Common Sense Tech

I rarely need to edit PDF files more than shuffle pages, which the Preview app on the Mac can do. Just now, when looking to redact a PDF, I was looking for a FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) application to do it, but my web searches didn’t yield any usable results.

It was only when I searched for applications that run on Linux, that I found that the excellent LibreOffice (which is a complete FOSS alternative to the Office suite from that big software company that makes Windows) lets you edit PDF files in the Draw application (each page is a sheet). You can’t save the edits directly, but you can export the results to a new PDF file (same as you use any application in the suite to create a PDF), which gives you the same result.

I work at the intersection of technology and business, but no matter what work we do to earn our living, we can’t leave human nature behind. As social animals, even the most die-hard individualist among us is profoundly affected by those we spend time with at our workplace.

When I reflect on the emotional highs and lows at work, I’m often reminded of a scene from a favorite Christmas movie. When the main character is asked why he extols the virtue of a beloved former boss hosting a Christmas party at the workplace, his reply is memorable: “You don’t understand, he has the power to make our work a pleasure or a burden.”

Those of us fortunate enough to lead teams, either at our workplace or other areas of life (like volunteer efforts), should never forget this important notion. As leaders, we have a profound effect, both directly and indirectly (via our effect on other team members and the team environment), on whether our teammates experience the shared mission as a pleasure or a burden.

If now you are hoping I have some secret formula for how to do this, I’m afraid you are in for a disappointment. Different teams and environments will necessitate different approaches. But as I was told once in an excellent training class, intention and results matter more than process. 

If you are leading knowledge, workers, for example, keep in mind Dan Pink’s “autonomy, mastery & purpose”. Work-life balance is likely also key, but if your team is engaged in work that they can leave at the office at the end of their shift (call-center, for example), it’s likely not an issue. 

The point is to be authentic both to and for you and your team; and to recognize that, like any form of happiness, pleasant work is an emergent state, not something you can pursue directly (”Hey, let’s all be pleasant!”). 

There are some tools you can apply, however, that seem nearly universal and probably won’t need much tweaking for your context. The annual “State of DevOps Report” has some interesting data about how cultural norms, like failures being treated as learning opportunities, drive high performance. This jibes with the well-documented research result that psychological safety is a key enabler of high-performing teams. 

Lastly, don’t forget that winning is a pretty pleasant experience! Purpose won’t motivate the team unless they sense progress to successfully achieving that purpose. That doesn’t always mean the original goal is achieved, of course. Apollo 8 was originally meant to test the lunar module, but it wasn’t ready. The astronauts still managed to orbit the moon, though, which provided both valuable experience for the larger purpose and gave a nice end to an otherwise dismal 1968. Not too shabby, as a friend of mine says. 

What do you do to make working on your team a pleasure rather than a burden? I’d love to learn about it in the comments.

We have another very troubling data breach (called “CloudBleed”) from a major company, all the more worrisome because it’s a security company. You can get details here, including which passwords you should consider changing. Whether or not you think you are affected, It’s a good reason, though, to review your personal security practices. There are many other things to do (non-admin accounts on your computers for kids and your everyday use, for example), but here’s a bare minimum:

2FA on email accounts

Your email just doesn’t need to be protected in its own right, it serves as your identity for websites and a security mechanism (passwords resets) also. Protect your accounts with two-factor authentication. The easiest way is the authenticator apps from Google, Microsoft and others, but you should also have SMS as a backup (it’s not really secure, so don’t use it often) and a hardware key (I use and recommend YubiKey) if supported. 

Multiple email addresses

Two core security principles (least privilege, and defense in depth) both inform you to use different email addresses for different classes of accounts. My recommendation is to use 3 different email addresses. One you use only for banks and other financial accounts (brokerage, money transfer, etc.), one for accounts that allow purchases and social media, and one for everything else. This way, if someone gets access to one email account, the others (especially the financial one), are safe.

Password Manager/Unique Passwords

This is the trickiest one to decide, for various reasons. First, all password managers (either online or offline) are themselves vulnerable in the sense that if someone gains access, then they have all your passwords. Unique (ideally for every website) and complex passwords, however, make you more secure (vs reuse), but are difficult for most people to manage without a password vault. You have to decide for yourself how to create the best balance, but here are some ideas to consider.

You can have multiple vaults, perhaps mirroring the three email accounts (and reminder, anything for work should be separate and should accord with your company’s security policies and practices). Reuse of passwords for unimportant sites is probably fine (unless you are a high-profile target), but don’t do it for finance and e-commerce accounts. 

After all this, you may be thinking, “This isn’t worth, and I’m not really a target”. Sorry, but that’s wrong. Everyone is a target to some degree. It’s also bad risk thinking. You are focusing only on the probability of getting hacked, not the potential consequences. You may think you have nothing to hide or protect, but I guarantee that if you ponder the possibilities (all your emails/private messages being posted online, your bank accounts being drained, etc.), you will think different. And unless you live a completely offline life (but then you wouldn’t be reading this!), you are more vulnerable than you think. You don’t bank online, you say? Great! But if your email gets compromised, there may be enough data there for a hacker to register for online banking on your behalf, especially if they can social-engineer your mobile provider to associate your phone number with a fake SIM card.

If you’re starting (or reinvigorating) a small company or team, your choice of collaboration tools is going to have a massive impact on both your performance and your happiness. This is especially true if your team is virtual, where you rely on those tools even more than teams that are all under the same roof.

So, how do you go about choosing those tools? Having just gone through this experience again for the startup I launched along with some INSEAD classmates, I can share some fresh thoughts.

First, decide on what’s important to you beyond the individual features. What are the principles you will use to guide your choices? Here’s my list:

DRY, aka Don’t Repeat Yourself - strive to keep every piece of data in only one place. This especially means NEVER attaching files in emails unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. Link to the file that will always be the correct version for the lifetime of the discussion/project, etc. If you need to preserve history, make sure your file sharing solution includes versioning.

Usability beats Functionality - A tool that is a pleasure to use is superior to one with more features that has a steep learning curve. An unused tool can’t help anyone.

Integration of The Best over All-in-One Mediocrity - It used to be we would often have to sacrifice functionality in order to get a comprehensive tool that avoided having to move data between best of breed tools. Today, however, we can integrate tools almost effortlessly. Your bias should still be to use the fewest number of total tools possible, but you no longer have to sacrifice critical functionality to achieve that. I strongly prefer tools that are already supported by integration services like IFTTT & Zapier, but at minimum they should have a robust API.

Event-Driven & Searchable - You shouldn’t have to ask your colleagues where information is, you should be able to find it on your own with minimal effort. You also should never have to check systems, but instead to be able to configure them to get alerts tailored to your needs.

Experiment First - Demos don’t cut it. You need to use your shortlisted tools in real-life, for a couple weeks at least, before you make an irrevocable commitment. There are simply some important use cases that won’t show up when you merely kick the tires.

So, what are the indispensable tools, and examples/suggestions for any team?

Office Suite - Google & Microsoft are basically the only games in town, at least if you want to work across all devices, including browsers. There are myriad articles comparing these. Do your homework. And don’t underestimate how hard it is for your collaborators to learn new tools. Google Docs may have better simultaneous editing than Office 365, for example, but it’s not as feature rich as the desktop versions of Word you get with Office 365, and many users will be pained by what’s missing. Also, keep in mind that there are best of breed products you should consider in comparison to the built-in file sharing of Microsoft & Google, like DropBox and Box.com.

Messaging, Calendar & Contacts - Google & Microsoft dominate the scene here also, but be sure and take an expansive view of messaging and explore modern tools like Slack. For remote distributed teams, it’s super important to have something which supports presence, so you know when someone is “at their desk”.

“Customer" Relationship Management - I put the word customer in square quotes, because you should be really be tracking interactions with all your outside partners, not just customers. For example, if  the tool only supports customers, and not, for example, tracking contacts with vendors (with an equivalent to a deal/opportunity on the customer side), you may need to keep looking.

Wikis/Intranets - Sharing of your office suite files and the database driven apps like CRM may handle a lot of your data, but by no means all. Having the ability to organize relatively unstructured and ad-hoc data is incredibly important. Wikis and Intranets are one great tool to do this, with Google’s Sites and Microsoft’s providing reasonable solutions. But as with everything, one size doesn’t fit all. Don’t ignore other best of breed solutions or those that are more tightly integrated with other core tools.

Project Management - depending on your team’s requirements this can be anything from the shared to-do lists of Trello or Asana, all the way to Oracle’s Primavera and the like. Focus on tools that let all stakeholders interact in event-driven, on-demand fashion, rather then relying on project managers sending out updates via email.

Once you’ve decided what set of tools fits you best, make sure you allocate some time to making sure everyone knows how to use them productively and efficiently. For example, if you are using Google Drive for file sharing, post links to the files from your Wikis, don’t attach copies of the files. If some teammates fall in love with one app (like Trello, in my recent experience), help them resist the temptation to try and do everything in that app (like track client contacts/opportunities).

Make sure you “eat your own dog food” and use the tools yourself. Document everything in your wiki, for example, especially with examples of what tools are best for which tasks. When you add someone to the team, you should be able to start them off with one URL and say “Here’s everything you need to know about how we organize information and collaborate on this team.”

So, what tools did we wind up with? G Suite (fka Google Apps), including “Sites” for Wikis and Hangouts for instant messaging, Nimble for CRM and Trello for Project Management. Not a perfect setup by any means, but eminently workable. Using Zapier, for example, to put new Google contacts into Nimble has some problems (fails with email only contacts, for example, and also doesn’t send updates), but if you want to send all emails from Nimble (which has excellent email integration with Google), then it’s not a worry.