I always find it fun when you bump into a modern corporate action that matches perfectly a mediaeval, or even older behaviour, and is just merely a rebranded version.
This weeks one is “Coin Hordes”, which were the conscious hiding of deposits of money (often in pots).
It was most frequently connected with the state of the monetary economy at a given time and was often done “In uncertain times of war, when plundering expeditions threatened”
Now, you often find the corporate version of this, which is assigning budget into different areas that are not normally visible, i.e. moving support money into project, project money into capital expenditure etc etc. Its done for exactly the same reasons.
I have yet in my career seen this done for a dishonest reason, and only seen it triggered by senior managers, who due to poor communication at upper levels, have made their own managers respond with “I do not know what the powerful people are doing, but I know I still have basic deliverables to meet, so will do what I can to defend myself and those I have a responsibility for”.
If you’re a very senior manager and you are seeing this in your teams, it’s because your managerial style is such that you trigger a response of uncertainty such as war or plundering. perhaps improve communication so that people have faith in your goals.
An issue that shows the difference in how people view things and is very, very common, particularly when you merge financial industries is how people view dirty data.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here. Dirty data is not the same as Human centric data. Human centric data is when you have something that is meant to works with people and you try and force it into situations where people Only look at data in the way it works with systems.
The best contrast is when you compare banking transactions and insurance transactions. Yes, yes, I know. It’s very boring.., BUT banking transactions are very, very pure. They’re very strict money orientated things that are run by accountants and can be nailed hard to the wall. Such data structures are very precise and clean. So when there’s bits missing, they are provably dirty.
But if you take someone from a strictly banking financial place and put them in insurance, they often think insurance data is hideously dirty. It isn’t. It’s human data. Think of this scenario:
You have someone who is working out an imprecise insurance policy. How do you get imprecise insurance you ask? because it’s rooted in fear. Insurance is how when frightened of something that you need protection from, you talk with a human on how to protect yourself from said fear. Obviously with common fears like a car theft we have an automated way of dealing with it. But in a lot of cases, it is a discussion and negotiation over things that people value, and for that, you tend to involve a human, hence why you still have a lot of human brokers. Such negotiations are often done away from computers, away from the little screens. And when they are done, someone signs a bit of paper, the broker who has worked out the price, then takes everything back and only then tries to work out how he’s going to get everything that he agreed and signed up for into the computer. Now the computer has very definite things in a financial transaction that it REALLY wants, Many of them multiple thought sets away from a negotiation (Audit and regulation stuff for example). So the broker or whoever is doing the data input tries to work out the best way of getting the data in. Often in retrospect, they’ve missed getting stuff, but they’ve already agreed, got the signature and taken the money, they’re not going to be able to go back (not without loosing face). They do their best, they fill enter the data, but very often to them its merely the paperwork, the real work has been done, this is just naff stuff.
Unfortunately when this is then taken further up the line, analytics are done and there’s fields that don’t make a lot of sense because they’re out of context. And that data is classed as dirty. In this situation, it’s not from the original context, it’s human data that is too broad and too changeable to fit in the neat boxes.
So before you actually take data and say this is rubbish and just shout that people should take more care, try and think of the context in which the data is being provided. Because ultimately, to try and make data ‘non dirty’. You’re gonna have to go back to how the data was put in and change those methods, if you don’t it will result in never ending data clean-ups 1, you’re not going to get buy in from the people that do it. You’re not going to make people happy. And ultimately they will just complain and as soon as you’re gone they’ll go back to their old ways because you’re not taken consideration of what they do and how they do it.
So not all dirty data is dirty. Some of it just involves humans.
or in the worse cases, data lakes that try and fix it in an automated way going forward[↩]
Normally just shortened to “Flower Sink” this is something that sounds like it should be easy but in reality its something that causes utter hell to implement, sometimes used in a slightly derogatory way if you call a stakeholder (any gender) “Mrs Blanding” to mean someone who does not understand the consequences of their actions or demands.
Explanation:
This is best explained by merely watching the YouTube video attached. But I’ll paraphrase it here. Basically, an old black and white movie from 1950 called “Mr. Blanding’s builds his dream house” has this one scene where there’s this huge bill that’s just come in, and they try and track down where its come from for this custom house. It turns out that it’s from a tiny and seemingly innocuous request made by Mrs. Blanding, the architect explains the whole detail of why it’s caused such an expense and the background for such a huge knock on effect from a really simple and what should have been an easy request. It is the best and original example of when someone comes up to you and asks for something that “will just take a minute” and then they do not accept that to just make their little request will cause lots of things to need to be done and have huge knock on effects. It is also one of the few examples where you can take someone who is simply not getting that such things have a huge impact and showing them the video, because it’s so old and so venerable it rarely causes offence, so it’s more useful than just about any of these corporate terms that you’ll read here.
Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.
I am not a light traveller in general, I tend to carry a lot to cater for all situations and this is particularly true with my work bag, as a long time contractor I always find it best to not rely on anything being present at a clients site and always carry everything you need for a full days work.
Lets start with the basics, After trying lots of rucksacks over the years LowePro has proved to be the most consistent and best padded (they are designed to keep camera lens’s safe which cost more than laptops), their only downside is the constant model change, so when ever your current bag wears out, you have to work out the current equivalent model. Looking at their site just now, if I was buying a new one it would be the Flipside 500 AW II, which is fractionally larger than the one I currently use but still good, in addition to the excellent padding they are very water resistant and stuffed with good pockets and can take a hell of a lot of weight 1, also in the picture is a Totes Eco x-tra strong which is a good work horse umbrella.
Next comes the Laptop(s), when I’m using my own laptop I favour the highest power 15inch ThinkPad that can be charged off USB-C that I can get (which seems to change from generation to generation), but currently I’m mainly using the clients laptop, and for my own work I’m finding a good android tablet + keyboard and mouse is doing just fine, for this you currently can’t beat Samsung, though their keyboards are heart attack expensive (so much so that I would move to an external keyboard and a solid case for the tablet next time)
For years I have proudly been a single monitor person (as a contractor on a laptop it made sense) but working remotely plus having to now manage a calendar from hell, made me move to multiple monitors, now we are back to a lot of office work I’m finding that I miss it, there are a lot of posh recommendations for USB monitors with fancy features but I just want a second monitor that looks the same and is at the same angle as my laptop, after trying a bunch of them I settled on the ThinkVision M14d 14inch, it is like the classic Thinkpad range, solid, well behaved and just does the job (in addition it comes with an excellent case and is light as a feather), So now when I have space I pack this as well (I would have killed for it back in the training and Salesforce days)
Now on to the tech accessories:
For a Power Brick – Omni Mobile 25600 seems to handle all the needs I have, and is about as big as you can easily take on a plane, I also have the Omni 20+ 220v, but found it a bit of an overkill.
Powercube Rewireable – One of the most useful bits of tech ever, a power block that means you don’t need to bring multiple travel adaptors with you and is useable for everyday work, I bring mine everywhere, and the fact that it uses a standard C14 socket 2, means that you can get a wide variety of cables and splitters for it.
Odd Power Cables – As mentioned above, using the standard C14 connector means you can get adaptors and splitters, the one you can see in the picture is a C14 to C5 3
Tech Pouch – Rather than a formal Tech bag I found a wash bag from Eagle creak as done me proud for years now.
Decent USB Charger – So many of the apparently “amazing” usb chargers you see advertised on the Internet turn out to be rubbish, they share their full load poorly when multiple devices are plugged in or often even wont fast charge something on their own, the most consistent I have found is the Anker 543 Charger, which in addition is not built into a UK plug which gives me more flexibility.
Compact UK power lead – Used mainly for the USB charger this is a nice compact foldable UK plug cable (they don’t seem to make the UK version any more)
Headset – For my work headset I use a Plantronics voyager 5200, its solid and dependable, easy to get replacement ear tips for and to keep charged when you have 10 hours of meetings in a day, only unusual bit is that you don’t use the built in USB Dongle anymore as Bluetooth as improved to such an extent that it has surpassed Plantronics own standard.
Power supply – huge power supply brick for clients laptop, boooo!
A ton of different cables and misc. adaptors, considering we are all using USB there still seems to be a lot of different sodding cables to carry. I’m not going to recommend brands and such but a few tips have stood me in good stead.
Carry duplicates of the common ones
If you are an Android person also carry a lightning cable and vs. versa, nothing makes friends faster than a charging cable in need.
For USB-C cables the only ones you can REALLY trust for USB-C to USB-C activity are the thick ones with a 4K video rating, all others will have at least one failing (wont carry 100 watts, wont be recognised, can’t be used for external monitors etc etc), remember USB-C is just a connector format.
I favour trackballs over mice, both for shoulder health and for working on the move, so have used the Logitech trackball for the last 25 years, the current version of the ERGO M575 is the best yet and a good external case keeps it protected.
I always work with a physical notepad. It used to be a moleskin hard shell reporter notepad, but they stopped making that style and it turned out that I could actually get 100 custom made at a fraction of the cost that moleskin used to charge. So that’s what I did. I also use the Analog cards by Ugmonk for day to day task identification. Pen wise I always use a Paper Mate flex grip as its a solid workhorse of a pen.
Here’s where it gets a bit weird. I carry a desktop fan as I overheat in the normal 23 degrees of a standard office, for this I use an old server fan modified to run off USB, because they are far quieter and have far less vibrations than normal fans. You may overheat a lot in the office, but if you bring a fan that makes a hell of a noise, vibrates and annoys your clients and people around you, you are not making any friends.
External Keyboard wise, at home I use a full size Logitech MX keyboard, so it makes sense to keep with the same key feel, so I use the shorter MX Keys Mini, with a third party hard case, given the prices Samsung charge for their tablet keyboards and given the option to purchase again, I would purchase this to control the tablet as well, with the easy swap buttons for controlling multiple machines, it means I can use this with machines both at home and on the move.
Corporate Bits
For some reason no matter how posh and well setup the company is, they never have good conference facilities setup when it actually comes time to do a call or brain storm, so I bring a little kit in a bag with the following in it:
PowerConf S3 Speakerphone – A good general purpose speaker and mic. set that can run either via bluetooth or USB off your phone or laptop.
Pen set – A good pack of whiteboard pens, but given the nature of a lot of modern whiteboards, remember to swap at least one of them out for a white chalk pen.
Wipe set – Often overlooked by facilities and always by people, you need something to clear off your work after the meeting, so a small whiteboard wiper, a cloth and most important a cleaning spray, I have never found a travel set for this but Whoosh do a 8ml screen cleaner refillable spray bottle that you can fill with white board cleaner, and its about the size of a pen so can go in the existing pen Pack.
In conclusion: as you can see, I pack for every eventuality, I have found that the slight ribbing you get where it looks as if you’re packing for the world’s end in an office is far outweighed by the satisfaction that clients get when you simply can cope with everything. Nothing makes you stop work. You just shrug and keep going, as well as carrying enough to help other people and keep the team going at a pinch.
the only one I have ever “successfully” damaged was one I was using to carry a 32kg kettle bell, back and forth to a gym[↩]
This is a report presented to directors. But when they ask for justification and the person that generated the source data is dragged in, that person has no idea how the report has produced the numbers the directors are asking about.
Explanation:
These are the inevitable changes when a detailed report designed to be transparent and viewed by subject matter experts gets summarised multiple times by subsequent levels of management on the way up to the top. However these summaries tend to be made by managers wanting to make their report look better rather than accurate, often using a slight more ‘seemly’ term rather than a technical one. This means that over iterations the fundamental meaning of numbers will be changed rendering the report meaningless from its original intention.
Disclaimer: As always these posts are not aimed at anyone client or employer and are just my personal observations over a lifetime of dealing with both management and frontline associates.
