Montel Williams' EA Wisdom

Amazed to see this posting on Facebook by Montel Williams.

This hits the bulls eye with what enterprise architecture--both organizationally and personally--is all about. 

Love it, and thank you for sharing this Montel! 

(Source Photo: Facebook December 11, 2012)

Montel Williams' EA Wisdom

When Aliens Come Calling

This is an out-of-this-world topic that I don't think I have written about before...ALIENS--no seriously! 

MSNBC ran an interview with Seth Shostak, the chairman of the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study Group (27 June 2012).

SETI is the well-known orgnaization that conducts the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence--they employ 150 scientists, educators and support staff, and their projects have been sponsored by NASA, Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, and many technology companies like HP, Sun, and more. 

At SETI, they monitor radio transmissions and telescope observations for signals that "cannot be ascribed to noise."

According to Shostak, he believes that we will detect alien signals by between 2025 and 2030, although he acknowledges that searching for alien life in the cosmos in like looking for a needle in a haystack, and it "never occurs when you expect them."

However with advances in technology (specifically computer processing), we will get closer to be able to monitor "all-sky, all the time, all frequencies," rather than searching a specific star system, for a specific time, at specific frequencies.

The really interesting question posed though is what happens if we actually detect an alien signal?

Apparently, most of the planning, according to Shostak is for the initial protocols for alerting everyone and even then "it takes something on the order of five days" to assess whether it is real or not. 

The big concern is that "nobody is in charge" for handling such a global...no, intergalactic event. 

And, he says "I don't think there's any large-scale effort to prepare humanity."

Maybe, it's that we don't believe or want to believe that this eventuality will ever really occur.

Perhaps, it's too frightening to think of ourselves as the native Americans being invaded by colonials with superior technology and firepower.

Yet according to a National Geographic survey, more than a third (36%) of people surveyed think aliens exist. And how many more people are afraid to admit it?

Aliens could be a good thing--coming here benevolently to share with us or they could act alien and try to take from us. From our own Earthly experiences, it seems the latter is far more likely. 

We have a lot of fingers and weapons pointed at each other all time, I wonder whether we need to spend more time and effort thinking, planning, and preparing for something much more scary and threatening than each other.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Chris at Oblong Pictures)

When Aliens Come Calling

Technology Forecasting Made Easy

Here is a really nice technology forecast visualization from Envisioning Technology.

It covers almost three decades from 2012 through 2040.

And includes an exhaustive list of technology categories for the following:

- Artificial Intelligence
- Internet
- Interfaces
- Sensors
- Ubiquitous Computing
- Robotics
- Biotechnology
- Materials
- Energy
- Space
- Geoengineering

Further, specific technologies are informed by their:

- Relative Importance--by bubble size
- Consumer Impact--by size of the node's outline
- Related Clusters--by a jagged edge

Additionally, what I really like about their online version is that when you hover a technology, you get a decent description of what it is.

Looking in the out-years, it was great to see cool innovations such as machine-augmented cognition, retinal screens, space-based solar power, programmable matter, and anti-aging drugs--so we'll be overall smarter, more connected, exist in a more energized and malleable society, and live long-enough to appreciate it all. ;-)

Technology Forecasting Made Easy

Preparing For All Hell To Break Loose--The "Doomsday Plane"

Diane Sawyer from ABC News has a great piece here on the Flying Fortress, our Airborne Command Center, for the President and a 50-member entourage including the DefSec and the Joint Chiefs, to manage the United States response and retaliation should a worst-case situation happen--such as a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack. 

The plane has been referred to as The Doomsday Plane, Flying Fortress, Airborne White House, Airborne Arc, and The E-4B Nightwatch.

Located at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, this plane is on constant high-alert and ready 24 x 7 x 365--it is airborne within 5 minutes notice!  

According to Ideas and Discovery Magazine, there are actually 4 planes--the most-technologically advanced 747s in the world.

Built based on more than $2 billion in research, these planes are the most expensive in the world, fly 40 miles per hour faster than regular 747s, can stay in the air for about 3 days straight with in-air refueling, and are shielded from thermo-nuclear radiation and electromagnetic pulses.  

The planes are protected by 60 Air Force special forces troops, have their own on-board maintenance teams, and precision technical communication specialists. 

The planes have an area for battle staff to assess the situation and draw up action plans and a technical control facility for managing surveillance and command, control, and communications to issue encrypted commands on "virtually all frequencies" through 67 satellite dishes and antennas on the roof.

They can even communicate with submarines by dropping a 5 mile rope with a transceiver into the ocean below. 

These planes stand ready to evacuate the President and his staff in the case of a national emergency.

"The commander-in-chief can then send orders to troops and personnel, communicate with allied governments, or update the American people on the situation."

While it has far less amenities than Air Force One, this high-tech doomsday plane is very cool indeed. 

What I admire the most about this plane is not even the technology per se, but the planning and risk management that go into preparation for something "really bad" happening. 

While some people think emotionally that preparing for disaster is almost tantamount to pushing for one to actually occur, really that is an emotional reaction and denial of reality anchored in fear.   

Like insurance, you hope you never need it, but are really glad you have it, when all hell breaks loose! 

Perhaps, we can all learn something for ourselves here as well, that (disaster) preparedness can be scary and expensive, but we all need to have a plan and make it a good one.

Preparing For All Hell To Break Loose--The "Doomsday Plane"

Oh Deer!

This is an amazing photo by my daughter, Michelle Blumenthal. 

This deer just tried to jump a fence, but got impaled right through its neck--yikes! 

Truly a life lesson--it is good to reach high for what you want, but not to overreach. 

It really is a fine balance and takes self-awareness, discipline, and some good fortune. 

We have to know how much and how quickly to push ourselves to grow past prior limitations, but also recognize just how far we can make it on the next leap. 

Maybe that's one reason an incremental or phased approach is good.

It enables us to move ever forward, carefully planning and navigating our next steps, while hopefully not getting unnecessarily hung up by the life obstacles we must overcome. 

Good luck everyone!

Oh Deer!

Platforms - Open or Closed

Ever since the battles of Windows versus Linux, there have been two strong competing philosophies on systems architecture.

Many have touted the benefits of open architecture--where system specifications are open to the public to view and to update.  

Open sourced systems provide for the power of crowdsourcing to innovate, add-on, and make the systems better as well as provides less vendor lock-in and lower costs.  

Open Source -----> Innovation, Choice, and Cost-Savings

While Microsoft--with it's Windows and Office products--was long the poster child for closed or proprietary systems and has a history of success with these, they have also come to be viewed, as TechRepublic (July 2011) points out as having an "evil, monopolistic nature."

However, with Apple's rise to the position of the World's most valuable company, closed solutions have made a strong philosophical comeback.

Apple has a closed architecture, where they develop and strictly control the entire ecosystem of their products. 

Closed systems provides for a planned, predictable, and quality-controlled architecture, where the the whole ecosystem--hardware, software and customer experience can be taken into account and controlled in a structured way.  

Closed Systems -----> Planning, Integration, and Quality Control

However, even though has a closed solutions architecture for it's products, Apple does open up development of the Apps to other developers (for use on the iPhone and iPad). This enables Apple to partner with others and win mind share, but still they can retain control of what ends-up getting approved for sale at the App Store. 
I think what Apple has done particularly well then is to balance the use of open and closed systems--by controlling their products and making them great, but also opening up to others to build Apps--now numbering over 500,000--that can leverage their high-performance products.

Additionally, the variety and number of free and 99 cent apps for example, show that even closed systems, by opening up parts of their vertical model to partners, can achieve cost-savings to their customers. 

In short, Apple has found that "sweet spot"--of a hybrid closed-open architecture--where they can design and build quality and highly desirable products, but at the same time, be partners with the larger development community. 

Apple builds a solid and magnificent foundation with their "iProducts," but then they let customers customize them with everything from the "skins" or cases on the outside to the Apps that run on them on the inside. 

Closed-Open Systems -----> Planned, Integrated, and Quality PLUS Innovation, Choice, and Cost-Savings

Closed-Open Systems represent a powerful third model for companies to choose from in developing products, and which benefits include those from both open and closed systems.

Platforms - Open or Closed

Why EA and CPIC?

Note: This is not an endorsement of any vendor or product, but I thought this short video on enterprise architecture planning and capital planning and investment control/portfolio management was pretty good.

Why EA and CPIC?

Listening to Each Other to Succeed as a Team

There is an oft-cited best practice for conflict resolution called the speaker-listener technique—in which the speaker explains their position and the listener repeats back to the speaker what he heard him say. Then the speaker and listener switch roles.

After both sides have had a chance to express themselves, and the other side has repeated what they heard, both parties are ready to resolve their differences with greater understanding of each other.

The Wall Street Journal, 27 July 2010, in an article called “Fighting Happily Ever After” promotes the speaker-listener technique for improving couples communications and making happier, longer-lasting relationships.

I believe that the speaker-listener technique works not only because it improves the actual information flow and understanding between people, but also because it improves the perception that people have towards each other—from being adversarial to being collaborative.

In the sheer act of reaching out to others through genuine listening and understanding, we establish the trust of the other person that we want to work toward a win-win solution, as opposed to a clobber the other guy with what you want to do, and go home victorious.

In contrast, think of how many times people don’t really talk with each other, but rather at each other. When this occurs, there is very little true interaction of the parties—instead it is a dump by one on the other. This is particularly of concern to an organization when the speaker is in a position of authority and the listener has legitimate concerns that don’t get heard or taken seriously.

For example, when the boss (as speaker) “orders” his/her employees to action instead of engaging and discussing with them, the employees (as listener) may never really understand why they are being asked to perform as told (what the plan is) or even permitted to discuss how best they can proceed (what the governance is).

Here, there is no real two-way engagement. Rather, workers are related to by their superiors as automatons or chess pieces rather than as true value-add people to the mission/organization.

In the end, it is not very fulfilling for either party—more than that when it comes to architecture, governance, and execution, we frequently end up with lousy plans, decisions, and poorly performing investments.

Instead, think about the potential when employers and employees work together as a team to solve problems. With leaders facilitating strategic discussions and engaging with their staffs in open dialogue to innovate and seeking everyone’s input, ideas, reactions. Here employees not only know the plan and understand it, but are part of its development. Further, people are not just told what to do, but they can suggest “from the front lines” what needs to be done and work with others from a governance model on where this fits in the larger organizational context.

Speaking—listening—and understating each other is the essence of good conflict management and of treating people with decency and respect. Moreover, it is not just for couple relationship building, but also for developing strong organizational bonds and successfully planning and execution.

To me, creating a framework for conflict resolution and improved communication is an important part of what good enterprise architecture and IT governance is all about in the organization. Yet we don’t often talk about these human factors in technology settings. Rather the focus is on the end state, the tool, the more impersonal technical aspects of IT implementation and compliance.

Good architecture and governance processes help to remedy this a bit:

With architecture—we work together to articulate a strategic roadmap for the organization; this provides the goals, objectives, initiatives, and milestones that we work towards in concert.

With governance—we listen to each other and understand new requirements, their strategic alignment, return on investment, and the portfolio management of them. We listen, we discuss, we understand, and we make IT investment decisions accordingly.

Nevertheless, at this time the focus in IT is still heavily weighted toward operations. Research on IT employee morale shows that we need to better incorporate and mature our human capital management practices. We need to improve how we speak with, listen to and build understanding of others not only because that is the right thing to do, but because that will enable us to achieve better end results.

Listening to Each Other to Succeed as a Team

Focus Future

I was on vacation in Miami last week and had the opportunity to spend some time (when not on the beach and in the pool) in one of my favorite off the beaten path bookstores, where I spend some time perusing “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.

Some fascinating points that stuck with me:

- Focus on the now—to achieve peace and happiness—and not on the past or the future, because the past carries with it all sorts of baggage and the future weighs on us with anxieties.

- The focus on now can be viewed as more important than the past or the future, even though the past provides us our identity and the future with the hope of salvation.

The emphasis on now is an intriguing viewpoint for me, because by nature and profession, I am a strategist, architect and planner—I look always to the future to make things better than they are today. I routinely ask how can we use technology or reengineer our business processes to surpass the now.

I also do this based on my religious upbringing that taught me that our actions—good and bad—affect our merit for the future—in this world and “the next.”

In both cases, “the now” is but a steppingstone to the future. So while, I think living in the now can certainly help us wall off the mistakes of the past and worries about the future, I do not really see it as fulfilling our mission of learning from the past and growing into our futures.

While it may be simpler, more enjoyable or just more comfortable to focus on the present, it seems a little naïve to me to ignore where you come from and where you are going.

Maybe Eckhart Tolle doesn’t care what is in the future and he is blissfully happy in his ignorance, but I for one am more comfortable focusing on the future (except when I’m on vacation in Miami Beach).

I guess what I’m saying is, I love the now in that it refreshes and rejuvenates me. But I also think of it as ultimately leading toward a desired future state, and I think it’s more productive to focus on what can and must be done to make the world a better place tomorrow.

Focus Future

Balancing Planning and Action

There are two common problems where immature or dysfunctional governance results in poor performance. When good governance is lacking, either decision makers:

1) Over-think and underperform or
2) Under-think and underperform

In the first case, people are seemingly paralyzed (often in a state referred to as “analysis paralysis”) and are hesitant to make a decision and so the organization stagnates—in a state of perpetual inaction—and underperforms.
In the second case, people don’t think enough about what they are doing—they lack adequate mechanisms for planning, analysis, vetting, and general due diligence—and are too quick to just do something, anything—whether or not it’s the “right” thing—and again they end up underperforming.
Both situations have negative consequences on the organization: In one, people are over-thinking and therefore not doing enough and on the other hand, people are under-thinking and therefore end up doing the wrong things.
Instead what we need is a rational sequence of think, do, think do, think, do—where actions are regular, frequent, and driven by a reflection of what’s occurred, the entry of new inputs, an analysis of alternatives, a vetting process, and the point of decision-making.
This is the essence of good governance and the most basic balance of thoughts and deeds, where thinking leads to action and action feeds back to the further thinking and so on.
In it’s more expanded form, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the father of quality management, founded the Shewart cycle or PDCA (based on the scientific method)—where planning, doing, checking, and acting is a constant cycle of action and reaction:

Here we can see that good governance leads to continuous momentum from planning (thinking) and doing (performing) to a robust feedback mechanism that includes checking on results and acting to analyze and improve on those.
A recent article in MIT Sloan Management review, Spring 2010 called “Learning When To Stop Momentum,” by Barton and Sutcliffe, provides similar lessons from the perspective of overcoming dysfunctional momentum.
Dysfunctional momentum: “occurs when people continue to work towards an original goal without pausing to recalibrate or examine their processes, even in the face of cues that they should change course.”
Dysfunctional momentum fits into the category described above of under-thinking and underperforming. If we don’t “pause and recalibrate,” (i.e. think before further action) we are not going to perform very effectively.
The authors recommend that we do the following to cure dysfunctional momentum (under-thinking):
1) Be humble—“be confidant in your skills but humble about the situation. Even the most experienced experts cannot know how a dynamic situation will unfold.”
2) Encourage skepticism—“it is important that everyone’s voice be heard.”
3) Seek out bad news—“use the acquired information as an opportunity to learn.”
4) Be available—“interruptions force us to reconsider whether we really know what is going on and how well the present actions are working.”
5) Communicate frequently—“face to face is the richest medium for communication because…it conveys multiple cues that allow for a range of meaning, and it provides the opportunity for rapid feedback.”
To me, we can also cure dysfunctional paralysis (over-thinking) by tempering the prior recommendations with the following ones:
1) Be bold—be willing to understand the requirements, the options, vet them, and make a decision and move forward.
2) Encourage conviction—hear everyone’s opinions, thoughts, and ideas and then have conviction and take a stand.
3) Seek a decision—get the good news and the bad news, put it into a business case or other presentation for decision makers to act on.
4) Be discrete—manage time with discretion following the phrase from Ecclesiastes that “there is a time for everything”—a time for thinking and a time for doing.
5) Communicate with purpose—communication is critical and often the best communication is directed ultimately toward some decision or action to further some advancement on the subject in question.
The article summarizes both perspectives this way: Dysfunctional momentum occurs not necessarily because people are ignorant, risk-seeking or careless, but because they are human and have as much trouble in controlling momentum as they do in surmounting inertia.”
To address the issues of over- and under-thinking problems, we need to establish policy, processes, structures, and tools for good governance that support people in thinking through problems and making decisions on a sound course of action—leading us to a continuous and healthy cycle of thoughts and deeds, planning and action.

Balancing Planning and Action

From Planning to Practice

Real planning is hard work. I’m not talking about the traditional—get the management team together, offsite for a few hours or days and spell out a modified mission and vision statement and some basic goals and objectives—this is the typical approach. Rather, I am referring to thinking and planning about the future with a sense of urgency, realism, and genuine impact to the way we do our jobs.

In the traditional approach, the management team is focused on the planning session. They are engaged in the planning for a short duration, but when back in the office, they don’t go back in any meaningful way to either refer to or apply the plan in what they or their employees actually do. The plan in essence defaults to simply a paperwork exercise, an alignment mechanism, a check box for the next audit.

In contrast, in a comprehensive planning approach, the focus is not on the planning session itself, but on the existential threats and opportunities that we can envision that can impact on the organization and what we are going to do about it. We need to look at for example: What are our competitors doing? Are there new product innovations emerging? Are there social and economic trends that will affect how we do business? How is the political and regulatory environment changing? And so on. The important thing is to think through/ work through, the impact analysis and plan accordingly to meet these head-on.

This is similar to a SWOT analysis—where we evaluate our Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, but it differs in that it extends that analysis portion to story planning (my term), where the results of SWOT are used to imagine and create multifaceted stories or scenarios of what we anticipate will happen and then identify how we will capitalize on the new situation or counter any threats. In other words, we play out the scenario —similar to simulation and modeling—in a safe environment, and evaluate our best course of action, by seeing where the story goes, how the actors behave and react, and introducing new layers of complexity and subtext.

Harvard Business Review (HBR), Jan-Feb 2010, has an article called “Strategy Tools for a Shifting Landscape” by Michael Jacobides that states “in an age when nothing is constant, strategy should be defined by narrative—plots, subplots, and characters---rather than by maps, graphs, and numbers.”

The author proposes the use of “playscripts” (his term), a scenario-based approach for planning, in which—“a narrative that sets out the cast of characters in a business, the way in which they are connected, the rules they observe, the plots and subplots in which they are a part, and how companies create and retain value as the business and the cast changes.

While I too believe in using a qualitative type of planning to help think out and flesh out strategy, I do not agree that we should discard the quantitative and visual analysis—in fact, I think we should embrace it and expand upon it by integrating it into planning itself. This way we optimize the best from both quantitative and qualitative analysis.

While numbers, trends, graphics, and other visuals are important information elements in planning, they are even more potent when added to the “what if” scenarios in a more narrative type of planning. For example, based on recent accident statistics with the car accelerators (a quantifiable and graphical analysis), we may anticipate that a major foreign car company will be conducting a major recall and that the government will be conducting investigations into this company. How will we respond—perhaps, we will we increase our marketing emphasizing our own car safety record and increase production in anticipation of picking up sales from our competitor?

Aside from being robust and plausible, the article recommends that playscripts be:

· Imaginative—“exploring all the opportunities that exist.” I would also extend this to the other relevant element of SWOT and include envisioning possible threats as well.

· Outward-facing—“focus on the links a company has with other entities, the way it connects with them and how others perceive it in the market.” This is critical to take ourselves out of our insular environments and look outside at what is going on and how it will affect us. Of course, we cannot ignore the inner dynamics of our organization, but we must temper it with a realization that we function within a larger eco-system.

To me, the key to planning is to free the employees to explore what is happening in their environment and how they will behave. It is not to regurgitate their functions and what they are working on, but rather to see beyond themselves and their current capabilities and attitudes. Life today is not life tomorrow, and we had better be prepared with open minds, sharpened skills and a broad arsenal to deal with the future that is soon upon us.

From Planning to Practice

What Clarity of Vision Looks Like

I saw this photo and thought this is a great image of why we need a clear vision and plan for the organization.

So often we're going in all these different directions and we may not even realize it or can't seem to get control over it.

That's where strong leadership, planning, and execution come into play.

We need to move with a unified purpose if we want to really get somewhere.

What Clarity of Vision Looks Like

Supercapitalism and Enterprise Architecture

As a nation are we overworked? Are we just showing up, doing what we're told, and making the same mistakes again and again?

Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary and Professor at University of California at Berkeley, says that we are more than ever a nation of workaholics.

Reich’s book, Supercapitalism, talks about how we have to work harder to make ends meet for the following reasons:

• Globalization—“our real incomes are under assault from technology and low-wage workers in other countries.”
• Greater competition—“all barriers to entry have fallen, competition is more intense than ever, and if we don’t work hard, we may be in danger of losing clients, customers, or investors.”
• Rapid pace of change—“today most people have no ability to predict what they’re going to be doing from year to year, and job descriptions are not worth the paper they’re written on because jobs are changing so fast.”

Reich says to temper our workaholic lifestyles, we need to “understand that the quality of work is much more important than the quantity.” Honestly, that doesn’t seem to answer the question, since quality (not just quantity) takes hard work and a lot of time too.

In terms of supercharged programs, I have seen enterprise architecture programs working "fast and furious," others that were steady, and still some that were just slow and sometimes to the point of "all stop" in terms of any productivity or forward momentum.

Unlike IT operations that have to keep the lights on, the servers humming, and phones working, EA tends to be considered all too often as pure “overhead” that can be cut at the slightest whim of budget hawks. This can be a huge strategic mistake for CIOs and organizational leaders who thus behave in a penny-wise and dollar foolish manner. Sure, operations keep the lights on, but EA ensures that IT investments are planned, strategically aligned, compliant, technically sound, and cost-effective.

A solid EA program takes us out of the day-to-day firefighting mode and operational morass, and puts the CIO and business leaders back in the strategic "driver's seat" for transforming and modernizating the organization.

In fact, enterprise architecture addresses the very concerns that Reich points to in our Supercapitalistic times: To address the big issues of globalization, competition, and the rapid pace of change, we need genuine planning and governance, not just knee jerk reactions and firefighting. Big, important, high impact problems generally don't get solved by themselves, but rather they need high-level attention, innovative thinking, and group problem solving, and general committment and resources to make headway. This means we can't just focus on the daily grind. We need to extricate ourselves and think beyond today. And that's exactly what real enterprise architecture is all about.

Recently, I heard some colleagues at a IT conference say that EA was all bluster and wasn't worth the work and investment. I strongly disagree. Perhaps, a poorly implemented architecture program may not be worth the paper it's plans are printed on. And unfortunately, there are too many of these faux enterprise architecture programs around and these give the rest a bad rap. However, a genuine user-centric enterprise architecture and IT governance program is invaluable in keeping the IT organization from running on a diet of daily chaos: not a good thing for the mission and business that IT supports.

Organizations can and will work smarter, rather than just harder, with strong enterprise architecture, sound IT governance, and sound business and IT processes. It the nature of planning ahead rather than just hoping for the best.

Supercapitalism and Enterprise Architecture

The Bigger Picture is Beautiful

Just some reflection for the Jewish new year this week.

Enterprise architecture is about planning, governance, and the bigger picture.

This is a short inspirational video of the real bigger picture out there.

http://www.blessyoumovie.com/

Let this serve as a source of encouragement to all.

Andy

The Bigger Picture is Beautiful

Vision is not a Business Only Matter

At an enterprise architecture conference a number of weeks ago, the audience was asked how many of you see yourself as technology people—about half raised their hands. And then the audience was asked how many see yourselves more as business people—and about half raised their hands. And of course, there were a handful of people that raised their hands as being “other.”

Then the dialogue with the audience of architects proceeded to regardless of whether you consider yourselves more business-oriented or more technology-oriented, either way, enterprise architects must get the vision from the business people in the organization, so the architects can then help the business people to develop the architecture. It was clear that many people felt that we had to wait for the business to know that their vision was and what they wanted, before we could help them fulfill their requirements. Well, this is not how I see it.

From my experience, many business (and technology) people do not have a “definitive vision” or know concretely what they want, especially when it comes to how technology can shape the business. Yes, of course, they do know they have certain gaps or that they want to improve things. But no, they don’t always know or can envision what the answer looks like. They just know that things either aren’t working “right” or competitor so and so is rolling out something new or upgrading system ABC or “there has just got to be a better way" to something.

If we plan to wait for the business to give us a definitive “this is what I want,” I think in many cases, we’ll be waiting a very long time.

The role of the CIO, CTO, as well as enterprise architects and other IT leaders is to work with the business people, to collaboratively figure out what’s wrong, what can be improved, and then provide solutions on how to get there.

Vision is not a business only matter—it is a broad leadership and planning function. IT leaders should not absolve themselves of visioning, strategy, and planning and rely only on the business for this. To the contrary, IT leaders must be an integral part of forging the business vision and must come up with an enabling “technology vision” for the organization. These days, business is more and more reliant on technology for its success, and a business vision without thought and input from the technology perspective would be superficial at best and dead of center at worst.

Moreover, visioning is not an art or a science, but it is both and not everyone is good at it. That is why open communication and collaboration is critical for developing and shaping the vision for where the organization must go.

Early on in my career, in working with my business counterparts, I asked “What are you looking to do and how can I help you?” And my business partner responded, opening my eyes, and said, “You tell me—what do you think we need to do. You lead us and we will follow.”

Wow! That was powerful.

“You tell me.”

“What do you think we need to do.”

“You lead us and we will follow.”

The lesson is simple. We should not and cannot wait for the business. We, together with our operational counterparts, are “the business”. Technology is not some utility anymore, but rather it is one of the major underpinnings of our information society; it is the driving force behind our innovation, the core of our competitive advantage, and our future.

Vision is not a Business Only Matter

Enterprise Architecture 3.0

In enterprise architecture, we routinely plan for new information technologies and not enterprise anything. In fact, what we now interpret as the federal mandate for “enterprise architecture”, the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 really mandated not enterprise, but “IT architecture”. Here, architects didn’t typically develop enterprise (or common) solutions, but rather stovepipe solutions per customer demand. I would call this Enterprise Architecture 1.0.

As enterprise architecture evolved, we saw it mature in its implementation and expand beyond pure technology into the realm of business process reengineering and improvement. This manifested itself in the Federal Segment Architecture Framework of 2008, where we now looked to solve business, not IT, problems for logical business segments of the organizations. This is Enterprise Architecture 2.0.

However, even at this level of maturity, it continued to be somewhat rare to find enterprise architecture that looked at how we are transforming people, organizations, culture, and society itself. This is now beginning to be demonstrated in the architecture using social media and the larger implications of widespread information sharing, collaboration, and broader citizen participation. I would propose that this larger view of, and larger participation in, enterprise architecture is the next evolution and represents Enterprise Architecture 3.0.

Interestingly enough, I read in ComputerWorld, 18 May 2009, an article that took just such a enterprise architecture 3.0 view, called “Are Computers Transforming Humanity” by Mary K. Pratt.

Note, it’s not that these types of articles have not appeared in the past, but rather that they were not as frequent and this thinking not as endemic to the everyday IT planning discussion as it is becoming today.

The article states: “We’ve always had the introduction of new technologies that transform and move society in new ways. It changes our interactions, our sense f the world and each other…what individual and cultural transformations do, new computer technologies portend.”

Here are some of the EA 3.0 trends I gleaned from the article that are starting to manifest in people, organizations and society:

Convenience weighing on privacy—We can plan for new technologies (for example, mobility solutions that yield “quick answers and fast transactions”) to continue that advance of convenience and challenging traditional privacy concerns. As the article states: “what we let hang out there has changed.”

Reaching across all boundaries—new technologies will continue the miraculous feat of breaking down organizational and societal stovepipes. “One of the things that is different today isn’t that we can just act collectively very quickly, but we act across heterogeneous groups.” Plan for IT to reach across boundaries globally (and even inter-galatically, in the not too distant future).

Digital narcissism—technologies are enabling people’s self-indulgent practices where they often use social media tools to “reinforce and further rationalize overblown esteem for their mundane opinions, tastes and lifestyle choices.” We web 2.0 tools like blogs and twitters and social media everyone can have their own soapbox to evangelize from.

Multi-tasking galore—with the constant barrage of new technologies and communications from them, we are forced to multi-task like never before. “Studies have found that the amount of attention many of us can devote to a single specific task is about three minutes—15 minutes at most.”

Learning by doing—“Why should we memorize facts and figures when search engines, databases, and increasingly powerful handheld computing devices make them instantly available?” What we used to have to memorize, we can now just do the look-up for.

The implications of moving and maturing to Enterprise Architecture 3.0 are exciting and will have us thinking long and hard about the implications of what we do in and with information technology well beyond anything we have done before with IT for individuals, units, or line of businesses.

The changes from IT are broader-based than before and we need IT leaders who can plan and govern these larger scopes. Recently, This was evident with the appointment by President Obama of a federal CIO and CTO to oversee the extraordinary shifts in how we can and will use technology going forward in our nation and with our partners globally.

Enterprise Architecture 3.0

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.

You Can Lead a Horse to Water

Why We Miss the Planning Mark

We’ve all been there asking why we missed the signs while others saw them head-on and benefited in some way. This happens with financial investments (e.g. I should’ve sold before this recent meltdown like my good buddy did), business opportunities (e.g. I should’ve opened up a chain of coffee stores like Starbucks before Howard Shultz got to it), military strategy (e.g. we should’ve seen the attacks on Pearl Harbor and 9-11 coming and been better prepared to try and stop them) and other numerous “should’ve” moments—and no I’m not talking about that” I should’ve had a V8!”

Why do we miss the signs and misread information?

Obviously, these are important questions for IT leaders, enterprise architects and IT governance pros who are often managing or developing plans for large and complex IT budgets. And where the soundness of decisions on IT investments can mean technological superiority, market leadership and profitability or failed IT projects and sinking organizational prospects.

An article in MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2009, provides some interesting perspective on this.

“Organizations get blindsided not so much because decision makers aren’t seeing signals, but because they jump to the most convenient or plausible conclusion, rather than fully considering other interpretations.”

Poor decision makers hone in on simple or what seems like obvious answers, because it’s easier in the short-term than perhaps working through all the facts, options, and alternative points of view to reach more precise conclusions.

Additionally, “both individual and organizational biases prevent…signals from getting through” that would aid decision making.

How do these biases happen?

SUBJECTIVITY: We subjectively listen almost exclusively to our own prejudiced selves and distort any conflicting information. The net effect is that we do not fully appreciate other possible perspectives or ways of looking at problems. We do this through:

• Filtering—We selectively perceive what we want to and block out anything that doesn’t fit what we want to or expect to see. For example, we may ignore negative information about an IT investment that we are looking to acquire.
• Distortions—Information that manages to get through our mental and emotional filters, may get rationalized away or otherwise misinterpreted. For example, we might “shift blame for a mistake we made to someone else.”
• Bolstering—Not only do we filter and distort information, but we may actually look for information to support our subjective view. For example, “we might disproportionately talk to people who already agree with us.”

GROUPTHINK: “a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas.” (Wikipedia)

“In principle, groups should be better than individuals at detecting changes and responding to them. But often they are not, especially if the team in not managed well, under pressure, and careful not to rock the boat.”

Interestingly enough, many IT investment review boards, which theoretically should be helping to ensure sound IT investments, end up instead as prime examples of groupthink on steroids.

Concluding thoughts:

If we are going to make better IT decisions in the organization then we need to be honest with ourselves and with others. With ourselves, we need to acknowledge the temptation to take the simple, easy answer that is overwhelmingly directed by personal biases and instead opt for more information from all sources to get a clearer picture of reality.

Secondly, we need to be aware that domineering and politically powerful people in our organizations and on our governance boards may knowingly or inadvertently drown out debate and squash important alternate points of view.

If we do not fairly and adequately vet important decisions, then we will end up costing the enterprise dearly in terms of bad investments, failed IT projects, and talented but underutilized employees leaving for organizations where different perspectives are valued and decisions are honestly and more comprehensively vetted for the betterment of the organization.

If we shut our ears and close our eyes to other people’s important input, then we will miss the planning mark.

Why We Miss the Planning Mark

Disruptive Technologies

When companies get cozy, the marketplace gets innovative and from out of nowhere...a disruptive technology upends things.

We've seen this happen countless of times in big ways.

In the auto industry, 50 years ago neither GM nor Ford would have ever dreamed that they would lose their virtual monopoly on the U.S. auto industry to foreign car companies that would dislodge them with compact vehicles and hybrid engine technologies.

More recently in the music industry, Apple seized the day by combining functionality, stylishness and price on their iPod player with an accessible online iTunes music store.

More generally, the whole world of e-Commerce has stolen much of the show from the brick and mortar retail outlets with internet marketing, online transaction processing, supply chain management and electronic funds transfer.

Now, another disruption is occurring in the computer market. For years, the computer industry has made every effort to provide more raw computing power, memory, and functionality with every release of their computers. And Moore’s law encapsulated this focus with predictions of doubling every two years.

Now, on the scene comes the Netbook—a simpler, less powerful, less capable computing device that is taking off. Yes, this isn’t the first time that we’ve had a drive toward smaller, sleeker devices (phones, computers, and so on), but usually the functionality is still growing or at the very least staying the same. But with Netbooks smaller truly does mean less capable.

Wired magazine, March 2009, states “ The Netbook Effect: Dinky keyboard. Slow chip. Tiny hard drive. And users are going crazy for them.”

How did we get here?

“For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, which customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did.”

So what happened?

“What netbook makers have done is turn back the clock: Their machine perform the way laptops did four years ago. And it turns out that four years ago (more or less) is plenty.”

“It turns out that about 95%...can be accomplished through a browser…Our most common tasks—email, Web surfing, watching streaming videos—require very little processing power.”

The netbook manufactures have disrupted the computer market by recognizing two important things:

1. Computer users have adequate computing power for their favorite tasks and what they really want now is more convenience and at a price that says buy me.
2. Cloud computing is no longer an idea full of hot air, but it is a technology that is here now and can do the job for consumers. We can get our applications over the web and do not have to run them on our client machines. We can afford to have computers that do less, because the cloud can do more!

The result?

Foreign companies are running away with the Netbook market. “By the end of 2008, Asustek had sold 5 million netooks, and other brands together had sold 10 million…In a single year, netbooks had become 7 percent of the world’s entire laptop market. Next year it will be 12%.”

“And when Asustek released the Eee notbook, big firms like Dell, HP, and Apple did nothing for months.” They were taken off guard by miscalculation and complacency.

The future?

Of course, the big boys of computing are hoping that the netbook will be a “secondary buy—the little mobile thing you get after you already own a normal size laptop. But it’s also possible, that the next time your replacing an aging laptop, you’ll walk away into the store and wonder, ‘why exactly am I paying so much for a machine that I use for nothing but email and the Web?’ And Microsoft and Intel and Dell and HO and Lenovo will die a little bit inside that day.”

Implications for CIOs?

• End complacency and always be on the lookout for disruptive technologies and ways of doing business. There is always a better way!
• Hardware becomes a commodity over time and supplying the infrastructure for the organization is moving the way that electricity generation did at the turn of the 20^th century—to outside vendors that can do it more effectively and efficiently.
• Cloud computing means that commonly used software applications are available over the internet and can be provide the foundation business functionality for the organization.

The important future value add from the Office of CIO is in IT strategy, planning, governance, and mission-focused solutions. We need CIOs that are true leaders, innovative, and focused on the business and not just on the technology.

Disruptive Technologies

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