The Britt-Webb Family

It’s a familiar adage that if you are trying to persuade people to embrace or engage in some kind of change, you need to get to the heart of the “WIFM factors” - What’s in it for me? I’ve been helping clients understand, embrace and lead change initiatives for about 30 years.  This shows up in several ways:

• Often the nature of my consulting work involves working with clients to create a business-IT strategy that must be sold to the organization.  Of course, collaborative approaches afforded by the Web 2.0 universe facilitate much more use of collaborative, appreciative inquiry, Future Search and similar whole systems approaches to change - pull versus push approaches, if you will.
• Sometimes my work is about designing and helping clients to implement a new IT or shared service Operating Model.
• Occasionally, I am teaching those in the role of “change sponsors” or “change agents” how to be more effective at leading or guiding organizational change.
• And sometimes I’m asked to shed light on something gone awry, and usually to help get it back on track.

More and more frequently, I am personally on the receiving end of a change.  I learned many years ago that being trained and certified in a change management methodology does not immunize you from the stresses of change.  (About 15 years ago I went through many weeks of organizational change training when I was a partner at Ernst & Young and received the highest certification in their OCM methodology - a feat that involved rappelling down a sheer mountain in Jackson Hole, Wyoming - an activity that still has me occasionally waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat!)

My most recent personal change experience is trivial, but, I believe, quite telling.  I found myself in a discussion recently with several colleagues about web browsers in general, and Mozilla Firefox in particular.  I consider myself no laggard when it comes to technology adoption, but I’m no early adopter either.  I won’t lightly embark on a change unless I can:

1. See a very compelling benefit to the change (in this case from MS Internet Explorer to Firefox)
2. Understand and be comfortable with the risks of change (compared with the risks of not changing)
3. Understand the path I’m going to take from current to changed state (in this case, learning a new browser, moving all my favorite links, etc.)

I’m pretty conservative with my work technologies.  Internet Explorer (IE) effectively came with my work laptop computer and seemed to work fine.  I particularly liked some of the new features such as tabbed browsing.  So, I asked my colleagues, who were all very enthusiastic about Firefox, why I should change to Firefox.  I heard a lot of “noise” - they were telling me about features that I either did not understand, could not visualize, or that simply did not turn me on.  I was sent a couple of links to evaluation sites.  I spent a few minutes on those, but again, could not see anything compelling that would lead me to undertake the risks of change.  After a few such conversations, I dropped the idea of switching, and continued with my good old IE.

A few days ago, I came across a comment about Firefox’s speed advantage over IE - now I was really interested!  In my personal value system as it relates to personal computing, I’m a speed freak!  I can’t explain why, but I crave fast response times.   I was one of the first to get AT&T’s U-verse broadband, and I’ve experimented with tricks such as Google Web Accelerator (which I’ve uninstalled due to too many conflicts with web sites such as delicious and YouTube).

So, when I learned that Firefox might be faster than IE, I took the plunge and installed Firefox.  This blog is typically not about software evaluation, so I won’t go there except to say that I’m absolutely delighted with Firefox and it is, indeed, noticeably faster than IE on my computer.  But the real point is a lesson in change management.  If my colleagues had known, or had flushed out my personal value system, and related the change in browser to my “need for speed” I would have jumped at the change - no hesitation.  Instead, they threw features at me, or benefits that I just did not relate to or was not interested in.

So, if you are trying to persuade people to change, one of the keys is the WIFM - and to help them understand what is in it for them, you need to understand their personal value systems - what are they looking for - what turns them on - then figure out how your proposed change gets to their value system.  It is said, “All politics is local.”  The analogy is that, “All change is personal!”

So we have the Democratic National Convention starting this morning in Denver, the Republican National Convention starting next week in Minneapolis. It occurred to me that the Office 2.0 conference is like the “2.0 National Convention” for high energy attendees who are looking to shape the 2.0 agenda going forward. With nearly 100 speakers and panelists from all walks of the 2.0 experience, the conference provides a ground floor opportunity to learn what the trends are, what’s working, what’s not. What’s different about Office 2.0 from many other tech conferences is the conference exists purely for the pleasure of the member attendees. It’s designed to deliver the best possible customer experience because it’s a celebration of the phenomenon of productivity and mobility afforded by the cloud-ready second generation Internet.

In case you didn’t know, the Office 2.0 conference was conceived as an experiment, along with the meme. “The term originated with Ismael Ghalimi [1] in an experimental effort to test the hypothesis that it could be done today, that he could perform all of his computer based work in online applications.” (Source: Wikipedia). For the past three years, those of us who’ve helped Ismael literally scramble in 6-8 weeks time to pull together a best practices agenda and a worthwhile conference experience for all attendees. The process reminds of conferences I used to pull together when I was an industry observer in the outsourcing sector last decade. I created conferences with all the right people, with all the right topics, because I wanted to go!

Because the conference is non-traditional, this year we had a late setback that will hurt Ismael. That upsets me, personally, because this effort is truly such a labor of love for those who take part in it. Despite that hiccup in an otherwise fantastic show shaping up, I’m looking forward to a number of items on the agenda this year:

• The Unconference. If you’ve not been to one of these… make time on your agenda for this one. Ross Mayfield will once again coordinate this pre-show event. It’s your opportunity to speak, to attend, and participate in discussing the burning issues you have as you consider your own Office 2.0 journey.
• The Surprise Keynote: Ismael simply will not tell us who it is! ITSinsider will pay an unconference admission if you post your correct guess on the discussion thread regarding the mystery guest.
• The GE Case Study: I first saw the internal GE social network with my client, Greg Simpson (CTO, GE) early this summer. Greg was going to speak at the conference, but couldn’t arrange his schedule. Coincidentally, Oliver Marks saw Dr. Sukh Grewal speak in July at the Social Networking Conference. He moved quickly and asked him to join the Office 2.0 agenda. I’m certain it will be an excellent case study from one of the most innovative enterprise clients on the planet. See Oliver’s post on the GE social network from July.
• Platform-as-a-Service Panel: Hosted by SaaS guru, Phil Wainewright, this panel includes leading tech platform vendors such as Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, Zoho, and Longjump. I’m interested to see where these panelists agree and disagree. The stability and reliability of online apps depend on them getting this right.
• Wachovia case study: Pete Fields, who only had 20 minutes at the Enterprise 2.0 conference, will have more time to detail his experience with rolling out a social network/collaboration strategy for Wachovia to over 100,000 employees. Plenty of time for Q&A too.
• The Changing Face of the Enterprise: Adoption in the Real Business World: The theme of this year’s show is Enterprise Adoption. Sam Lawrence, everyone’s favorite e2.0 blogger, will be hosting this panel with a great lineup of early adopter veterans.
• Entering and Leaving the Workforce: nGenera has a treasure chest of data on this topic. Our Exec VP, Nick Vitalari, will moderate this panel which includes a retired F500 CIO and a 15-year old student!

These are just a few that I know I’m interested in… but experience has shown I generally learn more at sessions where I’m hearing the speakers for the first time. Although there will be scores of new vendors to visit in the pod demo gallery, I’m going to do my best to attend every session.

Incidentally, for small startups who (say, weren’t chosen for TechCrunch50 or can’t afford to go) want to get some excellent exposure for their products, be sure to check out the Office 2.0 Launchpad:

Office 2.0 Launchpad
You’ve started a new company developing a cool Office 2.0 product? Your company has 5 employees or less? You want to show your product to investors and media representatives? The Office 2.0 Launchpad is for you! Hosted by the Office 2.0 Conference to take place in San Francisco, CA on September 3-5, the Office 2.0 Launchpad will let you schedule one-on-one demos with over 50 members of the VC community, and more than 100 analysts, bloggers, and journalists, alongside potential customers and thought leaders from the Office 2.0 industry. If you’re interested, please send an email to ismael at monolab dot com. The first ten applicants come for free. The next get in for $995, barely enough to cover food and hotel costs. Hurry up, for we only have a limited number of spots available!

What’s included:

• One full attendee pass
• Listing on the Office 2.0 Launchpad page
• Access to the one-on-one demo scheduling system
• Dedicated page on the office20.com website for one year
• Video recording of your demo and publishing on the office20.com website

Needless to say (but I need to say it), the conference is going to be great. I’m looking forward to meeting many of you for the first time and catching up with friends. Several of the EIs are going, so there will be plenty of socializing in meatspace. Don’t forget to wear your Twitter decal on your badge.

See you in San Francisco!

photo credit: brian solis

“To understand a crime, follow the money” is a familiar principle of detective work.  Over the years, I’ve found that principle to be extremely useful in the world of IT management.  In fact, my spin on it is, “If you want to understand dysfunctional IT behavior, follow the money!”

Of course, this principle helps detectives to not only catch criminals, it helps to get the criminals punished.  Similarly, in the IT world, I’ve used the principle to both understand what is leading to dysfunctional IT behavior, and to help correct that behavior by fixing the money-related drivers.  Let me provide an example and the application of this principle.  The example is, of course, fictitious, though based on real life situations I have worked over many years of management consulting and research.

First, a caveat.  Clearly, not all human or organizational behavior is motivated by money.  However, I have found that collective organizational behavior is significantly shaped by money - by the sources of funds, valuation of returns, and measurement inherent in financial reporting.

Scenario

Higgins-Smithbottom is a global fashion designer and retailer.  The company culture values the creative geniuses who come up with the hallmark designs, and places great freedom and authority on the heads of business units.  In common with the industry, success is seen to be all about great design, brilliant merchandising and effective management of the brand - three disciplines that seem to have little to do with IT.  As such, IT is an “expense to be minimized,” a “necessary evil,” and something that the IT organization is expected to “take care of with minimal disruption to the business” so that business leaders are “free to design, merchandise and manage the fickle fashion business unencumbered by IT.”

The executives at Higgins-Smithbottom are vaguely aware of contemporary success stories such as Zara and Li & Fung, but don’t recognize the role that information and IT have in these companies success stories.

Financial Forensic Clues

1. All IT capital and expense is managed out of an IT budget - the IT resource is essentially “free” to the business unit leaders.
2. There is no enterprise-wide IT prioritization and allocation process.  Resources are essentially allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with the regulator on business demand being total supply - when all available supply is tied up, no other demand is accepted.
3. Because IT is “free” there are no attempts to measure and track the return on IT investments.

Dysfunctional Behavior

The perspective on IT is that it costs too much and delivers too little.  Even though business heads do not “pay” for IT, they know that the bottom line is impacted by it - IT saps profits and eats into the executive bonuses.  As a result, business leaders try to minimize their involvement in IT, invest no time or energy trying to understand it, or figure out how it can improve the business.  Consequently, IT contributes relatively little to the business.  It responds as an “order taker” acting on low value requests from business silos, without an overall IT strategy or architecture.  Each response to a business order adds more complexity to the patchwork of IT systems.  More time and money is spent on inter-system interfaces than on business enablement.

When a meaningful business request surfaces for management information or business analytics, IT finds it virtually impossible to respond, due to the complex patchwork of systems and lack of data standardization.  Lack of adequate IT resourcing and responsiveness leads business units to hire their own IT resources - sometimes as consultants and contractors, other times as permanent staff.  These “shadow IT” groups exacerbate the complexity of the systems environment, and mask true IT spending levels.

IT eventually finds itself in a vicious cycle - low business demand maturity begets low IT supply maturity.  When IT does get engaged by the business for a new system, it fails to “push back” on the business demand to “automate the manual process as is - don’t make us change the process!”  IT does what it’s told, even if that means customizing the heck out of an off-the-shelf package.  The customization triples the implementation costs, and sends subsequent maintenance costs through the roof.

Lessons Learned

1. When IT is “free,” it is not valued.  When someone else is footing the bill, there’s no sense of accountability from those who should be turning the investment into a valued return.
2. Without enterprise-wide prioritization and allocation, IT optimization takes place at the business unit level, leading to sub-optimization at the enterprise level.
3. Lack of enterprise-wide prioritization and allocation is typically accompanied by a lack of an overall IT strategy and road map.  This leads to islands of automation, and over time, the number of interfaces (and costs associated with building and maintaining those interfaces) increase exponentially.  After a few years, the vast majority of IT spend is related to interfaces - i.e., it’s all cost-added, without any value-added.
4. When IT is sub-optimized for the enterprise, IT “vacuums” get created throughout the business, and nature’s abhorrence of vacuums leads them to be filled by “shadow IT” groups.  This adds to actual IT spend, even though the shadow spend is not visible in the IT budget - i.e., IT is costing you more than you think it is.
5. Being “cheap” with IT usually ends up being very expensive!

My friend and colleague Frank Capek has just summarized his 25 years of learnings from his work on Customer Experience Design.  I think so much of Frank’s work, and believe this is so important, I thought I’d point you all to the post.

As a related aside, I’d like to share a couple of “wow” experiences I’ve had in the last week.  The first was delivered by Moen, the faucet company.  My kitchen faucet was getting a little hard to turn.  I went to the Moen web site and got my first small “wow.”  It is beautifully laid out.  I was quickly able to get a description of the problem, the recommended solution, and a real bonus - a nicely animated lesson in how to replace the cartridge in the faucet.  The site helped me find and order the right cartridge.  All well and good.  The replacement part arrived a few days later, and I was able to replace the part in about 20 minutes - a painless process thanks to the animation and clear directions that came with the part.

While I was replacing the cartridge I noticed that the lever was loose (the faucet is a single lever type, with an integrated spray attachment).  Anyway, replacing the part solved the “stickiness” in the handle, and all was well.  However, a couple of days later, I noticed that the lever was again loose.  I removed the Allen screw, applied a good dollop (an engineering term!) of Loctite thread compound.  A couple of days later, it was loose again.  I went back to the web site, but could not see any particular reference to the loose screw phenomenon, so I wrote a support request (again, easily done) describing the problem.  The next day, I got an email telling me that the parts I needed were being shipped to me post haste.

A couple of days later, a replacement Allen screw, plus several other parts associated with securing the lever, turned up in the mail - again with clear instructions.  No cost - no hassle.  Just exceptional customer service.  I replace the screw and related parts, and that solved the problem.  I was absolutely delighted about every aspect of my interaction with Moen.  In Frank’s words, I was ‘wowed!’

In the same week, I had read a review by the wonderful Walter Mossberg on Photo Books.  These are a fun way to assemble photos into a hard back or soft bound book.  He pointed out that Apple’s iPhoto had a gizmo built in, and that you could easily assemble a book (or calendar) and send it to Apple for processing and printing.  I’m already an enthusiastic iPhoto user, but had never tried the photo book feature.  So I did - quickly assembling a surprise book for my wife.  The process was easy and fun.  I ordered the book from Apple and was delighted when the finished product arrived through the mail about 10 days later.  Unfortunately, within minutes the pages separated from the hard back binding.  Bummer!

I got onto Apple’s web site, quickly found the place to register the problem - again, a beautifully designed site that made the whole process easy.  I got an immediate acknowledgment (nothing new there!) but a day later received a personal email from a support representative (named!) expressing deep regret that this had happened, and letting me know that a replacement would be shipped immediately.  The “wow” came 2 days later - while the original order was shipped by mail (my request, being a cheapskate) the replacement came by FedEx.  Once again, Apple proved it really is a class act.  of course, I’ve gone on to assemble and order several other items!

It’s experiences such as those delivered by Moen and Apple that go well above what we’ve come to expect - that differentiate them in the market place and keep us customers going back time and time again.  And, to one of Frank’s points, these were not “accidents.”  I know from years of experience, that Apple engineers the “wow” into virtually everything it does.  Similarly, as I’ve told friends about my Moen experience, they tell me of similar experiences they’ve had with the company - consistently exceptional customer experiences.

As an IT organization, how have you “designed” an exceptional customer experience?  How could you create more “wows” for your business partners and customers?  Check in on Frank’s blog to get some pointers on what it takes and how to achieve it.  It will be well worth your time!

I was in a conversation with a CIO earlier this week on the topic of value realization measurement, and I realized I had never really posted on this crucial topic - shame on me!  I did come at measurement (somewhat obliquely) in a post last October on The Business Case as a Value Realization Tool, but I suspect some of the ideas got lost in that piece, so I’m going to tackle the issue more directly as a multi-part post.

The biggest single mistake I see with value realization measurement is that people get totally intimidated with the incredible complexity around the topic - so intimidated that they generally give up.  It’s as if the business-IT “system” (I use that term in a scientific or engineering sense) is a big black box.  We know how to (and generally do) measure the inputs to the black box - capital expense, operating costs, headcount, ratios such as IT spend as a percentage of revenues or IT spend per employee, but we are generally lost as to the outputs, or even worse, the outcomes. 

I think there are 3 distinct aspects to the value realization measurement challenge:

1. There is indeed enormous complexity involved if you allow it - the relationship between a given technology initiative and an associated business impact is often tenuous at best - especially when the technology impact is largely infrastructural in nature.  What, for example, is the value of upgrading a PC?  The answer, of course, depends on all sorts of things such as who is the user and what are they using the PC for?  How will they use the upgraded PC in ways they could not use the device it is replacing, and how will the new marginal uses lead to additional realized value?  Even if not infrastructural, there are often timing effects - the initiative may not yield its full value until some time into the future - perhaps years.  There are often effects from interdependencies - we might get a certain amount of increased sales performance through the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.  We might then get a significant multiplier through a new sales incentive program and another multiplier from using some sort of Web 2.0 capability to engage customers in the product design process.  Accurately allocating benefits across these initiatives might be tricky, to say the least!
2. There are cultural issues that often get in the way.  With measurement comes accountability - real or implied!  If I’m a business executive that is sponsoring, say, a $150 million initiative and I’m in an environment where value realization is not measured, I am unlikely to stand up and say, “Hey, let’s measure the realized value of this initiative and see how it matches the business case!”  If I can get away without it being measured, that’s perfectly fine by me!
3. The third aspect I see might be the most intimidating - IT people like to get to precision!  They want the answer.  This is insidious and prevents most organizations from even trying to measure value realization.  And that’s my key point - if you are not trying to measure value realization, you are likely to lose some potential value - what I refer to as value leakage. 

Let me explain why trying to measure value is so important for actually driving value realization.  I’ll go back to my black box analogy.  We know what goes in but not what comes out.  So I ask you, my business customer and partner, “What would you like to come out of the box if you had your wishes?”  Let’s stick with the CRM example, and assume my customer/partner is Fred, the VP Sales and Marketing.   Fred says, “I’d like to increase sales productivity.”   “By how much, by when, and how will you measure it?” I ask Fred.  “By 25%, by the end of next year, and we’d measure it by looking at the increase in sales volume per quarter per salesperson.”

“OK, Fred, now let me explain, the black box is not really a black box - it’s a system, with people, processes, policies, information, and so on.  What will the black box system need to do to increase sales productivity by 25%?”  “Well,” says Fred, “It will need to save the sales people time - increase their efficiency so more of their time is spent on selling rather than looking for information and other activities that get in the way.  And it will need to improve their close ratio - make them more effective at selling.”  “OK. Fred, let’s talk about exactly how the black box might achieve those goals.  Let’s drill down on how it might improve the sales close ratio to better understand the best possible ways we might be able to do this.  And how we will measure and track the ability for the system to improve the close ratio.”

You can imagine this conversation going to and fro.  Fred may have a rich understanding of these issues, and all I’m doing is mining that understanding and breaking the system’s outputs down into capabilities and outcomes.  On the other hand, Fred might have no idea how the CRM will contribute to performance, and in that case I’m really consulting to him, rather than mining what he knows - Fred and I are jointly figuring it out.  Either way, we might determine that effectiveness will be increased by giving the sales person capabilities that bring her a wealth of information about the customer (e.g., buying history, current market intelligence) so that she’s better able to target her sales efforts and more effective with the ones she targets because she knows so much more about them.  The outcomes might include a measure of customer knowledge as assessed by the sales manager by listening in on sales calls or through periodic customer surveys.  Another capability might be the opportunity to collaborate with other sales people on a specific sales issue - has anyone ever come across this competitor?  What do we know about them?  An outcome measure might include a measure of collaboration among sales people, perhaps tied to some sort of reward and recognition for such collaborative behavior.

My example here is trivial (as clearly is my knowledge of the CRM space!) but hopefully you get the point.  We’ve taken a big investment (CRM deployment) with a nebulous goal - increase sales productivity - and drilled down to determine the capabilities that the CRM needs to provide, the outcomes those capabilities need to deliver, and the metrics we will use to track those outcomes.  Typically, in the process of doing this, we have significantly increased our understanding of the solution, probably identified additional aspects of the solution that might have been overlooked, dramatically increased Fred’s buy-in and commitment to the solution, and have identified some success metrics that we can track. By doing so, we are in a better position to learn and improve our business case processes and value realization strategies.

And this is why I say in the post’s title that “you can win by simply trying.”  Rather than assume that value realization tracking is so hard I won’t bother, I’ve worked with my key customer/partner to tease out some key measures.  They won’t all be right - that’s fine, they are a starting point we can refine with experience.  They won’t be precise, or perhaps even accurate - again, that’s OK.  Something is better than nothing, and there was probably enormous benefit in taking Fred through the analytical process.  Simply doing that will likely increase value realization.  Alternatively, it may have revealed that the benefits were just not there, or too nebulous for the CRM program to go ahead without further analysis and perhaps some benchmarking.

As Lord Kelvin famously said, “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”

Hutch Carpenter, a product manager at Connectbeam, mashed up this Wordle on what 10 leading enterprise 2.0 vendors are talking about on their sites. Vendors include:

1. Jive Software
2. SocialText
3. Connectbeam
   
4. Atlassian Confluence
5. Six Apart Movable Type
6. Newsgator
7. Traction Software
8. Near-Time
9. SpikeSource SuiteTwo
10. Worklight

See Hutch’s post here.

Making a deeper commitment to Microsoft, Atlassian acquired one of its community partners, Benryan Software and released its SharePoint Connector for Confluence 2.9. Additionally, the company incorporated over 150 user requests into the latest release and added 10 new production plugins. Benryan has a MS Office connector to Confluence (known fondly by existing users as the word/dav plug-in*) that makes it simple to import all Word Docs (in one to multiple pages), and to edit them in Confluence. You can also view Excel, PowerPoint, and Word docs within a Confluence wiki page and edit them. Also announced is the commercial release of its SharePoint connector. Some key features include the ability to embed Confluence content within SharePoint, bi-directional navigation (link SharePoint content within Confluence and vice versa), federated search (confluence searches reach into SharePoint), and security unification (immediate access: SharePoint permissions and unified security).

For a more detailed explanation of all the goodies in the new release, see @SarahinTampa’s post on RWW, “Wiki Editing Just Got Easier: Atlassian Confluence Releases Office Connector.”

Jeff Walker, President of Atlassian, briefed a few of us bloggers last week on the announcement. What’s interesting to me is how the company framed the announcement in language like, “We are embracing the Microsoft and Outlook world.” Jeff explained how there are lots of folks out there in corporate America who are “comfortable with Office documents.” Well, true dat, homeboy. IMHO the more sensible we can make the transition for corporate America to 2.0 working, the better. I hope we’ll see more 2.0 startups embracing the legacy installed base of enterprise 1.0 workers and workware.

Check out the MS Office Connector:

*For existing users who have the word/dav plug-in, there have been some major improvements and bug fixes to the software that are appearing within 2.9. And now that it is an Atlassian plugin, it is fully supported by the company, as well. The newer version is completely free to existing customers with current licenses. Bad news? Firefox 3.0 is currently not supported, however the company expects to resolve the issue shortly.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m contributing to a large research project here at nGenera. The research is titled, “Redefining Employee Computing.” The genesis for the project began when one of our customers casually asked, “What would happen if we (IT) stopped supporting the end-user… and we simply only supported from the Corporate network in?” Of course I’m paraphrasing, but that was the basic idea. The notion generated a spirited discussion around the topic, resulting in the research project we’re now undertaking.

Here is the project description:

“End-user computing” remains a burdensome challenge in large corporations, and the assumptions underlying its management have become obsolete. So has the term itself. Today we’re no longer dealing with just computing, but with devices and capabilities for performing work, communicating and collaborating with others, and even orchestrating the “life” side of the work-life equation. And corporations are no longer dealing with a faceless “end user” served by a standard package of capabilities, but with a wide variety of diverse and demanding employees who bring their own technological abilities and preferences to the job, and ho have been trained as consumers to expect technology to be highly capable and easy to use.”

The research has taken us in some predictable and some surprising directions. Included in the study are two dozen well-recognized corporate giants, many of them global. Half are in the Fortune 100 (of those, 6 are in the top 50 and 3 in the top 10). Bob Morison, featured here in the video is a regular commentator for PBS’s Nightly Business Report. He discusses the generational challenges we’re surfacing in the research. If you are interested in seeing some early findings on this research, we’ll be presenting at Office 2.0.

I try not to exploit my role as a blogger to promote products or businesses (unless there’s an exceptional customer experience or innovation I really believe is worthy of note).  Nor do I use it to vent frustrations about bad customer experiences (except in rare cases.)  I can’t fully explain my internal compass and guidelines for these principles, or even justify myself - when I promote or chastise, I do so because it feels right and appropriate at the time.  (As it happens, I think a great site for addressing product and vendor issues is at Get Satisfaction.)

With the caveats out of the way, I’ve recently been “upping the ante” on myself in terms of better organizing my online experience.  For example, as my bookmarks have expanded over the years, the way I originally had them organized no longer reflects how I actually need to use bookmarking.  Also, there’s just so much stuff to keep track of, so I decided to get into social bookmarking.  I had dabbled in the past, but determined that I needed to get beyond dabbling into some more serious usage.

Based on colleagues recommendations I tried Delicious - the new version.  Delicious is a rich and powerful tool.  I like the fact that I can use it in its simplest form (personal tagging and bookmarking) and grow into the more valuable social bookmarking dimension as I gain comfort with it.   Like most powerful tools, there’s a learning curve, and therefore I won’t feel the real value until I’m “past the hump” in terms of learning (my own personal ’speed bump’).

But I’m increasingly finding some Web 2.0 tools have really rough edges - strange user interfaces, erratic performance, and little meaningful guidance on how to get the best from them.  Now admittedly, I have a low threshold of pain in terms of learning.  If I can’t get a sufficient hang of a tool, and some level of instant gratification in 10 to 15 minutes, I tend to give up.  Sometimes the issue turns out to be unfortunate interactions between tools.  I’ve had a couple of such instances with Google Web Accelerator conflicting somehow with other web sites.  I was getting very erratic behavior with YouTube until I disabled Google Web Accelerator.  I believe I just found a similar incompatibility between Google Web Accelerator and Delicious.  The manifestation of this was both amusing and annoying.  I would frequently get the message:

Hmmm… you have been blocked…  Sorry, you’ve been temporarily blocked for accessing Delicious too rapidly. This could be the result of using a buggy, misconfigured, or malicious program. It could also be accidental on our part. Please hold off for a few minutes and try again later, in a gentler fashion. 

For a first class (and free!) product, this message from Delicious confounded me!  The implication that it’s my fault that I got an error message - I’m accessing the service “too rapidly”!  I should return later “in a gentler fashion”!  I tried typing slower, and hitting the keys with a little less vigor, but I still got the error message.  Fortunately, I discovered the Google Web Accelerator glitch, but someone else in a similar situation might have given up, or lived with this annoying glitch forever.

Again, this is not about Delicious, or even Google Web Accelerator.  Weird interactions aside, these are great products that work well (mostly) and have value.  I raved recently about MindMeister.  The more I use, the more I love it (as does my team as we now use this as a team support tool.)  But I’ve also wasted time and effort with some total rubbish!  I get the idea of beta versions and having users debug products, but some of the tools out there really are not ready for prime time.  One I tried recently (at a colleague’s suggestion) had no real guidance as to how to use it, a help system from the 1960’s, and when I gave up and tried to delete the things I put on it, gave me no way to do so.  I then decided to delete my account, and again there was no way to do so.  A search of the support pages showed me that this was a much requested feature they would work on some day.  In the meantime, “tell support you want out, and they will cancel the service within 24 hours”!  That’s not what Web 2.0 is all about!

I guess the punchline is - caveat emptor.  While there are some wonderful (and free!) tools out there that really do help with productivity and making you “smarter”, there’s many that just don’t cut it!

I’ve recently been working with a company where business-IT maturity is significantly lower than I typically see in my clients.  It’s a strange and sobering feeling - like stepping back about 20 years!  I don’t wish to embarrass anyone, so I’d best not say too much about the industry or the circumstances that led this company to have such low maturity, or that led them to be suddenly interested in cranking up the volume in their IT capabilities.  Suffice it to say that business conditions have recently changed, and are expected to continue changing over the foreseeable future, and this led them to hire a new, seasoned CIO.

Let me describe some of the characteristics of low business-IT maturity we see at this company.

• All “formal” IT spending is in the IT budget.  To the business, IT is a “free” resource - there is no business accountability for project spend or business return on IT-related investments.  This is a recipe that dooms IT to be viewed as a necessary overhead, and to mask the business value of investments in IT-enabled business change.
• There is a significant “non-formal” - i.e., shadow IT spend that is outside the IT budget.  Shadow IT typically occurs as a natural response to a void the IT organization has created - the business needs certain IT services or capabilities it is not getting from the “formal” IT structure, so it creates its own IT capabilities.  This may be OK, but it masks true IT spend, and typically impedes cost and leverage plays such as shared IT infrastructure, common tools and methods, and standardization.
• The business “places orders” on IT, and IT “takes orders” from the business.  As such, little, if any, process re-engineering is done, and given the highly siloed nature of the business (a common symptom of low business maturity), each silo wants to handle a process (such as order processing) in its own unique, idiosyncratic way.  This ultimately drives up IT costs and drives down value.
• As a result of the above, application packages are customized to a ridiculous degree - staying current with application package releases is impossible and support costs escalate.
• There is no consistent company-wide IT prioritization or portfolio management mechanism.  Demand volume always exceeds supply capacity.  To protect against this, the IT organization has grown its own silos that mirror the business silos.  Each IT silo has its own dedicated resources as a means to ensure that they can respond, at least at some level, to business demand.  The net result is that there’s always a significant amount of low value IT work to keep people busy, while potentially high value business opportunities lay fallow for want of IT supply capacity.
• There are no consistent project or program management methods, and nobody with a role of Information Architect, let alone Enterprise or Ecosystem Architect.  Contemporary practices such as SOA, or even simple middleware are a distant dream to those in IT that understand their potential.
• The IT staff is of reasonably high quality.  Many have been with the company a long time, so they really don’t know any different.  Some are more recent hires, though all from within the industry - and this is an industry I’d describe as one of the last bastions of what I’d call “IT blindness.”  The industry, by and large, has yet to recognize the potential of information and technology to completely reshape it, the way Wal-Mart’s supply chain and logistics leap in the 1990’s, or American Airlines foray into yield management in the mid 1980’s took their respective industries by storm, literally toppling some of their largest competitors and changing the discount retail and airline reservations businesses for ever more.

I’ll post another time about what this company might do to correct its sins of the past, and start gaining business advantage from IT, but challenge the reader to ask of your own company:

1. What is your level of busienss-IT maturity?
2. Are there any areas of IT blindness your company has?
3. Is all IT spending happening in those places that have the greatest leverage?
4. What are you doing to wring more value and competitive advantage from IT?

I took a quick survey this afternoon to see how members of my Twitter community are web-working.  These stats are not scientifically significant, but I found the results interesting.  Thanks to everyone who participated.

More than 10 browser tabs open:

Web-based services in use right now:

Nearly half (60%) described themself as an employee vs. self-employed, and the majority (85%) worked for small companies (1-500) employees.

We increasingly hear complaints about the stresses and strains of “information overload.”  I have to admit, I’m somewhat skeptical of this term and the phenomena associated with it.

First, this is not a new issue.  To the contrary, I suspect that since the earliest days of civilization, people have complained about information overload.  I can imagine the Town Crier (this was a person in the 1800’s employed by a town to proclaim announcements in the streets) approaching, bell ringing in hand, yelling, “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye.  Let it be known that…” and the town’s citizens grumbling, “Oh no!  That’s the third crier I’ve heard today - is there no limit to the amount of news we are expected to listen to?”

There’s something about the term “information overload” that puts the cart before the horse.  It’s like “horseless carriage” rather than “automobile” - if you pick the wrong label, you might misunderstand the problem, and thus come up with the wrong solution (or at least, come up with a solution that generates all sorts of undesirable, unintended consequences!)  If you think of the problem as information overload you might look for a solution that cuts back on the information, and that would be a crime!

I don’t personally suffer from information overload.  I feel eternally fortunate that I have access to so much information - that I am washed in so many messages for so much of my day and evening.  But, what I do feel is a strong need to:

1. Be better at finding potentially valuable information.  I’m finding an ever increasing array of new tools  - often Web 2.0 tools such as social bookmarking, RSS readers, tag and search, and content management - that really are helping me find useful information I might not otherwise come across.
2. Have much better tools to sort and filter the information available.  Again, tools such as tag/search, social bookmarking, and RSS readers are a great help in sorting and filtering.
3. Have much better ways to make sense of all the information.  There is always room for improvement here, but I find the better I can leverage technology to help with 1. and 2. above, the easier it is to make sense of the information I’m exposed to.  And even then, Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networks, and easy-to-use collaboration tools (e.g., mind mapping, project management) are helping enormously.

I think some of the so-called “information overload” is actually a “channels” problem - we often use the wrong channels for a given purpose.  Email, of course, is the most prone to abuse.  Part of this is a lack of accepted, shared protocols that would bring some sense and order to the email chaos.  Part of this is the old “hammer” problem - when all you have is a hammer, everything is treated as if it were a nail.  Clearly, tools such as Instant Messaging, collaboration hubs, and a better balance between “push” and “pull” communication methods can take the sting out of email.   At nGenera, my email traffic is down significantly since we began using a collaboration hub.

A more insidious problem that I believe is often masked under the “information overload” banner is poor work management practices.  In many IT organizations I see situations where layers of middle management have been eliminated over the last few years, but work processes have not been improved.  This is exacerbated by IT organizations often being the worst kind of “cobblers children” in that they are all but un-automated.  As a result, we see IT managers who spend much of their day sending and responding to email messages that are actually part of a dreadfully inefficient work-flow.  So, you have broken work-flow processes automated by email - a recipe for low productivity, low quality, and managers who don’t have the time to think, read, or learn. 

Let’s call a spade a spade - this is not “information overload” - it is poor management (at all levels) that has fostered poor processes and has created a vicious cycle leading to yet more emails, and ever-shrinking time to “sharpen the saw”, as the old adage goes.

I’ve had some interesting conversations with CIO’s and CTO’s about Cloud Computing lately.  These are exciting times.  I’m reminded of the earliest days of the personal computer.  PC’s were quietly finding their way into the enterprise computing scene, though you would not have known that by talking to CIOs.  They were mostly in denial, even as executive offices just down the corridor from the CIO’s office were beginning to become home to a variety of rogue PC’s - machines such as Apple II’s and Radio Shack TRS 80’s.

Fast forward 25 years or so.  Now the press is full of predictions and prognostications about Cloud Computing, several key players are investing heavily in this space (pun intended) but many CIO’s and CTO’s either just don’t believe it, see it as warmed over service  bureau computing from the 60’s and 70’s, or believe it’s the greatest threat to enterprise computing sanity since computer viruses first appeared.

I loved this post in ZDNet by Dion Hinchcliffe.   As usual, Dion is insightful, convincing and manages to come up with a clear graphic that helps us understand this emerging phenomenon.   I often have to remind myself about the theme of this blog - what IT organizations will look like in 2017.  That’s why I like Dion’s post so much.  I am absolutely convinced that by 2017, Cloud Computing will be the norm for all but the extreme laggards.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could display your Twitter ID on your badge, so your Twitter friends & followers recognize you? I created a handy way to add my Twitter photo and ID to any conference badge. I simply took a screen shot of my ID and inserted it into a label form I found on the web. I then printed them on label paper.

I will take these Twitter labels with me to every conference, meetup, workshop, etc. that I attend and simply attach them to the conference-issued badge. Easy! And what a great conversation-starter for Twitter friends and fans, the Twitter-curious, or the Twitter-unenlightened.

Jive Clearspace has begun an open community where e2.0 fans, friends, and enemies (that means you Tom Davenport :-)) can have an opportunity to share war stories, successes, and get questions answered. The community site is called ClearStep. Of course, you can always share your opinions on our nGenera site, as well. Oliver Marks tipped me off to this site too by Imaginatik which appears to be powered by Ning, but there are some great wikinomics-style case studies and discussion threads there you might want to participate in.

Second, I’ve been meaning to blog about this for awhile. Nick Barker has created a one-stop shop for aggregating all current goings-on and content related to Enterprise 2.0 at his Enterprise 2.0 Portal site. The site is free and should be on everyone’s feed reader. Make sure you check it out.

And, in case you missed it, the venerable consulting institution, McKinsey & Co. published its global survey results for “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise.” It’s also free, but you have to give them your contact info.

Finally, Niall Cook who founded one of my favorite products, Cogenz, (in his spare time) released his new book, “Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software will change the future of work.” I have not read it yet, but I’m certain it’s another must-have for your e2.0 bookshelf– IF you have a liberal expense account. It’s a little pricey at $89.95. I asked Niall about the price, he said it’s because the publisher sells mainly to an institutional and academic market. I’m hoping for a review copy, or will have to wait for the eBook or paperback version. Or maybe I can get a discount because Don Tapscott wrote the forward? (Humm… just realized we need to update Don’s profile on Wikipedia to reflect nGenera. Damn these Internets, always need to be current!). Actually, Niall may have taken a page out of the Wikinomics playbook, because it appears you can co-create with the community to add more content on each of the book’s chapters with this wiki hosted by Socialtext. He’s also blogging on the major themes of the book here.

courtesy Brian Solis

Yep. It’s that time again. The mad dash to put together a fabulous conference is underway. Ismael, Oliver Marks, and I are working hard to deliver a first-rate conference.

The web site should be up tomorrow here. Thanks again to Jive Clearspace for hosting the conference site. Today is the last day you can get the early bird discount ($1195 vs. $1495), so be sure to register before midnight Pacific time zone.

This year’s groovy gizmo giveaway will be the The HP 2133 Mini-Note PC or a Gigabyte M528 running Linux.

Much more will be coming on Office 2.0, as we lock in the details. Looking forward to seeing everyone in San Francisco!

Hope you like it.  It’s been a long time coming that I switch to my own domain and a theme refresh.  Please bear with me while I work the kinks out.  As far as I can tell, all links (in blogrolls and posts) are re-directing to this new domain.  This post is a test for my own feed-reader.  If you have any advice about having done this sort of thing yourself, please leave me a comment.  Thanks!

Virtually all CIO’s recognize they have a talent challenge - the competencies they have in their IT organization are often not the competencies they need today.  This is an issue I’ve wanted to post on for some time, but it’s complex and requires highly specialized expertise - people who both fully understand the Human Resources and Talent Management domains, and who really appreciate and have experience with the special needs of IT leadership.  I’ve therefore reached out to one of my wonderful colleagues, Dr. Margaret Schweer.  Margaret led our multi-company research last year on emerging IT competencies, and has worked with me on several important client engagements.  She and I have collaborated on this topic, and will post it to our respective blogs.

Being talent ready is a continuous journey - there is no steady state for talent.   Responsible IT leaders are always in the hunt for talent with key capabilities in anticipation of the organization or function’s needs.  This requires a robust competency model that describes contemporary IT leadership behaviors in observable ways.  A good IT leadership competency model helps people visualize what is needed from IT leadership in an era when technology is increasingly a strategic enabler, pervasive evolving rapidly. 

Margaret had a recent conversation with a client that wanted to design a technical competency model that would serve to stretch their functional capabilities from a high level 2 to level 3 Business-IT maturity, allowing them to develop talent in anticipation of business demands.  So what are they looking for? 

• In terms of leadership competencies, they are looking for leaders who are always sensing in anticipation of business needs and are able to identify and clearly articulate opportunities in and out of the function.  They want people who are sensitive to how the organization functions, can position initiatives effectively, and are experienced leading organizational change on a broad basis.  The breakout competencies revolve around demonstrating strategic agility and driving innovation. 
• In terms of technical competencies, the focus is on taking the business partner relationship to a different level, proactively planning and creating new, innovative, even transformational ways to create business value through technology.  Using their knowledge about the business, these leaders can leverage technology for revenue generation, not just automation and cost reduction.   The breakout competency is clearly relationship management. 
• In terms of personal competencies, collaboration takes on new meaning - it’s about developing networks and building alliances across boundaries; routinely contributing to and drawing from others to inform, influence, create, and leverage ideas and services.  And traditional ‘management of others’ competencies give way to a competency that enables talent flexibility and engagement.  It’s about creating  a well supported process for assessing and developing talent to fill an ‘on demand’ pipeline; quickly and seamlessly moving talent in a ‘marketplace’ approach; and engaging talent in a way that enables them to deliver a signature customer experience.  And the talent we are speaking about?  Well, they may or may not be employees.

Let us finish the discussion of IT leadership competencies with a comment about the importance of developing a global mindset.  The question here is not whether your business operates internationally, but whether your talent does.  Even in a domestic organization, a global perspective is essential in IT because the global technology talent and services market is global.  What is unique about these competencies is how they are described and applied culturally.  And I think there is real value in calling these out as transitional competencies.

It’s important to anticipate your organization’s competency needs, as many of these require a long lead time to develop.  We believe that development is best accomplished using a variety of methods, including training, feedback and coaching from others, mentoring and job experiences, including developmental assignments.  While experts agree that the most powerful development is done in the context of assignments, don’t underestimate the power of ‘social learning and networking.’  As noted researcher, Rob Cross reminds us, much of what we know or come to know is learned through others, in formal or informal networks.  Unlocking the collaborative power of your organization can be a real source of competitive advantage as you move to develop key organizational capabilities.

Years ago I was blown away when a facilitator at one of my clients began a very large meeting (dozens of people) to problem solve a very large issue (data management) by laying out an incredibly ambitious agenda for a very short meeting.  I remember feeling, “Oh no - she’s setting herself up to fail!”  I had just started working at the client and felt powerless to intervene and save her from herself.

She then opened a weird looking page projected onto a large screen and invited people to brainstorm on the major data management challenges they faced.  As they did so, she was furiously capturing them on the page, organizing them and reorganizing them as the list of ideas grew, and as one idea sparked others, or was refined by the “wisdom of the crowd”.  As she did so, people became more and more engaged, and after a hectic 15 minutes or so, she had a page full of ideas beautifully organized into 5 major themes.  Just getting them organized like that, in a chaotic, but emergent way was something of a breakthrough for all in the room.  The excitement was palpable!  She took one of the themes and moved into solution brainstorming mode with the group.  At the end of the one hour meeting, there was excitement, engagement and a level of commitment to working on the solution ideas that had been generated.

My fear that she was trying to do to much, with too large a group, in too little time was completely unfounded.  She was a very good facilitator, but the real secret was the tool she was using - MindManager mind mapping tool.  I bought the tool at the very first opportunity, and have used it ever since.  Virtually every colleague I’ve ever worked with who has seen me use the tool has likewise become a user.  And most clients that have seen me use it, quickly become users.  (I wish I’d owned a piece of Mindjet!)

Over the weekend, my colleague Kimberly Hatch pointed me to MindMeister, a web based and collaborative mind mapping tool (although with Google Gears, you can also use it offline).  I’ve been playing with it and am equally blown away.  It is elegent, powerful, and completely intuitive to use - certainly if you’ve used mind mapping before.  Here’s a trivial example of what a simple map looks like:

Over the next couple of weeks, I will try an experiment and set up a Mind Meister mind map and invite visitors to this blog to work with it - adding and revising - and see where the experiment takes us.

My recent post on Shadow IT: The Good , The Bad and The Ugly solicited an interesting comment about organization design and the placement of application development versus application support.  This got me thinking back over years (probably 25!) of helping clients with IT organizational design, and the tools, techniques and principles I’ve used over the years.  I thought it might be worth sharing these, and perhaps engaging in some interesting global conversations.

Let me start with a couple of overarching principles I’ve tried to keep in mind when designing IT organizations.

1. Share (and make common) everything that can be shared.  Implications include: resource pooling is better than permanently attaching individuals to applications, which tends to foster an endless string of low value enhancements, good for job security but not necessarily for business value or innovations!  Enabling capabilities such as Enterprise Architecture, Global Sourcing and Organization management are almost always great candidates for being globally common and shared.
2. Don’t share things that should not be shared!  I realize this is a weak principle (according to the principles of principles!) and a corollary to principle 1, but I think it’s important to state.  Some things are better not shared - they are unique to a business unit or function, there’s no leverage in sharing them, and sharing them will compromise quality or service (lowest common denominator).

Let me move on to a couple of models or lenses that I work with my clients to look through at IT capabilities.  The first is an oldie but goodie - the Value Disciplines from Tracy and Wiersema’s Discipline of Market Leaders.  The authors describe three distinct value disciplines - Operational Excellence, Customer Intimacy and Product Leadership. They argue that while any company has to be good at all three, operating models tend to optimize for one of the disciplines.  Not everyone buys this argument, and like all generalizations, there are some limitations to the assertion, but by and large, I’ve found the lens to be invaluable over the years.  Let’s look at the disciplines:

• Operational excellence means providing customers with reliable products or services at competitive prices and delivered with minimal difficulty or inconvenience
• Customer intimacy means segmenting and targeting markets precisely and then tailoring offerings to match exactly the demands of those niches. Companies that excel in customer intimacy combine detailed customer knowledge with operational flexibility so they can respond quickly to almost any need, from customizing a product to fulfilling special requests
• Product leadership means a focus on product innovation, offering products that push performance boundaries

Translating this into the world of IT, it is clear that IT organizations have to embody all 3 disciplines.  It is also interesting to note that climbing the business-IT maturity model tends to focus on the Operation Excellence needs first (IT infrastructure), then on the Customer Intimacy pieces (business processes and applications) and finally on Product Leadership (business innovation through IT).

IT operations (data centers, telecommunications, help-desks, etc.) lend themselves to an operational excellence model.  That is why frameworks such as ITIL can be so useful.  Discovery of IT-enabled opportunities is inherently a customer intimacy play - which is why this function is often best embedded in the business - logically and physically.  I believe that Enterprise Architecture and advanced technology research and development are essential a product leadership play, and these work best with a central focus (perhaps a competency center, community of practice or center of expertise - terms that get used in many different ways) coordinating a distributed network.  For example, an Architecture Center of Expertise owns the role of defining standards and enterprise-level models, but works through a network of business and technical architects (roles, not necessarily full time jobs) distributed throughout the enterprise.

This is turning into a longer post than I like, so I will stop there but follow up with a post on another organizational design framework I’ve found very helpful - one that comes from Henry Mintzberg.