Nov 18 2007
iRise Executive Roundtable | Mexico City: Measurement & Security Dominates Discussion
Along with 30 IT executives, I attended the final iRise Executive Roundtable event of the year in Mexico City last weekend. The event was held in conjunction with the Grand Prix of Mexico, the last race of the year for the Champ Car World Series. The weather was perfect, the networking was world-class and the content was stellar.
It all started with a fabulous dinner at the W Hotel on Friday evening, at which PKV Racing driver Neel Jani talked to the group about how he gets mentally psyched for racing and what it’s like to approach turn one at the Mexico City track at 195 MPH!
On Saturday morning there was 4 hours of great content. Leading off was Doug Hubbard, who runs his own consulting firm called Hubbard Decision Research and is the author of the book “How to Measure Anything; Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business.” 
Doug has spent many years working with IT leaders on ways to measure risk and assess chances of success. He talked about the “risk paradox” prevalent in many organizations: the highest risk problems get the least attention. Companies simply are not good at assessing risk and measuring things, because most people think the toughest problems are intangible (i.e. not measurable). Doug very skillfully and quickly proved to the group that this point of view is not based in fact. Anything can be measured by asking two simple questions: “What do you mean?” and “Why do you care?,” followed by controlled experiments and observation.
After working with many companies over the last 12 years, Doug has some interesting views on project failure. For instance, after doing some exhaustive research Doug concluded that the chances of a large IT project being canceled turns out to be 1.2% for every month the project continues; in other words, the longer (and larger) a project lasts, the greater the chance it will be canceled before completion. Doug pointed out that high yield (junk) bonds default less than large IT projects! Not a good situation.
The bottom line? Doug ended with the following three points: Information reduces uncertainty, reduced uncertainty improves decisions and improved decisions have observable consequences with measurable value. So measure the tough problems and use those measurements to make better business decisions. Good advice for any IT organization.
We also heard from Bob Strang, CEO of Investigative Management Group. Bob and his team are all law enforcement veterans and are experts on corporate security issues. It’s no secret that the world of corporate risk and security has changed dramatically in the last 15 years. According to Bob, the new flavor of corporate security officer must have both a law enforcement background, as well as the technology experience to face new kinds of security threats enabled by the Internet. The whole topic of security, according to Bob, has moved “from the basement to the boardroom” as the focus shifts from physical to cyber threats. There’s a good reason for this shift. Bob cited recent statistics from OSHA that concludes the U.S. loses $1.6 trillion every year due to fraud, identity theft, data theft and property destruction. Amazing stuff.
One great recommendation from Bob was that security organizations from different companies need to collaborate, even if they are in the same, competitive business. Sharing information is really the only way to keep ahead of the bad guys. Another solid piece of advice was to make sure that your company has a written, published set of policies that document a high standard of care that protects corporate data and physical property.
Following the formal content, the group had lunch at the track and received a rare, ‘backstage’ pass to the world’s fastest sports, with garage tours, pit lane walks and talks by the drivers. The weekend ended with a satisfying third place finish for PKV Racing driver Oriol Servia and a trip to victory circle for the roundtable participants. 
We got lots of great feedback on the event, including this from a CIO: “The whole weekend was masterfully organized. Both the roundtable and the Champ Car events were great, insightful and fun.”
The next executive roundtable event will be held January 25-27 in conjunction with the world famous Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona in Florida…can’t wait!