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-Ian Walsh, Managing Director, Intent Group Over the last few years, I have run several courses and seminars for business leaders, wanting to improve their business performance and productivity. One of the questions I typically ask is how much time a week they invest in problem solving? The answers vary, but many suggest they do a fair amount of problem solving. I then ask how many of them dedicate a set amount of time each week to structured problem solving as opposed to reactive, during on the event, problem solving. After some muttering and reflection, for most of the group, the answer is none. Less than 10% invest structured time with their teams to solve problems! It was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Surely you can’t expect your business to improve if you don’t invest any time in solving problems to root cause? Improvement itself is defined as solving the right (more impactful) problems at a faster rate than the ones that are occurring. If all you are doing is reacting to what occurs then you are treading water and in today’s competitive landscape, I believe going backwards. The question I have is why do we do this? Or why don’t we invest in structured problem solving? Here are the top 5 great myths: It takes too long, and we don’t have time. But we have time to react to the failure and lose production while we fix it. We are too busy. This is because we are reacting to all the problems that we haven’t fixed. We don’t need to do this as we have engineers who solve the problems, thus placing all responsibility on one group for this activity. This is ‘I operate, you fix’ mentality […]

Varonis, a pioneer in data security and analytics, has released its 2021 Manufacturing Data Risk Report, which examines the state of data security within industrial manufacturers and engineering firms. The report found cybersecurity maturity in the manufacturing sector lags behind other industries such as finance, with nearly half of all companies still underprepared for a disruptive attack. It is the sensitive and often highly valuable nature of their data which specifically puts manufacturers at risk – this data is overexposed and under protected, and to limit the damage attackers can do, companies must improve their cyber security practices. Key findings from the report include: Every employee can access, on average, 6 million files on their first day on the job. For large companies, that number doubles. 4 in 10 organisations have 1,000+ sensitive files open to every employee. 44% of companies have more than 1,000 active “ghost user” accounts enabled. More than half of companies have 500+ accounts with passwords that never expire.  

Yubico, the leading provider of hardware authentication security keys, now has available the YubiKey Bio Series, the first series that supports fingerprint recognition for secure passwordless and second-factor logins.  Built for biometric authentication on desktops, the YubiKey Bio Series supports modern FIDO2/WebAuthn and U2F protocols, in both USB-A and USB-C form factors. In keeping with Yubico’s innovation and design philosophy, the YubiKey Bio does not require any batteries, drivers, or associated software. The new security keys integrate with the native biometric enrolment and management features supported in the latest platforms and operating systems. Once a YubiKey Bio is set up, users will experience secure second factor and passwordless logins for desktop-based FIDO-supported services and applications. The series reimagines biometric authentication on a security key. Its three chip architecture  allows the biometric fingerprint material to be stored in a separate secure element which delivers enhanced protection from physical attacks.  The YubiKey Bio acts as a single, trusted hardware-backed root of trust which allows the user to authenticate with the same key across multiple desktop devices, operating systems, and applications. The YubiKey Bio enables biometric login on desktop with all applications and services that support FIDO protocols and works out-of-the-box with Citrix Workspace, Duo, GitHub, IBM Security Verify, Microsoft Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365, Okta and Ping Identity. With the growing adoption of modern authentication, Yubico continues to work closely with its partner ecosystem to encourage support of biometric authentication as detailed in the WebAuthn and FIDO2 specs.       

-Alistair Gordon Technical specialists such as engineers, software developers, scientists or economists are expensive to hire and require great effort to retain. And despite the expense and effort, often they don’t create the value or innovation that business owners expect. Our organisation has been coaching technical specialists for 10 years. I am still surprised by how much money is spent on the hire of technical specialists, and once they are hired, how little attention is paid to their performance. In an organisation that takes a “hire and forget” approach to these specialist roles, innovation is challenging, not least because the process to pitch and adopt new ideas will be long, impractical, and frustratingly opaque. On one side, specialists don’t know how to pitch, network or commercialise ideas. On the executive side, ideas that aren’t well pitched, with clear commercial benefit, are blocked before they get anywhere near the executive suite. Want to improve competitiveness in an organisation? Challenge each of its experts to master broader business effectiveness, not just technical expertise – to become a “master expert”. But to make innovation reliable and consistent, organisations must reframe their goals for specialist training, development, manager expectations, expert career paths and appraisals, with all supporting the goal of mastery. Experts don’t have their commercial skills developed, but they should Why such a radical change? It’s because experts, to date, have not had the development they need. Consider the career of a manager – not a technical specialist, but a high-performing people leader. They are appraised and promoted on their ability to achieve commercial goals, to communicate strategy and manage upward. From the first days of their career, their development, career ladder, appraisals, and mentoring all challenge them to master business and relationship skills. In other words, they are trained and supported to […]