Decisions are Made by Individuals

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_1061" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Decisions"][/caption]

Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention. — Sharon Salzberg.

Let’s be clear.  Decisions are made by people – by individuals.   Decisions are not made by groups or committees.

An organization I once consulted to was while wildly successful along many measures, but historically had a difficult time making, following up on, and seeing that decisions would stick.   Having experienced this first hand, I noticed that there was significant inconsistency in how decisions were being made, who made decisions, and how decisions were communication.  In many cases, it was unclear if decisions were being made or only communicated by specific designated people.

Further research into the matter revealed that part of the problem was that, in critical areas of the organization, the formal decision makers were designated as committees.  This had several unfortunate effects.  First the lack of an individual to make decisions allowed for each committee member to look to one another to make the decision.  Second, without an individual as the decision maker no one was accountable for the decision. Finally, by having a committee as decision maker prevents people from discussing the status of the decision with any individual.

Decisions need accountable owners in order for them to be made. Decisions require a process (or multiple processes) to have them made well.  While there are many decision models which may be followed, these fundamentals don’t change.

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How We Make Decisions

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_1042" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="How We Decide"][/caption]

Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.  – Laurence J. Peter

Decisions. We all make them. We may all make them differently. In an earlier post, Anatomy of a Decision, I talked about the different dimensions of a decision. This post will discuss how decisions are made (or not).

First, let’s establish that decisions lie on a spectrum of importance and urgency. There are also personal decisions and business decisions. While it may be useful to think of these as a two by two matrix for each of personal and business decisions, these details are beyond the scope of this post.

What is important to think about is how we make decisions – the process behind this.   It is both a personal attribute (everyone makes decisions differently) and personal / corporate critical success factor.

At one extreme Seth Godin encourages people to make decisions – many decisions.  The insinuation is that this is not normal behavior for people - that many people don’t make decisions at all, they simply let things happen. Looking at the dimensions of a decision –fill out–

Stepping up from the non-decision are the iPhone/Android apps for helping you make decisions. Simple and intuitive decisions can be made with Hunch.  More logical and emotional decisions with Proconlists.  the process here is straight-forward. Enter a question and get back an answer to your decision. Whether you are abdicating the decision-making process or adding another decision (whether to trust the app with your decision) is a minor point.

There are many decisions which demand more attention than your smart phone app. These will typically score high on the dimensions of a decision. They can be personal, “should I changes jobs?” or business “should I stop / keep / extend the relationship with our vendor?”.

The Harvard Business Review recently presented a paper by Blenko, Mankins, and Rogers titled “The Decision-Driven Organization“. This article basically outlines how several successful companies structure themselves around the types of strategic decisions that will be made. These decisions are obviously art the furthest end of spectrum on many attributes of a decision.

It is often thought that big decisions need big process to support them. This is not necessarily so. Sometimes speed of decision is more important than the comprehensiveness of a “big process”. Let us be clear though, a process (formal / informal, structured / unstructured, instinctive / thoughtful) exists for all decisions, whether you realize it or not.

Having said this, it is also true what Charlene Li notes in her book Open Leadership, “Inevitably, we base many of our decisions on the thinnest sliver of information and evidence, or even more likely, our gut feeling.”  Everyone wants more information to make decisions, and for that information to to be objective and measurable.  This is simply doesn’t reflect reality.  The process here is “go with your gut.”

How do you make decision?  It is worth investing the time to think about this.

Decide well.

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Margin Notes

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_964" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Meeting Notes"][/caption]

It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought.  Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

How do you know what’s really going on inside an organization? Is it possible to set up a barometer to not only know what has happened but forecast what is coming over the horizon?

A fellow consultant listens to the language being used within an organization to quickly gauge the organizational maturity. Whenever the opportunityto discuss topics of interest with a client presents itself, especially a new client, I find the language being used particularly telling.  This barometer can show how what the organization values, what is important at the moment, and the maturity level of the organization.

Another tool I have found is to review margin notes of managers, directors, and above. When available, if you are able to take a look at meeting agenda’s, presentation handouts, status reports, and the like you may notice something quite interesting. The handwriting which people place on these documents are far more than simple markings. The handwriting which in the margins is the individual’s personal take on specific items. In a similar way that handwriting analysts are able to understand a writer from their handwriting (based a direct connection from brain to pen to paper), margin notes are created in the same way.

Personal aspects aside, if you were to collect the agendas from all meting attendees will display the collective perceptions of the people in the meeting. This collective perception is a telling barometer of where things stand, and potentially where things may be going.

For an even better view, follow the history of margin notes on serial meeting (status reports, issue management, operational incidents, etc) and you may notice trends in the margin notes which foretold the future.

I have done this for myself on several occasions and for the most part, I find clues in my notes which allowed me to connect the dots to a future event.

My challenge is to have you watch your own margin notes. See what you are thinking. Understand why you thought what you did at the time. What events did you foresee?

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Leading at the Edge

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_952" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Leading at the Edge"][/caption]

The manager administers; the leader innovates. The manager is a copy; the leader is an original. The manager maintains; the leader develops. The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people. The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust; The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective. The managers asks how and when; the leader asks what and why. Managers have their eyes on the bottom line; leaders have their eyes on the horizon; The manager imitates; the leader originates. The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it. The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his own person. The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing.
– Warren Bennis

Leading is different from managing.  The Edge of IT is different from the Core of IT.

In a earlier post, Edge of IT, I explored the difference between Core and Edge IT functions.  At the Core of IT, the mission is to continually improve repeatable processes.  It is entirely possible to drive incredible efficiencies and realize much greater organizational effectiveness through exceptional management of Core IT.

At the edge, the action is about change.  The action is about identifying a vision and working towards transformation of an organization.  In the post noted above, Edge IT is defined as functions and services that rhyme with IT Strategy, workforce planning, financial and operational modelling, scalability and capacity planning.  This is an area where leadership makes all the difference.

Where do you want to go?  What is your vision of the future? How are you going to bring your future to life?  These are the questions that the Edge of IT serves to answer.  These are also the types of questions where leadership comes to the forefront.

The functions at the Edge of IT need you to think about the future.  They are periodic and episodic in nature.  The Edge functions are also mission critical.  Setting the IT strategy builds the foundation or future work and drives most high level decisions.  Building and refining the financial and operational models enables and liberates the IT organization, a welcome step for organizations which have not had these aspects of the organization put in place.

Change to a future state which you as the IT leader setting the direction, defining the future.  For the most part Edge IT require skills which are not typically present with the workforce which takes care of the Core.  For this reason, IT leaders typically bring in external advisors to aid with these functions.  The reason being is simple.  External advisors are specialists in these functions, and bringing this expertise to the periodic but critical Edge functions makes tremendous sense for the CIO, the IT organization, and the enterprise as a whole.

The bottom-line on Edge functions is that they are about change, the future you want to create, and your leadership skills in defining and executing to bring the future to life.

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Managing at the Core

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_942" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Management of Process"][/caption]

The physicist cannot simply surrender to the philosopher the critical contemplation of the theoretical foundations for he himself knows best and feels most surely where the shoe pinches…. he must try to make clear in his own mind just how far the concepts which he uses are justified… The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- Albert Einstein

In a prior post (Edge of IT), I looked at a useful construct in which IT services could be grouped into those at either the Core of IT, or the Edge of IT.  Core services were defined as those which play to the ongoing day-to-day success or failure of the IT organization.  Examples of this would be software development, package implementation, application support, help desk, project and program management.  You get the idea.  The front lines.

This is where management comes up big.  This is the world of process definition.  This is the world of execution.  This is the world of continuous improvement.

At the Core of IT, you will find a System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and all their siblings.  In more mature organizations you will find a high level of adherence to these constructs, and possibly even customized versions of these frameworks tailored to the organization.

This is also the area where truly great IT organizations separate themselves from their peers.  Organizations which are able to articulate the problems to solve, the benefits and costs in doing so, and have developed a well thought through approach in addressing the problem have a huge leg up.   By doing so, the organization can avoid false starts and mis-direction, early involvement of stakeholders instead of late, and the projects have a better chance of running to conclusion.  In general, this will provide a more efficient use of capital.

Organizations which are able to comprehensively look at a portfolio of well thought through candidate projects and, similar to a corporate venture fund, invest in those that will offer the greatest return (often beyond simply financial return), will be more effect.  The governing body which will select from this portfolio will be able to focus the organization through their decisions, on being more effective.  More effective in how they are run.  More effective in how they allocate resources.

Execution of projects is where the rubber meets the road.  Following a well-respected method which is appropriate for the organization is a good start.  Excellent management of the projects being executed will make a company great.     There will a continuous stream of issues to be addressed, risks to be managed,and  people issues to deal with.  A bad manager can take a stellar team and have the project fail miserably.  A good manager can routinely achieve the miraculous with little to work with.

ITIL is a wonderful framework for managing IT operations.  Those organizations which are more mature will more often than not follow ITIL (or a derivative) closely.  They will be monsters about deviation from the script – after all, the script works and works well.  They will take uptime, defect resolution, and availability seriously.  There will be a sense of pride in the way they execute their business and how this affects their end customers.

These are not the only areas at the Core, but certainly the ones which are front and center.  Management comes up big here.  Great management at the Core means happy IT customers and this translates into more effective and efficient IT organization.

Manage well.

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Edge of IT

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_933" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Core and Edge IT Services"][/caption]

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. — Hunter S Thompson

Several months ago, I was introduced to the concept of differentiating IT into “Core” and “Edge” functions or services.   This useful construct has significant implications to the way you can think about management and leadership of an IT department.

Core IT

Core IT refers to the nuts and bolts of an IT organization.  These are all the areas that you absolutely need to get right, and need to continuously improve.  These are also the areas where the perception of success or failure of an IT organization will originate.

Included in Core IT is the implementation and on-going support of the ERP, CRM, Supply Chain, and related mission critical systems the business partners depend on as part of their process execution.

Software development / package implementation and related system and application software architecture fits at the heart of Core IT as well.  Going along with the software development is the project and program management.  The Program Management Office is typically one of the key organizational structures that represent Core IT.

IT Operations is clearly part of Core IT as well.  The ongoing care and feeding of the system software, databases, servers, network, communications gear is all part and parcel of the core technology infrastructure.   The Help Desk and related support structures are typically pointed to as being representative of the Core IT as well.

Edge IT

Edge IT relates to aspects of IT which address different sets of problems, and necessarily address them differently.  An example of this include developing an IT Road Map / IT Strategy for the organization.  Similarly, it would naturally include technology assessments, research and discovery, and the application of new technologies to business enablement.

Workforce planning, financial and operational modelling, scalability and capacity planning are part of Edge IT.   You can also put legal and regulatory / compliance aspects of IT in Edge IT along with the Security and Privacy, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity.

These items are not necessarily once and done, but performed periodically they establish the foundational success of the IT organization.

Application

It is interesting how different companies would group the “Core” and “Edge” activities.  Ssecurity and privacy, for example, are clearly at the core in some organizations, while in other organizations it is definitely at the edge.   Some items will migrate back and forth between “Core” and “Edge” over time, representing the gray area between these two categories.

As part of an organizational self-examination, it is interesting to see how much of the “Edge IT” is present in your organization.  As companies grow and mature the core services that IT provides expand and more of the edge services become necessary.  In this case, simply the presence of these activities indicates a more advanced maturity, providing the foundation for further leveraging IT within the enterprise by maturing not only the Core, but the Edge services as well.

How does your organization align itself?   Do you think of Core and Edge services differently?

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Angry Exec Ratio

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_926" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Angry Executive"][/caption]

Tomorrow is often the busiest time of year. — Danish Proverb

Making people happy is over rated. Making everyone happy is impossible.  Getting the job done, no matter how difficult, is enormously under rated.

Time is the most limited resource any manager or executive has. The higher up in the food chain, the more precious the minutes.  How you parcel out the minutes is critically important to the success of the role.  How you divide these minutes will what gets movement and what doesn’t.  The same can be said for your department as you personally have a fixed set of time and effort to allocate to your tasks.

There is a finite limit to the amount of work addressed in a given time period.   Simple math indicates that prioritization and selecting the right things to work on, at all times, is critical. If you are wise, this will be a collective prioritization not an individual one.  Regardless of how you prioritize,  it is critical it is to set expectations with every one involved as to where each persons requests fit into the sequence.

People will be upset.  Everyone will differ in their expectations as to what is important and why their requests are more important than anyone elses.   Life is full of compromises. It is all too common however that IT customers expect that the only ones to compromise are IT and figure out how to service all the demands at once.  After all, as the indoctrination goes IT is a “service organization” and service organizations exist only to serve.

It is rare that a true partnership exists where business and IT are true equals.  I have been fortunate enough to see where this partnership works well.  It is surprising how much more work can get accomplished in this environment.  I have also seen the other extreme where there is not a partnership and the IT organization is subservient to the business partners.  This inevitably leads to dissatisfaction within the IT organization and a productivity hit ensues.  Is there a little of “chicken and egg” going on?  Maybe.

Net-net, difficult decisions will always be made about how to marshall scarce resources to get a number of broad initiatives completed.  At the more strategic level of the organization many of the executive peers will not have their initiatives ranked as high as they would like and therefore not funded.  There will unhappy executives.  Maybe many.  With luck they will be unhappy for all the right reasons.  At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if they are happy.  It matters that you get the job done, regardless of the difficulty.

As a colleague astutely pointed out, “if half of all the people an executive works with are not mad at them, they’re not doing their job.”

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Celebration of Shadow IT

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_914" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Shadow Workforce"][/caption]

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component, is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.  – W. Edwards Deming

All those of you who have participated in a Sarbanes-Oxley audit hold up your hand?  Good.  Now, how many of you have been involved in documenting the processes under scrutiny by the Act?  I see fewer hands up.  For those of you with your hands still up, do you notice something interesting in each of these processes?  Thats’s right, there’s a healthy dose of technology inside these processes – and a healthy percentage of this was developed by people who don’t work within the IT organization.

How did these applications get there?  Who are these people who developed them?

Not only were these applications developed by carbon based life forms from the same star system as Core IT, but in many cases talented professionals who were formerly within Core IT did the work behind the scenes.  Meet Shadow IT.

There is no possible way for IT organizations to meet all the demands of the business partners.  In the world of accelerating demands for new technology, and limited and shrinking resources within IT, only the highest priority initiatives can be undertaken.  In some cases only a small percentage of the demand will be adequately addressed.  The rest of the demand is either begrudgingly dismissed or the business partners will find another way.

While those who perform in Shadow IT do so with much greater variability of skill than those in Core IT, the evidence of their work is in every business process.  Typically the work by Shadow IT stays in place for a considerable amount of time.

It’s important to note that Shadow IT typically doesn’t follow traditional SDLC processes, comprehensive testing, or thorough investigative research on needs or range of technology solutions.  At the high-end, Shadow IT will be practicing their own form of  ”agile” development, and will exceed anything which IT can put forth.  At the low-end, these practices are not followed and projects limp along until they either are put to sleep or put into production.

Shadow IT is not new.  The work from Shadow IT is all around the corporate world.  We need not be blind to Shadow IT but recognize the important role that they play in the support of technology across the enterprise.  Without Shadow IT, the demand serviced by them would not be met and the organizational dysfunction would be magnified.

The controls and consistency which comes with Core IT needs to find its way into the work of Shadow IT.  The broader perspective and inter-system integration from Core IT will be helpful as the applications from Shadow IT will .  There is a time and place where the work of Shadow IT can and should be brought into Core IT.

This can be accomplished with a couple of key items.  First, recognize the role and value of Shadow IT.  Second, create the understanding that the work from Shadow IT may come back into Core IT at some point, and finally, set up the broad limits for which Shadow IT should work within – just the basics (Java vs. .NET, central data stores vs. local,  etc).

Let us celebrate Shadow IT.  The fingers of the Shadow IT are filling more dike holes than Core IT can ever fill.

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Using IT (Or Not)

Posted on April 19, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_905" align="alignleft" width="210" caption="Should I, or Shouldn't I?"][/caption]

As I get older, I’ve learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things. — Po Bronson

While every IT organization has its own mission, they generally support technology operations, optimize the use of technology across the enterprise, and use technology to advance the business.  In companies of any size the application portfolio supported is relatively large, there is duplication across business units, multiple platforms to support, competing architectures in play,  and no end to the number of open issues and demands for new features in the application portfolio.

In order to meet this need, IT organizations are built around managing volume, oriented around large-scale initiatives, and work within defined processes and methodologies to prioritize among the enormous number of items competing for attention, and do so while minimizing the risk to all.

What this doesn’t allow is each department to have their important needs addressed immediately.  This is where Shadow IT enters.  Departments who simply cannot wait in line will handle their IT needs themselves.  In doing so, the focus here is on speed to market.  Typically any technology is fair game and often ends up rhyming withVisual Basic, Microsoft Access, or Excel.  There will be few if any controls in place, and formal methodologies are a luxury.  The “whatever it takes” drumbeat dominates Shadow IT.

A few key points here.  The work done by Shadow IT will be able to get to market comparatively quickly.  It may have a higher number of defects, not use any operational controls, and not integrate with other data / systems.  But it will be quick.

Given this distinction, should departments use the IT organization or build their own Shadow IT group?  An equally good question is should they have this option within a corporate governance structure?  Both of these are questions are loaded with a great deal of emotion.  Discussions take place at a high volume.  Both sides have good points.

I believe that these decisions can be made without a gun being involved.  There are clear trade-offs between the two approaches and it is not an either/or situation and there are many instances when quick application development outside of the IT department is a good solution and should be embraced by both the business and IT.  For this to work, clear parameters need to be put in place.  For example:
- everyone understands and is willing to accept the risks involved in working outside of IT,
- the business unit will fund the effort,
- the business will provide all on-going support for the effort,
- a select few application development platforms will be endorsed for use by Shadow IT, and
- a plan is put in place for the transition (at some point) into the IT department for long-term support.

With these items in place, harmony around this one contentious issue can be obtained.

Viva la difference.

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IT Cost Management via Your Ecosystem

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Russ Aebig
[caption id="attachment_896" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Crunching the Numbers"][/caption]

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.  – Charles Darwin

“Cut your costs by 15%, I’ll need your report on how you will do this by Friday.”

Ominous words, but words which are all too common these days.  People are stretched pretty thin as it is and if your company is like most people, the work being done isn’t going away.  How will you do this?

There are several levers which you as a manager / director / CIO can pull to cut costs.  The easy way (and wrong way) is to simply cut total salary by 15%, either through staff reductions or across the board salary reductions.  Another way to look at this is through your IT Ecosystem and how you can leverage this to change your cost model.

In a prior post, I documented an IT Ecosystem model which outlined areas which come together to provide the technology support for an organization.  While the heart and soul of your IT Ecosystem is your internal IT staff, it takes an IT ecosystem to support the technology for a business.  Here are a few of the ways the ecosystem can be leveraged to cut your costs.

Shadow IT

One of the simplest ways to cut costs is to re-look at the financial model.  A model whereby the IT department maintains a budget to “keep the lights on” with operational support and leading edge thinking, and development projects owned by (and within the budgets of) the businesses who will benefit from them changes the priorities of the projects. You may find that many of these projects are not as critical as initially thought and likely will experience a deferral of projects and the costs that go along with them.

Another way to use Shadow IT is to formalize the role and recognize it for the value it contributes to the overall technology support effort.  It is entirely possible that the “super users” within this group will be able to (and eager to), grab more of the support role.

While these two items do not directly reduce overall organizational costs (only transfer them out of IT), the result is that business as a whole will be better able to decide its priorities and let go of those items which don’t make the cut.  This will also go a long way to manage the Demand on IT, allowing you greater freedom to manage the IT Supply.

Outsourcing of IT Functions

A typical organization has many functions which may be outsourced.  This is an opportunity to look at the mix of functions which you 0ffer to the business and how you may wish to change who is performing the work.  In many cases, outside firms will have different cost structures and can do more better work at a lower cost than you can internally.  While people immediately think of software development / maintenance, there are many other areas which can benefit.  Think telephony.  Think facilities.  Think research.

This is also a good time to look at swapping outsourcing vendors who are not performing, or dropping a service altogether if it is proving a significant value to the business.  These are direct cost savings.

Contractors and Consultants

Contractors are often used as a way to manage the volatility in IT Demand.  If this is how your organization operates, then this is a natural place to trim cost.  Depending on the specifics of the constraints around the cost cutting, it may be a place to move internal staff to keep them employed and providing value to the organization.  In some cases it may be preferable to the employees to work on contract as the terms would often allow them to market themselves and have multiple streams of income.

By their nature, consultants provide a longer term return on the investment in them.  When costs are tight, this seems to be a natural place to begin cost cutting.  I would typically recommend to redirect the consultants and not drop them.  Shifting focus to operational efficiencies will likely bring your overall cost structure down in the future, and it is worthwhile to keep up this investment (at least until the other cost cutting areas have played themselves out).

Looking at these areas within the ecosystem give one lever to use in managing costs.  Perhaps a large one.   By looking at these areas you can make much more of your labor costs variable, innovatively manage the IT Supply and Demand relationship, and under trying circumstances optimize the value being brought to the organization.  This along with the other levers at your disposal will giving you a fighting chance at getting your plan together by Friday.

[Update: in Apple's Self Sufficiency Model, Andy Blumenthal presented amazing statistics.  Apple has an amazing self-sufficiency model, where they have only 6 desktop support analysts for 34,000 worldwide employees, 36 helpline agents for 52,000 computers, only 38% of their IT budget is for baseline operations and 62% for innovation, and their IT spend is just .6 of 1%. These are numbers that most CIOs dream of.

While Apple has clearly developed a culture whereby the employees are self-sufficient, it also sets the bar very high for other for follow.  By minimizing their spend on internal IT staff, they can afford to spend more in other areas, as well as business innovation, etc.]

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