Notes

Information Asset Management.

defign what is an information asset
data, knowlege, procedures, technological and human connections that are;
necessary to fulfull business practices that directly or indirectly increase profit.

compare value of non-information assets, inventory? machinery
how much do you spend (time and money) protecting/insuring those.
could your business survive the total loss of all non-information assets - probably
could your business survive the total loss of all information assets, very unlikely

basics and not-so basics of digital data and the warm fuzzy of the offisite tape backup.
documentation and backups both must be designed around how they will actually be used when the time comes. backing up everything just to be safe can result in loss or delay of recovery of important data.
live backups, wan topology and other big words

human data, your only real asset, the difference in loss between digital and physical assets is pale in comparison to the difference in the loss of digital and human assets.
understanding what a human assets is so important that you can actually fail miserably at the rest and be very successful. if you watch carefully you will see that how things actually get DONE in your business do not follow your org chart, policies, job descriptions, job requirements and least of all the degrees behind the humans who get the work done.

Subtitle: the memo you never got why you need to take a different view of qualifing potential employees. you must do the hard work of qualifying the qualifier or you must do it yourself; A Harvard MBA does actually have some totally stand alone merrit, still, its worth your time to make sure the persons last name isnt bush and didnt just get pushed through as a favor to daddy but most likely they busted their ass to get that MBA, candidate 2 however started and ran 3 coffee shops in highschool, starting with 5,000 startup captial from their lawnmowing mutal fund savings which they paid back in 6 months and managed to sell the business when they were 19 for $38,000 mostly for the name, locations and equipment were leased, inventory was minimal and they used the money to buy a long lasting and very nice car and to pay their way to move into the big city (your city) with enough to live on for 3 months to find that perfect apprenticeship.

person 2 is both younger and less 'educated' than person 1 but if you got the memo; you should be conflicted. person 1 has proven that they can take instructions from well established leaders of industry and education, good guidence, help from peers with the same goals, and other peoples money that they wont likely have to pay back, and succesfully turned something into something more, person 2 on the other hand is going to make you money, you wont have to tell them how, you wont have to give them a budget you wont have to send them to training, all you have to do is tell them what you do and ask them to do more of it and do it better, they have already proven that they can deliver the goods with little to work on, give them a budget, they can do even more, the real reason you wont hire this person is that you need to represent to other people who have not gotten the memo that you have a highly qualified team. dont feel bad most companies are forced to hire both, why? because person 1 went to ma-n-pa state college for agricultural effectiveness where they slept through class, did 2 hours of work 3 nights a week, partied till they puked and couldnt solve a problem if their life depended on it, but they have that piece of paper that business has become accustomed to accepting equally as 2 different dollar bills, only one of them isnt worth the paper its printed on. sure, the very best programs at the very best schools and graduating at the top of your class, and in particular, grad school does give you a good idea of some accomplishment but still no guarantee of quality just a higher probability, whereas the other 100million degree toating employees to be may or may not have a clue at all, their degree wont tell you that. you have placed your #1 filter criteria in the hands of an accredidation orgainzation that has to meet the demands of federal financal aid guidelines, this whole scheme is no less hollowly aristocratic than the spelling of though, as in 'though I didnt finish college I know the history of that laim attempt to keep the -lessor- people out of the system of goods'.

my examples are extreme but they are very real, to some degree - no pun intended - every new hire you make is affected by this bias. this is not about doing the right thing for the poor guy who doesnt have a degree, screw him, this is business, its about your bottom line - isnt it? so you go on hiring a mouth breather for $80k then, if you are lucky and have at least half a clue, an undiscovered rocket scientist for $45k then to justify this massive waste you nullify the value of the rocket scientist by making the mouth breather his boss, if you would have just hired jonny prop head for $125k to begin with you would have made your investment back hand over fist in no time - after all he has already proven he can do that without any micromanagement or you wouldnt have hired him at all.

things you need to get rid of entirely:
middle management

meetings

paper

faxing

cubicals walls and doors