Search and Deceive: A Fast Cycle Adventure
May 23, 2011
Here’s how I learn about rumors. Some asks me, “Did you know, Mr. Anonymous, the chief technology office of Big Dreamer Inc. resigned?” I have documented some of these follies in Mysteries of Online.
“Nope, I say.” I am not too curious because in the last couple of months, I have grown weary of the revolving door at search and content processing companies changing executives at a pace more sprightly than Max, the Wonder Boxer can chase squirrels in Harrod’s Creek. The “revolving door syndrome” does not interest me.
A search mistake. Source: www.funnyjunksite.com
The investors and the families win a chance to get tough in life’s lotto. Lives of well meaning, but often search challenged executives, are temporarily disrupted. It is easy to become an expert in search and get into the search consulting pool. Just whip up a LinkedIn page and start selling yourself as an expert in taxonomy, SharePoint, metatagging, business intelligence, big data, open source, visualization, or what ever strikes one’s fantasy. A faux consultant who knows a conference organizer can give a dozen or more talks in an effort to Hoover in as many engagements as possible. Isn’t the modern information economy special.
The whine of the revolving door presages yet another repositioning move by the new management team. You probably have picked up on the “search to business intelligence” or “search to sentiment” type of plays. I would mention search to customer support, but that sector has managed to make “customer support” synonymous with “we don’t want to have any interaction with customers.” So I pay modest attention to that segment’s thrashing like a catfish in the bottom of my neighbor’s bass boat.
So back to search and deceive.
Often, at a remove of a few days or weeks, I hear something along the lines: “Did you know that Big Dreamer Inc. is hiring the Super Competent Analysis Management (SCAM) firm to procure another search system?”
My response is usually, “What vendor was the incumbent?” and “Who handled the installation, integration, optimization, and roll out?”
Most Fortune 1000 firms go after big fish vendors. After a search system is in place or at a very advanced stage, the management panic and throw the floundering search vendor back into the water really fast. (Please, do not conflate this “fast” which means quickly with a very, very popular enterprise search, content management, collaboration, and business intelligence solution.)
The intersection of nuking a CTO on whose watch an enterprise search system was licensed is one tell. The other is the hiring of the SCAM firm to procure a solution to repair the broken information access problem. Unfortunately, the problem not as simple as dumping one search vendor and signing up with another.
This type of firing, hiring, and procuring cycle suggests to me:
- A failure within the management of the licensing customer
- A flawed requirements statement and then a lousy procurement process
- Inadequate resources such as time, know how, money, and infrastructure
- Over reliance on “friends”, in house technical staff, and one’s own confidence in one’s ability to solve any problem.
The most recent rumor concerns Microsoft’s search system, a certain commercial database vendor, and a manager with a new associate of arts degree from the School of Hard Knocks. Today is May 21, 2011. More information as it becomes available to me. Since we don’t do news, I will wait until an open source document becomes available.
Exciting, exciting. Anticipating, anticipating.
Stephen E Arnold, May 23, 2011
Freebie unlike the cost of an education from the School of Hard Knocks
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
