Kudos to the Bean Counters

Innovation is powerful, and with power comes responsibility.

When we think creatively and “out of the box”, we break the mental bounds that constrain our ability to go beyond what we know today and build capabilities that were unimaginable just the day before.

Yet, innovation is not like creation. G-d creates something from nothing. Man builds on the ideas of those who came before us—this is incrementalism.

And doing so, we are able to go beyond our own individual human limitations.

Incrementalism is a force multiplier. It is like layering one new thought, one change, one innovation on top on another and another. With each incremental development, we as a society are able to go beyond those who came before us.

Of course, some innovations are more evolutionary and some more incredibly revolutionary, but for all there are influences that underpin their development and they are there even if we cannot readily see them.

In short though, we are constantly changing as a society and as individuals—for better or possibly, for worse.

In the introduction to the novel, The Prey, by Michael Crichton, the author talks about the how everything—“every living plant, insect, and animal species”--is constantly evolving and warns of the complexity, uncertainty, and possible dire consequences if we do not manage change responsibly.

““The notion that the world around us is continuously evolving is a platitude; we rarely grasp its full implications…The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do.”

I think the point is that even if we can envision or test the consequences of innovation one, two, three or however many steps forward, we cannot know the limitless possible downstream effects of a change that we initiate.

Crichton states: Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future.”

We don’t have to look too far to see how we have irresponsibly used many innovations in our times, whether they be complex and risky investment instruments that have led to the current financial crisis, medical products that have had serious unintended side effects resulting in serious injury and fatalities, and of course our endless thirst for and usage of fossil fuels and the general disregard for our planet and the negative effects on our environment such as global warming and pollution to name just a couple.

Crichton warns that “sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power.”

The warning is particularly apropos in light of the ever increasing rate of change enabled by and manifested in various technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, nuclear technology and information technology.

With each new advance in our technological prowess come risks of these new tools getting away from us and causing harm. For example, nuclear technologies have provided weapons of mass destruction that we struggle to contain; biotechnology has stirred concerns in terms of cloning, mutations, and deadly pathogens; nanotechnology stirs fears of toxic microscopic organisms that can easily get into our bodies, and IT viruses and cyber warfare that threaten our world of bits and bytes as we have come to know and rely for just about every daily activity we are involved in.

The point is not for us to be scared into mental stasis and inaction, but to be cognizant of the potential for serious side effects of changes and to take appropriate safeguards to mitigate those.

Innovation is exciting but it can also be seriously scary. Therefore, we need to be brave and bold in our thinking and actions, but at the same time we need to be cautious and act responsibly.

What this means in real life is that when new ideas are introduced, we need to evaluate them carefully so that we understand the range of benefits and risks they pose.

While it is not very sexy to be the voice of caution, great leaders know how to encourage new thinking while reining in potentially dangerous consequences.

Kudos to the Bean Counters

No Choice But to Change

It’s easy to get into a rut and just follow the status quo that we’re used to.

People do it all the time. It’s doing what we know. It’s comfortable. It’s less challenging. It feels less risky. It doesn’t “cause waves” with various stakeholders.

Don’t we often hear people say, “don’t fix it, if it ain’t broke”?

Here’s another more arrogant and obnoxious version of the anti-change sentiment: “don’t mess with perfection!”

And finally, the old and tried and true from the nay-sayer crowd: “we tried that one before.”

Unfortunately, what many of these die-hard obstructionists fail to acknowledge is that time does not stand still for anyone; “Time marches on.” Change is a fact of life, and you can either embrace it or make a futile attempt to resist.

If you embrace it and moreover become a champion of it, you can influence and shape the future—you are not simply a victim of the tide. However, if you resist change, you are standing in front of a freight train that will knock you out and drag you down. You will lose and lose big: Change will happen without you and you will be run over by it.

In short, it is more risky to avoid change than to embrace it.

Therefore, as a leader in an organization, as The Total CIO, you have an obligation to lead change:

• to try to foresee events that will impact the organization, its products/services, its processes, its technology, and its people.
• to identify ways to make the most of changing circumstances—to take advantage of opportunities and to mitigate risks, to fill gaps and to reduce unnecessary redundancies.
• to develop and articulate a clear vision for the organization (especially in terms of the use of information technology) and to steer the organization (motivate, inspire, and lead) towards that end state.
• to course correct as events unfold; the CIO is not a fortuneteller with all knowing premonition. Therefore, the CIO must be prepared to adjust course as more information becomes available. Sticking to your guns is not leadership, its arrogance.
• to integrate people, process, technology, and information; the CIO is not siloed to technology issues. Rather, the CIO must look across the enterprise and develop enterprise solutions that integrate the various lines of business and ensures true information sharing, collaboration, and streamlined integration and efficiency. The CIO is a unifier.
• to institutionalize structured planning and governance to manage change. It’s not a fly by night or put your finger up to see which way the wind is blowing type of exercise. Change management is an ongoing programmatic function that requires clear process, roles and responsibilities, timelines, and decision framework.
• to bring in management best practices to frame the change process. Change is not an exact science, but we can sure learn from how others have been and are successful at it and try to emulate best practices, so we are not reinvesting the wheel.

Change is a fact of life, even if it is often painful.

I’d like to say that maybe it doesn’t have to be, but I think that would be lying, because it would be denying our humanity—fear, resistance, apathy, weariness, physical and mental costs, and other elements that make change difficult.

But while the CIO cannot make change pain-free, he can make change more understandable, more managed (and less chaotic), and the results of change more beneficial to the long term future of the organization.

No Choice But to Change

Vision and The Total CIO

Vision is often the telltale demarcation between a leader and a manager. A manager knows how to climb a ladder, but a leader knows where the ladder needs to go—leaders have the vision to point the organization in the right direction!

Harvard Business Review, January 2009, asks “what does it mean to have vision?”

First of all, HBR states that vision is the “central component in charismatic leadership.” They offer three components of vision, and here are my thoughts on these:

1. “Sensing opportunities and threats in the environment”—(recognizing future impacts) this entails “foreseeing events” and technologies that will affect the organization and one’s stakeholders. This means not only constantly scanning the environment for potential impacts, but also making the mental connections between, internal and external factors, the risks and opportunities they pose, and the probabilities that they will occur.
2. “Setting strategic direction”—(determining plans to respond) this means identifying the best strategies to get out ahead of emerging threats and opportunities and determining how to mitigate risks or leverage opportunities (for example, to increase mission effectiveness, revenue, profitability, market share, and customer satisfaction).
3. “Inspiring constituents”—(executing on a way ahead) this involves assessing change readiness, “challenging the status quo” (being a change agent), articulating the need and “new ways of doing things”, and motivating constituent to take necessary actions.

The CIO/CTO is in a unique position to provide the vision and lead in the organization, since they can bring alignment between the business needs and the technologies that can transform it.

The IT leader cannot afford to get bogged down in firefighting the day-to-day operations to the exclusion of planning for the future of the enterprise. Firefighting is mandatory when there is a fire, but he fire must eventually be extinguished and the true IT leader must provide a vision that goes beyond tomorrow’s network availability and application up-time. Sure the computers and phones need to keep working, but the real value of the IT leader is in providing a vision of the future and not just more status quo.

The challenge for the CIO/CTO is to master the business and the technical, the present and the future—to truly understand the mission and the stakeholders as they are today as well as the various technologies and management best practices available and emerging to modernize and reengineer. Armed with business and technical intelligence and a talent to convert the as-is to the to-be, the IT leader can increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness, help the enterprise better compete in the marketplace and more fully satisfy customers now and in the future.

Vision and The Total CIO

It Time to Stop the Negativity and Move towards Constructive Change

Recently, there was an article in Nextgov (http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2008/12/the_industry_advisory_council.php) about the Industry Advisory Council (IAC), a well respected industry-government consortium under the Auspices of the American Council for Technology, that recommended to the incoming Obama Administration the standup of an innovation agency under the auspices of the new Chief Technology Officer.

The Government Innovation Agency “would serve as an incubator for new ideas, serve as a central repository for best practices and incorporate an innovation review in every project. As we envision it, the Government Innovation Agency would house Centers of Excellence that would focus on ways to achieve performance breakthroughs and leverage technology to improve decision making, institute good business practices and improve problem solving by government employees.:”

While I am a big proponent for innovation and leveraging best practices, what was interesting to me was not so much the proposal from IAC (which I am not advocating for by the way), so much as one of the blistering comments posted anonymously from one of the readers, under the pseudonym “concerned retiree,” which I am posting in its entirety as follows:

“Hmmmmm...."innovation"..."central repository of new ideas"......can this be just empty news release jargon? Just more slow-news day, free-range clichés scampering into the daily news hole?.. .or perhaps this item is simply a small sized news item without the required room to wisely explicate on the real life banalities of the government sponsored “innovation” world...such as: 1)patent problems - is the US going to be soaking up, or handing out patent worthy goodies via the "innovation" czar or czarina? Attention patent attorneys, gravy train a comin’ 2)"leverage technology to improve decision making" – wow! a phrase foretelling a boon-doggle bonanza, especially since it’s wonderfully undefined and thereby, prompting generous seed money to explore it’s vast potential (less just fund it at say, $20-30 million?); 3) the "Government Innovation Agency" - -well now, just how can we integrate this new member to the current herd of government “innovation” cows, including: A) a the Dod labs, like say the Naval Research Lab, or the Dept of Commerce lab that produced the Nobel prize winner (oh, I see now, the proposal would be for “computer” type innovation pursuits – oh, how wise, like the health research lobbyists, we’re now about slicing “innovation” and/or research to match our vendor supplier concerns, how scientific!, how MBAishly wise); B) existing labs in private industry (e.g. former Bell Labs. GM-Detroit area "labs"/innovation groups), C) university labs – currently watered by all manner of Uncle Sam dollars via the great roiling ocean of research grants. Finally - given the current Wall Street melt-down and general skepticism for American business nimbleness (this too will pass, of course) -- what's the deal with all the Harvard Grad School-type hyper-ventilation on the bubbling creativity (destructive or otherwise) of American capitalism - -surely the GAO/Commerce/SEC could pop out some stats on the progressive deterioration of expenditures -- capital and otherwise--on "innovation". Or perhaps the sponsors of the "Government Innovation Agency" - will be happy to explain at the authorization hearing - how all the dough to date spent to date on development of the green automobile has yet to put a consumer friendly one on the road from a US corp -- a fact that argues either for a vast expansion of the GIA, or, the merciful euthenasiaing of this dotty idea. See you all at the authorizing hearing?”

What’s so disheartening about this retiree’s comments?

It’s not that there is not some truth intermixed with the blistering comments, but it is the sheer magnitude of the cynicism, bitterness, negativity, resistance to ”new” (or at times reformulated) ideas, and “been-there-done-that” attitude that unfairly provides a bad name to other government workers who are smart, innovative, positive, and hard-charging and want to continuously improve effectiveness and efficiency of government for the benefit of the nation and to serve our citizens.

Sure, we need to listen and learn from those that preceded us--those with age, experience, expertise, and certainly vast amounts of wisdom. And yes, those of us who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat it. So we must be mindful to be respectful, collaborative, inclusive, and careful to vet new ideas and changes.

However, those that have served before or have been serving a long time now should also give hope, innovation, change (not for change’s sake, but based on genuine learning and growth) and continuous improvement a chance.

It is always easier to be a naysayer, a doomsday prognosticator, and to tear down and destroy. It is much, much harder to be positive, hopeful, and constructive—to seek to build a brighter future rather than rest on the laurels of the past.

Unfortunately, many people have been hurt by past mistakes, false leaders, broken promises, and dashed hopes, so they become resistant to change, in addition to, of course, fearing change.

Those of us in information technology and other fields (like science, engineering, product design and development, and so many others—in fact all of us can make a difference) need to be stay strong amidst the harsh rhetoric of negativity and pessimism, and instead continue to strive for a better tomorrow.

It Time to Stop the Negativity and Move towards Constructive Change

Scraping the Landlines and The Total CIO

It’s long overdue. It’s time to get rid of the landline telephones from the office (and also from our homes, if you still have them). Wireless phones are more than capable of doing the job and just think you already probably have at least one for business and one for personal use—so redundancy is built in!

Getting rid of the office phones will save the enterprise money, reduce a maintenance burden (like for office moves) and remove some extra telejunk clutter from your desk. More room for the wireless handheld charger. :-)

USA Today, 20 December 2008 reports that according to Forrester Research “Estimated 25% of businesses are phasing out desk phones in effort to save more money.”

Additionally, “more than 8% of employees nationwide who travel frequently have only cellphones.”

Robert Rosenberg, president of The Insight Research Corp., stated: U.S. businesses are lagging behind Europe and Asia in going wireless, because major cellular carriers…are also earning money by providing landlines to businesses—an $81.4 billion industry in 2008.”

“In Washington, D.C., the City Administrator’s office launched a pilot program in October in which 30 employees with government-issued cellphones gave up their desk phones, said deputy mayor Dan Tangherlini. Because the government has issued more than 11,000 cellphones to employees, the program could multiply into significant savings.”

A study by the National Center for Health Statistics between January and June found that more than 16% of families “have substituted a wireless telephone for a land line.”

So what’s stopping organizations from getting rid of the traditional telephones?

The usual culprits: resistance to change, fear of making a mistake, not wanting to give up something we already have—“old habits die hard” and people don’t like to let go of their little treasures—even a bulky old deskphone (with the annoying cord that keeps getting twisted).

Things are near and dear to people and they clutch on to them with their last breath—in their personal lives (think of all the attics, garages, and basements full of items people can’t let go off—yard sale anyone?) and in the professional lives (things equate to stature, tenure, turf—a bigger rice bowl sound familiar?).

Usually the best way to get rid of something is to replace it with something better, so the Total CIO needs to tie the rollout of new handheld devices with people turning in their old devices--land lines, pagers, and even older cell phones (the added benefit is more room and less weight pulling on your belt).

By the way, we need to do the same thing with new applications systems that we roll out. When the new one is fully operational than the old systems need to be retired. Now how often does that typically happen?

Folks, times are tough, global competition is not going away, and we are wasting too much money and time maintaining legacy stuff we no longer need. We need to let go of the old and progress with the new and improved.

Scraping the Landlines and The Total CIO

Coming Soon: A Federal Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

What is the role of the Federal Chief Technology Officer (CTO) that we are anxiously awaiting to be announced soon in the President-elect Obama administration?

There are some interesting insights in Federal Computer Week, 8 December 2008.

CHANGE: Norman Lorenz, the first CTO for OMB, sees the role of the Federal CTO as primarily a change agent, so much so that the title should be the federal chief transformation officer.

TEAMWORK: Jim Flyzik, the Former CIO of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and one of my former bosses, sees the CTO role as one who inspires teamwork across the federal IT community, and who can adeptly use the Federal CIO Council and other CXO councils to get things done—in managing the large, complex government IT complex.

VISION: Kim Nelson, the former CIO of the Environmental Protection Agency says it’s all about vision to ensure that agencies “have the right infrastructure, policies, and services for the 21^st century and ensure they use best-in-class technologies.”

ARCHITECTURE: French Caldwell, a VP at Gartner, says the CTO must “try to put some cohesion and common [enterprise] architecture around the IT investment of federal agencies.”

SECURITY: Dan Tynan, of “Culture Clash” blog at Computerworld’s website said the federal CTO should create a more secure IT infrastructure for government.

CITIZENS: Don Tapscott, author of “Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything,” seems to focus on the citizens in terms of ensuring access to information and services, conditions for a vibrant technology industry, and generally fostering collaboration and transformation of government and democracy.

This is great stuff and I agree with these.

I would add that the following four:

INNOVATION: The Federal CTO should promote and inspire innovation for better, faster, and cheaper ways of conducting government business and serving the citizens of this country.

STRATEGY: The Federal CTO should develop a strategy with clear IT goals and objectives for the federal government IT community to unite around, manage to, and measure performance against. We need to all be working off the same sheet of music, and it should acknowledge both commonalities across government as well as unique mission needs.

STRUCTURE: The Federal CTO should provide efficient policies and processes that will enable structured and sound ways for agencies to make IT investments, prioritize projects, and promote enterprise and common solutions.

OUTREACH; The Federal CTO is the face of Federal IT to not only citizens, but also state, local, and tribal governments, international forums, and to the business community at large. He/she should identify stakeholder requirements for federal IT and align them to the best technical solutions that are not bound by geographical, political, social, economic, or other boundaries.

The Federal CTO is a position of immense opportunity with the enormous potential to drive superior mission performance using management and IT best practices and advanced and emerging technologies, breaking down agency and functional silos in order to build a truly citizen-centric, technology-enabled government in the service to citizen and country.

Coming Soon: A Federal Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

GM and Enterprise Architecture

Where has enterprise architecture gone wrong at General Motors?

THEN: In 1954, GM’s U.S. auto market share reached 54%; in 1979, their number of worldwide employees hit 853,000, and in 1984 earning peak at $5.4 billion.

NOW: In 2007, U.S. market share stands at 23.7% and GM loses $38.7 billion; by 2008 employment is down to 266,000.

(Associated Press, “A Brief History of General Motors Corp., September 14, 2008)

Fortune Magazine, 8 December 2008, reports that “It was a great American Company when I started covering it three decades ago. But by clinging to the attributes that made it an icon, General Motors drove itself to ruin.”

GM clung to its past and “drove itself to ruin”—they weren’t nimble (maybe due to their size, but mostly due to their culture). In the end, GM was not able to architect a way ahead—they were unable to change from what they were (their baseline) to what they needed to be (their target).

“But in working for the largest company in the industry for so long, they became comfortable, insular, self-referential, and too wedded to the status quo—traits that persist even now, when GM is on the precipice.”

The result of their stasis—their inability to plan for change and implement change—“GM has been losing market share in the U.S. since the 1960’s destroying capital for years, and returning no share price appreciation to investors.”

GM’s share price is now the lowest in 58 years.

When the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, is asked why GM isn’t more like Toyota (the most successful auto company is the world with a market cap of $103.6 billion to GM’s $1.8 billion), his reply?

“We’re playing our own game—taking advantage of our own unique heritage and strengths.”

Yes, GM is playing their own game and living in their own unique heritage. “Heritage” instead of vision. “Playing their own game” instead of effectively competing in the global market—all the opposite of enterprise architecture!!

GM has been asphyxiated by their stubbornness, arrogance, resistance to change and finally their high costs.

“ GM’s high fixed costs…no cap on cost-of-living adjustments to wages, full retirement after 30 years regardless of age, and increases in already lavish health benefits. Detroiters referred to the company as ‘Generous Motors.’ The cost of these benefits would bedevil GM for the next 35 years.”

GM’s cost structure has been over-the-top and even though they have been in “perpetual turnaround,” they have unable to change their profligate business model.

Too many models, too many look-alike cars, and too high a cost structure—GM “has lost more than $72 billion in the past four years” and the result is? Are heads rolling?

The article says no—“you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their jobs”

“At GM, conformity was everything, and rebellion was frowned on.” Obviously, this is not a successful enterprise architecture strategy.

Frankly, I cannot understand GM’s intransience to create a true vision and lead. Or if they couldn’t innovate, why not at least imitate their Japanese market leader brethren?

It’s reminds me of the story of the Exodus from Egypt in the bible. Moses goes to Pharaoh time and again and implores him to “let my people go” and even after G-d smites the Egyptians with plague after plague, he is still unmovable.

Well we know how that story ended up for the Egyptians and it doesn’t bode well for GM.

The bottom line, if the enterprise isn’t open to genuine growth and change, nothing can save them from themselves.

GM and Enterprise Architecture

A Learning Environment and Enterprise Architecture

One of the things that make an organization (or a person) succeed or fail is its ability to learn and grow.

A child learns at home and in school and grows to become a productive adult human being. An organization begins as a start-up and grows and matures into a bustling successful organization based on the combined talents and wisdom of its people; new people are brought on board to meet the growth and to pollinate the organization with the knowledge, skills, and abilities it needs to meet emerging challenges.

The underlying architecture for growth and success is continued learning for self and an ongoing stream of new, bright, and innovative individuals to feed the organization’s thirst for ideas and remain competitive.

Organizations can hire or train people to bring in creativity and intellect; they can also cross pollinate talent with other enterprises and thereby share the talent.

The Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2008, reports that “Google, P&G Swap Workers to Spur Innovation.”

“At Proctor & Gamble Co., the corporate culture is so rigid, employees jokingly call themselves “Proctoids.” In contrast, Google Inc. staffers are urged to wander the halls on company-provided scooters and brainstorm on public whiteboards. Now, odd this couple things they have something to gain from one another—so they‘ve started swapping employees. So far, about two-dozen have spent weeks dipping into each other’s staff training programs and sitting in on meetings where plans get hammered out.”

What are these two corporate juggernauts swapping staff?

P&G is trying to learn and change from being primarily TV-centric in its advertising to moving its pitch to the internet (P&G spends $2.36 billion in television advertising versus $78.6 million online—just 2%--even though ”consumers ages 18 to 27 say they use the Internet nearly 13 hours a week, compared to viewing 10 hour of TV”).

Google wants to learn how to snare a bigger slice of advertising revenue from big corporations like P&G, which happens to be the largest advertising spender in the world. Although Google “controls 74% of so-called ‘search term’ advertising spending…TV snags nearly 40% of the world’s total advertising spending.”

Anyway, the job swap started in January and is going great. For example, P&G started “an online campaign inviting people to make spoof videos of P&G’s ‘Talking Stain’ TV ad and post them to YouTube. And Google job-swappers “have started adopting P&G lingo” One Google job-swapper stated “This is going to get so much easier, now that I’m learning their language.”

Change won’t happen overnight. “Consumer-product companies have been among the slowest to adopt online marketing because the traditional form of marketing, including TV and newspaper fliers are still reasonably effective,” but learning what are the new possibilities is playing a big role in changing the mindset for the future.

Indeed, enterprise architecture is not just about technology, but about business processes and human beings (the big three--people, process and technology). It’s about learning to do things better, faster, and cheaper. Underscore the learning!

A Learning Environment and Enterprise Architecture

Lessons from Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, U.S. Navy

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was an amazing pioneer and futurist of computers, and here are some lasting lessons.

COMPUTER:

Computer was the first device to assist the power of the mind rather than the strength of the arm

We’re only at the beginning…

TARGET ARCHITECTURE:

We have to build for problems and with the equipment of the future and not with what you have today.

How do you determine priorities? Instead of giving top priority to the senior squeaky wheel, base decisions on what information is most valuable.

How do you determine what information is most valuable to decision makers? 1) Time to act 2) number of people affected 3) amount of dollars involved.

CHANGE:

We’ve got to move to the future and recognize what we can do with computing.

Ask what the cost is of not doing something.

We have got to get new ideas moving and be willing to fight for them and push them.

Never take first no as the answer. Always go back and ask again. Some people always say no the first time.

Instead of saying “but we’ve always done it that way”—listen to your dreams.

LEADERSHIP:

We manage things, but we lead people.

No matter what you do or what you got, you have to do it with people.

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Lessons from Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, U.S. Navy

Enterprise Architecture Plans that Stick

I read a great little book today called Made to stick by Chip and Dan Heath about "Why some ideas survive and others die."

As I read this, I was thinking how very applicable this was to User-centric Enterprise Architecture in terms of making architecture products and plans that stick—i.e. they have a real impact and value to the organization and are not just another ivory tower effort and ultimately destined as shelfware.

The Heath brothers give some interesting examples of stories that stick.

Example #1: A man is given a drink at the bar by a beautiful lady that is laced with drugs and he finds himself waking up in a bathtub on ice with a note that tell him not to move and to call 911—he has been the victim of a kidney heist and is in desperate need of medical attention.

Example #2: Children Halloween candy is found tampered with and there is a scare in the community. The image of the razorblade in the apple is poignant and profoundly changes people’s perception of and trust in their neighbors.

Now, you may have heard of these stories already and they probably strike a deep chord inside everyone who hears them. Well, surprise—neither story is true. Yet, they have lasting power with people and are remembered and retold for years and years. Why do they stick, while other stories and ideas never even make it off the ground?

Here are the six necessities to make ideas have lasting, meaningful impact and how they relate to enterprise architecture:

Simplicity—drilldown to essential core ideas; be a master of exclusion; come up with one sentence that is so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it. In enterprise architecture, keep information products and plans straightforward and on point.

Unexpectedness—violate people’s expectations; surprise them, grab people's attention; I call this the shock factor. In architecture, we can use principles of communication and design (for example identify critical relationships in the information) to garner people’s attention, and help them come away with actionable messages.

Concreteness—use concrete images to ensure our idea will mean the same thing to everyone. In enterprise architecture, we can use information visualization to make information and ideas more concrete for the users (i.e. “a picture is worth a thousand words.”)

Credibility—promote ideas in ways that they can be tested, so that they are credible to the audience. An example is when Reagan was running for president and he asked Are you better off today than 4 years ago. This brought the message home and made it credible with voters in ways that pure numbers and statistics could not. For architects, the roadmap provided to the enterprise must be credible—it must have the level of detail, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and currency to garner acceptance.

Emotions--make your audience feel something; people feel things for people not for abstractions. In architecture and planning, we need to inspire and motivate people in the organization effectively influence, shape, and guide change. Remember, there is a natural resistance to change, so we need to appeal to people intellectually and also emotionally.

Stories—tell stories that are rich and provide for an enduring mental catalogue that can be recalled for critical situations in later life. Often, architects create isolated products of information that describe desired performance outcomes, business processes, information flows, systems, and technology products and standards; however, unless these are woven together to tell a cohesive story for the decision makers, the siloed information will not be near as effective as it can be.

These six principles spell out SUCCES, and they can be adeptly used successfully by enterprise architects to hone information and planning products that enable better decisions. These are the types of architectures that stick (and do not stink) and are truly actionable and valuable to the organization.

Enterprise Architecture Plans that Stick

Nimbleness, Ingenuity and The Total CIO

We all know the story of David and Goliath, where little David slays the monstrous adversary from the Philistines, Goliath.

From a religious perspective, of course, David is victorious over this incredible enemy, by the hand of G-d; it is a miracle!

Metaphorically, David slays the Giant with a rock and sling shot overcoming the daunting Goliath and his foreboding weapons (sword, spear, shield, and armor); it is David’s nimbleness and ingenuity that overcome the hulking and conventional giant, Goliath.

You have to love this story.

Good wins over evil. The smaller defeat the larger. The underdog overcomes the “sure thing.”

The modern day, Hollywood version of this is Rocky whose sheer determination and laser focus prevails against superior adversaries. How many times does the smaller Rocky defeat the larger, better trained, more muscular opponents? Remember—Apollo Creed (taller, trimmer, faster), Hulk Hogan (the giant who literally picks Rocky up over his head), Clubber Lang (the awesome Mr. T), Ivan Drago (the steroidal, methodically-trained Soviet), and so on.

David versus Goliath, Rocky versus Ivan Drago…

While these are amazing and inspiring stories of success, these aren’t unique stories or themes in history. Why?

As the old saying goes, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Small, nimble, and innovative can and will overcome large, lumbering giants. This can be in the ring (like Rocky), on the battlefield (like David and Goliath), and in marketplace competition (like challenger brands such as Apple, Google, Honda…).

Recently, the Wall Street Journal has an article entitled “Honda’s Flexible Plants Provide Edge.” (23 September 2008)

“One recent morning, the Hondo Motor Co. plant here churned out 120 Civic compacts. Then the production line came to a halt and workers in white uniforms swept in to install new hand-like parts on the giant gray robots that weld steel into the car’s frames. About five minutes later, the line roared back to life, and the robots began zapping together a longer, taller vehicle, the CR-V cross-over. In the automotive world, this is considered quite a feat.”

Honda’s plants are the most nimble in the industry.

In the first 2/3 of the year, while sales are down 24% at Chrysler, 18% at CM, 15% at Ford, and even 7.8% at Toyota, Honda is up 1.7%!

Like with Honda’s more efficient production process—“to shuffle production among different plants as well as make different models in one plant--flexibility and innovation are the rocks and slingshot of the modern day David. Watch out Goliaths!

The great lesson here for large, successful organizations is that no matter how much bigger and better you are than the competition, you can never rest on your laurels.

Time can change everything.

The smaller, seemingly disadvantaged enterprise is eyeing those in the #1 spot and taking it as their personal challenge to unseat them. They are clawing their way up and will use their smaller size to outmaneuver, and their ability to innovate to leap ahead of the competition.

The Total CIO (like King David and Rocky) find a strategic advantage to enable them to overcome stronger and/or larger competitors. The Total CIO leverages technology/business process improvement as tools of innovation to change the game completely.

Nimbleness, Ingenuity and The Total CIO

Political Capital and the CIO

Leaders wield power through many means: formal authority, control of scarce resources, use of structures, rules, and regulations, control of decision processes, control of knowledge and information, control of technology interpersonal alliances and networks, and so forth. (Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan).

But one often-neglected factor when it comes to power is likeability, sometimes known as political capital: the late President Ronald Reagan was the epitome of this.

“Political capital is primarily based on a public figure's favorable image among the populace and among other important personalities in or out of the government. A politician gains political capital by virtue of their position, and also by pursuing popular policies, achieving success with their initiatives, performing favors for other politicians, etc. Political capital must be spent to be useful, and will generally expire by the end of a politician's term in office. In addition, it can be wasted, typically by failed attempts to promote unpopular policies which are not central to a politician's agenda.” (Wikipedia)

Every leader (including the CIO)—whether in the public or private sector—manages to get things done in part through their political capital.

For the CIO, this means that while their job is certainly not a popularity contest, they cannot effectively get things done over the long term without rallying the troops, having a favorable image or degree of likeability, and generally being able to win people over. It’s a matter of persuasion, influence, and ability to socialize ideas and guide change.

The CIO can’t just force change, transformation, modernization. He/she must expend political capital to move the organization forward. The CIO must make the case for change, plan and resource it, train and empower people, provide the tools, and guide and govern successful execution.

The Wall Street Journal, 4-5 October 2008, has an editorial by Peggy Noonan that touches on the importance of political capital:

“Young aides to Reagan used to grouse, late in his second term, that he had high popularity levels, that popularity was capital, and that he should spend it more freely on potential breakthroughs of this kind or that. They spend when they had to and were otherwise prudent…They were not daring when they didn’t have to be. They knew presidential popularity is a jewel to be protected, and to be burnished when possible, because without it you can do nothing. Without the support and trust of the people you cannot move, cannot command.”

Certainly if the President of the United States, the most powerful position in the world, cannot execute without political capital, then every leader needs to take note of the importance of it—including the CIO.

Lesson #1 for the CIO: effective leadership requires political capital duly earned and wisely spent.

Political Capital and the CIO

The Three I’s and Enterprise Architecture

One question that is frequently asked in enterprise architecture is whether new technologies should be adopted early (more cutting edge) or later (more as quick followers). Of course, the third course of action is to close ones eyes or resist change and simply “stay the course.”

The advantages to bleeding edge technology adoption is having the early advantage over competitors in the marketplace (this head start provides the ability to incorporate innovation into products early and capture a hefty market share and quite possibly dominance), while the advantage to quick followers being learning from mistakes of others, building from their initial investments and a more mature technology base (for example, with software, one where the bugs have been worked out) thereby potentially enabling a leapfrog effect over competitors. The advantage to staying the course is organizational stability in the face of market turmoil; however, this is usually short lived, as change overwhelms those resistant, as the flood waters overflow a levee.

The Wall Street Journal 5-6 July 2008 has an interview with Theodore J. Frostmann, a billionaire private-equity businessman, who tells of Warren Buffet’s “rule of the three ‘I’s,” which is applicable to the question of timing on technology adoption.

“Buffet once told me there are three ‘I’s in every cycle. The ‘innovator,’ that's the first ‘I’. After the innovator comes the ‘imitator.’ And after the imitator in the cycle comes the idiot. So when…we’re at the end of an era it’s another way of saying…that the idiots have made their entrance.”

I relate the innovator and the early adopter in their quest for performance improvement and their sharing the early competitive advantage of innovation.

Similarly, I associate the imitator with the quick followers in their desire to learn from others and benefits from their investments. They recognize the need to compete in the marketplace with scarce economic resources and adapt mindfully to changes.

Finally, I relate the idiots that Warren Buffet refers to with those that ignore or resist change. Often these organizations mistake their early market success for dominance and in their arrogance, refuse to cede to the need to adjust to changing circumstance. Alternatively, these enterprises are truly ignorant of the requisite to adapt, grow, mature, and transform over time, and they mistakenly believe that simply sitting behind the cash register and waiting for customers is the way to run a business (versus a Costco whose warehouse, wholesale model has turned the nature of the business on its head).

In architecting the enterprise, innovation and imitation, while not without cost and risk, will generally speaking be highly rewarded by superior products and services, greater market share and more loyal customers, and a culture of success in the face of constant change. You don't need to look far for examples: Apple, 3M, P&G, Intel, Toyota, Amazon, and more.

The Three I’s and Enterprise Architecture

The Visionary and Enterprise Architecture

In User-centric EA, we develop a vision or target state for the organization. However, there are a number of paradoxes in developing an EA vision/target, which makes this goals quite challenging indeed.

In the book, The Visionary’s Handbook by Wacker and Taylor, the authors identify the paradoxes of developing a vision for the enterprise; here are some interesting ones to ponder:

1. Proving the vision—“The closer your vision gets to provable ‘truth,’ the more you are simply describing the present in the future tense.”
2. Competing today, yet planning for tomorrow—“By its very nature, the future destablizes the present. By its very natures, the present resists the future. To survive you need duality [i.e. living in two tenses, the present and the future], but people and companies by their very nature tend to resisting living in two tenses.” “You have to compete in the future dimension without destabilizing the competition [i.e. your ability to compete] in the present and without subverting the core values that have sustained your business in the past.”
3. Bigger needs to be smaller—“The bigger you are, the smaller you need to be….great size is great power, but great size is also stasis.”
4. The future is unpredictable—“Nothing will turn out exactly as it is supposed to…yet if you fail to act, you will cease to exist in any meaningful professional or business sense.”

So how does one develop a viable target architecture?

The key would seem to be in deconflicting past, present, and future. The past cannot be a hindrance to future change and transformation—the past must remain the past; lessons learned are welcome and desirable, but the options for the future should be open to innovation and hard work. The resistance of the present (to the future) must be mitigated by continuous communications and marketing; we must bring people along and provide leadership. The future is unknown, but trends and probabilities are possible for setting a way ahead; of course, the target needs to remain adaptable to changing conditions.

Certainly, any target architecture we develop is open to becoming a "target" for those who wish to take pot shots. But in an ever changing world and fierce global competition, we cannot sit idle. The architecture must lead the way for incremental and transformative change for the organization, all the while course correcting based on the evolving baseline and market conditions. EA is as much an art as it is a science, and the paradoxes of vision and planning need to be managed carefully.

The Visionary and Enterprise Architecture

Midlife Crisis and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is about managing change in the organization; however, there comes a time in our lives when there is an unprecedented opportunity for personal growth and change and that is when we reach midlife.

The reason that midlife is the prime time for self-realization is that we have enough life experience to know ourselves well, a little money to facilitate change, and enough time left to make a difference.

Harvard Business Review, February 2008, states that “midlife is your best and last chance to become the real you.”

Midlife crisis is a term coined by Elliott Jaques, a Canadian psychoanalyst and organizational consultant. It refers to a period when “we come face-to-face with our limitations, our restricted possibilities, and our mortality.”

Midlife crisis occurs approximately from age 43-62. It is a time when we are faced with dual “myths”. One is the fear that midlife is the “onset of decline” and the other is the fantasy that with “enough vision and willpower,” we can be “anything or anybody”. If we can overcome both fear and fantasy and anchor our choices in intelligent transitions, then we can make some phenomenal life changes and achieve amazing personal growth and satisfaction.

“Life expectancy today in the West is around 80 and continues to rise”, so there is no reason that health in midlife should be a show-stopper for most people’s aspirations. Further, with approximately 20 years or more of professional experience by this time in our lives, our plans for next-stage life growth, and what Carl Yung called individuation, should be more easily tempered by our understanding of what is and is not possible. “Magical transformations do not happen,” but meaningful growth and challenge can.

Isn’t it risky to make changes in midcareer/midlife?

Yes and no. Risk has to be managed. Staying the course has its advantages, but it also has its limitations, and when a person is bored, unchallenged, or just in a plain old midlife rut, worse mistakes can happen if negative feelings are just left to fester. That’s why it’s important to take control of one’s life, “by thinking not in terms of safety nets, but of active risk management,” that weight risk and rewards.

Should we reach for the stars?

Interestingly enough, we see the stars at night, which is also the time for dreaming. “The British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott characterized dreaming as the use of the imagination to create possible scenarios in which our potential can come to fruition. But to be productive, dreams must be connected to our potential.” That’s the difference between a dream and a fantasy.

In terms of reaching for our dreams, we need to dream to envision what could be. With the vision in hand, I would say go for it if the vision leads to what I would call intelligent life transitions—where change is thoughtful, achievable, growth-oriented, and personally satisfying.

As adults, we need to separate the TV and Hollywood fantasies from realities and our true capabilities. If we focus on self-actualization (the highest human need according to Abraham Maslow)—the realization of our individual potentials, the discovery of who we are and can be—then we have an opportunity to live again and an even fuller life then the first half.

Just as enterprise architecture plans, manages, and measures change and transformation for the organization, so too every individual must become their own enterprise architect and plan and direct change in their lives. Most positive change doesn’t occur by chance, although Divine providence is the guiding hand in all. If we take the principles of enterprise architecture and apply them to our own lives, then we will seek to understand and come to terms with our current state, envision our target that will help us self-actualize, and plan a realistic life transition.

Midlife Crisis and Enterprise Architecture

Gamers and Enterprise Architecture

More and more people are turning to gaming for entertainment, social interaction, some thrills and fun and even some challenge.

Many in society think that gamers, because they like to “play”, are childish, slovenly or irresponsible. However, there are many characteristics that gamers demonstrate that demonstrate that they are perhaps some of the best employment “catches” around.

Harvard Business Review, February 2008, states that “the gamer disposition has five key attributes. More than attitudes or beliefs, these attributes are character traits that players bring into game worlds and that those worlds reinforce. We believe that gamers who embody this disposition are better able than their non-gamer counterparts to thrive in the twenty-first century workplace.”

What are the gamer characteristics that can enable them to succeed in the modern workplace?

1. Performance-oriented—“gamers like to be evaluated, even compared with one another, through systems of points, rankings, titles, and external measures. Their goal is not to be rewarded, but to improve.”
2. Value diversity—“diversity is essential in the world of the online game. One person can’t do it all; each player is by definition incomplete. The key to achievement is teamwork, and the strongest teams are a rich mix of diverse talents and abilities.”
3. Desire change—Nothing is constant in a game; it changes in myriad ways, mainly through the actions of the participants themselves…gamers do not simply manage change,; they create it, thrive on it, seek it out.”
4. Learning is fun—“for most players, the fun of the game lies in learning how to overcome obstacles.”
5. Innovative—“gamers often explore radical alternatives and innovative strategies for completing tasks, quests, and challenges. Even when common solutions are known, the gamer disposition demands a better way, a more original response to the problem.”

How do gamers, or for that matter people in general, relate to enterprise architecture?

Gamers are a growing segment of the population and their characteristics and skill sets need to be integrated in support of our business processes and technologies. The way to do this is through an enterprise architecture that speaks to a human capital perspective.

Many times, I have written about the need for a human capital perspective (reference model) to be added to the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA). This would address the “people/who” perspective of the Zachman Framework and address the critical issues of the most important asset of the organization, its people.

Unfortunately, the FEA is still anchored in the industrial revolution, with factories served by “indentured” workers on the assembly line; people no more important than the mind-numbing, repetitive tasks that they performed 12 or more hours a day for little pay and certainly little respect.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture needs to enter the information age, where knowledge workers are the catalyst of innovation, engineering, modernization and transformation. The addition and focus on a human capital perspective to the architecture would be a good start to recognizing the centrality of people and brain-power to the competitiveness and future of our industries and nation.

One of the issues that the human capital perspective should address are the types of skills and attributes (such as those that gamers demonstrate) that are best aligned to support the requirements of the enterprise and its mission.

Gamers and Enterprise Architecture

Creative Destruction and Enterprise Architecture

“The notion of creative destruction is found in the writings of Mikhail Bakunin, Friedrich Nietzsche and in Werner Sombart's Krieg und Kapitalismus (War and Capitalism) (1913, p. 207), where he wrote: "again out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises". The economist Joseph Schumpeter popularized and used the term to describe the process of transformation that accompanies radical innovation. In Schumpeter's vision of capitalism, innovative entry by entrepreneurs was the force that sustained long-term economic growth, even as it destroyed the value of established companies that enjoyed some degree of monopoly power.” (Wikipedia)

From an enterprise architecture perspective, I find the concept of creative destruction an enlightening concept, in a number of ways:

1. Two steps backwards—enterprise architecture is not just a forward planning endeavor. Sometimes, to move forward on the roadmap, you actually may have to take a couple of step back. To build new processes or introduce new technologies, you may first have to scrap the old ones or at least stop investing in them. Just like with a physical blueprint, sometimes you can build unto an existing house or modify it, and other times, you need to bring in the wrecking ball (take a few steps back) and build fresh from the ground up. (Of course, at other times you may have to change the wings on the airplane while it’s still flying.) It is on a fresh palette that a painter can create a new masterpiece.
2. Creativity is the future—enterprise architects should not fear bringing in new ideas, innovation, and creative approaches. Just because something has been done a certain way in the past, does not mean that it always has to be done that way in the future. In fact, stagnation by definition means that the existing processes are doomed to be obsolete and surpassed by others who are adapting to an ever changing environment. Indeed, those enamored with the past can and often are a roadblock to doing things a new way. The old guard will stand up and say, we’ve been doing it this way or that way for so many years; who are you to come in here and try and change it; we know better; you don’t understand our environment. And sometimes, they may be right. But more often than not, the naysayers are fearful of and resistant to change. With ample research, planning, and testing we can develop better, faster, and cheaper ways of doing things.
3. Change can be radical—Much of EA change will be evolutionary, a planned sequence of steps in process improvement and technology enablement. However, some change will be more radical and revolutionary. Some organizational change requires selling off, closing down, merging, acquiring, or otherwise “destroying the value of established companies” in order to innovate and create something new and better. Like the process of evolution and the survival of the fittest, those companies and processes that are not “making the grade” need to be shut down, discontinued, or otherwise morphed into value-add forces of long-term economic growth.
   

One final thought. Destruction is a darn scary thing. No one wants to see their handiwork taken apart, brought down, and be forced to start again. In fact, it is hard enough in life to have to build something, but to see it destroyed and have to start again can be maddening. The mere fact of seeing something destroyed is destabilizing and demoralizing. The organization and person asks themselves: who’s to say the next build will be more stable, more everlasting, more productive? Who wants to feel that their time has been wasted on something that is now gone? Who can be so confident that their efforts will ever come again to a substantive and meaningful accomplishment, and one that compares or surpasses to what was? However, this is the clincher of creative destruction—while destruction is enormously painful and undermining to self-confidence, “out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises.” With a fresh start, an organization or person can build anew and perhaps from the lessons of the past, from the pain of building and destruction, from the processes of working something through and evolving it, a better future can be created. And there is hope for a new enterprise or personal life architecture.

Creative Destruction and Enterprise Architecture

Self-Determination and Enterprise Architecture

There is an age old question whether we make our own fate or whether it is predetermined.

For thousands of years, people have turned to prophets, fortune tellers, mystics, and star gazing to try and divine their futures. Yet, at the same time, we are taught that every child has the opportunity to become the President of the United States or an astronaut, or whatever their hearts desire; that laser-like focus, discipline, repetition and determination breeds success. Haven’t we always been taught to always try our best?

Surely, this is one of the irresolvable conflicts that philosophically can never be truly resolved: If the future is already predetermined, then how can we affect it? Further, if our actions can impact the future, then how the future be predetermined?

The way ahead is to work to influence our future, knowing full well that many things are indeed beyond our control.

From an organization perspective, there are no guarantees for the future, so we must take the reins of change, plan and manage it: one way we do this is through enterprise architecture.

In Fortune Magazine, 5 May 2008, in an article entitled, “The Secret of Enduring Greatness,” it states that “the best corporate leaders never point out the window to blame external conditions; they look in the mirror and say, ‘We are responsible for the results.’”

The future of our organizations are not static and so our leadership cannot rest on its laurels, rather we must continually plan for and execute innovation and transformation.

If we look at the largest corporations in America, the Fortune 500, we see that companies rise and fall to/from prominence with almost unbelievable speed. Here are some examples:

• “The vast majority of those on the list 50 years ago are nowhere to be found on the current list” (only 71 of the original 500 companies from 1955 are still on the list today).
• “Nearly 2000 companies have appeared on the list since its inception.”
• “Some of the most powerful companies on today’s list—businesses like Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Google” didn’t even exist in 1955 and conversely, “some of the most celebrated companies in history no longer even appear on the 500, having fallen from great to good to gone.”
  

So if the tides start to turn down for a company, what are they to do—simply accept their fate, and perish like so many of those that came before them or do they fight to survive, knowing full well that they may not or will likely not succeed?

I say we fight to survive—we plan and execute change—we transform, and we live to fight another day.

“Just because a company stumbles—or gets smacked upside the head by an unexpected event or a new challenge—does not mean that it must continue to decline. Companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them; they fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves.”

One example is IBM that stumbled in the late 1980’s in relying on what was becoming commoditized hardware, but transformed themselves in the early 1990’s to a software and services juggernaut. Similarly, Apple transformed from a niche computer manufacturer to a consumer electronics dynamo with their innovations such as the iPod and iPhone.

Essentially it comes down to the ability of the organization to manage change and complexity (as John Zachman stated) to adapt and transform, and we do this through enterprise architecture

Self-Determination and Enterprise Architecture