An interview with the UK Secretary of State for Transport is on the radio. He’s being grilled on the disastrous impact of a new train timetable on passengers across the north of England. He says all the Go-Live readiness indicators were Green, and a review has started to understand how this could be the case given the major disruption that ensued and continues. In fact the Badger’s wry smile is morphing into a hearty chuckle because it looks like dodgy Go-live readiness evaluation will provide the media with a stick to beat politicians and large organisation leaders for a while yet!