elemental links

brenda michelson's technology advisory practice

business-first technology leadership wins

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In 2010, when I wrote the Elemental Links tagline, “Technology Insights for Business Enthusiasts”, some of my trusted associates pushed back, telling me that I need to lead with TECHNOLOGY. But, here’s the thing. In the enterprise, from which I came and continue to serve, a technology-first mindset leads to disdain.

Contrary to the hyperbole of the technology press, analysts, pundits and product marketers, true, enduring, information technology success begins with a business-first mindset, which includes constant context checks.

Now, it would be fair to slap a (micro) pundit label on me, so what follows are snippets from three business-first technology executives, excerpted from this week’s WSJ:

“What directors really value in a CIO is sound strategic thinking and a great ability to execute, says Gambale, a former CIO at Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust, and Alex Brown, and former partner at Deutsche Bank Capital.”

via Art Langer: Virginia Gambale Says CIOs Should Offer Strategic Advice to Corporate Directors – The CIO Report – WSJ.

“We never start with technologies; we always look at trends in the world that are or may be having an impact on the future of our business. One example is the acceleration of innovation to market. Consumers and users want one-on-one connections to any service or product they interact with, so we have to respond. This is thoroughly changing the way we operate—the always-on, instant nature of interaction today.

We look at those megatrends and forces to see which ones will truly impact our business. Then we go look at what strategies we can devise to take advantage of those trends. The final step is evaluating which technologies can enable those strategies. The value is how we enable this dramatic change through technology.

Every three years or so, we review our strategies. Three years ago we focused on the idea of visualization. We have visualized data across the entire company. Everything we do is visual. This transforms the way the business performs because it creates what I call “information democracy.” There are no more layers. The discussions we are having are much more robust.”

— Filippo Passerini, president of global business services and CIO of Procter & Gamble in WSJ CIO Journal

“We’re truly guided by these big arcs of change [analytics, cloud computing, emerging markets and “smarter planet] that we believe in,” Rometty said. “They lend context and clarity. When you run a big company, context and clarity mean a lot.”

via New IBM CEO Says Will Maintain Longer-Term Strategy

Its Not What You Sell, Its What You Believe – Bill Taylor – Harvard Business Review

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“Cook did not respond with a detailed review of the products Apple made or the retail environments in which it sold them. Instead, he offered an impromptu, unscripted statement of what he and everyone at Apple believed — “as if reciting a creed he had learned as a child” in Sunday School.

“We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and thats not changing,” Cook declared.”We believe in the simple not the complex…We believe in saying no to thousands of products, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us,” he added.

“We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in ways other cannot…And I think that regardless of who is in what job those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well,” he concluded.Its not what you sell its what you believe.”

…

“In a provocative and saucy book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, Spence explains the unique beliefs behind many of the one-of-a-kind organizations he has studied or worked with over the years, from BMW to Whole Foods Market to Southwest Airlines. Sure, these and other organizations are built around strong business models, stellar products and services, and (of course) clever advertising. But Spence is adamant that behind every great company is an authentic sense of purpose — “a definitive statement about the difference you are trying to make in the world” — and a workplace with the “energy and vitality” to bring that purpose to life.”

via Its Not What You Sell, Its What You Believe – Bill Taylor – Harvard Business Review.

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business | Fast Company

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“In a big company, you never feel you’re fast enough.” Beth Comstock, the chief marketing officer of GE, is talking to me by phone from the Rosewood Hotel in Menlo Park, California, where she’s visiting entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. She gets a charge out of the Valley, but her trips also remind her how perilous the business climate is right now. “Business-model innovation is constant in this economy,” she says. “You start with a vision of a platform. For a while, you think there’s a line of sight, and then it’s gone. There’s suddenly a new angle.”

Within GE, she says, “our traditional teams are too slow. We’re not innovating fast enough. We need to systematize change.”

…

“The business community focuses on managing uncertainty,” says Dev Patnaik, cofounder and CEO of strategy firm Jump Associates, which has advised GE, Target, and PepsiCo, among others. “That’s actually a bit of a canard.” The true challenge lies elsewhere, he explains: “In an increasingly turbulent and interconnected world, ambiguity is rising to unprecedented levels. That’s something our current systems can’t handle.

“There’s a difference between the kind of problems that companies, institutions, and governments are able to solve and the ones that they need to solve,” Patnaik continues. “Most big organizations are good at solving clear but complicated problems. They’re absolutely horrible at solving ambiguous problems–when you don’t know what you don’t know. Faced with ambiguity, their gears grind to a halt.

“Uncertainty is when you’ve defined the variable but don’t know its value. Like when you roll a die and you don’t know if it will be a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. But ambiguity is when you’re not even sure what the variables are. You don’t know how many dice are even being rolled or how many sides they have or which dice actually count for anything.” Businesses that focus on uncertainty, says Patnaik, “actually delude themselves into thinking that they have a handle on things. Ah, ambiguity; it can be such a bitch.”

…

“Technology forces disruption, and not all of the change will be good. Optimists look to all the excitement. Pessimists look to all that gets lost. They’re both right. How you react depends on what you have to gain versus what you have to lose.”

Yet while pessimists may be emotionally calmed by their fretting, it will not aid them practically. The pragmatic course is not to hide from the change, but to approach it head-on. Thurston offers this vision: “Imagine a future where people are resistant to stasis, where they’re used to speed. A world that slows down if there are fewer options–that’s old thinking and frustrating. Stimulus becomes the new normal.”

via This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business | Fast Company.

Enterprise Architect Thought for the Day: Execution is Great Unaddressed Issue

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“Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today.  Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes.” – Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Yesterday, after a particularly trying conference call, I tweeted “too many inventors, too few executors”.  Later in the day, I ran across the above Ram Charan quote while sampling Alan Fine’s You Already Know How to be Great.

I think it’d be a fair statement to substitute “business” with “enterprise architecture” in Charan’s quote: ‘Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the enterprise architecture world today’.

Too many enterprise architecture teams eschew project management and delivery responsibilities, and then complain, no one listens, or uses their ideas. These disappointments are attributed to communication issues, shortsightedness, and lack of management support.

While those issues might exist, perhaps the root cause is lack of execution ability on part of the enterprise architecture team.  If you can’t transition your idea to practice, why do you think your constituents can?

For enterprise architecture success, your team must include the rarest of EA types, someone who sets (or gets) the vision, and can strategize and drive the execution.

If I was feeling marketing, rather than preachy, I’d tell you I have a tremendous ability to execute. 🙂

Feeding Problems & Starving Opportunities?

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In recognition of what would have been Peter F. Drucker’s 100th birthday, the Wall Street Journal is rerunning some classic Drucker on Management pieces.  The piece today,  originally published Oct. 21, 1993, is The Five Deadly Business Sins. 

The first 3 sins are related to pricing and profit margins, the 4th is “slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday”, and the fifth is feeding problems and starving opportunities:

“– The last of the deadly sins is feeding problems and starving opportunities. For many years I have been asking new clients to tell me who their best-performing people are. And then I ask: "What are they assigned to?" Almost without exception, the performers are assigned to problems — to the old business that is sinking faster than had been forecast; to the old product that is being outflanked by a competitor’s new offering; to the old technology — e.g., analog switches, when the market has already switched to digital. Then I ask: "And who takes care of the opportunities?" Almost invariably, the opportunities are left to fend for themselves.

All one can get by "problem-solving" is damage-containment. Only opportunities produce results and growth. And opportunities are actually every bit as difficult and demanding as problems are. First draw up a list of the opportunities facing the business and make sure that each is adequately staffed (and adequately supported). Only then should you draw up a list of the problems and worry about staffing them.

I suspect that Sears has been doing the opposite — starving the opportunities and feeding the problems — in its retail business these past few years. This is also, I suspect, what is being done by the major European companies that have steadily been losing ground on the world market (e.g., Siemens in Germany). The right thing to do has been demonstrated by GE, with its policy to get rid of all businesses — even profitable ones — that do not offer long-range growth and the opportunity for the company to be number one or number two world-wide. And then GE places its best-performing people in the opportunity businesses, and pushes and pushes.”

Drucker concludes the piece:

“Everything I have been saying in this article has been known for generations. Everything has been amply proved by decades of experience. There is thus no excuse for managements to indulge in the five deadly sins. They are temptations that must be resisted.”

So, I have to ask, is your IT leadership indulging in the fifth deadly sin?  Is enterprise architecture, typically staffed with top performers, focused purely on problems?  Or, do they resist temptation, by investing some top talent in opportunity?

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

Trusted Advisor.

(BIO)

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