Who is Mr. Hacker? Is it Mister, Missis or Miss? How is it to employ a hacker and is it good to be this kind of individual?

Before going to discussion about properties of hacker, let's give definition to the leadership and the process of leadership.

Leaders are people who are expected to be and are seen to be influential on important matters. Leadership means the process of influencing other people in the ways which are more or less acceptable for them.

There is a word «influence» in both definitions. Influence is a process when person or a group affects what other person or group does or/and thinks. Inputs for this process are powers. Powers can be sourced from «inside» of the individual, from the disposition or from formally given properties. All these include information, personal characteristics, control over resources, position, social connections, expertise (French and Raven, 1960).

Let's now return to the original subject. Who is a hacker? Sit down for a minute and try to understand or feel what does this term mean for you. I have done some research on descriptions of it, all are taken off the Internet (see Appendix below). I would like to explicitly note at this point that «hacker» is positive term by default. Negative opponent is called «cracker».

Now can we give cumulative definition to the term Hacker? Let me try to do it:

Hacker is an individual who enjoys exploring capabilities of self and others in order to extend those capabilities and manage toward his/her goals successfully, being motivated intrinsically up to the point of obsession. Hacker uses «trial and error» method and respects fast feedback. Hacker is having implicit code of ethics, and does not engage into activities contradicting this code. Hacker can «wear» white hat being creative and constructive, but can change the hat to black and become destructive, however not illegal.

Table 1. What does «Hackership» mean for businesses?

Thus in business language, Hacker (starting with capital letter) can be described as:

The individual who is having strong personal vision and criterion for effectiveness, successfully influences others using own charisma, intrinsically driven and uses power derived from analytical skills, experience, mentoring, integrity, trust building and mutual respect. This is an individual who learns things quickly when in obsession.

Are those kinds articulated inherent to Leaders? Isn't it the person you would like to employ with your business to raise its performance? Maybe yes, however, as I have already emphasized, Hackership as well as Leadership, can be positive («white») and negative («black»). Description above just says that those type of people have high «operational gearing», but does not say how it should be used. Like in financial considerations of break even point (BEP), when «operational gearing» is high, you can gain much more if volume increases, however at the same time you lose much more if volume decreases. The same is with Hackership and Leadership - you gain much more if individual is properly oriented and supported, but you will get global disaster in case s/he will have different point of view onto the business.

These are Musts and Do's when employing Hackers as leaders:

What organization should NOT do:

This is important to note here that Hacker is probably the leader practicing task-oriented leadership style - this means that s/he will be successful only in favourable or unfavourable situations (i.e. tasking for success or tasking in environment of crisis). Another item needs more investigation: organisations not only require leadership, but also management - how well Hackers can manage?

Appendix. Hacker can be described as:

Post of Sep 30, 2007