Lisa Breytspraak Jasper

Is "internal" app dev strategic?

2012-01-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

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

2012-01-11T09:56:00.001-07:00

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

2012-01-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

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?

2012-01-10T19:08:00.001-07:00

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

2012-01-10T19:03:00.001-07:00

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

2012-01-03T14:14:00.001-07:00

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?

2011-12-20T15:11:00.000-07:00

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?

Alignment is a Dirty Word

2011-12-16T07:54:00.000-07:00

Many of you have heard this rant before, especially if you have read the book! Focusing on alignment is a dangerous game for an IT organization to play... and it was the #1 concern of CIOs for all of the 1990s and well beyond.

Someone just forwarded me this blog by a Forrester researcher about why organizations need to move beyond alignment... and how to do it. I really like most of what Nigel says here, its very congruent with what we've been writing and speaking about recently.

I have one quarrel and one addition. But first, in case you don't read the article, here's the setup:

It’s the perennial issue for many CIOs and often the No. 1 challenge for new CIOs: “How do I align IT with the business?” And while this is perhaps the most important challenge for IT groups struggling with a bad reputation across the business, it’s certainly not the most important challenge for IT groups with a solid track record of success. For these teams, the challenge is how to move beyond alignment.

My quarrel is around his statement that IT organizations must first achieve alignment before they can move beyond it. Maybe it is semantics, but I think focusing on alignment in the first place will get them in trouble, even those less-mature, less-reputable organizations. I've heard a similar argument before and it is usually in the context of an elusive "maturity model" that IT organizations must step through to get to a trusted advisor status. The argument is that you have to be a good order taker before being a trusted advisor. I think that's wimpy! Of course you do, but that doesn't mean you should focus entirely on being a good order taker (or just being aligned) instead of being really strategic.

My addition to Nigel's suggestions is to think externally. The examples he gives are pretty externally focused but when I work with IT organizations, I'm really explicit about this. IT organizations are so often focused on internal strategies - things like optimizing the data center or improving internal IT processes. The best technology strategies say how IT is going to help the business compete!

Overall, good stuff.

Which certifications lead to higher pay?

2011-12-02T14:03:00.001-07:00

CIO.com just published a survey that certifications do, in fact, lead to higher pay. But upon closer examination, they are focused entirely on network certifications. In fact, the survey is republished from Network World.

This got me thinking about which types of certifications are valuable. If I were a CIO, I'd absolutely give preference and probably a higher salary to candidates who had infrastructure type certifications. It seems very logical to me that the knowledge required to pass those exams would help people be a more effective systems or network administrator.   But what about other types of certifications in the IT world?

I have to admit that when I see "PMP" (Project Management Professional) on a resume, I have mixed feelings. I know that certification is a challenge to acquire, and anyone who has gone through that process is very dedicated to their career as a project manager. But some of the best project managers I've known have not had that certification and others who have had that certification are so locked into their methodologies that they are ineffective. Again, as a CIO, I would not necessarily give candidates preference or higher salaries for having that certification, although for the right person it is an awesome thing to do.

And then there are the developer certifications. I'm most skeptical of these, and I used to be a card-carrying MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer).   Yes, I learned some great skills from studying for those tests, and they were pretty rigorous exams, but I don't necessarily think that was the best use of my time to become a better developer.   I'm sure these exams and certifications have evolved drastically since my day as a developer, since the world of development is so different with all of the easy reference at your fingertips. But I'm still skeptical that these are the best way for a developer to learn more or prove their worth.

What do you all think about certifications?   Do you agree with which are most valuable in the job market or career development world?

Diaries of a working mom chapter 7: Time to exercise

2011-12-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

As I sit on my couch, looking out the window at a snowy wonderland, I add yet another excuse not to exercise. Oh my, I've turned into one of the moms/married people I said I'd never be!

First, you should know that before I got pregnant, I was a little obsessive about exercise. There were days that I spent three hours exercising or getting to/from exercise, between my every morning boot camps, 5x weekly runs and 4x weekly Bikram yoga sessions. I had a personal trainer for most of the last fifteen years. Oh, and I tracked every calorie I ate and burned on LoseIt for the iPhone. I was on a constant quest to lose a few pounds.

I was in pretty good shape when I got pregnant but with little morning sickness and a healthy appetite, I started packing on the pounds right away. Of course I had another handy iPhone application that tracked my pregnancy weight gain and kept me concerned that my little dot was always above the top line of recommended weight gain. For the most of my pregnancy, I kept up a fair amount of exercise, seeing a trainer 2-3 times a week and getting out for walks. Prescribed "couch rest" from the doctors put a stop to all that in my third trimester, which quickly led to even more weight gain. I stopped weighing myself after 48 pounds when I was about to hit my husband's weight, but I'm sure I gained more than 50. I can't imagine what I would have reached if I'd made it another 3.5 weeks to term!

Then I wasn't allowed to exercise for six weeks after delivering. I griped at the doctors and felt very sorry for myself that I wouldn't ever be able to get the weight off. And then (please forgive me if you are working hard to get baby weight off - I have felt your pain before!) … I weighed myself. Somehow I'd lost almost 30 pounds in the first week, between the baby and a whole lot of water. And then Gus really started eating and I kept dropping pounds by the day. I'm not sure if breastfeeding works for everyone, but for me, it seemed to be the magic elixer. By the time I had to travel for work 10 weeks post delivery, my clothes all fit again.

Trying to function full time at work and keep a hungry little guy fed all the time was about all I could handle, so exercise did not make the calendar. Then we got into major sleep deprivation and I spent any spare moment sleeping or napping. A few weeks ago, when life finally settled down a bit, I realized I basically hadn't worked out in 6 months.

I tried to get out for a run, tried to go into the gym, even made it to a yoga class, but I just couldn't get into the habit again. As much as I'm thankful for the fact that I'm only 2 pounds up from my pre-pregnancy weight (even though the weight is in very different places), I don't really have vanity as a motivator. My expectations have dropped significantly and if were only about vanity, there's no way I'd consider working out with everything going on. But I know I would feel better, and I do feel better, on days that I work out.

So now working out has taken a bit of a different spin, a different goal. For the first time in my life, I'm thinking about exercise as something I should enjoy and that should make me feel better. I've been thinking about what I really love to do, and what's realistic to fit into my schedule. I can't believe it, but I joined one of those pop-yoga studios since they have two locations within 5 minutes of my house. No, it isn't the full, intense Bikram yoga experience, but I can get an enjoyable little workout in with just over an hour away from home. And my husband and I go over to the little neighborhood gym together some mornings, for all of 20 minutes to start the day with a little cardio. And now I "count" a walk with a friend (or my boys!) as a workout, something I would have only counted before if I'd run 4 miles while waiting for them.

I'm kind of on a roll… so I thought I'd share with the blogosphere my intention to work out 4 times a week through December! By January, I could have an old habit welcomed back to my life. Wish me luck!

I want to work at THIS company!

2011-11-30T17:39:00.000-07:00

OK, totally kidding, my Thought Ensemble colleagues. But this company is BANNING internal email! I think that's a pretty cool experiment and I'm very curious to follow whether or not it works and whether other companies try something so drastic as well.

We don't have an email problem internally to TE, but I know many companies that do. And even we could make some improvements by moving conversations to a better medium than email. We've been experimenting a little with Google+ and Yammer over the last couple weeks with mixed success so far.

Diaries of a working mom Chapter 6: Somethings Gotta Give Part II

2011-11-30T17:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you all for all your messages to me about the blog "Somethings Gotta Give". I've had so many people comment on it, mostly privately, that I thought I'd do a quick follow-up. I really appreciate all of you who reached out to me!

I just re-read it and was struck by how clearly sleep deprived I was at the time. That was the toughest time of mommy-hood yet. And while I'm not one to carry around regrets, I am one to share with others what I've learned along the way...

First, the choice to add in some formula at that point was perfect for us. It took so much stress off of me, but possibly even more stress off of my husband and probably our nanny. If I'm not around to "make a meal", they can whip one up themselves. I'm still sticking with breastfeeding through the holidays to help provide some immunities against all the bugs going around, but it is so nice to have more flexibility. Looking back, I'm not sure why this choice was so hard for me to make (sleep deprivation, maybe?).

Second, I really wish I would have read a book or two and had a plan in place before starting "sleep training" for Gus. We will all be just fine, but it would have made the process so much less painful all around. Everyone tells you "oh, you are smart - you'll just figure it out". That's fine on most topics, but I did not find the sleep topic to be intuitive at ALL. For example, wouldn't you think a child might sleep better if they are more exhausted? Absolutely not. Would it occur to you that if they always slept great wherever they were when they were young that they'd suddenly need specific logistics to sleep well? Not to me. And would you think you could simply move their eating from the night to the day? Didn't occur to me...

After winging it, backtracking, reading books, implementing a real plan, backtracking due to travel and then getting really consistent, Gus is a champion sleeper. He's been on a schedule for about a month where he goes to bed at 7 PM, gets a "dream feed" around 11 PM and wakes up at 7 AM. He absolutely LOVES to sleep, just like mama and daddy... yeah!

You, too, can be like an Apple store employee!

2011-11-15T10:10:00.000-07:00

(No, I'm not getting commission from Square or Apple to write this! But I will shamelessly plug Reboot)

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things about the Apple store is that any employee can check you out from any place in the store, using their iPhone to swipe your credit card and then emailing you a receipt. This little efficiency makes me happy every time I shop there and I'm ecstatic every time another store implements this improvement.

And now I can do the same! I'm going to an event tonight where we are going to have Reboot books on hand and I need a way to sell them immediately versus direct these eager buyers to Amazon.

Claudia, our uber resourceful back office manager, handed me a teeny contraption to attach to my iPhone to allow me to do this. Here's all I had to do:
1. Download the Square App
2. Login using the account Claudia set up
3. Insert the teeny contraption in my phone
4. Enter the amount of the transaction
5. Swipe my credit card*
6. Sign my name with my finger
7. Enter my phone or email for a receipt

* If you don't want to use the reader, you can just enter the card number, exp date, CSV and zip.

This is so fun, I have to stop myself from sending test transactions through at a minimum $1/ pop. The cost to Thought Ensemble per transaction is 2.5%, totally worth it! Other than that, it is free.

I love technology...

Is this really the "threat" IT organizations should focus on?

2011-11-10T12:30:00.002-07:00

Alright, I'm all spun up this morning. I was perusing CIO.com and this article's title just set me off: "The Threat Cloud Computing Providers Pose to Corporate IT". I've seen tons of articles like this over the last couple of years and I just can't contain myself any longer. I'm going to rant.

[start rant]

In Reboot, we talk about "Two Headed Goliath" organizations. These are big and/or old and/or slow businesses who have literally grown a separate head: their IT organization. "IT" runs so separately from "the business" that it is like the organization has two heads. The IT head is focused on serving the business, running themselves like a business, and competing with external service providers (not using technology to compete as an enterprise). These organizations think about things like cloud computing as a "threat" or "competition", focused on maintaining themselves as an organization.

I bet if we counted all the articles, we'd find as many or more articles like this that talk about technology advances as a threat to IT rather than as a benefit to the overall business. The underlying message may be the same (cloud computing or whatever other technology advance is beneficial to the business as a whole), but the angle is all wrong.

I guess IT people find it more interesting to discuss how IT organizations deal with their "competition", rather than how their businesses use technology to compete.

I just think it is totally backwards. IT people and IT organizations must shift their thinking ... their internal focus is the real threat.

[end rant]

Social networking within company walls is gaining steam

2011-11-03T20:56:00.000-06:00

Ever since I became a regular Facebook user (about four years ago now), I have seen the potential for FB-like social networking tools to be used within corporate walls to connect knowledge workers. One of my first blogs after we started Thought Ensemble was on this topic.

These tools seem particularly compelling for very large organizations that need to find ways for their workers to find and connect with each other across traditional boundaries. And that's what this ComputerWorld article points out - clearly companies are finally seeing that value proposition.

I'm wondering at what point critical mass is reached and a case is made to move conversations from email to a social networking tool... like say, Yammer. We send a lot of topics around in email at Thought Ensemble when we want group feedback and I'm curious to see if I can get our crew to pilot Yammer or something similar. Now that we are seven people, the email, while very helpful, is growing exponentially. I know people don't want to use yet another tool, but email just isn't feeling like the right solution for many to many communication anymore. I'll keep you posted.

On a separate note, I was amused that this article referenced the "Top 20 Social Networking Tools" and the date on the analysis was 2008. Don't you think the list might have changed a little since then? Yes, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube made the cut but there were a few others notably missing. But that's another story. My, how fast things change these days.

Diaries of a working mom chapter 5: Somethings gotta give

2011-10-21T22:41:00.001-06:00

Something’s gotta give!

Warning, this is likely going to be a long, rambling post. Bear with me, I’m sleep deprived and my child has been crying for the last 79 minutes. If you’d like to know what gave, just skip to the bottom…

It has been a rough week of parenthood.

As you probably gathered from previous blogs, little Gus has had the run of the Jasper home for his first four months. We fed him when he wanted to be fed, let him sleep when (and where) he wanted to sleep, and generally followed his cues all around. He has been a very happy kid and has grown amazingly fast.

Part of what worked for us early on was “co-sleeping”, which basically means Gus slept mostly in our bed. Because he was entirely breastfed and liked to eat every couple hours, this worked great because I barely woke up to feed him and his dad rarely had to get up either. I liked bonding with him in this way, especially since I was working so much during the day.

But we knew we weren’t a family where we wanted him in our bed for years and knew from advice and intuition that we had a bit of a window when he was a few months old to make a transition from our bed to his crib. So a few weeks ago we started working on this. We made progress getting him started most nights in his crib but I always caved on the second or third feeding when I was just too tired to stay up and feed him in his room.

Monday was the day we finally decided to get serious. We’d heard there might be some crying involved and our doctor had advised us that we should space out and increase his feedings during the day, but that was about all we knew.

Ah, you parents are probably shaking your heads knowingly at this point.

Situation: No Sleep

It has been a rough week and I feel like a walking zombie, too tired to even sleep. Monday night he cried for five hours on and off as we tried to soothe him to no avail. Tuesday morning I was delirious and Eric had an ulcer. Too tired to read a book or sift through internet advice, I asked my Facebook friends what to do and received a ton of advice, consolation and even a neighbor bringing food to help me make it through. I’m not really sure what happened after that. The last four days have been a blur. Somehow I’ve made it through the days relatively well, but Eric and I have spent every spare moment of the evening devouring sleep training books such as ‘Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child”, “The Sleep Whisperer” and “The Sleep Easy Solution”.

Note: if you have a child under four months or are expecting one, read one or more of these books earlier than after you start trying to implement their suggestions.

But the nights, oh the nights. Even the nights when he hasn’t cried a ton have been rough. Gus loves to eat and often. So just as I finally nod off, I’m up again, feeding him. I have fallen asleep while in the chair feeding him (big no-no!) and on the floor in his nursery while waiting for him to fall asleep. I have spent hours laying sleepless, reacting to every little noise and wanting to make sure I wake when he does, and wondering if I’ve done everything I can to prevent SIDS.

Complication: This Little Piggy…

And there’s a complication. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been barely keeping up with Gus’s consistent and increasing intake of milk (the doc even thinks he’s eating a lot, but he’s happy with his growth, so its all good). Whenever I’ve traveled, I’ve barely made it back in time to replenish the stock and our freezer reserves have been depleted. Over the last couple weeks, we’ve even had to dip into the reserves while in town.

Last week, at our four-month checkup, the doc suggested we consider adding in a little formula. He said this was very common at around four months to need a little extra, and while I could try to increase my breast milk production, that might reinforce habits that would prevent his sleeping and might not work anyway. But my breastfeeding friends and professionals encouraged me to keep at it. The suggested I just keep breastfeeding him whenever possible, pump all the time when I wasn’t, stop stressing, keep sleeping, drink tea, eat oats, hydrate, sleep, don’t stress (wait I already said that) etc, etc etc.

Well all this is heavily related to the sleep challenges. Even if you don’t believe formula is more filling and helps infants sleep longer, there are many other reasons breastfeeding is disruptive to your sleep. You have to either feed the kid or pump to keep the milk flow going. And when you are so short on milk, as I’ve been, you need to breastfeed every chance you get to keep the hormones going. Meanwhile, lack of sleep and stress hurts the breast milk supply.

No Perfect Solution

So I’ve been reading books, comparing notes with my husband, talking to people and mostly just “introverting” to figure out what to do. This equation is a little more complex with the sleeping and breastfeeding challenges all wrapped together. The breastfeeding advocates I’ve talked with mostly encourage going back to co-sleeping. Our doctor is pretty middle of the road and he said I could try to get my milk production up, but that would be enforcing the exact habits I’m trying to break and since it may not work anyway, I may be better just moving to formula. So I feel like I’m presented with a decision.

OK, little woo-woo side topic on decision versus choice. You Landmark Education graduates will resonate with this. I don’t ever remember being so wrapped up in “decision” as I have been this week. The root of the word “decision” is “cide”, which means “to kill off”. And the problem with feeling like you are forced to make a decision is that you are caught in having to give something up – like you are making a sacrifice. Better is to be in a place where you are making a choice, where you evaluate all of the information and choose from a place of free will. OK, enough woo-woo. Back to the “decision” I’ve been wrapped up in all week.

Throughout the week, I’ve been evaluating solutions to our little sleep/feeding conundrum. And every potential solution feels like a sacrifice:

Quit my job. If I quit, I could sleep during the day and have the child attached to my boob the rest of the time. But let’s move on. Anyone who knows me knows I did not give this option any consideration. I love my job and I’m a better mom for it.

Stop traveling. Similar to #1, this would allow me more flexibility to breastfeed and not worry about milk reserves. But I have clients I want and need to visit, presentations related to the book, company trips, etc. This is a distantly realistic option but a huge sacrifice.
Wait. Stall. Maybe it will get better. This is what I’ve been doing and it isn’t working. Every morning I do the countdown to the next trip and count the ounces in the freezer. I track every ounce he eats and every ounce I pump. I’m usually one ounce ahead, but the math doesn’t work. I’d need to be gaining on him at about five ounces a day to make up reserves in time to make my next scheduled trip. So this option just seems delusional. And it just continues to stress me out every day.

Invite Gus back into the bed. This would allow me to sleep better in the short term and arguably help with milk production. Eric and I actually seriously talked about this middle of this week –he was supportive if I wanted to do it. But we agreed this wasn’t what we wanted long term (or even short term) and we were just kicking the can down the path. Plus, this “solution” would make it way harder on Eric when I traveled.
Add some formula into the mix. The advantage here is that Eric could feed him once at night so that we could alternate feedings. And I wouldn’t be spending as much time obsessively strapped to the breast pump. The disadvantage? I don’t know. I really wanted to breastfeed him fully till six months. There’s the risk of him not liking it, or not digesting it well. But mostly I just had an emotional reaction to making this transition.

I have gone back and forth on this all week, but you can probably guess I went with #5. My dear husband was there a week ago, but he waited patiently for me to get comfortable with it myself. I had to analyze every alternative and more importantly, transition to a place of choice where I didn’t feel like I was making such a sacrifice. After consideration, I believe I’ll be a better mom if I can take a little stress out of the mix.

So , gasp, we fed Gus a little formula tonight, after weeks of talking about it. I swear it took me 30 minutes to get the carton opened and mix up the stuff. He sucked it down like it was the best thing since breastmilk …

Since I started writing this blog, he cried a lot and finally went to sleep. And now it is time for mommy to get some rest. More soon…

The "do this later" button

2011-10-18T11:48:00.000-06:00

You know the Staples "Easy" button? I have a new one. It is the "Do this later" button. I think about this every time I log into my Google account and it tells me "An Update to your account is required". Something about personal and work accounts overlapping. A colleague did this update and now his blog is hosed, so I'm avoiding it. Every day, sometimes several times a day, I press the 'Do this later" button.

And now the thinking has moved beyond my Google account as I push the button consciously and subconsciously all day long. I pressed the "do this later" button several times on renewing my car registration... and then last week I got a $75 ticket for its expiration. And after waiting in line and paying my fine, changing my name was going to take too long so I pressed the "do this later" button again. My husband and I have been pressing the "do this later" button every night when we let our 4-month old back into our bed. Let's just say today after 5 hours of crying I'm feeling the pain - but I have no interest in continuing to push the button because it is time to change our habits. What else... I've been telling friends for months I'll be back soon for social time. And there's a long list of other items that grows every day, some of which is tracked in a "Do this later" Evernote memo, and some of which has just been lost in the black hole.

Now, historically I haven't been too much of a do this later kind of girl. I might not do something right now, but I generally put it on my list and get to it pretty quickly. I'm all about playing "whack a mole" and knocking all these annoying little things off. So this thinking is a little new for me. In fact, I had a little outburst in my kitchen last week when my business partner and my husband were encouraging this behavior and I told them they should just go start the "Do this later" club.

But I got to thinking about it and here's the thing: If you don't do a little bit of "Do this later" your personal productivity will be hurt worse than if you do it all the time. Do you know people who always must stop to deal with every little Google account update type message before they move on to what they are really trying to do? These people are not the most efficient around. Yes, a few things might slip through the cracks and even come back to bite you, but a little bit of pushing things off is necessary for high productivity!

I've now adopted the "Do this later" vernacular with some of my coworkers - signaling that we do think we should do it but it isn't important or urgent enough to set a date yet. It helps us double check our thinking that we don't have to do something immediately but we do think we'll do it at some point in the future...

Laptop conversations at the carwash

2011-10-12T17:16:00.000-06:00

I'm at the car wash and I just whipped out my MacBook Air to work on a presentation. A guy carrying his new iPad approached me and asked me about it. "Is that the new one?" "Do you love it?" And we got into a whole conversation about how great the flash memory is and how much faster it is than our iMac desktops. He's got an old Air, as well as a MacBook Pro and he needs to get another laptop. He thinks he's going to go buy it today.

Now what's interesting about this is that I'd guess he's approaching 80 years old. I've heard business execs recently discounting their older customers' interest in using newer technologies. Really? I see examples out in the real world all the time that prove they may be a great demographic to target with technology...

Diaries of a working mom chapter 4: Traveling (without baby)

2011-10-04T19:28:00.003-06:00

One of my close friends and colleagues gave me a bottle of wine during my pregnancy and told me to save it to celebrate the completion of my first work trip. I didn’t realize what an “accomplishment” that would be! (Thank you, K, I enjoyed the wine this weekend)

I’m now in the middle of my second trip without the baby in two weeks. I am currently sitting in the back of a very small plane, surrounded by three little boys (five, three and two years of age). Their dad and nanny are trying to keep them in their seats to no avail. The boys are alternating between singing (screaming) “Jesus Loves Me” and playing some kind of hitting each other game between the seat. The five year old is next to me, the three year old is behind me with his dad and the two year old is across the aisle pinned down by the nanny and screaming for his dad.

This inspired me to write the next of my mommy diaries… what it is like to travel without my boys. Last week I was stressed for several days before leaving Gus and Eric, almost as stressed as I was about bringing them with me! As I prepared for a three day/ two night trip away, I wondered and worried … Would I go crazy being away from home? Would the boys get any sleep? What would happen if we fed Gus formula? And here… my preliminary answers:

Question: Would this ruin my whole plan to breastfeed Gus?
Answer: No, at least not yet!

It took some preparation, for sure. Part of why I didn’t travel without him earlier was that I didn’t have enough of a stock in the freezer. I had to build that up for weeks. The next challenge was carting all of the paraphernalia, including a breast pump the size of a small carryon, all of the accessories and then about a gallon of milk on the return flight. Lucky for me, I’d long ago mastered the art of traveling so light that by just ditching my workout gear, I was able to pack it all in. I was preparing for a big run in with TSA, but they didn’t even scan the breast milk, all sixty plus ounces of it. It was frozen in little baggies and I pulled it out separately for them. They did, however, rescan the pump.

I called Eric on the way home from the airport and he told me to hurry home, because we had three ounces left! And I made it back to restock the freezer just in time, with about 10 oz less than I’d left. I had a La Leche leader scare the crap out of me that any nights away from Gus could be devastating to my milk supply but so far it seems to be okay… although I’m not quite ready to risk more extended travel just yet. Not only do I not have enough milk stored to last more than a couple days, I also still am a little paranoid about how production can slow down without really breastfeeding.

Question: Would my boys make it without me?
Answer: Of course!

Gus seemed pretty oblivious to the whole thing, despite his parents’ increasing nervousness as the day approached. Until about a week before I left, Gus had been sleeping short, unpredictable stints both day and night, usually with me, either in the bed or on the Boppy pillow in my lap in my office. In preparation for the trip, our nanny suggested we start fully bottle-feeding him during the day and Eric encouraged me to try to get Gus to sleep in his own bed at night. Gus adjusted to the bottle very well through the day, but I was still caving when he was fussy and letting him into our bed towards the end of the night. As the trip approached, he was sleeping in the bed less and less but I encouraged Eric when I left just to let him sleep there if it helped. But Eric was determined! And he claimed two full night victories … and now has reclaimed our bed. I guess that’s what I get for leaving town. So yes, they did great, although Eric was pretty wiped out when I returned after getting up and doing the bottle rigmarole 2-3 times both nights.

Question: Would it be easier to travel with or without him?
Answer: It depends…

“Easier” is a more complex equation now.

For me, I’d say it was a wash. Yes, I had more freedom. The trip flew by because in typical Thought Ensemble form, we planned every minute of the trip to be fully productive, primarily in meetings. But I didn’t sleep any better since I still had to get up and pump, which is much less fun than feeding Gus. And of course I missed my boys.

For Gus, while I’d like to say he missed me terribly, he seems pretty satisfied with any of his three primary care givers. Now that he’s getting on a schedule, it is arguably better for him to be at home.

But for Eric… well, he clearly took the brunt of the pain. Not only did he have to wake up a couple times each night and deal with heating a bottle, he had to take care of Gus by himself before and after work. Usually we pass him back and forth quite a bit to give each other breaks.

So if I look at the full utilitarian view it might be even, but if I throw finances in the mix, it clearly sways it back towards leaving the boys at home. Sorry, honey!

We talked about it this weekend and while it is totally doable, we'd both prefer I minimize travel, at least until little Gus is sleeping through the night. Once he is, life will get a lot easier all around…

Neuroscience suggests we really do love our iPhones

2011-10-03T07:33:00.000-06:00

After all my Apple loving in my blog last week, my mom sent me this article. Neuroscience suggests that Apple's smartphone activates the part of the brain associated with feelings of love and compassion.

No, I'm not planning to buy the iPhone 5. Yet.

A new (tangible) asset... customer information!

2011-09-30T19:11:00.000-06:00

I just got an email message from the CEO of Barnes and Noble. Many of you probably got it too. Apparently, he bought my information from Borders during the auction of the assets in their recent bankruptcy!

The email was very nice; he explained what had happened and told me I had 15 days to opt out of getting all my information transferred. I probably won't. I liked what Borders sent me and I'll give B&N a chance...

But I was intrigued... how much was I worth to them? A quick search said B&N paid $14M for this customer information! I clearly haven't been paying attention to the news this week. I can't decide if I feel cheap or not. But I do think it is interesting that customer information is clearly a marketable asset now. And that the US courts think it is a marketable asset.

I wonder how this ties into the business cases people are writing for CRM strategies?

An inspiring article

2011-09-30T16:23:00.000-06:00

To continue my apple worshiping trend this week, here's a great blurb, "The Top 10 Lessons Steve Jobs Can Teach Us". A friend/colleague sent this to me after a deep conversation we had discussing the meaning of it all... and so maybe because I was in that mode already, a few of the Steve Jobs-isms really resonated. Maybe only 6-7 of these are worth top 10 status, but it is worth a read.

Speeding through Monday with my new MacBook Air

2011-09-26T16:46:00.003-06:00

It will take me longer to write this blog than it just took me to set up my new MacBook Air. Remember those days not too long ago when you dreaded getting a new computer because you had to set aside an entire day to migrate everything over and get it all set up? NO MORE!

The battery exploded off the back of my 3 year old MacBook Pro and I took that as a sign that it was finally time to replace the thing - see picture. But I've been a little busy the last couple weeks and have avoided it till the last possible moment.

Today my hand was forced. I'm taking off on another work trip tomorrow and I really need to work on some PowerPoint while gone. The iPad isn't going to cut it. So I took a little trip over to the Apple store just 2 hours ago. I am already back home and fully functional. And I would have saved 20 minutes if I hadn't tried to argue about our business discount.

Last time I bought a computer (my iMac), I just moved everything over from my MacBook Pro - files, applications, settings, everything. It was very easy, but this time around, I didn't want to clutter my new little pristine machine with all my photos, files and extra applications from the Desktop, so I decided to start from scratch. I figured this would take a few hours, but I had to do it, so off I went...

After a few minutes of consulting with the sales representative, I settled on the lowest end MacBook Air 13-inch ($1199). Since my primary need over the next few days was going to be PowerPoint, I brought my Office install disk with me to make sure it would allow me to install it on another machine. They plugged me into an external hard drive and it installed no problem. And I was out of there!

When I got home, I seriously just spent 15 minutes finalizing the setup. I downloaded Dropbox and logged into my account. Hazaa... I now have all my documents. I opened Mail and connected to my Thought Ensemble email. I opened iCal and connected to my MobileMe calendar. I opened MobileMe preferences and connected to my contacts. I downloaded Firefox and logged into Facebook, downloaded Skype and logged in. Those 5 simple steps and I now have 98% of what I need.

And this computer is FAST! I'm loving this flash memory. It boots up at unbelievable speed and saves/opens downloaded documents super fast. It feels faster than my practically new iMac, even though I've got a much slower processor on here.

Oh happy day.

Diaries of a working mom Chapter 3: Traveling (with baby)

2011-09-22T12:33:00.003-06:00

"You did what?"

Yes, I heard that a few times. This was not the plan. When I agreed with my demanding boss to come back to work in six weeks, our agreement was that I wouldn't travel for a while and I'd work out of the house part time. The first thing that went out the window was any semblance of part time, closely followed by a need to get on the road for a couple of short trips. When a new prospect called me (I mean "my boss") to ask us to do a really interesting IT strategy gig that had to be started very quickly to hit some deadlines... I caved. The client was willing to be flexible on how we did the travel if I'd come do the gig, so I started brainstorming on how I could work this out. I realized that taking Gus with me would be the easiest answer.

So Gus and I hit the road when he was just over two months old, along with our nanny, who hadn't been on a plane in 25 years. I'm not going to lie, I was very nervous, which is funny because I am a seasoned traveler who finds airports way more comfortable than local highways. As much as I get lost everywhere else, I navigate airports with some kind of sixth sense of direction. I can do it while carrying on a conversation, texting and even reviewing a presentation. I fancy myself some kind of airport super hero.

That said, all the complications and unknowns of traveling with a kid seriously stressed me out. I've whizzed through that "Expert Traveler" line over the years and caught glimpses of people in the "Family Travel Line" like they were some kind of alien species. But I knew I'd figure it out. I got some good advice from some other traveling moms, and I just dove in, knowing I'd figure it out one way or another!

On the first trip, we got there over two hours early (I used to leave my house an hour before the flight). We paid complete attention while going through security, even asking questions of the security officers to make sure we were doing things right. We apologized to the people behind us when we were slow.

On the way back on that same trip, I was feeling a bit more comfortable. I even decided to get a coffee and try to carry that amidst all my other stuff (more on that later). And now, after 4 trips and 8 flights in 3 weeks, Gus has traveled to his first 5 states and I'm feeling like I deserve back in the "Expert Traveler" line at the airport! I can no longer secure my coveted exit row seat since he's sitting on my lap, but he's so cute we got upgraded to first class - even better!

Anyway, it is TOTALLY doable. Here's what I've learned along the way about traveling with an infant. I'm sure by the time he's a few months older this will all change, but here's what I know for now. I would love the tips of other traveling moms and dads too!

1. Bring a stroller, infant seat + base, and gate check cover. You can gate check these things for free in addition to your normal two carry-ons. I took my Snap-N-Go stroller because it is so compact for the rental car. I like gate checking these versus fully checking them because they make for an excellent luggage carrier and it provides a place for the baby to sleep if you want to put him down in the airport. Now, you do have to put all this through the scanner (no one told me that), so make sure you can deconstruct the stroller quickly. Even though I load it up with my stuff now, I can pull the bags right off, pull the carseat off and flip it upside down and then fold up the stroller faster than the belt gave me time to load everything on. Right before boarding, I cover the carseat and base with a "gate check cover", which is just a cheapy plastic bag that protects the car seat from getting beat up and germy.

2. Wear the baby in a carrier (Baby Bjorn, Lillebaby, whatever). DIA actually lets you walk through the scanners wearing the baby in the carrier and then only asks to swipe your hands to check for explosives. Other airports want to do a full pat down, but I don't mind it, even though it can be pretty intrusive. I found this easier than keeping Gus in the car seat and having to remove him to put the car seat through the scanner. Plus, if you have the kid in the car seat, it isn't stable enough to put the carseat base in between the carseat and stroller, so you have to carry the base, which is surprisingly heavy.

3. Be prepared to scan breast milk. TSA is intentionally vague about how much breast milk you can carry, but so far I haven't had any problems. I brought 20+ oz with me on the two work trips and it wasn't a problem (I may have an update after my next trip, as I'll be toting back 2-3 days worth and I won't have a baby with me). My best advice here is to tell the TSA people up front what it is so they can easily do their little scan. They unscrew each bottle and wave a piece of paper over the top. Oh, and you may not want to use a fancy Dr. Brown's bottle with the contraption that goes into the bottle because then they drip it around and your best girlfriend might get completely grossed out when just a little bit spills on her.

4. You might consider checking luggage - it is at least now debatable. Keep in mind, one of my major breakups with a previous boyfriend started with a fight about him wanting to check luggage. But with the extra stuff you have to bring for the baby... and the stuff you are lugging through the airport ... you may want to check a bag. I think I'd check a bag if I'm by myself and carry on if I'm traveling with someone else. I did two of my four trips in carry on but I had my husband or my girlfriend pack some of the stuff we needed. It is possible to carry it all, if you have a good stroller, you just push it with one hand and pull the suitcase with the other (baby in carrier of course).

5. Take someone with you the first couple times! Even though our nanny hadn't traveled in 25 years, having her with me getting through the airport was huge. She could help schlep all our stuff and when I had to go do a diaper change, she could watch the stuff. I'm totally comfortable traveling alone with Gus now, but I was very happy to have someone with me the first couple times while I figured it out.

6. Not having a schedule helps. We are just now starting to get Gus on an... ahem, routine. On those first few trips, the feeding him on demand and letting him sleep when he wanted was seriously helpful. I think this will be harder once he gets into a routine, because even if you try to schedule around it, but you never know what the airline delays will throw at you! This is why traveling with them very young is easier. I did try to feed him as we were taking off because I'd heard the sucking helps with ear problems and because it helped him go to sleep.

7. Don't get coffee. Yeah, I used to always get a coffee before I got on the plane. I'd mastered the art of balancing it while talking on the phone while loading my luggage up top. But even I admit it is just too much with the baby. I thought the cell phone might be too, but I was texting away during our last maneuver through DIA....

IT Personalities

2011-09-22T11:20:00.000-06:00

Here's a fun little article called "7 IT Superheroes -- and their fatal flaws". Its worth a read by any CIO while thinking about your team ... and their strengths and corresponding weaknesses.

Now on a sort of related note, if you are an IT person, go take this quiz to find out your IT personality type. While I didn't necessarily like the results, I did find the quiz to be (GOL) giggle out loud funny. My results classified me as "The Shadow", likely to move into "The Empty Suit" under pressure. But my MBTI type of INTJ would make me the "Ubergeek":

"the Übergeek would be classified INTJ -- an introverted, intuitive-thinking, and judging person/ If the Übergeek absolutely must communicate with beings of inferior intelligence (i.e., you), she would rather do it by e-mail. But if she can avoid all human contact, that's OK, too."

I don't exactly identify with that, but I could see how someone with a more extreme version of my personality type, especially on the introversion scale, just might!

Ramblings on technology

2011-09-15T09:41:00.002-06:00

I love whiteboards. Love them, love them, love them. I love looking at the possibilities of a blank one. I love looking at thoughts scribbled all over one and figuring out what to do with it. I love the smell of markers. Sometimes a little too much. Please make me stop if you catch me smelling them during a workshop. Kidding! Kind of.

Anyway... So one of my clients has one of these very fancy electronic whiteboards. I'd seen these for years and had even written on them, but didn't think much of them. After using one for a couple workshops last week, I know what I want for Christmas. I love how you can move from one screen to another with the press of a button... its like an "etch a sketch" but you can go back to your previous four pictures! And I love that you can print out as many copies as you want. It's kind of ridiculous, but I think I want one of these for my home office.

But here's the catch. I had this really detailed grid that I printed from the whiteboard in the workshop last week. When I got back home, I wanted to send it off to someone to help me make a slide out of it. My dang scanner was kaput since it was out of printer ink (anyone have any idea why the thing can't scan without ink?) and I hadn't thought to save the file from the whiteboard to a USB. So... what next. Ah, the iPhone!

I took a pic of the iPhone and sent it off to him. The quality of this picture was unbelievable. I should have known this, I use iPhones to take pictures straight from the whiteboard all the time. Why not a printout of the whiteboard to a picture of the printout! You could probably throw in a scan and fax and still be able to see all the details. A bit of sadness struck me as the whiteboard lost a little allure.

Yesterday, I was on the phone with one of my clients and he wanted to send me a printed document that he'd marked all over. He went out to get his assistant to scan it and she wasn't there... so I said "you've got an iPhone, right"? Just send me a picture. And it came through practically as clear as the original.

So I have to admit, I'm rethinking what I want for Christmas. As much as I really love that whiteboard (right now, I'd pick it over a new Audi)... I should probably just get whatever latest iPhone is out. Sigh. They win again...

Age Bias in IT

2011-09-06T12:29:00.001-06:00

This article "Age Bias in IT" is an interesting look at the challenges facing older workers in IT. Many of these challenges ring true - I believe there is an age bias in IT, whether or not it is warranted.

There's a reason this is a bigger problem in IT than in other business functions and it has to do with what's happening to the technology that the older workers support. We often see the impacts as part of our IT strategic planning efforts. An IT strategy usually involves some analysis of direction of the various business applications and the organization (people) supporting those applications. We are often asked to help figure out what to do with the older, "legacy" systems.

Of course there is a strong link between technology decisions and organizational decisions. Often times it is the older demographic supporting these so called "legacy" systems. Their skills are rare, which is one of the things that puts the systems at risk. Because the systems are risky, the workers are at risk. The best answer is usually to shut down these old systems, or as a second option, minimize changes and move the support to a cheaper, usually offshore, location. So those workers are impacted and if they aren't up to date in newer technologies, they may be replaced with other (usually younger) workers who are.

To minimize their risk, older workers in IT must overcome several perceptions - this is part of what the article discusses. One perception is that they are set in their ways - less likely to take coaching or be willing to try new things. They need to take leadership in helping the organization move from an outdated legacy system on to a newer platform. Another perception is that they aren't as talented from a technical perspective, since they didn't grow up with technology like the young 20 somethings. So they need to make an extra effort to get retooled on the latest technologies.

I have seen huge exceptions to these general perceptions, and I've also seen the incredible amount of business knowledge some of these 50 and 60 somethings bring to the table. Older workers may have the maturity to have better people skills and the experience to have stronger business domain skills. If they really keep up with technology and business trends, they can be huge change agents within their organizations.

Diaries of a working mom Chapter 2: Breastfeeding

2011-08-31T20:37:00.002-06:00

(warning: this is a PG-13 blog)

Before I dive into this sometimes controversial topic, please let me start by saying I have no judgment about how other parents choose to feed their kids. Children and moms turn out wonderfully in many combinations of breast feeding and formula feeding. This is an emotional and perhaps uncomfortable topic for some people, so I hope you don't take issue with me writing about this in what's usually an IT strategy blog. I just feel it is an important issue to cover if I'm going to talk about challenges for working moms. Companies need to realize how important it is to some moms to be able to breastfeed their kids... and what they can do to make that possible.

My choice was to breastfeed Gus, assuming everything worked. My initial goal was to breastfeed him for 6 months. There are a whole slew of benefits of breastfeeding - it is healthy for the kid, is healthy for the mom, promotes bonding, is cheaper and (arguably) convenient. That said, it puts a lot on the mom, even when there are other caregivers around to help. I knew coming into this that it would be challenging, both physically and logistically. But I figured I had enough control over my schedule and enough experience juggling logistics that I should be able to figure it out.

To start, Gus was three and a half weeks early, which made breastfeeding a bit more challenging from the beginning. Early babies want to sleep much more than eat ... and they don't have "sucking power" to bring in milk. So the first few weeks were a challenge trying to get him to eat ... and then pumping extra breast milk after every feed. It was a full time job. Anyone who thinks maternity leave is a vacation is crazy! Poor Eric quickly learned that asking me what I did all day was not a good way to start a conversation.

Then Gus hit about two weeks old and all he did was eat. He nursed every couple hours, sometimes for an hour at a time. It truly was a full time job feeding him. I tried to pump extra breast milk whenever I could, but he gobbled that up too. We left him with my aunt for an evening when he was just over a month old and he went through our entire stash of reserves - almost 20 oz of milk, what most kids are supposed to drink in a day at that age. I didn't know how I'd ever be able to go back to work. I couldn't even get a day ahead in the milk reserves!

But business was booming and I wanted to get back after about six weeks, so thank goodness I was able to get back to work from home. I intended to go back part time, but we were way too busy for that to work. What I was able to do was schedule breaks during the day to feed him or pump. I was running a pretty full meeting schedule, but most all of the meetings were phone or video conference rather than in person. Having the opportunity to feed him once or twice a day during the day was a life saver. What a lot of people don't realize is how important it is to actually keep feeding kids to keep milk production up and build milk supply. Even the best pumps can't replicate the hormonal aspects of real breastfeeding. And the body produces the amount of milk the kid needs - it is very hard to replicate this artificially, especially in the early months.

Gus still isn't on a schedule: I'm following his lead on when he wants to eat. There are pros and cons of this, but from what I've learned, for the first few months I wanted to follow his cues and let him eat whenever he wanted, however much he wanted. So my calendar doesn't say "feed Gus". What I do every day is just print a copy of my calendar and put it next to the nanny log, and mark it for the times I'm "interruptible". She works really well with me to ask if I'm going to want to feed him or if she should prepare a bottle. And I just check in with her to see if he wants to eat before I pump.

Gus finally slowed down on his eating at about nine weeks, at which point he'd already doubled his weight. I was just starting to get a little bit of milk in the freezer, when another complication came along. I said I wouldn't travel for business until he was at least three months old (Just like I said I was going to go back to work part time, huh?), but before I was even done with maternity leave, a client called with an IT strategy opportunity that was time sensitive and required on site work. I had the relationship with this client, and besides, the rest of the TE team was booked. I was freaked out to leave the little guy this soon, and a lot of that was about the breastfeeding. I didn't think I could get enough of a milk bank in the freezer in time to last him. I started obsessing about him starving. And what if I got delayed or couldn't get back for some reason? So I just took him with me. I was fortunate that our nanny was willing to travel and that our nanny share family was okay with me taking her for a few days. So off we went! It was an extremely busy schedule, but my client was very understanding and worked it to have a long lunch and a before dinner break so I could go back to the hotel to feed or pump.

So here we are, right at 12 weeks. I still can't imagine leaving him all day every day, and if I'd waited to go back to work until now, it would have been considered a pretty long maternity leave. I sure feel for all the moms who go back to full time jobs in an office, sometimes with a commute that means they are gone 10+ hours a day. As much as I've felt challenged by all this, I'm very grateful for my current set up.

What's next? I really don't know for sure! I'm just figuring this out a little at a time. Gus is coming on one more work trip with me and then I'll be traveling on my own after that. I'm going to keep spending as much time at home as possible while still doing everything we want to do to build our business through the fall. Its fun to have good things to balance in the whole work life integration equation!

Why kickoff meetings are important

2011-08-25T16:36:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year again, the busy season for strategy work. We've been starting a lot of projects lately and the topic of kickoff meetings recently came up among our team, specifically why they are so important.

Sometimes we are tempted to blow through kickoff meetings.... Many projects take so long to get started with all the internal approvals and external coordination that people are kind of over it before really getting started. Another "prep" meeting feels like a wasted step.

There's a lot of value in getting everyone involved in the project together to both understand and buy into the project approach, timeline, and their roles and responsibilities. These topics are arguably more important with part time team members, since they need to know how the project is going to fit in among all their other activities. If all team members are clear on this up front, projects move much faster. Spending the time kicking off more than pays back in speed of execution.

Even more valuable is the "why" discussion, and many kickoffs skip or skim this topic. Gaining a common understanding and buy in to the benefits of a project helps the team focus on the end game and make good decisions throughout. A good question to ask is "how will we know if we are successful in this project?" During the kickoff meeting of a strategy recently, the execs agreed they'd be successful if they had an integrated, realistic plan vs. a document that ended up on the shelf. We can use that as a checkpoint throughout to make sure we are getting maximum benefit from the project.

Diaries of a working mom: chapter 1

2011-08-23T22:48:00.000-06:00

I was telling business partner Jim some of my Gus stories last week and he said "you should blog on that!". At first I poo-pood the idea, but everyone HAS been asking me lots of questions about how I'm adjusting - it seems people are curious how someone previously known as a workaholic might be adjusting to life with some new priorities. And supporting working moms is a pretty big topic for organizations who want to figure out how to retain talent. So with that, I'll share a few thoughts on my life as a working mom interspersed with my other blog musings about IT and organizations.

To start, I've come to a few conclusions over the last few weeks since giving birth I thought I'd share...

1. Six weeks is a really short maternity leave! I admit it - I secretly thought maternity leave was just like an extended vacation and a chance to exercise off the extra pounds to fit back in work clothes. Yeah, no. Even if the doctor had cleared me for exercise before I went back to work, I wouldn't have felt up to it - and I worked out through most of my pregnancy! But forget the physical side of it - the big challenge was just figuring out how to be a mom. I found myself obsessing about whether or not we'd be ready in time... And we weren't. The six weeks absolutely flew by and I was not ready to leave the little guy when it was over.

2. Six weeks is a really long maternity leave. Jim and the rest of my colleagues were awesome, totally holding down the fort and keeping me out of pretty much everything business related... For almost six weeks. At about five and a half weeks I think we both broke down and started into more and more work related discussions. Even though i wasn't yet back to bigger client and company meetings, Jim really wanted my input and I wanted to be involved. No surprise, it is hard for a leader of a company to disengage. But what I found more interesting was the psychological effects of not working. This hit me one day about halfway through my leave when Jim called just to talk about mommy hood and I told him I was having a bad day, for no particular reason. He said he needed to fill me in on some work stuff sometime later in the week and I told him just to hit me with it. After about ten minutes of talking about work I was happy again. I felt more like myself. So even though it was hard to go back to work so quickly I was glad I did; I got back to being myself that much sooner.

3. Moms can be very productive. I'm a productivity junkie and I thought I was optimized, but I'll tell you, I'm even more productive now. Productivity is a combination of doing the right things (and not doing many other things) and doing them very efficiently. I've increased my ability to do both, just because I'm motivated. I know when 5 pm comes around I really want to be done, and I do everything I can to get done. Not only do I work faster, I question the value of practically everything I spend time on. I believe the mantra "if you want to get something done, find a busy person to do it" applies here. Moms can be very productive!

4. Flexibility of hours and location is a huge benefit. I have a sweet setup. I couldn't have planned it any better (well, I did kind of plan it). For the last month, I've been working at home with child care in the house. I have a nanny for four 10 hour days and then my hubbie stays home one day a week. And now we are sharing the nanny with our neighbors, so Gus has a playmate and we have another family to help. So I have coverage to take meetings early for my east coast clients and late for my west coast clients, and I also get to see Gus throughout the day. I am so grateful to be around and see him all day. It would have been much harder to go back so soon without that luxury. I've always loved working at home and now I love it more. And I love that my hours give me time to spend with Gus.

5. I'm still me. I had to throw this in because so many people got in my head about what was going to happen to me after I had kids. They told me how hard it would be and how I might not want to keep working. I wondered if I'd still be me! I was so worried about whether I'd lose my career ambitions, or even start resenting work, I worried about feeling guilty all the time. And none of that has happened. I called Jim soon after giving birth and said, "just to be clear, I'm still me. This mom thing is awesome, but I'm excited to come back and help with everything we are building,". Maybe I'm just Lisa 2.0 now, I have not once wished to be a stay at home mom... Even though I have more respect than ever for women who choose that job!

Ok, I've got a few topics coming soon... Including Gus's first work trip, breastfeeding challenges, mom networking and more. Stay tuned!!

Summer Lemonade Stand

2011-08-17T13:56:00.000-06:00

One of the many wonderful benefits of being in a neighborhood with a lot of kids is the fun of driving down the street and seeing a summer lemonade stand popped up on the corner. It has been so long since I've lived in a real neighborhood during the summer that seeing a lemonade stand yesterday just made my day! Of course I pulled over and bought a cup of lemonade and some cookies.

This particular stand was "manned" by three toe-headed little girls who were clearly determined to make friends with their customers and push their product as the best on the market. I struck up a conversation with these girls, asking them how their business was doing and what they were doing to promote it. At 6, 8 and 10 years of age, they didn't have too much to share on that front.

Then I explained to these little girls that my friend and I had just written a book about how companies should use technology and that we used a lemonade stand as an example of how even the simplest business can use technology to be more competitive. OK, I'll admit, this first marketing effort for our book got me three blank stares, but their mother was amused at least!

For the rest of you, just think about that for a second. Could your lemonade stand use a little technology? If you don't believe it, read the book... or just keep following this blog and I'll talk about it more.

Over the next few months, Jim and I are both going to be discussing topics from the book on our blogs so we hope you will join in on the conversation!

I'm back!

2011-07-28T10:11:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone... I'm back! Little "Gus" Jasper arrived on June 7th, over three weeks early, so I disappeared to the world of motherhood without getting out a notice on where I'd gone. Yes, a few things fell through the cracks with his early arrival but life goes on and the little guy sure keeps that all in perspective.

And after six wonderful weeks on hanging with the new guy, seeing many family members and friends, and moving into a new home, I'm back in the swing of work this week. The book is due out very soon, we have some great projects underway and everything is cranking right along! It is good to be back and I just wanted to say hello to everyone out there and let you know I'm blogging again.

Thanks to all of you who've sent your well wishes and asked about little Gus.
We ended up having to induce since I had pre-eclampsia, but he was still a healthy 6 pounds 6 oz. He's been eating all the time and packing on the pounds since then and he's doing great.

Attached is a picture of him in his first Thought Ensemble onesie... he's growing into it just in time to join in on the TE fun as I get back to work.

More on IT Strategy soon!

Online collaboration - is video the secret?

2011-06-02T12:23:00.000-06:00

I'm continually amazed at how much better video conferencing is than simple phone conferencing or web conferencing (i.e. looking at a document or virtual whiteboard while on the phone). We are big believers in using virtual collaboration at Thought Ensemble and more and more of our clients are getting into it as well. We've been using video for our internal TE meetings for over a year and it is a big part of how we stay connected every week. We are now hoping to work with more and more of our clients this way.

We had a cool experience this morning that I wanted to share. We ran a four hour, very interactive workshop with one of our clients, all over a web conferencing line, but with video. For those of you who have been through "RACI" workshops before you know how painful they can be but how incredibly useful they are for quickly assessing a company's organization and delivery model issues. For those of you not familiar with "RACI" it basically requires you to go through a long list of broad activities and assign them to groups within the organization, also capturing overlaps and gaps in the organization and its processes and tools.

Imagine doing this on the phone! While we are big into virtual meetings, we almost always do these types of workshops together in person, because they go at such a fast pace it is important for the facilitator to be able to monitor the room for when people aren't being heard or when we are losing people in the weeds.

But our client, a huge global organization that historically has traveled a ton, is trying to minimize travel. So we needed a new approach. Jim from TE was the lucky facilitator and we did a lot of prep with our core team to plan out how we were going to use various presentations and resources so people could easily follow along on a Web Ex. In our core team, we've been using the video on WebEx for all our calls and have found it really helpful, so we decided at the last minute to put all of us on video and invite the participants to do the same.

We had 9 people on this call in 8 different locations. Most were in home offices. Most all had video cameras on their computers, and turned them on!

The workshop went really well. We covered a ton of content in four hours and the interaction was extremely good. It felt so much more connected than a typical phone conference call, or even a typical non-video WebEx. I think we were all pretty surprised that we got through everything virtually, as we knew it was an aggressive agenda.

We all agreed video was key. I can't put my finger on it exactly. There's something about seeing all the little thumbnails of the people you are talking to and feeling like you are more "with" them than you are on the phone. The level of engagement is higher. Understanding of the content as well as people's meaning (even little things like humor) is so much better, almost like being in person. Not the same, but close.

Video alone could rocket us ahead in our ability to run meetings virtually. The capabilities have improved substantially, just in the last year, and will continue to improve as both the bandwidth of our home office connections and the capabilities of the web conferencing software continue to improve.

I can't wait to see what this is like in 2-3 years!

A unique approach to higher education funding

2011-05-31T17:44:00.000-06:00

This article caught my eye today. I'm always watching out for interesting new approaches to education and funding for higher education is one of many challenges we just have to figure out. There's arguably a student loan bubble as we've encouraged people to go to school who aren't in need of a higher degree based on their objectives. And more important, there are people who haven't been able to go to school who have the potential to do wonderful things.

This blog proposes a new strategy: we could invest in students based on their potential rather than just giving loans. Basically, students would apply for investment and then be responsible for returning a portion of their salary for some number of years following graduation. It would reduce the risk to students who can't get jobs or get lower paying jobs, and could also be more financially attractive to the "investor". At first, I was intrigued ...

There's a critical flaw in this logic, though. It assumes that the students who deserve the most investment are those who will make the most money in the early years of the career. Is that really what will make our society better? Or would we rather reward those who go teach, research, innovate or in other ways contribute back to society? Well, I have a strong opinion on this and it isn't aligned with this so called "investment" plan. So let's keep coming up with creative ideas!

The real challenge of bedrest

2011-05-31T17:14:00.000-06:00

What if your doctor told you that you had to stop multi-tasking?

A few weeks ago, at 33 weeks pregnant (that’s 7 weeks from full term), I ended up spending a couple days in the hospital because my doctors were worried about my high blood pressure. All the tests on both the baby and me came back fine, but they sent me home to the couch, on a sort of modified bedrest plan. Since then, they’ve warily and gradually let me add a little more activity here and there, especially as I bring them articles from their doctor magazines about bedrest not being proven to help the situation, although they still remind me at my twice weekly visits that I shouldn’t be doing anything drastic like “going shopping”.

I never thought bedrest would be that hard for me. I’ve been known to spend 10+ hours a day for days on end locked up in my home on my computer working. And there’s never a shortage of things to do on my computer … and that’s before I even add in things I usually don’t do like watch TV or movies.

But here’s the catch. Anyone who knows me knows I’m just as capable of working up my stress level from the couch as I am from the mall, no matter what the doctors think. So while the doctors did not specifically order me to stop multi-tasking, I’ve been on a mission to reduce my stress naturally in order to try to keep this baby inside a little longer. And one of my little projects has been to eliminate or at least drastically reduce multi-tasking. You know, flipping between email and presentations, texting people while on the phone with other people, filling out paperwork while on conference calls, the list goes on and on and on, and that’s just what I can do while resting on the couch.

I do know how to focus on a task. I’ve intentionally retrained myself on how to do that over the last few years after realizing that technology had me constantly switching from one thing to another for some 18 hours a day. For some interviews, meetings, coaching sessions, writing projects, etc, I intentionally exit my email and sometimes even disconnect my network connection. I have the discipline to do that for an hour or two at a time. But then it is back to the whack-a-mole game, which is more fun the more moles you can whack at once!

Going for days on end, trying not to multi-task is a whole different game. It requires a level of planning (like not stacking meetings so tight) and surrender (like being much picker about which work actually gets done) far beyond what I am used to. But it is a fascinating experiment. I’m finding more focus and enjoyment in some of the tasks I’m doing. And I’m losing tolerance for those I don’t want to do instead of putting up with them because I’m really just doing something else.

I’m not ready to say all multi-tasking is bad, not yet, as I do miss a little bit of the outcome as well as the process, but I have changed my perspective on it enough to say I’m going to avoid it more going forward.

Try it. Just for a day. You might be surprised at what you find...

New blog domain

2011-05-26T10:59:00.000-06:00

Yes, I'm the kind of girl that had the foresight to buy the blog domain as soon as I had an engagement ring, but it took me more a little time after getting married to figure out how to transfer over my blogger account and then get my old www.lisabreytspraak.com domain to forward. But the new domain is all set up now and I'm proud to say I didn't have IT support to do it. Please use www.lisabjasper.com going forward.

And now that I've got my marriage license and social security card it is time to get cracking on the name change across all my accounts. For you soon to be name switchers, I highly recommend MissNowMrs to facilitate the process for a very worth it $29.

B2C mobile is getting much more interesting

2011-05-26T10:53:00.000-06:00

I am not one of those iPhone/ iPad users who goes out to the app store looking for the latest and greatest new apps, even though I now they are added by the minute. Every once in a while I'll ask other big Apple users what their favorite apps are or go search for something specific I think the app store might have.

My stance may be changing, though. I've had enough recent success with a few B2C applications that now I'm wondering what else is out there and I'm sure much more open to the possibility that I could be missing out on something pretty cool. Here are the top three B2C apps:

American Airlines. This is so much faster and so much more convenient than any other way I can get information about my travel on my favorite airline. Plus, the mobile boarding pass is so convenient when you don't have access to a printer.
Chase. I know I wrote a blog recently about how my husband's community bank was going to win the business of our joint checking account ... but now I'm reconsidering! I can actually deposit checks from my phone! I've tried this and it works... this is game changing for me. I hate going to the bank - even to the ATM. Now if this thing could just spit out cash for me...
Amazon. My way of shopping has completely changed. No longer do I make lists of things I need to buy and go look for it online. When I think of something, I open the Amazon app and either scan the barcode or type in what I need. And in one click it is ordered and shows up in 2 days (with free shipping since I'm an Amazon prime member).

All three of these applications have totally changed the way I interact with each of these businesses, and have arguably changed my life. They've sure changed my habits on how I fly, bank and shop. And brand loyalty? For these three brands it is through the roof - I'm totally locked in.

I'm not sure what is next, but now my eyes are open. I'm waiting to see what other businesses out there have already or will come up with better ways of working with me. So when I see the "get our iPhone app" button on the website I no longer sigh about the clutter and now I wonder what I might find if I press it ...

I can't wait for what's next. If you are in a business serving consumers and aren't on top of your mobile strategy... I'd get on it!

Drive: a final word on compensation

2011-05-13T15:15:00.005-06:00

(this is part of on ongoing series on the book Drive, the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us)

Before I tie up this initial series on Drive, I want to make a few comments about compensation. I’ve been noodling on this for a few weeks and talking to colleagues about it too.

Before I dive into compensation specifically, I want to re-emphasize that I love everything Drive says about autonomy, mastery and purpose. Yes, I have a couple quarrels about some of the specifics as you can read in my blogs on each, but overall, I think Pink is dead on that these are critical motivators for knowledge workers. Getting these right is more probably important than getting the financial rewards right, once you get past paying people well, which is the point of Pink’s book.

With that, my first comment is around the realities of “paying people well”. Pink sure makes that sound simple. Realistically, until a business is pretty large and mature (and maybe even then), it can be very challenging to implement a salary structure that takes money off the table. In most start up businesses, there must be an element of compensation that is at risk, not to motivate people, but to manage the company’s financial risks. I’ve seen consulting firms fall in to the trap of raising salaries too fast and then having unprofitable cycles that force them to lay people off or make short term choices that aren’t for the best of the company. Especially at companies where their biggest expense is salaries, like services companies, high salaries just do not seem like a wise business choice early on. Pink doesn’t address this at all, but I suspect he must be thinking of more established companies when he makes this argument about getting money off the table.

My next comment is about whether money is a positive or negative motivator. Pink asserts that it is actually a negative motivator for most people, once basic needs are met. Again, in a large company, maybe that could be true. But in my experience I have seen a couple of big exceptions:

Measure-driven people. I’m not sure what to name this, but you know people like this – you may be a person like this – these are people who want a yardstick by which to measure their success. In Pink’s terminology, they want to know if they are approaching mastery. I’m one of these people, less so than earlier in my career, and I’ve known many (usually young) superstars who fit this mold as well. When it comes down to it, often one of the easiest ways to measure mastery is through financial measures. Consulting firms have widely varying compensation schemes from simple to elegant to grossly overly complex, but generally as you move up in your career, your compensation climbs. Perhaps the consultancies could get a lot more creative about coming up with other success measures, but the overall business’s success is measured around work sold and delivered, because that’s what drives growth and profit. So employees are naturally incented by their impact on these numbers and by default they are promoted and rewarded based on their influence on these numbers as well. This is true in tons of roles in big and small companies – sales people, P&L general managers, financial services advisors. It seems to me that separating how we measure success in an overall company from how we measure success in an individual is pretty unrealistic.

Sidenote: I’m a big believer in other measures than financial measures for any company (i.e. creating valuable products/ services, having happy customers and employees) and I would never want to work for a company that only emphasized financial results, but the fact is that that’s how our markets reward them so it remains pretty darn important.
Business owners/ entrepreneurs. I know plenty of people who love building businesses, even if they aren’t primarily motivated by money. For them, it is more about the innovation, or the game of figuring out how to compete and build a successful company. Several of my colleagues fit this mold and I’d put myself in this camp too. When we do well as a business we reap financial rewards as partners in the company, but does that mean we are directly motivated by the financial rewards? I’d argue not – since any of us could make more money in the short term in other companies. Again, the financial results are one way to measure mastery. When the company is successful, short term and long term, we feel like we are approaching mastery. There are also many other ways we get to measure mastery, like coming up with a new piece of intellectual capital or helping a client implement a strategy successfully.

Sidenote: As we were starting Thought Ensemble, I sat down with several very successful entrepreneurs to share our vision. I told them all about how we were going to go build the best intellectual capital … and write a book … and change the way consulting was done with our clients. I specifically said I didn’t want to pay any attention to revenues. All of them (and my business partner) set me straight. They emphasized that our ability to do everything else we need to do (get more clients, hire employees, invest internally) would be based on our success in driving financial results. A few years in I do acknowledge that my stance was a little naïve.

So this is getting a little long and I’m going to wrap up … while I love this book and the concepts it is built on, I am not on board with his stance on compensation. I think compensation can be a positive motivator and a direct measure of mastery, especially for certain types of people in certain types of companies.

Thoughts?

Drive's third key element: Purpose

2011-04-28T12:13:00.001-06:00

(this is part of on ongoing series on the book Drive, the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us)

The final element of “Drive” is purpose. Satisfaction and well-being require not only that people have goals but that they have the right goals. People who are working towards a purpose achieve more.

Over and over again, I have talked with people in technology organizations who are either excited about a system they’ve built that has really made a difference for the people who use it or who have had the opposite experience and are frustrated that they spent so much time working on something that was never rolled out. The difference in the job satisfaction of those people is clear.

So I agree: purpose is the critical third component here. Even if you were given complete autonomy to work they way you want and you got to operate in flow, working towards mastery, most of the time, it would eventually feel a little empty if there were no purpose.

Here’s where I think Drive breaks down. In this section, the book focuses almost entirely on organizations who are shifting their focus from “for profit” to “for benefit”. It is very inspirational and I love hearing the stories, but I disagree with any implication that companies can’t have a purpose if they are primarily in business for… well, business!

The success of open source alone seems enough proof that people don’t have to be doing something truly philanthropic to be fulfilled. I see it in companies too. Technologists are truly proud when they create an application that their users love because it simplifies their life or helps them make better decisions. And on the flip side, go back to the example of the technologist who works for a year on a project that is completed but never used. How much better would it have been for everyone involved to have stopped that project in its tracks halfway through? Companies look at the financial aspects of those mistakes but rarely consider the motivation aspects.

It’s the same thing in consulting. Thank goodness at Thought Ensemble we have the luxury of saying no to projects and clients where we don’t think we can make a difference. We also get to walk away from a project or a client when we don’t think we are helping any more. Already in 2011, I’ve told two clients that I’d be happy to give them money back if they weren’t going to do what it would take to keep the project moving forward. In one case they got their ducks in a row and the project back on track and then I was once again really able to make a difference there. The other… we’ll see, but I’m perfectly happy with either outcome. I feel lucky to be in the situation where I can make those choices.

In some ways, consultancies have the most opportunity to find purpose, as they get to constantly choose which new projects they work on and which companies they help. But many consultancies get into the trap of razor thin margins or bumpy revenue where they are forced to take any project they can get. So draw your own conclusions there.

Technology organizations have a more complex challenge, as they often feel at the whim of their businesses. And now I’ll make a plug for our book, Reboot (coming very soon), where we talk a lot about the criticality of defining a real technology strategy that helps inspire and align people around a common goal of how technology will change their business and industry. More on that soon!

I have one more blog on this topic in me... coming soon. I'm going to wrap by talking about the book's assertions on compensation systems. Coming soon.

My second mobile phone

2011-04-25T18:03:00.000-06:00

I will never forget my first mobile phone. I was a pretty early adopter in 1995. I had to buy a larger purse just to fit it, and while I don't remember how much it cost, I do know I had a smaller wallet after the purchase. I remember it was a big deal, with an up front investment, a long contract and per minute charges that kept me from talking on it for very long.

Over the weekend, I bought my first second mobile phone... Not a phone to replace that first brick, but one to supplement my current mobile phone. I've known people over the years who have carried two phones, usually because they want to have a personal phone separate from their business phone. While I get that, that's not for me as I lost track of that separation years ago.

So why did I need a second cell phone, you ask? Because my first one doesn't really work as a ... Ahem, phone. Yes, I'm a dedicated Apple user and I've finally accepted that the phone part of the iPhone just doesn't work much of the time, especially in my temporary living conditions. I paid hundreds of dollars for the phone and I continue to pay AT&T $170 a month for unlimited voice and data connectivity and it doesn't work as a phone. Yes, I probably could have paid some astronomical charges to move to Verizon, but there was a more economical, speedier option for now...

Do you know how cheap cell phones are today? I went into Cricket and procured a perfectly useful teeny tiny $19 phone in about 7 minutes flat. I can pay $1/day without long distance coverage or $2/day with unlimited long distance and ONLY on the days I use it. I figure my iPhone doesn't work about half of the working days in a month, so I'm out a maximum $20/month for this little insurance. This seems to be a perfectly fine solution and I'm quite pleased with it for now. Once I move, I may install a home line or look into other options, but I'm not in a contract so I can figure that out later.

But how ironic is this, really? If you had told my 1995 self that I would be perfectly pleased to pay hundreds of dollars up front and a couple hundred dollars a month for a phone that doesn't even work as a phone ... My jaw would have hit the floor. If you'd gone on to explain to my 1995 self that I really used the phone more for emailing, texting (what's that?), scanning and ordering products on Amazon, checking the weather, buying movie tickets, tweeting, facebooking, reading the news, reading books, finding cheap gas stations, showing off wedding pictures, listening to music, checking house prices, tracking what I eat, getting health tips every day, checking into my flights, taking pictures and videos, accessing all our company files, setting an alarm clock, finding nearby anything or far away facts.... Well, I might have thought I'd pay 10x what I do today!

It is quite a testament to Apple's customer lock in and how far mobility in general has come. It sure made me pause for a minute to consider the irony...

Facing my fears of technology

2011-04-21T14:37:00.000-06:00

OK, I just had to do something scary and I'm going to admit it to all of you.

First, I must admit that I moved into my husband's house in January and I have never actually turned on the TV, let alone attempted to operate the DVR or DVD player. Honestly, there might have been a couple of times when it crossed my mind that I might want to watch or record a TV show, but it wasn't ever worth trying to figure out the remotes.

So 5 minutes ago one of my friends contacted me and asked me to record a TV show. And of course, my husband isn't here. I said I would try, but only for 5 minutes. Guess what? I think I did it! I won't admit here what TV show now takes priority over Rockies games, but I am quite proud of myself. OK, I'm blushing because I'm a little embarrassed to admit this.

I think there is a little lesson to be learned here. Even those of us who consider ourselves pretty comfortable around technology sometimes have our fears. Those of us who are a little... ahem, older, and I know I'm not THAT old, but we remember the times when new technologies were really overwhelming. The thing is, they rarely are any more.

So just jump on in... whatever it is you are avoiding. This is kind of a lead in to some blogs I'm about to do on social networking, so watch for the theme to be continued soon...

Prediction: IT and Marketing will follow the same path as IT and Sales

2011-04-21T06:47:00.001-06:00

I thought this article, "IT And Marketing: How Digital Media's Changing The Relationship" was a good write-up in last week's Information Week, even though I fundamentally disagree with the conclusions. The article is about how critical technology is to the future of Marketing and how that may help IT and Marketing bridge their longstanding gap.

I can't help but think about where we were with IT and Sales a while back. Sales and IT historically didn't get along (I know I'm making some really big generalizations here, but broadly across companies it was true) and Sales for the first time was really exploring technology that could support their efforts. Along came several CRM solutions, most notably SalesForce.com, who played the game perfectly by selling directly to Sales executives and cutting IT out of the mix. I swear they were drilled in sales school to say things like: "You don't need them (IT)", "They don't understand this space", "Don't worry, there's no need to integrate/ we can do all the integration" ... and of course they had all those incredible demos to share that made any sales execs mouth drool. And it worked! We saw tons of companies with otherwise relatively "successful" IT organizations completely lose the connection with their Sales group. Now over time that has changed as these CRM systems have had to be integrated and as IT organizations have generally gotten up to speed with the criticality of these systems.

So I have a theory. It'll be a couple years before IT is really leading the charge on technology to drive marketing forward. Arguably, it may get worse before it gets better. Unless IT organizations can get out ahead of this, Marketing groups will be wooed by technology vendors who will convince them their IT organization doesn't know enough to help them and will likely slow them down (arguably both true). Over time, IT organizations will realize what's up and get out ahead or at least catch up. So maybe ultimately these technology shifts will change the dynamic, but it is going to take some time.

Of course, it doesn't have to be that way... IT organizations could easily spend some time getting up to speed on the technology options out there and really help their Marketing groups do something strategic.

Drive's second key element: Mastery

2011-04-21T06:29:00.002-06:00

(this is part of on ongoing series on the book Drive, the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us)

The next element of "Drive" is mastery. It is based on the premise that people hold one of two types of intelligence: one that you have a finite supply and the other that you can increase your intelligence. The second viewpoint, usually held by people who are motivated intrinsically, leads us naturally towards a push to mastery. People who believe they can improve their intelligence have a more positive attitude about setbacks and failures because they feel they are learning through the whole process. They also realize that mastery takes work and that you never really reach it, you can only get closer and closer.

Mastery is based on this mindset, but in action, it is all about working on tasks that get you into “flow”. Tasks need to be hard enough to challenge you, but not so hard that they frustrate you. Pink calls these “goldilocks” tasks”. These goldilocks tasks bring great satisfaction at work. Not only do these goldilocks tasks increase people’s enjoyment of work by turning it into play, removing basic flow type tasks that people (sometimes secretly) enjoy on a daily basis like washing dishes and working out has immediately negative psychological effects.

So now I have a big confession. It’s been a little secret for many years and I know some of you have suspected it to be true. I absolutely love creating really complex PowerPoint slides. I can get completely lost in them for hours. I feel like an author and an artist and a thinktank all wrapped up into one. I remember when we were writing our Thought Ensemble methodology a couple months after we started and I was totally, completely in the zone (with the help of a little caffeine!) for several days. There was no stopping me. And it was … FUN! I’m getting to the point that going through a presentation and cleaning up the format has totally lost its lure … and I still have my days when I stare at a blank slide overwhelmed about where to begin. But usually, PowerPoint is my flow. And now I understand why I like it!

So how does this apply to technology organizations and consultancies? The obvious answer is that if you can get people into flow, finding goldilocks activities for them, they’ll be more motivated, productive, and fulfilled. And yet this is rarely a conversation at any type of company. We usually do a better job (because of the necessity) of moving people out of roles or getting them the help they need when they struggle with the tasks at hand. On the flip side though, we’ve all seen people who are left far too long in a role where they’ve surpassed their interest in the tasks at hand and have stopped learning much of anything new. We don’t take it seriously enough. The big fallacy is that they get better and better at their job as they approach mastery. Actually, their performance may be declining!

I think the answer here is simple. Every manager and every leader in an organization should be considering who is working in flow and how to get people into flow who are not. No, it will never be 100% of the time, but if we are conscious of it, we can make decisions to get people’s flow allocation up significantly and that could make a huge difference in organizational productivity and attitude…

Drive's first key element: Autonomy

2011-04-11T10:24:00.004-06:00

(this blog is part of on ongoing series on the book Drive, the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us)

The first element of “Drive” is autonomy. Research shows that individuals ultimately perform better in autonomous environments; companies with autonomous environments are more competitive. The thesis is that we are wired to be autonomous and while we want to be accountable to outcomes, we prize control over how we achieve those outcomes. This includes autonomy over task (what you do), time (when you do it), technique (how you do it) and team (who you do it with).

Few technology or consulting organizations I’ve worked with have embraced any of these elements of autonomy. Some of these elements would be easier for technology groups to take on, others are inherently easier for us consultancies. Overall, I think most organizations could make a huge leap forward on the autonomy front just by understanding it more so that general policies and individual managers support it.

Let’s start with task. This one is squishiest to me. Most of what the book talks about here is companies like 3M or Google who give their employees some allocation of time to work on whatever they like. We don’t have that formally built into our model at Thought Ensemble but we’ve talked about how to do it along the way. For now we’ve settled on our Thought meetings, which we informally rotate around and have people bring ideas to present to the rest of the group. Some of those have turned into new service offerings, or new ways of working at our clients. This one seems to be harder to implement in your typical technology organization, especially those that run at 100% allocation and have business executives fighting over where the technology people spend their time. That said, I’m sure a few hours could be carved out here or there and companies would be blown away by the ideas and productivity that could come from it.

Next is time. This one is harder to support as a consultancy than as a technology organization. In some ways we have total control of our time, in that we set our own meeting schedule and manage our individual calendars. We don’t have working hours. But all that said, we have clients around the world and we do what it takes to support them, often adapting to their schedule. Technology organizations could do a lot more here. It is amazing to me how many companies require regular working hours considering how few tech people are most productive during these hours. I understand the need for some meetings, and some overlapping of hours for collaboration, but tech people need to be given a lot more freedom over their time than they typically are.

As a sidenote on time, we have talked in the past about moving Thought Ensemble to a compensation model with several components, one based on delivery hours. Our thinking was less about incenting working more hours and more about allowing people to choose how much they wanted to work depending on individual preferences at any given time. We have largely abandoned that idea, and now after reading this I’m very hesitant about a compensation model that includes that kind of component, whatever the philosophy behind it! And it is pretty common these days in the consulting world.

Technique is next. This is the area businesses really need to question the level of specificity they give to how tasks get done. Coding standards and writing standards make sense if they really help with collaboration and overall productivity, but beyond that, this is an easy freedom to grant, in both consultancies and tech organizations.

Team is the most interesting, and as Pink admits in the book, the least developed of the four. I think most interesting is his point about how social networks and other collaboration increase people’s ability to be autonomous over who they work with. Historically in large consultancies a staffing coordinator assigned people to projects, but in the future, this arrangement may be more fluid as people pull together resources through a variety of networks. And what happens to those left behind? I love the idea of natural selection but there has to be a way to incent people or at least get rid of the low performers.

Overall, I think most organizations, even ours, could make some easy progress on the autonomy front. Just being aware of types of autonomy and watching for what makes each employee (since it is unique by person) have control over their outcomes can make a world of difference. Then there are some items that would require some discussion and planning, like allocating time to special projects or moving to a no hours policy. Going completely autonomous isn’t realistic, for us or any of our clients.

Autonomy was my favorite of the three elements, I could have gone on much longer, as I think there’s a lot here for companies to consider. My next couple blogs on Mastery and Purpose will be a little shorter.

Myers-Briggs gets a shout out in the WSJ

2011-04-07T05:19:00.002-06:00

Many of you know I'm a big fan of the Myers-Briggs personality instrument. Remember that fun little 4-letter tag that can explain so much about who you are? I'm INTJ (Introvert, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging). Here's a little article my dad just sent me about how it and similar instruments are being used more in life coaching and family therapy.

I can see this really helping people in understanding themselves and their relationships with others. One fundamental premise behind personality instruments like Myers-Briggs is that there's no right "answer" and that different types bring different capabilities and perspectives. These instruments help people understand that everyone is different and that's okay, we just need to understand how they tick. And often the conversations we have in more detail once we get on the topic are what helps us understand each other the most, because it gets us talking in a non-confrontational way.

As a newlywed, I'm very happy to have this tool and others to help work through a new relationship. Just last night my new husband gave me a big hug and affectionately said "aw, honey, I never would have guessed you were more of an introvert than I am". People think both of us are extraverts: Eric because he'll make smalltalk with anyone and is often the entertainer in the crowd, me because I'll share details of my personal life to people I barely know. But both of us have introverted tendencies and often need time to think through things or just be by ourselves, which can rub people the wrong way if they don't get it. But we both get it and don't take offense at behaviors that might rub (ok have rubbed) others the wrong way.

On another facet of the Myers-Briggs, Eric and I are pretty opposite. I'm a "J" (Judger), preferring to have things structured and decided, while he's a "P" (Perceiver) who prefers to be more flexible and adaptable. (sidenote: Claudia wrote a great blog last week on Js vs. Ps). This came to play recently when we planned a wedding in nine weeks (while I was finishing the book, we were working hard on our day jobs and moving). I had a 100 line Excel spreadsheet with the couple tasks we needed to do each day to stay on track and he was more about doing things as inspiration struck. I'm still not sure which of us was more frustrated by that process and hopefully we won't go through something that extreme again anytime soon, but the conversations we've had about it since have really helped us just understand each other in day to day life. I have so much appreciation what happens when I give him the space to be creative and innovative when the time is right (for him) ... and I think he appreciates my lists, at least a little. We are very different on this front and have had many conversations about how to appreciate each other's differences.

One other thing I'll say is that people do tend to over simplify these instruments. Not all introverts are the same, not all extraverts are the same. Not all people who exhibit a dominant perceiving function are the same, and not all people who exhibit a dominant judging function are the same. The Myers-Briggs test gets really interesting when you get into all the sub-facets of each preference. Example: I'm an introvert, overall, but I'm far out of preference (i.e. I test like an extravert) on the "expressive" versus "contained" facet that people think I'm an extravert just because I'll tell them very personal things right after meeting them. I'm containing myself right now from giving you examples. You really have to get into the facets of each preference to truly understand someone, especially when they are out of preference. Anyway, just something to think about before you go too crazy analyzing your spouse, parent, child, friend, co-worker based on a few letters...

The research behind Drive

2011-04-07T04:31:00.001-06:00

(this is part of on ongoing series on the book Drive, the Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us)

Drive is based on some perspective-shifting research, which I won’t describe in detail because you can get a summary from the video. It is compelling, and it is worth digging deeper in the first couple chapters of the book if you are interested in this stuff.

Pink doesn’t talk much about Motivation 1.0, which is all about the motivations we have as humans to survive, but he does talk about Motivation 2.0 and its shortcomings, leading us to the need to operate more in a Motivation 3.0 mentality.

Motivation 2.0 is focused on maximizing rewards and minimizing punishments. This has been our standard operating procedure in life and business for a while. Most company cultures and their associated performance systems are based on rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. Think about it – performance reviews, raises, bonuses, promotions, demotions, outplacements. - it is all “carrots and sticks”.

And now to the premise of this book. If you’ve seen the video, you’ll see that for the kind of knowledge work we do today, research shows that carrots and sticks not only don’t help incent the right performance but are actually detrimental! People who are offered financial incentives to do creative tasks perform poorer than those who weren’t. And they enjoy it less.

People are motivated extrinsically only up to a point, a point at which they make enough money to provide for their needs. Beyond that, people are motivated intrinsically, especially the people we want to hire in the jobs we want to hire them into.

This could be a very a good thing. Intrinsic motivation is a renewable resource – whereas trying to continually incent people via money can be a losing game. Plus intrinsically motivated people are more successful, healthier and happier in the long term.

I’m very convinced our company and our clients’ companies should focus more on Motivation 3.0, built around three elements: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. I’m still not ready to completely let go of the old performance incentives. But I’ll get back to that later.

Next I’ll go through each of the dimensions and some ideas of how we can bring them into our companies … each of these blogs will talk a little about technology organizations as well as consultancies, since I know I have readers from both types of groups!

A series on Pink's book Drive

2011-04-03T19:33:00.007-06:00

I posted a video a while back titled “Really? People aren’t motivated by money?” I’ve been using the concepts since with some of our clients who are working on building higher performing cultures. Those of you who watched the video or have been following the research know that Daniel Pink wrote a best selling book, Drive, based on this research.

Over the last few months, my husband has been insisting I read the book, especially as our company is talking about our vision and an appropriate longer-term compensation model to support it. I haven’t been motivated since I usually don’t get a lot more out of the book than a summary article/ video. But, as usually, Eric was right. I finally read it and it was well worth the quick read.

In fact, it actually has me thinking enough about the concepts included that I’m going to do a short series of blogs talking about each of the major concepts. I’ll share with you some of the challenges we’ve had with these concepts at our clients… and even open the kimono a bit on what we are talking about as we are building our company, Thought Ensemble.

Before I jump in, I’ll share one of my very favorite things from the book. In his summary chapter, Pink includes a “Twitter Summary” a “Cocktail Party Summary” and a “Chapter by Chapter Summary”. Every book should be required to do this! Anyway, I love the Twitter summary:

“Carrots & sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose.”

Are Jobs and Gates really opposed on education?

2011-03-24T10:06:00.000-06:00

Over the last few days, the New York Times has been running a debate on education... spurred by the supposedly opposing viewpoints of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. After reading through the eight positions and many of the comments from readers, I'm still not sure exactly what the debate is.

Gates has dedicates a lot of his philanthropic time and money to improving the state of our country's educational system, and this article points out his focus on academic disciplines and departments that are "well-correlated to areas that actually produce jobs." And Steve Jobs emphasizes the need to marry technology with liberal arts. If you put the two of them in a room together, would they really be diametrically opposed? I'm sure Jobs would agree we don't have enough graduates with skills in math, science and technology to fill the need in our economy. And I'm sure Gates would agree that the liberal arts perspective is valuable in business too.

I bet if you really got them talking, they'd agree that the issue is not rooted in higher education and what majors people pick. The problem starts earlier.

I had the best cry of this year watching the movie Waiting for Superman. We have to start by fixing the fundamentals. Students who have potential in math and science do not even have the opportunities to pursue those fields because their middle schools and high schools don't offer decent education or classes at all in these subjects. It seems to me if students have the foundation they need in K-12, the basic models upon which to learn, they can choose to go onto college and major in a variety of fields and be successful. We need more college students majoring in STEM subjects, but we also need the liberal arts majors. And ideally we want graduates to have a mix of perspective, whatever their primary major.

Just step away from the computer ...

2011-03-23T17:25:00.000-06:00

Its been a crazy (good) day full of little fun surprises on the work front. We are making progress on all fronts with our clients and we have lots of new and interesting business coming our way.

Towards the end of the day today, I was talking with a colleague on the challenges of balancing everything we've got going on at once. We were sharing our little secret strategies for being productive amidst the mayhem. I shared with her one of my favorite visuals: the "whack a mole" game that most of us play all day. Remember that arcade game when we were kids? It's exactly the same. We spend our days trying to whack those moles back in their holes... and the game never ends.

We talked about how hard it is in this day in age to even complete one thoughtful task without looking at email or something similar. It seems that our brains are wired now that if there's one moment of delay in progress, we should just flip over to something we can actually accomplish. We want the immediate satisfaction of being productive. But unfortunately that leaves us with emptiness at the end of the week when we haven't done any of the critically important things we set out to do! So we have to set aside time for those things first and protect that time from others, but more so from ourselves and our tendencies to get distracted!

On a related note, I shared with her something a wise woman once shared with me... if you ever find yourself sitting at your computer not being productive (and being productive could very well be doing something you truly do find fun), then step away, or your brain will start learning to be lazy in front of the computer.

Here's the funny thing. Once I hung up with her, my last scheduled call of the day, I sat down to get back to work. I wasn't sure where to begin since none of the things I needed to do had to be done right now. So I glanced through my work email ... and then checked my personal email... and looked at Facebook... and there I saw a funny blog from Jim ... and then realized what I was doing and decided to confess about it to all of you on my blog. Not that any of those things are bad, it was more the way I was wandering around aimlessly looking to be productive.

Acknowledgement is the first step. I'm going grocery shopping and then I'm going to make a lasagna. I'll get back to it all later.

Decision making as the foundation for organizational effectiveness

2011-03-17T09:25:00.000-06:00

Bain wrote a piece recently on how we should refocus talent efforts on an organization's ability to make decisions. You can read it here, but the short of it is that we should design organizational structure, pick people for positions and evaluate people's success based on decision making. It was worth a skim if you are interested in org design or performance management.

Here are a few thoughts I had after reading it... Of course organizations need to pay more attention to where key decisions are made in the organization - this is good, basic organizational design that many companies overlook. This article takes it a step further and talks about how critical it is to place top performers in positions around the organization where the most critical decisions are made. I like this new slant - once you get the organizational structure right you need to look at where those most important decisions are made (and this is not always at the top) - and get the right people in place.

The article also touches on the need to evaluate people based on their ability to make decisions. That's a little trickier... I'd agree that people can and should be evaluated on how quickly and effectively they make decisions but measuring them based purely on the outcome of those decisions is dangerous. It could slow those decision makers, or even paralyze them, if they are fearful that bold decision making will not be rewarded.

Could the PMO really evolve?

2011-03-10T08:06:00.001-07:00

I was meeting with a forward thinking IT executive from a very large organization the other day. Among other things, she talked to me about how their group was too focused on project timelines and schedules, rather than driving outcomes to the business. (preaching to the choir here). She wondered if they should repurpose their PMO (Program Management Office) into an RMO (Results Management Office). While I thought the lingo for it sounded a little hokey at first, I agreed with the problem and the concept was intriguing enough that I’ve been noodling on it the last couple days.

Let’s step back for a moment. When you really boil it down, IT groups have two primary issues that prevent them from driving results to their businesses. The first is that they don’t work on the right things, the second is that they aren’t working on those things as productively as they could. PMOs have historically focused entirely on the second, myopically pushing on project schedules and costs. Frankly, few of them are great at doing that, but assuming they are, is that enough? No, because they might not be working on the right things. Sometimes this is because poor decisions were made up front, other times it is because the organization is not able to reprioritize effectively based on changing needs. They might deliver a project, but it has little use, especially compared to the investment to complete it, once it is done.

So back to this fancy RMO idea. This morning I did a little web research and found that a couple of consulting firms are trying to exploit the RMO terminology as a new thought for IT organizations. To grossly oversimplify it, RMO would expand the PMOs role to own prioritization of projects and then track their success in measure aligned with real business value, not just timelines and schedules. And that conversation is interesting. Clearly someone needs to be managing demand and picking the most important investment opportunities… but should it be an evolution of the PMO?

Academically, I love the argument that we should evolve the PMO. I love that we might stop drowning in discussions around schedule, cost, status, and change controls and actually have discussions about how decisions we are making could change the business. I love the clean integration between the group that is managing the projects and the group that is deciding which projects to do and how to reprioritize on an ongoing basis.

But unfortunately, I’ve seen few PMOs able to morph into this kind of role. And they’ve tried. They’ve usually called it something different than an RMO. The PMO takes on “Portfolio Planning” or “Governance” or “Resource Planning” or “Demand Management” or some other fancier term. And they often fail. They are too far in the weeds to be successful having those kinds of conversations. They rarely have the executive engagement and support within their IT organization, let alone with all their business stakeholders.

The organizations I’ve seen get really focused on driving results do it outside of their PMO. Its either the executive team working together or in a separate group (sometimes Architecture, sometimes Account Management) with a different set of competencies. It makes me crazy to say that because I see the organizational challenges in having that in two groups, but practically speaking that’s what I’ve seen work.

I’m just noodling here. This was intended to be a short blog but I got all riled up once I started typing. Comments welcome, as always.

Ante Up! Table Stakes are Rising

2011-02-28T21:46:00.002-07:00

Not only am I going all traditional and changing my name, my new groom and I are completely merging finances. You may remember from previous posts that I’m a bit obsessive about tracking finances. I’m not that into following a budget, but I really like to know where I’m spending money. I think this is going to work great because my new husband has no interest in doing this and never has but absolutely loves the reports I can give him on our spending. And since he’s a financial planner, he handles all the long-term investments and taxes and hard stuff. We’re both giddy about this new arrangement.

But there’s trouble in paradise. After the mint.com debacle last year (which they still haven’t fixed), I moved back onto Quicken. Everything is set up and working great with all my accounts and I just need to get my husband integrated. We are keeping our separate credit cards for ease of tracking business expenses but want to move into one merged checking account.

I’ve had a Chase checking account for years, but I have no real attachment to them other than the automatic bill pay I have set up which is mostly all changing now that I’ve moved into my husband’s house. He uses a small community bank literally right next door to his office and is actually quite attached, not only because of the convenience but because the ladies who work there know him so well they just walk over to see HIM if there are any issues.

So, after 15 seconds of discussion, we concluded we’d work with his bank. And I got his account information to start getting everything set up in Quicken. You probably know where this is going. They don’t have integrated downloads! Are you kidding me? All my credit cards and bank accounts have been fully integrated with Quicken for years. So he goes to talk to the ladies next door to ask about this and they explain to him that I just need to log into the account and press the Quicken button to get a download of transactions. Again, are you kidding me?

Lucky for his bank, I’m not making this decision alone. As it turns out, I’m still coming out ahead because he’s happy to deposit all checks and provide me with cash, two errands I’m grateful to have off my list. The 3 minutes it will take me once or twice a month to go log in, press the button, and drag the file onto Quicken is worth spending for never having to deal with a bank in person again. But it made me realize there is no way I would consider interacting with a bank without Quicken downloads if I didn’t have the husband benefit. At least 90% of my banking decision is based on how easy it is to work with them online – paying bills, transferring money, and integrating with Quicken. Since I don’t want to interact with them in person, less than 10% of my decision has to do with convenience of branches or customer service.

The funny thing is that just 10 years ago, I used to save every single receipt and ENTER every receipt by hand into Quicken. I also wrote checks and stamped envelopes and went to the bank to deposit checks. That was just the way it was. And now I’m put out that I have to go to their website to, press the download button, and drag the file over.

I don’t think I’m the only one. Companies need to realize that technology like this is not a competitive advantage anymore. It is table stakes, a commodity, a basic expectation.

Back from Hiatus

2011-02-28T21:45:00.001-07:00

Jim and I have completed the final content edit for the book and it is off to the publisher for some final touch ups before we get it on the virtual bookshelves in April or May. I’ll be sharing lots more about the book in coming posts, but I’ll tell you now that we are very excited about how it has all come together. It has been quite a project, more than we ever imagined! So we are both back to the blogging scene, finally…

In other news, I got hitched last month and am in the process of changing my name to Lisa Jasper. Watch for a new domain for this blog coming soon.

A little hiatus ...

2010-11-18T14:47:00.002-07:00

You all may have noticed my blogging has slowed down a bit the last month or so. Not only has Thought Ensemble's client work been busier than ever ('tis the season, it seems), my business partner Jim and I are getting close to finishing our first book on IT Strategy. So I'm going on a brief hiatus until we get the book out the door in early 2011.

I've really appreciated all your comments and input, both here on the blog and offline. Please reach out to me anytime and hopefully there are enough archives to enjoy for a while.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mobilility and the cloud

2010-10-28T10:32:00.002-06:00

I bought a new desktop computer a few weeks ago. My laptop had made it 28 months, a record for me, but it was on the fritz and I was ready for some better performance and bigger screen size. I took the laptop in for a tune up and then assumed I'd leave it in the closet except in the cases of long work trips where I needed more than my iPad. But I've been surprised. I use all four of my computers (iMac desktop, MacBook Pro laptop, iPad, iPhone) all the time, switching back and forth between my laptop and desktop at home constantly.

Part of the reason I go back and forth so much is how seamless it is to move between computers. This is enabled by a faster shift to cloud solutions in the last couple years, primarily because of the ease of connectivity and the availability of applications that make it so easy. As examples, here are a few of my favorites:

Dropbox - I really can't express how much I love Dropbox. It might be top 5, right after my navigation system, dark chocolate, my furry black hat and stinky cheese. I rarely save files on my local hard drive anymore. I keep most everything on Dropbox, which means that I can access files from any of my four "computers". And even better, everyone at Thought Ensemble works out of Dropbox, and many of our clients and partners do too. So I can go into a client folder at any time and get the most recent version of a presentation, go into our sales folder and see every proposal we've done this year, access the latest chapters of our book, whatever I need. I love it.
MobileMe. I started using MobileMe when I switched to my first Mac and iPhone. I realized when I lost my phone (see blog) how happy I was that all my data was stored out in my little cloud. But now I love it even more because my calendars and contacts are in sync no matter which computer I'm using. It is immediate! Amazing.
Email (IMAP). I've been shocked that my email has stayed in sync between my two Mac Mail applications, as well as the iPad and iPhone apps. We host our mail on gmail and the IMAP syncing really works. Now I have had some glitches, some of which had to be solved through the google Captcha program and some through rebuilding my mail file, but generally it works great.
Evernote - I'm actually typing this in Evernote - my favorite tool for keeping lists, brainstorming ideas, taking notes on calls, capturing notes from web pages, and saving reading material. Again, Evernote works with all four devices, although you can't change notes with funky formatting. I'm a big fan.
I'd mention Google Docs, more for sharing the editing of files across our company, but we've had so many challenges with access breakdowns we've given up on it in the short term. Hopefully it will be back to round out the suite.

All these solutions really expand options for the mobile worker. It is so much easier to move around than before. It is also interesting to think about what an industry has been created. Businesses have been created around supporting big company cloud needs, but there are also a lot of individual/ small business opportunities out there. If I add up what I'm paying for Dropbox, MobileMe and Evernote, since I've upgraded from free to bigger accounts on Dropbox and Evernote, I'm paying several hundred dollars a year for these little luxuries. That adds up, it is worth it to me and those companies are going to make a mint...

Finally, a good article on attracting and retaining women in the workplace

2010-10-27T20:58:00.002-06:00

This article, "Attack of the Women-Dominated Workplace", published last month in MORE Magazine, is a great summary of what companies need to be thinking about to attract and maintain women, and up their overall talent.

Now if you don't think this is an issue, read this excerpt from the article:
"When researchers examined the profits of Fortune 500 companies, they found that companies with the most women in senior management positions were over 30 percent more profitable than those with the fewest. And when consultants at McKinsey examined 89 European firms with the highest proportion of women in power, they found that those companies’ stock prices climbed 64 percent over two years, compared with an average of 47 percent for other firms in the same sector. Numerous studies support these findings. "

The entire article is good, but a couple sections stood out to me as critical for companies to consider, and not just for women.

Customized "career latices". Deloitte is cited as an example... each employee there talks to a career counselor on a yearly basis to scale pace, schedule, location and role. This is clearly critical for women wanting to ramp up and down in different ways while having kids, but so many men these days want these options too. It is no longer just about women trying to balance having kids, its men doing the same and all kinds of people wanting flexibility for different reasons.
Untethering the workforce. I haven't officially worked in an office since 2002, and I've gotten more productive every year. The challenge for me is how not to be productive at home. But may companies have yet to realize how successful some of their workers can be when working remotely. They need to move to results based evaluations, and this is where women who desire flexible schedules can really flourish. And where the company as a whole can raise the bar of their performance by actually paying attention to it versus when people show up to the office.

There are also some good points on what laws need to change, how women need to be promoted and paid more fairly and what's going on with women in academia.

Good stuff! Let me know what you think.

Frozen in uncertainty ... and what to do about it

2010-09-26T20:36:00.001-06:00

More than ever, people are expressing their frustration to me about being able to do any strategic planning amidst all the unknowns. Granted, I have been talking a lot with friends who work in the Healthcare and Education fields and I do acknowledge there's more uncertainty in those spaces than ever. But that's not a reason to give up - there are definitely tactics that can help prepare strategically for alternate and undefined futures.

Jim and I did a lot of work in the late '90s with utilities companies in Texas preparing for deregulation. I still remember our first project where the partner walked in and said, "okay, guys, we need to help our client prepare to create and spin out a Retail company. And we have no idea what that means yet." At that point, none of the rules and regulations had been defined for how deregulation was going to work in Texas, but we had to make some intelligent assumptions and start preparing or we were never going to be able to split all of their technology into two companies a few years time.

The best advice I have for people dealing with so much uncertainty is a proven tactic: scenario planning. I wrote a blog on this a while back. And there's a great overview here on Wikipedia. Basically, you want to define all the uncertainties and narrow down to a couple of dimensions of uncertainty to define alternative futures. Then test your plans against those alternative futures.

Please dive in if you've had successes or challenges with scenario planning in your organization

The best $10 iPad app

2010-09-24T07:44:00.003-06:00

At lunch on Monday, one of my friends showed me an iPad app for mind mapping. I'd heard of such things and hadn't been too excited, but he insisted on showing me how he uses it in meetings with clients, prospects and other contacts to brainstorm ... and then email them the picture immediately. So I downloaded it on Tuesday and by Thursday ... here's where I really want to write "it changed my life" but I'm instead going to say it is my new favorite iPad app and $10 very well spent.

I've been in the midst of an intense assessment all week, a combination of interviews, workshops and data gathering ... the kind of week that invented the phrase "drinking from a firehose". I'm a big believer in doing projects like this intensely, to move through quickly to hypotheses and get on to figuring out the solutions. The art of it is pulling out the top issues and then hypotheses for how to fix them from all the other noise. It is something my brain and our teams together have learned to do even more effectively over the years, but this is the first time I've found a tool that's really helped support that thinking. Every time a new idea popped up this week, I just went into my master mind map and added it. Oh, and I used another mind map to storyboard the deck. And then I created a little example for this blog and I timed it. 5 minutes. Its extremely fast and even less disruptive than taking a note somewhere. It is great working individually or when brainstorming with others.

So check it out - let me know if you like it as much as me! Its called iThoughtsHD

Google threatens the enterprise

2010-09-15T22:50:00.001-06:00

I was talking to an old colleague yesterday who shared his frustration with one of his developers. This colleague had recently purchased online access to a library of technical books, and had suggested that his developer utilize this library to learn more about some of the technologies their company is implementing. The developer responded that he doesn't read books, since he can google everything he needs.

The same day I was listening to Nicholas Carr talk on his favorite topic of late, how the Internet is changing the way our minds work. In his book, The Shallows, and his Atlantic Monthly Article, "Is Google Making us Stupid?", Carr discusses how the way we access information today is changing the way our brains work. For the worse. He talked in the interview about how much we moved forward with the advent of the printing press and books and how we are now at risk of stepping back as we give up reading books (and the knowledge books provide us) for the cheap thrill of accessing quick data via Google and the like.

People are losing both their ability and interest around understanding the systems behind the way things work. And this is scary when you think about the risk it introduces to enterprises. It is one thing when my mail file crashes and I go search for a fix. Based on a Yahoo Answers post, I may go drag around some system files and delete some things, but the damage I can cause is limited. Developers or architects or operations support people are using Google as their sole source of information, and generally only on a reactive basis. It is rarer and rarer that they spend the time to understand the root cause of the problem and learn the overall system.

I'm all for the increased productivity and effectiveness progress brings, but companies need to watch out that it doesn't go too far. If I were interviewing developers, architects or ops people I would definitely dig into their preferred methods of problem solving even more than I ever have before.

Google is trying to distract me ... but I'm still using blekko

2010-09-07T13:19:00.004-06:00

One of my colleagues just pointed out Google's home page today. Wow. I couldn't stop playing with my mouse; the dots were totally entrancing. See the WSJ article for some guesses as to why the dots today... seems they are planning a press event about search tomorrow.

What's funny is that Google is no longer my home page. I'm beta testing out a new search engine - blekko - and loving it so far. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think there's room for blekko in the search world! blekko allows you to narrow your search in all kinds of ways Google does not. I'll blog more on my personal experience soon, but if you want to read about what they are doing, some of the press is here.

So my first assumption was that Google is worried about them and doing something to preemptively strike. Google may own the verb for search, but we'll see if they really own the market for the techies once blekko is let loose...

Can "technical debt" be measured at the portfolio level?

2010-08-31T22:04:00.000-06:00

The concept of technical debt has popped up recently with a couple of our clients. Specifically, these clients are interested in how to measure it across their application or product portfolio. It came up most recently as we were brainstorming the measures for a scorecard for a large technology group that wanted to track their progress towards increasing speed and decreasing costs through strategic architecture consolidation.

Note: the term has been used as a metaphor for a while in the software development world, but more commonly during the software development lifecycle. Apparently Ward Cunningham coined this term originally to describe when a development team "chooses a design or construction approach that's expedient in the short term but that increases complexity and is more costly in the long term." Here's a writeup by Steve McConnell that is dated but very comprehensive if you want the full background.

But back up to the portfolio level ... assume we define technical debt as maintenance costs for a product/ technology that could be avoided by making a certain investment. Of course not all technical debt is bad. There are very good reasons to incur debt especially when you can make a case that it accelerates innovation or addresses customer needs. But many times debt is incurred needlessly due to ignorance or poor decision making. Clearly if we had decisions to make all over again, we probably wouldn't end up with the same unique blend of technologies, tools and methods underlying our portfolio. Did we really need that one-off DBMS license? Do we still want to support and enhance applications written in FoxPro? Why can't we resist trying a new source code control tool on every project? These questions come up, but often too late to do anything about them.

So the question is, could we measure something early on in the project lifecycle, as we are making decisions about the technologies, tools and methods to be used, that tracks the technical debt we are incurring from veering off a defined path?

We talked about it extensively with our clients and in both cases came to the conclusion that a lagging indicator like maintenance spend, combined with more of a leading indicator like compliance to architectural standards, were the most direct ways to measure it. It seems the concept is a very useful metaphor for helping business executives understand the implications of technology decisions, but measuring it directly seems to be impractical.

But I would love to hear from those of you who may have some ideas or even better, some history, with measuring it effectively!

How much would you pay to increase your intelligence?

2010-08-24T21:39:00.001-06:00

One of my favorite questions for years has been "would you trade 10% of your appearance for 10% more intelligence or vice versa"? The answers often surprise me. And no, I wouldn't.

People have been paying to improve their appearance for years, everything from anti-aging products to hair highlighting to full blown plastic surgery. Some do this for pure vanity, others believe it will help them be more successful (in their career, in finding a spouse, etc). And yes, I do some of these things.

So if there were a proven way to increase intelligence, would people pay for it? Maybe because they are vain about their brain... Or because they believe it will make them more successful?

It seems the market is there, for adults and for their children. I met an old colleague and friend yesterday for coffee who left his corporate job a couple years ago to start a franchise of a brain training company. For now, in this economy, he's focusing on kids, but he's still getting a fair number of adult clients, including doctors and attorneys who don't want to advertise what they are doing to improve their performance on their tests or in their daily work.

This company, LearningRX, has proven their ability to improve IQ by 15 points. Higher IQ may not do anything other than increase people's egos. Most people (including me) don't even know their IQ. But this company also has data to prove they can improve processing power as well as short and long term memory. That's a little more interesting.

It is a big investment. Multiple one on one sessions per week over six months costing thousands of dollars. The training sounds kind of hard, maybe even frustrating. But once you are done, your brain is improved for the rest of your life.

My boyfriend (who is the financial planner in our relationship), thinks I'm a little insane for even talking about this. But maybe I can convince him that with a little more processing power and memory, I'll be even better at my job and pay back the investment. No, I'm not really going to do it, probably more because of time than money, but I am intrigued...

For now I'll focus on all the other things that have been proven to improve brain power: exercise, nutrition, sleep, reducing stress, etc. But I'll keep my eyes on this. I do think it is fascinating.

Comic: Internal Customers

2010-08-19T22:22:00.005-06:00

Many of you know we are working on our first book on IT strategy. One of the most fun parts of writing it has been creating all the comics about IT and business people trying to work with each other. Jim's been sharing a few of the comics on his blog and I thought I'd share a couple too.

I was just talking today with some IT leaders about the concept of the "internal customer" and how detrimental the thinking can be to IT organizations. It separates IT from the rest of the business and distances them from the actual customer.

Does this scene look familiar?

Deep thoughts from 30,000 feet

2010-08-13T21:37:00.004-06:00

Warning: I've had lots of coffee, chocolate, brain candy, and now a glass of wine after little sleep and a thought provoking day... So this is going to be one of THOSE blogs...

Earlier this week I read this HBR article, "How will you measure your life?" by Clayton Christensen. He's one of my favorite thinkers and authors so I was very excited to see an article by him on one of my top subjects: being intentional about how we live our lives. He writes about how he challenges his MBA students to apply what they learn about business and strategy to their lives: designing a vision, allocating resources, creating a culture and staying true to their principles. I read this a couple of days ago and several of the concepts have really stuck with me. The principles topic even caused a bad dream about what happened when someone tried to convince me from 100% to 98% on my principles. I was relieved when I woke up. I almost blogged on the article, but something wasn't sitting right with me and I didn't realize what until I read this follow up comment by David Brooks, "The Summoned Self" in the NYT this evening.

Christensen's recommendation is just a little premature. Few MBA students have the perspective or experience to really know what is important to them, even fewer undergrads are ready for that kind of thinking. Not that they can't have a hypothesis, but it is likely to change. My business partner Jim and I still enjoy rereading our journals from our quarter life crisis (25 years old) trip to the Galapagos where we discussed and documented the meaning of work, life, love and the pursuit of happiness. Yes, some of it holds, but much has changed, and will likely continue to change.

This morning, on the way to facilitate a full day workshop, I talked with a colleague and friend about the choices we have made and continue to make related to work and life. As I told her, and as anyone who knows me will tell you, I really love my work, at least 90% of the time, which is pretty good. And I live a very happy life outside of work. Related to Christensen's recommendations related to setting vision, allocating resources, building culture and sticking to principles - I'm very satisfied with work and life. Even at the end of the day, as I headed back to the airport for a late night back to Denver, I was truly looking forward to a weekend full of time with my boyfriend, golf with my girlfriends, work on our book and some client work (that I was actually excited about doing!). But getting to the steady, happy, calm of the Thought Ensemble has been a long road of ecstatic highs, devastating lows and opportune encounters. Along the way I was lucky enough to encounter a professor who convinced me away from Math to Comp Sci, an Andersen Consulting partner who gave me an internship even though I told him I had no interest in consulting, a brilliant young CEO who saw my spark and lit my little entrepreneurial fire, the same CEO who years later, when I burned out and quit, just laughed and told me to take 6 weeks off because I'd be back (he was right), a top strategy firm who gave me a chance to consult with the big guys despite my nontraditional background, a longtime mentor who brought me back to my core of IT consulting, an MBA contact who almost lured me away to one of the top assessment and coaching firms and a best friend who called me one day and said "let's just go create our future". It took all those experiences, good and bad, and every fork along the way to end up so happy and satisfied doing what I do today.

So while I'm always one for planning and being intentional, I have to go with Brooks rather than Christensen on this one. I'm 37 and I finally know what I'm going to do when I grow up... And I know it is probably going to continue to change....

Apply by August 9th to have CU CompSci students help with a company project!

2010-08-03T14:50:00.003-06:00

Do you have a software project that could use some attention? I co-chair the Education Committee of CSIA (Colorado's Technology Association) and we are helping the University of Colorado Computer Science department collect proposals for a Senior Software Engineering Project Course this fall.

The Computer Science Department at the University of Colorado annually asks for companies to submit potential projects for their Senior Students to tackle in the Senior Software Engineering Project Course. This is an opportunity to get a small energetic team to address one of your software problems.

Here are some basic facts about sponsorship:

Apply by submitting a short (1 Page) description of the project, by August 9.
A team of students will work on the project for 2 semesters.
The outcome of the project will be more than useful software, you will have direct experience with graduating seniors entering the job market.
The costs of the program are covered by voluntary contributions from satisfied project sponsors at the end of the project.

You can check out past projects here. Successful sponsors have included sponsors from industry, government agencies, research institutions and non-profit organizations. The types or projects have addressed a wide variety of problem domains, including business, artificial intelligence, medicine, imaging, networking, science, entertainment, aviation, publishing, education, hardware design, communications, security and many others.

Let me know if you end up applying! Thanks!

Really? People aren't motivated by money?

2010-08-02T17:58:00.004-06:00

This video is fun on a couple of levels - first, it is fascinating how much more engaging this soundbite is with the animation associated to it. It makes you realize how much more we can digest (and focus) when multiple channels are utilized (in this case, auditory and visual).

Next, I think the research is interesting, which concludes that people aren't motivated by money - once they are paid enough to be comfortable - they are motivated by 3 things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. That may sound all motherhood and apple pie, but the research here may be enough to motivate companies to think about how they incent people differently.

In the work we do, these motivators come into play in several ways. Sometimes we get pushback on the need to define a strategy or the need to broadly communicate it. Since people need to feel they have a purpose (sidenote: being "responsive" or "aligned to business needs" might not make people feel a whole lot of purpose), focusing on a vision that inspires people and communicating it out to the organization is incredibly important. And we need to set up organizational structures that allow people to have autonomy and develop mastery in the pursuit of that purpose. Easier said than done, I know...

The $35 iPad

2010-08-01T20:45:00.007-06:00

No, that's not missing a $0! This device, recently released by the Indian government, can watch a movie, read a book, check your email, browse the Internet. Its pretty amazing to think about what the world will be like as we get these devices into so many hands...

Smart managers and their root belief systems

2010-07-28T13:48:00.000-06:00

I haven't read Multipliers yet, but I've listened to a couple podcast interviews with the author and read a couple articles on it. If you haven't heard of it, the premise is that there are two kinds of managers: Multipliers, who amplify the smarts and capabilities of those around them, and Diminishers, who kill ideas and sap energy. And, of course, you or your people can learn to be Multipliers.

At first blush, it sounded very much like First Break All the Rules and Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, which focus on helping team members be their best by improving their strengths rather than trying to fix their development areas. And the book does seem to share some common themes. But at least one of the topics Liz Wiseman talked about in her NPR interview was interesting and new: the difference in root belief systems of Multipliers and Diminishers. If they are really honest with themselves, Diminishers believe there are only a few smart people out there and so people need to be dependent on them; Multipliers see all types of intelligence and believe people are generally smart and will be able to figure out what to do. I can absolutely see that, but I question how people who at their root believe intelligence is scarce will be able to change their belief system and therefore their actions that those beliefs drive. I'll update if/when I read the book - if anyone has any insight meanwhile, let me know!

The new complications of the PC refresh cycle

2010-07-14T18:12:00.001-06:00

Today I thought my laptop had crashed. For good. While everything had been backed up and was completely recoverable other than perhaps the email I was in the middle of typing, I was still distressed enough to leave my computer for rest, grab the jar of raw almond butter, and eat it by the spoonful while looking out the window wondering what to do. (Raw almond butter soothes my nerves like Ben and Jerry) I've been preparing for a trip to the Apple Store for a while, and while it wasn't on my schedule for tonight, I sighed and processed my potential future pretty quickly. Then I got a grip, put the almond butter away, and called Jim to talk about what to do.

As a little background, Jim and I both bought the same MacBook Pro model two years ago when we started Thought Ensemble. His crashed a couple months ago, although he was able to replace the hard drive and make it usable again. I have not lasted with a laptop more than 18 months since the beginning of my career. I am very hard on laptops - I take them everywhere, move them all around, drop them, junk them up with too many applications, etc, etc. So when I built our original financial plan, it was based on an 18 month laptop refresh policy. Jim told me I was crazy, but at least I thought I was being conservative. So who was right?

Well, as it turns out neither and both. The whole laptop/ PC refresh equation has gotten much more complicated. Yes, Jim was right, the machines now do last longer than 18 months. Well, they always did, but they last longer than that for the aggressive user like me and the standard three-year cycle that most companies follow is lengthening as well. The machines are more durable today, especially the Macs, and their performance power lasts longer than it used to.

But here's where the numbers in the model weren't off base. It isn't a simple 1:1 equation anymore. You can't estimate how long the device lasts, on average, and use that number to model a per-employee spend. If you follow Jim's blog, you'll know the complication. He replaced his laptop with a desktop. Well, he repaired the laptop and got an additional desktop. Oh, and we bought the whole company iPads as soon as they hit the market. And we all have iPhones. So we now each really have 3-4 computers. And before you toss those out as minor expenses in comparison to computers, know that the iPhones are $600 each, the iPads are $600-800 depending on the model, and new laptops ... well, I don't know. I just paused to google "price of Dell laptops" and it appears they start at around $399. So I could probably get something usable for traveling for less than $1000... if I weren't tied to a Mac. And all these machines are capitalizable, at least according to our accountant.

So my conversation with Jim had nothing to do with when to replace the laptop. We both know productivity is so important to us that we will invest in computers in their various forms early and repeatedly. The discussion was about the multiple replacement options. He's so much more productive on his desktop that I'm tempted to go that route. We even talked about doing an iMac desktop and a cheap PC laptop (not just for cost, but to have the option to work in native Windows and Office).

Luckily, my computer did finally turn on and I didn't have to make the decision today because I'm not sure what I would have done. Well, I know I would have gone straight to the Apple Store, but I'm not sure what I would have done once I got there...

Moving beyond alignment

2010-07-14T15:30:00.000-06:00

I just ran across this article, "Beyond Alignment", from ComputerWorld. I love the topic - it is one I've been ranting on lately and a core premise of the book we are writing. The article highlights five companies (Southwest Airlines, Progressive Insurance, P&G, Zappos and Vanguard) who have embraced "IT-business convergence", a fancy way of saying that in some companies, the gap between business and IT is closing. The article also talks about how rare it is to have tightly coupled IT-business strategies (a McKinsey study referenced within says less than 16% of companies say they do). And I'd back that up from what we've seen out there in the wild.

The article highlights some of the best practices of "converged" companies, including establishing a common vision, converging IT and business strategic planning, rotating leaders in and out of IT, increasing transparency and more. But there's one I'd disagree with, and that is the continual focus on internal customers. This focus just widens the split, separates the business into groups. Until IT organizations drop the idea of internal customers, moving beyond alignment will be difficult or impossible...

The Schizophrenic CIO

2010-07-08T10:46:00.003-06:00

This is a great write-up on IT leadership, by Chuck Price, SVP of Technology at CoreSite. "The Schizophrenic CIO" builds on a recent IBM study that outlines not only what the goals of a contemporary CIO should but also the capacities they need to be successful in achieving those goals:

To successfully "make innovation real," one must balance being an insightful visionary and an able pragmatist.
To successfully "raise the ROI of IT," one must balance being a savvy value creator and a relentless cost cutter.
To successfully "expand your business impact," one must balance being a collaborative business leader and an inspiring IT manager.

Yes, it is trendy to talk about how much simpler IT has gotten, with many going so far as to say it is simply a commodity. But Chuck makes some good points about how hard it is to find leaders today who can manage technology strategically, because they need such a balance of leadership traits that may seem in opposition at first blush. I agree, for these reasons and more, it is harder to find good leaders for IT today than ever before. I'll be writing more on IT leadership capacities in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

5 critical components of a tech strategy project

2010-07-06T13:03:00.001-06:00

Over the last week, we've been working on the last chapter of our book, which goes through the process of how to define a technology strategy through a project. In some ways, the projects we execute don't appear on the surface to be that much different than the way we did them 5, 10 and 15 years ago. In some ways they don't appear to be that different than the ways other consulting firms usually do them today. And yet we know and our clients tell us that our projects are unusually effective. So we have been pondering... what is it that's different about our process? The model we use to frame the analysis and the approach we use to refine our thinking are both unique, but the process itself seems pretty straightforward... on the surface.

At the very highest level, we always go through some sort of assessment (to understand where we are), a strategy/ design (to clarify where we want to go) and a plan (to lay out how we get there). But there are a few things that we do consistently as part of that process that many projects gloss over or cut out entirely to save time (money) or avoid difficult conversations. And we believe these are the items that make us most successful:

We conduct thoughtful interviews with senior stakeholders, the people who make or influence investment decisions around technology. This is THE most important part of the assessment. We are scrupulous about the topics we cover with everyone and the individualized questions to ensure we maximize our 45 minutes with each person. We don't skip this step because some or all stakeholders have already been interviewed or because we think we know what they want.
We actually do an external assessment. More than ever, companies must look beyond their walls to include their customers and their markets in their assessments. They must consider the direction of the industry. Technology strategies have long focused on internal improvements and these days that will never cut it.
We do an "assessment review" at the end of the first phase to validate our findings and check our initial hypotheses on the strategy. This is the most critical group meeting of the entire project. It is the moment we all agree to the problems we are trying to solve as well as the opportunities we can leverage, and also get initial agreement as to how we are going to go forward.
We actually define the vision. It is so tempting to go straight from a list of issues to a list of projects, but without the vision to connect the two, the implementation plan will break down very quickly. It is very important to define what the organization, technology and delivery model will look like in the future in support of the overall strategic vision.
We make the strategy actionable through clear project overviews. Sometimes, but not always, we take this all the way to a detailed project plan and/or a full business case, but at a minimum, the approach, deliverables, timeline, resources required, high level benefits and costs need to be outlined. We get it to the point we could hand it over to a project manager to get started.

None of the above items may seem that unique, but I assure you, many projects skip some or all of the critical steps. Getting all five of those items done in an average of about 8 weeks is a challenge!

Is IT ready for growth?

2010-06-30T19:05:00.001-06:00

The cover story on the latest Information Week, "Return to Growth" makes some interesting points. Their 2010 survey of IT priorities showed a drastic leap in the number of organizations that are focused on introducing new IT led products and services for customers. As editor Chris Murphy states: "IT tends to be most comfortable making business processes more efficient rather than driving sales and creating new products and working with customers". So true.

And while the last couple of years have been painful, many IT organizations have been operating in their comfort zone. Now many of their organizations need them to help spur technology innovation to drive growth. Several challenges may hold them back. First, as mentioned previously, IT is more comfortable focusing on efficiency. Second, the cultural shift to innovation takes time. People are in the mode of minimizing their risk, so they won't be thinking in innovative ways to change their business or industry. Finally, IT departments have cut their costs to the bone, so they lack the foundation for investment. They don't have the capabilities in house, they have scrimped on infrastructure, their core applications are lagging.

And a couple of sidenotes: while I smiled to see that "aligning with the business" is FINALLY low on the list of priorities, I was disappointed to see that "meeting with customers" is also still pretty low. We clearly still have a ways to go.

It is going to be a fun year...

Do we need phases in strategy projects?

2010-06-24T07:20:00.000-06:00

Jim asked me the other day why we (and most strategy consultancies) conduct all our mainline strategy projects in three phases. Really, it was a just for fun kind of question. We learned early in our strategy training that it makes a lot of sense to start with some kind of assessment (where are we now), then move to a strategy (where are we going) and wrap up with a plan (how do we get there). Projects are extremely different - different durations, activities, deliverables, people involved - but they almost always follow these basic three steps.

We run across clients who want to skip one of the phases, but it is pretty easy to make a case for doing all three. Without an assessment, you aren't aware of all the issues (many of which are rooted below the surface) or the resources you have to work with. Without the strategy phase you have no overall vision by which to make difficult technology choices. Without a plan, people aren't aligned about exactly how to make things happen.

Jim wasn't really questioning why we do all the activities in the phases but more why we have to structure it in time as such. We pondered whether projects were closed off to new information by calling a phase complete. What we came to after a little healthy debate that really wore out his dog (since it resulted in a longer walk) was that a strategy project should be like a funnel, where you start with a hypothesis but a broad one and gradually hone in on the final recommendation. The checkpoints along the way (i.e. the end of the phases) not only put some rigor around the process to ensure you are making progress to that end, they also ensure the right amount of input and buy in of key stakeholders along the way. If you get agreement on what the problems and opportunities are, as well as the big picture of how you want to address them, the actual projects that need to happen are easy. And interestingly enough, we find that the hardest point to get alignment on is the assessment (counterintuitive to many since they think it is the most straightforward) and the easiest point is at the end of the plan (assuming we've had the right checkpoints along the way).

So the answer is yes. There are really good reasons to structure strategy projects in these chunks and in this order - although overlapping phases can be both necessary and beneficial. So for now, we will stick with this basic construct and find more interesting problems to tackle...

Healthy Tension in Leadership Teams

2010-06-16T22:12:00.002-06:00

I was eating organic natural peanut butter straight out of the jar in Jim's kitchen today. He encouraged me to eat as much of it as I could, because he tried to like it and just couldn't. He's back to some nasty processed sugary stuff I won't get near. I made a face and wondered how someone who eats so well could put that crap in their body. But I was happy I could eat the rest of the good jar.

Meanwhile, we were discussing something about one of our clients, and coming at it from completely different angles, as usual. It got me thinking about all the things we disagree on... and let's say it goes far beyond nut butters. I like to plan things way in advance. He wants to stay flexible. He likes to start. I like to finish. I like standardizing the way we do things. He doesn't want to waste time. He's skeptical. I'm trusting. I believe in enterprise architecture. He questions its value. On so many of our client projects we go back and forth, or build on each others ideas, respectfully criticizing, until we get to something great that we can both support. I love having Jim and my other colleagues around because I know their perspective helps me come up with better ideas, better recommendations, stronger insights.

One of our clients was talking the other night about how cool it is to observe the Thought Ensemble banter. Another client recently described the ying yang. On most of our projects these days, we have some combination of the Thought Ensemble team represented, and we'll pull in others for additional perspective even if they aren't officially on the project. And we often disagree in front of our clients. They seem to like it. They see multiple angles, we work through it together, and come to better conclusions in the end.

Healthy tension is so important in leadership teams. As long as there's an element of underlying respect, good arguments allow people to vet ideas faster and more effectively. We talk about it when coaching people, making sure that they have those kind of people around them, along with the trust and respect necessary to have productive conversations. I'm really lucky that I have it with my business partner, my other Thought Ensemble colleagues, clients, friends and other people in my life. I wouldn't give it up for anything. Even my favorite nut butter.

Working globally

2010-05-31T22:23:00.000-06:00

Several of our big clients over the last year are global companies, with headquarters in Europe and most of the people we work with on a daily basis dispersed throughout North America. From a consulting perspective, it is interesting to observe how different they operate than companies whose executives all work in the same building. For someone who is used to working primarily with people in the same location, it is a big adjustment. They can't grab someone for a few minutes after a meeting, they can't walk down the hall to find someone who doesn't show up to a meeting, they can't pick up the phone and talk anytime if they are working in radically different time zones. They can't just go grab lunch to get to know each other or see if someone is having a bad day based on their body language.

I haven't seen these challenges hold them back. If anything, some of the executive teams working remotely are more effective than those who work in the same suite. Those who are really effective do the following things really well:

They are loyal to their calendars. They schedule meetings and show up for them.
They are master facilitators on the phone. They prepare materials in advance to get conversation started and tee up discussions effectively.
They use video sometimes, either via computers or TelePresence to further get to know people.
They are very strategic with their in person time together, planning both work and play.
They have hubs of people working together so that they do feel like they have some camaraderie in the workplace.

What have you all seen?

Where are all the good project managers?

2010-05-28T12:51:00.001-06:00

Every week in our company meeting we review who we know looking for new jobs and companies we know are needing to fill positions. the other day as I was looking at our list, the gap at the manager level struck me. I know our data set is both limited and likely skewed but it does seem there's a dearth of good applicants in the manager/doer level of the IT space, both on our list and in my talks with people. We know plenty of people looking for Director, VP and CIO/ COO positions, but many of the jobs companies want to fill right now are at the manager level, and the kind of manager who is still able to "do real work" (a quote from one of my clients).

The same day I talked with a friend who is trying to fill a really interesting IT management role focused on the business analysis around a large program. He's got three headhunters working on filling this role, has been interviewing for months, and can't find someone qualified. He finally concluded that the balance of technology skills, project management abilities and the softer skills needed to navigate a complex program are just really hard to find in that level of individual.

Why is it that these people are so hard to find? Is this a new problem? Do IT people not have what it takes to move into these roles? Are they not interested? Do they get promoted beyond as soon as they get there if they are good?

I think this gap has always been around, but it has gotten worse lately. We used to raid the Big 4/5/6; and they produced a swarm of senior consultants and managers with 5-10 years of experience, eager to get off the road and join a company. But from what I've seen (and my colleagues who interview them) this isn't a sure thing anymore. These days, the big consultancies do a lot of packaged implementations and long term outsourcing contracts so consultants are more likely to have gone deep in a specific area versus gotten the overall skills required to jump in and contribute to a large variety of projects.

If you have any thoughts, I'd welcome them. And if you know any really good project managers in Denver or Dallas, send them my way!

Can Apple maintain momentum?

2010-05-27T08:52:00.003-06:00

Apple passed Microsoft yesterday as the most valuable technology company, at least as defined by market capitalization (Microsoft still has a strong lead in both revenue and profits). Apple's "comeback" is arguably the biggest turnaround in history. This NYT article talks a lot about how this moment signifies the move from PCs to handheld devices, which is partly true, but I think Apple's momentum and market valuation has been enhanced by the cult following of its customer base.

I admit, I love apple. I love my iPhone and won't give it up even though I can't stay connected on phone calls! I love my new iPad, my 2 year old lap top that has lasted far beyond my typical laptop life, my iPod that plays music in the car, and I can't wait to get my iMac. I get excited for their next thing and I'm beyond a loyal buyer at this point - I'm totally locked in.

But there are masses of people out there who worship Apple. These evangelists, with apple stickers on their cars, are always talking about and showing off all the benefits of Apple products. The single ones are eagerly awaiting the release of a new dating site so that they can find each other more easily. What other company has generated this kind of loyal following?

I'm wondering if Apple's cult following can be retained now that they are at the top. They've lived on the underdog reputation for a while. If the majority of people out there start carrying around Apple devices, people will find more to complain about. Its fun to be the adversary!

I'm still rooting for them, at least until other companies can really compete with their product leadership, but I am a little skeptical about their ability to keep this momentum.

Addition: After posting this, I saw Jim's latest post: Velcro and the iPad. Case in point!!

The dilemma of the strategy focused executive

2010-05-20T09:53:00.000-06:00

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been working with a few different clients on a wide variety of project types. Working with multiple clients on an ongoing basis isn’t anything new. Part of the value we bring is the perspective we have from working with a variety of organizations. What was new was the drastic difference in the type of work I was doing: everything from crafting a five year technology strategy to rolling out a large reorganization. Tactically speaking, this meant I was moving between blank whiteboards and a flurry of urgent emails and phone calls. As well as the usual interviews, workshops and quality time with PowerPoint. All these activities are right up my alley, but the last few weeks have required an unusual high speed of switch-tasking, luring me into the dangerous world of multi-tasking.

I finally acknowledged a few years ago that I’m not good at multi-tasking. When I’m focused on something, I’m totally focused on it, and when I’m focused on multiple things, I’m focused on nothing. But I am good at switch-tasking, as long as I have enough time, say an hour, on each task, and I really like doing different types of work. So I created the whack-a-mole analogy. Here’s how it works. On the left side of my brain, I’ve got a big, blank whiteboard. Oh, happy place. This is where strategy is created, a plan of attack is made, and that plan is executed. Theoretically, I’d love to spend all my time with that whiteboard, but most of my daily activities are more like a game of whack-a-mole. So I put that over on the right side. And the only way to make progress on the strategy is to dedicate time to it and focus playing whack-a-mole.

So it all sounds great, right? But here’s the problem. Those moles are so tempting. And I like playing whack-a-mole. It gives me an immediate sense of accomplishment. And often times those little things are helping my clients, colleagues or friends, even if it doesn’t help them as much as the whiteboard will eventually. (note: the number representing emails in my work inbox has creeped to 2 in the last 10 minutes since I started typing this blog. I’m not going to look at it until I’m done, but it is starting to make me crazy. My brain actually had the idea that I could look on my iPad because that wouldn’t be cheating!)

This all makes me think about the challenges of being a strategy-focused executive. Except in rare circumstances, we are part time and our clients don’t expect us to respond immediately. But a strategy-focused executive in a large company doesn’t have that luxury. This presents a bit of a dilemma, rooting back to a couple potentially contradictory beliefs about what makes a good strategist:

Strategy requires focused thinking time.
Good strategists have experience implementing their strategies.

So good strategists will be doing strategy and execution. And it takes a strong willed person to do the former while also making progress on the latter. Not that it is all about email, but it is a prime example. If we let ourselves, we could spend all of our days answering email. I don’t think many people knew what to do at work before email told them! It has trained us to be reactive. Getting our brain out of email and other reactive mediums to the blank whiteboard is foreign, and probably more challenging because we aren’t used to having time to think anymore.

The discipline to block time to focus on strategy, whatever that means (for me it is turning off email and phone) is critical. And it is constant. I have to retrain myself after a long game of whack-a-mole. But if you care about what you are up to in this world, spend some quality time with your whiteboard.

Where should strategy sit?

2010-04-30T23:55:00.000-06:00

I was taking with one of my friends earlier this week about the placement of the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) in his very large organization. I was initially surprised that she (the CSO) doesn’t report to the CEO, but instead into the COO. But once my friend explained that this particular executive is more focused on rolling out common processes and standards across their enterprise than she is focused on developing a strategic vision and executing strategic initiatives, it made more sense. Apparently all the visioning and even strategic execution is happening in pockets throughout the rest of the organization, and the people doing those kinds of activities stay very far away from this CSO.

So really, this particular executive just has an inappropriate title, a title that gives professionals focused on strategy a bad name, since expectations are set and not met. I’ve got to say, I don’t really see a true strategy officer reporting anywhere but directly to the CEO. Yes, a strategic program director or transformation officer could report to the COO if the Ops group is the central group that drives change through the enterprise. But the person or group responsible for visioning needs to have both the visibility and the autonomy to do that effectively. And that likely requires being outside of Operations.

So I got to thinking about what this all means for a technology organization within the larger enterprise. Specifically, IT or technology organizations with hundreds of people, can justify a role focused on strategy for their group. And CIOs sometimes wonder where it should live, especially if it doesn’t justify its own direct report to the CIO. Once again, I’d be very hesitant to lump it into any group more focused on execution (i.e. PMO, Operations, Development). It could be combined with performance management (i.e. organizational scorecards, not HR performance). The other likely place to put it is with the architecture group, assuming the architecture group is operating strategically, setting an overall vision, versus just defining standard technologies and processes.

In defense of PowerPoint

2010-04-30T10:57:00.000-06:00

This article , “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint”, was at the top of the New York Times “most emailed” list so I felt compelled to respond. The article quotes army commanders who joke about the junior lieutenants being “PowerPoint Rangers” and say things like “behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making.”

I’ve found it to be just the opposite.

So I’d like to take a moment to defend PowerPoint. But before I do, I must clarify that I’m not defending PowerPoint itself, but the use of a tool like PowerPoint, which happens to be the most pervasive application to support projected presentations and written reports. Despite my love for Microsoft Excel and my respect for Microsoft Word, I don’t find Microsoft PowerPoint to be anything more than adequate in its space. (I’m looking forward to trying KeyNote, Apple’s presentation program, when my iPad gets here later today). But I do spend a lot of time in PowerPoint, probably more time than in anything other than meetings.

I also must acknowledge that 90% of PowerPoint users are abusers. They make slides that are far too complicated, like the illustration at the top of the article. They create long lists of bullets that bore and confuse people. They put too many ideas on one page. Or they have too few ideas on a page with an incomplete message. And most of them have 10 times as many slides as they need!

When used appropriately, PowerPoint provides advantages over other forms of communication (e.g. pure verbal delivery, emails, or written prose) from development through delivery of good communication:

When conducting an analysis, building towards a final presentation ensures logical, complete analysis with focused, more efficient data gathering
When writing up the conclusions, having a “storyboard” can speed up writing time and help facilitate collaboration between authors
When presenting the communication, it is easier for the receiver of the communication to follow along, assuming the story is laid out logically and the information is organized in a method easier to digest.

The guys interviewed in the article poke fun at the emphasis on creating a “storyboard”. But the idea behind storyboarding is to ensure the message is delivered in a way that will help the audience understand quickly and frame discussions most effectively. Most people deliver communications in the way they came to the conclusion, versus the way their audience will most efficiently and effectively receive it.

At Thought Ensemble we focus on creating “killer” slides, those pages that summarize an issue or help dissect a problem to support choosing a path forward. Jim and I spent hours on one slide (i.e. page) this week. It was a summary of the strategic issues facing one of our CIO clients. The slide was organized into four categories (strategy, organization, delivery model, technology), with pithy bullets and a mini-chart for each one. He showed it to the CFO, who said it was so dead on she was going to frame it. When we come back to the executive team with our final report, it may be 10-20 pages but every page will be insightful and the pages will be organized to tell a story that will help the group make well-informed, thoughtful decisions.

I could write a novel on this, but I wouldn’t. I’d make a PowerPoint presentation. Oh, I already did, back when I used to teach writing training... so if you want more info, let me know!

Good news for CS majors...

2010-04-10T17:41:00.003-06:00

A recent WSJ article highlighted some good news for CS grads, despite the fact that most college grads are facing lower relative salaries.

"Those with computer-related degrees are expected to see one of the largest increases in offers — rising to $58,746, on average, 5.8%, higher than a year earlier. For computer-science majors, offers are 4.7% higher for an average salary of $60,426."

Keep your favorite high schoolers in math and science classes and encourage them to pursue CS degrees!

Is money really the reason women leave IT?

2010-04-09T11:48:00.000-06:00

As a female in the technology industry, I find it interesting to follow what people say about the lack of women who start and stay in IT careers. This recent Computer world article, “The shrinking female IT workforce”, asserts that women are leaving middle-management roles in IT because of pay disparity, and attempts to link that to stronger biases against women than in other parts of the organization.

I’m not sure how well the argument holds up in the article and it sure doesn’t seem to jive with what I hear on the street. Women are often less motivated by money (the article says they are now more motivated in a bleaker economy with more women taking on the “breadwinner” role) than by other indicators of job satisfaction. I meet with women in IT practically every week looking for new opportunities and money is rarely if ever mentioned as a key driver.

I believe the issue still goes back to getting more women interested in math and science as a career … and creating cultures where they enjoy working.

What if we all told girls they were good at math...

2010-03-31T21:07:00.002-06:00

When I was in fifth grade, I announced to my dad that “girls aren’t supposed to be good at math”. I don’t remember exactly what spurred the comment; I think it might have been my denial that “x” couldn’t be ANY number, or maybe I just knew at some level it would tweak him. I do know that my parents will never let me forget the outburst. My academically minded parents were so concerned about social biases that I wasn’t even allowed to have barbies. I may still be scarred from that, but lucky for me, I did accept that “x” could be any number, went straight into advanced math classes, planned to major in Math in college, ended up CS instead, and became one of the growing number of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers.

AAUW just released a report around “Why so few?” (women in STEM careers) that has been getting some buzz, even though the topic has been discussed extensively in the news over the years. The good news is that the number women with the academic and test performance in STEM fields has drastically increased. The bad news is that the gap hasn’t closed yet, and many of those with potential don’t choose STEM careers. The study makes a strong case for lingering cultural biases, and the need for education to be improved to give girls the right environment for learning. It also makes a case for us continuing to encourage the girls we know into these types of careers.

My cousin is a junior at Colorado State, majoring in chemical engineering. She grew up with an epidemiologist and a statistician as parents, and it probably never occurred to her not to be good at science. This girl is going to rock the world – she’s smart, nice, thoughtful… and beautiful. You’d never peg her as an engineer if you believed all the stereotypes. Of course she is already getting internship offers all over the world. She spent last summer in Germany and is spending this summer in Ireland. The opportunity is there. We all just need to spread the word. And the technology industry (as well as many others) would be so much better off if we did…

Where should architecture sit?

2010-03-31T17:18:00.000-06:00

I have a theory. I’d like to test it…

First, only for the purposes of this discussion, let’s classify technology groups into two types:

An “IT organization” builds and maintains applications and infrastructure for its “internal” customers. For example, they may deliver sales force automation for Sales, or HR systems for the HR group. They may also build some applications for “external” parties, like an ecommerce platform for customers or a procurement system for suppliers.
An “Engineering” organization that is building something the customer is buying, like software, or a product that distributes information. They may also have a back office IT organization supporting them.

Now, for the theory related to architecture’s role. Assuming a centralized group that is looking for technology leverage opportunities (e.g. standardization, consolidation, innovation) across the organization:

The internal IT organization would be well served with an enterprise architecture organization that acts as a primary liaison its internal customer. This group, as the primary liaison, can most effectively develop strategy, manage demand, and ensure the appropriate investment decisions are made.
The Engineering organization would be better served with an architecture organization that sits behind other groups, groups that are more aligned with customers, products or business lines. The architecture group would act as an advisor to the heads of those areas, who should be focused primarily on the needs of their business area.

I could go on, but I’d love some initial reactions first…

Cultural implications of ongoing feedback

2010-03-25T14:09:00.000-06:00

I’ve been in a lot of meetings the last few weeks - client meetings, networking meetings, sales meetings, community meetings - many with my coworkers Jim, Claudia and John. At our company trip last month, we all re-committed to one of our original objectives around debriefing after every meeting together. We’d been sporadic before, but since then we’ve been doing a really good job of spending five minutes after every meeting giving each other feedback.

I’m not going to tell you it has been easy to fit in the schedule or even have the conversation. That’s why we are putting special focus on ingraining it into our culture until it is natural. At first, it feels a little awkward, especially for those who have given and received many performance reviews over the years. Its hard to overcome the natural tendency of bracing for unpleasant news or taking a deep breath to deliver something you’ve been waiting to say for a while. But after a few meetings, the conversation really flows naturally. It really feels more like back and forth rather than up and down, and that’s what I find most interesting.

Jim and I have been experiencing the benefits of back and forth feedback with each other since college. Amidst constructive and unconstructive cultures and performance reviews at a variety of companies, we’ve always had a ton of respect for each other and given each other tough criticism as well. Today we are harder on each other than ever, but it feels totally safe because we have a relationship built on helping each other. Theoretically, that should become much more challenging as we add people with different roles in the organization who have new or historic relationships with us and each other.

So far, so very good. What’s most interesting about these debriefs is the quick turn they take from one-way feedback sessions to helping each other improve and generating ideas as to how the company can grow. After one of John’s presentations a couple weeks ago, I told him I’d been watching carefully to come up with ideas for how he could have been more effective. And then he did the same for me the next day. We weren’t reviewing each other, we were helping each other work better with our clients. After Claudia and I met a potential partner company for lunch, I opened up to her about where I thought I had fallen short and then she was able to build on that to give me some feedback on how I could have steered the conversation better. Jim and I came out of a networking meeting last week that took a quick and unexpected turn into a sales meeting and even though the outcome was great, we still discovered in talking through our debrief something that neither of us had put our finger on individually – that we need to be able to give prices for certain types of projects on the spot.

We are huge believers in having a flat structure and culture and so far this feels like one of the best things we have done to lay a foundation for that. We’ll keep you posted on how this goes as our company grows, but I think we are on to something pretty unique and extremely valuable. Assuming we can stay really good at this, we’ll never need performance reviews!

Shopping at Apple

2010-02-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

I really don’t like shopping, but unfortunately, I like having stuff, so I end up doing it sometimes, when I can’t outsource it to someone else. The other day was one of those days. I went into the Apple store to buy a phone charger. I sighed as I walked through the door into probably a hundred employees and customers clustered all around the store. I went straight to the back in search of my charger and as soon as I picked it up a woman walked up to me and asked me if I had found what I needed.

I held up my phone and the charger and said, “Do these match?”
She said, “Yes, would you like to purchase it?”
“Sure”, I said.
“OK, I can do it right here. Cash or Credit?”
“Credit.” I held out my Mastercard.
With her tripped out iPhone, she scanned the teeny box and swiped my card. “Receipt printed or emailed?”
“Emailed”, I said with a smile. I was liking this so far.
“breytspraak@yahoo.com?”
“Yes…”
“You are all set. Thanks!”

I was done?!? I put the charger in my purse and walked out triumphantly. That was AWESOME! Imagine how happy IT organizations would make their organizations if they rethought processes like that? They need to re-engineer their internal organizations in how they do everything from provisioning, approving projects, gathering requirements and more. They need to lead their organizations in rethinking how they get work done, how they interact with customers. That would build some serious respect.

I’m not dreading going back to the Apple store now. I actually think I might enjoy the experience. If only swimsuit shopping had been so enjoyable…

Social Networking's Impact on Organizational Structures

2010-02-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Economist recently did a special report on social networking. It is thoughtful and comprehensive, but it could have been written a couple of years ago. I love the Economist, but their reports on IT tend to lag the times. As usual, I was a little disappointed. Anyway, not my point…

The particular article in the series: Yammering away at the Office, got me to thinking a little about organizational structures and how social networks have the potential to really change the way we thinking about organizational design.

Historically, when doing organizational design, the dominant thinking is around the “HR reporting”, in which every employee reports to one manager who is ultimately responsible for that employee’s performance. With increasing complexity of organizations, we’ve added dotted line reporting, which basically means an employee has a second or third manager who is also responsible for some aspect of the employee’s performance, but the primary manager still retains primary control of that employee’s world. We now have matrix organizational designs, project based designs, and functional designs, all that may coexist with traditional HR reporting structure.

Over time, the HR reporting lines have lost power. Superstars can more easily circumvent the bureaucracy and poor performers are outed easier. Managers can more easily snag people for their special projects. In some companies, HR lines are only retained because HR systems require it, or to facilitate annual performance and compensation review processes. Yes, there are functions in an organization that require tight “HR management”, especially those that are more operational in nature. But over time, much of the operational work is being automated or outsourced, so more and more is project based. And project based work does not lend itself to traditional HR reporting lines. People are often working on a couple of projects at once (ideally not more than a couple though). Projects rarely last the entire year, so people need to be moved around often. And the people involved in each project are ideally picked each time, so teams are constantly forming with new people. And it goes even further. Knowledge is no longer segmented to specific functions in an organization. Whether it is a project or just a minor task, the best person or idea to move it forward is often in another area of the organization than HR reporting lines would lead us to believe.

So how is technology changing these reporting lines? The article says that “existing IT systems are geared towards reinforcing separate silos rather than building bridges between them”. I assume they are talking about all the standard systems we know across the organization that are set up to support specific functions with interfaces between them only where necessary. Many of these systems have tried to incorporate more collaboration but have had limited success.

True social networking technologies are driving or supporting (up for debate, probably both) the move towards more project based work and knowledge sharing across the organization. Microsoft’s SharePoint has been around a while and is so pervasive that most organizations immediately pop up a new site as a resolution to any problem or project. That has moved things forward a bit, but it is still mostly just to share documents despite the advanced features. It is taking social networking technologies, both external (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter) and internal (Yammer, Newsgator’s Social Sites Enterprise) to really collaborate across reporting lines and geographies. As people are getting more comfortable with this type of communication in their external world, it is picking up steam in within the walls of the corporation. As the article points out, there are still objections to these technologies as productivity enhancers, but those objections are getting shot down quickly.

So now that technology can really support knowledge sharing and project collaboration, people are getting more comfortable with different ways of operating, and managers are accepting the value, how will reporting structures change? It is pretty clear that HR reporting lines will continue to lose power in most parts of the organization, but will we get to a point that they disappear entirely? I suspect that day is closer than we think. Organizations will flatten and spans of control will widen, with tens if not hundreds of people “reporting” into a general manager and working with a resource manager to prioritize their projects. People will work on a variety of projects and tasks for various managers, with a variety of project teams, pulling in knowledge experts from all around and outside the organization. And these technologies will help enable it all.

Financial Planning in the Cloud: An Update

2010-02-12T09:24:00.002-07:00

I am SO glad I listened to my "consultant". If you didn't read the previous post, this consultant, had I hired them, would have convinced me to give up on the processes I had used for years associated with Quicken. And I was very resistant. In fact, since my PC crashed last summer, I'd been trying to find some technology that exactly replicated what I used to do on my PC on my Mac. It actually seems kind of ridiculous now that I couldn't let go of my customized categories, just because that's how I'd thought about my expenses for years.

But I let it go. My hands were tied and I played Mint.com's game. And now I have all these great new features, partly because I simplified to their standards! I'm saving all kinds of time because it actually knows where to categorize 90% of my spending. And I love the simple interface and intuitive reports. Everything is finally in one place. I'm actually amazed that it can pull in all of my investments and show me how every individual stock is performing, with just a login and password to my investment site.

I think my financial planning saga is over. I can throw away that old PC and be happy sitting on my little cloud.

Financial Planning in the Cloud

2010-02-04T07:53:00.003-07:00

Ever since I lost my Quicken data on my PC, I’ve been searching for a viable financial planning alternative on my Mac. I started with Mint.com, a free financial planning tool in the “cloud”, which offers some fun new features like bill pay reminders and overspending email notices, but it is still a bit amateur compared to Quicken’s capabilities, especially in its ability to customize categories and run reports. So my financial advisor, who uses Fidelity as a custodian, suggested I try Fidelity’s Fullview product, another online tool that pulls data from a set of online accounts and allows for categorization and reporting of transactions. It did allow me to do some category customization, but the interface was not exactly what I liked. But then an entire billing cycle of one of my credit cards (at least 100 transactions) mysteriously disappeared after I’d gone through and categorized all of them. The help desk said they’d try to retrieve it but it would be a couple of weeks. I lost patience and trust and have since been exploring alternatives: going back to Mint.com and losing some flexibility, moving to something new like Money Guide Pro (another option to integrate investment performance reports with budgeting) or waiting for Quicken for the Mac to be released this month and seeing what it has to offer.

I spent an hour today looking at the alternatives and I’m more frustrated than ever. I admit, I’m still a little pissed about losing all of my PC Quicken data of 1996-2009, but more importantly, I just can’t let go of some of the basic functionality I came to know and love and some other functionality I think is reasonable to want…

I really want my customized categories back. Why? I’ve categorized expenses for the same way for the last fourteen years and I’d like the reporting to be consistent.
I need an easy way to categorize my business expenses and run a report to generate my expense report. I have a process to categorize those expenses, report on them for my expense report and then exclude them from my spending reports.
I want to follow my investments in the same place, ideally in a way that my financial advisor and I can review the progress together.

Quicken for the PC did all these things, with the exception of #3. So it seems logical to me that I can find another program to run on my Mac or in the cloud to do the same. After fourteen years of basically the same functionality, I don’t see why I should have to change. And then I realized … I am the reason that systems in large companies can’t be killed off! I’m one of those “power users” who insist their processes are so effective they shouldn’t be changed by technology.

But what’s interesting is that in my investigation of Mint.com’s supposed missing feature, I realized through some discussion threads there is some reasoning for the standard categories: It makes it a lot easier for them to categorize transactions automatically and run comparison data with other users. Automatic categorization and ongoing benchmarking are arguably better features than category customization. Additionally, Mint.com also has a way to tag business expenses without using a separate category, which could make expense reporting and exclusion from spending analyses even easier. They don’t seem to have much on the investment front, but there really isn’t a reason those two systems have to be tied together. I can still see the full picture, even if I can’t get all the details of the activity within.

If I hired a consultant to come in and run a software selection for me, they would likely advise me to let go of my hangups and use the free product that is likely to make me happier in the long run. They would tell me that it won’t work exactly like I’m used to, but that by moving to something more standard on the cloud, I’m going to get better overall features in the long run. So, I’m going to swallow my own medicine and give Mint.com a try. If I just can’t take it, I’ll see what Quicken releases for the Mac… more soon.

What’s it about personality “tests” that some love and others hate?

2010-01-31T17:50:00.001-07:00

“But I don’t wanna be put in a box!”, he exclaimed. “He” could have been a colleague, a client, a guy I’m dating … I’ve heard it from all of them. But yet these same people want to be understood, they want to be loved and respected for their unique attributes, they want to relate well with others. And personality instruments like Myers-Briggs, DISC and others help us understand each other and provide a safe language for speaking with each other about our differences.

Yes, I love this stuff – I’m happily distracted by a personality test any day over many other activities (granted, I also liked taking tests as a kid, so I realize I might be a bit of an anomaly). I just think it is so fascinating to get a glimpse into the way people perceive the world, process information, and make decisions, especially when it is so different than me. To understand that an extravert has to take everything out of his head and pick through it with someone else to figure out what he actually thinks, or that an introvert, when asked a question, must run away for a few days to her little getaway just to come back with a one word answer … that helps people relate. To get that some people need to take information in visually, some auditory, some kinesthetically, that helps people connect. To understand that some people are uncomfortable making final decisions and others will be ancy until the decision is made … that helps people work together. And those are just a few examples.

Every one of these tools is just an instrument to learn more about ourselves and help us relate to others who are different than us. Understanding our natural preferences helps us figure out where we need help and what we need to work on. So why are some people so anti personality tests? Unfortunately these instruments have gotten a bad rap because people get so caught up in the classifications that they attempt to draw very specific conclusions without realizing the nuances. It should be more about the conversation that it gets started. When we talk through our types and say “oh, that’s totally you!” or “that really resonates with me”, we can open up communication in a non-threatening way, acknowledging our differences and advising each other on how we can relate effectively. The week after my office went through one of these facilitations, one of the guys in my office who tested strong “F” (feeling, not thinking) in Myers-Briggs, stopped me mid conversation and said, “Lisa, remember, I’m an “F”, so I’m sensitive when you tell me this stuff!”, which isn’t exactly the meaning of “F” in Myers-Briggs, but it helped us have the conversation we needed to have in a much more effective way. And we got a good laugh out of it.

So I think everyone should stop taking all these tests so seriously and use them for what they are meant – helping us better understand ourselves and others to improve personal and professional relationships!

IT job market seems to be improving

2010-01-29T08:44:00.004-07:00

Just this week, I've had four people email me looking to fill IT related positions, mostly in consulting. Several have remarked that the market is getting tighter, it is harder to find good people now than last year. And I know fewer people looking. Based on what I hear from people, it feels as though the job market (at least in IT) has been steadily improving since December.

If you are looking for a job in the IT field in Denver or Dallas, feel free to email me what you are looking for and I'll let you know if you are a match for any of these opportunities. And no, I don't charge a fee, it is just your reward for reading my blog.

HB1192 needs to be squashed

2010-01-26T09:40:00.003-07:00

I’m not usually one to get very involved in local or state politics, but this proposed House Bill 1192 is an exception. If you haven’t heard about it, you can read more here. Basically, it is a huge new tax on software that will affect our technology community and every company employing workers in Colorado.

There are several complexities that make it even worse – it is retroactive, it is based on employee usage of software (even if they use a software program one hour a year), and they are planning to penalize companies who do not somehow hear about this required tax through an industry association or some other means. It is so clear that basing a tax like this on the number of employees in Colorado will reduce employers’ incentives to hire/ retain people in Colorado.

Hopefully this won’t pass because it is unconstitutional under TABOR to add a new tax without voter approval, but please voice your concern by calling state officials and spread the word. I just emailed each person on the appropriations committee - it only took five minutes. You can find out more information here on who to contact…

What will be the technology turning point for remote work?

2010-01-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

This week I flew to Michigan to kick-off a new project. We had eleven executives from seven different locations across North America. Only one lived and worked in Michigan.

During a fun dinner conversation about how technologies like Yammer and IM are changing business interactions, we got on to the pros and cons of TelePresence, the high end video conferencing solution this company uses. (If you haven’t used it before, I’ll share from personal experience that you can count the hairs on someone’s head. It is far beyond traditional video). Someone joked about how hard it is during a TelePresence call to multitask or even lean over and whisper to a coworker without being heard and seen. And that is exactly what made another person ask the group how long it will be until we all have setups in our home offices to allow us to connect in so “virtually-real”. The gap between remote and in person meetings is closing to the point that it will soon be very hard to justify the travel and/or office maintenance costs. Yes, George Clooney, in his recent movie “Up in the Air”, did make an adequate case that some things (i.e. firing people) should be done in person, but many other everyday interactions can and should be moved to video conference once the technology is there.

I, for one, dream about the day I can work from a home office from the mountains, connecting to my clients via a medium stronger than a phone. I like a mix; meeting people in person is great the first time and every once in a while or for longer meetings, but so much work can be done, more efficiently, remotely.

And it is happening…

Old-school consultants find it extremely surprising when we hypothesize that Thought Ensemble may never have a physical office. And yet I feel closer to my colleagues than ever before, with constant connection via IM, presence to show me where they are and video conferencing on our internal meetings. We still see each other once or twice a month and at various locations for internal meetings, but the majority of our time we work remotely.

My financial planner conducts his quarterly review meetings with me using video/ web conferencing. At first I thought it was a bit strange for him to suggest this type of meeting when I only live a few minutes from his office, but now I absolutely love just connecting in with him in the midst of my day, from home. I’m meeting with him more often and feel more connected to him than I did my previous financial planner. There’s something about seeing him on the screen while he projects the report online that feels much more connected than a phone call.

It is even happening in larger companies, although our clients seem to still congregate in various offices rather than work remotely from home offices. Some of our clients are dispersed across the country and globe and stay very connected with each other via video, phone and instant messaging. In some ways, those in remote offices may have more effective communication. Recently, I’ve noticed that companies that primarily operate out of one location are less rigorous about setting and running effective meetings because they take for granted their ability to snag a coworker’s time. Yes, there is something nice about walking down the hall, but being dispersed requires people to use each other’s time more thoughtfully. It seems the more dispersed the team members are, the more they respect each other’s time, showing up to meetings as planned, setting agendas, and sticking to the time alloted.

That all said, there’s still a huge cultural shift to having people work remotely. Many technologies along the way have supported that shift –beginning with the phone, onto email, instant messaging, presence and social networking. (Good) video may be the turning point. Once quality video is pervasive, I believe the majority of knowledge work can be done remotely…

Favorite Books of 2009

2009-12-31T19:01:00.002-07:00

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 ...

2009-12-30T18:26:00.001-07:00

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

2009-12-17T15:06:00.001-07:00

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

2009-12-17T09:06:00.002-07:00

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

2009-12-16T09:03:00.000-07:00

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.

A little venting… about a lot of opportunity

2009-11-30T21:44:00.000-07:00

One of the fun things about having a blog is that I get to vent. So if you don’t want to hear about my various customer service debacles, skip this blog or skip to the last couple paragraphs…

I’ve been wondering for the last few weeks why XM’s auto calling program continues to call my cell phone and leave crisis messages? Every day. For over three weeks. They left me seven messages while I was out of the country at the start of November because my auto credit card had expired. So I called them, even though I would much preferred not to talk to anyone, and the whole experience of giving them a new credit card number was quite painful. But here’s the kicker: Not only has the auto program continued to call me and leave messages, even after I called back a second time and was told I’m all clear in their system, they somehow managed to send me a new XM radio to my house. A thank you gift? Not exactly. Somehow, the representative got confused when I called to change my credit card and actually set up a whole new account and shipped me a new radio. When I called back, they told me they couldn’t even help me … that I had to call another number around new orders that wasn’t even open. They had “no access to that system”. I escalated through management and finally caved and went to go ship the silly radio back, at which point I found out from Mr. Mail Boxes etc. that he sees this kind of thing all the time … he’s helped send back over 20 phones in the last month that were “accidentally” shipped from Qwest. And, he emphasized, these companies often lose the orders and make people pay for phones who lose their tracking number.

Meanwhile, my COBRA provider continues to email me important notices that have to be downloaded and opened through some executable program… one that doesn’t happen to run on a Mac. So every time they send me one of these mystery messages, most of which are not really “important notices”, I have to call into their hotline and hear their apologizing about not supporting Macs. Really? Are Mac users so rare that we don’t need to be considered? C’mon.

And why does Chase think they can take online banking down for scheduled maintenance between 8 AM and noon on Sunday morning? Aren’t there ways these days to make changes to websites without taking them down for four hours… and if not, how about doing it in the middle of the night? Sunday morning seems like the very most logical time for people to be doing online banking.

Just today, I got a notice from a wine club offering a case of Cab Franc at a great price. While I do not really need another case of wine, the price, vineyard and grape were very compelling, so I clicked through to buy. I don’t remember using this website before, in fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never ever ordered wine on the internet, but apparently my email address is associated with an account and I can’t buy anything until I get my password sent to me and log back in. It has been 7.5 hours since I requested my password and this sale is ending in 2.5 hours so I guess they are out several hundred dollars. It is probably for the best, but seriously? I can’t buy this wine without logging in with a user name?

It just kills me. There is so much opportunity for companies to use technology to improve customer experience, reduce their costs of interaction, improve their cash flow, sell new products, retain customers… but they are botching it! They think are implementing the latest customer tech fad, but they aren’t systematically considering the needs of their customers … or the limitations of their current technology. I guess this is why I have a job. ☺

Before I conclude, I’d like to call out one big exception, at least the only one in my life: AT&T. I have been so impressed with their customer service on many occasions, as well as their variety of options on interacting with them. Jim was just telling me that he had a similar situation to my XM debacle with one unpaid bill in years and they sent him a text that was (for him) the perfect prompt to go pay his bill. Dumb luck? Probably not. Someone in that company has actually thought all this through from a holistic customer perspective. And that makes me happy. Even though my phone drops calls!