I was browsing some articles on organizational change and came across this nice summary on Pink Elephant. The statistic that jumped out at me was that 70% of change initiatives fail. The article goes on to assert two main causes for these failures:

1. The change is not started early enough, or is not well managed during execution
2. People affected by the change are not sufficiently guided, and consequently don’t adopt or sustain the change

According to the article, “Many organizations focus on the first reason and totally ignore the second.” When I consider where IT needs work in leading change, #2 sticks out to me. So, how can I effectively guide the agency?

In my Technology Management Capstone course, one of the models I teach my students is John Kotter’s model of organizational change management, which is arguably the most famous model ever for leading an organization through change. Kotter’s book, Our Iceberg is Melting, is a classic in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Kotter’s model consists of eight steps:

• Create a Sense of Urgency
• Build a Guiding Coalition
• Form a Strategic Vision and Initiatives
• Enlist a Volunteer Army
• Enable Action by Removing Barriers
• Generate Short-Term Wins
• Sustain Acceleration
• Institute Change

Notice that most of the work happens before the the change is instituted. Kotter’s steps are a good way to make sure that the organization has sufficient buy-in and sustainability to carry out the fast-paced changes we have to achieve in IT.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Hanlon’s Razor. This adage states that one should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I would re-frame stupidity to be ignorance that results in poor communication. Indeed, most people, when kept in the dark about an issue that may affect them, tend to attribute nefarious intentions to the poor communicator. But I’ve found that rarely are the motives iniquitous. Rather, it is far more common for the communicator to simply not realize their messaging may be poor, their plans not communicated effectively, their intentions not transparent.

This is important in many fields of human endeavor, including IT. Followup communication on incidents and service requests frequently fall victim to time poverty on both sides, confusing written (i.e., email) responses, and technical jargon. While IT strives to improve in this area, I’m perturbed that sometimes it seems as if we make little headway to make our communication better and more transparent. It is a never-ending battle.

Happily, good communication and transparency can be taught – they are skills one may learn. Recognition of the psychological issues are the first step. Assessment, process, and practice are the methods to improve them.

So, the next time you’re in a poor communication situation, don’t assume the worst. Consider that the other may simply not realize that the message is unclear or has been lost.

Misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At least the latter two are certainly rarer.

Goethe. J. W. (1774). The sorrows of young werther (as translated).

Quite a few folks have told me that they were a little confused the last time they tried to show a PowerPoint display in MS Teams. Recently, the application was upgraded to allow presenters more control over presentation mode than just simply sharing their screen or PowerPoint app. This tutorial by the MS Education Team talks about this new feature and a few others that were recently released.

Welcome back to the office. Is your office phone forwarded to your mobile? Did you forget how to “un-forward it?” Here’s a refresher on how to forward and un-forward your office phone.

A recent conversation with our Chief Information Security Officer impressed upon me the importance of protecting my credit. He talked about how his social security number and other protected information were sold on the dark web which led to problems with his credit and bank accounts. He went through the process of freezing his credit reports and bank account information, which gives a layer of protection against identity theft. This prevents bad actors from opening credit accounts and taking out loans in your name. Fixing these kinds of problems after the fact can be very difficult.

According to Experian, a credit freeze, also known as a security freeze, is a tool designed to help protect you from fraud and identity theft. It limits access to your credit report unless you lift the freeze, or “thaw” your credit. Having a freeze in place won’t affect your credit scores, but it will prevent your credit report from being accessed to calculate scores unless you first lift the freeze.

So I asked Brad for more information, and he was kind enough to send me a list of steps to do this. While he was doing this to stop further compromise of his information, he stressed that proactively freezing your credit and utility accounts can prevent problems before they start.

CAVEAT!

Freezing your accounts creates an inconvenience when you or a creditor need to access them. You have to unfreeze them prior to applying for a loan, or some other form of credit. Not a big deal, but be aware. Sometimes unfreezing a report can take several days. In some cases (such as ChexSystem) you will have to keep up with a PIN they send you to unfreeze the account in the future.

In order to freeze your accounts, take the following steps:

• Credit Freezes
  • Freeze Your Equifax Credit Report
  • Freeze Your TransUnion Credit Report
  • Freeze Your Experian Credit Report
• Bank Freezes
  • Freeze Your ChexSystems Information
• Utility Freezes
  • Freeze Your NCTUE Consumer Information

Thanks to Brian Long for researching this guest column about assessing your home Internet connection.

Think your home internet isn’t as fast as it should be? See the article below for details and a walkthrough of how to test your speed.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2048594/how-to-test-your-home-internet-speed.html

You’ll need to know a few things:

1. What speed did your Internet Service Provider (ISP) sell you?
2. Are you on a wired or wireless connection?
3. Is anyone else in the house sharing your internet?
4. Are you using a VPN ?

Example: let’s say your ISP is providing a “100Megabit” internet connection. This doesn’t mean that you will always get 100Mb of speed in both directions (upload and download.) In most cases for home ISP’s, the download speed will be faster than upload. On a 100Mb connection you may see speeds of 20-70Mb download and only 2-20Mb upload speed. Other factors can make that number lower than “advertised”. Wireless internet is not quite as fast as wired. If possible, test your home internet with a wired connection to find out your “best, possible” speed. Then you can compare that speed result to a wireless test. As noted in the article below, wired is faster, but wireless is certainly more convenient and may be “fast enough”.

https://www.howtogeek.com/217463/wi-fi-vs.-ethernet-how-much-better-is-a-wired-connection/

Are you the only one using the internet at your home? If someone else is home and streaming Netflix, downloading/uploading files, or in a video call, etc., your speed will be affected.

The last thing to check is VPN. If you have a VPN connection going, disconnect it for the test.When you make a VPN connection, it affects your speed by 5-20%. Details of why VPN affects speed can be found in this article:

https://hackernoon.com/does-vpn-slow-down-internet-4ba14ae60e3

If you find your home internet isn’t as fast as you think it should be, first try a reboot of your networking gear (Router/modem.) Leave it powered off for at least 30 seconds and test again. Still slow? Contact your ISP’s support. They may know of a outage or problem in your area or walk you through some of these steps to assist you.