Transforming IT

When Resistance isn't Resistance

A recent blog post by Jim Highsmith, entitled, "Change-Resistance versus Doubt" helped crystallize in my mind something that's been bugging me.

Whenever we engage on a project, we put a tremendous amount of energy into the concepts and efforts around cultural change.  We talk a lot about the need to focus on people and their behaviors and not just process or tools.  We deploy an entire methodology that helps make this work.

But inevitably, as time goes on, it ends up morphing from this holistic open process built around bringing people into the tent, into one of merely convincing or cajoling people to follow the new rules.

And it completely misses the point.

I don't know that I've ever developed or helped developed a process that I thought was "right."  They are (hopefully) better than before, but they are never perfect.  The real goal, in my opinion, is the journey to creating an organization that learns to think critically about what's going on and whether or not it's still the best way of doing things.  To constantly ask, "What's broken" and to once and for all banish the false "comfort" of "the way we've always done things."

Cultural Change is about getting people out of their rut and participating in the process - honestly and genuinely.  It's not about just making them do something different.  That should be the outcome, but it's the process of creating that something different that's the key.  If you fail at that, you haven't changed the culture at all, you've just replaced one way of doing things with another and set yourselves up to have to do it all over again somewhere down the road.

So "Resistance to Change" needs to be properly understood as "Resistance to Participating in the Process of Change" - but participating in the process sometimes means telling the designer of something new that's it genuinely not going to achieve what is desired and that you therefore need to go in another direction. 

And it is critical that when that happens, it is recognized for what it is, because sometimes, resistance isn't resistance.

Why Knowledge Fails to Transform

Whenever we're involved in an IT Transformation effort, we employ an adoption philosophy that has four components: Awareness, Involvement, Education and Adoption.  The point is to create engagement and investment in the changes being made.

But what we always find challenging to overcome is the reliance that teams have on knowledge as the key driver to enacting change.  But as Dan Heath puts it so well in a recent Fast Company article, "The problem is this: Knowledge rarely leads to change."

Yet time and time again, teams go through the entire process and then finish with a thud by rolling out some boring training program and then expect people to change.  But as Dan Heath points out, it's not knowledge that's needed - it's feeling.  People must make an emotional connection with the transformation effort before they will willingly change their behaviors.

It's this emotional aspect of transformation that can be uncomfortable for IT people.  We like bits and bytes.  We like things tangible and logical.  Where does emotion fit in?  But the reality is that behavioral change is fundamentally driven by human emotion.  Because it is only an emotional connection that will overcome the ingrained desire to simply "hold course."

So, to be successful in your transformation efforts, you need to break free of the "Chains of Knowledge" and put a little bit of feeling into your program! 

Exciting Times for IT Transformation & CastlePointe

It is an exciting time in the world of IT Transformation and in CastlePointe's development.  There is a lot of good work being done within the industry to really re-shape the way IT organizations are doing business.  (There's a lot of hype too, but I guess that comes with the territory.)  We are constantly encouraged by seeing so many organizations embrace the approach that we have been promoting for some time.

And things keep developing for us.  We have several new, large deals that we're working on and we're producing a lot of quality content that I'm very proud of.  We launched our "Free Lunch" IT Transformation Webinar Series to offer brief explorations on key topics around transformation and it's off to a great start.  I hope your able to attend one of them.  (Our next session, "The Art of Cultural Change - Making Change Stick" will be held on July 21st at 12:15pm EST / 9:15am PST.  Register here.)

We also have some new articles that I'm very excited about that will be published over the next several weeks, including:

• Becoming a Transformational Leader
• Creating a Learning Organization
• To Conform or Transform: Finding Business Value in Your Frameworks
• Overcoming Consensus Paralysis

There is so much to discuss and explore in this space - and so much for progressive IT leaders to do as you move your organizations forward.  We hope to help and to be there with you.  Stay tuned!

The Danger of Optimization

Something has always troubled me.

Despite being a "process guy", in many ways, I hate following the rules.

When my wife and I both worked in healthcare, it used to drive her secretary nuts that I wouldn't park where I was supposed to.  I rarely like being the guy who simply "does what he's told" - unless it's my wife who's doing the telling!

But isn't that what creating process discipline is all about?  Figuring out the optimal way of doing something and then repeating it forever and ever?

I'd argue that it's not.  There is a danger in optimization in that we can get so hung up on "optimizing" that we lose sight of what we're really after.  Seth Godin had a recent blog post that speaks to this very issue.  In the "non-optimized life" he makes the case that we should all be less focused on optimization and more focused on creation.  It's interesting and instructive from an IT perspective.

Clearly, as Service Management professionals, one of our key objectives is to identify process inefficiencies and eliminate them.  We need to take out the junk that keeps us from doing the job of IT well.  The problem is that we sometimes get so hung up on "optimizing" that we forget that our goal is to do the job of IT better.  Sometimes that will happen from optimization.  But a lot of times it will come from a little bit of controlled chaos that creates a better way of doing something.  It also means that we need to be building into our processes the flexibility to let our team members be professionals and use their judgment to create better outcomes.

So we need to be careful that we don't optimize or improve for the sake of improvement and always ask ourselves what we need to do to provide value and do our job better.  And if our process is getting in the way of doing just that - then un-optimize it and get it done.

Because not everything should be controlled. 

And sometimes you need to break the rules to do the job of IT better.

Meeting Madness - Are You Really There?

Various members of the IT team file into the conference room.  Yet another meeting.  Everyone sits down and promptly opens their laptops.  Everyone is in the meeting, but is anyone really there?

If you were to ever ask someone why this is the case, the answer you'd hear is that it's because they are just too busy.  They'll whip their laptop around to show you their calendar of double- and triple-booked meetings to prove it.  They'll say that they have more things to do than can be done in one day, so they must "multitask or die."

So everyone sits in the meeting, but isn't really there.  Questions are raised which no one answers - until weeks later when someone, by chance, is paying attention.  Meetings become nothing but a place where you come together and wait your turn to give a monologue, but in which very little real dialogue takes place.

I am as guilty as the next guy when it comes to multitasking.  (Don't get my wife started about me, my iPhone and the dinner table!)  And I'm pretty insanely busy - I'll put my calendar up against anyone's!

But here's the real secret.  I don't multitask because I'm too busy to avoid it.  I multitask because most meetings I attend are just a waste of time.

It made me wonder.  What if we changed that?  What if I walked into every meeting and committed that for the next 30 or 60 minutes that meeting and everyone who spoke would get my undivided attention?  No laptop.  No multitasking.  Undivided attention.  What would change if I literally hung on the speaker's every word and gave back to them meaningful, thoughtful responses every time? 

It would probably take a while for anyone to take notice - they would need to dig their noses out of their laptops first.  But I think that if we all did that, something dramatic would happen.  How would it change the context of meetings?  The care with which people scheduled and conducted them?

I know that for me it would.  If I knew that by calling a meeting, each and every person was going to commit that for the duration of the meeting they were going to do nothing else, that they would be giving me 110% of their undivided attention and mental energy - it would cause me to look at things differently.

Is this a good use of their time?  Are they going to be angry that I made them stop what they were doing to come and discuss this topic?  Would they even show up knowing that they couldn't do anything else and that this time would be lost forever?  I know that I would prepare a lot more for meetings to make sure that they were useful and effective.  And I'd probably keep them shorter and more focused - I wouldn't want to take any more time than I needed to.

I truly believe that if we banned laptops and blackberrys and cell phones (and yes, iPhones) from every meeting, we would find that we would have a lot fewer meetings and that those we had would be much more meaningful.  If we each committed to making a true investment of our time and energy by walking through the door, I believe that the very nature of each meeting would change for the better. 

I know that this is probably a pipe dream.  But wouldn't it be great if at your next meeting, everyone was really there?

The Power of Momentum

Whenever we talk about driving organizational or behavioral change, we talk about a lot of different tactics and strategies.  At CastlePointe, we employ an approach that includes four components: Awareness, Involvement, Education and Adoption.  Other approaches to organizational change have similar elements.  But it's important to remember that in all of these there is an underlying element that is critical to success: momentum.

Momentum has a little bit of a "consulting word" feel to it, so I want to tread lightly here.  But to me anyway, momentum is a way of saying that your effort starts moving under its own power - that it has an energy of its own.  If we look at our four components of change, they are all integral to creating this type of momentum.

It is important to recognize this because it is easy to start "going through the motions" while executing these four components and miss the point.  If you lose the energy, you will not be successful no matter how well you execute the steps.

During our consulting engagements, we often talk about exponential value.  Momentum is a lot of how it's created.  When people are engaged, motivated and excited, they start taking things to levels that were not even anticipated during planning.  It's these kinds of extraordinary efforts that create exponential value. 

Creating momentum first requires that you believe.  Your effort must be more than a project.  It must be a passion.  You must lead your team with energy and an earnest belief that what you are doing is critical to the success of the organization.  You must infuse that energy into your team and expect that they bring that energy into everything that they do. 

If you can lead with passion and spill that energy out to your team, you will create momentum that will carry your initiative wherever you want it to go.

Is IT As We Know It Really Dead?

There has been a lot of press lately about the doom and gloom scenarios that spell the demise of IT as we know it.  I clearly believe that IT must undertake active transformation efforts to meet the requirements of the future.  But I hardly think that IT is going to somehow become less significant or just become outsourced to the cloud.  In fact, I think that as technology becomes ever more strategic, IT organizations will be elevated to more strategic roles.

I'm not alone.

In a recent post in InformationWeek, Bob Evans makes the case for why IT is, in fact, entering a Golden Age.  In The Golden Age of IT has Begun, he lays out 6 reasons that the stage has been set for IT to finally realize its potential.  And, of course, I think that this means that there's a lot of IT transformation on the horizon!

The Key to Becoming Effective

In one my recent posts, IT Transformation Begins with Organizational Effectiveness, I made the case that all IT transformation efforts must begin with doing the basics right, consistently and reliably.  It's one of the three pillars of our vision for IT Transformation.  But what does it mean to become an effective organization?

While there are many aspects to becoming "effective", there is one simple key that starts it all - your mission.

It may seem overly simple, but to be effective you must begin by understanding what you are trying to achieve.  For some reason, countless organizations have set out to become "more effective" without any understanding of what their mission is meant to be.  But being effective is not about "doing things right", as the saying goes - it's about doing the right things. 

And you need to know where you're trying to go, to know if you're doing the right things.

I will be posting a new article on this subject that goes into more detail once our redesigned website goes live, but this one key point is worth noting and remember and repeating - over and over again.  Know your mission. Say it clearly.  Ensure that your team understands it at their core.  Then drive everything you do from the power of your mission.  Anything less is just spinning your wheels.

Does Your IT Team Know They Matter?

Last week, I was at an executive networking meeting filled with a bunch of very smart people.  Mostly company founders and executives, but one of our speakers that night was another really bright guy named, Matthew Emerzian.  He co-wrote a book called Every Monday Matters about how each person can make a difference.  He is in the process of launching a non-profit to take the message to school children that: "You Matter" because You can make a Difference.

I was very impressed with his mission and goals - and I was very pleased that our networking group is supporting him.  But it also made me think about his message in the context of IT organizations.  Does the average IT staffer think that they matter?  Do they understand how their function impacts the organization?

In most of the IT organizations where we work, there are hundreds or thousands of IT staff.  They often have very specialized, technical functions.  And I think it's easy to see how they can become disconnected from how everything works together to actually provide value for the business.

I think that this creates the problem that we often talk about - that IT people start looking at technology for the sake of technology and not understanding the business perspective.  But there's another side to it that this presentation made me think about. 

If IT folks get disconnected, I think that they also can lose perspective on the value of their work - on their own professional worth.  It's easy to think that what you do doesn't matter.  After all, it's just some database blinking away in a data center somewhere.  Does this lead to a lack of professional and personal fulfillment?  It probably does - and I think it's another reason why we need to get things connected again.

In my recent post, IT Transformation Begins with Organizational Effectiveness, I wrote about the need to get your team pulled together to deliver routine services consistently.  But if your team doesn't see and feel the value of those routine services, it could be a rough uphill climb.  Maybe we all need to adopt a "You Matter" campaign within IT organizations to make sure the entire team understands just how vital and important they are.

IT Transformation Must Drive Business Value

This is the third post in a short series describing the three pillars of our vision for IT Transformation.  The third part of our vision is really where it all comes home:

IT Transformation Must Drive Business Value

One of the greatest risks that IT organizations have when undertaking a transformation initiative is believing that becoming an effective and efficient organization is enough.  As I discussed in my last post, IT Transformation Begins with Organizational Effectiveness, it is where you must begin, but being effective is merely meeting the base expectations of the customer.  In the end, if you are merely effective, you are still nothing more than an effective commodity provider. 

The ultimate goal of any IT Transformation initiative must be to provide strategic and competitive value to the business.  It is only in this state that the business' investment in IT will be fully realized. 

To accomplish this will require that IT transcend its traditional structures, perspectives and sensibilities.  It will require the creation of a service culture, a commitment to transparency and the development of true intimacy with the business.  Only through this level of transformation will IT be able to truly stand in partnership with the business.  And only then will IT be able to drive technology-enabled innovation that accelerates the achievement of business objectives in unexpected ways. 

It's surely no simple task.  But that, after all, is what a transformation is meant to be - the fundamental change in form, shape and appearance of an organization.  So, are you ready to transform?