Madeira: Maps Private Value, #1

By Alden Globe

Value Engineer Rave Maps lost a vital business consulting opportunity working on the Portuguese island of Madeira.

Then she nearly lost her life.

 

Rave's VE skills are tested as she struggles to fulfill client obligations racing from Madeira to Toronto, Paris, Steamboat Springs, and St. Lucia fighting to remain a step ahead of BrainRanger AI, an artificial intelligence working to steal her clients and appropriate everything she knows.

 

To survive, Rave must learn to work with another powerful AI. One that has just become… her Digital Twin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alden Globe
• Release date: Jun 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223689249

Alden Globe

Alden Globe grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Victoria College at the University of Toronto, a degree in Law from the University of New Hampshire, and attended executive education at Harvard Business School. His career focuses on speeding access to critical knowledge that improves performance of frontline staff from pilots and customer service agents to IT professionals. Globe has been recognized for technical innovation by IABC, Multimedia Magazine, MISQ, Computerworld, Smithsonian, US West, J.D. Edwards, Microsoft, Jeppesen a Boeing Co., and BMC Software. He lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Book preview

INVISIBLE WORLD

With a soup-bowl size cup of coffee in hand, I stood watching as dawn broke over the Atlantic Ocean.

I breathed in the fresh, salt-tinged morning air as my thoughts ran to value engineering, as they often do. It’s both a blessing and a curse based on a lifetime of experience working in information technology, IT. Whatever; the point is my work is defined by what I like to think of as an ‘invisible world’ of IT infrastructure, one that powers our consumer lives today.

Some might dismissively refer to the invisible world as simple ‘logistics.’ That would be partly true. Some may try to describe it as a ‘cold chain,’ a ‘distribution system,’ ‘production system’ or ‘global supply chain.’  All of that is largely true as well. But these mundane descriptions don’t capture the magic I can see.

When I look at my phone, I see over one hundred ‘apps,’ each from a different company. To me, each of those represents the top of a mountain. Standing beneath each of those mountaintops, propping them up. are thousands of IT professionals.

Those developers, administrators, and operations staff are working in turn with thousands of electronic systems that span the history of technology, from mainframe to cloud. This complex, hybrid, and fragile infrastructure must be orchestrated to ensure data is shared perfectly. All the pieces must function correctly and be available 24x7, so that we, the consumer end users, can purchase socks, book a flight, renew a driver's license, deposit a check, use a credit card, schedule an appointment, or track our daily steps, all with a simple tap.

You flip a switch, and a light turns on. Every time.

This is the invisible world of global supply chains powered by IT, software, hardware and value engineering.

Finding a way to harness all of this capability to meet human desires relies in part on our being able to gather data, understand the ‘customer journey,’ unearth insights, overcome obstacles, define a company brand, and build stories that motivate people to change what they do and how they do it.

My name is Rave Maps, and my small firm, Maps Private Value is the best in the world at value engineering. I gather data from customers and help them tell stories that drive change. I’ve never failed. I’ve never let a customer down.

Not once.

Not ever. I could not allow that to happen.

My hotel phone rang, interrupting my morning reverie. I stepped back into my room to pick up. This is Rave.

I’m very sorry Dr. Maps.

The voice belonged to the prospect whose business I’d had been working hard to win over the past two weeks: Adalberto Joaozinho, IT Director at Sacqui Group Lisbon.

Listen, Joaozinho continued. I detected a dialect I’d heard before in his European Portuguese, one that marked a boyhood spent in a former Portuguese colony. It became more pronounced when he was nervous; he’d probably grown up on one of the Cabo Verde islands.

Your proposal is professional and compelling, but we have a hiccup, and the decision is out of my hands now. Procurement determined a competing proposal is more closely aligned with our future direction.

I said nothing.

Often, silence proves a useful technique; people normally feel compelled to fill the void with additional explanation. But not today.

Thank you for your efforts, Ms. Maps; we do appreciate it. I wish you well. Bom Dia, Good Day.

I could not believe what I’d just heard. Word-of-mouth marketing meant everything in my business. Clients know from experience my value engineering consulting fee repays itself in large multiples as organizations futureproof IT infrastructure and successfully meet rapidly changing business demands driven by customers. Sometimes my work brings hope for change to beleaguered IT staff resigned to a future of hopelessness, seeing a lifetime of endless, repetitive, manual tasks supporting an arcane process that plays a small part in keeping the invisible world functioning.

I stared in silence at the vintage black Bakelite telephone, then slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle. I’d been working from Madeira at my own expense for the past two weeks. There had been no hint of competing proposals from other firms in my discussions with the client.

The research I’d collected already would have been a big help to them. Sacqui was facing new financial technology – FinTech—challenges that would impact their portfolio companies, all of whom are facing significant business disruption over the next several years. I’d been preparing a statement of work for the firm; they had requested I pitch them on several workstreams. They wanted to modernize their IT estate. They also wanted me to build a business case supporting the investment committee’s due diligence efforts; they were working to build a first-round tranche structure for a collateralized debt obligation that would quietly pool revenue-generating assets in support of a new investment in a tech startup.

Rapid change was coming from every direction, including artificial intelligence (AI), automated cryptocurrency compliance, Web 3.0 for data, and advanced fraud detection. I knew better than anyone the benefits new technologies might deliver. I also knew the sale begins at No."

And yet, it appeared I’d now lost the chance to prove myself. Why?

What a way to begin the morning. I stepped out again onto my balcony. Porto Cliff Bay is a luxury spa hotel perched on a cliff above the Atlantic Ocean and was the ideal place to office remotely. Incredible morning views. Looking across the bay lifted my spirits, tranquil silver-gray waves spread to the horizon as the sun rose. Funchal, the largest city on the island was coming awake on the hillside to my left.

I’ve enjoyed two weeks here on the Portuguese island, part of a volcanic mountain archipelago 400 miles off the coast of Morocco in the North Atlantic. Delicious foods pair perfectly with local wine and the warm hospitality of every Madeiran I’d met. I had quickly come to favor the mellow, slightly acidic dry white wines pressed from flavorful Verdelho grapes that grow in small vineyards on the cool, north side of the island.

I’d combined work with some of my favorite pursuits, as I always try to do in every country I work in. I enjoyed the 15-minute ride on the Teleferico do Funchal. The cable car begins in downtown Funchal and rises ten thousand feet to the exotic Jardim Botanico and Monte Palace Gardens, where I lingered over lush azaleas, orchids, protea, Scottish heather, and cycads. The gardens in Madeira flourish even though the water on the island comes exclusively from captured rainfall collected in the island's Levadas, a network of irrigation canals built by hand four hundred years ago, stretching hundreds of miles through the mountainous interior. The Levadas were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999. 

I slipped into a swimsuit, dropped my sunglasses, journal, and towel into a beach tote, and descended to the pool level in a tiny elevator. I made my way across the expansive sun deck, ignoring sly glances from pampered German and French guests. They were reclined on lounge chairs, enjoying their morning, reading, sleeping, or working on their tans. I walked over to the wharf and stood watching the sea. Light chop driven by an Atlantic breeze lapped the wall fifteen feet below. Executing a graceful dive into clear blue water, I swam for the raft anchored offshore and pulled myself up to admire the view of the bay.

Across the cove sat Belmond Reid’s Palace; its pink walls stand out from the dark, rocky cliff. I could see the private bathing pier and the old waterside entrance to the former British Imperial hotel. Looking higher, I picked out the balcony where Churchill spent a few days in 1950 smoking cigars and working to finish his fourth volume of war memories: The Hinge of Fate.

After my swim, I took breakfast outside in the garden of Cliff Bay's Michelin 2-star Il Gallo d'Oro resto. Peering at the ocean I heard the lap of waves below, felt the sun and ocean breeze against my face, and heard bees buzzing, pollinating orchids beside me. Magical. I was inspired to order a tumbler of strong local Poncha to accompany breakfast. Made from Aguardente de cana rum, orange juice, lemon, and honey, the storied cocktail had a well-deserved reputation on the island. I raised the glass in a silent toast to the sea and to moving forward, then ordered the full English breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms, to which I added two sweet Pastel de Nata custard tarts. I needed fuel for today's hike to Caldeirao Verde; a trail crossing steep, mountainous, and wet rainforest on the north side of Madeira.

As the food arrived, I put my journal away and studied the colorful tumble of orchids, roses, and bougainvillea by my table. Offshore I noticed a two-masted, 62-foot replica of Columbus' ship Santa Maria beat its way east. It had been constructed to resemble Columbus’s famed 15th Century cargo Nau; she displaced 150 metric tons and was bound for the tourist marina in Funchal.

As the great ship slid silently past, I replayed the call with Joaozinho in my mind. I had no competitors rivaling my differentiated skillset that combined listening, observation, analysis, research, data collection, storytelling, and problem-solving. I brought my clientele my interest in understanding their emotional needs and personal wins. These were the unspoken goals motivating leaders to drive change and commit significant budgets to innovation.

My job often is to just keep my clients’ names out of the paper; they need the work to be done correctly, ensuring they avoid fines that may arise from a breached service level agreement (SLA), or from incurring embarrassing IT downtime. Not to mention avoiding customer complaints. My recommendations normally require organizations adopt significant change.

I know from experience that when we introduce change to an organization, over a hundred people have their hands on the brake. Resistance to change is part of human nature. My goal is to overcome that resistance by building powerful and attractive strategies that help