• Only 11% personally use and fully leverage the capabilities of the technology currently in place


• 50% agree with the statement that "business leaders don't understand how to use their systems and technologies"


• Only 25% of business leaders consider themselves "IT-smart"

It's critical to have at least one person on your team who is a "power user" because, in the words of a wise IT leader I interviewed, "business groups who have somebody on their team who is an IT expert do much better with IT (in terms of leveraging technology to meet their needs) than those who do not." If you are lucky enough to have an IT relationship manager or analyst assigned to support you, treat them like a full-fledged team member (including office space and inclusion in all the staff meetings, off-sites, team builds, etc.) so that they start wearing your team uniform. Technologists take enormous pride in seeing the impact of their work on the business, so do everything you can do include them as you plan, play, and celebrate the game.

Make sure that you and your people have access to (and mastery of) the technology tools necessary to run your business and experiment with new ways to work. This isn't about "doing IT's job for them" — it's about giving your people the capability to discover value-added opportunities and develop "visual" requirements to facilitate productive communication with IT. According to Von Hippel, the difficulty that users have in communicating their "context of use" requirements can be resolved by giving lead users "innovation toolkits", allowing IT to study and better understand the innovations that result.

If you are wondering what an innovation toolkit should consist of, ask your lead users what tools they use — and wish they could have. At minimum, they should understand the applications, data repositories, reporting, data query/analysis, and end user productivity tools in place in your company that are relevant to the business processes they support. A recent survey on enterprise systems highlighted that "most organizations use only 64 percent of their enterprise systems core functions" with 20% of the respondents explaining "that they didn't make use of all the functionality due to lack of time to learn how to apply them."

In addition, ensure that lead users have access to the full breadth of the following productivity tools and capabilities:

1. Presentations: shaping and storyboarding


2. Spreadsheets: Analyzing data, reporting, and proving out data models, calculations and reports


3. Data Analysis and Reporting: Advanced data extracting, manipulating, and reporting


4. Workflow and Diagramming: Designing new workflows and data models


5. Content Management: Designing and sharing new forms and documents


6. Web publishing and collaboration: Sharing ideas and innovations

Foster innovation by sharing what's going on across the company and with competitor and analog companies, asking "What if?" questions, and celebrating both progress and "good tries." Take the advice of the IT-savvy lead user I talked with, and work out a deal with IT to provide an IT person to be "on call for the innovators as good ideas can get derailed simply because the proper IT resources aren't there to get things out of the mud" and a "safe haven network where users feel free to try anything within the bounds of the innovation rules without fearing harm to the network or disrupting core business." Remember, the simpler, the better.

A few tools in competent, motivated hands with active support from leadership and IT are all that lead users need to do what they do best.

Question is, like the proverbial tree in the forest, are lead users really innovating if no one's watching? For if no one is watching, then the innovations remain the domain of the inventor — potentially of value but practically invisible.

Many organizations have "lead user" employees who are innovating in relative anonymity. Most leaders are looking out and up, not down; thinking about tomorrow, not today; thinking big, not small. Same goes for IT. IT is focused on managing demand from above — not creating it from below. In the face of seemingly infinite demand, what IT professional in their right mind has the time or inclination to go out looking for what might be when it's hard enough dealing with what is?

Yet this is exactly what business leaders want their IT organizations to do. They want IT to show them the future possibilities and help them understand how IT can be used to drive the business. Problem is, this never gets to the top of IT's priority list. While it's true that IT studies current practices as they pertain to funded initiatives, IT rarely studies, on an ongoing basis, the unintended uses of installed technologies.

According to Hippel's research, even if IT had the time to dream up the future, they can't do it alone. Reading techno-tea leaves with any level of accuracy requires nurturing and learning from lead users. It's not easy for users or IT to communicate their respective needs to each other. As a result, users don't understand why it's so hard to develop IT-enabled capabilities and IT struggles to extract "good enough" requirements from users. According to Hippel, this can be resolved by providing users with innovation toolkits and studying the innovations that result.

Excel is a great example of an innovation toolkit. The compliance wonks may hate spreadsheets but, without a doubt, Excel has played an important role as an innovation tool. Many an organization would be better off today had they devoted resources to examine how Excel was being used and standardizing and scaling the resulting innovations rather than trying to mandate "out of context" tools defined from above or acquired from outside.

Now is the perfect time to nurture lead users. Companies have made huge investments in IT that need to be leveraged and extended to change the way work is done — not by using the traditional approaches of scraping and rebuilding or throwing a bunch of changes at the wall, hoping that something will stick. Companies need to identify their lead users, give them more of what they want, free up a good chunk of IT's time to study what they are doing (and why), and figure out how to standardize and scale the most promising innovations to benefit the enterprise.

If you are wondering how to find the lead users, ask IT for the "power users" who drive them crazy. These users want more, they want it is all, and they want it now. Rather than try to push lead users down to the lowest common denominator, companies need to charter an IT "gifted-and-talented" program ("Gate") that gives lead users special IT privileges — the best tools, equipment, education, and support — as long as they agree to "first do no harm," clean up their own messes, and support the less-talented around them.

To find the time to work with the lead users in the "IT Gate" program, IT has to stop doing things for their business counterparts that they can do for themselves. In stark contrast to the lead users, there's a bunch of "barely users" who need a "no user left behind" program. In return for "IT Gate" status, lead users should provide "just in time" education and support to increase the adoption of the technologies in place, diagnose problems before they are reported to IT (for example, the 30% of calls that relate to passwords), and prioritize or handle a some of the enhancement requests (using, for example, the ERP software configuration tools.) Over time, of course, improved education and accountability will reduce these support requirements, freeing up lead users and IT to do more innovating and less remedial support.

By their very nature, lead users and technologists love to innovate. They don't need to be assigned to a task force, paid more money, or even given special recognition. They innovate because that's who they are. Find them. Connect them. Nurture them. Benefit from them.

We've all been through the IT equivalent of the diverted flight. Like air travel, IT projects deliver too little, too late, for too much. (Share your views about working with IT by participating in this survey.) Smart "IT travelers" know how to increase the likelihood of getting to their destination, on time and on budget, provided that they keep a few principles in mind.

1. Choose your destination wisely. Foster organizational support by focusing your IT-enabled initiative to support the enterprise's business strategy. Scope it to add tangible value to the business and to the people on the front lines who buy products and services, or interact with those who do.

2. Anticipate delays. IT-enabled projects are difficult. And they cost too much. Like the picturesque beach in Fiji, it's easy to imagine the techno-perfect-world you'd like to live in, but hard — and expensive — to get there. Be sure to make the expense worthwhile by anticipating delays and planning for them.

3. Plan your itinerary. Reduce the risk of project failure by 50% by defining clear business objectives, securing executive support, and arranging for sufficient involvement by subject matter experts.

4. Don't "overpack." When you're flying, you probably travel light — and don't check anything you can't live without. The same philosophy holds here — focus on the practical ("I absolutely need my laptop/prescriptions/passport"), not the possible ("It sure would be nice to bring these beach chairs/snow shoes/kayaks").

5. Explore — and learn. The power of IT comes from changing the way people think, behave and interact. Learn what happens when field agents are given real-time access to information, what franchisees do when given web tools to procure parts, and how consumer participate in promotions when they are accessible via their cell phones. Don't automate existing processes, but redesign from an extended enterprise perspective. If you are going to replace or upgrade an existing system, scope it so that it delivers an important capability that was not in place before.

6. Play the upgrade game. Hold out for the right resources — not necessarily the available ones. Wait to start your project until you have a seasoned project manager supported by a small team of full-time people.

7. Ask nicely. Make sure that you foster an environment of open and honest communication so that the project team is comfortable discussing what could cause the project to go off course. Adopt Paul Glen's perspective on IT-enabled projects. In his book, Leading Geeks, he counsels, "The point here is not that geeks are incompetent or that geekwork is hopeless, but that creativity and innovation are difficult to do" and "if you expect every project to be completed on schedule and on budget, you're likely to be constantly disappointed."

8. Don't stay too long in one place... Break large projects up into smaller pieces or stages, with each stage delivering value within 3-6 months. By delivering value along the way, you will capture and nurture precious organizational mindshare that will help ensure success.

9. ...But don't travel too quickly, either. Leverage existing technology by fully understanding and exploiting the current systems before you move on. New technology isn't necessarily better — it's just different — and by insisting on using existing technology, your initiative will be cheaper, less risky, and get done faster.

IT-savvy companies have revenue growth that is 3.9 percentage points higher than the average. Position yourself as a leader who knows how to deliver IT-enabled change, since leaders who are willing to volunteer for difficult, strategically important assignments reap the rewards in terms of influence and promotions.

There really is no choice but to learn how to travel smart with IT. After all, who wants to stay where they are and do the same old thing, the same old way?

During the "good times" only 10% of managers lived in a state of purposefulness, defined by clarity of intentions and vigor that is fueled by intense personal commitment (with the balance of managers operating in a state of disengagement, procrastination, or distraction.)

There are many who believe that these "bad times" will bring a kind of satisfying scarcity. That companies (and families) will start focusing on what's most important by stripping the "nice but not necessary" out of their daily existence.

Consider the case of Frontier Airlines, managing through Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection. Given the severe shortage of resources, they reduced the number of IT projects from a few hundred to just 10. Instead of each person having three projects, every project now has five people. The impact of moving 10 balls a mile versus 300 balls an inch? In the words of the CIO, "I believe we are getting more done, but I also believe that we are getting better value done."

It's not just companies in dire straits that are leveraging the benefits of the bad times. One leader shared recently that he is hoping to use financial constraints to act as a surrogate for strategy to force decisions about what should — and should not — be done. Another leader expressed relief that tight funding had resulted in canceling initiatives that were the "right projects being done in the wrong way." What's true professionally is also true personally — like many, I am terrible at saying "no" and am secretly thrilled when I can do so in good conscience: "Sorry, have to pick my kids up from school," "No, I have another meeting," or "Thanks, but I'll be on a plane."

Once the economy leaves the rehab center, my guess is that most leaders will leave their healthy, satisfying, and focused behaviors behind. Only those who purposely limit their agendas and refuse to focus on every opportunity will benefit from the lessons learned during the downturn about how focus accelerates progress. The rest will continue to "confuse frenetic motion with constructive action," as Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal put it, letting their environment dictate their actions, and continue to book their calendars in half-hour increments while professing their commitment to complete the "urgent vs. important" matrix very, very soon.

Do yourself and your company a favor by challenging the powers-that-be to adopt boundary rules to promote focus and force reflection and discussion when the organization makes unhealthy decisions. For example, in IT, some powerful boundary rules include those that guide strategic priorities ("all new investments must benefit the customer"), investment levels ("IT funding will not negatively impact company margins"), architecture ("we will clean up as we go"), resource utilization ("we will maintain less than than a 1:1 relationship between projects and people"), business value ("success will be gauged by measuring business impact"), risk ("every proposal will assess and manage risk"), and sourcing ("the best work will be done by our employees.) In application, boundary rules promote focus by aligning organizational decision making and ensuring that well-reasoned exceptions are escalated for discussion.

What does your company need to do to ensure that the lessons from the bad times are remembered so that the good times become even better?

Let's get real. Mr. Greenberg worked at AIG for 38 years and left less than 4 years ago. He hired the people currently in charge and "was behind the expansion push that included creating the financial productions unit that nearly sank the firm after he left in 2005." With due respect to the octogenarian, is this any way for a grown up to behave?

Everyone knows that things fail gradually, then all at once. The seeds of AIG's destruction were surely planted, watered and tilled by Mr. Greenberg and his fellow leader-gardeners.

Everyone makes mistakes. Grownups take responsibility, even if they didn't have a clue that their upsides would be somebody else's downsides. There's only one form of mistake that is unforgivable — that's when leaders know what's right and do what's wrong.

Let me give you an example from the world of IT. My last post discussed a "clean up as you go" approach to fight the natural forces of entropy that creep in to our systems, confounding leaders in their quest to change their organization to capitalize on marketplace opportunities and competitive realities.

Last week, while chatting with a very talented IT leader, I heard a tale of "mess up as you go." He proposed cleaning up some critical enterprise data as part of an upcoming project. It involved creating a master record of data that currently resides in multiple places, attached to applications supporting various silos. This is a no-brainer. Something you do because it's the right thing to do; additional effort that will bring no accolades. Something you do not for yourself, but for your grandchildren.

And yet, surprisingly, his boss was laissez-faire in her response.

There are only three reasons why people don't do what they should: they don't have time to, they don't know how to, or they don't want to. It wasn't that she disagreed with the recommendation or was concerned about the additional costs or time. She just didn't care — she didn't want to do it because it wasn't important to her.

She may have been distracted or reflecting the short term, feel-good, me-centered leadership that causes individuals, families, companies, economies, and government to fail gradually, then all at once. Regardless, it's a mistake happening in real time — completely avoidable and without accountability.

Our individual, seemingly small actions create the building blocks of tomorrow and leaders have a profound responsibility to leave their world a little better than they found it. Fundamentally, this requires the personal integrity and courage to think deeply about the ramifications of today's actions and admit mistakes.

What are you doing today to create the positive legacy you want to leave behind?

So of course the airlines didn't intend to build "multiple old computer systems that don't share information well." When these systems were initially constructed (in the 60s and 70s), they were neat and tidy. Application requirements were defined from the point of view of a department and the needs of the people within it. The approach to programming reflected a simple and static world where it was the norm to embed data and business rules together with the logic necessary to support a business function — for example, to book and manage reservations. No one conceived that customers would book their own travel, that airlines would merge and spin off, that competing airlines would sell seats through code share agreements, or that competition would become so fierce as to necessitate greeting them by name and remembering their favorite drink.

To respond to these demands in a timely manner, IT did what we all do. They packed as much as they could in the existing "application" garages. When it became impossible to enter them without breaking something, they built new ones to store additional, but redundant, data, business rules, and logic. In an attempt to coordinate these applications to support business processes, they built a myriad of point-to-point interfaces between the applications. As a result of these seemingly efficient but short-sighted approaches, the systems architecture of the average 20+ year company looks something like this (aptly named, the "scare" diagram):

Because of this complexity, many companies don't have a definitive understanding of their customers, products, and performance and have difficulty modifying business processes in response to new opportunities and competitive realities. Furthermore, they devote the lion's share of their IT spend to maintaining existing systems rather than innovating new capabilities.

This isn't new news, of course. During the 1990's, we started to realize that IT systems often inhibited rather than enabled change. Since then, IT and business leaders have been working hard to increase agility by replacing systems and using new approaches to promote integration and commonality. Along the way, we have learned that:

1. Across-the-board "scrape and rebuild" of systems usually doesn't make sense because often the gain isn't worth the pain. This approach is like knocking down your garage and throwing out everything in it. There's a lot of good stuff in your existing applications and there is no guarantee that the new systems will be that much better, less complex, or cheaper than the old ones.
2. Hiding existing systems complexity using a "layer and leave" approach makes it easier to use and integrate existing systems, but doesn't reduce the costs of supporting inflexible and redundant systems. This approach is like hiring a garage "concierge" to find things and put them away. Unfortunately, you have to pay for the concierge service as well as the costs of maintaining the garages.
3. The best way to manage complexity is to "clean as you go". This is a combination of the two approaches — implemented on a project-by-project basis. Each project is defined in a way that moves the enterprise closer to the desired "to be" architecture. Using our garage analogy, to move something in, one or two things must be reorganized or moved out. This approach includes layering, but also extracting critical data and functionality out from applications and rebuilding them so that they can be managed as an enterprise asset.

IT isn't alone in the need to simplify. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter pointed out, "Companies sow the seeds of their own decline in adding too many things — product variations, business units, independent subsidiaries — without integrating them." Keep in mind that, since IT architectures mirror the inherent complexity of the businesses that they support, it's impossible to have a truly agile and cost-effective technical architecture without simplified business architecture.

It's hard to say "no" to the extra product line, merger, reporting package or, for that matter, bicycle. Simplicity's just not that simple. How are you doing getting there?

With the 10% unemployed rightfully dominating the front page, it's hard to remember that the 90% employed are working hard, not looking back or acting scared.

Case in point, here's an email I received recently from an IT executive working for one of the (well run) auto companies: "Things here are jumping. Projects are going well. Overall management is really good."

To the cynical, this is an executive living in denial, victim of the "boiled frog" syndrome, defined as the inability to react appropriately to changing circumstances. To me, it's reality. People are doing what they can, where they can — exactly what we need to manage through this crisis as quickly as possible.

Not too long ago, I expected sadness and despair to permeate the companies with whom I work. Anticipating the worst, I tiptoed down their hallways, expecting that my clients would need empathy and comforting words. They quickly brushed off any opportunity to commiserate. Relatively dispassionately, they described the impact to their business, the budget cuts and layoffs, and the priorities going forward. They felt no need to wallow in what was or could have been. Their focus was on the future.

I left feeling comforted, surprised, and a little concerned.

Upon reflection, I realized that nothing has really changed for the average I.T. professional. They've been working in the do-more-with-less, your-job-is-at risk world since the dot com bust. According to Microsoft CIO, Tony Scott, IT has "been dealing with trimmed IT budgets for years, which means they've had to focus on boosting productivity and cutting costs." Tight funding combined with outsourcing means that that the typical IT professional has been living in a "recession" (in dollars and/or jobs) for almost 10 years. And this phenomenon isn't unique to I.T. Talk with the average leader about managing cuts in dollars and jobs and the reaction isn't denial, anger or grief, but acceptance.

The new normal is the old normal. No reason to get all worked up about it. Let's just move on.

My concern remains. While this mindset is healthy for our businesses and economy, what does it say about the state of our hearts? As the media reports new homeless and hungry, it makes more sense to be sad than sanguine. Let's hope that the 90% take good care of the 10% so that we all get through this together.

It's my hope that Kundra had nothing to do with this mess. Believe me, I, and many other CIOs, have been in his shoes. There's a lot of money flowing through IT and if someone with signing authority wants to approve invoices for products that were never received (which is what happened under Kundra) or resell product that was received (which is what happened to me), it can go on for awhile unless some pretty strict controls are in place.

I don't know Kundra, but reports indicate an impressive track record and I hope that we all get a chance to see what he can do in an enterprise famous for not making anything happen, at least not quickly or cheaply.

Based on his press, he sounds like the perfect CIO. Of course, nobody's perfect, but what's not to like? He's a workaholic who is an ardent advocate for applying consumer technologies in creative ways to support the mission of his enterprise. He watches every dollar, only supports investments that make good business sense, and has no fear of killing projects going nowhere to reinvest the money in other opportunities. He spends time on the front line, making sure that technology is making a difference, and invests in developing his people.

It's a sad coincidence that his office was searched and employee arrested on the very same day that he gave his first speech outlining his leadership agenda. I regret that he's not at work today because what he said made sense. Let's look at what he outlined against the four key IT imperatives:

1. How do we increase the value realized from our IT investments?

Kundra's agenda: Align with Obama's transparency and open government strategic mandate, underscoring the principle that the information age requires "liquidity in the market when it comes to the flow of information and the velocity at which that information travels" and that "when data has been democratized in the past, you've had an explosion of innovation."

2. How do we improve the success of projects and change initiatives?

Kundra's agenda: Use technology more effectively by doing "a better job managing its more than 4 million employees and more than 10,000 IT systems", in particularly, changing the way investments are rationalized by focusing more on outcomes and less on processes.

3. How do we ensure coherent architectures to enable flexibility and agility?

Kundra's agenda: Reduce the timeline for procurement since, "If it takes two or three years to go through procurement...we've bought something that, by the way, suddenly makes no sense."

4. How do we reduce our lights-on costs to increase innovation capacity?

Kundra's agenda: Lower the cost of government operations by using consumer technologies that are subject to the "Darwinian pressures in the consumer space — the ones that so fundamentally innovate and lower the cost of technologies."

A CIO who can lay out a strategically grounded, coherent agenda after only two weeks on the job is rare find. Whoever made the decision for Kundra to go on leave needs to get real and get him back on the job. It's a fact of life that people steal. It's my bet that Kundra isn't one of them.

I'm sure glad I wasn't working in D.C. when someone under me was caught embezzling. It was embarrassing enough to find that I had been played, but at least it didn't force me out of my job and impact my career.

I about fell out of my chair reading that companies are investing in sound masking technology to prevent their employees from overhearing executives discuss the state of the company and possible layoffs. I wonder if anybody in the decision-making process posed the question, "Yes, the sound masking technology will help squelch rumors, but shouldn't we focus our energies on actually helping our employees manage their fears about plant closings, project cancellations, and job losses?"

We all use, or rather misuse, smart technology to do dumb things. I've attended meetings in body, but not in spirit, due to the lure of my constantly buzzing BlackBerry. Everyone has diddled with a Power Point presentation by spending endless hours searching for the perfect graphic, adjusting the fonts, and positioning the text. And, of course, most of us have experienced regret and remorse for sending an email late at night, in a fog of anger or fatigue.

Unfortunately, our lapses in techno-judgment extend beyond how we use our personal "productivity" tools - they also are manifested in the systems that we select to run our company's core business processes. The impact of doing stupid things to our business far outweighs the impact of doing stupid things to ourselves (since we also personally bear the brunt of these behaviors in the form of poor performance appraisals, long work hours, and uncomfortable, strained relationships.)

Time and time again, I see leaders focus exclusively on defining technologies to drive the performance of the business rather than the people within it. Here are a few examples of how good technology can go bad...

These examples illustrate two very important principles about smart applications of technology:

1. Increase breadth of impact by pushing technology as far down in the organization as possible. The greater the use, the greater the value. Don't give decision support tools to senior executives or business process tools to an elite group of specialized analysts. Instead, equip the front line employees who serve your customers and run your business.
2. Increase the depth of impact by implementing features that simultaneously serve individual and business interests. Don't expect people to trade their old practices for systems that make their jobs harder or more mundane. Instead, figure out how to tap in to the core motivational needs: to be challenged, respected and connected. For example, incent sales reps to enter timely and accurate data by providing something of value in return such as a customized sales presentation, elimination of status reporting, or insights regarding successful sales strategies employed by other sales reps.

The leader's job, in the words of Jim Collins, is to "hire motivated people and don't de-motivate them." In applying technology, this includes giving them giving them tools that foster accountability, innovation, and collaboration." By considering the soft side of your software decisions, you can make technology work for you, your business and your people.

Most leaders have attended the requisite change management workshops and learned how to analyze stakeholders, develop communications plans, and build momentum and skills for change.

Good stuff - as far as it goes. Problem is, no one ever tells you that to be a good change agent, you have to be willing to die in order to thrive.

Okay, not literally. You have to be willing to put your job or position at risk by having some difficult, but crucial conversations - to ensure that good decisions are made and the odds for success are on your side.

Consider a case in point. Alberto, a talented executive, sold in his company's first ERP implementation. His is a familiar story with the project delivering short of expectations and timelines and costs coming in twice the original plan. Alberto is no longer with the company. He didn't get fired, but decided to leave. He was exhausted and disillusioned. Alberto knowingly broke all the rules. He allowed the project to start even though success criteria were fuzzy, the scope was too large, and accountability for process change was not in place. He assumed the sponsorship role for the project when the CFO left for "personal reasons." He allowed an inexperienced project manager to be assigned and assumed day-to-day management responsibilities when she didn't deliver - even though he had a department to run. He half heartedly tried to raise issues, but sent mixed signals. In the beginning, he didn't want to sound like a naysayer and kill the project before it began. In the end, he was embarrassed and felt professionally at risk.

Research has found that almost 70% of IT-enabled business initiatives fail or fall short of expectations and, of these, 50% of the issues are caused by inadequate user involvement and executive support and unclear business objectives. Interestingly, the majority of project managers are well aware of the risks on their projects. Unfortunately, about only about 1 in 5 project managers know how to effectively engage in the right conversations to mitigate these issues. In the article, "How Project Leaders Can Overcome the Crisis of Silence", the authors discuss the five "crucial conversations" that need to occur to help ensure project success:

When managers don't engage in these conversations, it's a painful for all involved. Projects fail or disappoint and the survivors are changed forever. The lucky ones learn from their experience and become amazing project and change managers. Many others lose their jobs or find that their career has stalled. The unfortunate majority learn that life is too short and shy away from assuming leadership roles or projects that look too risky. In most cases, the organization loses.

Constructive, and often difficult, dialogue results in good decisions and good decisions drive success.

Take your anxieties and channel them in to productive conversations. Review your projects and figure out which of the risky behaviors are in play. Next, get help role-playing how to have the right conversations. Finally, muster the courage to say what needs to be said - the earlier the better. Keep in mind that, if your project was easy, it would already be done and that the powers-that-be want you - need you - to succeed. You are the means to their end.

Alberto's ills were self-inflicted. No one can make you do something you don't believe in. If someone tries, respectively and humbly decline. As a wise, old boss of mine used to say, "It's better to eat it on Sunday, than every day of the week". In other words, a relatively quick, painless death is better than a slow, painful one.