Inspiring Women: Lisa Messenger – author, entrepreneur, challenger

Lisa Messenger is the vibrant, game-changing CEO and creative director of The Messenger Group, as well as founder and editor-in-chief of The Collective magazine – an entrepreneurial lifestyle magazine distributed into over 37 countries with a mandate to disrupt, challenge and inspire.

In addition, she has worked globally in events, sponsorship, marketing, PR and publishing. The Messenger Group has custom published more than 400 books for companies and individuals. Lisa has been a regular commentator on business, entrepreneurialism and property and has sat on a number of boards including the Australian Businesswomen’s Network and Publishers Australia.

Lisa has authored and co-authored over a dozen books and become an authority in the start-up scene, charting her rollercoaster ride to success in best-selling book Daring & Disruptive; unleashing the entrepreneur and its sequel Life & Love, which reached #1 on Booktopia.

With fans including Sir Richard Branson, New York Times Best-selling author Bradley Trevor Grieve, and a social media following of over 100,000, Lisa’s vision is to build a community of likeminded people who want to change the world. She’s trekked across India raising money for charity, ridden camels in the Sahara for fun and has laughed her way through communal showers in the Costa Rican jungle in the name of personal development. Her passion is to challenge individuals and corporations to change the way they think, take them out of their comfort zone and prove that there is more than one way to do anything. She encourages entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and innovation and lives life to the absolute max. Most mornings she wakes up and pinches herself as to how incredible her life is, but Lisa is also acutely aware and honest about the bumps and tumbles along the way. In between being a serial entrepreneur and avid traveler, she spends most of her time in Sydney at the Collective Hub offices

Her new book Money and Mindfulness is in stores October 1st.

Growing up, what kind of career did you want to pursue?

Funnily enough I wanted to do something with horses – that at the time was my lifelong dream

Who inspires you?

Our community – every single day with their courage to pursue their goals. Also Oprah, Jamie Oliver, Martha Stewart, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, Marianne Williamson – I draw inspiration from so many great leaders.

Who is most surprised by your achievements?

Probably anyone who knew me back at school – I was a rebel who most probably thought would never amount to anything.

How have women helped shape your success to date?

I have had such an incredible community of beautiful, thoughtful, kind and strong women help me to be the best version of myself. I’m a massive believer in the power of collaboration and helping to lift each other higher. It’s a joy every single day and something I do not take for granted and am thankful for continuously.

What qualities do you most admire in a female colleague?

Dignity and grace and the ability to be both strong and vulnerable.

What’s the key to successfully balancing work and life?

I don’t believe in balance. Instead I prefer the word “blend”. When you love what you do as much as I do, it all just rolls together. What I do is not work and what I do is not life – its all one big mash up of passionate goodness.

If you had an afternoon to yourself, how would you spend it?

Building our community, coming up with more ideas for collaborations, reading, writing, listening to an inspiring podcast, running, jumping in the ocean, journaling, meditating, catching up for a meal with great friends.

Who do you regard as your mentor?

I have so many. I have those closer to home that sit on my advisory board and are a great sounding panel. Then I have mentors from afar that I learn from inadvertently by reading their books, listening to their podcasts etc. And our community seriously – these are the people being brave enough to take risks and start new businesses every single day. They are the people I do what I do for.

What personal attributes have you used to overcome adversity in your life?

Self belief, compassion, vulnerability, authenticity, loyalty, passion, tenacity. And trust me – I’ve had my fair does of adversity and the bigger you get the faster and thicker it comes. I always say, it’s not what life throws at us, it’s how you deal with it that counts. And every day I consciously choose to deal with everything with dignity and grace.

If you could make one change to women’s lives, what would it be and why?

Let them know that anything is possible. It’s extraordinarily important that women believe in themselves and I try to demonstrate this by living my life out loud every single day through the good and the hard times.

What is the hardest part of your job?

Cashflow!

What advice would you give to someone aspiring to success in your field?

Know your “why”. Keep hustling every single day. Fail fast. And never give up.

This article was originally published on A code of ethics in IT: just lip service or something with bite?  Robert Merkel, Monash University and Oliver Burmeister

The emissions scandal that has rocked the car maker Volkswagen has again raised the issue of ethical standards in the tech industry.

Reports so far say the company is pointing finger at the “unlawful behaviour of engineers and technicians involved in engine development”.

But that’s led to questions about the strength of any codes or practice or ethics that such operators are supposed to comply with. So are such codes any good or are they just words?

Here two software experts present both sides of the argument.

Codes of Ethics – worthy sentiments, but no teeth when it comes to the public interest

Robert Merkel
Lecturer in software engineering at Monash University

The Australian Computer Society’s Code of Professional Conduct says nice, and generally sensible, things about the values its members should act upon in their professional lives.

The first, and most important value listed is, “The Primacy of the Public Interest”, which informs members that:

You will place the interests of the public above those of personal, business or sectional interests.

But IT professionals do not get paid by the public interest – their work is mostly paid for by business and sectional interests. While whose interests a business should serve is a subject of lively debate, to a first approximation management of businesses are expected to act in the interests of its shareholders, and within the law.

Even if the senior management of a business are technologists, in practice it is the legal and cultural obligations of their management role that are taken more seriously than any professional obligations that apply to IT professionals.

In my view, many businesses act in ways that are harmful to broader society in the interests of their shareholders. Some companies have management who, for ethical reasons, choose to avoid certain business activities. But, in a free market economy, if it’s legal (or even if it isn’t) and there’s a dollar in it, at least some businesses will attempt to collect that dollar.

These pressures are not unique to the IT industry. Engineers, accountants and lawyers are professionals employed by businesses in a similar way to IT professionals. But there is a key difference between those professions and IT – those professions have professional bodies or closely related registration bodies (such as the Victorian Bar Council) that control access to those skills, backed by the law.

The vast majority of Australian IT professionals work in roles for which there is no institutional gatekeeper of any kind, legal or otherwise. Nor do employers demand, or seemingly value, accreditation by professional bodies in IT.

Have a look at ads for IT jobs, which overwhelmingly value demonstrated professional experience in technologies and techniques. Credentials, including university degrees, are rarely mentioned.

While a body such as the ACS might seek a de-facto gatekeeper role through its credentials attaining employment cachet, it is hard to see how this might be workable.

IT work tends to hyper-specialisation, and those specialisations continue to evolve faster than institutions can keep up. And, for what it’s worth, I get little sense in my dealing with both students and current professionals that the IT workforce conceives of itself as a unitary profession, and is looking for an organisation to establish itself as a gatekeeper.

So, given the total lack of teeth, and no realistic prospect of gaining any, the ACS Code of Ethics is not something that there is any real obligation to comply with. At best, it is an educative tool and, sadly, not one that students prioritise. Why would they?

In a world where IT degrees are viewed as a meal ticket to a high-paying career, students gravitate to the topics which they believe employers will value. Experience in the perceived hot technology of the day is generally a far higher priority than ethics.

In my contact with IT students a substantial fraction express concerns about how IT can be put to use. Once in the workforce, some of these students might personally resist it being put to use in particular ways, despite a lack of institutional support and personal costs in doing so.

But that’s not enough. As long as those who wish to use IT for sectional interests can pay for sufficient talent, somewhere in the world, history shows that that they will be able to find it, ACS code of ethics or not.

Codes of Ethics – a shift in values sees a carrot more useful than a stick approach

Oliver Burmeister
Chair of the Australian Computer Society’s Committee on Computer Ethics

In my view, one needs to understand the bigger picture within which the Code of Ethics plays an important role, namely, that there is what we might call “a values shift” in progress.

I had the privilege of chairing the process that led to the adoption of the revised Code of Ethics in 2010. It was the first time that the ACS code had been revised in 25 years.

One of the things that was very evident from the focus groups and seminars around the country was that a shift in values had occurred. Namely, the environment featured in almost all discussions.

It was not even a consideration in previous revisions of the Code of Ethics, but the 2010 version reflects environmental issues, because that was important to many ACS members.

Similarly, I believe that there is an increasing values shift towards greater ethical accountability among ACS members. What evidence do I have for this?

Firstly, the ACS has twice partnered for projects on professional ICT ethics funded through the Australian Research Council. This shows that at the highest level of research funding in Australia, professional ICT ethics is valued and given more than lip service.

The earlier (2006) project had a survey response of 1.9% (351), after holding the survey open for six months. The recent (2013) survey had a response of 12.4% (2,315), and was only open for two months. This suggests that in the intervening seven years, ICT professionals have developed a much greater awareness of, and interest in professionalism and ethics.

Secondly, the values shift is seen in that ACS members are voluntarily, at their own expense in many cases, taking ACS Education subjects, including on ethics and professional conduct, and undertaking annual professional development to achieve and maintain a Certified Professional status.

Following a similar successful implementation by Canada’s Association of Information Technology Professionals (CIPS) – the Canadian equivalent of the ACS – the ACS is currently developing an online ethics test, which applies the Code of Ethics to real world case studies, with a view to adding it to the annual certification requirements for professional status.

Finally, this values shift is seen in the United Nations agenda, through the WSIS+10 process in Geneva, June 2014, which was tabled at the UN General Assembly in New York. For the first time ICT ethics and professionalism feature prominently.

Returning to Merkel’s criticisms of the Code of Ethics, ICT is a young profession. I have attended several meetings at Professions Australia (PA), representing the ACS. It is apparent from those meetings that few professional societies have the clout of the old professions of law and medicine.

In law and medicine the “stick” can be wielded – break the ethical code and you get disciplined, which at the extreme could mean being kicked out of the professional society and therefore being unable to practice.

But young professions such as ours can’t mandate membership and therefore PA speaks of codes of ethics as “aspirational”. That is, we use the “carrot” and not the “stick” (or “teeth” as Merkel puts it).

The value shift discussion, above, indicates that there is a lot of evidence to suggest our carrots are working. The PA defines a profession as:

a disciplined group of individuals who adhere to ethical standards […] It is inherent in the definition of a profession that a code of ethics governs the activities of each profession. Such codes require behaviour and practice beyond the personal moral obligations of an individual. They define and demand high standards of behaviour in respect to the services provided to the public and in dealing with professional colleagues. Further, these codes are enforced by the profession and are acknowledged and accepted by the community.

Therefore one measure of professionalism is a willingness to be held accountable for the standard of one’s work, against the Code of Ethics.

So Merkel appears correct that in the past the Code of Ethics had limited traction. But my view is that there is a shift in values in progress and with that shift the Code of Ethics is gaining in importance.

What do you think about the strength of any code of ethics in the IT industry? You can ask both Robert Merkel and Oliver Burmeister who will be online from 3pm to 4pm AEDT today (Friday October 9, 2015) to answer your questions in the comments, below.

Robert Merkel, Lecturer in Software Engineering, Monash University and Oliver Burmeister, Associate professor

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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