Mike Rollings
Research VP
5 years at Gartner
27 years IT industry
Mike Rollings is VP of Gartner Research within the Professional Effectiveness team. His research discusses what IT professionals need to know about transformation, innovation, human behavior, contextual strategy, collaborative organizational change, communication and influence, and cross-discipline effectiveness . His research can be read by IT professionals with access to Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) research. Read Full Bio
by Mike Rollings | April 11, 2011 | Comments Off
This past Thursday my colleague Kirk Knoernschild pointed out a blog post by Alistair Cockburn about Taylorism creeping into the world of agile. Alistair’s post ignited a discussion within Gartner’s IT1 team reflecting on how it applied to our own agile work practices. What follows are some of my insights about the dangers of Tayloristic thinking taking over agile.
Personally, I have written much about the influence of Taylorism on IT, management theory, and human behavior so I was certainly interested to hear how it was infiltrating agile. Tayloristic thinking, where efficiency is the sole basis of your approach, has permeated management doctrine for over 100 years. Taylor believed managers should dictate how men should work. Time-motion studies, metrics, and removing people from the puzzle are some of his contributions which created the hazardous belief system called efficiency thinking.
I can’t stop thinking about the irony of “agile” and “Taylorism” getting together in the same sentence. It would be like Donald Trump and Rosie O’donnell announcing their engagement, or the slow food movement being supported by fast-food chains, it is not an expected combination.
You may be thinking “But Mike, the post talks about metrics and metrics are good aren’t they?” There is a big difference between the use of metrics to understand something and the mindless pursuit of efficiency. In my blog post “A Life out of Control” I discuss the pox of Taylorism:
The industrial age and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor made control popular as we used humans to mechanize our factories. Control permeated society down to the education systems that eliminated variability, encourage conformity, and produce the mechanized humans for the industrial machine. But the control mentality does not have utility in a world that is co-creative and cognitive. We must replace control with the creation of shared value, a fondness for contribution, appreciation for human uniqueness, and the embrace of uncertainty. We need to create an atmosphere of humility where co-creative energies are released instead of subdued. Our future depends on the cultivation of new ideas and shared knowledge — a future easily smothered by control.
This is why I feel that agile is not evolving when it embraces Taylorism, it is devolving.
Alistair’s post is timely because I recently finished a research document “Improving Cross-Competency IT Effectiveness” that will be published in the coming months for IT1 subscribers. In that document, I illustrate how IT has multiple competencies that work in concert with one another to achieve a greater effectiveness level. Yet, many IT organizations are fixated on improving single competencies and wonder why organizational effectiveness is elusive. I use agile adoption throughout the paper to illustrate the corrosive effects of single-competency maturity thinking which has its origins in efficiency thinking:
The pathological pursuit of single-competency maturity blinds IT staff from seeking effectiveness improvements beyond their own competency silo. One example of this poisonous mindset is illustrated by how organizations are pursuing Agile development. Many organizations adopt Agile practices to improve business outcomes and generate more value for the development dollar. But they cannot attain that goal when they emphasize Agile adoption solely during the development phase. Ignoring related practices – estimation, prioritization, and budget allocation – suffocates the improvement they seek.
Taylorism is a pox upon agile. Efficiency thinking – Taylorism – causes incrementalism and striving to be rated “+1” (i.e. if your efficiency is a one, you strive to become a two). As you constantly focus on efficiency, human nature causes you to ignore other inputs that are not related to efficiency. This results in incrementalism which prevents you from breakthrough thinking, and isn’t breakthrough thinking what you are hoping for by adopting agile? Breakthrough thinking is certainly what IT needs.
Mark McDonald’s post highlights the urgency for a revolutionary change
The enterprise is up for grabs. One difference between an evolution and a revolution is that evolutionary change is based on adapting to the environment while revolution either creates or has at is roots a fundamental change in that environment and its circumstances.
IT would be facing an evolutionary change if it were not for the observation that enterprises are changing as they take the turn from the past and into a future dominated by the need for growth in a sluggish economy, new requirements for productivity, and the need for product and service innovation.
These differences are leading executives to look for new ways to manage the enterprise, its operations and performance. This opens the door for IT and others to revolutionize their role as simply delivering last years results plus or minus 10% will not drive success.
We need a different style of thinking to make revolutionary changes and Taylorism is not it.
Category: Altered States Applications Cloud Economy Human Behavior IT Governance Management Strategic Planning Transformation Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Innovation, IT Delivery, Production Mindset, Transformation, Uncertainty, Value
by Mike Rollings | April 4, 2011 | 6 Comments
Gamification, where organizations incorporate game dynamics into applications, is one of the latest trends. Many view it as a silver bullet to load into marketing websites, innovation tools, worker productivity tools, ERP systems, and social environments. The hope is that these applications will attract and retain ‘players’ that will get hooked into playing their new game, and make the mundane more fun. Not a bad application for game dynamics and the use of game theory, but it is the easy association and a small play related to its potential.
Many are looking at gamification as strictly creating application software that uses game concepts to motivate players. They desire to create software that provides:
- Free and safe place to play
- Accelerated feedback cycles
- Clear goals and rules
- Achievable goals/challenges
- Status/Recognition
However, this is a small play for the use of game dynamics, and it misses the purpose behind game play research. Think about when you were young and the games you used to play. Think about how you could creatively conjure a game from just about anything, the roles you and your friends would play, the rules that you would invent, and the mental energy that flowed into their creation. There were no limits for our imagination, our willingness to try and error, or collaborative energy between our friends. The environment you played within was the safe and supportive world supplied by your friends and your mind.
Instead of looking at the bulleted list above as a set of software requirements, we need to use these as organizational requirements and principles. They need to be used as guides for every individual to create an environment where the constructs of play become commonplace. This is the massive potential for the use of game dynamics. Giving us the freedom to create, innovate, try, error, and incorporate play into our everyday lives.
Category: Human Behavior Management Transformation Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Empathy, Innovation, Transformation
by Mike Rollings | February 14, 2011 | 2 Comments
National Public Radio (NPR) seems to wake my imagination. This morning they had a story about IBM’s Watson. Watson is IBM’s computer that is squaring off against two Jeopardy champions – the shows air for the next 3 days.
I wonder how many people will begin to believe that Watson actually thinks? I’m sure it will be a dazzling display of finding. Watson has to find all kinds of things to process the question (e.g. noun, verb, the question) and it has to process even more to find, weigh and select possible answers from historical information. But it is not thinking. (Everybody stop reading and pat yourself on the head. We humans still excel at that over machines).
My favorite example about Watson’s lack of thinking from NPR was “What do grasshoppers eat?”. This question had the response “Kosher” (a sign that many people like the cake?). Sure, you can add more programming, but as the story pointed out humans bring an enormous amount of context to the examination of a question. I would also say that humans add an enormous amount of context to the examination of a question. This subtle and important difference is what makes computers like Watson important helpers but not replacements for humans. We can associate other experiences and insights to make discoveries.
I don’t think that Watson’s creators hope to replace humans, but many people may romanticize about the potential to do so. Instead, I like to think about the augmentation of human cognition and our ability to develop an insight into uncharted territory.
Augmentation is the job for a computer. It is easy to over-emphasize facts that come from a computer to be ‘the truth’. Yet, no matter how powerful machines become, we must reserve the development of truth to a discourse between two or more humans who develop a shared context.
Category: Human Behavior Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Business outcome mindset, Innovation, Insight, Uncertainty
by Mike Rollings | January 19, 2011 | 2 Comments
So many things in our life are governed by the idea that we can control the outcome. Take strategy as as an example. For years strategists have operated under the false notion that strategies were conceived, plans created and execution of the plan happened. This resulted in an elite view of conducting strategy and the false reality that strategies were handed down from high like tablets from Moses. But the reality is far from true. Tom Peters once said that much less than 10% of strategies get executed as conceived. One explanation for this delusional thinking (that the strategy we create will get executed as conceived) is that we convince ourselves we can control the actions of others and our environment.
Recently, Naomi Klein spoke at TedWomen talking about risk taking mentality that is engrained into our global society (“Addicted to Risk”). She illustrates that we are always willing to take greater risks and that even the manner in which we discuss things is slanted toward taking risk as opposed to understanding risk. She discusses that the questions we ask and the inspiration we seek actually causes acceptance of massive risk. Some of her examples include:
- “What if climate scientists are wrong?” instead of asking “what if climate scientists are right?”
- “What is the latest possible moment we can wait before reducing greenhouse gas emissions?”
- “How much hotter can we let the planet get and still survive?”
- “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”
This type of thinking encourages taking risks that have larger and larger consequence when things go wrong. It also encourages people to keep moving the line on acceptable behavior. It is behavior rooted in our belief that we can control the outcome and that we can be certain we are right.
What is control anyway? Is it a manufactured reality that allows us to operate with false confidence and with the boldness to ignore other factors of concern? Is it a figment of our imagination that systematically sorts the opinions of others into buckets where ideas similar to our own are believed and others minimized or ignored? Is it a way of coping with a reality that we cannot exact control by creating a narrative that allows us to ignore it?
What is the benefit of this notion called control? Does it encourage participation or exclusion? Does it promote elitism or camaraderie? Does it make getting ahead equivalent to forcing others behind? Does it establish lines of dogma that are difficult to cross or permeable boundaries that allow reshaping of belief? If control had a benefit beyond that of a select minority, it certainly has reached its end.
The industrial age and the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor made control popular as we used humans to mechanize our factories. Control permeated society down to the education systems that eliminated variability, encourage conformity, and produce the mechanized humans for the industrial machine. But the control mentality does not have utility in a world that is co-creative and cognitive. We must replace control with the creation of shared value, a fondness for contribution, appreciation for human uniqueness, and the embrace of uncertainty. We need to create an atmosphere of humility where co-creative energies are released instead of subdued. Our future depends on the cultivation of new ideas and shared knowledge — a future easily smothered by control.
We need to live life out of control.
Category: Altered States Economy Human Behavior Management Strategic Planning Transformation Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Economy, Empathy, Transformation, Uncertainty, Value
by Mike Rollings | December 10, 2010 | 1 Comment
The notion of value is ambiguous and abstract. An object or an act is not intrinsically valuable. We define what is valuable. We have a choice.
Some cultures decided that stones would be used to reflect something of value that can be exchanged — their currency. Eventually, the stones were so large that they could no longer exchange them. Instead, they would communicate the exchange. Eventually, the stone currency changed to something more transportable. They made a choice. They changed their notion of value.
Organizations have the same choices to make about what they value from IT. For instance, many organizations have valued speed of delivery and the adherence to budget, without the commensurate adherence to desired scope and quality. They celebrate hitting the delivery date and spending the budget allocated, but they do not measure to see if the benefit received equals the benefit expected. It may be that they are fearful of measuring what they already know — benefits are not equal to expectations. The burden this creates is the burden of lost benefits.
Application portfolio bloat is another burden that can be created by the sole attention to delivery and budget. A development team receives $1M to deliver a defined scope. They deliver it for 50% of the projected cost. Instead of returning the remaining funds to the next worthy project investment, they spend the remaining funds on additional enhancements. It’s not like they did not receive any value. However, they are not working on the priorities that are expected to deliver the most value. This condition enlarges the burden of lost benefits and further increases the unplanned expansion of the application portfolio.
Solely valuing delivery and budget takes your eye off of the sources of measurable value — the scope and the quality required to provide the return. The value is not delivered through the management of the budget, but in how the budget is applied to those things that provide the real return. Like ancient cultures who tire from carrying larger and larger stones, we can change what we value if the burden has grown too large. We can define value in new ways that reflect today’s needs. We can change our organization’s notion of value. But we must begin recognizing and demonstrating the burden created by what we currently consider valuable.
Category: IT Governance Management Transformation Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Business outcome mindset, IT Delivery, Production Mindset, Value
by Mike Rollings | December 6, 2010 | 1 Comment
Friday night my children and I had the pleasure to hear Greg Mortenson speak at the St. Louis County Library. Mortenson is a humanitarian and advocate for children’s education in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is the author of “Three Cups of Tea” and “Stones to Schools“, two books about his life’s work to promote peace through education.
These books and Mortenson’s work illustrate how one person can make a profound difference in the world. Mortenson’s organization, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), has built over 130 schools in remote villages. He states that the best way to lift these regions out of war and poverty is to educate children, especially the girls. Girls have a network effect on education since they are more likely to read to their mothers and to educate their children.
His work leverages a village’s community to collaboratively build a school, and to teach a curriculum that is meant to educate, not indoctrinate, the children. This lifts them out of poverty and ignorance by giving them the ability learn something other than hate and war. One of my favorite stories was about how a school was brought to a Taliban stronghold in Oruzgan Province in south-central Afghanistan. When visiting another project with Mortenson, the Afghan clerics immediately gravitated to the playground to swing like children. In that moment, the area’s leaders returned to their childhood and were immediately supportive of having a school built in their community. They hoped that their children would grow up with the ability to play and to be educated instead of learning war and to hate.
The picture Mortenson showed of these war-hardened men swinging on the playground will stick with me as a symbol of how anyone is capable of transformation, and that transformation happens in an instant. It may have taken Mortenson years to get to that point, and the acts that follow are by no means complete, but these men transformed the moment they sat on the swings.
Mortenson’s books have many life lessons in them, but one that I think can help all of us is the core lesson from “Three Cups of Tea” about building relationships and the way relationships are formed by having tea with someone:
- The first time you have tea you are a stranger
- The second time you have tea you are an honored guest
- The third time you have tea you are family, and for family we are prepared to do anything
As testament to Mortenson’s impact in the region, his message was reshaped into the following guidance from General Petraeus to US troops:
- Listen more
- Respect
- Build relationships
No matter what you do, to get to a moment of transformation you need to build relationships. We are all in the business of building relationships, and Mortenson’s lessons can improve your impact.
Category: Human Behavior Transformation Tags: Behavior, Communication, Empathy, Transformation
by Mike Rollings | November 15, 2010 | 1 Comment
Too many times I speak with people in organizations who proudly state that they know and achieve their priorities. What once was a hidden list of projects is now given visibility. They consolidate their project list , they sort on value of each business division, and manage resources (e.g. funding, people) more effectively than before.
Then comes the hallucinogenic part of the discussion… “we do not do measurement to understand what we achieve”, “once the project gets funding we never kill them, we only readjust what gets done”, “we worry about time and budget and cut functionality”, “we really do not understand dependencies until we start development”. Pardon me, I think somebody slipped you something in your morning coffee.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that they feel they are doing better, and in many ways they are improving. But we shouldn’t be comfortable with just removing pain. We should be treating the patient’s disease. The disease is not an IT disease, it is a business value disease and the whole organization has contracted it. This disease is associated with expectations and business outcomes.
Yes, not knowing what is going on is painful. Yes, it is better to get your arms around what is being done. No, treating what hurts is not sufficient to address the bigger picture problem that is totally missed — do you know what will provide value and do you achieve it? If your organization does not measure the value received and compare it against expected results you really cannot know the value of IT.
Is your organizations being delusional? Does your organization really know the value it receives from IT?
- Do you know the business outcome you want to achieve? Why do you want to achieve it (what do we expect to happen)?
- Do you know what must change to achieve it? Be sure to separate the wheat from the chaff and identify the core that must be achieved to enable the outcome. How do we achieve it?
- Do you know when conditions and expectations have changed causing a deterioration of the original value expectations? Do you kill projects if it is no longer achievable or does not meet minimum expectations?
- Do you track the achievement of business outcomes? Do you know if you delivered all the elements of change you set out to deliver? Do you frown on hollow victories (i.e. celebrate an on-time delivery and budget target achievement, but cut expectations to get there)?
If you can’t answer the questions affirmatively you may be in denial (and denial is not a river in Africa).
Category: Altered States Human Behavior IT Governance Management Tags: Business outcome mindset, IT Delivery, Value
by Mike Rollings | October 29, 2010 | 5 Comments
Recently, Twitter #entarch has erupted in the recurring discussion about the value of enterprise architecture. I say ‘recurring’ because illustrating value is a constant challenge for IT and especially for EA practitioners. This particular Twitter value discussion falls mainly into two piles:
- Value theory
- Value realities
Value theorists describe how value “should” work in an organization. Theory would be enough if humans were rational beings. But, like the many studies related to behavioral economics have shown, humans do not always act rationally. So the biggest problem with the rational models discussed by value theorists is that it leaves out the human dimension. Yet it is the human dimension that makes the application of the theory less prescriptive and much more subjective and situational. This is best illustrated by asking how to apply the theory. The response to “how?” is predictably followed by the statement “It depends”.
The value realities camp (myself included) does not sanitize the value discussion by eliminating the human dimension. The fundamental difference being that to those who are more interested in getting things done, value perception is top of mind (how do you demonstrate value?). Getting things done lives and dies by identifying value expectations and understanding value perception. The value reality camp knows this because they have the war wounds from trying to make things happen in an organization. When you have been responsible for implementation and have lived (and fried) by value perception, it gives you a perspective that book smarts cannot fill. There is a big difference between discussing value and the generation of value. As a result, a discussion about value realities leads to a discussion of expectations, applied action, and perceptions.
Value management models are useful, but value itself is related to human perception. Value is ambiguous until defined (remember the eye of the beholder?). Defining value does not mean creating a textbook definition, but working with the humans in your organization to understand what will generate value for the organization and to understand what each person will consider a valuable outcome. If you apply “book smarts” to what people consider valuable, then you generate value. You can’t ignore the human dimension of value; it is the yardstick determining success.
This applies directly to enterprise architecture value. Most people who are not EA practitioners do not care about EA theory. They care about the results from applying EA. Sure, EA theory, like other theoretical input, provides valuable ideas for someone in EA role, but for the rest of the organization, the outcome from applying “book smarts” is the source of value. For EA practitioners this means:
- Learn to describe architecture’s business contribution and value without using EA’s secret language.
- Deliberately avoid a highly theoretical approach to EA in favor of helping produce results.
- Describe what you can do to help versus describing EA.
- Help the broader audience of business and technology professionals use the knowledge of dependencies, implications, and constraints to improve their results.
An EA practitioner may care about the theory, but when it comes to generating value it is important to be a value realist.
Category: Human Behavior Management Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Business outcome mindset, Enterprise Architecture, IT Delivery, Value
by Mike Rollings | October 27, 2010 | 2 Comments
In Loraine Lawson’s post “CFO Resigns After ‘Data Integration Glitch’” she reports that TUI Travel CFO Paul Bowtell resigned last week after the company announced it had overstated revenues. Loraine states that the press release and the UK articles all note this problem was “the accounting error in the integration of IT systems in its UK mainstream business”.
When Loraine tweeted the link to the article she asked “This company does have a CIO…Wonder how he got off?” I think the answer is simple and much more than honor which is listed in the blog post.
I do not have any additional information beyond Loraine’s post, but I believe the reason the CFO resigned is because “the CFO” is the answer to the question “who is responsible?”
Yes, the data was flawed. Yes, the systems were implemented by IT and the CIO was the data custodian. But, ensuring that financial data is accurate is the responsibility of the CFO. In this case the data may not have been stewarded, but the CFO is taking responsibility like a data steward.
If every business on the planet internalizes this lesson, stewardship may finally be noticed as a business priority. The information environment (and the application portfolio) have been ignored for too long. Businesspeople must become reacquainted with their stewardship responsibilities for the enabling technology environment, and IT departments must help them repatriate stewardship into the business.
Category: IT Governance Management Uncategorized Tags: Stewardship
by Mike Rollings | October 22, 2010 | 2 Comments
Okay, enterprise architects, this is your chance to join a fellow architect and go scream out the window. Just like in the movie Network where longtime news anchor Howard Beale delivers a live rant claiming that life is ‘BS’, architects can join @chrisvenable as he screams along with other enterprise architects…
“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Chris wants EA to stand up and take its rightful place. His post resulted from a Twitter discussion that I started when I retweeted “RT @lgreski: Burton: IT control is an illusion, EA needs collaborative view of governance. #GartnerSYM >Right on Betsy! INFLUENCE not ctrl
Here is a segment from Chris’s post:
It’s time to take a true leadership position, and to be empowered like every other leadership position in nearly every company. It’s time to insist that EA is given the authority to match its responsibility, which is simply Business 101.
Mike invoked Gandhi. I’m taking a different tack — I’m invoking Patton:
“The only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of the offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.”
Rise up, EA, and demand to be removed from behind the 8-ball. No one will grant you the power and authority necessary to fulfill your mandate otherwise, because to some you represent nothing but a risk or even a threat. In fact, many of them will gladly let you drown. And they will survive, continuing to pad their 401(k)s as the memory of EA as a failed experiment gradually fades away…
It feels good to scream, but like Howard Beale states in his rant – now that you have screamed, what are you going to do about it?
Poor influence and communication is one of the top causes of enterprise architecture (EA) program failures and an inability to cause lasting behavior changes. An EA program typically requires a massive amount of influence and communication because it includes the implementation of organizational change. It includes changes to governance, changes to processes, new decision-making responsibilities, and a wide-range of other changes to how an organization does planning and implementation. For this type of transformation to be successful, a planned approach to influence and communication is critical. But, if you have ever had responsibility for implementing anything new in an organization—helping people recognize the existence of a problem, understand the need for new ways of thinking, drive conformance to standards, and start a new process—you too will recognize the importance of influence and communication.
Any large program or project evolves through a predictable set of stages as you develop a program to address an opportunity. These stages are usually encountered in the following order.
Consider the creation of an EA program. The initial foray into EA is typically based on the desire to create technology solution standards, reduce infrastructure complexity, and to begin instilling the use of common solution approaches. But to get to this point, the person evangelizing the program had to start defining the problem with stakeholders. Maybe that is where you can start now that the screaming is over.
But change also requires commitment, repetition, and feedback. Taking the hill is actually the continuous act of taking small and large hills. The world is round – there is always another hill in front of you. It can be very frustrating when you feel like you are not making progress. But you have to continue to look for sources of value, make a contribution, and then assure that others recognize the contribution. Equally important is to look for sources of value that aid forward momentum. Being selective is a critical skill and you must align your effort to business outcomes that are meaningful, as well as illustrative of the purpose behind your EA program.
The bottom line is that most enterprise architects do not have power and authority to force other people to comply. However, that does not force a limitation on success. As Seth Godin insists, enterprise architects should strive to become a Linchpin. The value from enterprise architecture is evident when it enables the achievement of business outcomes and influences better business decisions.
This approach adds value by exposing new perspectives upon which judgments are based. It relies on collaboration to ensure that things are done properly between compliance checkpoints. It also relies on informed people participating in the instruction of others and on the vested interest of subject matter experts (SMEs) who create architectures to ensure the approach is used, used properly, and maintained. An EA team cannot possibly work on every project; collaboration fills this void.
Teaching the organization to consider and incorporate multiple perspectives into its decision making is one of the challenges of applying EA. But when done well, it raises the level of EA from just a program to a catalyst for improving strategic thinking, planning, optimization, and design.
So now that the screaming is over, integrate EA into an ecosystem of good decision-making practices by improving your ability to influence decision-making practices.
****************
For those interested in my reply, check out Chris’s post. I definitely feel that Chris wants to make progress and not waves. His point in the comments on his blog regarding “keeping the sword on the wall” shows his pragmatism. I do believe that we all just want to get things done.
I also sent a reply to Todd Biske (unfortunately did not save it myself) where I stated that mandates are done by those seeking or using power. Influence is exerting force – not in the sense of a deity or strength usage of the word – to affect an outcome. The greatest force we have at our disposal is increasing the perspective for decision making.
Be a Linchpin!
Category: Altered States Human Behavior IT Governance Management Strategic Planning Transformation Uncategorized Tags: Behavior, Communication, Enterprise Architecture, Transformation
