Patients with amygdala injury 'unafraid' to gamble

The amygdala is associated with fear

Californian scientists think they may have discovered the part of the brain which makes people fear losing money.

The study, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at two patients who had damaged their amygdala, deep within the brain.

These patients were less worried about financial losses than the normal volunteers they were compared with.

The scientists say this could translate to how people make decisions in fields ranging from politics to game shows.

'Loss aversion' describes the avoidance of choices which can lead to losses, even when accompanied by equal or much larger gains. Click here for full story

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On the Dark Management front, it now makes a lot of sense why managers make stupid callous decisions. Psychometric tests are highly recommended to include a section on gambling to separate wheat from the chaff!

How to Make Friends and Move Around Paperwork

A colleague made this observation that rules were created to manage exceptions that occurs only 5% of the time while crippling proven everyday processes. If we were to abide by each and every process; nothing would ever move.

So you almost always have to intervene, make friends with the approving authorities and talk it over a cup of coffee.

The gauntlet of procedures, processes, ISO standards and Audit tasks now controls the organization rather than work for it. Why should we even bother with processes then considering that it’s easily side stepped through “relationship”? Adding salt is the fact that through relationships, most of the heinous business crimes are committed; remember Enron and MCI-WorldCom anyone?


So maybe processes need to be replaced by cold heartless computers. No negotiations, just binary Yes or No.

The root cause however, does not lie in the paperwork, but the people running it. Dark Managers being evil, sadistic creatures take root and dig deeper than barnacles to entrench positions while edifying red tape to the stature of Holy Scripture with the CEO being God. I mean, think of it this way, scripture says; Thou Shall not Kill, but it’s OK to kill when God tells you so.

Seriously, why do we put up procedures due to listing requirements? Shouldn’t it happen by default? And why do we complain about it once we have the processes up online like it’s a disease that you inflict on yourself knowing that you don’t have a condom.

It a choice ladies and gents; rule like leaders, or have the rules rule you

The Business and IT Dichotomy

There’s a big difference between IT and Business. Technologists seek absolute certainty; while Businesses thrive on uncertainty.


A good case study would be Microsoft's launch of Windows 95. It may be the crappiest piece of OS at that time, but the businessman in Gates saw that since most software were rotten anyway, it’s ok to release one that’s crappy with style.

Advice for the IT Guy
It doesn’t matter what you think, at the end of the day; if the emperor feels that the invisible clothing looks good, it will be good. Any further negativity will label you a whiner.

Advice for the Business Guy
Once in a blue moon just humour the IT guy to a cup of coffee. You might just learn a thing or two, and thank God that you’ve outgrown being a geek.

Advice for the Dark Manager
If both the Business and IT give thumbs up, the project will be a glorious success. If either one of them says otherwise, make the person who says NO the key decision maker. At least you’ll be erring on the side of caution. However; if you’re the one that’s forced to say YES to some higher up, make sure you’re not cc’ed any emails, have them sign everything and practice your selective amnesia..

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

One thing that you gotta hand it to is Steve Jobs' presentation style, a lot have been talked about it and its now condensed in this simple book. Click on the link for business week's round up.

My Pet Questions during an Interview

a) Tell me about yourself.
The question opens up a huge can of worms which you can dig deep and explore further. Between, megalomania, shyness, a total lack of enthusiasm or someone with a temper problem.

b) Tell me about the biggest and hardest project that you've worked with
How detailed the person gets and the kind of topic he covers will let you know whether he's

• A people person
  Talks about the stakeholders, the team, the challenges with the customers
• A techie
  Jumps right into the how many components the solution has, but before he/she can move to the next component, you've already got a huge gobbledygook of why the 64bit processor driver couldn't work with the HBA drivers.
• A faker
  Everything stops at level 1, you just can't prob him any deeper.
  

c) Tell me about the most difficult situation you've been in.

• A liar or someone who just forgets easily
  "I've never been in any difficult situations". Potentially a good/dangerous sales person
• Highly committed but sarcastically jaded and cynical
  May be a whiner, or someone that will put in a lot of effort. Be wary of whiners as they tend to give 1001 excuses why something can't be done.
  

d) Tell me about how you solved it

• A quiter
  The problem was never solved, but he's resigned, or decided that it's too dangerous to proceed
• A good guy
  Probably doesn't exist, unless the company went bust.
  
  
  

Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales

There's very rarely presentations that makes me go WOW! Bjarke talks about how architecture rocks!

EDS loses lawsuit to BSkyB - 709m pounds!

BSkyB's lawsuit against EDS may just be the wake up call that IT Outsources need, or rather IT management in general. Here's some tips before pushing any IT Outsourcing deals.

1. Hire a realist.
   IT Sales person should stick to selling commodity IT equipments. A realist can tell you at least 10 things that can go wrong with the project and how to get it to work.
   
2. Hire a realist that has a solution
   Some realists happen to be perfectionists that requires the gates of Valhalla to be opened before a project can proceed. There are workarounds and sensible percautions without having to pave the road with gold to get to your goal.
   
3. Never have a Sales Director lead the brokering
   Sales Directors pretty much get to where they are after achieving a deal that's so big, they can't possibly fathom ever eclypsing it; end result. They quit the job 3 months later, having padded their resume with the results.

The thing about gargantuam deals is that, no sane company would sign on to it unless "sweeteners" are put in place. Secondly, those come in many forms and apply to many entities, like the people making the decisions or perks to the organization.

In short, if you don't know what you're getting yourself into. Better just shut up, and let the IT Realist do the talking. Some deals are just not worth the bullshit.

Actual news from ComputerWorldUK here.