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Two recent Microsoft communiques have sent my Absurd-O-Meter off the scale.

First there’s the Microsoft ad imploring you to install Windows NT Workstation because it’s faster, more robust, and yada yada yada. What will you be upgrading from? Windows 95, of course, which I guess must be slower and more fragile.

Who writes this copy? News flash to Microsoft: You’re supposed to badmouth your competitors’ products, not your own.

Then there’s the new Palm PC, for which the company that once claimed ownership of the word “windows” borrowed “Palm” from a popular personal digital assistant. It’s going to run — I’m not making this up — a “stripped down version of Windows CE.”

Shows what I know. I thought Windows CE was the stripped down version. WinCE indeed.

To punish the perpetrators of this nonsense, this week we’ll discuss defenestration (OK, I’m reaching) strategies.

We can’t throw out Windows on the desktop. That really is too risky. Instead …

Microsoft has built its Windows NT Server strategy on Moore’s Law (which predicts that the bang-per-buck ratio will double every 18 months) and on the average CIO’s overall nervousness regarding Unix.

In the minds of most CIOs, NT is safer and easier to learn than Unix’s notorious grab-bag of in-joke commands and semi-compatible versions. It’s more versatile than NetWare, since it can act as both file and application server.

And, it doesn’t threaten MVS (now OS/390) because comparatively, it’s still a toy.

That’s fine with Bill Gates. With every iteration of Moore’s Law, NT can take over more of OS/390’s turf, even without Microsoft investing in product improvement.

But NT is, of course, far inferior to many of its head-to-head competitors, at least from the perspectives of performance and stability. Be honest. Isn’t there a part of you that wishes you could use Linux instead? Too bad you can’t take the risk.

Well, you can run part of your business on Linux with no risk at all. All you have to do is break free of the we-gotta-have-a-standard mentality and replace it with a what-standards-do-we-need mentality.

When it comes to Web servers you don’t need a standard operating system, because Web server software shields everyone from the OS. You can run your whole corporate Intranet on Linux (or Netware, or Solaris, or a different OS on every server) with no compatibility or integration worries. And since most of your NT alternatives can handle at least twice the processing load as NT on a given piece of hardware and are more stable besides, there’s a direct business benefit. (Truth in packaging department: In saying this I’m relying on reviews and the opinions of knowledgeable friends, not on direct experience.)

How about the dreaded cost of training? I’ll bet you have a few adventurous employees who’d be absolutely delighted to invest personal time learning Linux on their own, and some Netware hold-outs who’d be thrilled to extend that environment rather than have you phase it out despite its technical superiority.

Cost of administration? C’mon, these are Web servers. You don’t have thousands of logins to administer … and besides, Unix and Netware both have very strong tools for administration.

Okay, I hear you say, but what if Linux (or Netware, or whatever) vanishes from the landscape?

No problem. Simply install Cairo (it should ship by then) and copy the files. Since you’re dealing with true cross-platform standards, you’re safe.

Each platform decision you make has its own risk/reward dynamics. When you enforce a one-size-fits-all strategy you lose your ability to optimize.

The beauty of this defenestration strategy is that while your company benefits, you help preserve a diverse operating system marketplace.

At least a dozen different people have, in correspondence, endorsed an alternative to bailing out AIG: Instead we’ll divide the $85 billion evenly among the 200 million adult U.S. citizens, giving each of us $425 thousand.

Other than the misplaced decimal point this would be a fine idea: The correct division of spoils is $425.

The economy has, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, an “implacable aroma.” The impact on your IT budget is a predictable, if misguided desire for panaceas. CIOs should plan on thinner budgets, demand for more services, and insistence that these two requirements are entirely compatible.

There’s no point in arguing, either. Those who insist will have both the authority to do so and the desire for it to be true. It’s a lethal combination — neither facts, nor logic, nor shouting at the top of your lungs will result in any discernable dissuasion.

You’re in danger. It’s time to dust off a basic rule of responding to requests: Both yes and no are bad answers — in this case because one admits incompetence; the other is insubordinate.

Answer yes and you’ve admitted to having run a hopelessly inefficient IT organization for lo these many years. If that weren’t the case, how can you now find the efficiencies necessary for delivering more for less? You’re dead.

Answer no and you’re disobeying a direct order from the person you report to. That’s generally a very bad idea. (Yes, I’m stereotyping CEOs. Some are quite reasonable and won’t put you in this situation. This type of CEO is terrific to work for, but quite useless as a rhetorical device.)

Your alternative to yes and no is, as always, “here’s what it will take.” You can get from here to there, but not for free. Some alternatives will require investment; all will have risks attached.

Investment and Risk pay for your ticket out of Can’t Win Land. They explain why you haven’t already done whatever it is you have in mind, without you looking like a slug.

Now all you need are the ideas.

Here are some starters. See if you can spot the risks (add a Comment below this column):

Increase trust: Distrust is expensive. It’s a luxury distressed companies can’t afford. Specifically, distrust drives unnecessary rework. This increases unit costs, lengthens cycle time, and decreases throughput in any process where it plays a role.

Increasing trust is far from simple. Distrust exists for a reason, and there’s no simple recipe for overcoming it. The chapter on Building and Maintaining Teams in Leading IT: The Toughest Job in the World provides some useful techniques, but it’s hardly exhaustive.

Managing the interpersonal dynamics among employees to identify and address dysfunctional relationships is a core leadership responsibility. Focus on it yourself, and insist that the managers who report to you focus on it as well.

Cut meeting participation in half: Many consider all meetings wastes of time. It might be true of some, and possibly most meetings in your company.

The challenge: You don’t know if they’re wastes of time because they aren’t needed or because, while needed, they aren’t run very well.

In my experience, most meetings are convened for good and valid reasons. Also, most have more participants than necessary, primarily due to distrust: If someone isn’t personally in the room, that person doesn’t trust those who are to do a competent and unbiased job.

Increase trust and you can probably cut attendance at the average meeting in half, freeing up all of those hours for other work.

Do something about negatively productive employees: Employees fall into three clusters. The first, and biggest, consists of those who put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and deliver acceptable, workmanlike results.

The second consists of star employees. These folks aren’t twice as productive as the first cluster. They’re an order of magnitude more productive.

Then there’s the third group — employees who not only fail to deliver useful results themselves, but who interfere with everyone else.

Getting rid of these employees is a triple win. First, you save their salary. Second, since their productivity is negative, their departure increases average productivity.

The third benefit? These folks spread distrust the way a manure spreader spreads … well, manure. Get rid of them and the level of trust among those who remain will almost certainly increase.