What’s Your Relationship?

This week I learned about the Three Levels of Relationships.

Level 3: Family/Friends

The highest form of a relationship where you are being authentic (i.e. yourself), you share deeply about yourself (thoughts, feelings, desires, mistakes, etc,) and you are vulnerable. 

Level 2: Professionals

The middle level of relationships in which you are seeking to build trust and respect, you share some information (i.e. appropriate), and you expose yourself a little to the other person. 

Level 1: Acquaintances

The most elementary of relationships that is superficial in nature, there is little personal sharing of information (i.e. mostly when you are asked a question and you feel comfortable answering it), and you remain guarded. 

This is a good way to assess your relationships–is it a level 1, 2, or 3 and are you behaving appropriately within that, so that you trust, communicate, and collaborate effectively.  😉

(Graphic Credit: Andy Blumenthal)

In The Know or Dark

So here is one way that some people can (try to) manipulate you–positively or negatively. 

They can help either to keep you “in the know” or “in the dark.”

As we all know by now, information is power!

When you’re in the know–you are a trusted agent and a valuable resource; you have more dots and more connections between the dots to make; you are able to analyze what’s happening and make better decision going forward; you can lead with knowledge, wisdom, and hopefully understanding. People come to you for advice, guidance, and because you are a true asset to the team, your superiors, and the organization. 

When you’re in the dark–you are untrusted and unvalued, you may actually be seen as the enemy who needs to be marginalized, put out or taken out! You are kept out of meetings, uninformed or misinformed, and so you become more and more intellectually worthless. Further, others are implicitly or explicitly told that you are poisonous and not to get caught up in the pending slaughter.  A colleague of mine put it this way: “Don’t get between a man and his firing squad.”   

So with others, there can be information alliances as well as information warfare. 

To a great extent, you are responsible for keeping yourself in the know. You need to build relationships, bridges, and networks. You need to read, observe, and talk to lots of people. You need time to digest and analyze what you learn.  And you must build your information store so that it is ready and actionable. 

But to another extent, there are others–superiors, competitors, bullies, abusers–who just might seek to keep you in the dark and bring you down. Not everyone is your friend…some maybe just the opposite. (Wouldn’t it be nice, if we all were just friends!) But showing you the intellectual ass of the group is a powerful nut that once superimposed as an image, cannot be easily distilled. There is plenty of groupthink to go around. And taking out a perceived enemy diffuses their power to everyone else.  What a lousy coup by some nasty f*ckers!

Why some friend and others foe you–who the heck knows. Perhaps some is chemistry; some is tit for tat; some is personal bias and bigotry; and some just the crapshoot of fate. 

In the end, keep doing your part to enhance your value, your friendships, and your integrity. The rest, you have to be vigilant about and realize not everyone wants the lights kept on. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

UNSOCIAL Social Media

This video is absolutely fantastic.

Congratulations to Gary Turk for hitting the nail on the head here.

And thank you to my daughter, Michelle, for sharing this with me.

Smartphones, dumb people.
Easier to connect with people, but we spend more time alone.
Be there in the moment.
Give your love, not your like.
Look up from your phone, shut down your display.

Part of me just wants to say that Social Media is one of THE biggest wastes of our time…REALLY!

Another part of me, believes in some aspects of it for information sharing, collaboration, and being a greater influence.

But Social Computing is NOT a replacement for genuine human interaction, which is too OFTEN what it has become.

I applaud my daughters, for at times, disconnecting their Facebook accounts to read, spend time with friends, and do other activities.

We’ve lost too much of ourselves to an escapist virtual reality–where it’s easier to HIDE behind a screen, then be there in the flesh facing the challenges that we must.

There are great aspects to being online–it’s been a true information revolution–but the computer needs to SERVE the human master, and not the other way around. 😉

The Counterterrorism Calendar

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) “leads our nations efforts to combat terrorism at home and abroad by analyzing the threat, sharing that information with our partners, and integrating all instruments of national power to ensure unity of effort.” The NCTC is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Not since the playing cards used in the 2003 Iraqi invasion with the most-wanted identified on the cards have I seen the employ of such a common tool for sharing such important information–until now with the development by the NCTC of a Counterterrorism Calendar.

Typically, pin-up calendars have been devoted to beautiful models, Dilbert cartoons, and areas of personal interests and hobbies–such as cars, sports, aircraft, boats, or whatever.

I was impressed to see this concept used for sharing counterterrorism information; really, this is something that we should be mindful of every day–it’s about our safety and national security.

The counterterrorism calendar has both a website and a PDF download.

The website has an interactive timeline, map, and terrorist profiles–so you can learn about terrorism by time and space and those who commit the atrocities.

Timeline–you can view by month and day the major terrorist acts that have occurred–and many days have more than one terrorist act associated with it–and only seven days out of the whole calendar year have no terrorist acts listed–so for those who are focused on just 9/11, there is a whole calendar waiting for you to view.

Map–the map allows you to see the home base and geographical sphere of influence of many terrorist organizations–17 of them–along with a profile of each of those terrorist groups. There is also a button on the bottom of the page to see all the countries impacted with victims from 9/11–there are 91 countries shown with victims from this single catastrophic event alone.

Terrorists–the site has a list of terrorists with their profiles, identifying information, what they are wanted for, and amount of reward offered, or whether they have already been captured or killed. There is also a list of the 10 most wanted off to the right side of the page–with a rewards of $25 million listed for the #1 spot for Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The downloadable calendar has this information in a 160 page color-calendar–with a wealth of information for a calendar format like this–it is so large, I don’t think you could actually hang this calendar because no regular push pins could actually hold it.

So if you can pull yourself away from the stereotypical Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Calendar, then you may actually be able to learn a lot about what our counterterrorism efforts are all about. 😉

Amazing Internet Statistics 2012

So what happens in only 1 minute on the Internet–this cool magazine Ideas and Discoveries (October 2012) provides some amazing examples:

– Information Sharing–639,800 gigabytes of data are exchanged

– Information Generation–6 new Wikipedia articles are created

– Information Visualization–20,000,000 photo looked at on Flickr

– eMail–204,000,000 emails are sent

– eCommerce–$83,000 of sales on Amazon

– Social Networking–320 new users on Twitter and 100 on LinkedIn (wonder how many for Facebook…)

– Cyber Crime–20 new victims of identity theft

And in the same month, Harvard Business Review reported on the growing significance to commerce with the Internet contributing to GDP (in 2010) as much as:

– 8.3% in the UK

– 7.3% in South Korea

– 5.5% in China

– 4.7% in the US

– 4.7% in Japan

– 4.1% in India

Moreover in HBR, this is what was reported that people are willing to give up instead of the Internet for a year–and the numbers are pretty startling–check this out:

– 91% of UK would give up fast food

– 89% of Indonesians would give up smoking

– 86% of Japanese would give up chocolate

– 85% of Chinese would give up coffee

– 78% of Indonesians would give up their shower

– 60% of Japanese would give up exercise

– 56% of Chinese would give up their car

– 56% of Japanese would give up sex–go figure! 😉

While this is all sort of light, there is also a very seriousness dimension to this. For example, in the Wall Street Journal today, it quotes Secretary of Defense, Leon Paneta warning that with Iran’s digital assault on the U.S., the concerns of cyberwar are growing with the SecDef going so far as to say “Is there a cyberwar going on? It depends on how you define war.”

Yes, the Internet is amazing for so many reasons and we can’t take it for granted–we need to be vigilant and defend the Internet (cyber) with the same zeal and commitment as the other domains of war–land, sea, and air–all are vital to national security and for the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is a lesson we need to learn quickly and decisively–before the old Star Wars is passe and cyberwar turns deadly.

I Hate Paper

Paper has been around for approximately two thousand years, since it’s invention in China, and it has served as the medium of choice for recording and sharing information ever since.

However, enter the age of information technology and we are now able to capture, process, and store far more information, quicker, cheaper, and more efficiently than we ever could with paper.

Combine that with the environmental impact and the need to conserve, and we have numerous federal laws calling for the reduction or elimination of paper, to the extent practical.

1) The Paperwork Reduction Act (1980) calls for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to regulate collection of information and establish information policies to reduce the paper handled by the government.

2) The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (1998) mandates the use of electronic forms, filings, and signatures for official business with the public.

3) E-Government Act (2002) requires use of the Internet to improve citizen access to information and services.

All three are a recognition of the need to move from costly paper-based processes and the management of maintenance of mountains of paper records to instead leverage information technology to re-engineer and improve the way we perform information management.

It’s funny, but for me it’s almost become a personal crusade to make better use of information technology to perform our mission and business of government more effectively, and I personally keep as little paper records, as possible–instead choosing to manage predominantly online–and it’s great.

Aside from having a cleaner office–no paper files, I enjoy all the benefits of electronic filing, search, and the ability to quickly share files with others in the office without having to rummage through a stack of papers 3 feet deep!

Working in some areas that are still paper intensive for case management and so on, I have taken on the mantra, which I frequency cite of “I hate paper!”

No, I don’t really hate it, but in order to change decades old manual and paper intensive processes, we need to exaggerate a little and tell ourselves and other we hate it, so we can help change the inefficient and costly status quo.

You can only imagine how surprised I was to read in The Atlantic (20 April 2012)–that “Paper: [Is] The Material of the Future.”

Essentially, the article touts the new developments with paper using nanotechnology to make it water-proof (although you can still write on it), magnetic, fluorescent, and even anti-bacterial.

Imagine paper that you can stick to your file cabinet, spill coffee on, light up the room with, and even keep you from getting sick–yes, that’s fairly impressive!

However, while these new features are wonderful indeed and will increase the usability of paper as well as improve records management of them, I do not want to see us get complacent with reducing our use of paper and making better use of technology.

Even with these cool nano-tech improvements to paper coming our way, I am still going to say, “I hate paper!”

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Earthworm)

Candy Dish, Come and Get Some

I saw this brilliant piece in the Wall Street Journal (20 March 2012) about building relationships with sibling “rivals”, but in my opinion the advice has much broader implications for growing our relationships for how we deal with others in life.

The article describes about how one man sends his brother, with whom he has been fighting with for years, the following story in an email:

“Two men had a stream dividing their properties. One man hired a carpenter to build a fence along the stream, but the carpenter built a bridge by mistake.” The brother then wrote, “I’d like to walk over the bridge.”

Wow! This is a very powerful story.

We can choose to build walls to separate us or build bridges to close the divide.

This can be applied to so many situations, where building relationships has a genuine chance or can be a lost and forgone opportunity.

In the office, for example, some people choose to put up proverbial walls between themselves and others. They do this by closing their doors, scowling at others, putting up signs that they are having a bad day, or perhaps by literally surrounding themselves with the accoutrements of their office (desks, chairs, appliances, mementos) and sending a message of a clear distance between them and others–almost like they are circling the wagons and no one will get in without getting shot.

While others take a different approach and are busy building bridges between themselves and others. For example, they regularly say good morning and how are you, they have a true open door policy, they may even have a candy dish or other enticements for others to stop by and just talk. They are open to others to share, collaborate and to build relationships.

Thus, just like with the two brothers, the conflict between them can turn into a hard and deeply anchored wall that closes all venues or the opposite, a bridge that connects us.

Think about it as building or burning bridges. When dealing with people who are really not deserving of trust, sometimes there is no choice but to separate and “live and let live,” but when dealing with those with whom a real relationship is possible and even desirable, then start building those bridges today or at least take a first step and put out that candy dish. 😉

(Source Photo: Blumenthal)

Taking Down The Internet–Not A Pipe Dream Anymore

We have been taught that the Internet, developed by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was designed to survive as a communications mechanism even in nuclear war–that was its purpose.

 

Last year, I learned about studies at the University of Minnesota that demonstrated how an attack with just 250,000 botnets could shut down the Internet in only20 minutes.

 

Again last month, New Scientist (11 February 2012) reported: “a new cyberweapon could take down the entireInternet–and there is not much that current defences can do to stop it.”

 

Imagine what your life would be like without Internet connectivity for a day, a week, or how about months to reconstitute!

 

This attack is called ZMW (after its three creators Zhang, Mao, and Wang) and involves disrupting routers by breaking and reforming links, which would cause them to send out border gateway protocol (BGP) updates to reroute Internet traffic.  After 20 minutes, the extreme load brings the routing capabilities of the Internet down–” the Internet would be so full of holes that communication would become impossible.”

 

Moreover, an attacking nation could preserve their internal network, by proverbially pulling up their “digital drawbridge” and disconnecting from the Internet, so while everyone else is taken down, they as a nation continue unharmed.

 

While The Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which encourages companies and government to share information (i.e. cybersecurity exchanges) and requires that critical infrastructure meet standards set by The Department of Homeland Security and industry are steps in the right direction, I would like to see the new bills go even further with a significant infusion of new resources to securing the Internet.

 

An article in Bloomberg Businessweek (12-18 March 2012) states that organizations “would need to increase their cybersecurity almost ninetimes over…to achieve security that could repel [even] 95% of attacks.”

 

Aside from pure money to invest in new cybersecurity tools and infrastructure, we need to invest in a new cyberwarrior with competitions, scholarships, and schools dedicated to advancing our people capabilities to be the best in the world to fight the cyber fight. We have special schools with highly selective and competitive requirements to become special forces like the Navy SEALS or to work on Wall Street trading securities and doing IPOs–we need the equivalent or better–for the cyberwarrior.

 

Time is of the essence to get these cyber capabilities to where they should be, must be–and we need to act now.

 

(Source Photo of partial Internet in 2005: here, with attribution to Dodek)

 

Where The Biggest Nuts Rise To The Top

According to an article in Mental Floss (November/December 2011) engineers at the Advanced Dynamics Laboratory in Australia in 1996 researched how to mitigate The Muesli Effect, which describes the paradox of how, for example, cereral in boxes tend to separate with the smaller stuff lingering on the bottom and the large chunks rising to the top. This is the opposite of what you’d expect in terms of the larger, heavier pieices falling to the bottom–but they don’t.This is also known as The Brazil Nuts Effect, because the largest nuts (the Brazil Nuts) can rise to the top. While in physics, this may be good, in leadership it is not.With leadership, the Muesli Effect can led to situations where cut-throat, unethical, workplace operators push their way to the top, on the backs of the masses of hardworking individuals. Unfortunately, these workplace “bullies,” may stop at nothing to get ahead, whether it means manipulating the system through nepotism, favoritism, outright descrimination, or political shinanigans. They may lie, steal, kiss up, or kick down shamelessly disparaging and marginalizing coworkers and staff–solidying their position and personal gain, which unfortunately comes at expense of the organization and it’s true mission.Some really do deserve their fortune by being smarter, more talented, innovative, or hardworking. In other cases, you have those who take unjustifiably and ridiculously disproportionately at the expense of the others (hence the type of movements such as 99% or Occupy currently underway). This corruption of leadership begs the question who have they “brown-nosed,” what various schemes (Ponzi or otherwise) have they been running, how many workers have they exploited, suppliers squeezed, partners shafted, and customers and investors have they taken advantage of.

Countless such ingenious leaders (both corporate and individual) rise by being the organizations false prophets” and taking advantage of the “little guy”–some examples whether from Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Tyco, MF Global, and Bernie Madoff are just a few that come to mind. These and other examples can be found as well in government, non-profit, as well as educational institutions.

Interestingly, the Museli Effect occurs when you shake a box vertically. However, if you rock it side-to-side, then you reverse the effect and larger and heavier pieces of chaff fall to the bottom letting the precious kernels rise to the top.

This is similar to organizations, where if you focus on working horizontally across your organization and marketplace–on who you serve, your partners, suppliers, investors, and customers in terms of breaking down barriers, building bridges, and solving customer problems–then the real gems of leadership have the opportunity to shine and rise.

In the age of social networking, information sharing, collaboration, and transparency, the reverse Muesli Effect can help organizations succeed. It is time to stop promoting those leaders who build empires by shaking the organization up and down in silos that are self-serving, and instead move to rewarding those that break down stovepipes to solve problems and add real value.

(Source Photo: here)

Misappropriating Twitter

By now we are all familiar with the news story regarding a prominent lawmaker, recently married, who admitted to a longstanding pattern of inappropriate sexual exploits via Twitter.

 

As The Wall Street Journal (9 June 2011) notes, the individual got caught when he “mistakenly sent the photo to tens of thousands of Twitter followers,” rather than as a private message.

 

As a public servant who is a proponent of social media technology used appropriately, I was very concerned when I saw this in the news (note: all opinions my own).

 

The government needs social media tools like Twitter. It is an important tool for sharing information and alerts. It is obviously not for “sexting” your followers, especially with a Twitter handle that is apparently coming from someone in the government.

 

Twitter is an important means of engaging the public in important ways, moving this great country forward on policy issues and a vision that is noble, righteous, and for the betterment of our world. What a shame when these tools are misappropriated!

 

So while I cannot say “with certitude” what exactly this person was thinking, I am certain that we need social media in government and that there are numerous positive ways for it to be applied.  With the caveat that the basis for social media by anyone in government has to be truth, transparency and genuine outreach on issues of importance to the people.

 

A lot of government people and agencies are doing a good job with Twitter and other social media tools. Let’s go back to focusing on the positive work that we can do with them, even as we note with caution how badly they can be misused.