In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss other people's failures. They can affect you, as the recent Amazon Web Services outage showed. Cat owners who had trusted the feeding of their felines to internet-connected devices came home

People Shortage

Nov 26th, 2021 5m 43s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss the people shortage. It isn't real. Complaining about a lack of people is what is known as a "half argument." You say what you want, but not what you are willing to give up. That's like a po

Data Hoarding

Oct 29th, 2021 7m 29s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss data hoarding. Gathering too much data costs money and doesn't add value. We think we need all this data to train our AI, but hoarding data is the wrong place to start. Using a counterprodu

Monoculture

Oct 15th, 2021 9m 4s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss monoculture. Just like in farming, monoculture is efficient and dangerous.Modern farmers will plan hundreds or thousands of acres with the same crop. That gives efficiency because the entire

Trust, but Verify

Oct 1st, 2021 9m 34s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss trusting your vendors. You trust them to make their best effort at producing bug-free code. You probably trust that their software will perform at least 50% of what they promise. You might t

Time to Recover

Sep 17th, 2021 8m 28s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss time to recover. The entire network of the justice ministry of South Africa has been disabled by ransomware, and they don't know when they'll be back. Do you know how long it would take you

Goal Fixation

Sep 3rd, 2021 9m 10s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss goal fixation. Richard Branson almost didn't make it back from space. His pilots had a problem and flew very close to the limit. They should have aborted. But the future of commercial spacef

Narrow Focus

Aug 20th, 2021 8m 28s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss the narrow focus of IT professionals. This is an unavoidable consequence of the complexity of the technology we use. We've had to learn to give our computers very exact instructions, and tha

Back to the Office

Aug 6th, 2021 8m 38s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss whether you should force people back to the office. This will be your most important leadership decision this year. Apple told everyone to report back to the office. Apple CEO Tim Cook says

Humans and Computers

Jul 23rd, 2021 6m 42s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss humans and computers. Jeff Bezos went to space in a fully autonomous computer-controlled rocket. Richard Branson went to space last week, and he had humans flying his spacecraft. The Silicon

Competition

Jul 9th, 2021 10m 18s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss competition. Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are competing who gets to space first, with both likely to blast off within the next two weeks. Competition is one of the great force

Pseudo-Security

Jun 25th, 2021 7m 53s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss pseudo-security. The lock on your front door is not secure. It takes an experienced locksmith an average of 7.1 seconds to manually an average door lock, and it's even faster with a "pick gu

Good Enough

Jun 18th, 2021 7m 55s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss how to choose what is good enough. How do you know when something is good enough? That requires good judgment, which is unfortunately in short supply. IT used in aviation, pharma, and a few

Unnecessary Roadblocks

Jun 4th, 2021 9m 8s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss unnecessary roadblocks. Amazon has a problem finding enough workers, and they have decided to get rid of an unnecessary roadblock: They will no longer test people for marijuana use. As marij

Expectation Management

May 28th, 2021 7m 50s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss expectation management. I was doing a small renovation project in our summer cottage, and I needed a special type of hinge. I found it on the website of our local building supplies store, bu

Gaming the Metrics

May 7th, 2021 10m 31s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss gaming the metrics. We measure things to be able to manage them. But when we start using metrics to reward individual employees and teams, people will start gaming them. Newton's third law f

Accidental Publication

Apr 30th, 2021 7m 55s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss accidental publication. There are two ways organizations lose data: Through break-ins and through carelessness. It is hard to protect your systems against determined hackers, but it should

Irrational Optimism

Apr 23rd, 2021 8m 5s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss irrational optimism. IT people are too optimistic. It is a natural consequence of our ability to build something from nothing. Our creations are not subject to gravity or other laws of physi

Risk Aversion

Apr 16th, 2021 5m 23s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss risk aversion. The U.S. has stopped distributing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It has been given to more than 7 million people, and there have been six reported cases of blood clotting. Her

Biased Data

Apr 9th, 2021 7m 29s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss biased data. Machine Learning depends on large data sets, and unless you take care, ML algorithms will perpetuate any bias in the data it learns from. The famous ImageNet database contains

Price transparency

Mar 26th, 2021 7m

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss price transparency. In the U.S., a coronavirus test can cost $56 if you pay yourself, but $450 if your health insurance pays it. This lack of price transparency makes the U.S. healthcare sys

Blaming the Humans

Mar 19th, 2021 7m 35s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss blaming the humans. It often happens that a system failure is attributed to fallible humans. In that way, you don't have to admit embarrassing shortcomings in your system. A recently declass

Wasting Money

Mar 12th, 2021 8m 51s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss wasting money. The business always complains that IT is costing too much. That is because we are wasting so much money. We're on track for worldwide IT spending of about 4 trillion, and surv

Moving Fast

Mar 5th, 2021 5m 55s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss moving fast. Mark Zuckerberg is famous for saying "Move fast and break things." That was his way of communicating a preference for high speed, accepting high risk. It has become an unofficia

User Experience Disasters

Feb 26th, 2021 7m 20s

In this episode of Beneficial Intelligence, I discuss User Experience disasters. Danes consistently rank among the happiest people in the world, but I can tell you for sure that it is not the public sector IT we use that make us happy. We have