Unwanted Boomer Output: Do Quality Work, GenX, Y, and Zoot
September 17, 2026
Fast Company has a story about the executives and the power they wield over their employees called: “Executives Don’t Need More Willpower.” The article rambles on about how the author works in the fitness industry and observed executives who don’t keep with with their exercise routine. Willpower isn’t enough to keep them on track, instead the ones who focused on building routines that reduced cognitive workload and protected execution from stupid stuff that bogs down the workflow were the most successful.
The most important quote from the opener is: “When time is constrained, quality of execution matters far more than the volume of activity.”
The author continues that physical activity is an important factor to improve overall health, including memory, cognitive flexibility, and executive function. He then goes on with those quote:
“Physical fitness is not separate from executive performance. The ability to think clearly under pressure, recover from demanding periods, sustain energy across long days, and make high-quality decisions consistently all depend, in part, on how well we manage the system responsible for every one of those outcomes—ourselves. Executives who maintain consistency do not rely on having extra discretionary time. Instead, they plan for constraints, recognizing that board meetings may run long, travel can disrupt routines, and priorities often shift.”
Consistency remains the key to success, but it can’t just be any type of consistency. It needs to be a special type, i.e. doing the right things consistently. Accountability helps achieve this type of consistency. Another key factor is fostering a sense of belonging or making the employee feel respected and important. Also having a good work environment helps too. The article ends on this quote:
“Long-term success rarely results from extraordinary willpower. More often, it comes from systems that make it easier to show up, reconnect, and progress over time.”
This is great Boomer advice. I can visualize a Grandmother-type shaking her finger and providing output. If tech execs follow this set of suggestions, will people trust them, their companies, and their products? Absolutely.
Whitney Grace, September 17, 2026
Insecure Managers Watch: Whistle While You Shirk
March 27, 2025
It’s never been easier to spy…er…watch employees while they work. Systems track employees and their work. Employees are monitored with software that’s akin to spyware except it wears a white hat (sort of) instead of a black one. Computer World says that employers are spying…er…monitoring their employees more than ever: “Electronic Employee Monitoring Reaches An All-Time High.”
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported that 80% of companies are tracking remote and hybrid workers. Everything from keystrokes to tone in communications is being recorded. This is often happening without the knowledge of the employees. Meanwhile Gartner believes that spying…er…watching employees is up 30% from 2024, making it 71%.
One reason employees are being monitored more is that return-to-office mandates aren’t working. Employers aren’t enforcing them because employees value flexibility to work where they’re most productive. There’s also a changing workplace trend that employees value supportive management. If the support isn’t there, they’re not afraid to share their discontent online.
Employees are worried about the spying…er…monitoring:
“The constant oversight is stressing workers. In a survey of 1,500 US-based employers and 1,500 workers by ExpressVPN, 24% said they take fewer breaks to avoid looking idle, while 32% feel pressured to work faster. In response, 16% fake productivity with unnecessary apps, 15% schedule emails, and 12% use tools to evade detection. Nearly half (49%) would consider leaving if surveillance increased, with 24% willing to accept a pay cut to avoid it. ‘Surveillance may seem like a solution for improving efficiency, but it’s clearly eroding trust and morale in the workplace,’ said Lauren Hendry Parsons, ExpressVPN’s Digital Privacy Advocate. ‘As companies adopt increasingly invasive tools, they risk losing the loyalty and well-being of their workforce.’”
When employees are watched it lowers their productivity. Many of them also want a disclosure about being monitored and how their information is being used.
Maybe the modern workplace works better as a prison?
Whitney Grace, March 27, 2025
Why Search Sucks: The MVP Approach Maybe?
April 13, 2020
I read what seems to be a modern management write up. The implicit idea is that when developing an app or other software, people get excited. The coder or the team thinks of the many nifty things the new gizmo can deliver. What happens? There are Windows 10 and Apple OSX updates that brick a user’s computer? There are services like Quibi which fall over on Day One because scaling didn’t happen. There are other examples ranging from Google’s wild and crazy Zoom killers to Zoom’s encryption which wasn’t and still may not be… encrypted.
“Why We Are Hardwired to Focus on the Wrong Parts of our Product” seeks to explain why flawed apps and software are the norm. Remember? That’s the big hump in the middle of standard distribution. The challenge today is producing software that sort of works; that is, good enough for today’s often clueless user.
The write up asserts:
Iterative product development achieves its speed through a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach. MVP means taking the possible feature set that could be included in a product, or the possible functionality a specific feature could deliver, and cutting it down to the minimum needed to bring value to the end-user.
The consequence of MVP: The bell curve of failure.
The MVP process primes us to want to regain the value we believe we’ve lost. As soon as the product is live, we fall into a weakness-based, additive strategy, where we are compelled to add new functionality in order to win back our lost value (real or imagined).
This weakness-based mindset gets further reinforced when we start analyzing data and feedback. Because loss aversion causes us to focus on losses more than gains, we are more likely to gloss over positive signals and areas of strength and focus instead on the areas of the product that “aren’t working.”
What’s the fix? Here you go:
Analyze what works
Move from addition to subtraction
Understand your strengths.
Sound too good to be true? Well, the approach may be good enough. I am waiting for a book called Thinking Wronger: A Basic Guide.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2020
Enterprise Document Management: A Remarkable Point of View
March 3, 2020
DarkCyber spotted “What Is an Enterprise Document Management (EDM) System? How to Implement Full Document Control.” The write up is lengthy, running about 4,000 words. There are pictures like this one:
ECM is enterprise content management and in the middle is Enterprise Document Management which is abbreviated DMS, not EDM.
The idea is that documents have to be managed, and DarkCyber assumes that most organizations do not manage their content — regardless of its format — particularly well until the company is involved in a legal matter. Then document management becomes the responsibility of the lawyers.
In order to do any type of document or content management, employees have to follow the rules. The rules are the underlying foundation of the article. A company manufacturing interior panels for an automaker will have to have a product management system, an system to deal with drawings (paper and digital), supplier data, and other bits and pieces to make sure the “door cards” are produced.
The problem is that guidelines often do not translate into consistent employee behavior. One big reason is that the guidelines don’t fit into the work flows and the incentive schemes do not reward the time and effort required to make sure the information ends up in the “system.” Many professionals write something, text it, and move on. Enterprise systems typically do not track fine grained information very well.
Like enterprise search, the “document management” folks try to make workers who may be concerned about becoming redundant, a sick child, an angry boss, or any other perturbation in the consultant’s checklist ignore many information rules.
There is an association focused on records management. There are companies concerned with content management. There are vendors who focus on images, videos, audio, and tweets.
The myth that an EDM, ECM, or enterprise search system can create an affordable, non invasive, legally compliant, and effective way to deal with the digital fruit cake in organizations is worth lots of money.
The problem is that these systems, methods, guidelines, data lakes, federation technologies, smart software, etc. etc. don’t work.
The article does a good job of explaining what a consultant recommends. The information it presents provides fodder for the marketing animals who are going to help sell systems, training, and consulting.
The reality is that humans generate information and use a range of systems to produce content. Tweets about a missed shipment from a person mobile phone may be prohibited. Yeah, explain that to the person who got the order in the door and kept the commitment to the customer.
There are conferences, blogs, consulting firms, reports, and BrightPlanet videos about managing information.
The write up states:
There is no use documenting and managing poor workflows, processes, and documentation. To survive in business, you have to adapt, change and improve. That means continuously evaluating your business operations to identify shortfalls, areas for improvements, and strengths for continuous investment. Regular internal audits of your management systems will enable you to evaluate the effectiveness of your Enterprise Document Management solution.
Right. When these silver bullet, pie-in-the-sky solutions cost more than budgeted, employees quit using them, and triage costs threaten the survival of the company — call in the consultants.
Today’s systems do not work with the people actually doing information creation. As a result, most fail to deliver. Sound familiar? It should. You, gentle reader, will never follow the information rules unless you are specifically paid to follow them or given an ultimatum like “do this or get fired.”
Tweet that and let me know if you managed that information.
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2020
Editorial Controls and Data Governance: A Rose by Any Other Name?
June 16, 2017
I read “Why Interest In “Data Governance” Is Increasing.” The write up uses a number of terms to describe what I view as editorial controls. The idea in my experience is that an organization decides what it okay and not okay with regards to the information it wants to process. The object is to know what content will be processed before the organization kick starts indexing, metadata tagging, or text analysis.
The organization then has to figure out and implement the rules of the game. Questions like “What do we do when entities are not recognized?” and “Who goes through the exceptions file?” must be answered. Rules, procedures, processes, and corrective actions have to be implemented in the work flow. One cannot calculate costs, headcount, or software expenses unless one knows what’s going to happen.
The write up explains that data governance is important. I agree. The write up hooks the notion of editorial controls and editorial process to a number of buzzwords. I don’t think this type of jargon catalog is particularly helpful. Jargon distracts some people from focusing on Job One; that is, putting appropriate controls in place before nuking the budget or creating the type of editorial craziness which Facebook and Google are now trying to contain and manage.
The notion that an organization has to perform “data program management” is fine. But this is nothing more than hooking the editorial rules of the road to the responsibilities of the people who have to set up, oversee, and change the work flow.
Jargon does not help implement editorial controls. Clear thinking and speaking do.
Stephen E Arnold, June 16, 2017
Watson Weakly: IBM Case Manager Includes Watson
October 28, 2015
I read “IBM Case manager Provides Tailored Content Management.” For those of you not keeping track of IBM’s product line, may I share with you that IBM Case Manager is a wrapper perched on top of FileNet?
Remember FileNet?
In 2006, yep, nine short years ago, IBM purchased FileNet for $1.6 billion. I stumbled literally upon FileNet when I was doing some work for one of the financial outfits who once found me mildly amusing. FileNet was founded in 1982. The company scanned checks and other documents, stored the images on optical discs, and made the contents searchable—sort of.
The hardware was pure 1982: Big machines, big scanners, and lots of humans doing tasks. Over time, FileNet updated its human dependent system to become more automated. FileNet was a proprietary set up and required lots of engineers, programmers, and specialists to set up the system and keep it humming along at 2 am when most back office operations were performed in the 1980s.
Enter IBM.
FileNet is still available. But IBM has created applications which are designed to make the system more saleable in today’s market. The IBM Case Manager includes FileNet and workflow, collaboration, and compliance tools. You can now run FileNet from a mobile device. When I first stubbed my toe on a giant scanning system, folks were using nifty green screens. Progress.
The 1980s are gone. IBM now delivers a case manager. Keep in mind, gentle reader, that case management is a solution keenly desired by many in law enforcement and certain intelligence disciplines. The US government continues to search for a case management system that meets its various units’ requirements. I would suggest that some of the products available as commercial off the shelf software do not do the job. But let’s focus on what the article reveals about IBM Case Manager.
The article points out that IBM Case Manager includes these components:
- A unified interface. Always good for a busy user.
- A data capture and parsing module.
- Information life cycle tools. The idea is that one can comply with Federal regulations and make darned sure information has a “kill on” date.
- A content manager which “provides features for capture, workflow, collaboration, and compliance on both mobile and desktop [devices].”
- SoftLayer which makes IBM Case Manager a cloud application. But licensees can install the system on premises or use a hybrid approach which can be exciting for engineers and investigators.
But the big news in the article is contained in this passage, which I circled in dollar bill green:
Analytics, which is a set of packages that includes IBM Watson, which can glean insight from business content, present that insight in the right context, and identify patterns and trends.
I did not know that IBM Case Management included Watson. My understanding was that Watson was the new IBM; therefore, Watson includes IBM Case Management.
Perhaps this is a minor point, but since we are dealing with technology from the 1980s, open source code, and wrappers which add a range of user experience features, I think getting the horse and cart lined up correctly can be helpful at times.
Another remarkable revelation in the article is that IBM Case Manager is for “enterprise of all sizes.” There you go. The local Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, car wash and grocery can use IBM Case Management with Watson to help the proprietors deal with their information demands.
May I suggest that FileNet, regardless of its name, is appropriate for outfits like banks, hospitals, and meaty government agencies.
I also learned:
IBM Case Manager can be used to monitor social media sites to get a reading on public sentiment on a given subject or brand. Case Manager can also provide collaboration with social media platforms.
I have updated my Watson files and noted that IBM Case Manager includes Watson or is it the other way around?
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2015
SharePoint 2016 Beta is Coming Soon
August 13, 2015
There is a lot of excitement about the future of SharePoint. Microsoft wants to capitalize on the good buzz but in their excitement the timeline has gotten skewed. It seems that the most recent change is in their favor, however. CMS Wire covers the story in their article, “Cancel Your Plans: SharePoint 2016 Beta is (Almost) Here.”
The author begins:
“For the past couple of years, we IT pros really haven’t known what our place in the world was going to be with SharePoint. But I feel like in the past couple of months I’ve seen the future. At least for me, as an IT pro, part of that future is identity. So you’re going to be hearing a lot more about that from me. But also the reason you’re going to be hearing about a lot of that is because next month — August — we’re going to get our first public beta of SharePoint 2016.”
The beta release will come earlier than projected. Lots of updates will come fast and frequently once the release is available, making it difficult to stay ahead of the curve. In order to sort through the chaos, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com, a website carefully curated by Stephen E. Arnold. His SharePoint feed is a great way to stay in touch with the latest news, without being overwhelmed by the unnecessary details.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Organizations Should Consider Office 365 Utilization
July 30, 2015
Office 365 has been a bit contentious within the community. While Microsoft touts it as a solution that gives users more of the social and mobile components they were wishing for, it has not been widely adopted. IT Web gives some reasons to consider the upgrade in its article, “Why You Should Migrate SharePoint to Office 365.”
The article says:
“Although SharePoint as a technology has matured a great deal over the years, I still see many businesses struggling with issues related to on-premises SharePoint, says Simon Hepburn, director of bSOLVe . . . You may be thinking: ‘Are things really that different using SharePoint on Office 365?’ Office 365 is constantly evolving and as I will explain, this evolution brings with it opportunities that your business should seriously consider exploring.’”
Of course the irony is that with the new SharePoint 2016 upgrade, Microsoft is giving users a promise to stand behind on-premise installations, but they are continuing to integrate and promote the Office 365 components. Only time and feedback will dictate the continued direction of the enterprise solution. In the meantime, stay tuned to Stephen E. Arnold and his Web service, ArnoldIT.com. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and his dedicated SharePoint feed is a one-stop-shop for all the latest news, tips, and tricks.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Blackberry Gets Alerted
July 23, 2015
The idea of industrial strength notifications is understood in some mission critical entities. For most folks who focus on marketing hyperbole, the notion of an alert is a Twitter message or a real news release.
Blackberry, confused and baffled Blackberry, has realized that commercial alerts can be a good business. According to “Blackberry to Buy Crisis Alerts Firm AtHoc,”
AtHoc’s communications software is essentially a messaging alerts system, but for entities that need to exchange potentially sensitive and critical information between devices, organizations and people when other forms of communication may be unavailable. The software supports a variety of devices and platforms, including iOS, Android, PCs and Macs.
At Hoc has interesting technology. There is the alert function. The company also features filtering and scheduling activities and a number of content processing functions.
I like At Hoc. I assume the sale will not significant alter the At Hoc products and services. But, hey, it is Blackberry.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2015
Jury Is Still Out on Microsoft Delve
June 11, 2015
Sometimes hailed as Pinterest for the enterprise, Microsoft Delve is a combination of search, social, and machine learning, which produces an information hub of sorts. Delve is also becoming a test subject, as enterprise experts decide whether such offerings intrude into users’ workflow, or enhance productivity. Read more in the Search Content Management article, “Microsoft Delve May Drive Demand for Office365.”
The article summarizes the issue:
“As Microsoft advances further in its mobile-first, cloud-first strategy, new offerings such as Microsoft Delve are piquing companies’ curiosity but also raising eyebrows. Many companies will have to gauge whether services like Delve can enhance worker productivity or run the risk of being overly intrusive.”
As SharePoint unveils more about its SharePoint Server 2016, more will become known about how it functions along with all of its parts, including Delve. It will be up to the users to determine how efficient the new offerings will be, and whether they help or hinder a regular workflow. Until the latest versions become available for public release, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com for the latest news regarding SharePoint and how it may affect your organization. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and his work on SharePoint is a great go-to resource for users and managers alike.
Emily Rae Aldridge, June 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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