Monthly Archives: February 2010

“Branding” Your IT Organization


I love this post on Attraction of Identity from my kindred spirit, Russ Aebig. (And not just because he references my work on Business-IT Maturity!)   Russ poses the question:

As an organization, who are you? What is your internal and external story?”

Russ goes on to say:

IT organizations typically are not oriented around branding and when pushed to think about it realize they have many disparate, confused, and mixed  identities, each shaped by recent events with their customers. From a brand perspective, there will be no clear message which the IT customers can positively associate with.”

The IT-Marketing Disconnect

Hallelujah!  And I’d go further to say that IT organizations typically have little to no sense of marketing, the core set of disciplines within which branding belongs. Many years ago, as an intern, I did a stint in both the sales and marketing organizations of a British computer manufacturer and quickly learned some of the key differences between these disciplines and how they play off against each other.  As a marketing executive defined it to me back then, “Marketing is about ensuring an environment in which your products (or services) sell!”  As such, marketing has much to do with understanding the market needs and dynamics, then shaping perceptions in that market so that your product’s (or service’s) ability to meet those needs is known and compelling.

Against that background, you can imagine the many shortcomings in how IT organizations:

  • Create deep understanding about their markets, segments, problems their customers want solved
  • Position their products and services in ways that can help solve those problems
  • Make it easy to find and engage in the IT organization’s available services
  • Price their services in ways that make sense to their customers and are “easy to do business with”
  • Communicate in powerful and positive ways to shape perceptions about how they are solving business problems and creating value

The Power of Branding

If IT organizations were automobiles, what make would your organization most closely equate to?  Would you be a Ferrari – extreme high performance, lots of pizazz, reserved for the enlightened few with the means to drive it?  Or perhaps a Mercedes – high quality, superbly engineered, high technology, style, and within reach of (some) mere mortals?  Or a Mazda – quality at an affordable price, with lots of innovation, to boot!  Or a Chevy truck – great value, solid dependable performance for going beyond the normal needs of a family saloon?

If you don’t like the automobile analogy (which I use somewhat tongue-in-cheek) pick something closer to home – perhaps a retail store chain, or consumer service provider, or a hotel chain.  Do you want to be known for breadth of service, with all the bells and whistles?  Or tightly focused on some core competencies?  Are you an innovator?  Or more about the nuts and bolts services needed in day to day operations?  This kind of branding analysis and execution may lead you to recognize that you have more than one brand to your IT organization (think FedEx Express, FedEx Ground and FedEx Office!)  With different types of services, different value propositions, and different ways of engaging.

The key, I believe, is to be thoughtful, as Russ suggests, about your value proposition(s) – how you want them to be seen and felt.  This is not only “good marketing” – it’s also a great way to build alignment among your leadership team as you work through the definition of your organization’s mission, vision, values and brand messages.

Image courtesy of Lauren Fernandez

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Avatar – Blending “Hi Tech/Hi Touch”


Way back in 1982, futurist John Naisbitt authored the fascinating book Megatrends.  I especially recall my reaction to one of the trends – High tech, high touch – and the need to balance between technology and human interaction.  I recently caught a small segment on television about the making of Avatar.  (There’s lots of interesting clips of this stuff on YouTube.)  A couple of things really struck me.

Cameron Invented Some Cool New Tech!

The breadth and depth of new technologies invented (or, in come cases, refined) by James Cameron and his team is truly astounding.  Not just the “performance capture” technologies and related techniques, but also the technology to integrate the video streams from dozens (in some cases, hundreds) of video cameras and computer generated graphics in real time to a single ‘virtual camera‘ device that Cameron could look through as the filming was being done, and let him select the best angles and perspectives to capture the moment.  According to Wikipedia, the virtual camera system:

…displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor’s virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron, “It’s like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale.”

Other technical innovations included a system for lighting very large areas, a massive motion-capture stage and the technology and methods for full performance capture, including facial expressions.  He also reduced the weight of notoriously heavy and unwieldy 3-D cameras to something that could just about be hand-held and up to the dynamics he envisioned for Avata.

But, Cameron Also Paid Attention t0 the Hi Touch!

But what most intrigued me, and took me back to Naisbitt and Megatrends, was the attention Cameron paid to the “hi touch” to make such a hi tech movie work.  This included taking the actors to rain forests in Hawaii to spend time getting the feel of such a landscape – and some of the most similar terrain he could find to his imaginary Pandora.  He wanted the actors to hike around the forest – to be able to recapture the feeling of a lush forest when they were on the concrete sound stage.  He wanted the actors to really look as though they were in control of the flying creatures, so he build a gimbal rig to let the actors get the feel of the movements (which had been previously worked out with wire frame models and their possible flight paths).

Hi Tech, Hi Touch

How are you balancing the high technology you are deploying with the high touch techniques that will help them integrate into the human world in which they must operate?

Image Courtesy of Collider.com

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Lessons in Listening: Superior Performance Demands Great Listening!


One of the ‘gifts’ I’m enjoying in my semi-retirement is more time pursuing my musical hobbies – including performing with local musicians and friends.  That creative outlet reinforces for me, at the deepest level, how much good musical performance demands intense listening.  This is so relevant to my ‘professional’ world of IT management consulting for a couple of reasons:

  1. The client challenge as presented is rarely the ‘real challenge.’ So, to be effective, a consultant has to listen through and beyond all the noise to hear what’s really going on.
  2. Given that much of my work is with CIO’s – often, by definition, very bright, innovative and even charismatic characters, I frequently see ‘listening deficiency syndrome’ – a failure to really listen and actually hear what is going on around them.  If they are not skilled at hearing what their audience is saying, they cannot be skilled at “selling them” the next IT enablement opportunity.
  3. The Web 2.0 world is largely about collaboration – and collaboration demands superb ‘listening’ skills (and here I’m using listening very broadly – with the eyes as well as through the ears).

There’s a wealth of material on the Internet about listening skills – books, articles, training programs, and so on, so I don’t intend to make this post a source for improving listening skills.  I will point you to the excellent Mind Tools site and their Active Listening paper as a great starting point.  But I do want to share some personal insights that have mostly come to me through my hobbies.  I guess there’s a mini-insight even in that sentence – active hobbies are really important to a healthy mind!  I often work with client IT professionals who are locked into 10-hour days, flowing into weekends, trying to get on top of email in-boxes with thousands of unread messages, who just ‘don’t have time for hobbies.’  I fear for their sanity and for their effectiveness!  I consider hobbies to be non-optional – period!

Lessons from Music and Performing

So, as I’ve tried to learn music over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the importance of listening – and how hard that is to do when you are focused on trying to play the right notes!  For years, I played guitar.  One day I found myself in a band situation without a bass player, so I offered to try my hand at bass.  I soon realized that I had not really, deeply, listened to the bass parts in music.  I found that I really enjoyed the bass as an instrument, and started listening to my favorite music with a focus on the bass parts.  What a difference!  With focus and concentration, you can hear any given part – effectively filtering out the other parts.  And that’s an important skill in deep and active listening – whether it be in music or in discussing the business value of an IT solution!   As an aside, with guitar, you are mostly listening to the singer, other guitars or keyboards.  As a bass player, you are mostly locked on the drummer.  An interesting shift in listening perspective!  Think how that might apply to the CIO versus CTO roles, for example?

More importantly (and more challenging) when playing music with others, while the natural tendency is to focus on what you are playing, and listen to how you are sounding, I pretty quickly came to learn that the real trick was to focus on the other instruments and voices – what they are playing and how they are sounding!  It’s less about what you play, and more about what you hear!  Think about how that might apply to your role versus those of your colleagues?

Lessons from Acting and Dramatics

While we are on this performing arts thing, I learned a wonderful lesson as a teenager when I got involved in amateur dramatics.  Just as with the music experience, the natural tendency is to focus on your own lines – what you are saying.  The trick, I soon learned, was to listen to the other actors, and, more importantly, to the audience!

I learned this very quickly, the hard way.  My first ‘big’ play was a wonderful comedy – “You Can’t Take It With You” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. (I played Boris Kolenkov, a Russian ballet instructor!)  Through weeks of rehearsal, we had a pretty good sense of the funny lines and how to deliver them.  We then got to the actual week of performances.  Everything went well for the first night, then the second.  On the third night, something very strange happened.  I delivered one of the ‘non-funny’ lines, and the entire audience roared with laughter!  Without warning, a ‘straight’ line that I’d delivered the same way for weeks of performances, was funny.  Not just to a few audience members, but to the whole audience!  And I suddenly got the joke that I’d never seen before.

This experience taught me a great deal about the challenges of comedic timing – if you aren’t ready for the laughter, you will talk over it, and the audience will miss some lines.  If, on the other hand, you pause and there’s no laughter, you’ve interrupted the flow and momentarily broken the illusion that good theater hangs upon.  The key?  Intense listening – even as you struggle to remember your next line, and how to deliver it!  The other lesson here is to listen to the pace and rhythm of your audience – and try to match that.  Talk slower to slow talkers, and faster to fast talkers.

Lessons from Powerful Dialog

Finally, and I’ve shared this chestnut before on this blog, but I think it bears repetition – one of the best nuggets of wisdom I learned from a boss many years ago, was “When in trouble, ask questions!”  And, of course, the corollary to that is, if you’re going to ask a question, you better listen deeply to the answer!

Image courtesy of WorldWork

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Exploring an IT Operating Model for Enterprise 2.0 – Part 4: IT Governance


In Part 1 of this series, I suggested that the implications of Enterprise 2.0 for the IT organization are dramatic.  I also suggested that the ways of designing and executing an IT Operating Model in a Web 2.0 context are quite different from traditional approaches.  In Part 2, I outlined the major elements of an IT Operating Model as being:

  • Processes – how we perform activities that deliver predictable and repeatable business results through competent people using the right tools.
  • Governance – how we make and sustain important decisions about IT.
  • Sourcing – how we select and manage the sourcing of our IT products and services.
  • Services – our portfolio of IT products and services.
  • Measurement – how we measure and monitor our performance.
  • Organization – how we structure and organize our IT capabilities.

In Part 3 we looked at how Web 2.0 approaches could transform the way IT processes are defined and managed.  I now want to look at IT governance, and the implications of Web 2.0 for this ever important aspect of IT operating models.  Due to the depth of this topic, I will discuss the facets and domains of IT governance in this post, then deal with the Web 2.0 implications in a subsequent post.

Facets of IT Governance

There are many definitions and descriptions of IT Governance, and frameworks such as COBIT that attempt to bring ‘best practices and processes’ to the domain.   The two definitions I have landed on in my years of research and consulting in this space, are:

  1. A framework of decision rights and accountabilities to encourage desired behavior to realize maximum value from information technology.
  2. Aligning IT decision-making with enterprise governance and business unit objectives through an interrelated set of processes, policies and decision-making structures with clear goals, roles and functions, sponsored by the CEO, with clear consequences for compliance or lack thereof.

I like the first definition for its simplicity, getting to the heart of both ‘decision rights’ and ‘accountabilities’ through the lens of ‘behaviors’ all focused on maximizing the value realized through IT.  This is pragmatic – you can define the types of behaviors you would like to see (e.g., business takes ownership for the business outcomes to be enabled by IT initiatives), or behaviors you are seeing but would like to eliminate (e.g., people see IT as a ‘free’ resource, and therefore use it with little or no regard as to its cost or value.)

I like the second definition in contrast for its recognition that IT governance is an extension of enterprise governance, and for its reference to ‘processes’, ‘policies’, and ‘decision-making structures.’  I also like the emphasis on CEO sponsorship and consequence management – i.e., governance with ‘teeth’.

I’ve come to view IT governance as a means to achieve balance between the competing forces of innovation versus standardization and business unit autonomy versus collaboration.  I also see IT governance as a way to manage IT investments and assets as a  resource that is shared by the enterprise.  Finally, good IT governance provides a “transmission chain” for the highest level enterprise strategy, from senior executives on down through the organization. As such, IT governance is a critical alignment mechanism.

IT Governance Domains

Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Ross, in their excellent book, IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results, call out five decision domains of IT governance:

  • IT Principles (strategic choices between competing perspectives.  For example, ‘We will optimize IT investments for the enterprise rather than for individual business units.’)
  • IT Architecture (“the organizing logic for data, applications, and infrastructure captured in a set of policies, relationships and technical choices.”)
  • IT Infrastructure (“Centrally coordinated, shared IT services that provide the foundation for the enterprise’s IT capability.”)
  • IT Investments and Prioritization (“How much and where to invest in IT, including project approvals and justification techniques.”)
  • Business Application Needs (“Specifying the business need for purchased or internally developed IT applications.”)

While these domains may each be handled by different processes, policies and decision-making structures, all of these domains must be covered in ways that support a coherent strategy and set of beliefs about IT.

IT Governance, In Other Words…

IT governance deals with how the business makes decisions about the deployment and delivery of IT.  When sound IT Governance is in place, senior executives not only know their organization’s IT plans and policies, they also know how they are made.  IT governance is about the specification of decision rights and responsibilities required to ensure effective and efficient use of IT.  As such, it deals with organizational power and influence, and therefore  must be approached with care!

IT Governance 2.0

The implications of Web 2.0 on IT Governance are dramatic and far reaching!  On the one hand, with ‘transparency’ a watchword of good governance, 2.0 capabilities offer several important mechanisms to bring transparency both to the design of effective IT governance processes and structures, and to their ongoing execution and management.  On the other hand, dealing with decision rights and accountabilities in the types of highly diverse, distributed and fluid information environment enabled by social networking tools can become quite complex.  We will dig deeper into the implications of Web 2.0 for IT governance in a subsequent post.

Image courtesy of The ERM Current

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Mobility, Shmobility… Why Should I Care?


Thanks to friend and co-blogger Russ Aebig for pointing me to this great post by Joshua-Michéle Ross on his excellent Opposable Planets blog.

In his post, Ross points out that devices such as iPhones are,

location-aware (GPS), motion-aware (accelerometer), directionally aware (compass) visually aware (camera that can gather visual input of the immediate environment), sonically aware (microphone and speakers), always-connected (wireless or 3Gs) handheld computer. In short… an environmental sensor.”

It’s easy to dismiss these rapidly evolving tools and technologies, and their emerging ecosystems – rather than think about how they can enable a better world, improved lives, and new ways of doing business.

How will mobility affect your business?  Your life?  What “jobs do you need to get done” that aren’t easily done today, that could be done with mobile technology?

Image courtesy of Ubergizmo

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Exploring an IT Operating Model for Enterprise 2.0 – Part 3: Process Management


In Part 1 of this series, I suggested that the implications of Enterprise 2.0 for the IT organization are dramatic.  I also suggested that the ways of designing and executing an IT Operating Model in a Web 2.0 context are quite different from traditional approaches.  In Part 2, I outlined the major elements of an IT Operating Model as being:

  • Processes – how we perform activities that deliver predictable and repeatable business results through competent people using the right tools.
  • Governance – how we make and sustain important decisions about IT.
  • Sourcing – how we select and manage the sourcing of our IT products and services.
  • Services – our portfolio of IT products and services.
  • Measurement – how we measure and monitor our performance.
  • Organization – how we structure and organize our IT capabilities.

In the next series of posts we will consider how these elements can be dramatically improved with Web 2.0 capabilities.

Web 2.0 and Process Management

Process Management, including all phases of process design, deployment, automation, including work flow and continuous improvement, are well-served by collaborative approaches and Web 2.0 tools.  With minor add-ons, SharePoint plus some creative use of Wikis works well for most aspects of process management.  Furthermore, once you are in a browser and on the web, you have access to a plethora of collaborative tools that are helpful when performing process management work, including project management, mind mapping, polling, voting, training and communicating, financial modeling, drawing, 3-D modeling, and so on.  Cheap, and in many cases free, these tools let you create a productive environment, or even a “process management toolkit” for reengineering your IT operating model.

Microsoft, in their “People-Ready Process” approach to Business Process Management argue (appropriately, in my opinion) that you don’t need to standardize on a single tool – the needs and preferences of analysts, process owners, architects, and so on, as well as the tools with which each may be familiar, will vary.  Also, most of these Web 2.0 tools are evolving rapidly, so focus more on the techniques and building the skills, while being prepared to switch or upgrade tools as the market allows.  (Obviously, you need to work closely with your collaboration managers and enterprise architects to ensure they are well informed about what you are doing, and that you don’t create any ‘unpleasant surprises’ for them or the IT operations environment!)

Graphic courtesy of Microsoft People-Ready Process: Collaborative Process Design

Not Just About IT Processes!

Note that while my primary intent and focus for this series of posts is using Web 2.0 approaches in the design and deployment of IT Operating Models for an Enterprise 2.0 world, the same approaches apply to Enterprise 2.0 business process management.  However, I generally feel that the IT organization is well served “doing unto themselves” before they go too far “doing unto others”!  This is a matter of both need (i.e., IT organizations need a healthy dose of collaborative process management!) and experience (i.e., IT organizations should gain some first hand experience in the approaches before they plunge into business process management 2.0!).

Not Just About Web 2.o Tools

As IT professionals, we inevitably gravitate towards the tools, but collaborative approaches bring so much more than useful tools.  I find that with collaboration, it is so much easier to follow agile methods – thereby delivering value sooner.  It also brings the issues of organizational and cultural change to the foreground.  It is an old cliche that “people don’t resist change – it’s being changed that they abhor!”  By bringing a broader swath of stakeholders into end-to-end process management, the challenges of process deployment, adoption and ongoing refinement are significantly reduced.  People are far more engaged in their processes, including their design, use and improvement.  Furthermore, the rapid, iterative methods afforded by such collaborative approaches also facilitate a “design for implementation” approach – helping eliminate design flaws up front, and to iron out kinks faster than traditional methods allow.

Tell us about your experiences with collaborative business process management.  What’s worked well for you?  What not so well?  What have been the benefits?  What have some of the impediments been?

Cartoon courtesy of Doug Savage, Savage Chickens

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Exploring an IT Operating Model for Enterprise 2.0 – Part 2


Elements of an IT Operating Model

This is the second part of my series on IT Operating Models for Enterprise 2.0 (for the introduction, please see here.)  In Part 1, I explored the question, “Why Does Enterprise 2.0 Demand a New IT Operating Model?”  I posited three key answers:

  1. The types of IT products and services the IT organization must deliver in an Enterprise 2.0 world are quite different from those in a 1.0 world.  Enablement of enterprise collaboration, for example.
  2. The ways that IT products and services can be delivered in an Enterprise 2.0 world are also quite different.  Through “the cloud”, for example.
  3. The ways of designing and executing an IT Operating Model in a Web 2.0 context are also quite different.  Collaboratively, and through “the cloud”, for example.

I mentioned my current interest and excitement about the 3rd point as something I’ve been exploring, both through multi-company research and through actual consulting engagements, and that is where I want to focus this post.

What Are the Primary Elements of an IT Operating Model

My last post described an IT Operating Model as “the basic framework your IT organization follows to get your products and services into the hands of its consumers and customers.”  Let’s consider what might be the primary elements of such a framework:

  • Processes – how we perform activities that deliver predictable and repeatable business results through competent people using the right tools.  For example, how to we shape demand?  How do we surface and clarify demand?  How do we turn demand into solutions that deliver the intended (or better) business results?  How do we continuously improve the way we do IT work?
  • Governance – how we make and sustain important decisions about IT.  For example, how do business needs and initiatives get prioritized?  How do we manage the tensions between local and global optimization?  How are “standards” chosen and what are the consequences for deviations?  How do we govern major business programs?
  • Sourcing – how we select and manage the sourcing of our IT products and services.  For example, how do we leverage our scale?  What do we offshore, near shore, onshore, in house, in source, contract?  How do we manage key vendors?
  • Services – our portfolio of IT products and services.  For example, what is in our service catalog?  How do we define and manage service levels?  Do we offer differentiated services by customer segment (e.g., concierge service for executives or key customers?)
  • Measurement – how  we measure and monitor our performance.  For example, what are the shared goals of the IT organization?  How does the business determine value realized and delivered through IT investments?  How are we improving over time?  What are our leading indicators of performance and trends, what are they telling us and how do we know what to do about it? What customer experience are we creating for users of our products and services?
  • Organization – how  we structure and organize our IT capabilities.  For example, what capabilities should be located within the IT organization and what can be within the business?  How do we organize around major projects and programs?  How do we organize around major products and platforms?

Note, I deliberately put Organization Structure last in the list.  For years, when I’ve been consulting on IT operating model design, clients invariably want to start with the organization design.  I call that “moving the deckchairs on the Titanic.”  It rarely solves anything.  On the other hand, if you work around the other elements – services, processes, governance, etc., the organizational decisions fall out relatively easily, and far more coherently.

For the last 50 years or so, IT Operating Model Design was mostly an oxymoron – they weren’t designed as much as evolved.  When deliberate design was attempted it was typically though workshops, using flip charts, post-its, PowerPoint slides, Visio, and so on.  At the end of the day, you had an organization chart to follow, organizational charters, templates, process descriptions and such, usually as MS Word and PowerPoint documents that got emailed to and fro, edited, re-edited and eventually “filed,” never to be seen again until the next CIO and the next attempt to “better align IT to the business!”

So, How Can Web 2.0 Change the Way to Design an IT Operating Model?

Given collaborative tools, wiki’s, social networks, prediction markets, et al, how can IT Operating Model design be performed in a more collaborative, impactful way?  How can it be done so that the traditional artifacts of the design – the PowerPoints, flip charts and Visio diagrams become “the way work gets done”?

I will pick up this question in the next post in this series.

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