Transforming IT

The Danger of Tomorrow

I have a new post that I will publish tomorrow. I was going to publish it today, but as I went to do that I noticed something - I hadn't posted in a month!

I was, frankly, just plain shocked.  I knew that I had been delinquent, but I figured it had been a week - maybe a little longer. But a month? No way.

That is the danger of putting something off. It is the risk you take when you say, "This can wait. I'll handle it tomorrow." Sometimes it becomes a lot of tomorrows.

There is always a question of prioritization, but if you believe something should be done - sometimes you just need to buckle down and do it.

Otherwise, it may be a month before you realize it. Trust me - it doesn't feel good.

Is there something you have been putting off until tomorrow? If so, tomorrow is here. Get it done. You will be glad you did.

See you tomorrow!

Should You Break All the Rules During an Emergency Change?

During an emergency change, do you know which rules to break?

It rained a lot in California last month. Every time it rains, there are a lot of accidents.  Californians, it seems, just don't know how to drive in the rain. A lot of accidents mean a lot of ambulances.

I do not want to make light of these accidents. They are serious incidents and a horrible occurrence.  But having several ambulances roll by me did make me think about how they operate and what we can learn from them in relation to emergency changes.

RULES ON BREAKING THE RULES
As I was sitting at a stop light, I heard the siren coming from my right.  As our light turned green, the ambulance approached the intersection. We, of course, all stayed where we were, giving them the right of way. With all of us sitting still, but his light red, the ambulance essentially came to a stop at the intersection and gingerly eased his way across it. The driver almost lurched across the intersection a couple of times as he cautiously peered around cars to ensure that there was not a distracted driver about to come flying through the intersection oblivious to his "right of way."

As I watched this unfold - as I had many times before - a thought occurred to me.  The ambulance was following a set of rules on how to break the rules.

The laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but they all come down to the same thing: the ambulance driver is permitted to break the normal traffic rules, go through red lights, pass in non-passing lanes, etc. as long as they take due caution for public safety. It makes sense, right?

IF AN EMERGENCY CHANGE WAS AN AMBULANCE...
This makes perfect sense to us as drivers. If instead of cautiously edging across the intersection, the ambulance driver had blown through it at 80 miles an hour, several of us would have been calling 911 reporting them for being reckless. It is obvious and intuitive - the ambulance should be able to break the rules, but not if they are going to introduce greater risk to themselves and other drivers.

While this makes perfect sense in the world of ambulance driving, for some reason it  seems somehow illogical whenever we are talking about emergency changes.

Whenever there is some critical incident that requires an emergency change, the prevailing wisdom is that the change should be able to be made without any regard for the rules. But how is this any different than that ambulance running through the intersection at 80?

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN URGENCY AND PANIC
Emergency changes are tough because they come with a demand for urgency. The impact to service can create a near state of panic as teams rally to fix the problem.

But there is a fine line to be found.

During a critical incident, a sense of urgency is required - demanded even. But urgency is not panic. Urgency is not action at all costs. Urgency means that you are reacting as fast as you possibly can while ensuring that you don't make the situation worse.

Among several posts during his career, my father ran a narcotics team for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. I once had the opportunity to do a "ride along" during the surveillance of a suspect. While this guy was driving around, completely unaware that he was being followed, my dad and his team were literally creating a virtual net around him. My dad and members of his team were running red lights and breaking all kinds of traffic laws in order to stay in the proper position to maintain the surveillance.

While these were urgent actions and reactions, they were completely devoid of any panic. In fact, my dad and his team were completely calm and in control at all times.

There can be this misconception as to how you should react during a time of crisis. Thanks to the movies, there is this image of the commander frantically running around barking orders. During a crisis, however, the most effective leaders are those who remain perfectly calm and in control. They instill a sense of urgency, but they are not frantic. And they absolutely refuse to throw out all of the rules in the name of urgency. In fact, they know the secret - that during a time of crisis, many of the rules are more important than ever.

CREATING YOUR RULE BREAKING RULES
The trick is to provide a clear path to guide a calm reaction during a crisis. In the cases of both the ambulance driver and my dad's surveillance team, there were defined rules on how they were to break the rules. An emergency change process must be the same thing.

It cannot be a free pass. Instead, it must provide a clear set of rules which will allow for the urgent reaction required, but in a way that does not introduce undue risk. It must also define the responsibilities of others to make the urgent execution of the emergency change safer (i.e. other drivers must pull over as the ambulance approaches).

Your goal is to create an emergency change process that enables an urgent reaction, but that does not result in or rely on panic. You seek to create an emergency change process that results in a calm and controlled execution of necessary changes as fast as possible.

Doing this will require that you carefully think through the rules that you need to break the rules.  And a siren couldn't hurt.

Do your ambulance drivers know the rules to breaking the rules?

The Problem with Training

There is a classic theme found in a lot of "underdog overcomes the tyranny of their rulers" action films.  At some point in the story, the hero bands together a group of underdogs who are ill prepared to fight the well armed and well financed forces of the king of whoever is oppressing them. Then there's the dutiful montage scene with the epic music showing the band of future conquerers preparing for battle. They gather up their meager arms and the hero sets about training the band of misfits. As the music plays you see scenes of them preparing their weapons, firing arrows at targets, staging sword fights amongst each other, climbing walls and whatever else fun thing the director could come up with to show how hard they were preparing for battle.

But you know what's never in those scenes? A webex training session.

In fact, if you think about it, there's not a lot of what we might consider training at all. It's all about role playing and practice. It's learning by doing. It's active and the underdogs are fully engaged and committed. That's because their goal is not to "train xxx number of people" - their goal is to win the battle, against all odds. To do that, they need to transform these farmers and villagers into soldiers. The stuff of movies, to be sure, but it makes me wonder when training turned into this sanitized, watered down version that we typically use in IT organizations today.

In most transformation efforts, "training" is nothing but this simple, sanitized version - and it typically has little impact. That's because we don't learn by listening - we learn by doing. What would happen if you threw out the training rule book and instead imagined that your team was that band of misfits preparing to go to battle against the tyranny of corporate bureaucracy and inefficiency? If instead of sitting them through just another webex session, you offered them the equivalent of target practice and sword fights? If you focused instead on putting them into situations where they learned by doing, such as simulations and role playing - how might that change the level of adoption?

I'm not sure when or how we decided that training had to be this simple, boring and largely one-dimensional exercise that enabled us to clear our project stage gate. But it needs to end. Your training and adoption efforts are the most critical factor in the success of your transformation program. And you'll never find success if you rely on a webex training session.

So pull out the bows and arrows, put on the armor - and get to work.

Technology or Cultural Transformation?

While at itSMF USA's annual conference, Fusion, I was introduced to someone by an associate of mine.  When he introduced me, he said something like "he helps transform IT organizations."

Over the blare of the party music, my new associate asked me, "Technology or cultural transformation?"  The question took me a second to process because (of course) I only think of an IT transformation from a cultural perspective.  But is a technology transformation a legitimate use of the term?

A couple of weeks later, I was having another conversation with a CIO of a large healthcare equipment company. He explained the situation that he inherited and how disjointed and disparate their technology architecture was - particularly for their size. In fact, he had been brought in specifically to fix it. He was intrigued by what we did and as we discussed it, it became clear that he was going to need two transformations - a technology transformation, followed closely by a cultural one.

I often bristle when I hear someone talking about an IT transformation when all they're really talking about is some new technology. I feel that in most cases, it's nothing but marketing hype and spin. Just putting a new name on the same old thing to try to make a sale. But during this conversation, it became clear to me that a technology transformation was a legitimate undertaking if it sought to fundamentally alter the way the IT organization operated. Depending on your business objectives, your IT transformation initiative may require both a technology and a cultural transformation to be successful - and it may be that you must transform your technology platforms before you can begin to truly change the organizational culture.

Mind you, I still believe that many IT organizations reach for the tool box far too often and far too quickly.  I believe that many business objectives can be met simply by changing how the IT organization operates. I also still believe that a technology-driven transformation that doesn't address the cultural elements of the IT organization will never fully realize the benefits of the transformational effort. Nevertheless, I was convinced this week that there are legitimate situations in which the term "technology transformation" rings true.  I guess it's just a good reminder that the starting point for any transformation effort must always be the business objectives. Start there and look honestly at what it will take to achieve them and you will find just the right mix of the technology and cultural change that you need.

Missing the Point of the "Cloud"

During my last session at the 2010 SIMposium in Atlanta, there was a group of CIOs talking about the cloud and the evolution of IT.  While it was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of their perspectives, it seemed to me that they largely missed the point.

It seemed that the conversation largely revolved around the cost model of cloud offerings and whether or not the business case justified it. There was a bunch of discussion about concerns around security and availability, but they seemed to see cloud computing in this one-dimensional view.

There is a LOT of hype around cloud computing, to be sure. For the record, I don't really buy into a lot of it. But to me, the big point of the cloud is not about a lower cost structure, although that should be a natural by-product of the approach. To me, the biggest driver behind a cloud platform is agility.

I don't believe that Salesforce.com rose to prominence because it was inexpensive - although that may have made transitions easier. Salesforce.com got traction because it gave power back to a group of customers who felt disenfranchised by their own IT organizations. One of the CIOs on the panel said that when he saw a business unit wanting to explore some cloud offering that it was a wake-up call that they weren't satisfying their needs fully. I completely agree with him.

To me, it's not about whether or not we're going to see a mass move to public clouds or that private clouds are the future or that it's all about Infrastructure- or Platform-as-a-Service. All of these are simple manifestations of a customer base that is growing weary of IT being slow, lumbering and bureaucratic. Customers don't really want to take control of their IT solutions. They just want IT solutions that help them compete and solve business problems without taking forever and costing a fortune. In my opinion, that's the real point and meaning that underlies all of the hype around cloud computing.  

Whether its cloud computing, Agile or whatever comes next, the message is that IT needs to be fast.  IT needs to be responsive.  And IT needs to deliver consistent business value every day.  I hope CIOs get the message.

The Order of the Day - Report from SIMposium 2010

I spent yesterday hanging out with several hundred CIOs and senior IT leaders at the 2010 SIMposium conference in Atlanta. It's been a great conference so far and I've particularly enjoyed hearing from the many CIOs about what they see as they're greatest challenges and priorities. It's probably my professional tunnel vision at play here, but I just couldn't help but see the need for IT transformation running through all of it.

There were a number of key themes that seemed to run through comments throughout the day:

• Innovation
• Mobility
• Speed & Agility 

There was a lot of discussion around all three of these areas and about the need for IT organizations to simultaneously meet rapidly changing business needs while dealing with the constant pressure to "do more with less." And through all of that there was a recognition that the ability to achieve this rested with the people who made up their teams. 

Call it what you want, but IT organizations everywhere are faced with daunting challenges.  Whether it's a need to adopt and leverage emerging technologies such as mobility platforms or cloud computing or the need to build deeper partnerships with the business to drive innovation, it is clear that the world of IT is changing.

There was a consistent theme that you must be able to execute effectively and act with speed and agility to even have a seat at the table.  Yet there was also a growing recognition that talent was getting harder to find and harder to keep.  Put it all together and it seemed clear that this was less about year-to-year tactics or "the new CIO", but rather much more about CIOs seeing the need to build the "new IT organization."  

An IT organization that can react rapidly to changing needs.  An IT organization that can drive innovation and leverage emerging technologies to gain competitive advantage.  An IT organization that can operate in a dynamic environment in which they do not fully control all of the elements of the IT delivery model.  An IT organization that can harness the nascent technical capabilities that exist within business units and encourage "out of the box" thinking within their ranks. 

It's a tall order, but one that must be met.  And it sounds like a transformation to me. 

Urgency Does Not Equal Impatience

The first of Dr. John Kotter's 8 Steps to Leading Change is "Acting with Urgency." But I think that sometimes this is misinterpreted. Urgency does not equal impatience. 

There is a lot of pressure on IT executives to make things happen. If you are leading a transformation effort, there are probably some very real business drivers behind it. And that can lead to a lot of pressure to deliver results - fast.

The challenge is that sometimes moving too fast has the exact opposite impact that a transformational effort is meant to have. It can lead to the implementation of a bunch of stop-gap solutions that fade away as soon as the pressure eases. But, the argument goes, we need to "act with urgency", right?

Urgency means that you take action now. That you don't stick your head in the sand and hope for things to get better. But it doesn't mean that you can change things overnight. 

The reality is that true change takes time. You must be willing to invest in changing organizational behaviors if you want the change to last. In his book, Dr. Kotter often talks about change programs lasting years or even decades. Impatience will get you nowhere. You need to be committed to a transformational effort over the long haul. Act with urgency, but invest the time and energy to see the change through.

Tomorrow, I'll continue this theme with a story about SWAT teams and a little saying..."Slow is Smooth. Smooth is Fast."

Information Sharing Doesn't Cut It

How much time is wasted each day in corporate America with "information sharing"? I wonder how many more hours of productive time would be recaptured if we eliminated every meeting whose stated purpose was information sharing or "socializing"?

It's becoming endemic. Just for the record, there are rare circumstances, where an information sharing meeting is appropriate (mostly for political reasons), but most of the time it should be a red flag and be translated as "waste of time." I really don't fully understand why this has happened, but we need to figure out how to make it stop.

From my (maybe simplistic) point of view, every meeting has two mandatory requirements: 

• An Objective and Intended Outcome
• Specific, Actionable Expectations

Every meeting should have a clear purpose. Why are you holding it? What's the objective? What do you want to come out of it? If you can't answer that question in 20 words or less, stop. Do not pass Go. Go back and figure out the answer. If there isn't an answer, cancel the meeting.

Second, you must walk into the meeting with a specific and actionable set of expectations of the participants. Are you expecting them to make a decision? Do you expect them to take what you've presented back to their teams? Do you expect them to provide critical feedback on the ideas you're working on? You must know what you expect and then ensure that they understand and agree to the expectations.

With expectations set, you have two final responsibilities. Have you provided them the tools that they need to meet your expectations?  If you need a decision, is the question and options clear? If you expect them to take something back to their teams, have you provided the tools they will need to do so? If you want their feedback, have you prepared specific and pointed questions that will help them provide the feedback you seek?

Your second responsibility is to then make sure that you have a mechanism to follow up on the actions expected. You need to make sure that the action is taken and that the other party knows the outcome. They need to understand that the investment of their time was valuable.

If you can make a promise to stop information sharing and make every meeting truly meaningful, you'll find that you get a lot more done and enjoy the meetings you do have a lot more.  

And when you feel that overwhelming urge to information share, send an email instead.

What do you think?  Am I just ranting here or is this a real problem out there?

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 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.