Is "internal" app dev strategic?

I love my SIM (Society for Information Management) meetings every month. We always have such great discussions during dinner!

This week, we got on a particularly interesting topic, one near and dear to my heart and covered in detail in the book. We were talking about the evolution of IT organizations and whether or not an internal application development capability is strategic these days. A long time ago, companies could gain strategic advantage by custom developing software or highly customizing packaged software that supported their internal business processes. My first internship was supporting a custom developed HRIS at a huge telecomm company. Can you imagine building an HRIS today?

Of course not. That's one of the reasons it has been trendy to say IT isn't strategic. The basic systems you need to run a business - HRIS, ERP, CRM, etc - have been available as packaged software for years and now many companies are not even hosting or maintaining these systems in house, leaving little need for an IT group to build OR support them. It is hard to argue with this video on cloud computing.

The conclusion we came to at dinner was that the strategic IT organizations today spend very little time on these core systems. Instead, these IT organizations are focused around the edge. Most companies today use technology to integrate outside of their company, particularly with their customers, but also with suppliers and other entities. That's where IT can be strategic. But it requires a different kind of IT organization with more of a product development strategy than an internally focused development group.

What do you think? Has the "strategic-ness" of internal application development come full circle? How does the IT organization need to evolve?

Diaries of a working mom Chapter 9: Working from home

When I tell people I work from home, I get a wide variety of reactions, ranging from “you are the luckiest person on earth” to “how in the heck can you do that with a kid there?”. Most people are shocked that I have no intention of ever going to an office, at least not my own office.

I have to say, for me, for the time being at least, I absolutely love it and wouldn’t have it any other way. I am not one of those people who showers, gets dressed, and “goes to work”, then takes a lunch break, then “goes home”, all in the confines of my home. I flow back and forth between work and the rest of my life throughout the day.

I love that I can roll out of bed and use the time I’m most thoughtful to do something important. I love taking a break when I need to rest my brain to shower, workout, or run to the grocery store. I love that I can work with clients in all different time zones by working earlier and later but doing personal stuff during the day. I love that I fill up my gas tank less than once a month. I also love the days when I have meetings around Denver or hop on a plane to visit a client. I love being able to crank through work for hours with minimal interruptions.

I’ve loved working from a home office for ten years now, but now it is even better because I get to take a break and see my little guy. I can check in on him throughout the day and communicate with the nanny on how he’s doing. I went back to work after my maternity leave really fast, and that was much easier on me because I was able to be around and be involved.

In talking with other parents, I’m starting to notice a trend. Women with kids seem to love working from home, men with kids most often want to go to an office. People without kids are a mixed bag. I have a theory about this….

Moms who work from home usually have some kind of childcare, in or out of the house. Dads who work from home often have wives who are taking care of the kids at home – at least the majority of the ones I’ve talked with about this topic so far. My theory is that it is harder to put work lines around a spouse than it is around a childcare professional… and it is therefore a lot easier to work from home if you have professional childcare for your kids… or don’t have kids at all.

My personal experience with this is every Thursday, when my husband is usually home as Mr. Mom. Thursdays are a whole different type of day for me. There isn’t the routine of the nanny showing up to “kick-off” the day. And of course my husband and I talk a lot more throughout the day about childcare and many other topics than I talk with the nanny on one of the other days. I’ve tried various tactics for making Thursdays easier on all of us, but it has been a challenge. I absolutely love having him home one day a week so we are going to figure it out (I have a few more ideas to try), but I can see why dads are challenged with this! One dad recently expressed to me that he needs to go to his office because while he wants to help his wife with the little things when she asks, it really does distract his flow. I totally get it.

I’m bullish that this working from home thing is going to work for me for years to come, but I know there will be challenges along the way. The first will be helping the little guy understand “mommy’s at work” when I’m right there in the next room.

I believe it is possible. I know a couple who have two kids and both work from home. They have a live-in nanny and the kids have grown up understanding their work. The parents love it. They get to spend more time with the kids since they see them on breaks and save all the commute time. Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me!

Another great Goliath example: Running meetings at Google

Thank you, Sarah, for sending this!

Here's a glimpse into Google's "rules" around meetings.  At first glance these seem obvious, but take a hard look at your company's meetings and ask yourself how many would pass... I'll admit not all of ours would!

Every meeting must have a decision maker and a decision to be made. 

Can Goliath companies compete?

Those of you who have read our book know we compare many companies out there to Goliath - because they are big, old and slow - and because they struggle to compete.  We take the analogy a little further with the "two heads" of Goliath (business and IT) not getting along all the while David organizations are armed with new tools (mobile, collaboration, cloud).

Well, we all love reading stuff we agree with - and boy do I love this article, "Avoiding Innovation's Terrible Toll" from the Wall Street Journal this week.  It talks about the challenges of HP and Kodak but also points out some examples of Goliath organizations such as Apple and IBM who have succeeded in the world of innovation.

So yes, Goliath organizations can compete, but it takes a very different way of operating!

Diaries of a working mom Chapter 8: The Nanny Share

I haven’t done a “Mommy Diaries” post in a while, so I thought I’d start the new year with a couple of topics near and dear to my heart: the nanny share and working from home.

They are kind of related, but I’ll write first about the “nanny share”. Lots of people ask me how this works, so I thought I’d share a little, since for us, it really works great.

Some people use “nanny share” to describe splitting a nanny’s time. For example, one family might use the nanny two days a week and the other family three days a week. That’s not our deal. Our “nanny share” involves one nanny taking care of two kids, full time.

This was never my intention. I assumed I’d want the flexibility of having a dedicated nanny, here at the house. When my husband came in a week after I went back to work and informed me the neighbors in the alley wanted to do a nanny share, I was very skeptical. But I appeased him since his crazy ideas work out pretty well more often than not.

When Eric met the neighbors in the alley, we had already hired our nanny and she was working for us four days a week, for ten hours a day, with Eric covering the fifth day. I liked this schedule because it gave me about fifty hours a week of childcare to get both work and personal stuff done, with enough flexibility that I could spend some time with the little guy during the day here and there. He was always at our house so I could see him when I had time and keep an eye on things.

So we met the neighbors, and their little boy, who was a few months older than ours. We talked with them about everything from philosophies on parenting to logistics to schedules to germaphobia (actually, our mutual lack thereof) and more. Everything seemed like a great fit, so we decided to try it out. It worked so well for the first couple weeks that the other mom decided to go back to work full time right away.

Here’s how it works: First thing in the morning, the nanny shows up at our house and we pass off our little guy. About an hour later, one of the parents brings the neighbor kid through the garages and passes him off. At the end of the day, our nanny just packs up the neighbor kid and takes him back to his house so they are waiting when his parents get home. Of course we change up the schedule some and sometimes they go over to the neighbors’ house if we have something going on here, but that’s the general routine.

The nanny likes it because we pay her more and she gets more hours than she would with just one. The neighbors like it because it is so convenient and they know I’m keeping an eye on things since I’m home a majority of the time. I love it because when I do want to take a break and hang out with the little guy I don’t feel like I’m paying for help I don’t need. And as you can imagine, we are saving quite a bit for the little guy’s college fund.

So what are the downsides? Two kids under a year old are a handful and our nanny stays very busy. She doesn’t have time to do much else around the house and I’m sure sometimes the kids don’t get what they want the moment they want it! But we’ve all agreed that’s probably better for them anyway. I do help out here and there with a feeding or a diaper change, but again, I like being involved during the day and just consider that my “coffee break”.

I thought going into this relationship I’d be losing flexibility. While I can’t take the nanny on a trip now (without some coordination) we actually have more flexibility in a lot of other ways. With the extra hours each of us already have her, it is no problem to add in the second kid. We can also move locations easily, as they are totally set up in both houses. And even when the nanny isn’t there, the families know the other kids and have the set up to easily take care of each other. We haven’t done much of that yet, but we are talking about doing more dropping off for errands, date nights and even longer vacations.

Pretty cool, huh? I don’t know if you can proactively find such a great situation, but I thought I’d share because I never thought about doing something like this before it fell in my lap. Now I understand all the posts on the mommy boards looking for a “nanny share”!

New Years Resolutions

Do you believe in New Years resolutions? What are yours this year?

I love hearing the responses to these questions. In my oh-so-scientific studies over the years, I'd say most people refuse to make any NY resolutions because of the also-so-scientific-statistical data on NY resolution failure. They think they'll be happier if they don't set themselves up for disappointment by setting goals they might not achieve.

I can't help but think about vision/strategy/goal setting processes in most businesses. Many people object to going through individual goal setting or group strategic planning exercises, usually for one of the following reasons:
1) It is a waste of time because everything gets reprioritized anyway.
2) We don't want morale to drop if we set goals and don't achieve them.

Well, I think that's bunk. However you do it, whenever you do it, setting a vision (or goals or resolutions or whatever you want to call it) is the most surefire way to success. That's why I'm a strategy consultant. It is why I love facilitating meetings to help people build vision and prioritize objectives. And why I love building those beautiful presentations that help everyone agree on their strategy and get inspired to make it happen. I truly believe for organizations and individuals, getting clear on vision is the key to getting what you want.

I've set a lot of goals in my life, personally and professionally. I've also missed few of them along the way. But the process of thinking about what I wanted and constantly going for it is what has gotten me where I am today.

Now, I'm in an interesting place.  Last year, I realized so many of my possibilities: success with the company, publishing our book, getting married and having a baby. While in a space of so much gratitude, I am wondering what is next… because I know if I don't create more vision, I won't keep moving forward. And I might even move backwards.

I spent some time last week while on vacation thinking about all this and getting it on paper. I won't go through all the details, but there are a couple goals I wanted to share with you all, my blog readers.

First, I'm re-committing to my social networking goals, beginning with Twitter. Twitter continues to be an area of discomfort and honestly a little skepticism for me, but I am intrigued about its ability to connect us in new ways. I was on and off through last year and I've had several people convince me that it is a mind-shift at first, but once you are on, it is a new cool way of being connected. I'm going to treat this one like a 21 day habit and see where it goes from there.

Second, I'm going to be gearing more of my writing and presenting to "impact" - specifically how strategies can impact companies. Impact is TE's third core value (after the more obvious two of Thought and Ensemble) and even though it is the whole reason we are around, we don't talk about it enough. I get that not everyone is inspired by strategy, believing that if you build it, success will come. Some people want more real examples We've also gotten feedback from Reboot book readers and presentation attendees that while they find the problems laid on in the book compelling and the solutions insightful, but they want more specifics of what to go do and success stories from companies who have had positive impacts.

So there you have it: written down for the world to see.   The closest thing I have to NY resolutions.  Now, time to get to it!

Really? These are the top places for IT workers?

I just got suckered by this link - survey results for the top places IT workers want to work!  I should have known better. It is just the usual suspects, the four biggest IT employers around: Microsoft, IBM, Apple and Google...

I'm not sure how they conducted this survey of 431 IT workers, but I suppose if you ask an open ended question about where people would most like to work, the results are likely to be the biggest, best known tech companies out there.

Are these really the "dream" companies for IT workers?  My first reaction was "heck, no!".  Whenever I talk to people who really love to build technology, they usually talk about their dream being to go off and create something totally new.  They often want to start up a company where there's little bureaucracy and they just get to focus purely on the creation of a technology that can change the world, or at least their company or industry.  But then I thought a little further... and I wonder.  Maybe the advantage of these mammoth tech companies is the resources and infrastructure they offer.  Perhaps in the right place in those companies, an IT worker gets to be more of a purist.  And perhaps they feel like they are part of something greater.

What do you think?