Favorite Books of 2009

Thanks to several long vacations, quite a few work flights where I’ve managed to avoid on board wi-fi, and my awesome new book club (which is so serious we must read the books to attend and get kicked out if we miss too many), I’ve had the pleasure of reading some really great books this year! So I thought I would share a few reviews, especially of my favorites that others might enjoy…

BUSINESS

Best Business Book goes to The Management Myth, hands down. I almost yanked this out of Jim’s hands when he was reading it because he would not stop cracking up and the few quotes he shared with me were so funny and poignant. The author is a philosophy PhD who spent years consulting at some of the very top firms, some of the same firms where I’ve worked. He goes back and forth between destroying management “science” and its “gurus” and telling stories about his experience at the consulting firms where he worked. As a consultant, I felt like I knew all the characters and every story. I loved it – all the provocative views and his overall point that we must introduce more humanity and less science in the way we think about business. Every MBA and consultant should read this … every executive who hires MBAs or consultants should as well.

Runner-up Best Business Book goes to Innovators Dilemma. This book hit me at the optimal time. Several of our clients and friends were dealing with what innovation means and how they need to structure their technology organizations to do more of it. It is a must-read for any company or IT organizational trying to crack innovation, any software company figuring out its strategy, really any company selling a product that could be disrupted.

I also very much enjoyed Predictably Irrational, another pop book on behavioral economics. I’ve previously read several of the others in this genre, including Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, and Freakonomics, all which I liked (loved Freakonomics best of all), but I thought Predictably Irrational one was really well written and extremely entertaining. I’d definitely recommend it if you like this kind of stuff, and if you want to stop and question every shopping and life decision you make for the next couple months!

I loved the 4 Hour Work Week. Much of it was irrelevant to my specific job but the few philosophies and approaches I took from it have really changed my perspective on work. I definitely recommend it if you want a shakeup in your work and/or career. My whole family has been reading it over the holidays and we are having some good banter on his recommendations.

I also read a couple of books that might interest Landmark Graduates in particular. The Three Laws of Performance basically takes the Landmark Forum and applies it to organizations. It was a quick read and it changed my perspective a bit on the process for shaping strategy, although I’m not sure someone who hadn’t gone through the Forum would appreciate it quite as much. The Energy Bus is a great little parable-style book about positive energy in the workplace. I’ve read a lot of things like this so it didn’t impact me quite as much as it might some others, but I’d recommend it if you are in the mood for some new perspective on work or life.

The only true IT strategy book I read was Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, which was sadly one of the better books I’ve read on the topic but still not mind-blowing. Other than that, I’ve read some other books on coaching and organizational performance that aren’t even worth mentioning.

NON-FICTION:

Best Non-Fiction book goes to The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. This was the one non-fiction book my book club chose to read; it is about the Supreme Court from Reagan onwards through many of the big discussions around abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. I loved the book and loved the discussion. I learned a lot about the court, recent US history, and politics … and was very entertained with the stories about the justices along the way.

Runner-up Non-Fiction goes to In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. While I was already eating pretty healthy and have long prided myself in knowing a fair amount of nutrition, this book totally changed my perspective, especially on how our government has mislead us along the way about what it takes to be healthy. Since reading this, I shop differently, cook more, eat out less and feel much better.

I also liked this little book on PACE training – while it isn’t particularly well written, it changed my philosophy and approach to aerobic workouts. It makes the case that long aerobic workouts train our bodies to retain fat, and that interval training gets them to burn it. I’m now running a fraction of the time I used to and I’m the strongest and fastest I’ve been in my life…

FICTION

Best Fiction Book goes to The Count of Monte Cristo. If you haven’t read it, just read it. It is literature with just enough trash to keep you entertained. I can’t believe I didn’t read this book years ago. Don’t take it on vacation unless you want to miss all the other activities!

Best Book Club Discussion Book: If you are part of a ladies book club, you all must read and discuss Loving Frank, about Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress. I won’t spoil it, but it raises some really interesting ethical and life dilemmas that got the ladies in my book club all really thinking.

I also liked and would recommend The Bad Girl. Elegance of the Hedgehog, and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. I’m torn on Slaughterhouse Five – it did get me to think but I did not love it. The good news is that it was a quick read!

2010

I’ve got Sense and Sensibility, Anna Karenina and Godel, Escher, Bach in progress … all good so far, but I’ll keep you posted or do another review at the end of next year!

Basketball and organizational performance ...

With several Blue Devils in the household, there’s always a fair amount of basketball talk around the holidays and we got into an interesting conversation yesterday about basketball and organizational performance. My dad was talking about Sports Illustrated’s top 10 basketball players of the decade earlier today (three are from Duke) and it reminded me of this article we discussed at work earlier this year, which is now very timely as I’m working on some research and writing on organizational performance…

“The No-Stats All Star” in the New York Times features Shane Battier, a basketball player whose individual performance, based on the usual stats, is relatively unimpressive, but whose effect on his teams is statistically significantly positive. The article also highlights the Houston Rockets’ strategist who, based on his unconventional statistical analysis, made the surprising case to bring Battier to the Houston Rockets, which has proven to be an excellent strategic move. The article is great, albeit long. (sidenote: I especially love the part about how Battier is given way more statistical information than the rest of his teammates because he can process it and use it strategically - go Duke!!)

But on to my point, or my discussion at least … can we extrapolate what these teams have figured out in basketball to organizational performance? Are there individuals in organizations who are relatively unimpressive in their own right, perhaps who receive mediocre performance reviews, who have a significantly positive effect on their organizations? I’d say yes, and it is something most performance review systems undervalue. Most of us have worked with those “team players” who totally change the dynamic of their teams or organizations but who really don’t do too much for their own area. Perhaps they create excitement, resolve conflict, or simply make working together a little more fun. And almost all of us have witnessed the poisonous effects of one bad apple on a team or entire organization. They may even be considered critical because of their knowledge or skills, but their negative energy destroys the momentum of the group. Despite these significant effects these people have, the emphasis those effects have in individual performance reviews is minimal. And companies think much more about individuals when building teams than they do about the team interaction as a whole.

When we do assessments for our clients of their leadership teams as part of IT strategy projects or as a separate project, we look not only at individual performance and potential but also how the group is functioning together and how developing, removing or adding key positive or negative influencers will take the team to new levels of performance. Our clients see the value in taking it to this level, but the more provocative question that comes up from this article is how much we should evaluate individuals on their impact on team performance. How much “credit” should individuals receive for improving teams if their individual results are totally average? How do you measure that influence other than seeing what happens when the person is removed? And how do you reward that influence other than through group performance bonuses or profit sharing?

Back to basketball, the Rockets are struggling with many of the same questions. Being aware of and considering these performance implications is a big step, but I also hope organizations modify selection, development and performance management shift based on looking at teams as the system they are.

Information architects need a home

When we do organizational strategy work for internal IT organizations or technology groups, one of the most common discussion points is where the information architects/ data czars/ data architects should live in the company. Someone has to figure out how a piece of information like gross profit is defined within the company, as well as how it needs to be calculated based on the information in a variety of systems. Oftentimes, our clients don’t really have this kind of role in place already, so it is more of a theoretical discussion of who should own it if it did exist.

It has been coming up again at a couple of my clients and so I’ve been asking some experts what they think. I asked a question of the CSIA business intelligence panel last week. Erik Duffield from JCB Partners had some good thoughts on the subject. Of course he gave the “it depends” caveat, but he elaborated that his preference is to have someone in the business own defining the measures of performance management, with IT owning the technical side of definition and implementation. That owner might reside in the Finance function in smaller organizations, in Merchandising in a large retail company, or in various other places in the business depending on the industry and company size. He also emphasized the need for multiple SMEs (subject matter experts) in various functional areas of the business tagged as owners. Good stuff.

I’ve also asked some of my architect friends who tend to work on the IT side of the house. Some of them do think this role needs to be in IT, likely in a centralized architecture group. Practically speaking, that’s where I’ve seen the most progress get made. Since IT really needs information architecture to complete projects, they often take it on by default. It may not be the best answer, but it seems to be more common than not.

So my conclusions on the matter haven’t really changed. Yes it depends … Software companies will be different than internal IT shops. Industries and company size may impact the answer too. But ideally, someone should own the definition of data in a centralized place within the business. And the technology group should own the technical side of making that definition reality in the existing and planned systems.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

I was reading an article in the Economist last night about our jobs crisis and thinking about how the little indicators I get on demand don't match up. People I know who are looking have lots of opportunities, even though it may be taking some time to get through the hiring process. I've been sent more postings in the last few weeks than I have in months, which is very unusual for this time of year. Many of them are for Business Analysts and Project Managers, which implies that companies are ramping back up for new projects. There's enough going on with people we know that we've added a topic to our weekly ensemble meeting to go through all of the people looking to hire and see if we can match make with those we know are looking. Additionally, all of our clients are hiring for something, although they may still be pretty particular about what that is.

So, yes, I'm concerned for our nation, but I'm optimistic within the IT space. Economists are saying we've still got a while, but I think we are going to see IT investments start increasing early next year. Curious if others are seeing the same...

The soft side of business intelligence ROI

I went to a great Business Intelligence panel last week put on by CSIA, Colorado’s Technology Association. It was a combination of presentations by IBM and JCB Partners, along with a panel discussion that also included a couple of local executives who had successfully implemented BI at their companies.

One of my favorite questions from the audience was not a surprising one: a woman asked how they had measured the ROI of business intelligence projects. Unlike many of the other questions, the panelists did not have an easy or straightforward answer. A couple of the panelists did not think ROI could be measured quantitatively. The consultant on the panel had a more solid answer, but still acknowledged the challenge compared to other investments. It seemed a little ironic to me that business intelligence, which at its core is about measuring and managing performance, can’t be measured and managed itself.

So I just did a quick search on “ROI Business Intelligence” and came across this article titled “Business intelligence ROI: Five keys to justifying BI investments”, which basically backs up the conclusion of the panel with the following conclusions: executives just need to embrace it, the benefits are soft, trying to drive to hard metrics is hard and unnecessary, etc.

So the bigger question is as technology moves more towards providing better information to influence decisions … will hard benefits become a thing of the past? In the past, more technology investments were about improving productivity than they are today, and productivity improvements are much easier to quantify.