The Britt-Webb Family

I was watching BBC America World News the other day, and there was an interesting piece on the G20 summit.  Dr. Irwin Stelzer, Senior Fellow at the Hudson institute made the assertion, “Europeans are very much in love with process, while Americans are very much in love with results.” As a European who has lived and worked in the US for 30 years, I resonate with this statement - gross oversimplification though it might be. I’m not sure where the US/Europe biases regarding process and outcome originally come from, but in my experience, they are biases rather than universal dogma.  Americans can get deeply (and sometimes overly) enamored of process at the expense of outcomes just as Europeans can sell process short in a jump to outcomes.

The need to balance process with outcomes is, I think, well appreciated.  Even the distinctions of types of work, and how these play into the importance of process are, I think, old news and generally understood.  However, for all of the underlying theory and experience, there do seem to be cultural biases that all too readily derail the proper balance.  One of the great things about the US is its “bias for action.”  This was one of the characteristics that led me to move to the US in the first place, and has helped keep me here.  However, taken too far, a bias for action all too easily becomes wasted effort or a screwed up opportunity.  On the other hand, an overly deliberate focus on process can get in the way of outcomes realization.

I have seen many business process reengineering efforts derailed by a loss of sight of the outcomes.  While these may have been clear at the outset, they somehow got lost in the process of re-engineering.  In fact, for quite a few years I was involved in many client consulting engagements designed to help get derailed ERP initiatives back on track.  Almost always the magic sauce we used was to go back to the original outcomes.  If these had been well-defined up front, it was simply a matter of refreshing them then going through a rigorous triage to determine what features and functions were essential to realizing those outcomes.  Anything else, while perhaps “good ideas” and/or “good things to do” were put on a back burner as “not critical to achieving the outcomes.”  If the outcomes had not been well-defined up front (this was often the case - they were vague, lacked specific metrics and time frames, or were not really outcomes at all) then our task was to define the outcomes.  In every case, once the outcomes were clear and compelling, the process could be brought back on track.

Process can all too easily become a substitute for thinking, rather than an aid to thinking.  When I was at Ernst & Young, I learned (and still apply) the “ODW” mantra - Outcomes, Deliverables, Work-plan.  The idea is simple - get clear on the desired outcomes first.  Then figure out what deliverables are needed to realize those outcomes.  Then you can build the right work-plan for creating those deliverables.  It’s a very simple formula, but one that once internalized can help enormously with this outcome/process balancing act. In some respects, ODW is a process.  And, of course, the work-plan that comes out of ODW is a process.

Finally, I think metrics are an important tool in helping keep the balance right.  Not coincidentally, the Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard has as an underlying premise the balance between outcomes and process (as well as the balance between today’s results and investments for the future.)  It is an important discipline to distinguish between outcome measures and process measures.  The former can tell you how well a process is performing, while the latter can provide insights into how to improve that process.

Lately I’ve been spending time with several IT teams from global Fortune 500 enterprises who are charged with fostering collaboration, innovation and the other hoped-for outcomes of Web 2.0.  It’s been a fascinating experience - plenty of good news, but some aspects I find frustrating.  More importantly, I believe these are things that are slowing progress in exploiting Web 2.0 et al in the enterprise context.

For most companies, the necessary infrastructure, while mostly in place, is not fully there.  Desktop software may not be at the right level.  Videoconferencing capabilities are first or second generation, and need to be upgraded to tap the full potential of today’s telepresence and high definition video.  Instant messaging, previously banned as a perceived “renegade, redundant and dangerous technology is now seen as a useful tool, but the IT infrastructure must now be tweaked to embrace it.  Early implementations of SharePoint that served as interesting experiments, must be updated and redeployed to take advantage of the latest release and goodies.  More complex initiatives such as virtualization, unified communications, shifts from perimeter-based to asset-based security take time, energy and investment to sort through.  Collaboration strategies tend to be emergent rather than holistic,
IT- more than business-centric, push rather than pull, infrastructure rather than application focused.

The good news is that for the more forward-thinking companies, these infrastructure initiatives are funded, resourced and underway.  The people leading them are the best and brightest from the IT infrastructure ranks - they know what they are doing, and move assuredly through this complex space, checking off important milestones, and celebrating successes along the way.

The more frustrating, and ultimately limiting aspects are around the demand management (especially, stimulation/seeding) and application (especially value capture) of Web 2.0 - how to ensure that the emerging collaboration infrastructure is actually used, and used productively and creatively.

A couple of points.  Without the right infrastructure, Web 2.0 doesn’t work, or doesn’t work well enough to sustain itself - it is the table stakes.  But, a shyness in addressing the broader landscape of collaboration and innovation across the enterprise and its ecosystem ultimately limits the value of the infrastructure.

I use the word “shyness” with some thought - there is literally a shyness about getting into things that are thought of as “really needs to be in the business.”   The Catch-22, however, is that without IT leadership in demand shaping/management, you might not have the exact infrastructure you need to really tap the power of the emerging collaboration capabilities.  And I’m taking “infrastructure” quite broadly to include all the shared components and services that support Web 2.0 and its inevitable implications (e.g., Cloud Computing).

So, my recommendations to these teams typically include:

1. Keep going with the infrastructure plans and deployments!  Celebrate the infrastructure, market its capabilities, keep up the great work!
2. Step back and look at your broader collaboration strategy.  What other projects or programs are underway that impact or are impacted by this initiative?  What other projects or programs are needed to ensure success?   What does success look like?  How would we measure it?
3. Add a demand shaping/demand management perspective to the collaboration initiative.  Wrap it into the overall collaboration strategy and plan.
4. Expand the collaboration initiative team and brief/charter to bring in the business and customer/user perspective, and some “Net Gen” people or really understand how the Web 2.0 world works in the social/consumer space.
5. Foster adoption from the grass roots up.  Think “chaos theory” and “emergence” - but don’t lose sight of the fact that we are human and ultimately, political and social animals.

I recently started a post on this topic which I am continuing here with some additional principles that you might consider adopting if you are leading a transformation of IT capabilities.  (If you wonder what that means, please refer to the first post in this series.)

Principle #3.  You don’t have to call it a transformation!

Calling a major change program a “transformation” has a nice ring to it - gives it a sense of importance and gravity.  And therein lies the trap!   Transformation programs are often characterized by a high level of communication up front - burning platforms, compelling future state visions, sense of urgency, blah, blah, blah.  They are equally characterized by a gradual fading away of all the hype and noise as people lose interest, fail to see any real action, and get drawn back into the realities of their day jobs, and the magnetic hold of the status quo.

Sometimes it is better to plan on a quiet start and a loud finish, rather than the other way round.  After all, a transformation is an outcome more than it is a plan or intent.  Imagine a personal trainer saying, “I am going to transform you into a fitter, healthier person who will look better, and live longer.  Here are your exercises and diet plan.”  While she might be willing to make that promise, it is false, and I am likely to be disappointed and to lose interest pretty quickly.  Imagine on the other hand she said, “I’m going to teach you some exercises and show you a diet plan.  If you do the exercises as taught, and change your eating habits per the diet plan, you will over time transform into a fitter, healthier person who will look better, and live longer.”  Now that is an authentic promise.  It is believable, realistic and a far more authentic approach for her to take.  The real transformation is for me - can I really get myself to exercise and eat per her recommendations?  Rather than promise an IT transformation, lets focus on what we are going to change, what we are going to do differently, what new outcomes will result, and why these outcomes are valid and worthwhile.

Principle #4.  You can’t transform IT by transforming IT!

It is said that businesses get the IT they deserve.  This is a round about way of saying IT organizations exist for the businesses they serve, and that it is the unique confluence of business and IT that ultimately creates value from IT investments.  When we talk about “the performance of the IT organization,” except for basic IT infrastructure services, we are talking about the product of business-IT performance.  In other words, it is ultimately the way that businesses harness the potential value of IT that is being transformed, rather than the IT organization as the subject of transformation.  It’s of little use if the IT organization introduces a new investment prioritization process designed to shift IT investments to a more innovation-focused profile if this is not embraced by business leaders.

Please let me know about your experiences with IT transformations.  Have you developed any principles that might be of interest to others?

We are getting close to wrapping up our multi-company research project on “Redefining Employee Computing.” This was focused on the emerging trend of moving away from a highly controlled and locked-down approach to what used to be known as “end-user computing” to a more open and self-service model.  One of the research team came across this post in Forbes.com about the “Un-marketing of IT.”

I thought the post was spot on!  It includes a short interactive survey (4 questions) and you can see the results instantly. It’s not a pretty picture.  Overwhelmingly, respondents conclude:

1. IT’s limiting of the the use of technology creates a poor impression of IT.
2. IT does not provide an adequate explanation for limiting the use of technology.
3. When IT limits the use of technology, it does not provide alternative ways to accomplish tasks.
4. IT does not provide a responsive support structure to address issues caused by limiting the use of technology.

Like so many things in life, service providers seem to care mostly about making their own lives simple - as opposed to thinking through the entire customer experience, and making lives effective and productive for the customer.  I see too many business executives who have to tote two laptops and two personal organizers (one of each for business use and one of each for personal use).  If personal computing is the most visible face of IT, it’s often not an attractive and welcoming face.  And then we wonder why business executives cry, “IT costs too much and delivers too little!”

I know I will get hate mail for this post - “It’s not our fault, it’s the lawyers and HR folk!”  “We’re only trying to protect the company and its assets!”  I recognize these factors, and why the locked down PC environment was necessary.  However, a new day is dawning and it’s time to enable the enterprise.  Some constraints are OK - but they need to be explained, alternative ways to work need to be made available, and a responsive infrastructure is essential if we really want IT to be a strategic capability.

I want to tackle the thorny and often controversial topic of transforming IT capabilities - probably through several posts over the next few weeks.  I first started looking at how large companies went about transforming IT about 20 years ago.  I got very focused on it in a formal way about 16 years ago when I was leading a multi-year longitudinal study of 25 global corporations under the auspices of the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation.  This research led to the infamous Business-IT Maturity Model that I refer to from time to time on this blog (it has evolved substantially in the last 10 years), to a normative IT Process Landscape (which has also evolved somewhat over the years) and to a great deal of insight about IT transformations - things that seem to work well, and others that seem to fail consistently.  Finally, it led to a book, which was very satisfying to write, well regarded at the time, but is now somewhat too dated to try to hawk on this blog!

First, a couple of observations.  Defining transformational change can be somewhat tricky as it is inherently subjective.  We might believe, for example, that a change in a business analyst’s role to shift from a focus on a business area to a focus on an end-to-end business process (order-to-cash, say) is an incremental change, but to the analyst it might feel transformational.  Notwithstanding this subjectivity, I think of transformation as change that is:

• Broad in scope (for example, encompassing change in processes, tools, organization structure, vision, mission, rewards and recognition)
• Deep in nature (i.e., intended to lead to a significant change in organizational outcomes)
• Far-reaching in impact (i.e., affecting a broad base of stakeholders)
• Recognized to be risky in that the absolute details of the end state may be unclear or ambiguous at the outset

Further complicating the definition of transformation is that not all transformational change is labeled as such.  Sometimes the infamous “butterfly effect” leads to transformational change as a result of an intervention that looked on the surface to be purely incremental.  For similar reasons (the unpredictability of the behaviors of complex systems), not all programs labeled transformational actually result in transformation - in fact, the vast majority do not!  How many programs do you recall titled something like “Quality First,” or “One Company,” or “Journey to Innovation,” and so on that are now distant memories with little more to show for them than the printed tee shirts and embossed paper weights?

Why do IT organizations feel from time to time they need to transform?  Reasons, of course, vary but the typical rationales include:

• A shift in business operating model - often from a holding company model with independent business units to a more integrated model, with common and shared capabilities.
• A shift in underlying technology paradigm - for example, from mainframe to client-server (historically) or from client-server to Web 2.0 (currently).
• A shift in sourcing model - for example, outsourcing major pieces of IT, and then transforming the “retained IT” organization for an increased focus on business value, growth and innovation.
• A change in CIO where the new boss wants to shake things up and make her mark by driving IT performance to new heights.

Why do I feel that I need to post on this subject?  Because I’m tired of seeing the same transformational issues time and time again!  It seems to me we ought to be better at reinventing the role of the IT organization, delivering more value from costly IT investments, getting significantly closer to the businesses we serve, and being more sympathetic to the IT professionals who have heard it all before, want to keep their heads down until the latest transformation wave passes, or who just want to know, “What’s in this for me?”

I’m also tired of seeing so-called transformational change programs so badly bungled that the organization learns to ignore strategic change initiatives (the “this too shall pass” syndrome).  I’m tired of seeing so many IT leaders tackle transformational change as if they were the first ever to try it, and that there is nothing to be learned from all those who have gone before - especially learning from the failures, as well as from the success stories.  I often (with prior permission) put CIO’s in touch with clients I’ve worked with who have successfully transformed their IT capabilities - I do this in response to a request, but 8 out of 10 times discover that they don’t follow through!  The client who has been through the pain is more than willing to take their time to share their experiences, but the CIO who’s asking the questions does not even take the time to make to the call.

Also, I have to say that I come across many IT organizations that are frankly so out of touch with today’s business and technological realities that they need a major dose of transformation.  Week after week I talk to IT managers and leaders who have no idea what RSS, Wikis, and Cloud Computing are, and what their implications might be for the business they support.  The don’t know what an RSS reader is, or why they should want one.  They have never participated in a social network, and so have no opinions or ideas about how Web 2.0 capabilities might be turned to  business advantage.

So, let me suggest the first couple of transformation principles:

Principle #1. Communicate from the outset with absolute integrity and the unvarnished truth.

Your IT people are smart and will not be easily fooled.  In fact, trying to fool them will undoubtedly backfire.  So engage them in the dialog; be honest about what is going to be needed; don’t take anything “off the table” as sacred cows not to be discussed.  In most transformations, some people will not make it through - that’s a fact than cannot be hidden or avoided.  Make it clear to people that those that get engaged in the journey are more likely to come out as winners, but there’s no guarantees.  On the other hand, those that stand in the background lobbing stones will absolutely come out as losers!

Principle #2. Take the time and effort to collaboratively build a compelling but plausible vision for the future.

The temptation is to short-change this step - IT leaders already have the vision in their heads and assume everyone else in the organization “gets it.”  They don’t!   The next temptation is to develop the vision with a subset of the IT leadership team, and then emboss it in a paper weight or memorialize it on wall-sized posters.  After all the wordsmithing and polishing, the “vision statement” (which is not what I mean by “vision”) means nothing to anybody except the select few who created it.  Visions need to be rich and multi-faceted.  They need to be in peoples heads, hearts and stomachs.  They need to be compelling and to serve a higher purpose that gets people up in the morning and that merits putting themselves through the pain and anxiety of change.

Have you been through an organizational transformation?  Did it work?  Why?  If not, why not?  And please watch for more to come on this topic in subsequent posts.

I loved this quote by George Gilder in Forbes.com’s Coming Creativity Boom, Referring to Cloud Computing, Gilder states, “The rule for the new architecture is that hardware softens on the edge and software hardens at the core.” For those who have tracked my uses of the terms “core” and “edge” in this blog over the last year, you will recognize why this quote so resonated with me.  For those that are not familiar with my use of those terms, please check out here and here, for examples.

I’ve referred to Cloud Computing a few times in this blog (who hasn’t), mostly in a tone that has been “pro” this important trend.  Lately, however, I’ve seen more negative commentary - more disbelievers and naysayers highlighting the reasons why Cloud Computing is not for all, or why it’s dangerous, or over-hyped, and so on.  Yes, the cautions are appropriate - like any paradigm shift, the technologies behind Cloud Computing are immature, our enterprise infrastructures for working in this new paradigm lag the new arhcutectures, and there are real and valid concerns about security, reliability, and serviceability.

However, I’m frankly puzzled that in October 2008, there is as much naysaying as there is!  From my perspective as one that has studied trends and patterns in enterprise computing for some 40 years, several truths seem to me, to coin a term, to be “self-evident.”  These include:

1. In many respects, we’ve used Cloud Computing principles before - quite successfully.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s, service bureaus were an important part of the enterprise computing scene, especially as they evolved beyond overnight batch computing to the provisioning of on-line computer terminals.  These often supported innovative and extremely powerful forms of end user computing (what some of us refer to nowadays as “edge computing”) such as complex modeling and simulation, and data analytics.  In fact, many of these tasks could only be done through remote service bureaus - they had the computing power and the sophisticated software that the typical enterprise IT set up did not.
2. Many of the services to which users need access - processing cycles, data storage - truly are commodities.  When communication bandwidth was limited and/or was expensive, we needed those processing cycles and data storage to be as physically close to the user as possible.  Today, as we approach 10 gigabits and more as the lower threshold in many parts of the world, this computing power can be anywhere - just as long as we have ubiquitous access to high bandwidth.  Yes, I know we are not there yet, but the rapid growth in high bandwidth telecommunications is a reality, and shows no sign of slowing down.  For the skeptics, you might dig into Gilder’s Law and how that is playing out in reality.
3. Energy costs and climate change are impacting decisions about where to place data centers.  Compounding these issues is the need to make IT costs more elastic - to be able to react on demand to both increases and decreases in compute power.  Cloud computing satisfies this increasingly valuable requirement.
4. We can do things in the Cloud that cannot easily be done in the enterprise computing environment.  Just as all those teletypes and green screens hooked up to service bureaus gave us access to powerful modeling languages such as APL, analytics software such as SAS and SPSS, and to the so-called Fourth Generation Languages like Focus and Nomad, so too will Cloud Computing give us access to capabilities for business innovation, and for participating in communities in ways that cannot be achieved within the enterprise firewalls.
5. The Cloud is inherently collaborative and integrating.  The standards that make Cloud Computing feasible, also make it easy to “mash up” new capabilities, and to incorporate a geographically and thematically dispersed communities (customers, suppliers, interest groups, and so on).  By contrast, the vast majority of enterprise computing that has been developed over the last 20 years or so is inflexible, non-integrated and difficult or frequently impossible for users who were not part of the original design intent, or who are outside of the enterprise firewalls, to take advantage of.
6. In a nod to the economic climate, I believe Cloud Computing is more cost effective - certainly, delivers a more flexible and palatable pricing model - one that is inherently value-based (pay “by the drink.)

My recommendation to IT leaders is this - stop reading about and worrying about all the reasons Cloud Computing might not work for you, and start identifying situations where it could work - and where it might in fact give you a business edge.  OK, to be realistic, do continue reading what the smarter and independent analysts are saying about pros and cons - you have to be educated on this rapidly evolving field, but my point is, find ways to make this work where it makes sense.  Experiment - one of the attributes of Cloud Computing is the ease with which you can get into it and play.  Don’t think in terms of a wholesale switch - you don’t need that, and it probably does not make sense for most of us today.  (Though if I were counseling a start-up, I’d think seriously about leveraging the Cloud to the full!)  Again, think of the “edgy” things you’d like to do for or with your business partners, and approach those as your learning opportunities for this new architecture.

Continuing my reflections on our recent return to the UK for a 2-week vacation.  To recap, my wife and I were born in the UK, moving to the US 30 years ago (originally for a 1-year tour of duty!) and my mother-in-law moving to the US about 20 years ago.  I’ve got back to the UK frequently over the years, but through business travel.  This was the first time in quite a while to see the country up close and stay with “real Brits” (friends and relatives) all over England, as well as in some fine old country inns and one West End London hotel. (For earlier posts on this, see here and here .)

So, what else did we find?

• People still ride Penny-Farthing bicycles out in the countryside!  Just kidding - but I did have a delightful cream tea in a cafe in Knutsford, Cheshire, that had a magnificent collection of these strange machines!
• People are generally much more environmentally aware than in the US.  For example, they mostly use cloth bags for groceries - taking them with on trips to the stores just the way I recall my mother doing all those years ago!  My very good university friend Bob Bailey (a partner in environmental consulting firm Quantum Strategy & Technology) told me about several innovative government programs that are helping with climate and sustainability, and are driving some worthy small-business innovations.  Behaviors such as trash disposal in landfills are heavily taxed, incenting people to me more creative in how they design, use and dispose of stuff.  Similarly, local incentives are increasing bicycle ridership (no, not the penny-farthing style) and helping both the environment and health care!
• Britain has inevitably become even more Americanized than when I was living in the US.  Like in the US, television programming appears to be mostly puerile rubbish - a similar “all about me” TV syndrome.
• Ubiquity of Fast Food and ‘all you can eat’ restaurants has led to a burgeoning obesity problem - something that was not seen until the last 15 or 20 years.  The good news is that the food across the UK is mostly really good, and often excellent.  The bad news is the gargantuan portions and the toll those are taking on waistlines!
• Apparently, there’s a lot of crime, but knives seem to be the weapon of choice given the lack of availability of handguns.  We saw a large metal container in a suburban high street, labeled “Bin-a-knife” - a repository with amnesty for people to dump their knives.
• Just about everyone we spoke to in the UK is ecstatic about the upcoming exit of George Bush! However, they would like Gordon Brown to accompany him into obscurity (The two GBs!)

My esteemed colleague Susan Scrupski had a great post the other day entitled “The trouble with social media is, well, people” where she captured something quite important.  It has always been clear that social networking can be both a positive and negative force - but Susan nicely connected the potential and impact of social media to global mindsets, and how our attitudes to social networking (and ways to use it) might shift in a recession.

As Susan says, “Social media was great when it ran on positive mental attitude and a go-go economy, but now that people (the stuff networks are made of) are acting like humans, well, harrumph, it’s time to re-examine this social media phenomenon, eh?”

My take on this is that ultimately, you have to believe that increased transparency is positive - though there will be a period while companies and individuals adjust to the facts that:

• Anyone can say just about anything - whether you like it or not!
• Anything you do say (or is said about you), anywhere on the web, might come back to haunt you!
• Expect a free flowing and open dialog - now how are you going to (a) live with it, and (b) take advantage of it?

I had the privilege of participating as both a speaker and an attendee at one of nGenera’s joint IT/HR Summits in Austin last week on ‘Next Generation Technologies for Next Generation Enterprises.’  These are 3-day sessions where CIO’s and VP’s of HR come together to share and learn about key business issues on their joint agendas.  It truly was a privilege to be part of this event which included presentations by Andrew McAfee (Harvard Business School), Don Tapscott (nGenera Insight), David Ulrich (University of Michigan), Tammy Erickson (nGenera Insight) and yours truly.  I got a lot out of the speaker sessions, but also found the dialog and networking to be highly stimulating and informative.  Inevitably, many of the conversations steered to the global economy and the role of IT leadership in a recessionary climate.

With a nod to Professor John Henderson’s old joke (”there are two kinds of people - those who believe there are two kinds of people, and those that do not”), I did find two sharply divided worldviews among the many engaging CIO conversations I was involved in.  I will, with some poetic license, represent those opposing worldviews below.  These represent the extremes - most of the CIO’s I spoke to at the event were closer to a middle ground - but examining the extremes may stimulate your own thinking about this issue.  What do you believe is the proper role of IT leadership today?

I will refer to the opposing views as Ivan Innovator and Cecil Controller.  Here are their contrasting positions:

Ivan Innovator

A recession is a time for the IT function to shine by showing leadership and fostering innovation.  To do that, and to buy ourselves both business credibility and IT bandwidth, we have to aggressively cut costs, but also need to shift IT resources from low to higher value activity.   The cost cutting actions are something we’ve wanted to do for some time, but now the economic climate provides the air cover we need.  So, our value proposition to the business is double-edged:  we are going to agressively retire IT systems and assets that are no longer critical to running or growing the business, and will redirect the resources that are freed up by this rationalization and consolidation of our technology platform and focus them on more innovative and higher value initiatives.

We recognize that some people are going to be inconvenienced by the cost-cutting - they are on the obsolete systems because of a particular report or function they like to use.  Unfortunately, we can no longer afford the luxury of keeping old, redundant systems around.  While they were written down long ago, they are a drain on resources - keeping them running and the constant need to build and maintain interfaces with other systems.

The other side of this is that our business partners have never needed us to focus on growth and innovation more than they do today.  There’s been a literal sea change in available technologies, and we have to find value-producing ways to tap these new technologies.  If we can beat our competitors to the punch, we can turn the economic climate to our advantage.  And that is our focus.

Cecil Controller

Economic conditions spell a period of retrenchment for IT.  We have to take out costs to help the business weather this downturn.  As such, many of the initiatives we have started or were planning are being put on hold.  This is hunker down time - we don’t know how long it will last, but we’re betting at least a year.  Optics are all important here - I need to show my business partners that I understand the economic climate, and that this is a time for IT to take a low profile, cut back its spending, and do our part to help the company weather the down market.

I find it interesting to think about the drivers of these opposing views.  Are some CIO’s inherently more optimistic, and therefore proactive?  Or is it the company and its leadership that sets the tone - either empowering the optimists to grow and innovate their way out of a recession, or scaring the pessimists to step into the shadows and idle till the clouds pass by?  Like the nature/nurture arguments, there is no simple answer.  But I feel the energy and sense a more positive outcome around the proactive innovators compared with the reactive controllers.  I know who I’d sooner be around and work with, and, if I were a CEO, who I’d like to have on my team as CIO.

I have been working with a team preparing for a new multi-company research project - Continuous Business Strategy - that will kick-off in mid-November.  I think this will prove to be an interesting project, to say the least!  Certainly, the research team has already engaged in several heated discussions and come across some intriguing information in our secondary literature research.

For IT leaders, I can’t think of many topics that are more pressing or deserving of a fresh look than business/IT strategy.  I’ve been involved in many strategy efforts over the years - from strategy planning for my own company when that was my gig, to business and IT strategy planning for clients, strategy reviews, strategy refreshes, and so on.  I’ve seen a lot of problems and dysfunctional behaviors in the name of strategy over the years.  Even the term ’strategic planning’ takes on all sorts of meanings - some deserving of the label ’strategy’ but many not.  When the issue is “IT strategy,” the level of dysfunction increases significantly.  In this post, I will take a couple of common dysfunctions I come across frequently that I think will improve at strategy shifts from a periodic to a continuous management tool.

1.  IT strategy is not the point - it’s all about business strategy.

I recall a session many years ago (I’m guessing it was around the mid-80’s) where I was speaking at a CIO conference in Phoenix (it could have been a Society for Information Management event) following the illustrious Professor Warren McFarlan. After his presentation on IT strategy, during Q&A a CIO asked, “In my company, if there were a business strategy, I could craft a dynamite IT strategy.  But there is no business strategy - what should I do?”

Warren, who could be sometimes be pretty blunt and confrontational and an ‘in your face’ kind of teacher, virtually attacked the hapless CIO.  “You CIO’s are always complaining about lack of business strategy,” taunted McFarlan.  “You draw two boxes, one above the other.  The top box you label ‘business strategy’ and the lower box ‘IT strategy’ and you grumble that the business strategy box is empty.  Listen up - the business strategy box is always empty!  And it’s your job to fill it!”

This was one of those frame-changing moments for me.  I was well aware of the reality, but McFarlan’s blunt and visual description of the circumstances validated my worldview around strategic planning.  Most of my IT strategy development work with clients has been business strategy development in disguise.  In fact, over the years we developed a business outcomes-based approach to IT strategy that on the one hand forced business strategy to the surface, while on the other hand avoiding offending anybody by insinuating they did not have an actionable business strategy.  I think we will find that shifting to a more continuous strategy process will have the effect of better integrating business and IT strategy formulation activities.  Their separation has always been for me an unhealthy dysfunction - business strategy formulated in a way that is devoid of appreciation for the information and IT possibilities.

2. Much ’strategy’ effort is not very strategic.

A lot of work done in the name of strategy is in reality tactical - often more about budgeting than competitive positioning - more about status quo than change.  I’ve seen some extremely robust strategy planning efforts involving large numbers of teams from across the company on a several-month, once every three years effort.  On the face of it, this looks like a great idea.  In practice, it often is not very effective.  I recall one client where such a planning initiative was going on (I think the third of fourth time they’d run this kind of effort) and the management committee crafted the strategy over about 12 hours across three sessions.  The formal corporate initiative was largely ignored.  Again, I believe we will find that at its best, a more continuous approach to strategy formulation will improve the strategic quality of the result (though this will not necessarily be the case.)

3. Strategy formulation and execution are too loosely coupled.

Many scholars and researchers have commented on the formulation/execution gap.  Peter Weill differentiates appropriately between “strategic intent” and “current strategy,” and Gary Hamel provocatively suggests, “If you want to understand the real strategy, look at what people are doing!”  There are almost always disconnects between the strategy as formulated and the rewards and recognition systems and hidden organizational logic that drive management and employee behaviors.  Once again, I believe we will find that the shift to a more continuous strategy process will tighten many execution gaps.

I will delve deeper in future posts into strategic planning dysfunctional behaviors and the promise of leveraging Web 2.0 to move to a more continuous and productive strategy process.

WSJ’s Business Technology blog had an interesting post asking Why Do You Hate Email? The post quotes Michael Osterman, saying:

Email has been stretched far beyond its limits…

I agree based upon what I see in my consulting clients, but not just in the traditional ways we imagine ’stretching’ to include (e.g., cc’ing the world, horrendously long tomes).  In many cases, Email has become a de facto work flow solution - a function for which is is horribly unsuitable.  This has happened due to the old “if the hammer is your only tool, every problem looks like a nail.”  Absent the tools or wherewithal to really think through workflow needs and opportunities, Email became the answer.  This is akin to the common mistake of automating bad business processes rather than re-engineering them in the light of automation possibilities.

I got more into this in a post a while back on The Myth of Information Overload.  Challenge every Email sent and recieved - is this something that belongs as an email, or should it be part of an automated work flow process?  I beleive that in the current economic conditions, we need to be digging deep to harness the next level of productivity and effectiveness gains - the technology is there - and there’s never been a better time to leverage it!

Central London as seen from the incredible London Eye

I’m going to further explore the feelings and reactions my wife, mother-in-law and I felt in our recent return to the UK for a 2-week vacation.  To recap, we were all born there, my wife and I moving to the US 30 years ago (originally for a 1-year tour of duty!) and my mother-in-law moving to the US about 20 years ago.  I’ve got back to the UK frequently over the years, but through business travel.  This was the first time in quite a while to see the country up close, and stay with “real Brits” (friends and relatives) all over England, as well as in some fine old country inns and one West End London hotel.

So, what did we find?

• After 30 years in the US, we were amazed how small England is and how close together places are.  Distances between towns that seemed gigantic in my youth have shrunk significantly (even though the time taken to travel those distances has not improved due to road traffic.)
• Cars are everywhere - so much more visible in a country that was not built for cars the way most of America has evolved.  Unfortunately, like in Rome, Italy, cars are parked just about everywhere - often on both sides of narrow residential roads, rendering them single lane and hard to travel along.  Even major roads seem to have become parking lots.  This constant chain of parked cars detracts from the beauty of the fine old houses and buildings that characterize much of the UK.
• Britain has it’s own immigration issues, though this seems to be largely Eastern European.  Most people we saw in the service industries (e.g., hotels, restaurants) were from Eastern Europe - often with heavy accents that were hard to decode.  Even in the excellent Marriott on London’s Grosvenor Square, my wife and I went through the check-in process largely mystified as to what we were being told due to impenetrable accents.  Where are the English, we wondered?
• People seem much more helpful in shops, restaurants, etc. than we remember.  30 years ago, service in the UK was in a miserable state.  There was little to no sense of entrepreneurship, and service was surly and unhelpful.  I remember how pleased we were with the level and quality of service when we first visited the US.  Unfortunately, the US has lost much of that edge, while the UK has regained it.
• Traveling through London’s Gatwick Airport within hours of either leaving or arriving at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport is a shock to the system.  Gatwick seems to work well, efficiently and with smiling, helpful faces from airline, security and airport personnel.  Atlanta, by contrast, is inefficient, unpleasant, and makes travelers feel like criminals.  As an Atlanta resident for the last 25 years I’m ashamed of the face that the busiest airport in the world presents to travelers.  As an aside, last year I went to Jamaica for a reunion with a dozen of my university friends.  (The university was in the UK, but we meet every few years somewhere in the world where one of us is living, and it was Jamaica’s turn.)  Anyway, many of my alumns traveled through Atlanta’s airport, and all found it to be a horrendous experience!  We are currently planning our next reunion, and, regrettably but understandably, one of the parameters has become picking a location that does not require travel through Atlanta airport!
• London seems to be much cleaner than we remembered, and certainly more affluent. Despite how expensive everything is, people still seem to be doing OK.  Of course remnants of the National Health and social services are still helping finances a lot.   As an example, I have a cousin who still lives with his mother in a council house (subsidized living).  He is now paid by social services to look after his mom!
• There are a lot of innovative schemes for managing environmental issues.  We had the good fortune to stay with a university friend who has been in the energy management and environmental consulting business for most of his career, so I got some expert insight into how things work.  This is so interesting, I will make a separate post just on this issue.

I will leave it there for now, and pick up on the environmental management schemes and other impressions in a future post.

My wife Gillian in the London Eye

Apologies for too long a gap between posts.  I took my wife and mother-in-law to the UK for a vacation.  I had hoped to keep active on the blog, but challenges with Internet access and constant travel (we traveled the UK for 15 days, often staying with friends or in several hundred year old inns, where Internet access was challenging, to say the least!) kept me off the blog.  Anyway, I’m back the the US now, and have quite a bit of new fodder I’m going to draw upon in the next few weeks based upon my reflections as a Brit now living in the US and returning after a long hiatus.

I left London, England with my wife and 2 year old daughter in 1978 to take up residence in Boston, Mass on a 12-month tour of duty.  At the time I was an executive with a British software company.  About 6 months into the stay, we upped the ante, and extended the tour to 2 years - we were thoroughly enjoying the US and it seemed like 12 months was not going to be sufficient.   Towards the end of the 2 years, we faced up to the fact that America had become our new home, and we sold our UK house, began a path to US citizenship, and began to settle down in our new home.

This week we are back in London for a vacation.  I get back to the UK (my place of birth and home for 31 years) every year or so on business, my wife much less frequently, and her mother even less so, so this was an important time to catch up on relatives and friends. So here we are, playing tourists, and making the inevitable comparisons.  Here are some initial impressions.

1. We knew London would feel expensive - but we are still shocked.  IT’S REALLY EXPENSIVE!!!  The Marriott Grosvenor Square wants to charge me 20 British Pounds (about $37 US) for 24 hours of Internet!  I actually took the option for a 1 hour session (nearly $10, about the same as a Marriott in the US charges for a whole day!)
2. London is looking great - very clean, and the air seems clear.  Many Americans have asked me over the years about the London fogs.  This is a myth established by all those Sherlock Holmes movies.  As a child, I do remember horrendous London fogs, but an early clean air campaign in the 1950’s took care of that, and today the air seems much cleaner than most major US cities - certainly when compared to Atlanta, GA where we now live.  (Note: The photo above is a stock picture thanks to Google Images.)
3. It’s hard to find a Londoner in London.  It’s all tourists and, if you’ll excuse the term, foreigners.  Even the legendary London cab drivers no longer live in London - they live in the countryside and drive in for a day’s work.  (We have not taken many cabs - the London transport system is effective, though not nearly so as it was 30 years ago - way too much traffic for the buses and the “tube” is undergoing extensive renovations, so many lines are out of action, and delays seem rife.)
4. The food is much better than it was - very much better.  All countries develop a certain mythology over time (e.g., London fogs!) and that is usually based on reality - at least a one-time reality.  England is not know for great food - that’s the myth and was the reality.  Of course, you could find great food, but you’d have to look hard.  And the service used to be very poor - Brits don’t do well serving others.  Well, that has changed.  Excellent food abounds, as does good (but not great) service.

Well, the above was actually written after our first 3 days, spent in London’s West End.  Since then we’ve traveled much of the country, and have more to say on the pros and cons of the UK versus the US, as seen through the eyes of a dual nationality (British and US) ex-pat.

Quite amazing, but this blog enjoys its 1st anniversary today!  I’d like to use this minor milestone to draw a few lessons learned, and perhaps some insight about blogging, Web 2.0, and management of change.

My entry to the blogosphere arose from 3 primary drivers:

1.  The first was the acquisition of The Concours Group - my corporate home for about 10 years.  Our new CEO, Steve Papermaster, said at our first meeting (and repeated many times since then), “If we are going to be successful helping companies become ‘next generation enterprises,’ we have to become one!”  This seemed reasonable, logical, even inspirational, but, to be frank, also somewhat mystifying.  What exactly did that mean?  How would we know we’d arrived?  What would look and feel different?

Fairly soon after that, the company implemented our own collaboration hub, were urged to avoid email except where it made sense (with some guidelines on how to decide), added personal tagging to declare, validate and track things such as competencies and interests, and were generally encouraged to learn and discover for ourselves how this might all play out.  Daily postings on the collaboration hub quickly exposed me to readings I would not otherwise have seen and soon began to expand my knowledge base, especially about the Web 2.0 world.  Recommendations and ‘early adopter’ colleagues soon turned me on the the magic of RSS and readers such as Google Reader.  Note, all this in a mostly “virtual” environment - my office is in my home, and many of us in nGenera rarely go into an nGenera office (though many of us do spend time in our customers offices.)

2.  The second driver was more direct - I got a call from blogger extraordinaire Susan Scrupski who had joined nGenera (as we became known sometime following the acquisition) telling me, “I’ve been appointed your blog coach - you need to start a blog, and I’m here to help you!”  I cannot overstate how important this little intervention was.  The coaching probably ended up being about 3 hours on the phone over a few weeks, plus some encouraging messages and advice between calls.  I now pass that advice on to my clients who are trying to become more “socially networked” in their own companies - find someone who’s already an active and successful blogger, and enlist them in helping others learn the trade, as it were.

3. The third driver is more subtle, but important.  I’m inquisitive at heart.  Over the years, my family has laughed at my occasional tendency to take up a hobby with great enthusiasm, and then drop it a couple of years later.  What they don’t appreciate is that when, for example, I took flying lessons when I first came to the USA, it was less about wanting to be a pilot, and more about curiosity about flying - I wanted to know about planes, controls, navigation, and so on.  (By the way, I did the same thing with remote controlled model planes I built, flew and crashed repeatedly for a couple of years way back when!)  When, some years ago, I bought a Sitar (an Indian stringed instrument) and took lessons from a local teacher, again it was curiosity, rather than any ambition to become the next Ravi Shankar.  (The joke there was my teacher would book my 1 hour lessons for 90 minutes to allow time for me to stand up straight after sitting for an hour in the proper, but very uncomfortable cross-legged position with the bowl of the giant instrument resting awkwardly on the inside of my bare left foot!)

So, I had a curiosity about blogging and about how it would work out for me.  On the other side of the ledger were a zillion reasons to resist becoming a blogger.  For example, I already had way more to do than there was time for - I feared the amount of time blogging would require.  I always fear learning a new technology, particularly if it’s not super-user-friendly.  As I looked at some of the basic blogging platforms, I had grave concerns about how much HTML and CSS I would need to learn.  Also, I have to admit that at the time, it was not clear what the benefits would be.  If I wrote it, would they come?  Even more important, would they come back?

So, what have I learned from a year of blogging?

1. It actually takes me even more time than I imagined it would.  The surprise here was the need to read more, especially blogs, than I had ever previously done.  I reckon there’s probably one hour or more of reading time needed to support one hour of writing time.  The good news is that both the reading and the writing became such a pleasure, that it never felt onerous.  To the contrary, sometimes it is actually cathartic to sit and the computer and write (or read) late in the evening or very early in the morning.  For example, I’m writing this section at 6pm after a very long day in my home office, mostly on phone calls, web conferences, dealing with emails (yes - I still have those to deal with, though much less than used to be the case!)  I find this is a good time to unwind from the day and ease into the evening dinner and perhaps a Netflix video.
2. I was initially disappointed at the low number of comments I received.  I’ve learned since that this is par for the course, and the level of commentary has picked up over time.  More important, some of the comments have been really insightful and have led me in unexpected and sometimes valuable directions.
3. I have found that the process of mentally rehearsing things I will post about, and the posts themselves, often helps me process some of the day’s issues that surface though my research, client activities, or from the reading.  i.e., I feel better prepared to deal with these issues thanks to my digesting them through the act of blogging.
4. Not surprising, but the patterns of readership are very cyclic - often highest on a Thursday, dropping over the weekend, picking up again on a Monday and building from there.
5. Most satisfying has been the steady growth in readership.  I’m very pleased with the statistics and information WordPress (which I’ve been absolutely delighted with as a blog platform) provides, and am fascinated to learn what search terms bring people to the blog, my referrers, incoming links, top posts, and so on.
6. More surprising to me is that the readership seems to have relatively little to do with how frequently I post.  I dare not experiment to find out at which point my posting frequency leads to an erosion of readership!
7. I was very excited when I added the ‘Visitors to this site’ Clustrmaps widget.  I was initially excited as this was my first widget, and it worked!  (Trivial, of course, but as a novice I was not expecting that!)  But the real excitement came with actually seeing that blogging is truly is a global experience.
8. After a year, I’m still a relative novice.  I’ve experimented with embedded videos and slideshows, but only occasionally.  I need to do more to bring the ideas and issues I write about to life.
9. Good and unexpected things have surfaced out of my blog, including guest spots on other’s blogs, invitations to write and podcast, and I’ve made some new friends and important contacts.
10. Finally, the lessons in change management.  I saw the firm’s leadership modeling the behaviors they expected from me.  They set a clear expectation for me, but not in a threatening or dictatorial way, but in a helpful and constructive way - the call I got from Susan.  Having a blogging coach to get me started was absolutely key.  At the time, Susan was working with 3 of us, so we were also able to form a micro ‘community of practice’ and learn from each other.

So, as I enter year 2, I’m relatively satisfied with the first year, determined to make the blog more interesting and valuable in the second year, and am extremely grateful to those who encouraged me to start a blog, and especially to Susan Scrupski for really being the catalyst that got me over the initimidation factor and learning curve.  Of course, my hightest gratitude goes to you the readers - I’m not sure this would be so enjoyable an activity if I was the only reader!

Last week I was teaching an IT Leadership Development program with a team of senior IT executives - virtually all of them engineers by training and by inclination.  It was a very energizing and productive session, loaded with thoughtful dialog and rich, provocative discussion.

At one point, one of my colleagues on the faculty, while talking about lessons learned in organizational change stated, “Speed matters - if you don’t move fast, the change you are trying to achieve will likely dissipate.”  The group’s CIO said politely, “No, I think you are confusing speed with momentum.  And it is momentum that matters most in organizational change!”  This led to an interesting discussion where we rapidly concluded that the CIO was correct.  But in the process of that discussion, I think we all got a little more clear on the nature of transformational change, and some of the critical success factors.

I want to drill into the distinction in this post, and see if we can shed light on the murky topic of transformational change - I believe there can be some important insights from this discussion.   First, a caveat.  I was trained as an engineer, but my degree was in Electrical Engineering (my first excuse!) and to be honest, other than the instinctive application of engineering principles I apply daily, I have not given much thought to classical mechanics and the formal definition of terms, so please forgive any engineering goofs - unless they significantly impact my key points, in which case, bring it on!  I’m also going to stay away from quantum mechanics, and the particular spin (if you’ll excuse the pun) that the quantum world adds to classical mechanics.

In dealing with the concepts of speed and momentum, we have to sort out some distinctions with the lazy ways we use these terms in everyday speech, and their mechanical differences.  We tend to use speed and velocity interchangeably.  In fact, velocity is a vector, so it has direction.  Speed is the magnitude of velocity - it doesn’t have direction.  So, strictly speaking, we should be talking about the velocity of change, given that direction is important.  You can imagine a situation where I say, “Fred and Anne are both changing their facilitation behaviors very quickly.”  We might think that’s a good thing, but if Fred is becoming a more effective facilitator, while Anne is becoming less effective, that’s not a good thing.

The speed/velocity distinction is important to understanding momentum, which is the product of the mass and velocity of an object.  Velocity is defined as the rate of change of position of an object.   In everyday speech, mass is often synonymous with weight, but strictly speaking, weight means the strength of the gravitational pull on the object - how heavy it is, measured in units of force.

So, we often talk about speed, when we really mean velocity, and where we should be referring to momentum, which takes into account the mass we are trying to move.  So, the sum of small movements every day across a large organization will have far greater impact than if a few people make great leaps of change.  I came across this great quote (and a nice little audio post) on Odeo.com:

Most business owners make a horrible mistake.  They confuse the words ‘momentum’ and ’speed.’  The people who really succeed do little things every single day.  The little things start to add up.  The speedsters want to go from start to finish in 55 seconds.  They want to reach the top of the Google ranking in next to no time.  They want to learn a skill like copy-writing or article writing in three weeks.  They want speed. And as you already know: Speed kills.”

This speed/momentum distinction also reminds me of the superb work of Jim Collins and the flywheel analogy he introduced in his classic book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t.   In his research for that book, Collins learned that companies who make the transition don’t do so overnight.   He analogizes their success to that of a flywheel, where it is sustained momentum that accelerates the energy output and ultimately drives transformation.

This also reminds me of the wisdom of the great sage of total quality Edwards Deming, and the first of his 14 points: Constancy of purpose.

Create constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society, allocating resources to provide for long range needs rather than only short term profitability, with a plan to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.

As I look at some clients I’ve worked with over the years with their “flavor of the month” change programs, it is no wonder why they move backwards rather than forwards, and why their employees adopt the “this too shall pass” attitude over time, ignoring strategic change initiatives.

Susan Cramm’s interesting post for Harvard Business Publishing, “IT’s Dirty Little Secret: No Accountability” contains some worthwhile observations and valid recommendations, but her post’s title is misleading.  I believe it is not “IT’s dirty little secret” but the “Business’s dirty little secret.”

As has been observed before, businesses get the IT they deserve, and it is primarily a lack of business accountability for the business value of IT investments that places IT in the somewhat sorry state it finds itself with regard to value realization and the measurement thereof.  Now one can argue that IT is accountable for colluding with dysfunctional behavior - i.e., spending money on IT investments on behalf of the business without insisting on business accountability for the results.  This is not only sloppy management practice, it is also a source of “value leakage” (failure to figure out how realized value will be tracked often leads to poorly planned or designed systems due to lack of real understanding and agreement on how the business outcomes will be achieved or enabled by technology and/or process change).

One leading practice we’ve seen that can help address this accountability gap is a partnership between the CIO and CFO focused on driving business value realization from IT investments.  For all the grumbling that it is hard to achieve, there is lots known about how to achieve and some great success stories for those that try.  If you are interested in this topic, please check out my recent posts: Financial Forensics as a Clue to Dysfunctional IT,  and Measuring the Business Value of IT - Where You Can Win By Simply Trying!

Dion Hinchcliffe’s excellent recent post on Web-Oriented Architecture (actually, this is his latest in a series of posts on this topic) reflects an important shift in thinking around technology architecture and componentization.  This is the shift from push to pull approaches to change - a shift I’ve covered from from time to time in this blog.  It is, I believe, inherent in the evolution from “1.0″ to “2.0″ (as in Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and so on.)

I’ve posted previously on the shift from IT Architecture to Enterprise Architecture and how this takes you from an IT-out to a business-in approach to design.  I’ve since expanded on this idea in my post about moving from Enterprise Architecture to Ecosystem Architecture).   Our research last year into SOA showed that most companies try to go about SOA the wrong way - IT-out rather than business-in, and as a technical standards rather than a business capabilities issue .  Our research report identified  hope then was that IT professionals would get it, and leverage SOA appropriately.  In retrospect, that was probably an unreasonable hope.  Instead, WOA is evolving naturally from the mélange of emerging standards and architectures.

One of the most powerful attributes of the 2.0 world is its outside-in, bottom-up “pull” nature (as opposed to the 1.0 inside-out, top-down “push.”)  I think that WOA (as a manifestation of SOA) is working because it is emergent, and is inherently “pull” oriented.  Dion captures this beautifully in this graphic.

Note:  Thanks to Brian for his photo from the 2005 Burning Man extravaganza.

Picking up on my previous post on Organization Design and the Value Disciplines, my colleague Roy Youngman reminded me of the theoretical work by Henry Mintzberg that we drew from many years back.  At that time, Roy was helping me to write a book, Development Effectiveness: Strategies for IS Organizational Transition.  (Note:  I’m not plugging the book - it was written in 1994, and while I think much of it is still relevant, there are more current and relevant books on the topic today.  I include the link here in the interests of completeness.  Of course, if you want to buy a copy, that’s OK too!)

Anyway, Roy has been using the Mintzberg insights with a current client to great effect, and as I was on the subject of organization design, I thought it was worth revisiting these ideas.  Mintzberg’s Theory on Organizational Forms discusses four “standardization” strategies that can be applied in organizational design:

• Standardization of work processes, which achieves coordination by specifying the work processes of people carrying out interrelated tasks.  This is the common model for things that are routine and sequential (e.g., IT operations, data center, telecommunications, IT infrastructure, etc.)
• Standardization of outputs, which achieves coordination by specifying the results of different work.  This is the best model for things that are collaborative and perhaps visual.  This is perhaps the dominant model for systems development and programming.
• Standardization of skills (as well as knowledge), in which different work is coordinated by virtue of the related training the workers have received.  This is the model for things that are complex and exploratory.  There is an element of this in all IT roles, but tends to apply mostly in the more technical and operational roles (think Microsoft Certification programs, Project Management Institute, etc.)
• Standardization of norms, in which it is the norms infusing the work that are controlled, usually for the entire organization, so that everyone functions according to the same set of beliefs.  I’ve found over the years that IT groups with the most cohesive culture (i.e., they have a shared sense of their destiny, and a passion for fulfilling it) are the most effective in driving performance and leading transformations.  For example, at their best, movements such as Total Quality Management and 6 Sigma instill norms of quality management.  I’ve also found (though this is unfortunately not the norm) values initiatives such as Johnson & Johnson’s Credo Values, and Google’s Mission to be effective ways to motivate and focus people around important values and norms.

Like most models, Mintzberg’s theory is valuable because it simplifies reality.  While the reality of IT organizations can be quite complex (e.g., Mintzberg’s standardization strategies all apply to IT roles to various degrees) it can help to think about the dominant strategy for a given IT capability.

We often find the standardization strategies and the interventions to achieve them get confused.  For example:

• We see people trying to standardize work processes for things that are not routine and sequential - think of waterfall life cycle methodologies applied to rapid, iterative development!
• I once worked with a health sciences company who was trying to standardize software development processes in order to comply with Federal regulations, when what was really called for (and far more easily implemented across about 10 business divisions with their own IT shops at very different levels of maturity) was standardization of deliverables (outputs.)
• We see simple training programs as futile attempts to induce norms such as self-accountability.  Or, as an industry, we have suffered for years without standardization of many crucial IT skills.  Even today, PMI Certification (and legitimate and worthy credentials) are not taken seriously by a majority of IT leaders.
• I believe that most IT shops pay too little attention to standardization of norms.  For example, many lower maturity groups believe their mission is to do what their business partners ask for, as opposed to do what they actually need.  This reflects norms such as, ‘the customer is always right’ and ‘to be successful I must behave as an order-taker’ rather than ‘my role is to help create business value from IT investments’ and ‘the customer is not always right - they expect us to push back and guide them.’

So, think about standardization in your organization - have you applied the appropriate standardization strategies to your important IT capabilities?  To drive business-IT maturity, what would you like to change with regard to these standardization strategies?

I realize it might be somewhat outré (and very circular!) to reference a post that is referencing one of my own posts, but I’m going to do that.  Espen Andersen picked up my post The New IT Role: From Problem Solving to Opportunity Creation and made some important expansions on the inherent ideas, in his post The Opportunity-creating IT Department.

I really believe that with the confluence of a weakening global economy, widespread social and political upheaval, and the emergence of a whole slew of “2.0″ information technologies, it is now more important than ever to find creative and constructive ways to drive growth and innovation by whatever means.  I made a personal vow when I started blogging almost a year ago to stay out of certain topics - politics being one such taboo.  I am prepared, however, to state my position that I believe a major driver of an economy is psychology and mindset.  With FDR’s words ringing in my head, “The only thing we have to fear Is fear itself” I do believe we can depress ourselves into (or further into) a recession, or just as easily inspire ourselves into an expansion.

I talk to too many CIO’s who have gone into hunker-down mode.  These are the problem-solvers.  They see the problem as IT costing too much, so they try to help solve that problem by doing less.  Of course, the real result is fueling the vicious cycle and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about the role and cost of IT.  Thank heaven for the visionary CIO’s who are the opportunity-creators.  They see the opportunities in the emerging technologies and capabilities.  They don’t know exactly what that all means to them and their companies, but they are actively involved in finding that out through action and experiments - through bringing leadership and inspiration to their organizations and their companies.

What kind of CIO are you, or do you aspire to be - problem-solver, or opportunity-creator?  What do your actions tell about you?  What can you do to become more of an opportunity-creator?

I was talking with a colleague yesterday about the ways IT management consulting has changed over the last couple of years.  On reflection, the changes for IT management consulting mirror in many ways the changes in the role of IT - at least as far as the more mature business-IT environments are concerned.

For many years, IT specialists inside large businesses and agencies (i.e, I’m not talking about companies who’s business is IT) have pursued a role of problem solver.  “Too much slack in the supply chain?  We can help you re-engineer the business process, enable it with slick supply chain software, and problem solved!”  “Too hard to make meaning of all the transaction data that gets generated every day?  We can build at data warehouse and provide sophisticated data analysis tools to help you make better, more informed decisions.”  “Losing track of inventory?  We can put bar codes or RFID tags on goods, and use a tracking system to keep an accurate record of where stuff is.”  You have a problem - the IT organization will help you analyze it, determine root causes, then design and implement a solution.  It’s been a worthy role for years, and the results, more often than not, are successful.

Note how similar this is to the role of the IT management consultant - for years, we’ve been brought in when there’s a problem the CIO needs help solving.  But over the last few years, that has been changing.  My hypothesis is this:  Most of the traditional IT management problems have been solved, or, at least, the CIO and her team have solved similar problems before, and feel qualified to solve them for themselves. Let’s translate than from IT management consultant and the CIO team, to the CIO team and their business partners.  I think similar forces prevail.  The big problems have either been solved, or at least the tools and disciplines of 6 Sigma, business process re-engineering, and other problem solving methods are now reasonably well known, and have become relatively routine.

So, what’s a poor IT management consultant to do?  More to the point (for readers of this blog) what’s an IT professional to do?  I believe the cutting edge of information technology today, with Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, and the evolving convergence between the consumer space and enterprise computing has shifted the paradigm for the IT professional from problem solving to opportunity identification and exploitation.  This may seem like a subtle, semantic shift, but I think it is more profound and impacts the competencies IT pros need to be successful, and the way they see and operationalize their role and relationships with their business partners.  Let’s consider some of the differences between problem solving and opportunity finding:

• Problems tend to be brought to you (to map back to the IT management consulting analogy, the problems often come to you via a Request for Proposal), whereas you have to go find opportunities.
• When people bring you problems to solve, they are hoping for a solution (even though sometimes the ‘be careful what you wish for’ adage applies!)  When you find an opportunity, you might have a very hard time selling your business partner on something they weren’t looking for in the first place and that does not solve a recognized problem.
• The tools used for problem solving are quite different from those used for opportunity identification.  You might be a master black belt in quality improvement, but not know how to be an effective innovator.
• The solutions available for problem solving are often ‘off the shelf’ while those required to exploit new opportunities may need to be either invented or at least ‘mashed up’ from component pieces.
• The skills needed for problem solving (e.g., analysis, design) are different from those required for opportunity creation (e.g., synthesis, innovation, persuasion).
• The relationships involved in problem solving are quite different from those involved in opportunity identification.  Think about your own relationships with the plumber or car repair shop compared to those with a personal training coach or travel adviser.  I don’t care how little the plumber knows about me as a person - I just want the leak fixed quickly, efficiently, and without getting ripped off.  But I do want my travel adviser to know enough about me to point me to the kind of vacation I’m going to really love and benefit from.

I think this type of role shift for the IT professional relates back to several earlier posts. (Forgive me for referring back to my own posts, but I believe that looking for patterns and connections is important to understanding the changes in the world around us and to opportunity identification.)  For example, in IT Pros - What Will Become of Them I talked about the risk of the old-style ‘business analyst’ becoming a dinosaur.  In Financial Forensics as a Clue to Dysfunctional IT I referenced IT funding as often driving dysfunctional behavior.  In fact, IT funding is often set up for the problem solving paradigm - i.e., funds are made available once a problem has been identified.  As you shift to opportunity identification, it becomes hard, if not impossible, to get the funding needed to pursue opportunities.  In my post Some Suggestions for a CIO 2.0 I talked about the shift in a Web 2.0 world from “the business problem to be solved” to the “potential opportunities to surface”; from “projects to be framed out” to “experiments to find and stimulate, communities to seed”; and from “deliverables to be created” to “behaviors to be fostered.”

So, are you operating primarily as a problem solver or an opportunity creator?  Are you helping innovate products, processes and services, or simply helping take the kinks out of them?  Are you helping grow the business top line, and perhaps creating new revenue streams, or helping improve the bottom line by taking out costs?