Risk and Business Continuity - Managing for the unknown

Do you have the right team in place to face a future filled with Unknown Risks?

While the perilous unknown may be the stuff of sci-fi and doomsday movies, the potential for more mundane or fiscal danger is always around us.

This should not provoke paranoia but rather a healthy sense of vigilance as well as skepticism. Executives need to be vigilant about what could happen next. By all means consider pandemics, earthquakes and wars, but also be skeptical about their effects on their organisations.

For example, if financial executives had been more vigilant and skeptical prior to the fiscal meltdown of 2008 some businesses may not have found their institutions so over-leveraged.

Clearly, we say this from the moral high ground of Hindsight, which is always 20/20.

So what is a savvy executive to do? Three questions come to mind.

What is the worst that could happen to us?
This question prompts many scenarios from a natural disaster to a market crash, or even the entry of a significant new competitor who changes the balance in the market place. What happens then? Executives need to keep their antennae up and do their Risk Assessments and sound Business Continuity Planning.

How would we react?
Very often companies do have BC or disaster plans but are they robust and up to date? Do they stipulate what happens when resources are not available or executives and employees are separated from each other?

Do we have the right people in place to recover?
This is perhaps the most important question. Very often members of a leadership team are equipped to manage when the going is good, but what happens when the bad gets into fear and panic?

The senior leader must ask if these people have the right mindset to adapt to evolving and changing circumstances.

Flexibility becomes an imperative, but so too does resilience. You need leaders who can cope with setback and maintain the discipline to persevere.

Big questions provoke big picture thinking. Very often such questions will cause real unease, or at least a sense of disruption and that is healthy.

If a catastrophe strikes disruption will be significant. So what will you do to survive?

Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self - Video

Every day, we make decisions that have good or bad consequences for our future selves. (Can I skip flossing just this one time?) Daniel Goldstein makes tools that help us imagine ourselves over time, so that we make smart choices for Future Us.

Scottish Historian Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity

http://www.ted.com Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves.

Scottish Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture, call them the 6 killer apps, that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.

The West's 6 Killer Apps

The Great Divergence

Global Patent Registration

Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2011

Gartner, Inc. has revealed its top predictions for IT organizations and users for 2011 and beyond. Analysts said that the predictions highlight the significant changes in the roles played by technology and IT organizations in business, the global economy and the lives of individual users.

More than 100 of the strongest Gartner predictions across all research areas were submitted for consideration this year. This year's selection process included evaluating several criteria that define a top prediction. The issues examined included relevance, impact and audience appeal.

"With costs still under pressure, growth opportunities limited and the tolerance to bear risk low, IT faces increased levels of scrutiny from stakeholders both internal and external," said Darryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. "As organizations plan for the years ahead, our predictions focus on the impact this scrutiny will have on outcomes, operations, users and reporting.

All parties expect greater transparency, and meeting this demand will require that IT become more tightly coupled to the levers of business control."

"Gartner's top predictions showcase the trends and disruptive events that will reshape the nature of business for the next year and beyond," said Brian Gammage, vice president and Gartner fellow. "Selected from across our research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions, the developments and topics they address this year focus on changes in the roles that technologies and IT organizations play: in the lives of workers, the performance of businesses and the wider world."

Last year's theme of rebalancing supply, consumer demand and regulation is still present across most of the predictions, but the view has shifted further toward external effects. This year's top predictions highlight an increasingly visible linkage between technology decisions and outcomes, both economic and societal.

Read the Gartner Predictions here: Gartner Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2011 and Beyond

Gartner's Top Predictions for IT organisations in 2011

Gartner, Inc. has published its top predictions for IT organisations and users for 2011 and beyond. Analysts said that the predictions highlight the significant changes in the roles played by technology and IT organisations in business, the global economy and the lives of individual users.

More than 100 of the strongest Gartner predictions across all research areas were submitted for consideration this year. This year's selection process included evaluating several criteria that define a top prediction. The issues examined included relevance, impact and audience appeal.

"With costs still under pressure, growth opportunities limited and low tolerance to bear risk, IT faces increased levels of scrutiny from stakeholders both internal and external," said Darryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. 

"As organisations plan for the years ahead, our predictions focus on the impact this scrutiny will have on outcomes, operations, users and reporting. All parties expect greater transparency, and meeting this demand will require that IT become more tightly coupled to the levers of business control."

"Gartner's top predictions showcase the trends and disruptive events that will reshape the nature of business for the next year and beyond," said Brian Gammage, vice president and Gartner fellow.

"Selected from across our research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions, the developments and topics they address this year focus on changes in the roles that technologies and IT organisations play: in the lives of workers, and the performance of businesses in the wider world."

Last year's theme of rebalancing supply, consumer demand and regulation is still present across most of the predictions, but the view has shifted further toward external effects. 

This year's top predictions highlight an increasingly visible linkage between technology decisions and outcomes, both economic and societal.

The top predictions which have clear implications for the business continuity profession include:

By 2015, a G20 nation's critical infrastructure will be disrupted and damaged by online sabotage.
Online attacks can be multimodal, in the sense of targeting multiple systems for maximum impact, such as the financial system (the stock exchange), physical plant (the control systems of a chemical, nuclear or electric plant), or mobile communications (mobile-phone message routers). 

Such a multimodal attack can have lasting effects beyond a temporary disruption, in the same manner that the Sept. 11 attacks on the US had repercussions that have lasted for nearly a decade. If a national stock market was rendered unavailable for several weeks, there would be lasting effects even if there was no change in government, although it is also possible that such disruptive actions could eventually result in a change in leadership.

By 2014, 90 percent of organisations will support corporate applications on personal devices.
The trend toward supporting corporate applications on employee-owned notebooks and smartphones is already under way in many organisations and will become commonplace within four years. 

The main driver for adoption of mobile devices will be employees — i.e., individuals who prefer to use private consumer smartphones or notebooks for business, rather than using old-style limited enterprise devices. 

IT is set to enter the next phase of the consumerisation trend, in which the attention of users and IT organisations shifts from devices, infrastructure and applications to information and interaction with peers. This change in view will herald the start of the post-consumerisation era.

By 2013, 80 percent of businesses will support a workforce using tablets.
The Apple iPad is the first of what promises to be a huge wave of media tablets focused largely on content consumption, and to some extent communications, rather than content creation, with fewer features and less processing power than traditional PCs and notebooks or pen-centric tablet PCs. 

Support requirements for media tablets will vary across and within enterprises depending on usage scenario. At minimum, in cases where employees are bringing their own devices for convenience, enterprises will have to offer appliance-level support with a limited level of network connectivity e.g. access to enterprise mail, schedules, and help desk support for connectivity issues and data transfer.

Additional details are in the Gartner report ‘Gartner's Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2011 and Beyond: IT's Growing Transparency’ which is available on Gartner's website.

Like Minds: Robin Wight on The Future's Bright, The Future's Social

...
Don't let the picture put you off!

What do you get when you cross sociology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience and an outrageous purple suit? The result is Robin Wight’s insight at Like Minds - a nonstop ride of case studies, quips, and powerful revelations that brings Robin to one inexorable conclusion: the future is indeed social.

As an ad man with over 40 years of experience, Robin Wight is the president of both WCRS and Engine, where he has handled the BMW account for 31 years and been the creative driving force behind their prominence.

Watch Robin’s Insight in HD, along with other videos and speaker bios.

Gerd Leonhard Futurist:: Social Media (R)Evolution video presentation

The Youtube version is here. PDF is on Slideshare.

Gerd Leonhard Telecom Futurist website

Scientists Claim Future Crimes Can Be Predicted Perfectly

“A team from Northwestern University claim they have achieved 100 percent accuracy in reading the minds of make-believe terrorists — simply by attaching electrodes to their scalps and examining their brain waves.

For the study, 29 students were given mock terrorist plans and 30 minutes to learn about an attack on a certain U.S. city. They were asked to work out their own details based on information they were given regarding weapons and methods.

The researchers, who also knew about the mock terrorist plans, monitored the students’ brain waves to find out whether they gave away details of where and when the attacks were to take place. They correlated a rise in brain wave activity to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy across all the students that participated.

According to psychology professor J. Peter Rosenfeld, the “guilty” patterns occur in “P300″ brain waves when meaningful information is shown to a person with “guilty knowledge.”

What makes the result so impressive is that in a real-life situation, the knowledge would be much more deeper entrenched, given the months or years of planning that a participant would be subject to.”

Jason Goldman, outlines the Future Revenue Plan for Twitter

Jason Goldman , vice president of products at Twitter, however, says Twitter's first plan for generating revenue, its spread as a political tool throughout the world as well as other advances are all simply pieces of a long-thought-out plan of management.

There have been some surprises along the way, but that's just part of Twitter's journey, added Goldman, who joined the social networking firm in 2007.

In an interview this week, Goldman talked about the plan announced last month for generating advertising revenue, what businesses want from the microblogging site, who he follows on Twitter and what he thinks about tweeting on Apple's new iPad tablet.

What's your 'promoted tweets' plan announced last month?
The first phase is to get a better understanding of how well promoted tweets perform and how well users react to them. Once this is done, we will roll out promoted tweets to be shown on Twitter clients. Beyond that, we're going to continue to refine and include promoted tweets outside of just search. Have relevant tweets in your user timelines.

What are other revenue generating parts of the new business plan?
Promoted tweets is the big thing we're focused on. Another is the commercial accounts product. It's more speculative. It's about services we can provide for businesses to make their use of Twitter more affective. It's a feedback mechanism to let them see what users think of them. We may charge for that service. We may not. We're going to see stuff on that later this year.

Any other advertising plans in the works?
No. We continue to learn and be open to other ideas but they have to pass the test. We're making a bet with promoted tweets. We're not working on other advertising plans. I'm not saying we won't someday, but we're not working that right now.

Is business use of Twitter increasing?
We haven't categorized users as businesses or not ... but it's a minority. We have started working with businesses to build more services for them. They're looking for ways to understand the effectiveness of what they're doing on Twitter.

So much of the activity happens outside of Twitter.com, so they need to know what happens through a longer lens at the whole ecosystem. How many people were engaged in the tweet I wrote on desktop clients compared to the tweet I did on a mobile phone?

Read more of this article on Computerworld website

Gerd Leonhard Video: The Future of Communications and Social Media

Gartner Video: 'Worst year ever' for IT spending

Gartner: 'Worst year ever' for IT spending

Gartner says Silicon Valley no longer in the driver's seat
At the Gartner Symposium/ITExpo 2009 in Orlando, Fla., Peter Sondergaard, a senior vice president of research at Gartner, says 2009 was the worst spending cycle ever. He adds that Silicon Valley will no longer be in charge of the rebound and emerging regions will drive IT spending and how it's deployed.

Expanding your career in a shrinking market

It is the aim and nature of all professional people to develop themselves to the maximum. The mantra states; we must maximize our potential and grow our careers.

To do that you have to achieve better results than those around you and without 'over' achieving. Although, this last point is more a problem for older more mature employees.

Remember there is a tiger at the door; So you are in direct competition with everyone else in your company

Consider some simple techniques to help you get more recognition and better results for your efforts.

1) When the bell rings, come out fighting.

• Be the first to arrive and the last to leave.
  
• Be sure to be caught working all the time you are at work.
  
• Start the day with the most important, onerous or the most difficult tasks.
  
• Do not surf the Internet, make personal calls, read the newspaper or make small talk with the 'losers'.
  
• Check your list of activities for the day,
  
• Focus on establishing priorities and get on with it.
  
• Start knocking down those skittles!
  

2) Fill your day with achievements.

• Always be the one that contributes positively at meetings and in face-to-face interaction.
• Ask your boss and yourself, what you can do to provide the greatest contribution to the organisation.
  
• Let everyone know that you are willing to go the extra mile or kilometre.
  
• Do more than the basic minimum, more than you are paid to do.
  
• Be seen to be the one that puts in more effort than the others.
  
• Look for solutions, methods or tools that will allow you and therefore the organisation, to be more effective.
  

3) Set a scorching pace.

• Your career is not a quick sprint or dash across the hurdles.
• It is more enduring like a marathon:
  
• Some runners sprint off at the beginning and get out way ahead of the pack.
  
• Most will be happier running with the pack, safe in the middle, un-noticed, unseen
  
• There are many who are less fit and not really motivated. They are content to be in the race at all but they are clearly seen to be struggling and lagging behind the pack.
  
• Your place is up amongst the leaders, being in the right place at the right time. Excel in hitting targets, achieving goals and milestones.

Take control of your life, your day and yourself. Start each working day with a list of planned activities carried over from the previous day. These will be organised by their priority, so you can address each task as the priorities dictate.

This is a life discipline not just an office routine and will make you more efficient, targetted and better directed as a person. This, in itself will make you stand out from the ambling, gasping crowd and when all around are losing their's, your career will soar.

If you are looking for promotion, assume the position

Stay Focused - Tough Times ahead

Budget cuts. Layoffs. Doing more with less. Sound familiar? Every manager is suddenly tasked with putting out fires on multiple fronts, as businesses struggle to survive amid the economy's smoking ruins. Don't forget your day job, little things like keeping the service levels (SLAs), servers and network availability in the greenest of green.

The mounting responsibilities and demands can be both personally distracting and professionally discouraging for some IT and business managers: The US's work-related worries jumped from 62 percent to 67 percent between April and October 2008, according to the American Psychological Association.

Now, more than ever, focus is the name of the game, especially when people and money are tight.

Finding and maintaining your office Zen isn't as easy these days. Drawing on past experiences, here's how some current and former CIOs have maintained focus in their role and within their department during a crisis.

"After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, business was struggling and the workplace was pretty tense," recalls Les Duncan, then senior vice president and CIO at Joann Stores.

To ease staff concerns, Duncan held regular meetings where he could speak directly about business conditions and highlighted that week's or month's hot issues. His staff knew how the company planned to weather the difficult times so they could focus on their work, he says. "This transparency also helped me to stay focused on what was really important i.e. the success or failure of the business during hard times."

Get busy and stay busy. We've all worked at businesses where large numbers of employees were cut from the payroll. Most of the employees ran around huddling in small groups talking about the latest rumour, but you want to be in the group that stays busy and focused on delivering. So busy that you don't have time to whine.

Positivity and flexibility is essential in staying on target at work. "Anticipate changes by checking in frequently with business decision makers and stay on the offensive by killing projects that are going nowhere".

Try to see the opportunity in any major change. It's a good time to offer assistance to colleagues and take on tasks that might normally be outside your scope. This is not the time to hide in an IT or business silo, but the ideal time to step out of it. Create the space and opportunity to innovate. It costs very little and can result in new opportunities and growth.