Michael N. Dundas

Terry Gillis of Carswell Partners wrote a post on your image, specifically your attire when at work.  In his post, Terry questions why people would dress wearing Cargo pants, flip-flops and other less professional attire when going to work.  I get his question and it is something that I have struggled with my entire career.

When I first started my career, I was employed by a bank.  Like you might expect at a bank, most dressed in a reasonably professional manner.  Dress pants, buttoned shirt, dress shoes for the technical and support staff.  Managers often added a tie.  Senior executives typically wore suits.  There were some exceptions, but for the most part that was the norm.  Being new to my job, I unconsicously followed the trend, typically wearing  dress pants, buttoned shirt, dress shoes configuration.  People when meeting you, immediately assumed a certain position level, experience, and intelligence based on what you wore.  I also observed that people who chose to dress differently than their role, a non-manager that suddenly wore a tie for example would be noticed.  Many wouldn’t say anything, but you could tell by their body language they noticed it. Sometimes there would be a comment like “Joe is wearing a tie today, he must be interviewing” or something to that effect.  It was almost a way of indirectly saying “your dress doesn’t match your role.”

Eventually, I left the bank to work for a small consulting firm.  This firm provided network security and network designs for tier 1 service providers around the world.  I was also now interacting with both engineers and executive management on a regular basis.  Initially, I tried dressing more formally wearing a jacket and sometimes a tie.  The problem was that most engineers didn’t take me very seriously.  They would initially view me as a management type that didn’t understand the ‘technical details of network flows and security’.   I would consciously dispel those thoughts in the first few meetings, but I found I had to make a point of proving my technical capabilities and it caused the relationship to have a much ‘slower’ start.  If however I matched the technical teams dress, things were easier.  It was a weird correlation to me, but it seemed to be present at most clients I visited.  Of course, the reverse was also true.  When I had meetings where I was providing updates to the executives, things seemed to go much better when I was dressed similar to what they were wearing.

Today, working for a financial institution once again, I actually dress depending on what I am doing for the day, who I am meeting and which location I will be in.  If I am working at head-office (usually 2-3 times per week) I wear a suit and tie.  I find that most dress business formal at head-office.  If I am at one of our other locations, then it is business casual which is dress pants, shirt and optional jacket (although I usually have a jacket on).  On Friday’s the business causal seems acceptable at head-office as well.

Where did the idea of wearing flip-flops to work come from?  Well, I am no expert my first experience was when working for small tech companies.  I realized they rarely if ever dressed formally.   That was actually one of the perks.  If you were smart, good at what you did, and had a passion for the work, then they hired you based on that.  Didn’t matter what you wore, if you had an earring or a tattoo.  Look at most pictures or videos of Steve Jobs from Apple – Jeans and a black t-shirt is his standard attire.  These companies believe they are hiring you for your passion, knowledge, and skill – period.    During this part of my career, I always had a change of clothes in my office, car or hotel. If external clients or potential clients were visiting, I would quickly change, otherwise I dressed comfortably and casual.  I remember times when a group of us would be interviewing potential candidates for technical positions and if the candidate overdressed, a comment was usually made after the interview had concluded.  It wasn’t a decision point, but it was noted.

One of the reasons I try really hard to consciously not judge someone based on their dress but on their personality, what they say and how they act is because of my experiences with dress.  The turning point for me was when I realized that by dressing certain ways, you can make others feel more comfortable or less comfortable, depending on what you want to achieve.  If you want people to be comfortable working with you, dress plays a key factor.  Logically this doesn’t make sense to me, and I personally try hard to not judge based on dress.  But I have learned that depending on the environment dressing appropriately makes things a little easier for me and more importantly the people I interact with so I try to follow along as much as possible.

I have read and been told by researchers and vendors over the years about a “best practices” for this technology or for that type of deployment.  I have discussed best practices with clients as a consultant, as a vendor promoting products to a potential customer,and as a consumer of a particular technology or design.  The ‘best practices’ concept seems to come and go over the years.   Recently, the frequency of mention of ‘best practices’ has been dramatically increasing in my world.  I am not sure if this is due to a general trend in the industry, or just myself being back in the financial services world.

I have always been very wary of ‘best practice’ when it is mentioned and when it is applied I tend to scrutinize it.  Here is why.

1. Lessens the sense of ownership. After all, you didn’t really create the solution.  You followed the ‘best practices’ for the particular solution you were deploying.  Sure, you added a few twists and exceptions, but really the bulk of it was already predefined.  If something goes wrong, it is not totally your fault.  After all you followed best practices right?

2. Stifles innovation and creativity. You don’t have to come up with a solution, create or design a system to handle a particular problem.  It is already created by ‘best practices’.  Obviously the best practices are proven and smarter people came up with them than your team.  Why re-invent the wheel?

3.  Who declared it to be best practice? I have never seen scientific reasoning for why something is considered a best practice.  Typically, the rationalization is that everyone else has done it this way, so it is the ‘best practice’.  If your competitors have all done it this way, then should you really spend the time figuring out if they have done it right?  If they all did it, then obviously it is the best way to go.

4.  Used as manipulation by vendors. Every vendor tries to manipulate ‘best practices’ to favour the particular set of technologies they are trying to sell you.   They often do this by ‘teaching’ the customer about best practices and how their product suite best fits.  It also assists them to influence your decision making process.  By touting ‘best practices’ they can elegantly neutralize employees ideas on how to solve a particular problem when their solution may not fit.  They are not personally telling you that your ideas are wrong, the best practices are.  They are just helping you understand so you don’t make a mistake.

I do believe ‘best practices’ have their place.  A project team should consider all ‘best practices’.  The ‘best practices’ provided by your current vendor, ‘best practices’ provided by your current vendors competitors.   The team should research ‘best practices’ that are not vendor related.  These should be given weight, but less weight than that of the project teams opinions.

Ideally, the team comes up with the design that meets the requirements.  Once and only once the team is comfortable with their solution, it is vetted it against the ‘best practices’.   Using this approach, the team feels a sense of ownership for the solution.  The team created something based on requirements and their skills and knowledge.  They took into consideration the many ‘best practices’ available, tweaked their solution where necessary after careful and conscious thought.  If done correctly, the end result is a solution where a sense of ownership is felt, any innovative and unique ideas were considered and incorporated, best practices were given their due consideration, and the best vendor and technologies are chosen.

photo credit

Working remotely in my opinion is great. I came across this video of an individual April Dunford who works for Nortel. She discusses working remotely and the benefits it offers. From experience, I agree with her comments. My company has a very similar view on working remotely. Personally, I find I am much more productive when I am not in the office than when I am. For me it is the interruptions, meetings, and chats that take away from my productivity. At home during the day there is just me and the Internet, so lots of time to get stuff done and if anyone really needs to get me it’s not difficult, e-mail, phone, VoIP, IM …. just choose your channel.

What actually caught my attention was her name, I knew I had seen it before but at first couldn’t recall from where or when. Then it hit me. She is a friend of a friend and was mentioned on one of his blog entries. She also has a blog.