Erik on Software

Digitally Distinct

According to the algorithm(s) in use by the "Online ID Calculator", my online brand is "digitally distinct" rather than digitally dissed, digitally dabbling, or digitally disastrous:

This is the nirvana of online identity. A search of your name yields lots of results about you, and most, if not all, reinforce your unique personal brand. Keep up the good work, and remember that your Google results can change as fast as the weather in New England. So, regularly monitor your online identity. That way, if something negative, such as an anonymous ad hominem attack on your character on a blog, crops up, you can address it quickly, before it gets out of hand.

My surname, while it might be "verbally dissed", is apparently helpful in the online world. The dimensions of input originally entered to compute my online brand resulted in the following graph:

According to the creators of the "Online ID Calculator", this tool is "the first and leading tool" of this type, and that "until now, there has been no way of evaluating the strength of online personal brand".

Results are based on seven dimensions:

• total number of Google responses for provided name
• total number of Google responses on the first page of results
• total number of Google responses not about provided name (i.e. they are about someone else with provided name) in first three pages of results
• relevance of Google results on first three pages of results in regard to personal brand relevance
• aspirational career level
• whether personal web site or blog appears on first page of Google results
• whether any negative or unflattering Google results appear on first page of Google results

It is quite apparent that the "Online ID Calculator" is not only Google-centric, but uses two rather subjective dimensions in its calculations, both of which are associated with personal opinion on brand relevance.

Substituting "Manager with 5-10 years' experience, Director, Consultant or Small Business Owner" with "VP, Highly-regarded Consultant or Acknowledged Thought Leader", for example (there are only five closed-ended choices provided), results in the following:

Still "digitally distinct" according to the algorithm(s), but a bit closer to "digitally dabbling".

Other than the dimension for the total number of Google responses for provided name, which affects the Y axis, however, the permutations of possible entries for the various dimensions covered by the algorithm(s) that affect the X axis are rather limited.

In addition, of course, reside the presumed interpretations of the following:

• reputation of the Google search engine
• volume range of search results for the upper two quartiles and lower two quartiles
• volume range of search results within each aspirational career level
• definitions of aspirational career levels, especially in light of a broad spectrum of careers
• other definitions, such as "negative" and "unflattering"

It is possible that some of these interpretations are relative, based on the growing pool of respondents, in which case calculation results might prove interesting, but in the absence of such statistical relativity, results provided by the "Online ID Calculator" essentially boil down to one of four quartiles that can be easily visualized by stepping through some simple reasoning.

Past Book Review (December 6, 2008): "Iconoclast"

Past Amazon Vine book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, by Gregory Berns, Harvard Business School Press, 2008, reposted here:

After describing the iconoclast, Berns provides numerous examples of who he considers to meet this description, and along the way provides a high-level look into how he thinks the human brain enables this trait. It is important for the reader to note that the subtitle is a bit of a misnomer in the sense that the content of the book does not really describe how to be an iconoclast. A large portion of what Berns discusses is interesting material for readers who are new to this subject matter, although sometimes the material gets a bit off course. The author explains that an iconoclast is simply "a person who does something that others say can't be done". The aspect of this book which brings some substance to the content is the fact that the author is a neuroscientist, enabling Berns to add to this simple definition by writing that "the iconoclast's brain is different...iconoclasts perceive things differently than other people", and he elaborates by noting that "the difference in perception plays out in the initial stages of an idea...it plays out in how they manage their fears, and it manifests in how they pitch their ideas to the masses of noniconoclasts...it is an exceedingly rare individual who possesses all three of these traits".

There exist three functions of the iconoclast brain that are different than others, each of which are associated with different circuits in the brain: perception, fear response, and social intelligence. The author provides a well-written defense of this stance, and along the way explains that "although the key process for iconoclasm is perception, this is only the beginning...perception is not something that is immutably hardwired into the brain...it is a process that is learned through experience, which is both a curse and an opportunity for change".Berns explains that the reason he wrote this book is because the iconoclast is "the type of person who creates new opportunities in every area from artistic expression to technology to business...the iconoclast embodies traits of creativity and innovation that are not easily accomplished by committee...he eschews authority and convention...he thumbs his nose at rules...but given the proper environment, the iconoclast can be a major asset to any organization."

The author's segment on the iconoclast who discovered MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), Paul Lauterbur, provides one of the best quotes by an iconoclat in the book: "Many said it couldn't be done, even when I was doing it!" And shortly after this quote, Berns provides one of the most insightful paragraphs in the entire book: "At every step in the process of visual perception, the brain throws out pieces of information and assimilates the remaining ones into increasingly abstract components. Experience plays a major role in this process. The human brain sees things in ways that are most familiar to it. But epiphanies rarely occur in familiar surroundings. The key to seeing like an iconoclast is to look at things that you have never seen before. It seems almost obvious that breakthroughs in perception do not come from simply staring at an object and thinking harder about it. Breakthroughs come from a perceptual system that is confronted with something that it doesn't know how to interpret. Unfamiliarity forces the brain to discard its usual categories of perception and create new ones."

And later, the author explains that "visual creativity - imagination - utilizes the same systems in the brain as vision itself. Imagination comes from the visual system. Iconoclasm goes hand in hand with imagination. Before one can muster the strength to tear down conventional thinking, one must first imagine the possibility that conventional thinking is wrong. But even this is not enough. The iconoclast goes further and imagines alternative possibilities." Throughout the remainder of the book, the author discusses how the brain learns to see, how visual imagery leads to imagination, novelty as a trigger for running the perceptual system in reverse, fear and stress, reappraisal and extinction, risk, social intelligence, the icon, innovation diffusion, early adopters, the pharmacopoeia of the iconoclast, and dozens of other topics. Throughout these segments, the author shares interesting case studies on a host of individuals such as Nolan Bushnell (creator of the original 'Pong' arcade game), Walt Disney, Florence Nightingale, Branch Rickey (who hired Jackie Robinson), and Ray Kroc (McDonald's), as well as groups of iconoclasts who worked together. And examples of the antithesis to the iconoclast are also shared, such as Charles Wang and Sanjay Kumar of Computer Associates.

The CEO of Rite-Solutions, a software company based in Rhode Island, is quoted as saying: "Most companies have this funnel. Give me all of your ideas and we'll choke them down to two ideas. In my old company, if you had a great idea, we would tell you, 'Okay, we'll make an appointment for you to address the murder board,' because the murder board's job was to make sure the company took no risk. Their job was to shoot down ideas." And the president further explains that "some technical guy comes in with a good idea. Of course questions are asked of that person that they don't know. Like 'How big's the market? What's your marketing approach? What's your business plan for this? What's the product going to cost?' It's embarrassing. Most people can't answer those kinds of questions. The people who made it through these boards were not the people with the best ideas. They were the best presenters." The CEO then confesses that "If you know the game, you can get through the funnel. You make up stuff. I made it to executive VP not by being bright, but by being theatrical. By being passionate. You can fake passion. And the better ideas are being shot down because the other guy didn't do theater as well." The discussion that the author shares about their "idea market", the Rite-Solutions approach to coaxing innovation by avoiding the problem of social fear and how this fear stifles innovation, is excellent. Although this book frequently follows a number of tangents, this reviewer recommends this book to readers interested in the study of ideas and how biology plays an important role in this space. Some readers might be interested in knowing that the notes section in the back of the book is better than average.

New Book Review: "Strategy Safari"

Recently posted book review for Strategy Safari: A Guided Tour through the Wilds of Strategic Management, by Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel, Free Press, 1998, reposted here:

Authors Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel provide the oft-cited "The Blind Men and the Elephant" by John Godfrey Saxe as a backdrop to their discussion on the ten schools of management (Design, Planning, Positioning, Entrepreneurial, Cognitive, Learning, Power, Cultural, Environmental, and Configuration), because while at the outset they indicate that "we are the blind people and strategy formation is our elephant", since "everyone has grabbed hold of some part or other and 'railed on in utter ignorance' about the rest" because "no one has had the vision to see the entire beast", the authors end their discourse by showing that there is not necessarily one safari beast with which to contend, but multiple, although "we shall never find [the whole beast of strategy formation], never really see it all". Corresponding to each of these ten schools is a different view of the strategy process - strategy formation as a process of conception, strategy formation as a formal process, strategy formation as an analytical process, strategy formation as a visionary process, strategy formation as a mental process, strategy formation as an emergent process, strategy formation as a process of negotiation, strategy formation as a collective process, strategy formation as a reactive process, and strategy formation as a process of transformation.

The chapter introductions to each of the schools provide superb historical information, and the last chapter discusses the evolution of the the ten schools and provides an excellent bulleted summary table that whimsically assigns different beasts to each school as well as easy-to-remember homilies such as "take us to your leader" for The Entrepreneurial School, "I'll see it when I believe it" for The Cognitive School, and "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" for The Learning School. In the opinion of this reviewer, the chapters on these three schools are also the best, even though the authors indicate that The Cognitive School is "characterized more by its potential than by its contribution. The central idea is valid - that the strategy-formation process is also fundamentally one of cognition, particularly in the attainment of strategies as concepts. But strategic management, in practice if not in theory, has yet to gain sufficiently from cognitive psychology. Or perhaps more accurately, cognitive psychology has yet to address adequately the questions of prime interest to strategic management, especially how concepts form in the mind of a strategist".

The authors draw from many research sources (some readers may be interested in knowing that the bibliography is 18 pages long), including some of their past works, most notably Mintzberg, and their liberal use of well-placed sidebars and diagrams in the material is extremely effective in bringing these together. Their use of humor is also well received by this reviewer, especially when placed in the midst of some of the rather lengthy discussions that some readers new to his subject matter might otherwise receive as dry. For example, the chapter on The Design School starts with a quote by an anonymous manager about a Harvard MBA: "The damn guy just sits there waiting for a case study." This reviewer completely agrees that, in the words of the authors, this book makes sense of a field that often seems to make no sense. Well recommended to anyone in business, especially those struggling through the vast, sometimes confusing terrain of strategic management.

Personal Reading List: 1Q2010

My personal reading list for January, February, and March 2010.

Color Key: Special Notes, Currently Queued,  Completed Reading .

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 Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, by Ross Dawson, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005.

Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, by Thomas H. Davenport, Harvard Business School Press, 2010.

Coders at Work, by Peter Seibel, Apress, 2009.

Don't Just Roll the Dice: A Usefully Short Guide to Software Pricing, by Neil Davidson, Red Gate Books, 2009. 

Five Germanys I Have Known, by Fritz Stern, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006.

Java Transaction Processing: Design and Implementation, by Mark Little, Jon Maron, and Greg Pavlik, Prentice Hall PTR, 2004.

Life Balance: How to Convert Professional Success into Personal Happiness - Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner (The Ultimate Consultant Series), by Alan Weiss, Jossey-Bass / Pfeiffer - A Wiley Imprint, 2003.

Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects (Pragmatic Programmers), by Johanna Rothman, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2009.

Million Dollar Consulting, by Alan Weiss, McGraw-Hill, 2009.

Open Source SOA, by Jeff Davis, Manning Publications, 2009.

Pragmatic Thinking & Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, by Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2008.

Under Control: Governance Across the Enterprise (CA Press), by Jacob Lamm, Sumner Blount, Steve Boston, Marc Camm, Robert Cirabisi, Nancy E. Cooper, Galina Datskovsky, Christopher Fox, Kenneth V. Handal, William E. McCracken, John Meyer, Helge Scheil, Alan Srulowitz, and Robert Zanella, Apress, 2010. By invitation from Joan Levy at Blanc & Otus, Inc for CA, Inc (formerly Computer Associates, Inc).

New Book Review: "The Integration Imperative"

Recently posted book review for The Integration Imperative: Erasing Marketing and Business Development Silos - Once and for All - in Professional Service Firms, by Suzanne C. Lowe, Professional Services Books, 2009, reposted here:

Author Suzanne C. Lowe writes that many professional service firms exist in a state of confusion due to a less than optimal structure for deploying marketing and business development. "Business development (selling) is a one-to-one activity. Practitioners' brains (well, their brain power) are the 'products' clients are considering for eventual engagement. But marketing is a one-to-many activity, and is best deployed from a firm-wide, centralized purview." And "without an optimal structure for marketing and business development, the potential for confusion creeps in when one-to-one fee-earning practitioners want to get involved in the one-to-many aspects of marketing". She continues to write that "any misunderstanding of the optimal scope of the marketing and business development function causes 'disconnectivity' and waste". After a discussion of the structural and cultural challenges to marketing and business development integration, Lowe discusses how individual "doing things differently" efforts within a professional service firm can impede effectiveness if such initiatives do not have integration as a springboard.

Lowe's Integration Imperative concept, which consists of the Process Imperative, the Skills Imperative, and the Support Imperative, three interdependent structural frameworks, embeds marketing and business development into the function of every individual within a professional service firm. Through these three frameworks, respectively, the author suggests that professional service firms "broaden the scope of their marketing and business development functions, better balance them strategically, make them more discernible to everyone in the firm, and make them more obviously iterative", "reframe their advancement pathways - for practitioners and nonrevenue-generating staff - to more clearly outline the steps every professional can take toward competency growth in marketing and business development", and "create more formal avenues for function-to-function collaboration, shared accountability, and co-leadership for marketing and business development".

The third part of this book presents 11 case studies (from Korn/Ferry International, Holland & Hart, Perkins+Will, Moss Adams, IBM Global Technology Services, Haley & Aldrich, Baker Donelson, Ross & Baruzzini, Jones Lang LaSalle, R.W. Beck, and Randstad) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Integration Imperative when applied to professional service firms, and the frank business leader quotes liberally provided throughout are one of the best features of this book. A quote by Scott Jensen, the first Moss Adams director of sales, illustrates the practicality of these case studies: "I knew our people got the message that there is a difference and dependence between marketing and selling. They understood that we cannot effectively sell unless we market, and that we cannot market unless we sell, and finally that without superior service, both are wasted. Marketing is too expensive without selling. Selling is too hard without marketing...When we market effectively and sell correctly, we establish the basis for serving passionately." Similarly, a quote by Ranstad's chief marketing officer Frans Cornelius: "The key lesson is that it is all a matter of organizing and communicating internally. To win outside, one must start on the inside. One would think that the marketers would be excellent communicators, but sadly this is not a skill that is learned a lot in marketing education. Typically, marketers tend to communicate within their own circles - with agencies, other marketers, seminar participants and the like. Yet marketers must become expert at communicating to general managers and CFOs!"

This reviewer also appreciates diagrams such as Figure 9.1 which shows the connection between passive and active aspects of marketing, sales and service along the path from messaging to revenues. The appendixes are also well done, especially the second that includes several templates, including the Skills Imperative template which outlines how associates, consultants, and senior consultants can be involved along with principals/senior managers and owners/management executives in the Integration Imperative. Regardless of whether you read this work in an as-needed "à la carte" fashion like Lowe suggests, or start-to-finish, as a consultant this reviewer expects that all individuals working in professional service and business to business firms stand to benefit. Well recommended.

Past Book Review (July 13, 2008): "The Opposable Mind"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, by Roger L. Martin, Harvard Business School Press, 2007, reposted here:

Great topic. Essentially, Martin argues that leaders need to integrate ideas in order to succeed. Although the author might have conducted considerable research to reach this conclusion, in my opinion much of what is offered in this text really is not ground-breaking material. While Martin does bring some structure to his research by offering numerous examples to support his views along with accompanying models that he has developed, there is not a lot of substance here. It might make sense for the reader to review one of the briefs written up about this book rather than taking the time to digest all of the material, although it is a quick read.

The author defines integrative thinking as "the ability to face constructively the tension of opposing ideas, and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to each". Quite frankly, one would think that such an approach is already a common route to take.

Procter & Gamble chairman and CEO, A. G. Lafley, is quoted by the author at the start of chapter two as saying that "everybody can do 'or'...you are not going to win if you are in a trade-off game", but regardless of what decision is made, is not one still making an 'or' decision? Of course. The old adage that indicates that one is still making a choice regardless of whether it is a conscious one still applies. It is possible that much of what is being discussed here is the difference of thinking between right-brained thinkers, left-brained thinkers, and what Marti Olsen Laney refers to as "bilateral dominance" in "The Introvert Advantage" (see my review). Is it true that heavily left-brained thinkers are still dominant in business leadership? It would be interesting to hear what Martin has to say on this topic.

Unlike other reviewers, I give credit to Martin for giving some thought to his graphical depiction of the thinking process model that progresses through stages of salience, causality, architecture, and resolution, although the names of the stages might be a bit too abstract for some readers. In my opinion, the author's discussion of "reality" is probably one of the best aspects of this book. Martin states that "models are our customized understanding of reality", and he does a good job at introducing examples into the discussion that explain his point that "we filter the data that besieges us in part to protect our brains". Again, the material presented really is not new, but the explanation is well-crafted. The second half of the book concentrates on mapping a personal knowledge system model for the reader, and is a bit more interesting.

The philosophy of Bob Young, co-founder and former CEO of Red Hat, is shared through several quotes in chapter five. "There is always more than one way to succeed in any given situation...whatever we adopt as our first answer is bound to be wrong." In addition, "customers are not always right...customers lie or they are wrong". After a brief discussion of the contrasts between engineers and salespeople during the early days of the Internet, Young contributes some of the best content to the book. "Don't think you're any good...and don't get defensive about it. It's not something to be embarrassed by, because the odds are no one else is any good either. That's the big secret. That's what's behind the curtain - no one else is any good." Young goes on to say that getting "a little bit better tomorrow" is how to slowly progress from good to excellent. "That's all it takes, is just this commitment not to be defensive. Don't worry about criticism, because you're not any good, so criticism is always valid".

Martin then offers a discussion of sensitivities and skills, which leads up to a graphical depiction of "your personal knowledge system" that shows the flow between stance, tools, and experiences. Stances of the integrative thinker share six key attributes, the first of which is their belief that "whatever models exist at the present moment do not represent reality; they are simply the best or only constructions yet made". Reaching the stance about oneself that one is "capable of finding a better model" is also important. Three tools to create a new model, generative reasoning, causal modeling, and assertive inquiry are then discussed.

The last chapter of the book discusses how humans have an inclination to accumulate experiences that reinforce the stance and tools with which they start. However, experiences also in turn influence stance and tools, and can deepen mastery, although "experiences do not necessarily deepen mastery". It would seem that Martin would agree with Gerald M. Weinberg's statement in "More Secrets of Consulting: The Consultant's Tool Kit" (see my review) that "experience is not just the best teacher, it's the only teacher. Experience may be the only teacher, but it doesn't necessarily teach anything". If you don't have time to read the entire book, chapter eight on experience is well recommended.

Past Book Review (May 22, 2005): "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About"

Past book review (i.e. posted prior to starting this blog) for Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, by Donald E. Knuth, Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes, 2003, reposted here:

In modern, Western, pluralistic, secular culture, it is currently still difficult for many to understand the interconnectedness of "science" and what is often called "religion", and to discuss many of the topics included in the text of this Knuth work. However, while this book could have been titled "Things that Society Rarely Talks About", the text specifically centers around the computer scientist and the software engineer. While the majority of "Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About" is in essence a transcript of Knuth's lectures at MIT, a transcript of a panel discussion also included in the concluding pages of the book, as well as the Q & A sessions following each of the 6 lectures, provide societal context in that the thoughts of other thinkers in this field are given argueably equal treatment alongside that of Knuth.

I would argue that the content of the fourth lecture is a bit too much centered around the author's work on "3:16", but I found this material fascinating, especially in light of Knuth's third lecture on the difficulties of natural language translation and how this difficulty is not as prominent in computer science. As a software engineer, I consider this book to be an extensive (although sometimes incoherent) expansion to the occasional spiritual comments made by Frederick Brooks in his classic software engineering work, "The Mythical Man Month" - more specifially, the pages Brooks wrote on the "joy of the craft" in which he compares the joy of the software development process to "God's delight in making things", and his comments on "the delight of working in such a tractable medium" where one is "only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff".

Guy Steele, of Sun Microsystems, notes in the panel discussion that "...the study of computer science, as we know it, is a human activity, so far; human activity is spiritual, at least in part; and therefore the study of computer science is spiritual, at least in part. This may seem to beg the question. My point is that by human activity I mean to imply activity with purpose. I want to talk here about purpose. Why do computer science? Because it's fun? Because it is beautiful? To earn enough money to buy mango ice cream at Toscanini's [an ice cream parlor near MIT]? To improve the lot of humankind? To serve God? For me, it is ALL of the above."

Knuth's lectures, the Q & A, and the panel discussion are all presented in what appears to be a sincere discussion of related topics that many would rather not discuss. Both Knuth and the members of the panel admit that they do not have all the answers, and that there is some confusion. For example, a self-proclaimed "devout agnostic", Mitch Kapor, who designed Lotus 1-2-3, here discusses that during the 1970s he became a teacher of transcendental meditation - of which he describes it as a "...very interesting experience. I can tell you that people really don't levitate. In fact, it is a cult, at least if you get highly involved with it. I have a lot of bruises acquired along the way from some of my involvement. I am kind of a Buddhist fellow traveler, in the sense that I have a lot of affinity for a Buddhist's way of thinking; but I just can't seem to make it in any organized religion, including Buddhism". So while Knuth is grounded in the Christian worldview, and is not a relativist, he as well as everyone else participating in this discussion has questions that have no certain answers - this fact must of course be one of the underlying premises of this book.

Helpful Votes: Part 2

As of today, 500 helpful votes have been received on Amazon for the various reviews I have written.

Google Analytics: 1 Week

Just this past week, I set up Google Analytics for this blog, and I plan to post periodic updates in the future to share traffic information.

The following diagram is a map overlay for the number of visits this past week:

And the following diagram is a map overlay for the number of pages per visit this past week: