Deconstructing A False Alarm: Boston invaded by Mooninites

The Department of Homeland Security's color coded threat scheme has been the subject of jokes since introduction. Until today, I didn't have a better solution. Well, seeing the Boston politicians trip over themselves tonight to appear tough on the Cartoon Network's viral marketing campaign, it's clear what the new threat scheme should be. You could even use different color lights on the "mooninite" (the symbol for the Cartoon Network Show "Aqua Teen Hunger Force") to indicate threat severity.

It's easy to mistake nothing for something. About 10 years ago, I was involved with shutting down a major waterway because of a "suspicious device"; turned out to be an old microwave with some aluminum foil duct taped onto the top. False alarms are a fact of life. What matters is how quickly the system validates a threat. There is a lot of second guessing going on in Boston about why it took so long to invalidate the threat. Maybe there is some validity to this, but I give them the benefit of the doubt. Best case, maybe the city could have invalidated the threat a couple of hours earlier ... probably not worth quibbling about.

Just as important as response, though, is after action. How do you clean up the mess, how do you learn from the process, what do you tell the public. It's only been 5 hours, but I think the initial grade here is a "D". I had a visceral reaction to the politicians triumphantly announcing an arrest superimposed against footage of the downtrodden artist they arrested. After action is supposed to make citizens feel safer. Legality aside, his arrest made me feel like the city is petty and focused on the wrong things. Of course, I didn't sit in traffic for 4 hours because the roads were shut down ...

As for Turner, I don't know the details or legal issues so I'll keep my judgment in abeyance. I do think that the job of any product manager is to manage risk; I'd be surprised if risk wasn't considered before putting up 100+ signs in over 5 cities.

picture source: CNN, Cartoon Network

Abdicating Responsibility

One of the byproducts of a safety net is that some people seek a free ride. There are those that truly need the safety net because of mistakes and those that purposefully use the safety net for their advantage. The latter type of person is a freeloader who is a drain on the entire system.

Last week I was in Nantucket reading the local paper and there was a picture of this kiteboarder who had gone out into the harbor in extreme weather. You have to wonder if he would have gone out into this extreme weather if there wasn't a Coast Guard available to back him up.

I have no idea if this guy consciously knew he was abdicating responsibility for his safety. What I do know, is that 7 years ago I had to plan a rescue mission for the same guy when he had gone out into a gale and gotten washed out to sea. At the time, I was in charge of Coast Guard resources from New Jersey to Maine. I had to order two boats and two helicopters to look for him which was risky, not to mention expensive. The cost of this freeloader got absorbed into the overall cost of the safety net.

Experience that matters in corporate America

I believe John Kerry when he said that he wasn't intending to insult those serving in military by calling them uneducated. Kerry is one of the few in the Senate who actually served in the military and I find it hard to believe he would purposefully insult the armed forces.

That said, Kerry's comments were misplaced and suggestive of a broader theme. There are a lot of preconceived notions in the private sector about how a military background measures up in the civilian sector. With the hindsight of now having more years in the corporate world than the military, I know that military experience can be a great contributor to business success. However, many young former military officers feel they need to minimize their military experience to appeal to those in corporate recruiting. I probably did a bit of the same thing.

I remember one dinner with an investment bank during Harvard's recruiting process. I was sitting next to a managing director who asked, "How would taking down a smuggling operation ever be useful to my firm? Frankly I don't see any way you could fit." Maybe it was a test and I probably should have had a better retort at the time. I would now. Leading a multi-national effort (US, Dutch, Colombian), across a matrixed organization (US State Department, US Navy), using unstructured data (intel, analysis,) in a high stress environment to a successful conclusion. How couldn't that experience be considered relevant? The rest of the stuff (high seas, night time boardings, etc) is just window dressing.

My advice today to an officer going through the experience is to not give any company the time of day that doesn't value your experience.

Google Groups Lacks Social Network Diagnostic Tools

One of the best aspects about running groups online in a contained environment should be the ability to diagnose the groups using the ideas of social network analysis. Identifying who is central to the conversation, who is quiet but respected or who is a connector is fairly basic as long as you know who communicates with who and in what order. Google Groups unfortunately doesn't allow any of this basic analysis. The only information shared is the number of posts by each individual.

The social networking information is a fairly valuable dataset. I would be surprised if Google isn't analyzing this information on the backend and adding to its great store of data on the way we interact.

Splitting My Blog - One Enterprise Software, One Everything Else

I am going to launch a new blog and will now have two:

1. New: Business Of Software with an explicit focus on enterprise software
2. Original (this blog): Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range with its more general focus

I will do dual posts while I get the word out. If you read me only for software, please update your feeds: http://businessofsoftware.blogspot.com/

I hope this brings a sharper focus, especially since I have had the opportunity to recently take the lead for a great enterprise focused strategy team.