Executive Advisory Program

100% Organic Thinking

Posted by Jack Santos

The term “organic” is making the lexicon rounds, and has come a long way from its health food store beginnings in the 70s.  Take organic business growth (versus growth by acquisition).

The most recent manifestation of “organic” came from a column in Forbes, by Dan Woods.

Dan’s approach, and back-handed chastisement of traditional IT, certainly fits trends that we at Burton group talk about.

Specifically the  consumerization and democratization of IT.   A recent Computerworld report brought the point home:  Internet access is now a human right, according to the EU.

So, as information technology continues to become integrated in everyday life,  the trend toward “organic IT” will only get worse – or better depending on your POV.

That’s why I often talk about IT integration versus IT alignment.

But the flip side of organic is chaos (both data and process) and unintended consequences.  Think invasive species. 

The business has ultimate control and responsibility for both data and process, and the organic approach, if not managed, can negatively impact both.

Usually what that means is that the organization looks for someone to mediate the decision-making and organizational/systems decisions…and the only piece of the organization that has the expertise and (ostensibly) the umpire-like lack of line responsibility skin-in-the-game is IT – so IT ends up managing the use of technology, and all that goes along with it -- including governance processes.

Whether governance fully involves the business, or IT just takes on the mantle of responsibility is a tricky balance.  The latter often occurs at the urging/delegation/abdication by business units.  I would submit that IT needs another set of skills – that of making sure that technology (read data and process) decision-making is business driven.  

It’s a  biblical “give a fish vs. teach to fish” scenario – but  teaching to fish assumes learning acceptance by the target, and some level of skill by the teacher.  And these skills are not technical skills – but relationship and influence skills.  Not the usual courses taken by a rising C programmer, or a database administrator.

When getting the business to be fully involved in technology decision-making doesn’t work well,  it's just a short hop to blaming IT, or for IT to overreact (again as proxy to the business) and set inflexible standards that squelch business innovation.

That’s why architecture (and governance) is so important.

It’s all about collaboration and communication, and neither a soviet-style centralized approach (which, incidentally, has strong similarities to how capitalist companies are managed), nor a total laissez-faire anarchy (which is where organic has strong tendencies) will work.

Which reminds me of a t-shirt…

“Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in the boat drinking beer all day…”

Would that be…organic beer?

The real world

 

 
  Posted by: Jack Santos

Just back from 2 weeks at sea; timing is everything – just missed a hurricane.  It gets interesting when life doesn’t include daily (if not hourly) interaction on the internet…and it was a welcome respite.  Which reminded me of this recent piece forwarded by a friend:

If Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were alive today, their infamous sketch "Who's on First?" might have turned out something like this:  

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT      
ABBOTT:  Super Duper computer store. Can I help you? 
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT:  Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer.. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT:  Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why?  Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows? 
ABBOTT:  Wallpaper. 
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software... ABBOTT: Software for Windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer!  I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business.  What do you have?
ABBOTT:  Office.
COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything? 
ABBOTT: I just did. 
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT:  Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT:  Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT:  Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office! 
ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?  
ABBOTT:  Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows? 
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W".
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "W" if you don't start with some straight answers... What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOTT:  Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT:  Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer..
COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer? 
ABBOTT:  Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much? 
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money? 
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not?  THEY OWN IT!
        (A few days later) 
ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you? 
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?
ABBOTT: Click on "START"............

Of Garages and Hospitals: The Mechanics of High Tech Healthcare

Posted by: Jack Santos

Those of you that know me or my background know of my healthcare IT pedigree – on both the insurance and the provider side.   Keep that in mind when reading this post, because  my comments can be easily misconstrued. 

One of the key concerns for healthcare IT advocates (and detractors) is the  automation of healthcare; kind of a care assembly line.  This has certainly been a concern of some watchers of the debate going on at Capitol Hill.

This concern manifests itself with alerts and reminders in an Electronic Medical Record system, leading to complacency on the part of the clinician.   I recently saw a similar phenomena happen when I took in my brand new 2009 car to the dealer for a perceived warranty issue.

Mechanics courses now focus heavily of use of computer based diagnostic testequipment.  By connecting to the car’s on-board computer (OBC) system, a mechanic can measure and detect all sorts of things – alerts on component failures, out of spec operation, even speed and acceleration statistics (which would be a boon for auto insurers and rate determination – but that is for another post).

In my case, my cruise control on my new car was working erratically – sometimes over 30 MPH, sometimes under 40, sometimes never.  After three trips to the shop, and numerous on-line lookups by mechanics for similar service recalls or problem reports (each time downloading codes from the OBC and diligently following alerts and repair protocols) they determined that the problem was an obscure part that rarely fails, especially in so new a car: an electronic brake light switch.  It would take a month to get a new one from the factory.

What the mechanics failed to do in this entire diagnostic process was to actually LOOK at the patient (in this case, my car).  Even a rudimentary look would have revealed that an after-market hitch harness for brake lights had been installed (by yours truly).  The manufacturer of the hitch harness had incorrectly listed this make and model as compatible.  The electronics in the harness (which was supposed to just extend the brake light signal to a trailer) interfered with multiple things in the car – including the cruise control.  I removed the harness – and problem solved.

This automotive story is a perfect example of what I would call process automation complacency.  Complacency that would be the result of relying totally on pretty (although busy) computer interfaces (like the one above), automated alerts, reminders, computer based knowledge bases – at the expense of rudimentary human-based diagnostics, or even common sense.

In this automotive case, the results were just annoying; in the case of back office processes, it could be an impact to the bottom line, or even financial reporting.  But in healthcare -  it could be a life lost.

Should that derail the Electronic Medical Record juggernaut?  I think not.  But it should make computer professionals, and healthcare executives, sensitive to  all the other aspects of a healthcare delivery system – including training,  and the cultural/sociological implications.  Cars can be replaced – human lives cannot.

NO Bars, NO Service

Posted by: Jack Santos

  A recent snafu with my cell phone roaming plan really brought home what it’s like to be one of the bandwidth have-nots.

Unfortunately, AT&T has a policy of not automatically transferring  features when you get a new phone.  So I ended up in a London hotel room, waiting for my cell to ring with directions to a meeting and…no bars, no service. My international calling plan was non-existent.

No problem. Call AT&T.  No service meant no 3G. No 3G on my laptop too.  Pull out the old, trusted fallback – the AT&T business calling card for international calling. 

Well my old trusted fallback was so old (2 years!) that no number on it was working (they were all disconnected and not forwarded).

Can’t call 1-800-CALL-ATT.  NO international access to US 800 numbers.

OK, frustration building (what was that about no bars?). Call the hotel concierge (help!). Here’s the AT&T international number, they say.  That, too, is out of service.

So I am in a foreign country (at least I speak the language), but no way to communicate to my carrier, with a phone and PC I can’t make calls with, and awaiting an incoming business call.  Not even Skype can bail me out at this stage (no WIFI in the hotel). What to do?

It occurred to me that for just a brief moment (or maybe an hour), I was in the land of the technology have-nots.  Off-net, no way to plug into the ether, starved, lonely, looking for attention, with nowhere to turn.

Kind of like an inhabitant of Vatican City, which according to Wolfram Alpha is last on the list of places with internet users – 90,000  (versus the US at 223M; by the way – China just passed the US with 253M users).

It also shows how much wireless is overtaking regular landlines – to the point of the atrophy of phone numbers for landline calls.  Or the inability to get number information, especially without internet access (an interesting conundrum).

So, you may ask, did I finally get “on-net”?   Yes – thru the British Telco operator, who connected me to a landline AT&T operator, who connected me to a wireless AT&T service number, who turned everything on in seconds. Problem solved.

Burton Group mobility analyst Paul DeBeasi has forecasted how wireless will overtake landline in all its forms (his posts here).  That time seems to have come. But our need for landline (and human-based service) just keeps on hanging on.

2010 Enterprise IT Trends (Continued)

Posted by Chris Howard

I posted a few weeks back on our three big trends impacting enterprise IT: (Externalization, Consumerization and Democratization (ECD)). Each of our coverage areas will be releasing planning guides in the coming weeks that explore trends in their domains. In preparation, Jack Santos and I recorded a brief presentation that covers the main topics and ties them into the larger ECD context:

Cognitive Dissonance

Posted by: Jack Santos

 I just finished reading “Management Rewired”, which purports to take recent brain science and explode management myths.  I’ll expand on my thoughts about that in another post, but suffice it to say it was worth the read – as much as I had issues with some of the examples (weak), and the minimal treatment of actual brain science implications.

But a recent incident certainly made me acutely aware of how complex our brain is, and almost cost me my life.

I was hurrying out of the Amsterdam central train station, and quickly glanced at the walk light across the street.  In plain sight was the red signal, and a number counting down.  Having seen this many times, my brain said “go – 10 seconds left!”.  I ran across the intersection in the remaining seconds of time  allotted….

…and was met by screeching tires, as a car abruptly pulled to a stop to this mad man crossing against  the green light!

No harm done, no rear end collisions, no actual bodily impact.  But a deep breath and “’what did I do wrong?” was in order.  Apparently, a countdown in Amsterdam means time left before you can walk across, and a countdown in the US means time left to walk across.  A situation in dire need of standards.  But what about the symbol?  I quickly assumed that the red symbol in Amsterdam was correct, and that the countdown in the US MUST be accompanied by a green symbol,

Twenty four hours later in Boston, I was in the same situation.  A street to cross, a countdown, and (surprisingly) a countdown accompanied by a red symbol!  So in both countries, the signals are the same, but mean completely opposite things (red symbol + seconds left before you can cross (EU), and red symbol + seconds left to complete a crossing (US)).

 No wonder I was confused.  This incident also shows how quickly we can convince ourselves that prior experience was not remembered correctly, and how our brain tries to correlate multiple experiences, creating a new reality.

The lessons for managing IT are obvious: data quality, standards, conventions, and the political and human limits around those efforts.  This little incident shows that the way our brains works is critical for management and for transformation, topics which Charles Jacobs goes into in “Management  Rewired: Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science”.

A lesson I learned with little harm.  Fortunately, cars weren't coming from the right, like in London. Then it might had been worse…

Programming Languages and Human Languages

Posted by: Jack Santos

Sometimes  intriguing stories come from unexpected meetings.  Because of a canceled flight I needed to share a cab from Basel To Zurich with 2 other young men – they looked slightly older than college age to me, although I suspect they were in their 30s.

Rupert had a backpack and an IBM laptop. After brief introductions, his excellent English led into an engrossing conversation on linguistics, language extinction, and programming.  Rupert’s undergrad degree is in computer science, but he now is involved in University work in linguistics.  I presume he teaches – but we never got that far to find out.  Our conversation led to a discussion of languages, language extinction, and his current research focus. Being from the Boston area, I referred to MIT's Noam Chomsky – which elicited much disdain from Rupert:  “he’s not a real linguist”. I sensed he felt that Chomsky bordered on a fraud.

Rupert is particularly interested in Slavic languages, specifically languages that are in danger of extinction because there are so few people speaking them.  I presumed at first it was because of the predominance of American English  (the global lingua franca); but in the Czech-Polish-Russian belt it actually is the slaughter of languages and dialects by Russian speakers and hegemony.

Even more interesting was how he was trying to save endangered languages.  He had spent some of his research studies using XML style sheets and XSLT – web programming technologies – to codify the structure of languages that are bordering on extinction.  In one specific case he used two written guides to the language that were published over a hundred years ago or more, and is capturing the language rules and constructs using style sheets and XSLT transformations.

So he is using what is basically a modern computer language to preserve legacy spoken languages. Brilliant. He promises to send along his research when complete.  I can’t wait.

The CIO's Dilemma

Posted by: Jack Santos

Are enterprise IT projects fundamentally business projects?

Or

Is every business project fundamentally an IT project – first and foremost?

This, my friends, constitutes the CIO’s dilemma.

When we at Burton group talk about consumerization and democratization of IT, the discussion usually leads to how IT has to justify all efforts in a business context.  In other words, it’s the integration of IT within business, and that IT projects are business driven with business sponsors, business advocates, and business stewards. Mike Rollings talks about this in his posts and papers: the moment IT takes control it has lost the game. Stewardship is formed by keeping responsibility for business issues within the business.

But in a recent conversation about a major failed IT effort that was quite visible, it was conveyed that the CIO in charge of that effort decided that since he was getting the blame for the failure, he saw the need to take charge, and as a result now sees all business projects as IT projects first, with IT driving the business change.

Interesting.

In fact, the case can be made (through consumerization effects, and cross-functional impacts) that many business projects ARE (at the core) IT projects, and need special IT guidance and leadership.  How else do you address cross functional projects that span many business areas? The argument goes that  IT should be central to, and lead, the delivery of those projects. 

I think these observations leads to the recognition of two types of CIOs:

Type A: where the CIO sees the CIO position as being integral to business operations, a major “player at the table”, and maybe even a stepping stone to  the CEO position. 

Type B: where the CIO “leads from behind” – recognizes the primacy of business ownership, and takes a more supportive role in business projects, gently guiding, applying best practices, defining processes, but letting business partners take a primary role in project justification, leadership,  and involvement.

I would submit that the right approach incorporates aspects of both types, but ostensibly emphasizes B.  It is the role of the CIO to ensure that business units heads DO NOT surrender leadership for business projects that incorporate IT.  To do so is to ultimately fail the business in your job.

Of course, every example, every business, every culture is different, and those CIOs that take on the mantle, and subjugate business leadership, may be responding to their set of conditions.  They may even be successful.  They may even eventually run the business.

But that’s the exception, not the rule.

What type of CIO are you?

Globalization - Personalized

Posted by: Jack Santos

I am visiting clients in Europe this week, and it’s my first trip abroad carrying two passports.  Yes, you heard right. I qualified for, and obtained, dual citizenship this past year, so I am now a citizen of the US and the EU.  My progeny have pointed out that this disqualifies me for the highest US (or EU) security clearance positions. Thems the breaks.  In fact, there is a whole subculture of people that thrive on multiple citizenships. Like this blog here.  Or more information in FAQ format here.

In fact, there may be other downsides, yet to be tested:  taxation, military service, etc. are all potential gray areas.  Technically, I am now an ex-pat Portuguese citizen.

So why do it?  Two words:  Customs lines. And in fact, upon arrival at Heathrow the non-EU  lines were 30-100 deep, while the EU citizen lines were 1-5 deep. Hmmm, I wonder what the security cameras thought of the line jumper from one citizenry to the other?   Opportunity (and time-is-money) knocked!  Left the US as an American, arrived in the EU as a European.

But, in our IT world of externalization (i.e., globalization), consumerization, and democratization, the implications are much broader.

What does it mean to be a citizen?  How is allegiance determined?  What happens when travel and migration is so matter-of-fact that the geographic lines are nearly meaningless?  How does a culture develop?  These are questions that the US has been grappling with, as melting pot.  As we now take the melting pot global (because of IT effects), the implications are that much more insidious.  September 11 – when viewed as a clash of cultures – was just a warning bell. Saudi citizens, trained in Afghanistan,  residents in the US.

As our world gets smaller, because of outsourcing and the effects of the internet, the questions get larger.  And as one of the first global citizens, I wonder if allegiance becomes less to geography, and more to ideas.

But then again, isn’t that called religion?

Multitasking - Right or Wrong?

As the father of three wonderful adult children, successful in their own right, I am often staring at the differences between my generation (Boomers) and their generation (Y).  One of those differences is around multitasking.

Yes we all do it, and we all think we do it effectively,  But the occasional train or bus wreck by a texting driver reminds us that there are appropriate times to multitask, and inappropriate times.  Another example that teeters on the edge of acceptability is checking emails on your handheld in a meeting.  Or on your desktop during a phone conference (betrayed by the tapping of keys in the background, or the occasional computer beep).

Whether it is socially acceptable is one thing.  If it really is effective is another. 

I recently was in a discussion with one of my progeny over whether they really do absorb better when they are multitasking – being younger and much smarter than his aging old man, he insists that he is much more effective, gets much knowledge, quicker. Hmmm. Recent studies are starting to debunk that:

August 24, 2009
Study Finds People Who Multitask Often Bad at It
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:38 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That's the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University

The New York Times sums it up nicely.  And a piece on NPR.

We at Burton Group do a lot of research on collaboration, and analyst Craig Roth voiced his doubts about the study here.

I believe there are some fairly significant impacts that computing and the access to knowledge are having on human processing capability, and that the level of our ability to manage and process multiple inputs is changing (think of putting a stone age man on a city street, or in front of a TV).  During that transition, there are unintended consequences, and the danger that we may not be as far along as we think.   Multitasking reflects that.

In the meantime, what worries me less is the state of multitasking, and what worries me more is how we view it in the work place; do we encourage it, discourage it, take it case by case, individualize our response, incorporate tools that affect multitasking (positively or negatively).  Are we creating hostile environments for unitaskers, should we set aside “no multitasking” times or places (like staff meetings). 

I love my iPhone, partially because it doesn’t emulate the multitasking multi-windows environment that I grew into after Microsoft's DOS.  But I think the  plan is to move into full multitasking even on the iPhone, so getting distracted, even on my handheld, is imminent. 

Whether we think it is effective or not, the train has left the station.