Diversions | Branden R. Williams, Business Security Specialist

CurrentC, Off to a Rough Start standard

Last week we saw a flurry of announcements around CurrentC, a merchant-driven alternative payment scheme that is designed to cut the costs from electronic payment processing. Sure, they didn’t demonstrate a great approach to security with the notification of their breach last week, but no payment information was put at risk. CurrentC is designed to work in a similar manner as Apple Pay (enabled by a smartphone), but it platform independent and works using QR-codes to transact business. Essentially, any merchant with a scanner that can read a QR-code would theoretically be able to accept this form of payment. That brings in grocery stores and big-box retail for sure as most use some kind of scanning technology to assist in ...

The Role of Evidence-Based Management standard

Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt) is a topic growing in popularity in both the academic and professional worlds for a number of reasons. We’ve never had access to the volume of data that we do today coupled with the processing power available to make sense of it. In addition, we’ve learned that while hunches give us a gut feel we are comfortable with, we like to confirm it with data (which can be challenging when coping with Confirmation Bias). One of the bigger lessons you learn when you continue past a Masters degree is that your opinion doesn’t matter. Everything you write about should be evidence based. Synthesis is great and a critical step in Bloom’s Taxonomy—meaning it is just fine to ...

There Are No Unicorns standard

Those of you in the DevOps community know exactly who I am talking about when I use the term Unicorn. Amazon, Netflix, and Disney all come to mind. After two days here at the DevOps Enterprise Summit, we shouldn’t be using the term unicorn at all to describe these high-performing IT organizations. If we have to choose four-legged animal, they are more like a thoroughbred than a unicorn. Here’s why. When trying to strategically position a firm in the marketplace, scholars like to use Resource-Based Theory (sometimes called the Resource-Based View of the Firm), largely popularized in recent literature by Jay Barney. His seminal paper in 1991 is frequently cited when trying to understand why one firm has competitive advantage ...

Apple Pay is Here, First Notes standard

12:01 hits and I hit my Software Update menu item to see if I can snag me some Apple Pay, and BAM! There it is! 20 minutes later, I am ready to go with iOS 8.1. Here are a few notes for those of you who may be using it as well. Apple Pay is a part of Passbook, and acts like any other Passbook integration. You can open Passbook and add ONE card, but any additional cards must be added under Settings -> Passbook & Apple Pay. For each card that is enrolled, you may be asked to validate your identity. Make sure that your banks have current email addresses and phone numbers for you. They will send you ...

Consider the Hawthorne Effect for Big Data standard

The Hawthorne Effect is a term coined to explain inconclusive results from a set of studies performed at Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works on worker productivity from the 1920s and 30s. Essentially, researchers were confused with the productivity results from two specific parts of the study—changes in illumination levels and worker break time—which improved productivity only during the study. Workers knew they were being studied, thus improved productivity regardless of the changes implemented by the researchers. The Hawthorne Effect is used to describe positive results from research as influenced by the workers, not by the actual independent variables studied. Researchers today now work to reduce this effect through a number of ways, but it is still a tricky process. The ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: The Roundup standard

Well, it’s been quite a journey over the last month or so! I hope that some of the things presented here are helpful. I’m happy if just one tip makes a change in your career! During my research for this series I found TONS of other bloggers who have posted information about some of these skills (many around politics and politically charged environments). I would encourage you to find more information on your own to further your skills. As a suggested starting place, check out this blog post by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman titled, The Skills Leaders Need at Every Level. If you need a quick reference to ALL of the posts in this series, use this link. Possibly ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: Presenting standard

For the final post (for now) in this series, I wanted to take a moment to discuss presenting. At some point in your career you will need to present something to a group of colleagues, industry peers, or superiors. For those of you who are already suffering from nausea and dry mouth, the worst part is that you might be caught in a Catch 22—skipping or bombing that presentation could be career limiting. I’ve been presenting in some form or another fairly regularly for a little over ten years. I still get nervous. In fact, I typically don’t really get into the groove until the audience does something to reinforce what I am talking about. It could be a laugh ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: Writing standard

This isn’t going to be a long post. I frequently give training on writing to technical folks because I have found that to be one of the easiest things to fix among technical people. Just like the accounting analogy, nonlinguistic majors must be able to articulate ideas in ways that help them advance their careers. When I taught grad school, I took a full letter grade away for spelling and grammatical errors—that’s how important this is. Check out these two posts and then spend some time using your new found Google skills to find more resources on improving your writing: On Writing: The Funnel vs. the Brain Dump Business Writing Bad Possibly Related Posts: Aviation Apps I Use Sellers Buying ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: Applied Finance standard

So you are all brushed up on your finance and you are ready to take on the CFO for your next project. WAIT! You are not quite ready yet! As I have been working on this series of posts, I’ve tried to avoid being a consultant. You know, that guy who tells you ALL OF THE THINGS, but never tell you how to practically do it! After writing the last post, I realized I did just that. There is one more piece that you need to know in order to apply your new finance knowledge. Every CFO works under a set of assumptions when he builds the financial models for the next period. She knows that she has $X amount ...

Corporate Survival Tips for Young Professionals: Finance standard

So you are an IT guy probably because you didn’t want to be an accountant, right? Let those guys do the numbers! Wrong. One of the biggest lessons I learned at my previous employer is that if you want to advance, you have to demonstrate a working knowledge of finance. Essentially, you have to be able to talk to the folks who control the money and do it in THEIR language, and it may mean that you have to put more of your personal bonus pay at risk to get what you want. It’s the equivalent of diverting profits (personal bonus) from business operations back into the business to invest in a bigger long-term return (promotions, future bonuses, accelerators for ...

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