Other People Don't Work as Hard as Me or Contribute as much!

If you work with someone whom you think is lazy and not doing enough of their share of the work, you will be critical and resentful of it.

They don’t carry their load. They waste time socialising and miss important deadlines. They spend all their time at the coffee machine chatting to everybody, instead of getting their head down.

Hmm! Is this really true, or is it simply your perception that's misaligned? As with car tyres and the human eyes, check your alignment regularly.

When we compare our own work with others, we can easily overvalue ourselves and undervalue them. That’s partly because we know much more about our own work, and partly because most people have a self-serving bias. That is, they believe they have made greater contributions than they have or that others have difficulty in recognising their real value.

Your perception of how much time someone spends working, is not necessarily a valid reflection of the real effort they are expending or of the beneficial results they are achieving. They may have terrific time-management skills, stay late or work weekends and have an extensive social network that compliments and influences the work they do.

They may other circumstances that effect their behaviour or have legitimate personal reasons for what they do and how they do it. The stress of dealing with a sick partner or close relative, problems with a spouse or increasing debt that may lead to the foreclosure of the family home, are all extreme examples of external circumstances that will definitely affect how people behave.

To avoid overreacting, ask yourself why you are so disgruntled or angry. Did you miss a deadline because of this person? Did you have to stay late because they left early? Your goal is to establish their impact on your performance and to be more open and realistic about the cause and effect of your colleague's behaviour.

In these tough economic times, why would anyone put his or her job at risk by slacking off? It just doesn't make sense or stand up on its own merits. There have to be other reasons affecting their behaviour.

Although, it makes perfectly logical sense to see people make more effort and to work harder now, in a recession but this is not the case. We’re actually seeing peoples' performances dip.

Staff and managers alike, are feeling uncertain and insecure, so they spend more time dwelling on the negative aspects of their work environment i.e. talking more about the problems they are facing, rather than getting the work done. They may also want to talk about subjects that having nothing at all to do with work, as a way of taking their mind off of their job-related insecurities.

You have to consider that they may be unconsciously invoking a protective displacement behaviour, which appears frivolous and superficial to others, but is in fact a security blanket thrown over the psychologically traumatised mind, to soothe it and stop it overloading.

Some people just have different characters and simply aren’t aware of what you see as 'time-wasting tendencies'. They see themselves as friendly, sociable and outgoing, until they are confronted about it and made to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed by it. People will only change their behaviour when it is pointed out that the behaviour they repeated show, is both inappropriate and could have painful repercussions on them, career-wise.

The real, bottom line question to ask yourself is this; Is this person’s failure to get the job done affecting your productivity, and if it is, what can you do about it?

First, try dealing with it directly and approach them yourself. For the person who continually comes into your office to chat and distract you, make it clear that have to get on with your work, but offer to talk more at the coffee break or have lunch together later.

Your intruding visitor is probably in your office just to fill in their time, not to have a serious heart-to-heart conversation, but if they do need to talk seriously then the office is never the best place. Be sure to establish that boundary without being confrontational. You are not rejecting, you are simply re-scheduling.

Focusing on the need to get your work done will make it hard for your co-worker to feel personally insulted or slighted. You are staying focused on the client, the customer and the business.Who could argue with that?

Don’t stew over the problem and vent your troubles to others. You will end up spending a lot of time dwelling on the negative performance of another person. It saps your own energy and can make you appear more negative than you really are.

The best way to handle a direct discussion with your co-worker, so they don’t become defensive, is to keep it on a professional level. Your entire discussion should be a professional presentation of the facts, cause and effect. Don’t be personal, judgmental or accusing.

Look at it as an opportunity to exercise your leadership skills. It is good practice for you, because you will have to deal with people like this throughout your career, but be careful it is not your perception. Always check for misalignment first!

If all your efforts fail to deal with your co-worker and have yielded no change, you can always escalate the problem and go to your boss, but remember, this is always as your last resort because it can reflect badly on you.

The worst case is when it is your boss that is wasting your time. Then you do need to be very diplomatic. If your boss likes to talk and socialise, you will have to try and steer the conversation back to work, without offending them.

Zombies Ahead! Spooks in the machines!

An electronic road sign was hacked and changed, to alert drivers to the potential hazard of 'hoards of the undead' jaywalking. This provides a nice example of why the status of the security on the US Grid and associated infrastructure is such a “big deal”.

The hack itself is trivial: an intrepid individual discovered that electronic road signs shared a common default password. The good news is; that the default password would have been discovered and publicized years ago if the systems were connected to the internet. They were only left alone or overlooked, for years because very few people had the initiative or twisted interest, to walk up to one of the signs and attempt what is essentially a simple dictionary attack against the authentication mechanism.

Without the motivation and justification of protecting installations from sustained and multiple attack, engineers saw no reason to improve the security of their systems. Following the threat response reasoning, that defense is only required where attack is likely or where expenditure restrictions veto and supress security issues. (Discuss!) You could also argue that the lack of protection in certain areas forms part of the overall strategy of the threat and those that threaten.

It seems that everyone laughed off the hack as a simple prank, but failed to consider the serious implications and security problems that exist in systems that are legacy-based, semi-automated and semi-attached to the National grid.

There are a large class of systems that are semi-attached to the grid and they also have similar security problems and vulnerabilities. Known as SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) Systems, these computers are responsible for controlling electro-mechanical devices and physical plant as found in nuclear reactors and oil refineries.

Many of these systems were deployed years ago in simpler times, well before the information security industry fully understood code quality problems and how they can be and would be, exploited by attackers. These systems are only safe from exploitation for as long as you can guarantee a substantial air-gap or secure firewall between the control network and anything a human being can touch.

Serious Vulnerabilities

Spies and government sponsored hackers have already been probing the U.S. electrical grid for months and planting software that is intended to be activated at a future date, according to a Wall Street Journal. The report highlights the latest non-physical, indirect threats and vulnerabilities facing the U.S. power infrastructure.

The Journal notes that the spies are from China, Russia and other countries who are more openly threatening. While the news is very disturbing, it isn’t all that surprising. The vulnerabilities of the U.S. infrastructure are well documented. It is also notable that the electrical grids were initially thought to be somewhat hacker proof, until recently. Why? because the grids run on old legacy software, which is often proprietary. This it turns out is its greatest weakness, along with apathy and complacency.

The barbarians are not at the door but they may have remote access to your infrastructure and life support systems! Prepare to repel boarders!