Penny Garbus, President Soaring Eagle Consulting
When I was a kid and learning to color and follow directions, in kindergarten I always colored between the lines. As an entrepreneur some days we have to stay in the lines, security processes for one. Stay in the lines, do what is best for your business environment and business practices. Run backups, control access through role processes, track who is doing what in your environment. This is not the time to be loose and let things get out of line. When the security rules are too stringent and affect the ability for your team to do work, then bend the rules, but don’t break them. For instance, if a developer needs access to production to role up code or to fix bugs that need to have immediate correction allow that to happen but keep the other controls in place. Still test the role up code, have another person review for coding standards and track what is being changed by who and when and always have a role back plan.
A business leader needs to be pliable, be able to work in a manner that allows important activities to occur so that the business does not slow down or stop, but breaking security rules during an emergency roll up or making other environment changes means that you can skip a step or two but review the entire reason for any changes in the environment, the time it will take, the people needed then determine what rules can be broken without going so far out of the lines that a mistake will cause a worse outcome than the current situation.
