May 16, 2009

Building and Rebuilding the World



(Tikkun Olam)

We are placed here on this earth, figuratively in G-d's "hand," and our job is to build (and rebuild) until it's perfect.

This image struck me as a wonderful metaphor for what the essence of enterprise architecture is really all about.

What are your thoughts?


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Executives, One Foot In and One Foot Out

The last thing any executive should be doing is getting caught up in the weeds of management. The executive needs to lead and define the organizational strategy and the management team needs to execute. The executive is the link between what needs to get done (stakeholders’ needs) for the stakeholders and getting it done (management execution) through the organization’s people, process, and technology.

How does the executive perform this linking role?

Not by looking myopically inside the organization, and not by jetting around the globe shaking hands and kissing babies. Peter Drucker said “ The chief executive officer (CEO) is the link between the Inside that is ‘the organization,’ and the Outside of society, economy, technology, markets, and customers. “

In Harvard Business Review, May 2009, A. G. Lafley the CEO of Proctor & Gamble see’s that the CEO’s job is to “link the external world with the internal organization.”

The executive is the bridge between inside and outside the organization. And by having one foot in each, he/she is able to cross the artificial boundaries and bring vital stakeholder requirements in and carry organizational value back out.

Lafley breaks down the CEO’s role into four key areas, which I would summarize as follows:

  • BUSINESS SCOPE: Determining “the business we are in” and not in.  No organization can be everything to everybody. We need to determine where we will compete and where we will withdraw. GE’s Jack Welsh used to insist on working only in those markets where GE could be either #1 or #2. Drucker’s view is that “performing people are allocated to opportunities rather than only to problems.”
  • STAKEHOLDER PRIORITIZATION: “Defining and interpreting the meaningful outside”–this is really about identifying who are our stakeholders and how do we prioritize them?
  • SETTING THE STRATEGY: Balancing “yield in the present with necessary investment in the future.” Genuine leaders don’t just milk the organization in the short term, but seek to deliver reasonable results immediately while investing for future performance. Lafley states “We deliver in the short term, we invest in and plan for the midterm, and we place experimental bets for the long term.”
  • ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: “Shaping values and standards.” Lafley argues that “the CEO is uniquely positioned to ensure that a company’s purpose, values, and standards are relevant for the present and the future.” Of course, the culture and values need to guide the organization towards what matters most to it, to meeting its purpose, and satisfying its stakeholders.

To me, the Drucker-Lafley view on the CEO as a bridge between boundaries inside and outside the organization, can be extended a step down in the organization to other “chief” roles. The CEO’s vision and strategy to deliver value to the stakeholder to the role is fulfilled in part by the chief information officer (CIO) and chief technology officer (CTO). Together, the CIO and CTO marry needs of the business with the technology to bring them to fruition. Within the organization, the CIO is “outward” facing toward the needs of the business and the CTO is “inward” facing to technology enablement. Together, like two sides of the same coin, they execute from the IT perspective for the CEO.

Similarly, the chief enterprise architect (CEA), at the next rung—supporting the CIO/CTO, is also working to span boundaries—in this case, it is to technically interoperate the organization internally and with external partners The chief enterprise architect works to realize the vision of the CEO and the execution strategy of the CIO/CTO.

The bridge the CEO builds links the internal and external boundaries of the organization by defining stakeholders, scope, business strategy, and organizational culture. The CIO/CTO build on this and create the strategy to align business and technology The CEA takes that decomposes it into business, information, and technological components, defining and linking business functions, information flows, and system enablers to architect technology to the business imperative.

Three levels of executives—CIO, CIO/CTO, and CEA, three bridges—inside/outside the organization, business/technology sides of the organization, and business process/information flows/technologies within. Three delivery mechanisms to stakeholders—one vision and organizational strategy, one technical strategy and execution, one architecture plan to deliver through technology.


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May 11, 2009

Innovation Goes Both Ways


A soldier with an iPod mounted on his wrist takes aim with his assault rifle

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iphones-in-iraq-ndash-the-us-armys-new-weapon-1682655.html


It used to be the military technology often found application in the consumer world (like the development of the Internet from DARPA). Now, consumer technology is being used in battlefield theatre (for example, iPods and iPhones).

Enterprise architecture is being turned upside down in terms of the traditional migration path of technological innovation.

Perhaps, the practice of applying technological innovation to other areas regardless of from where they originate is the best model of them all!

In this way, we share and match the best and brightest ideas and product designs to new areas of applicability, opening up more uses and markets for successful product launches.

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May 10, 2009

Are We Getting Any Closer To Unified Messaging

The Holy Grail in communications has always been the drive to unify our messaging (data, voice, video) into a single device.

To this day, we continue to see vendors developing consumer products that combine as many of these functions as will possibly fit on a device.

For example, with the traditional copy machine, we have migrated to “all in one” devices that have copy, fax, scan, and print features. At the same time, cell phones have morphed into Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and have brought together traditional voice telephony with email, chat, web access, GPS, photos, videos, and an almost endless array of applets.  Similarly, computers are converging communications functions for email, voice over IP, photos, videos, social networking, and much more. While televisions are merging in features for web access, movies on demand, and so forth. 

Convergence is the name of the game--the consumer wants more functionality, more communications capability, more raw computing power, in single, smaller, and sleeker devices.

Ultimately, the vision for mobile communications was first epitomized by the Star Trek’s Communicator with universal language translation and later by the communications badge that with one tap put you in touch with Scotty who could beam you up to the Enterprise in a flash.

So with all the convergence in our communications gear, are we getting any closer to bona fide unified messaging systems?

I don’t know about you, but rather than less communications devices, it seems like I have more and more to fiddle and diddle with. At least two cell phones that balance on opposite sides of my belt (one is my personal phone and the other my work device) and I still have regular landlines at both home and work. Then there is my work computer and my home computer and remote access devices like air cards, tokens, and so forth. Of course, I have Skype, numerous email accounts, FaceBook, Twitter, Blogs, digital cameras, and various printing/copy/faxing/scanning devices to choose from. With various devices in just about every nook and cranny of my work and personal space, I’d say that my ability to community is certainly extensive, but unified, simple, user-centric—I don’t think so!

Government Computer News, 4 May 2009, reports: “Like the paperless office, unified messaging—storing and accessing various types of communications, from e-mail to voice mails, faxes and videos, in a single place—has been something of a chimera.”

With unified messaging, like the Holy Grail, it seems like the more we chase it, the more elusive it becomes.

Why?

Perhaps, we have a little bit of Moore’s Law running up against Murphy’s Law here. While the capability for us to do more computationally and functionally with ever smaller devices become greater and greater, the possibility of getting it all to work “right” becomes a greater and greater challenge. Maybe there are limits to how many functions a person can easily understand, access and conveniently control from a single device.

Think for a second about the infamous universal TV remote that has become the scorn of late night comedy. How many people get frustrated with these devices—all the buttons, functions, alt-functions, and so on that no reasonable person seems to care to learn. Or think about the 2 inch think operating instruction booklet that comes with the DVD player or other electronic devices that people are scared to even break the binding on. Then there are the PDA’s with touch screen keypads that you see people fat-fingering and getting the words all wrong. The list goes on and on.

Obviously, this is not user-centric architecture and it doesn’t work, period.

The consumer product company that gets “it”—that can design communications devices for the end-user that are functional and powerful with lots of capability and as close to unified as possible, but at the same time simple, compact, convenient, and easy to use (i.e. intuitive) will crack this unified messaging nut.

We cannot sacrifice ease of use for convergence!

Apple and RIM, in my experience, have probably come closest to this than any other consumer electronic companies, but even here it is a magnificent work-in-progress unfolding before our eyes.

I, for one, can’t wait for the Star Trek communications badge to become commercially available at the local Apple store. 


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May 9, 2009

“Soft Hands” Leadership

Conventional wisdom has it that there are two primary types of leaders: one is focused on the work (task-oriented) and the other is focused on the relationships (people-oriented). Of course, the exceptional leader can find the right balance between the two. Usually though it is the people skills that are short-changed in lieu of getting the job done.

Personally, I am a firm believer in the military doctrine of “Mission first, people always!”—Although, I am certain that some leaders even in the military are better at exemplifying this than others.

With the global financial downturn, there is an interesting article in Harvard Business Review titled “The Right Way to Close an Operation,” May 2009 that sheds some light on this leadership topic.

In this article, Kenneth Freeman advocates for a “soft hands” approach when closing or shrinking an operation. This approach calls for leadership to “treat employees with dignity, fairness, and respect—the way you would want to be treated.”

Wow!!! This is great--A human-centric approach to leadership.

Unfortunately some unconsciously believe that being tough on mission means being tough on people too. However, there is no need to "flick the whip." There is another way. We can embrace people as human beings, work with them, have compassion on them, treat them well, and lead them towards mission delivery.

It doesn’t have to be supervisors versus employees--different sides of the bargaining table. It can be in most instances people striving together for organizational success.

For me, this ties right in to my vision for enterprise architecture to have a human capital perspective. Human capital is critical to mission delivery. We must not focus exclusively on process and technology and forget the critical people aspect of organizational performance. A stool with only two legs (process and technology) without the third (people) will assuredly fall.

Freeman states that even when doing difficult things like downsizing we can still treat people humanly, the way we would want to be treated. He says: “reducing a workforce is painful, but you can do it in such a way that people will someday say, ‘you know I once worked for Company X. I didn’t like the fact that they shut my plant down, but I still think it’s a good company.’”

Here’s some tips from Freeman as I understand them:

- Address the personal issues for the employees—why they are losing their jobs, how the closure will affect them, what you will do to help them land on their feet…

- Communicate early and often—“People need to hear a message at least six times to internalize it.”

- Get out there—“Be visible and personal. A closure or a downsizing is not an excuse for leaders to go into hiding.”

-Take responsibility—“The leader should take personal responsibility for the organization’s behavior.”

- Be honest, but kind—“Explain that the decision is being made for the sake of the overall business not because the people who are leaving have done a bad job.”

- Treat everyone fairly—“who stays and who goes should be decided on an objective basis.”

- Help people go on—“help people find jobs.”

- Maintain a quality focus—“leaders should regularly remind everyone of the importance of quality and keep measuring and celebrating it.”

Freeman goes on with other sensible advice on how to not only treat employees well, but also customers and suppliers “like valued partners.” He has a refreshing perspective on delivering results, while maintaining human dignity.

Here's the critical point:

Having a “soft hands” approach to people doesn’t mean that you are soft on mission. That can never happen. But it does mean, we remember that delivery of mission is through our professional relationships with people—employees, customers, suppliers, partners, shareholders and more.

Treating people with dignity, respect, and fairness will positively generate mission delivery for the organization.


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May 7, 2009

Rolling Out New Technology: Lessons Learned


Lessons learned:
  1. The more things change, the more they stay the same; even though the technologies may change, the people and process issues still need to be dealt with.
  2. You can't just role out new technology and expect that people will just "catch on"; what's intuitive to one person is not necessarily intuitive to another.
  3. Different people learn in different ways; some can read a manual, others need more human interaction or hands-on training.
  4. Communication is critical to progress; we need to listen to others before we can effectively solve their problems.
  5. Learning needs to be repetitive; once is often not enough.
  6. Training needs to be part of every technology rollout.
  7. People, process, and technology need to be unified to bring results; otherwise the "new" technology may just end up sitting there.
  8. Many people are afraid of and/or resistant to change, and we need to be compassionate, empathetic, and help bring people along, always!

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May 2, 2009

Oracle - An Architecture Treasure-trove

Anyone following the strategic acquisitions by Oracle the last few years can see a very clear trend: Oracle is amassing a treasure-trove of business applications that are powerful, interoperable, and valuable to mission delivery.
Most recently, Oracle snapped up Sun for $7.38 billion, right from under the clutches of IBM!
Oracle with $22.4 billion in revenue in 2008 and 55% of license revenue generated overseas “is the world’s largest business software company, with more than 320,000 customers—including 100 of the Fortune 100—representing a variety of sizes and industries in more than 145 countries around the globe.”(www.oracle.com)
Oracle’s roots are as a premiere database company. However, since 2004, they made more than 50 acquisitions in calculated business areas.
The Wall Street Journal, 21 April 2009, identifies some of these notable buys:
2004—PeopleSoft for human resources and financial management.
2005—Siebel for customer relationship management.
2007—Hyperion Solutions for business intelligence.
2008—BEA Systems for infrastructure management.
2009—Sun Microsystems for software, servers, and storage devices.
Oracle has been able to acquire companies with operating-profit margins of 10% and within six months expand those margins to 40%.”
With the recent purchase of Sun, Oracle is gaining control of critical open-source software such as Java programming technology, Solaris operating system, and MySQL database.
According to Forrester Research, “Forty-six percent of businesses plan to deploy open-source software in 2009.” Oracle can now provide an important service in product support and updates for this. (Wall Street Journal, 22 April 2009)
In addition, Oracle also provides various middleware to integrate business applications and automate processes.
From databases to end-user applications, from service-oriented architecture to infrastructure management, from content management to business intelligence, Oracle has put together a broad impressive lineup. Of course, this is NOT an endorsement for Oracle (as other companies may have as good or even better solutions), but rather an acknowledgement of Mr. Ellison’s keen architecture strategy that is building his company competitively and his product offering compellingly. Ellison is transforming the company from a successful single brand that was at risk of becoming commoditized to a multi-faceted brand with synergies among its various lines of business and products.
Some lessons for enterprise architects and CIOs: Build your product lineup, create synergies, uniformly brand it, and be number one or number two in every product category that you’re in (as Jack Welch famously advised) and grow, grow, grow!

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May 1, 2009

This One is Just For Fun--Happy Weekend Everyone--TGIF!


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Customer Service Will Always Be Goal #1

Too many organizations espouse good service, but very few actually excel and deliver on the promise.

However, one company is so good at it that it serves as the role model for just about all others--that company is The Four Seasons.

The Wall Street Journal, 29 April 2009 reviewed the book “Four Seasons” by Isadore Sharp, the luxury hotel’s founder.

Here are some things that I learned about customer service from this:

- Customer Service means reliability—“a policy of consistently high standards.” At Four Seasons, anyone who has visited the chain around the world [83 hotels in 35 countries]…can attest to its reliability. To be reliable, customer service is not just raising and holding the bar high-- having high standards for quality service--but this must be institutionalized through policy and delivered consistently—over and over again. You can’t have a bad day when executing on customer service. Fantastic customer service has to always be there, period!

For The Total CIO, this type of reliability means that we don’t focus on technology per se, but rather on the customer’s mission requirements and how we can consistently deliver on those in a sound, secure, and cost-effective manner. CIO leaders establish high standards for customer service through regular performance plans, measures and service level agreements. Reliable customer service is more than a concept; it’s a way of relating to the customer in every interaction to consistently exceed expectations.

- Customer Service means innovation—“The things we take for granted now during our hotel stays-comfortable beds, fluffy towels, lighted make-up mirrors, fancy toiletries, and hair dryers-made their first appearances at the Four Seasons…likewise for European-style concierge and Japanese-style breakfast menus, in-hotel spas, and the possibility of residence and time-share units.”

For The Total CIO, technology changes so fast, that innovation is basically our middle name. We never rest on our laurels. We are always on the lookout for the next great thing to deliver on the mission, to achieve strategic competitive, to perform more cost effectively and efficiently.  Advantage. Moreover, we reward and recognize customer service excellence and innovation.

- Customer Service means valuing people—“Follow the golden rule. Workers are vital assets who should be treated accordingly…at the Four Seasons, those who might otherwise be considered the most expendable ‘had to come first,’ because they were the ones who could make or break a five-star service reputation.”

For The Total CIO, people are at the center of technology delivery. We plan, design, develop, and deploy technologies with people always in mind—front and center. If a technology is not “user-centric”, we can’t employ it and don’t want it—it’s a waste of time and money and generally speaking a bad IT investment. Moreover, we deliver technology through a highly trained, motivated, empowered and accountable workforce. We establish a culture of customer service and we reward and recognize people for excellence.

- Customer Service means solving problems—“Turning the top-down management philosophy on its head, Mr. Sharp authorized every Four Seasons employee to solve service problems as they arose to remedy failures on the spot.”

For The Total CIO, leadership is fundamental, management is important, and staff execution is vital. It is the frontline staff that knows the customer pain points and can often come up with the best suggestions to solve them. Even more importantly, the IT customer service representatives (help desk, desktop support, application developers, project managers, and so on) need to “own the customer” and see every customer problem through to resolution. Yes, it’s nice to empathize with the customer, but the customers need to have their problems fixed, their issues resolved and their requirements met.

The Total CIO will make these customer service definitions his and his organization’s modus operandi.


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April 25, 2009

Groups Can Help or Hurt the Decision Process…Here’s how

Generally, IT governance is based on the assumption that by vetting decisions in groups or boards—such as an Enterprise Architecture Board or Investment Review Board--we get better decisions. I for one have been an outspoken proponent for this and still am.

However, I read with great interest in the Wall Street Journal, April 25-26, an article entitled “How Group Decision End Up Wrong-Footed.”

In this article, an organizational psychologist at Stanford University, Robert Sutton states: “The best groups will be better than their best individual members”—okay, that’s right in line with our IT governance model, but then goes on to say…

and the worst groups will be worse than the worst individual.”—oh uh, that’s not good…here the IT governance model seems to backfire, when the group is dysfunctional!

Here’s the explanation:

“Committees and other groups tend either to follow the leader in a rush of conformity [here’s the herd mentality taking over] or to polarize into warring groups [here’s where the members break into oppositional stovepipes jockeying for position and turf].”

In these all too common dysfunctional group scenarios, the group does not work the way it is intended to—in which members constructively offer opinions, suggestions, explanations and discuss issues and proposals from various points of view to get a better analysis than any single person in the group could on their own.

Instead, “all too often committees don’t work well at all—resulting in a relentless short-term outlook, an inability to stick to strategic plans, a slapdash pursuit of the latest fad and a tendency to blame mistakes on somebody else.”

So how do we develop groups that work effectively?

According to Richard Larrick a psychologist at Duke University, “For committees and other boards to work well, they must be made up of people with differing perspectives and experience who are unafraid to speak their minds…they must also select and process information effectively and seek to learn from their mistakes.”

In this model, people in a group can effectively balance and complement each other, and synergistically work together to make better IT decisions for the organization.

Here are some suggestions offered by the article for effective groups:

The first is to break the group into “pro” and “con” sub-groups that can develop arguments for each side of the argument. I call this the debate team model and this offsets the tendency of groups to just follow the “leader” (loudest, pushiest, most politically savvy…) member in the room, creating the herd mentality, where anybody who disagrees is branded the naysayer or obstacles to progress. To get a good decision, we need to foster a solid debate and that occurs in an environment where people feel free to explore alternate point of view and speak their minds respectfully and constructively with non-attribution and without retaliation.

The second suggestion is to ask how and why questions to “expose any weak points in the advise.” This idea was a little surprising for me to read, since I had prior learned in leadership training that it is impolite and possibly even antagonistic to ask why and that this interrogative should be avoided, practically at all costs.

In prior blogs, I have written how enterprise architecture provides the insight for decision-making and It governance provides the oversight. So I read with interest once more, that oversight has a dual meaning: “the word can mean either scrutiny or omission.” And again it clicked…when the governance board works effectively; it “scrutinizes” investments so that the organization invests wisely. However, when the group is dysfunctional the result is “omissions” of facts, analysis, and healthy vetting and decision-making. That is why we need to make our IT governance boards safe for people to really discuss and work out issues.


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April 24, 2009

To Invest or Not to Invest, That is the Question

There are scarce dollars for investment purposes and many competing alternatives to invest in. Therefore, organizations must make wise investment decisions.

Common sense dictates that we invest in those technologies that will bring us the greatest return on investment. However, investing in IT is not only about seeking to maximize profitability or superior mission execution, but also about mitigating risk.

MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2009, discusses the need to balance between two types of investment risks.

The first, and obvious one is financial risk—“the failure to achieve satisfactory returns from an investment;” those organizations that load up on too much financial risk, can actually put themselves in danger of not being able to stay financially solvent i.e. too many poor investments and the company can be sunk!

The second risk is competitive risk—“the failure to retain a satisfactory competitive position for lack of investment.” Organizations that are too conservative and don’t invest in the future put themselves at risk of falling behind the competition, and may be even out of the race altogether.

So how do we balance these two risks?

On one hand, we need to make critical new IT investments to stay competitive and become more effective and efficient over time, but on the other hand, we need to manage our money prudently to stay on solid financial footing.

Managing financial risk is a short-term view—similar to looking at the daily stock market prices or quarterly financial returns; if we can’t meet our financial obligations today or tomorrow, game over. While managing competitive risk is a long term perspective on investing—we need to remain agile amidst our marketplace competitors and outmaneuver them over time picking up additional customers and market share and building brand and satisfaction.

In information technology management, we must manage both the short-term financial risk and the long-term competitive risks.

What tools are in the CIO’s arsenal to manage these risks effectively?

Enterprise architecture planning is a strategic function that takes a primarily top-down view and assesses organizational requirements (including competitive needs) and drives IT investments plans to meet those needs. In this way, EA manages competitive risk.

IT governance or capital planning and investment control is a bottom-up view that helps us manage shorter-term financial risks by providing a structure and process for vetting IT investments and prioritizing those. Sound IT governance helps us limit financial risk.

So we attack the risks from both ends—from the top and from the bottom.

While we cannot entirely eliminate the risks of failed IT investments or of missing opportunities to knock the competition off its feet, we can manage these by architecting our enterprise for long-term success and by appropriately scrutinizing the selection, control and evaluation of our investments so that we safeguard our financial resources.

So the CIO can err by going too far in either direction:

So a balance needs to be maintained.

“More specifically, a balance should be maintained between errors of omission and commission.” Fail to invest and modernize the organization’s technology and you commit the error of omission. Invest overly aggressively and you commit the error of commission. “A balance must be struck between the error of pursuing too many unprofitable investment opportunities as opposed to the error of passing up too many potentially profitable ones.”


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April 12, 2009

The Implications of Nonverbal Communications

"Only seven percent of what we say is conveyed through words. Tone and visual cues make up the other 93 percent. That is why email messages are so often misunderstood. Ed Muzio of Group Harmonics suggests using email only when you should: to convey facts and data, and when no emotion or sensitive issues are involved.

In the past 12 months alone, I’ve seen e-mails misconstrued and misinterpreted too many times to count, and then management ends up having to devote extra time to damage control for issues that shouldn’t have been issues in the first place." - Jason Hiner is the Editor in Chief of TechRepublic.



This research is really important to keep in mind with regards to effective communications.

The distribution of information in a message that gets transferred is:
55% Visual
38% Tone
7% Words

Most of the message transferred is based on non-verbal cues. And as we know, these are easily misunderstood or misinterpreted. So communicating clearly and effectively means not only carefully using ones words, but also packaging ones words with effective visual and tonal effect. Moreover, as the research demonstrates, visualization is even more important (55%) than tone and words (45%).

Leaders have to be especially careful with their communications and always keep in mind that others can not only misread or mishear words, but also misinterpret non-verbal cues.

I think part of a good communications solution is to be consistent with one's overall message and to listen for confirmation of understanding from the other person.

We can't take for granted that what we mean is what is received on the other end.
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April 11, 2009

Training is a Critical Element of Enterprise Architecture

CBS News Video: "ATF students learn how to investigate bomb explosions by seeing them firsthand. In training, actual bombs are detonated in vehicles and homes to simulate real scenes."


Watch CBS Videos Online

Training is a critical component of any organization's enterprise architecture. With the proper training, people are provided the necessary preparation to carry out the organization's mission.

Training needs to be built in to everything we do--whether it the business processes we perform or the system we operate--the employees have got to be ready and able to execute precisely.

As a proponent for a Human Capital perspective to enterprise architecture, I see training as being a core component of that area. As architects, we need to define what training is currently being provided to our people, what is needed for future capabilities, and how we will get there.

The training component of EA can be a critical link in the line of sight that aligns people, process, and technology into an effective whole.
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April 10, 2009

The CIO’s Inner Circle

Executives, such as CIOs, need to surround themselves with plenty of smart and talented people to be successful leaders. Even the greatest of CIOs is not superman and cannot go it alone. He/she needs a diverse workforce with the full spectrum of capabilities to tackle the most challenging problems facing the organization.

In building our teams, leaders need to understand themselves and how they relate to others. Some common instruments that help to do this are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI). Myers-Briggs classifies people according to their preferences for introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. Similarly, the SDI charts people according to their altruism, assertiveness, and analytic. Both of these give people insight into their own personalities as well as provide a typology for those we work with.

MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2009, provides yet a new profile to categorize the support network of leaders in “Profiles of Trust: Who to Turn To, and for What”.

The profiles of people in the CIO’s support (“trust”) network comprise 8 types that “reflect differing combinations of the three facets of trust—ability, integrity, and benevolence.” They are as follows:

  1. Harsh truthtellers—“sought out for their honesty…what needs to be said, not necessarily what people want to hear.”
  2. Moral compasses—“respected…for their unwavering sense of right and wrong.”
  3. Loyal supporters—“values are closely aligned with those of the support-seeker [leader].”
  4. Star players—“experts renowned for their talent, but not necessarily for their ‘people skills.’”
  5. Average Joes—“moderate levels of ability, benevolence, and integrity.”
  6. Dealmakers—they “’get things done,’ often directly and unceremoniously, in a manner reminiscent of, say, a Tony Soprano.”
  7. Cheerleaders—“provide unconditional support…willingness to ‘be there’ no questions asked, to lend moral support.”
  8. Trustworthy partners—They ‘have it all’…they are capable, have high integrity, and have the support-seeker’s best interests at heart.”

“Executives are likely to build a support network based on different types of relationships with different people (who span the above eight profiles).” For example, when actionable advice is needed, those with high ability and integrity will be called upon. When looking for emotional or political support, those high in benevolence and integrity are especially valuable. And when looking for raw information, the “average Joes” with all three attributes in moderation are there to assist.

Of course, the specific people called upon for their subject matter expertise will vary according to the occasion and the needs of leadership. And regardless of who is called upon, and when, to provide their support, everyone serves a vital purpose.

So to me, what it important here is that everyone in a diverse workforce is infinitely valuable. And while no one person or type of person can do everything, everyone can do something. Those executives who build the breadth and depth of talent around them will have the human capital assets to thrive in any situation.


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April 9, 2009

You Can Lead a Horse to Water

When we architect change, we have to build in the transition plan for how to get from point A to point B. The problem with most enterprise architectures though is that they begin and end with the equivalent of “Thou Shalt” and never does the architecture deal with the behavioral elements of how to actually motivate people and organizations to change the way we plan/want them to.

Maybe that’s one reason why architectures so often remain shelfware and never actually get implemented.

This is reminiscent of the adage, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” or can you?

With the Obama administration elected on a platform of change and major problems facing our nation in terms of the economy, healthcare, the environment, and so on, we are seeing the government confront the dilemma of how do we get the change we promised?

Time Magazine, 2 April 2009 has an interesting article “How Obama is using the Science of Change.”

The administration is using it [behavioral science] to try to transform the country. Because when you know what makes people tick, it’s a lot easier to help them change.”

Similarly, this knowledge can help enterprise architects effect change in their organizations. It’s not enough to just put a plan to paper—that’s a long way from effecting meaningful and lasting change.

So here are some tips that I adapted from the article:

  • Bottom-up or Top Down: We can mandate change from the top or we can grow change from grass-roots. If we can do both, the change is swifter and more likely to succeed.
  • Carrot and Stick: Change is not easy and usually will not happen without a nudge—we need help. We need to motivate desired change and disincentive obstinate clinging to failed status quo behaviors that are hurting the mission and long term success of the organization.
  • Make change clear and simple: Explain to people why a change is important and necessary. “In general, we’re ignorant, shortsighted, and biased toward the status quo…we procrastinate. Our impulsive ids overwhelm our logical superegos.” So change has got to be clearly articulated, easy to understand, and simple for people to act on. “Cheap is alluring; easy can be irresistible.”
  • Accept that change is painful: We need to keep our eye on the goal, and then accept that we have to work hard to achieve it. President Obama “urges us to snap out of denial, to accept that we’re in for some prolonged discomfort but not to wallow in it, to focus on our values.”
  • The way of the herd: When implementing change initiatives, we need to build community “creating a sense that we’re all in this together.” “We’re a herdlike species….when we think we’re out of step with our peers, the part of our brain that registers pain shifts into overdrive.”
  • Keep the focus on long-term success: Weight the benefits of long-term planning and change to short term status quo and gratification; constantly remind people that most worthwhile organizational goals are a marathon and not a sprint. But together, we can support each other and achieve anything.

With behavioral science principles like these, we can make enterprise architecture transition plans truly actionable by the organization.


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April 4, 2009

Social Media Can Free Us All

An action by a lone decision maker may be quick and life-saving as in response to extreme fear or stress, when a person must in a split second select from the “fight or flight response.”

Given a little more time to make a decision, people have found that there is not only strength in numbers, but also wisdom. In other words, vetting a decision among a diverse group and hearing different sides to an issue, generally yields better decisions than an individual could make alone. Colloquially, we often here this referred to as “two heads are better than one.”

Now, with the power of the Internet, we are able to employ collective decision making en masse. Through Web 2.0 tools like Wiki’s, Internet forums, social networks, and other collaboration tools, we can reach out to masses of people across the social, economic, and political landscape—anywhere in the world—and even from those orbiting the planet on the International Space Station. Soon enough, we will take the power of the collective to new extremes by reaching out to those who have traveled and reside on distance worlds—I think that will probably be in Web 4.0 or 5.0.

What’s amazing is that we can get input from anyone, anywhere and in virtually limitless numbers from anyone interested in participating and providing their ideas and input.

When we open up the discussion to large groups of people like this it is called crowdsourcing, and it is essentially mass information sharing, collaboration and participation towards more sophisticated and mature ideation and decision making.

The concept of participatory thinking and intelligence, to me, is an outgrowth not just of the technologies that enables it, but also of the freedom of people to choose to participate and their human right to speak their minds freely and openly. Certainly, this is an outgrowth of democratization and human rights.

While the Internet and Social Media technologies are in a sense an outgrowth of freedoms that support our abilities to innovate. I believe that they now will be an enabler for continued democratization, freedom, and human rights around the world. Once the flood gates are opened a little for people to be free virtually (to read new ideas online, to vote online, to comment and provide feedback online, and to generally communicate and share openly online), a surge of freedom in the traditional sense must soon follow.

This is a tremendous time for human civilization—the Internet has connected us all. Diversity is no longer a dirty little word that some try to squash, but a strength that binds us. Information sharing no longer cowers behind a need to know. Collaboration no longer hides behind more authoritative forms of decision making. People and organizations recognize that the strengths of individuals are magnified by the power of the collective.

The flip side is that voices for hate, chaos, and evil can also avail themselves of the same tools of social media to spread extremism, crime, terrorism, and anarchy. So there are two camps coming together through sharing and collaboration, the same as through all time—good and evil.

The fight for truth is taking a new turn through technology. Social media enables us to use mass communication and collective intelligence to achieve a high goal.


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