The other look I get is around the issue of having two computers.  While this is common with iPad’s and Kindles the addition of the wireless keyboard sends the signal that this is a business device.  So why do I need two computers?

Yesterday I found out as my iPad flew to the rescue as my new personal computer had a hard drive failure and left me without connectivity etc.   Sure email works on my smart phone, but I had to do more than just reply back to a message where the footer says, “pardon the typos as I am typing with my thumbs.”  I needed to alert tech support, respond to some serious emails, complete a document and basically appear fully capable to the outside world.

Well it worked great.  I knew it would as I have gone solo with the iPad for short trips in the past.  It is interesting that what I needed was good old hardware, not software, nor the cloud, nor other technologies just hardware, a wireless connection and email.   I will not feel silly carrying two computers, even one that I use more often than not to read books, listen to music, play games, watch videos, etc.

Really?

I had the honor of reviewing a transformation program and providing a health check.  The program is ambitious; technology intensive, process demanding, and can truly redefine the rules of the industry.  But there is a catch, the transformation program had progressed to a point where it had raised serious business issues, but the program and its sponsor did not have the authority to answer.

Sitting at this crossroads, the teams did what they could, keeping busy until there was a decision from the executive level.  The health check became necessary as the program sat stalled for more than six months and instead of creating pressure for decisions, it created calls to cancel the transformation.

It was clearly time for the executive team that sponsored the effort to step in and make some hard choices.  In the report recommending that action, among other recommendations, the Executive Team came back with the following reply:

“Why are you not telling us more about IT and where it has failed?  Why are you talking about where they are going wrong?  Why are you saying that we need clearer business direction, your just covering for IT and their failings.”

When I pointed out that there were several highly critical points in the report related to IT, which had little effect.  All the executive team heard was that there needed to be more business direction.  Their reply:

“If you say we haaave to be involved then please know that we are tired of having to make every decision.”

I was not surprised.

I was stunned.

Here was a major multi-multi million-dollar transformation program that had done the work, found the tough issues, gone as far as it could and now needed active executive sponsorship in the form of some hard decisions to go forward.

The executive team commented that their job was to be ‘above all of this’, to think strategically, and to be visionary rather than making operational level decisions.  The only problem was that the open issues were not just operational; they were strategic in the sense that the answers would determine the performance profile of the company in the future.

As I reflected on the meeting a few things became clear.

• The executive team assumed that saying it is should be so is the same as making it so. “We said yes, so we consider it done.”

• The executive team did not see making hard decisions as an expression of their leadership.  They wanted to remain ‘above it all’ and not create winners and losers on an issue.  They believed that you demonstrated leadership by guiding without getting their hands dirty.

• The executive team was ready to criticize the decisions or direction others had taken but they did not have the time, energy or political will to lead in creating that future.  “I can tell you what your did wrong, but its not my job to help you make it right.”

• The executive team did not welcome evidence to the contrary nor recommendations on how to move forward that required their active participation.  I will listen if you confirm my suspicion, your motives are suspicous if you do not say what I expect to hear.

These reflections give the impression of an incapable executive team.  But that is not the case, this team runs one of the most successful, global, industry leading companies in their market.

So what gives?

These executives were giving the level and type of sponsorship that had worked in the past.  Their responses, comments and attitude was appropriate for the type of relatively incremental, back office, administrative changes that have dominated the executive agenda for the past 10 years or so.

The level of sponsorship that worked when we talked about IT.

While the quality of that sponsorship was fine for then, it is totally in appropriate for the types of changes we are doing now.

The level of sponsorship required when technology becomes greater than IT.

Executive sponsorship needs a significant upgrade as the demands for transformation have outstripped current sponsorship models.  Enterprises are going through real and deep change, like this one, requires direct executive action, decisions and direction.  Not delegation.

If figuring out how your business needs to operate to create value is not part of the executive team’s job, then I do not know what is.

What are the changes, if any, you are seeing in the type, nature or level of executive sponsorship?  Not just for technology, but for any transformation.

The ECI provides European Citizens the ability to present legislative initiatives directly to the European Commission provided they have a million signatures from EU citizens in a representative set of countries. Links at the end of this post provide the details.

Rather than creating a large and complex program, the ECI’s basic structure revolves around open source software supporting registering an initiative and submitting signatures for validation.   That may not sound like much, but in an environment of social media and technology it gives EU citizens the basic interfaces to engage the formal structures of the European Commission and the rest is up to them.

In preparing for and participating in the panel a number of thoughts came to mind on the nature of technology, public policy and the future of direct citizen participation.

• The ECI is correct in conceiving of social media as the ‘technology’ for creating an environment for the initiative. Incorporating social media into the citizen centric strategy not only recognizes the reality of social media in society, but also encourages direct citizen action and innovation without prescribing a platform or approach.

• Social media platforms, like Face Book, Google, Twitter, etc. provide a platform with the scale and reach necessary to engage the large and diverse EU citizenry.

• Social media’s communications capabilities are well suited for sharing the depth of information associated with a strong citizen initiative.  I can imagine these sites holding more than just calls for support.  These sites can become key educational, documentation and discussion sites.  Imagine video’s that document conditions and situations, position papers that outline aspects of the initiative and debates where the community forms and reforms the initiative prior to its submission.  Those are the types of collaborative capabilities that can drive strong, positive and participatory policies and initiatives.

The open, participatory and self initiated aspects of social media tools match up well with the principles associated with the ECI.  These same aspects have the potential to change the nature of public discourse, government transparency and the like.  A few thoughts in these areas include:

• Social media in public policy can change the nature of policy development toward building solutions rather than supporting stances.  This creates the potential to shift the policy development process from a basis of exchanging single issues or interests based views to multi-lateral working discussions to craft an initiative prior to the ECI process.  This has the potential to change the nature of NGO’s and other policy influencers moving them away from advocacy for a position toward collaborating to solve a problem.   Call me naïve, but if all social media does is raise the volume of single interest, single views then we are poorer for it.

• Changing the level of transparency and participation in EC/EU deliberations concerning successful initiatives.  The current process, as I understand it, involves closed deliberation and consideration of initiatives that complete the ECI process.  I believe that the participation and transparency required for the front part of the ECI process, will lead to similar requirements in the deliberation and decision making of policy makers to not only use the content generated in the initiative process but also to engage the community in deliberations and discussions.  It is hard to open the front end of a process and make it more transparent and keep the back end closed.

• The ECI can be seen as part of a range of legislative processes and approaches.  Viewed in this context, the ECI plays an important role in submitting initiatives that should compliment rather than compete with other approaches and channels.   Recognizing the uniqueness of the ECI process should allow it to have different features and performance expectations as not every process is best to address all policy challenges and issues.

• Much of the ECI process will be ‘do it yourself’ in terms of citizens taking direct responsibility to organize, discuss, debate and develop their initiatives and tools.  There are few prescribed rules for the ECI, which opens the door for creativity and innovation in the policy development and debate process.  Sure it would be nice to have prescribed content policies, platforms, and premade tools as some at the meeting asked for, but such pre-structuring of the environment can also pre-structure the nature of the debate and set operational limits.  A practical and innovative way of being neutral is to be open and lay down a few clear rules, processes and tools which the ECI has done.

The ECI has many of the characteristics associated with successful mass collaboration. We identified these characteristics in researching how large organizations apply social media to achieve meaningful results for the book, The Social Organization.  Having a compelling purpose, just enough structure and the right level of sponsorship are all critical for success.

The launch of the ECI last week represents the first mile in a new approach to direct citizen involvement in the legislative process.  Submitting legislation is also the last mile for many in the policy arena as ideas turn into proposed rules and laws. How these two connect and collaborate using social media is something I look forward to observing in the future.

Related links

European Citizens initiative Web Site

European Citizens Initiative Face Book Page

Professionally I am looking forward to:

• A major cloud service provider who is willing to put their SLA into writing and be contractually obligated to deliver against those service levels to a better degree than a traditional outsourcing contract.   We may not see that in 2012, but it is a stumbling block to broader cloud adoption at the corporate level.
• CIOs to focus more on building skills in their current workforce and organization as IT skill gaps and future expectations are reaching critical levels.  CIOs know they do not have the right skills and more will have to do something about it.
• Increased application of social media based technologies outside of marketing and communications.  While its easy to think of these technologies as just another means of eCommerce, they really have a deeper ability to change the nature of work, the culture of an organization and address deep system issues through mass collaboration.  It takes leadership to do things in new ways and that is something I am hoping to see.
• IT organizations dropping the name IT.  Not because they no longer work with technology, but because they work with it in ways that are different enough from what we all think of as traditional IT.  There are a few organizations that have done this, but in 2012 there should be more who see their role around guiding the business model and business performance than administering technology.  Not sure what the new name would be, but this is definitely not the death of IT, but rather its evolution.  Your thoughts appreciated, where are a few of mine in an EXP report entitled “A Different Theory of the Firm: a Different theory of IT.”
• Executive teams who transform their meetings and management mantra’s beyond managing cost and conformance to budget to achieving benefit and performance target goals.  Too much of what passes for leadership and decision-making is made using a single dimension – financial – without real consideration of the deep bias and limitations it creates.  Comprehensive value, deployment and achievement of operational goals are things that would be great to get back on the executive table.

Personally I am looking forward to a few things.

• New products from Apple, yes I am an Apple fan and user simply because they are easier to use and feature rich.  This year I found out that I am an ‘odd’ Apple user. Odd in the sense of adopting odd versions 1, 3, 5, versions of the products rather than an even person 2, 4, 6 or the every person 1,2,3,4,5.  2012 promises to be a good year for the odd adopters with the iPad 3 and iPhone 5 anticipated to drop.  Both are expected to introduce a new form/factor rather than a major technical/software upgrade like the 3GS and 4S models.
• I look forward to the opportunity to work with all of you, either as readers of this blog, members of Executive Programs or in some other way.  I know that that sounds corny, but its true as I believe we are in the middle of something that is both exciting, threatening and confusing all of which means that we can make the future what we want it to be.
• There are other personal things that I will keep to myself.

What are you looking forward to in 2012?

What are you planning on doing different next year, not a resolution so much as a change?

Thanks for reading the blog, welcome your comments and all the best for the New Year.

Mark

I am having trouble drawing these into a single theme so rather than get writers block, here are a few thoughts and I welcome yours.

2011 was the year when Cloud made its first big steps to become mainstream.  The early majority is already forming around the use of cloud infrastructure, services and capabilities.  While it is not in the mainstream and it may not be t the right decision for everyone, few can argue that it is not ready for broader adoption and take up. Look for more in this space as

Mobility debuted in a new way in the latter half of this year as consumerism became more and more about mobility.  Right now most people continue to talk about pushing information to the edge, but new business models are coming that should revolutionize the way we think of mobility.  Those models will put the words ‘customer experience’ in the PowerPoint decks of just about every executive.

Security, privacy and confidentiality continue to become a scarce commodity.  We are living, as Richard Hunter predicted, in a World Without Secrets.  To date, security has supported a conservative approach, one favoring keeping things closed.  I am not sure how much longer that will remain and when we may see the first –totally transparent enterprise.

Globally 2011 it has been a year of deadlock, but not in the traditional sense of two sides opposing each other.  No the deadlock for 2011 has been one where formal systems increasingly freeze up based on acrimony, instrumentalism and limited leadership. Our formal economic, financial and political systems appear more willing to muddle through than break though the issues we all face.

At the same time, 2011 was the year where calls for change national choruses for change, in the case of the Arab Spring and discontentment in the case of unrest in the UK, across Europe, and the “Occupy” movement.  People are hungry for change and say so via social media, but the consensus seems to be more around anything other than what we have now.  A legitimate point and one that needs to develop in order to create lasting change.

Personally, 2011 saw the release of The Social Organization: how to use social media to tap the collective genius of customers and employees.  The book has been a major project and seeing it published a major accomplishment. Another highlight of 2011 was the more than 5,200 CIOs who attended the CIO experience at Gartner’s Symposium and IT Xpo.  My personal thanks to all who attended.

For IT, 2011 was a year to re-imagine technology’s role in the enterprise – a role that I believe increasingly means going beyond IT.   The implications of “TECHNOOGY > IT” are just emerging across customers, markets and enterprises.  More about that latter, but the fundamentals and the core value proposition of technology and IT are changing.

Finally 2011 was a year of personal and professional loss with the passing of Steve Jobs, Dennis Richie, and Ken Olson among others.

What was 2011 for you?  If you were to sum up the year what would it be?  Popular magazines have focused on the Arab Spring, protests and general discontent.

2011 may be the year of our global discontent, if so then so be it.

The challenge is not what was 2011, but what will we make 2012.

Your thoughts and ideas greatly appreciated.

With six shopping days left until Christmas here are six things I can think of talking with CIOs over the past few months. These are things that they cannot give themselves, like a new organization or new metrics, but rather things that others can give to them.  They are in no particular order.

• A business relationship focused on benefits realization rather than budget expenditure.  Business and IT relationships are a perennial issue in IT and one where we have tried specialized people (BRM’s), specialized processes (IT strategy) and specialized power (governance) with limited results.  Putting everyone on a management path around benefits realization appears to be a way to bring people together into a positive relationship.
• Contractual service levels from cloud providers.  Many CIOs are interested in adopting cloud technologies but they run up against the barrier that often cloud providers will not, or cannot provide service guarantees and service levels with contractual recourse.
• Security in just about every sense.  Security in information, access, technology etc., but also security in terms of the knowledge that high performing IT organizations will get the recognition that they have earned and that resources flow with recognition – they do in other parts of the business so they should in IT.
• An executive team that understands the economics of technology and how it’s funding and pricing actually work.  Technology, predominantly the infrastructure, is a source of speed, scale and choice for an enterprise.  Speed in terms of executing change, scale in terms of unit cost efficiencies that are saving money even though they appear to cost more, and choice in creating future options for the enterprise, products and services.  There is more to technology economics than Moore’s Law, matching supply and demand and cost accounting.  Executives do not need to be ‘technoconomists’ but they should recognize the connection between technology, price, operational budget and service level.
• A hunting permit for legacy applications would enable the CIO to weed the applications garden to reduce complexity, cost, and resources consumed on long tail – low use legacy apps.  Economic reality and legacy realities are colliding in new ways that require some radical approaches.  Consolidation, simplification and elimination are some of the hardest and least glamorous work, but the most important in staying responsive and responsible.  If you could not see the floor through the stuff in your teenager’s room you would eventually force them to clean up.  Well I doubt many of us have seen the floor of the data center in years.
• Last, and most importantly – good people on their team.  It cannot be stressed enough that great people make for great technology, business value, agility and the like. If there is one thing a CIO needs year round it’s good people on their team, a stream of good people stepping up and a team of good people challenging each other in a positive way.

You will notice that budget is not on the list for two reasons. First its obvious that the CIO needs resources to be successful and that many have had significant cuts in the past few years.  I am unsure that simply restoring those cuts is more important than the things on the list above.  Second, resources often mask real issues inside an enterprise and the challenges CIOs face are real and cannot be solved and their solutions sustained by just papering them over with money.

What is on your CIO gift list?  With only six days there is still a chance to make a start this holiday season.  It is better to start now rather than wind up next Friday lunchtime standing in line at the convenience store looking to buy that that last minute gift.

Welcome your thoughts and ideas.

Happy Holidays.

10 You do not have to purchase tooth paste, shampoo or soap as you can live off what is provided in the airline amenity kits and hotels.  This is even a greater sign of travelling too much given the decreasing size of those amenity kits.

9 You are used to taking long hot showers because no one in the hotel is there to tell you that you are wasting the hot water.

8 You use too much toilet paper because on the road there is a relatively endless supply.

7 Airline employees recognize you at the airport.  Now on the surface that is not such a big deal, but it is when an employee from Chicago walked up to me waiting at a gate in Seattle, then it’s a sign you are travelling too much.

6 You become expert at identifying seats in an airport or at a fast food restaurant near electrical outlets.

5 You have memorized your passport number so you do not have to pull your passport out every time you are filling out immigration forms.

4 You recognize the ‘humor’ in airline flight numbers.  For example, flights to Columbus Ohio delineated by flight number 1492 or flights to Philadelphia as flight 1776, etc.

3 You have seen every movie the airline has to offer for more than two months in a row.

2 You describe your experience in every city in the same terms: the quality of the meeting, the quality of the hotel and the quality of the conference room.

1 You realize that despite all of your travels, however exciting they may seem, your loved ones and friends back home are living a better life than you.

All the best for the new year, gotta go and catch a plane.

Just kidding

Obviously we will see on the good parts, the creativity, an uncompromising attention to detail, concern over the user experience, etc.  We will choose to see how we have stood up to authority, embraced our inner muse and fought against the odds to win all in the light of one of the most influential people in our world.

Seeing the genius of Jobs in us is natural.  It helps us feel and look better.   What I am afraid we might do is gloss over how Jobs, according to Isaacson, brought those values to life: being incredibly rude to people, dismissing their ideas, adopting them as his own, and generally describing everything he saw for the first time as ‘shit’.

I have been known to adopt this form of communication as well as work with others who have the good intentions and the bad manners attributed to Jobs.  My colleagues used to call it ‘D-Bombing’ as I would swoop in on a review of their draft only to find the weak points and tear it apart like it had been hit by a giant bomb.  All with good intentions and a desire to make the work as strong as it could be, but also with consequences.

I forgot about the consequences.  I believed that the results more than compensated for the tactics as people continually demonstrated to themselves and others that they could go beyond what was expected of them to do some truly exceptional work. The only problem was that without that constant prodding and challenge most slipped back into what was comfortable rather than continuing to push the envelope.

The moral, that while you can get great results from challenging people to be and do more, there needs to be other ways to sustain excellence than constant criticism no matter how constructive or well intentioned.

The point of this discussion is that many people are reading Job’s biography and its easy to become like John Scully as they convince themselves that they are like Jobs and all they have to do is adopt his ways.

You are no Steve Jobs.

You are not John Scully.

Be yourself and find your own way to excellence rather than copying that of others, particularly when that path is one that might cause others wonder, “you kiss your mother with that mouth?

Do you have to compromise your values or ideals to get great results?  No.  But you cannot copy your way to that same result, even though it may be easy to read how others have done that.

Be great, seek greatness in others, demand the best from them and yourself, but always be you, as that is the key to authentic leadership.

Just about every, conversation I have about project management centers on what is wrong with the project managers, their tools, their processes, their skills, the number of managers, etc.

There is never a conversation about the degree to which IT and organizational leadership supports project managers.  That is wrong.  As long as we think of poor project management performance as a function of tools, training or talent we will get what we deserve – poor project management.

It is no wonder that there are not enough ‘good’ project managers, particularly considering the way organizations treat them.  You see while its true that good project managers are successful, in many cases they are successful despite the organization rather than because of it.

Project managers often are left out alone on an island.   They find themselves with little intelligent oversight, active executive support, help or the opportunity to exercise judgment.   They have to play the cards they are dealt and if they have the wrong cards success rests on personality, bravado and the occasional bluff.

If you have ever been a project manager you know what I mean, particular when things start to hit the fan. You are suddenly alone.  It is up to you to figure out what happened, make the changes necessary and convince others to follow you.   No amount of project management tools, critical path analysis, spreadsheets or other tools will help you.  Likewise complying with the PMBOK offers no guarantee of success.

No wonder then, that when projects fail, we place part of blame on the project manager, their tools, their skills or abilities, etc.

As long as we talk about the personal or positional or tool failures of project management we will never make true progress.  We will never get the type of project managers we need and project managers get the support they deserve.

Project managers should not be deserted on a project island.   Their job is too important.  The resources they manage are too dear.  While the most professional managers never intentionally put themselves on an island, projects wind up there.

What do you think?  Share your thoughts as to how to avoid marooning project managers.

While there were a few operational glitches, it was the first time at this location, overall the CIOs I spoke with were pleased with the experience, exercised their issues and exchanged their ideas.  CIOs face the need to find new answers to new questions in an increasingly complex set of economic, operational and financial contexts.   Change is on the agenda of the CIO.

Economics and the debit crisis provided an important context to the event, particularly given events in Italy that happened while the symposium was in session.  I will talk more about that at the end of this post.

In years past, CIOs faced a similar tide of change.  This year there is no single type of change that is pervasive across the CIOs.  This makes 2012 different from 2008/2009 where there was change all in the direction of cost control.  CIOs are changing to support growth initiatives in Asia and Latin America.  CIOs are changing in response to new strategies or regulatory requirements.  And yes, CIOs are changing to reduce costs.

While every one recognizes the need to change, the nature, dricection and challenges of that change are increasnlgy company and contextually specific.  In this regard there is no “European” view on IT for CIOs as each faces their own context and challenges.

Change is at the top of the agenda, but unlike 2008 – 2009, when everyone was changing in the same direction — cutting budgets — change comes in many flavors.

Here are a few things that stick with me as I leave Barcelona.

• European firms are going through structural change in response to the structural economic and business challenges.  There is no clear pattern as some are breaking their companies into smaller divisions while others are consolidating and standardizing to save cost.  These changes are not temporary indicating that leadership believes the current conditions are not temporary.

• The existence of fragmented applications, data centers and operations is a particular target as financial conditions have opened the door to deeper change than simply holding the budget line on spending.  Eliminating the results of accretive change is increasing CIO visibility at the board level and creating new conversations with their business peers.

• Mobility is a hot topic and one that appears to be at the peak of expectations in Europe. The discussions I had related to mobility, tablet devices, etc revolved around understanding how they created value in practice rather than in theory.  The CIOs I spoke with were looking for hard and demonstrable facts rather than relying on the novelty of consumer technologies to create value.  Clearly in this area CIOs have a focus on the longer term rather than the quick value of meeting consumer needs.

• Interest in Social Media was strong, particularly from the perspective of how social media works within a company.  CIOs raised questions and comments regarding issues of individual behavior, free speech, expression and how mass collaboration actually works in a company.  CIO questions reflected an understandable degree of guarded optimism skepticism as they wnat to know how it works before putting it into practice.  You can assess your organization’s attitudes toward social media by taking The Social Organization Book’s assessment gartner.com/socialreadiness

• Cloud computing and sourcing showed renewed interest with discussions centering on actions and plans more than concepts or ideas.   It seems that European firms that had previously thought about these issues, dipped their toes into them were looking to take action in 2012.

• CIOs are facing the need to drive transformation programs in order to meet externally defined requirements and regulations.  The level of transformation and structural change driven by EU legislation appeared to be more on CIOs minds this year than previously.  In some cases, EU legislation is requiring industry restructuring, redefining the boundaries of business in Utilities, Law Enforcement and other areas.

Change requires new answers and new actions.  This creates the impression that CIOs and their organizations are more or less the same as they share similar plans and priority.  Such a view is incomplete as the differences between CIOs in general and European CIOs in particular has never been greater.

Look to the questions that CIOs are answering and the differences emerge.  There appear to be three sets of questions facing CIOs all of which can be addressed with similar plans but to very different results.

New Questions / New Opportunities CIOs facing new questions about growth, channel expansion and overseas operations face a future similar to other multi-national companies.  There questions are new questions about to compete in growth markets primarily in Asia and Latin America. These questions revolve around using technology (including IT) to extend enterprise capabilities and raise the customer experience.

Old Questions / New Answers CIOs facie old questions about cost cutting, consolidation, expense reduction.  They plan to use new technologies such as internet-based services to lower their operational costs, mobility to get high value functionality in to the field, and improve operational efficiency.  Theses CIOs are establishing a new argument around IT as a source of productivity.

Old Questions / Old Answers These CIOs face having to dust off their cost cutting plans and repeating the actions they took in 2008 and 2009.  Organizations implementing plans that call for ATB (across the board) cuts of 10, or , 20, or even 40%  fall into this category.  Repeating the past in hope of a different outcome is a sign of weak management and ATB cuts is a potent indicator that leadership needs new questions.

Regardless of the questions you face, the time to act is now.

If your organization has been holding back on spending cuts by budgeting them for year 4 or 5 in hopes of better economic conditions, then you have lost that bet.  2012 is year 4 of that 2008 plan. It is time to make the changes you hoped you could avoid.

Action is required for the simple reason that financial crisis are particularly caustic to an economy.  THey create the illusion that things are temporary, they lead to band-aid approaches to bail-out players at risk, the stifle the need for deep reform.

Inaction leads to ‘muddling through’ which only turns a CRISIS into a CHRONIC CONDITION.  How CIOs re-imagine IT and lead from the front will determining the extent to which IT contributes to that condition.

Please share your thoughts and experiences from Barcelona.