What's the deal with this housing market?

Well I'm going to reveal a little bit about my recent foray into the chaotic housing market. A few months ago the wife and I decided that with historically low mortgage rates and what we thought were depressed housing prices we could possibly find our true "dream home". If you've followed the news from this particular economic sector you've probably been able to come to the same conclusion we have: financial and industry experts are fools! or, at a minimum the news of a housing crisis has yet to reach the far flung edges of desolate Maryland. If you note a hint of biting sarcasm, its because I'm pouring it on. Before I delve into my tirade against the delusional current home sellers I want to briefly outline our futile attempts to refinance our current home under the federal programs for homeowner with ARM's. To summarize, not-a-gonna happen. Well at least not without a 3rd part mortgage broker acting on our behalf and capturing a small percentage. So what's the challenge?

There seems to be a certain unwillingness amongst the lending institutions to either understand the programs, or they understand, but without any real short term consequences helping qualified homeowners (besides possible foreclosure), they don't see an upside for them. I think it's funny that these same institutions incentivize the origination of new and refinanced loans but there seems to be a disincentive for loan officers to use these programs - you should hear the change in tone when we ask about refinancing under one of these programs; diagnosed victims of head lice are probably chippier (yes. I looked up chippier and it is a word:). Round and round we've gone with several different departments and uninterested people who seem to exist if only to transfer us to their unhappy cousins in the "I will be uber polite and unhelpful" department. Maybe recent incentives provided to those mortgage lenders who do convert loans and write down principal balances will help some? Anyways, eventually we prevailed and were able to refinance and lower our payments enough to consider renting our home and moving to a Single Family home. Would be nice to sell, but in this market, are you kidding me?

So speaking of the home selling market: why do home builders and sellers in Maryland immediately think that there doing you a favor by selling you a home. Some of the builders and home sellers we've encountered almost seem indignant when we request things like closing cost help and other seller incentives. I get it. 3-4 years ago you had 10 contracts on your home by the time your realtor hit the enter key into the MLS database. Over the last few months we've actually noted a decrease in private home listings in the counties/communities were interested in. New home construction seemed to be the way to go, however all the homes we liked were still going for 2004 prices. Certainly not prices from the top of the housing boom, but definitely not prices reflecting a buyers market. Some sales people have even had the audacity to tell us: "you shouldn't settle on options, if you have better offers then you should take them". Now mind you this isn't a comment resulting from multiple back and forth sessions of negotiations and counter-offers, but in one contract meeting. There wasn't even a suggestion from the salesperson that they could possibly work with us - It wasn't like we were asking for gold-plated faucets. I understand that our area is predicted to weather the economic storm a little better than most U.S. states, but these significant job increases that the media keep reporting are going to arrive, aren't here yet. Well at least the majority aren't. With all the disillusionment we've experienced we've decided to take the following article's advice and wait a little a longer to see how the market turns, after all we've already gotten hosed once.

What's the deal with this housing market?

Team building is vital to productivity

In my current position one of my informal responsibilities is to try to maintain and increase employee morale. My organization believes that there is a correlation between between high employee morale and work productivity, especially in light of some of their challenging work situations. Most of our employees work individually as representatives of our company. They are matrixed as part of a project team normally comprised of many different companies brought together to work on a specific set of customer challenges. As employees working individually for long periods of time we like to ensure that they still feel a part of our organization. I make significant efforts to reach out and contact all the employees on a weekly basis, attempt group outings to professional sporting events, lunches, happy hours etc.. this is often more challenging than it sounds because we have employees from different backgrounds and experiences and finding a common activity that will build team cohesion is daunting. I still find myself meeting some employees one on one because they don't enjoy group setting's (developers are a tricky bunch). I'm soliciting input and attempting to find commonality amongst the group to see what the best types of team building activities are that will be more inclusive.

Part of ensuring that our employees are content with our organization has two purposes: one, to ensure that they remain productive and contributing members of their project team and two, to continue to maintain low employee turnover. It would probably be a poor idea to allow an unhappy employee to remain unhappy while working with teammates from several other companies. One of the hurdles in maintaining morale is that our company can only really impact our employees while the other matrixed teammates are left to hope that the Project Lead will spend time trying to build team cohesion - this often doesn't occur and we end up with the have and have-not's. Inevitably our employees are requested to remain humble and ensure that they continue to serve the clients while building inroads and collaborating with their teammates.

As much time as I spend attempting to build unity, communication and cohesion amongst our matrixed employees I have a serious challenge ahead of me with my own new team. There is disconnect between the client and the Project Team due to some avoidable confrontations in the last few months. As a new member I have the unenviable task of not only selling myself as a valuable, contributing teammate but to also try to repair this fractured relationship with the client and the team. Fortunately I came to the team with a previous rapport with both the client and members of the Project Team. I think that if I remain communicative with both sides and show my willingness to learn, listen and actively contribute to the development of the system I can hopefully ingratiate myself to both groups and repair the damage.

Cloud Computing...

I believe that Cloud Computing technology has the most direct and beneficial application for my current organization. In fact we are currently transitioning to using a cloud approach to providing application services like Microsoft Office tools, files systems and access to certain databases. This approach allows a large and geographically disperse organization to optimize the use of valuable hardware and network resources. As I support the Department of Defense we are afforded the resources necessary to host our own cloud and eliminate the need to pay subscription fees to an external partner. Though each organization does not have to pay for the servers hosting the apllications and storing the data, they are responsible for any new software applications, integration activities, new storage hardware and all licenses. The real value though is the cost savings of installing and maintaining individual CPU's and servers - technicians now remotely access user terminals to either installnew software or troubleshoot malfunctioning software. Other than dropping new network connections or fixing hardware issues such as media drives and power supplies tech's can remain in the central Tech Center and thus less techs are needed for the IT dept.

Real challenges do exist though and they mainly relate to the challenges with integrating software or hardware that isn't a part of the architectural baseline. Small changes require lengthy planning discussions, review boards, integration schedules, readiness reviews and endless amounts of documentation and that's only if the IT group likes your software/hardware. Time is invaluable in our business and these extensive lead times cost a significant amount, and because they are generally inflexible, quick reaction capabilities have to be forced down their throat by senior leadership. Security is also a significant issue, either our organizational restrictions and security constraints hinder the IT group development and integration of custom built applications or the security rules governing why we need certain applications require lengthy explanations - Jeff from Legg Mason mentioned this when we discussing security. IT basically locks down everything and then requires each individual group to explain why they need certain items and that each group acknowledges the risks asscoiated with sending email. Yes. Even why we needed Outlook had to be explained at length.

The new corporate leaders wear camo

Recently I've seen several news pieces touting the warm welcome the corporate world is providing former Junior Officers (Lt.'s and Capt.'s) who have recently left military service. I definitely think this trend is a good one for a new, revitalized, corporate America. I must caveat my blog with the fact that I may be a tad biased because I was prior military, however I think I have some strong points that stand on their own merit.

Recently Gallup polls were used to survey the importance of ethics in the workplace - they surveyed both junior management employees in the corporate world and junior military officers re-entering civilian life. Can you guess which group had over 80% of its respondents strongly agree with the following statement "ethics were more important than profits", and which group had less than 50% agree (only 20% strongly agreed). As a business student I've seen this trend in polls and surveys over the last two years so I'm not surprised, but with the extent of the damage the financial industry inflicted on the U.S. economy based on sketchy lending and insurance practices you'd think the trend would slowly be trending upward.. I'm still waiting. One of the first things we learn in the military are strong core values: core values like honesty, commitment, integrity, duty and loyalty. These values are ingrained and reinforced through continuous training and real-world examples like the battlefield where your actions in the office can lead to possible life and death consequences - can you imagine if the leadership at AIG had thought for a minute that the risk of insuring the risky loans could result in the death of themselves or co-workers they would have taken the risk? I know it sounds extremist but military leaders think about the outcomes for their decisions and action in bigger terms than simple dollars and sense.

It's not that I don't think great leadership can only be found within the ranks of the military, but I think that this background does provide a great training platform for future success. Now I do think, and the articles assert this, the challenges with military officers is learning the corporate culture and subtle ways of conducting business and achieving group consensus vs. the military way of one person telling the team what they're going to do. The military realizes that for their leaders to be successful, not only in their post military life, but also while in service require leaders to be able to become adaptable to changing situations where they may not have direct training or experience along with self-awareness this builds dynamic leaders who don't require direct order to be effective. The above referenced articles state that this common myth about prior military officers is being quickly refute by those recently entering the civilian workforce - these officers feel that have the right experience and ability to motivate employees accustomed to a less formal and direct working style. One former Army Captain now working at Google has never had any direct reports but is still tasked with gathering teams together to work on projects .. he says his experience in the military has taught him how to motivate and get individuals excited about work and new ideas and helps lure developers onto projects. Remaining results focused rather than focusing on protocol also helps bridge the gap between himself and his team.

Is the U.S. Senate Broken?

After watching an interesting new segment on CBS Sunday Morning I'm starting to wonder if any piece of legislation that isn't titled "Humans Breath Oxygen Act", will be signed into law. This, of course, non-withstanding the eventual debate about exactly who gave humans that ability or whose now responsible for maintaining it.. I'm sure some "O2'ers" Senators from the wide open mid-western states will prove to be the swing votes necessary achieve successful passage. The news segment was focused specifically on the increasingly popularity of the parliamentary obstructionist move named the "Filibuster". The filibuster has been hampering the progress of legislation for a millenia, in fact even the famous conqueror Julius Caesar was stopped dead in his tracks by lengthy speeches by Cato the Younger, who applied this technique when blocking the political moves of Caesar.

So the filibuster in our Senate allows for Senators to speak for as long as they want on any topic until debate is ended by 60 or more Senators invoking cloture (hence, this big deal about a super-majority), and ending debate. Well in the famous Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" Jimmy Stewart uses the filibuster to stop political corruption and attack graft in the Senate. It has been traditionally been used to ensure the minority part still has the ability influence legislation - not control it. In the 50's and 60's this tactic was rarely used, throughout the 70's, 80's and 90's it was employed 20-30 times a year on average. Since 2008, when the Democrats took over both the Senate and House the filibuster has been used a total of 118 times... this year we're on track to easily break that 2008 record. Wow ... your probably thinking "that's a lot of speeches and talking", well my friends you would be wrong. There is virtually no talking, other then when then the selected representative of the minority party gets up to the microphone and points out that there aren't enough votes to invoke cloture. No real hard work there. Essentially we've made the ability to interrupt and halt the legislative process easy. Wow I pay $$$ a year to a bunch of clowns to sit around and figure out how not to get things done until 2 years from now when all there hard work (insert biting sarcasm here) will be rewarded and they now possess the majority... ooh but that is meaningless unless it is a "Super-Majority" of 60 who can then push through their legislation - not legislation built through compromise and common ground that protects and provides for all (well, heck, most would be something). Yikes, as citizens we are seemingly rewarding doing nothing. Note I haven't targeted any particular party because ironically the Democrats who are now the target of the Filibuster had the opportunity to end the need for a Super Majority in 2005 when the Republicans (of course tired of being the target themselves) proposed a rule change that would require only a simple majority to invoke cloture. Interestingly enough the Democrats screamed bloody murder about the unfairness of it all.... Now Dem's are the ones proposing to change the rules, what do you think Republicans are saying?

We need to stop rewarding those Senators who refuse to compromise and cross party lines to achieve consenus legislation or I fear will be forever mired in unending debate that will result in one side of every issue being left feeling like they have no voice.

Managing Organizational IT Security

As most of my followers (all 9 of you), may know our most recent subject in class dealt with organizational security. Protecting business from internal and external threats. Our two speakers represented the same organization from two different areas of IT security. Our first speaker was responsible for tackling issues related to Internet fraud, sensitive corporate information being shared, unintentionally or intentionally, and intellectual property issues. The other guest speaker from Legg Mason was charged with the IT infrastructure security - ensuring that IT property and corporate systems are well protected from intrusions, theft and other security issues. Both representing necessary roles within a firm to ensure that the customers, corporate IT systems and the company image are protected.

I found our first speakers role as extremely challenging and difficult for such a small team monitoring such a large spectrum (the World Wide Web) and tackling issues of fraud and blackmail while handling the various language barriers with a small team of virtual novices in a poorly defined role. Their ability to build relationships with the various local, federal and international law enforcement agencies to handle the relatively new frontier of Intellectual Property on the Internet is amazing. She describe how they have to use cleverly designed web crawlers that perform intensive web searches for certain key words that may signal an issue requiring her teams legal expertise to resolve. Additionally, her team seems poised to newly define the role of IT Intellectual Property - the team seems to find new ways to investigate possible leads .. they have no formal training or professional investigators but her team finds a way to discover who is infringing, stealing or blackmailing them while attempting to remain anonymous.. They don't just use the Internet either.. they make phone calls and perform investigative type activities to discover the criminals. Sounded really cool.

The second speaker spoke to us about the need bridge the gap between leadership and the employees and that the ability to understand the real meaning of corporate strategic direction and apply this to your projects and activities. Seems like it's always about bridging the divide between business and IT, right? He also reveled some valuable insight into how organization protect their IT resources, and why. He brought the issue of protecting corporate systems through encryption of virtually every facet of Legg Mason IT: files, external drives, hardware and intranets and corporate websites. He explained that that the security modus operandi of locking down all IT and then requiring employee justification for exceptions isn't based on malice but rather is the more sound approach to ensuring that no IT resource is left vulnerable due to an oversight. Examining each individual port request, website, media accessory and access to file system ensures that risks have been weighed and activity can be tracked. Tracking playing and important part in possible legal issues and allowing firms to accurately assess the extent of a security breach that may result in loss of data or exposure of client information.