Rapid reactions hurt

Outrageous things are sometimes true. Don't paint yourself, or your audience, into a corner of disbelief.

• Leadership Moment: Official Transparency

• One Minute Pro Tip: Hold your reaction

• Chapter Teaser: Whether you jump out of an airplane or get pushed out, you still need a parachute.

• (paid) Chapters in Limbo: Predicting your reaction to someone else’s choice might be the best input you can give.

Leadership Moment: Official Transparency

The NFL has an official crisis of trust. It is incredibly difficult to accurately officiate a professional football game, and any error easily confirms a viewer’s belief that the officiating is unfair; that the officials and the league office are conspiring to tip the scales in favor of one team or another. This isn’t entirely tinfoil hat territory; given a set of decisions with a noticeable error rate, even a “fair” and random distribution of errors will result in having some games that were heavily influenced in one direction (if this isn’t obvious, consider that any game might have 3-4 pivotal calls that could tip the scales; even a fair coin flip will likely result in at least one game in a sixteen game week where all of the calls lean in the same direction).

The NFL hasn’t helped itself with its overall policies. It has changed how it officiates rules midseason without notice. Reviews of questionable officiating decisions happen behind closed doors, and professional analysts, players, and fans don’t understand the results. Reporters’ questions are met with vague answers. Calls to improve the state of officiating are ignored.

Enter the XFL. It’s possible – even likely – that the XFL, like most spring football leagues, won’t survive financially. But while it exists, fans can see how a transparent professional sports league can operate. The XFL adds a sky judge - a referee who isn’t on the field, but has the same birds-eye view (and access to video feeds) that fans have. More importantly, when an official’s decision is challenged, the replay official (also the head of officiating) talks through his decision-making process out loud, on camera. While fans might not agree with the decision, they get to see the process, and outrage is minimized.

Letting people see you navigate the path forward is sometimes all you need to reduce mistrust and build engagement, because you reduce their surprise.

One Minute Pro Tip: Hold your reaction

Sometimes, someone comes in and tell you something outrageous and unbelievable. Maybe they tell you that your idea won’t work, for complex technical or operational reasons. Perhaps they tell you something about the organization that is awful. Whatever it is, the first thing through your brain is “That can’t possibly be true.”

Shut up, brain.

Whatever you do, you can’t immediately respond to argue the point. The person might not be perfectly right, but odds are, neither are you. Stop. Think for a moment. Maybe ask them to expound. But don’t dig in and create a hard line that neither of you is going to budge past.

Chapter Teaser

Ch 47: Whether you jump out of an airplane or get pushed out, you still need a parachute.

Events that should be unsurprising in hindsight are often very surprising as they happen. Consider being laid off – it happens to a lot of people, and looking around right now, I don’t think any of your colleagues and friends would be overly surprised if you told them you’d been laid off. Unless you told them you were laid off last week, and then maybe they’d wonder if you were just making excuses to skip out on a gathering of some sort.

But when you find yourself without a job, it doesn’t really matter if you planned to leave, or your company surprised you. You still need to have made a plan and been prepared for what comes next.

Appearances

On February 21, the CISO Series released a new podcast, hosted by me & David Spark, with Dmitriy Sokolovskiy, CISO of Avid.

Giving a slightly longer future view out for folks who might want to join some of these events:

I’ll be hosting an Insight break at the GDS Security Digital Summit on March 2nd, talking about multi-cloud.

On March 8th, I’ll be joining a webinar on “A CISO’s Guide to Salesforce.” Join me as I learn more about SF security.

On March 14th, I’ll be hosting a webinar on Uncovering Hidden Risks in your cloud environments, based on the first part of the ebook I wrote about last week. There should be pi puns, if we remember.

Also on March 14th, I’ll be hosting a dinner with ISE & Valence Security in New York on Ensuring SaaS Security. If this is relevant to you, let me know and I’ll get you an invite!

On March 16th, I’ll appear on a panel at TechStrong Con 2023 on “Is AI in Security a Revolution or Just an Evolution?”

On March 22nd, I’ll be hosting an ISE Fireside webinar on Leading the Charge in Managing Cloud Security Risks as a CISO.

On March 28th, I’ll be hosting a webinar on Cloud Cost Optimization.

On March 30th, I’ll be joining a TechExecs Virtual Roundtable.

On April 11th, I’ll be hosting a webinar on Creating a Cloud Security Strategy in your cloud environments, based on the second part of ebook I wrote about last week.

Below the paywall: a concise method for communicating feedback about job candidates.