Sean Combs (aka P. Diddy, Diddy) posted a help wanted ad on YouTube recently. He received over 10,000 video job applications.CNN's recent Democratic debate, by contrast, garnered only about 3,000 questions for the Presidential hopefuls.I have no idea what this means.
I just thought you should know.
With apologies to Jim Collins for the title of this blog entry....
It seems to me that most companies judge the performance of their I.T. departments in two ways.
1. On infrastructure: Do things work? (And if they break are they repaired quickly?)
2. On Project Management: Do projects get completed on time and on budget?
If the answers to these two questions is Yes, congratulations! You are good.
These are pretty basic measures. Obviously we all want our PCs and laptops to run flawlessly. The applications shouldn't crash. Our website should not be down. We need to run in a secure environment. I call this executing basic blocking and tackling - the fundamentals of I.T. infrastructure management.
And secondly, we judge I.T. on project management and execution. if we're going to give the I.T. department millions of dollars to implement that new system, they had better not run over budget, miss deadlines or provide a system that doesn't work.
Of course for more sophisticated companies, I.T. excellence is measured on multiple conditions - I.T. strategic alignment, Physical and intellectual data security, Infrastructure Change control processes, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, Governance, cost control, ISO certification, among many more....
But in the end, the average internal customer rates I.T. on two axis. Infrastructure and Project execution. If you do those things well, you have a good I.T. department.
I'm not going to spend much time telling you how difficult it is to execute these two metrics flawlessly. It takes dedicated, hard working, excellent employees, using good processes to make this happen. But for those of you who have managed to execute on these two major tasks, where do you go from here?
How do you get from Good to Great?
The short answer is: Business Process Execution. Now that you've provided the infrastructure and given the business the application tools, partner with the business to make sure the tools are used well - that the processes are being executed flawlessly.
How do you do that? Here are some suggestions.
1. Keep your eye on the prize. When big systems are justified, many times they're paid for with expectations of cost reductions or revenue enhancement or cashflow improvement or improved inventory turns. Make the business goals, I.T. goals. In the systems department, your job isn't done until the business benefit is achieved. (Makes any discussion about "I.T. alignment" moot.)
2. This forces you to look beyond launch date of the system. It says you must partner with process owners and managers to improve transaction execution, to achieve those business goals. This takes frequent, open and honest dialog. It requires partnering with your business counterparts.
3. Understand that the system itself doesn't guarantee anything. It amazes me that many smart executives expect that once a system is installed, the benefits should "just come". That same reasoning would have us install the latest version of MS Word on your computer, then sit back and wait for you to write the next Harry Potter novel!
4. Help your business counterparts understand the process, monitor the process and execute the process. In some companies (especially big ones), you might be amazed to learn that no one actually understands the end to end business processes. Departments become so specialized, that they only understand their jobs from their in box to their out box. They have no appreciation for what happens before the task reaches them, nor the affect that their work (if poorly executed) has downstream. This takes time, patience and coaching - words seldom used in technical I.T. job descriptions. Integrated systems are not very forgiving if the integrated tasks aren't performed properly. Transactions just stop.
5. Compensate your I.T. staff for obtaining positive business results. Make positive business outcomes into performance goals for your staff.
For example, the Purchasing Business Analyst might have a goal of reducing PO exception processing to less than 5% of all POs issued. Or perhaps should share a goal with Purchasing management to identify x% purchasing cost savings.
Your Payables analyst might have a goal that automated three way match processing should handle 90% of all payables transactions, or that prompt invoice processing should result in 100% allowable discounts.
Your Financial business analyst, might have a goal of shortening the monthly or quarterly close to x days. Or to automate all monthly journal entries.
6. Good I.T. functions still speak in terms of "us and them". Great I.T. departments speak in terms of "we". Once you've blurred the boundaries between business functions and I.T. support functions, you know you're headed on the path to Great.
Talent borrows. Genius steals.
I've heard this expression used a couple of times recently. I think its origin is in the Advertising world, but to me, it's meaning is applicable almost everywhere.
Talent recognizes a good idea and copies it. Genius recognizes a good idea, adapts it and executes it better than the original source, eventually securing credit for the original idea.
Great ideas are everywhere. And in the age of instant communications and unbridled information access and potential for collaboration, it makes one wonder how anyone could still hold sacred, a "Not invented here" mentality.
I'd be willing to wager that 99% of the time, anything you're considering doing - be it a process improvement, a product improvement or a service improvement, has already been tried and executed by someone previously.
Yet for many of us, finding a solution to a current challenge always starts with a blank sheet of paper or a whiteboard - the genesis of the reinvention of the wheel.
While this may be a satisfying intellectual exercise, it doesn't make great business sense. Is there any such thing as a unique problem anymore?
Seems to me that a strategy of Adopt, Adapt and Execute will win the day every time. Great process and service ideas are all around you -at the local Dry Cleaners, at the drive-thru, or at your neighbor's place of business. Great ideas can come from anywhere. Make those ideas your own. Steal great ideas shamelessly.
Be a genius!
After watching CNN's YouTube debate last night, I'd like to know what you think.
Was this format helpful or harmful in terms of helping you understand where the candidates stand on the issues? Did it help you narrow down your preference for a Democratic Presidential nominee?
Vote now!
I just came across this great HBS article and had to share it with you. It discusses one author's experience contributing to Wikipedia (and trying to keep his article from being deleted) and extends to a discussion of how wiki's might work (or not) in the corporate world.
Definitely worth a read.
If I could give an I.T. salesperson 5 pieces of advice, it would be these:
1. Don't Swing for the Fences.
I know you're excited to get a meeting with the C.I.O. but set your objectives short of selling him or her on the first try. It won't happen.
2. Don't try to sell me a solution looking for a problem.
The fastest way for you to lose credibility is to try to sell me somethng for which I have no need whatsoever - or to deceive my assistant to get the meeting.
3. Never cold call a C.I.O..
It simply won't be responded to. In my experience successful salespersons develop relationships at the Manager or Director level, build some support for your solution and are then introduced to the C.I.O. by internal management. You arrive with much more credibiity, if you're "sponsored" by one of my staff.
4. Don't come to me to understand how your company can help me. If you don't know that before you enter my office, you're wasting my time.
And yet this happens more often than you'd think. I personally was called by a major CRM software company monthly, for a year. I was called by different people each time and told them that we were customers of a competitor. Undaunted, the calls continued, until one day I asked what CRM system the caller used.
"Our own" was the answer.
"Then you don't use it very well, because I've told the last six callers we use a different system!"
The calls stopped after that.
5. Understand that even if you've built a better mousetrap, I need to understand all the transition costs. Corollary: Good enough is usually good enough. What I have deployed and functioning trumps something new, almost every time. So come prepared to address how to get "from here to there".
And understand too, that the C.I.O. will double your transition cost assessment.
A friend of mine now works for a company that bought his company out. Yesterday I asked him how the transition was going. He stated that it appeared that decisions within the I.T. department were being done tactically - to achieve cost reductions.. At least that's the way it appeared to him.
How could it be that after a year, a senior level manager had to "interpret" the I.T. strategy of his new company?
The problem occurs more frequently than you might think.
Don't believe me? Walk around your department and ask the question: What is our Mission?
And listen to the answers. Even if your company isn't going through a big transition, don't be surprised if the answers are "all over the board".
Then think about what an opportunity you might be missing. The efforts of even the most talented and energetic people can be compromised, if they aren't directed to a common mission. And if your people aren't 100% certain of the goal, getting there is going to take significantly longer!
Many of us assume that everyone knows where we're headed. I've been guilty of that in the past. It's not until you ask the question, that you know for sure.
In my friend's case, imagine how much progress might have been made if on Day One, the new CIO told the acquired I.T. department that it was their primary mission to identify ways to reduce I.T. costs of the combined companies, without sacrificing system performance or security.
Imagine the number of ideas that might have been generated by a joint session of the two companies' I.T. leadership? Initiatives could have been prioritized and assigned. It might have also been a huge opportunity to begin to evaluate the ideas and performance of the new staff.
Working relationships might have been forged. Everyone might have been allowed to contribute.
Instead, the acquiring company decided to forgo the opportunity and has built a new I.T. department, wherein a large number of folks now "check their brains at the door" and wait to be told what to do.
What a waste.
Just in case you aren't a seafarer, let me tell you a little about barnacles. Barnacles are small sea creatures which attach (cement) themselves to (among many things) ships' hulls. Attached is a picture of what they look like.
Barnacles are a big nuisance for the shipping industry. Here's why.
"It has been known for some time that barnacles, mussels and algae cause up to a 15 percent increase in the drag resistance of ships, which drives up fuel bills and hampers a ship's performance." You can read the entire article here.
Barnacles attach to hulls below the waterline. After all, they're sea creatures and they live below the surface of the water. Hundreds or thousands of barnacles can attach themselves to the hull of your ship, and you'd never know it, standing on deck.
But you'd feel the effect. You'd use more energy just to keep the ship moving forward. Your ship would be more difficult to steer.
So why are we talking about barnacles?
Well, think of your company as "a ship". With sleek, well engineered processes, your "ship" has a clean hull, (no drag) and uses a minimum amount of energy to get you where you want to go. You're maneuverable and can react to changing market conditions.
But over time, processes tend to evolve, change, out of view of senior management - below the waterline. An extra report here. Another form there. More approvals required for this task, additional reporting on that task, more meetings, less decision making, after the fact quality checks, inspection departments are formed, safety departments spring up...
One by one, these process "barnacles" begin to attach themselves to your hull. And before you know it, "your ship" is in trouble. Lethargic, not maneuverable, expending energy without desired results.
So what's the lesson in all this? Think about every proposed change in "end to end" process terms. When faced with a process or task breakdown, companies like Toyota, ask WHY? five times. They feel that this is the only way to really understand the underlying cause of an issue. They seek to solve the source of the problem, rather than to quickly address a symptom.
Dive into resolving the real problem - personal performance, lack of training, poor execution. If your processes need work, explore the root cause and fix the process. You likely don't need that extra form or the extra report or the extra approval.
And your ship will stay barnacle free.
Thanks to 800CEOREAD.com who points us to this site.
Project Cartoon is a variant on the classic I.T. Project cartoon, which (accurately) displays the various facets and views of how typical I.T. projects are run.
Now, thanks to the Project Cartoon site, you can create your own version of this classic cartoon by dragging and dropping the images and providing your own captions. Print it out and display it on your office wall.
Have someone from your user community visit the site, create a cartoon and send it to you. You could learn a lot about what your customers think about your PM skills.
Every once in a while I rediscover the meaning of a word.
Thanks to Seth Godin, I rediscovered the word "remarkable". He uses it within a marketing context - creating a positive customer impression, sufficient enough to get your customers evangelizing you or your product. To be praiseworthy.
If you think about it, too many companies are UNremarkable. They do what they do - in uninspiring, unremarkable ways. They don't leave you with sufficiently positive impression, that you want to tell your friends or relatives about them. So you don't.
Every customer you serve is your chance to be remarkable, and yet millions of times every day, businesses across the country forfeit that opportunity.
Seth makes the case for "remarkable" far better than I do, so I strongly recommend reading any of his books. Start with Unleashing the Ideavirus.
Another word I've recently rediscovered is "catalyst".
Dictionary.com defines a catalyst as:
1. something that causes activity between two or more persons or forces without itself being affected.
2. a person or thing that precipitates an event or change: His imprisonment by the government served as the catalyst that helped transform social unrest into revolution.
3. a person whose talk, enthusiasm, or energy causes others to be more friendly, enthusiastic, or energetic.
If you think about it, in a business sense, a catalyst is (in old parlance) "a mover and a shaker" - someone who gets things done. I wonder why we don't talk about catalysts more? Shouldn't we be celebrating those people in our organizations who are catalysts?
The word rarely (if ever) appears in a Performance Review. We don't talk about catalysts around the water cooler. I can imagine that in some places a catalyst is seen as a bad thing - a troublemaker, perhaps even, a contrarian.
Your mission: Go find a catalyst at your company and thank him or her. Better yet. Try to emulate them.
Ever wonder why some businesses seem to attract and keep customers far better than others?
I think the answer is that they understand that business is personal.
Starbucks has figured it out. It only takes a moment standing in line for your morning coffee to witness the dozens of ways people order their java. Burger King touts the slogan "Have it your way". Harley-Davidson has long understood the value of aftermarket motorcycle acessories, allowing their customers to customize their motorcycles. To make them stand out from the crowd.
It's a well known fact that in the service industry, one way of cementing a customer relationship is to recover from a screw-up. To make something right. To demonstrate that your customers matter. In fact it is more powerful than had you served them correctly in the first place.
Several weeks ago, I blogged about how the Lexus service experience really stands out. I also told you about Pipe Networks (hosting service) who publically challenged themselves to build a new datacenter in 100 days. Daring to be different. Daring to fail (or succeed publiclly). And there's the experience of my son's first car, where Scion turns customers into fans.
And I'm a big fan of Dell, who, although they're basically PC manufacturers, allow their customers to customize their PCs and also give their customers a voice through their IdeaStorm site.
They understand that to build brand and service loyalty you must personalize the business relationship.
You can do this a number of ways.
1. Allow your customers to personalize your products or service.
2. Find a way to demonstrate how your customers are (personally) important.
3. Give your customers a voice (and listen to them). Find a way to start and maintain a dialogue.
4. Be true to your corporate personality (let your freak flag fly). If you can't tell me how you're different from the competition, neither can your customer base. At that puts them at risk.
I'm starting to understand why our country is in so much trouble. This morning, while browsing through Digg, I came across this site, which flips text upside down.
The article had been Dugg over 4,000 times....
Unbelievable.
