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Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker,
Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change,
technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences
worldwide, he also writes monthly columns for CIO Magazine and
Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we
think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
If you'd like permission to reprint any
of Peter's articles, please contact him directly.
You can contact him at
pdejager@technobility.com
Or sign the Guest
Book and he'll get back to you.
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After much pain and anguish we’ve
discovered how to build structures to withstand most, but not all,
earthquakes. The key to this significant achievement, is an idea labeled
‘Base Isolation’. The concept is simple enough, we don’t firmly
attach the building to the ground, instead we build it upon a base of
giant metal springs or huge plugs of rubber.
The result? When the earth moves beneath our feet, not all of the
terrifying and horrific movement is transferred to the building. We notice
the shaking, but we don’t come tumbling down like a house of cards. By
creating a loose linkage between the building and the earth, we literally
distance ourselves from Earth’s tantrums.
That same principle of ‘base isolation’ is useful in many endeavors.
In Politics? Don’t link yourself so tightly with another countries
policies that you’re dragged into decisions you’d not have made on
your own. In Technology? Don’t link yourself so deeply into a vendor’s
products to the point where you can’t extricate yourself when they fail
in some unexpected manner.
Someone should have told clients of the @Home service
about ‘base isolation’ when they were
setting up their original e-mail system. It would have saved them, and
their thousands of subscribers a lot of pain and anguish during their
recent shift in e-mail addresses.
If
they’d only spent $75/annum on a URL, through which to funnel all their
customer’s e-mail instead of using the @home.com address, they’d have
themselves saved several million dollars and their 400,000+ users, several
hundred years of combined effort. Some decisions, or perhaps lack of
decision making, can cost disproportionate amounts of effort.
By using the @home.com as part of the ‘
vendors’ e-mail address, they effectively
gave @home total ownership and more importantly, total control over the
entire subscriber base.
Nor is this a case of perfect 20-20 hindsight. Whenever we choose to
engage with someone, whether as an individual or as an organization, we
must at least contemplate a ‘dis-engagement’ strategy. At the very
least contracts come up for renewal, the more we’ve become dependent
upon that relationship, the weaker our bargaining power. There are serious
lessons here for things like outsourcing contracts, or the concept of
‘renting software.’
I am a long suffering Internet Rogers Cable customer, but right from the
start I did one thing right, I used an e-mail alias. A long long time ago,
at the dawn of my internet usage, I decided aliases were the only rational
choice. When
Rogers
announced that the old addresses were
being phased out, I did not have to e-mail several tens of thousands of
people to update their address books, I merely directed my alias to the
new @rogers.com address.
I didn’t choose to use an alias because of any deep insight, in fact I
was a slow learner. It took several of my ISPs going out of business in a
six month period and having to repeatedly inform all my contacts that my
internet identity had changed yet again, before I clued in on the need for
a permanent e-mail address independent from my ISP.
The lesson here? Our e-mail addresses are something we should control as
we would our real world address. Changing your address should always be
your choice and no one else’s. The only way to achieve that goal, is to
own the tail end of your address. Yes it’s an added cost to your
internet usage, but consider the alternative.
© 2005,
Peter de Jager – Peter is passionate about change, how it affects both
individuals and organizations and allows them to grow and prosper. To contact him, and
host internal seminars on Change visit www.technobility.com
For
reprint permissions click here.
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