4 (Uncommon) Habits for Better IT, part 2

by with One Comment CIOITManagementTechnology

Jump to part 1…

II – Use the Resources you have –

Damn, if I had a nickel for every organization that bleeds money on unimplemented technology and underutilized, or more accurately “inappropriately utilized” staff…

Companies, the world over, could save billions in IT, and operational costs, if they just used what they already have.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Unix based or windows based, it’s 99% likely that there’s something you could automate, today, in a few minutes, to chop out half an FTE or more of useless labor.  Most organizations are paying for hardware and software they don’t need, or don’t use… and most organizations have no process for assessing or innovating what they do, how they do it, or why.

There’s just no focus on operations in this day and age.  Everything’s gotten so filled with buzz words (like IT alignment, CRM, ERP, Web 2.0) that there’s no leadership in the area that actually provides the business its greatest cost savings (or losses)… Operations.  I have yet to see an organization that isn’t throwing away big money on senseless human labor, unnecessary software and hardware.  It’s just a fact (because I say so).

Start automating today, and then, instead of firing employees when you’ve freed up some FTEs, get them into a 50/50 training scheme, so the organization can become even more effective over time. 

Oh, but you don’t have anyone to do automation.  BULL.  Every single IT professional should be able to do basic administrative scripting.  Every single IT professional can be trained to automate enterprise level work.  Every single IT professional should be on the lookout for better techniques… and the organization should be prepared to make changes.

If this isn’t how it is in your organization, it’s a management issue, plain and simple.  The benefit of good operations is the currency upon which you get CRM and ERP projects to fly.  I’ve said it before, automation is the fundamental purpose of computers, so it simply has to be a primary task of the IT group.  Automate as much as possible… then spend the time savings on more education and bigger projects.

To sum it up:  Start using what you’ve got, and make it a priority to investigate and squeeze out unnecessary labor and costs wherever they can be found.  If someone has to do a process more than once, you should consider automating it.  Making computers do the work is the fundamental reason for having the computers!

I – Manage output.  Treat IT like IT, business like business –

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this question/complaint in different organizations, “How do I get my IT people to come in 9-5… they take 2 hour lunches, etc.”  Now, to be fair, you can pretty much tell the state of the IT department when the question is asked… and it never seems to be asked by anyone with direct knowledge of the work… it’s always a Business manager, HR rep, or other type of manager. 

So this problem is not necessarily endemic to IT, but rather endemic to the integration of IT and other kinds of industries.  Also, the question itself has the unintended consequence of showing why outsourcing seldom works. 

In the ancient world, people showed up for work in the morning… they ate lunch for an hour, and later they went home to forget about work til the next day.  That was all that was possible…. and sure, there are still many jobs for which it’s a necessity.

Just as modern technology makes the world your office, more efficient management scenarios are also possible. Sure, if you have a help desk, the help desk has to be manned for certain hours, so a presence is a given – does that presence have to be in the office? Maybe not.  Your systems have to be up 24/7, and remote management is child’s play, so why would your systems admin be a 9-5 employee?  Development can happen anywhere, anytime… so why would you constrain your creative thinking developers to a tie, a water cooler, and a 1 hour lunch break?  

Turns out that good developers like to work in their underwear at 3 am, high on Mountain Dew. No one has dissected one to find out why… it’s just a fact (because I say so). 

I’m not saying the IT people are special and should be treated special.  I am saying that even if your IT group is part of a manufacturing company, running IT like an assembly line will ensure low productivity.  In fact, anything resembling micro-management is universally despised amongst IT professionals.  It’s not even a debate.

Of course this is about far more than a timeclock, it’s about the whole culture of work and finding ways for people to be more productive, less stressed, more responsible, more loyal, etc… not because you have to, but because it’s good for business.  Efficiently managing the 24/7 modern world is about placing expectations on the output, not monitoring the input.  Set goals for your IT teams and let them figure out what they need to do to be successful.  I’d certainly rather fire an unproductive 9-5er than a productive developer I only see on webcam.

Coincidentally, the root problem is the same in outsourcing failures.  If one can’t manage the output expectations of employees, one certainly can’t manage the output expectations of non-employees… which is all an outsourcing relationship is.  That, of course, comes back to having competent management.  They who set the goals need to know what the goals are… and more importantly, they need to have the respect of the IT team to achieve any of it.

To sum it up:  The 40 hour work week does not ensure results, managing results ensures results.  Explore working options with your IT staff.  Productivity increases by adapting to the nature of the work, and the nature of the worker. 

4 (Uncommon) Habits for Better IT, part 1

by with One Comment CIOITManagementTechnology

Jump to part 2…

I’ve seen my share of IT gone wrong, and I pay attention when it does.  Sure, the problems and solutions may seem obvious, “do good, don’t do evil” as a CIO colleague of mine likes to say… but making the conscious effort to recognize and stand up for the most critical values takes something you don’t often see in today’s IT workplace.

So here’s 17 years (oh god, is it 18 now?) of watching successes and failures, wrapped up in the form of 4 Habits:

IV – Competence and Character above all else –

Sure, it seems obvious… but most IT organizations in decline can trace their woes to incompetency and/or lack of character amongst their ranks.  It’s all the more disastrous when these characteristics emerge in upper management.

No matter how well integrated to a business, IT is, by nature, an organizational island… albeit one in which the natives fear the beach, sunlight and are allergic to everything. 

The business as a whole has to trust, almost blindly, that the IT management has things in hand.  This makes Character and Competence the two most important qualities of IT professionals at all levels. 

Sure, we think about those things when we hire people, but they aren’t the focus… and they need to be.  

With all due respect to managers, it is no great feat to keep geeks in line and pointed at a goal.  Most IT groups consist of members whose skills do not generally overlap, so most organizations already depend on IT staff managing themselves, whether anyone realizes it or not.  This is, in fact, an increasing trend.  For most IT pros, independent management is just part of the job.  

This aspect of IT is a key oversight when finding IT people, particularly CIO’s.  IT pros don’t look toward a boss for management, rather, for their competent, engaged and coherent input on the technical and policy issues that are facing them in their work.  The CIO is responsible for the grand scheme, making the cogs fit together, so a lack of technical competence at this level is a grave, yet pervasive liability the industry currently endures.  Technically competent CIOs are both more useful to subordinates, and make better decisions.  It’s just a fact (because I say so).  

Also, IT professionals who find themselves responsible for the livelihood of an organization also realize how important it is to be trusted implicitly.  The job simply can’t be done without the trust of the users.  If the group loses that trust, it takes forever to earn it back.  All it takes is one bad hire.

Competence and Character are simply indispensable, no matter how technical, ceremonial or managerial you think the job is.  IT staff are extremely sensitive to these two characteristics.  So instead of looking for generally “good” candidates, using whatever arbitrary factors may be in play, the first question that should be asked of your HR people is “how to we verify the technical competence of IT hirees” and the second is “how do we assess their character”.  If there is no current method, create one.  ALWAYS involve the rest of the IT staff in the decision making process, and DEMAND their unrestrained opinions.  You’ll be sorry if you don’t.

To sum it up:  Obvious or not, a little respect goes a long way at all levels of IT.  Hire people you and your IT staff respect, and foster a culture of doing the right thing, or expect major problems.

III – IT Employee Development and the 50/50 Rule –

In failing IT organizations, IT employees often work 100% of the time or more.  In successful IT organizations, IT employees often work 50% of the time or less.   It’s just a fact (because I say so).

You may grumble about that assertion, but the old adage about working smarter, not harder, is pretty much the mantra of the successful IT organization.  A good IT employee in a successful IT organization consumes and applies a PhD’s worth of information every couple years of their career.  Those who don’t, simply become irrelevant, or even a hindrance in short order.  Continuous education and retraining is an absolutely essential part of the job, from the CIO to the technician.

But you say, “The CIO doesn’t need to know how to configure a router…”  No, but it is the process of obtaining education in IT related disciplines that gives them the insight to contribute intellectually on other technical topics… in fact, it’s even more important for the CIO because a tech competent CIO will see possibilities well beyond what’s available on the shelf… and generally save their organizations large amounts of cash.

Of course, the shape of such education for IT staff need not be defined.  Certifications and degrees have no more value than the education derived from tinkering, experimenting, and reading Slashdot or Digg.

In order to progress and do things cheaper, faster, better… IT employees must both have the time, and be expected to learn and implement new concepts, technologies and strategies.  If your group is overtaxed just to get the daily work done, then you’re not only failing at employee development… but you aren’t providing a competitive advantage to your organization. The competitive advantage comes from doing things better than the other guy, and customizing the IT solutions to the benefit of the organization.  

Of course, the current management norm is to cut FTEs to the bare minimum any time there’s an excess of man power for the immediate work.  This, however, ensures that what you do today is all you’ll ever do, and likewise ensures that what your employees do today is all they’ll be able to do.  At that point, there’s little value to having an IT department… and is a major reason why organizations wind up unable to deploy new technology or adapt to unforeseen changes.
  
The more desirable outcome, indicative of both good management and employee development, is to have challenging goals being achieved, reasonable expectations being met, and employees that only spend 25%-50% of their time working, and the rest educating themselves.  Organizations in  this situation have the best chance of retaining employees and providing exceptional service.

To sum it up:  Education is half the job.  Organizations that make it a priority are more effective than those that do not.

4 (Uncommon) Habits for Better IT, part 2…

New Look

by with No Comment Uncategorized

I took a little break and finalized the new look of Tech Op/Ed.  I’ve switched from Blogger to WordPress.  I liked Blogger, but the New Blogger engine isn’t very friendly to external hosting… so it’s great if I want to run my blog from Blogger’s site, but not from my own domain.  So I started using some of the features from GoDaddy.com, where www.techoped.com is hosted.  GoDaddy carries WordPress – and many many other content management solutions and tools like Joomla – as a one-click install.  In fact, I have to hand it to GoDaddy for having one of the the cheapest, full-featured hosting sites.  I know other hosts are faster, have more space or are tweaked to run certain applications better.  But I am very pleased with the flexibility of GoDaddy, and that is my unbiased, unpaid opinion on the matter. 

And by the way, since I seem to be do some gratis schilling, let me throw in that if you’re paying more than $9 for a domain name (like on NetworkSolutions)… you are getting majorly screwed.  I left NSI a few years ago and I can’t believe I wasted so much on domain names.  Stop the madness.  Move your names to GoDaddy or one of the other reputable, sane-rate registrar.

Anyways, I’m still wrapping up some loose ends with the style sheets and other info, but I like this design and I think I’ll stick with it for a while. 

Hopefully I’ll have a chance to write more often starting in June.  For now I’m busy busy busy, but I’ll try to squeeze out a couple articles before the end of the month.

Thanks for reading.

j.ello on IT Part 8: pWNing IT Management

by with One Comment CIOcommodityITj.ello on ITManagementTechnology

Yes, I could devote every article to the pervasiveness of bad IT management and it’s chilling effects on business, but it depresses me and it’s time to move on, so we’ll wrap that up today.  The next article will be on how to fix IT gone bad… tips anyone can use to restore the value of an IT department.

First, a last word on bad IT management –

To sum up the shape of IT today… the old computing Director has retired along with his punchcards and VAX system.  In response to the larger role of IT in the business, the need to deal with increased regulatory and legal pressure, etc… the new IT leader is a slick, middle aged MBA who has some historical experience related to computing.  The primary vision is to reduce cost with fewer, cheaper employees… to commoditize every day computing.  IT management functions have been distributed throughout the organization – not generally by choice – to cope with the realities of the work.  The IT group “appears” to be no worse for the wear on the surface.

How it hits you in the wallet –

There’s a common economic term, “Opportunity Cost“, which is what you lose as a function of choice… i.e. if I have property and I build a condo, I can’t use the land to build something else.

A related term that everyone knows more personally is the “Hidden Cost“, or that which, by definition, is an unforeseen cost of a choice, one that often leaves you feeling like a jackass. If you’ve ever bought a device, only to find out you need several accessories to make it work, you know the feeling.

The ideal in life is to have all your choices governed by evaluating opportunities instead of dealing hidden costs. But converting what you can’t foresee to that which you can, is all about knowledge and creativity. So if you’ve read the previous IT articles, you’ll see where I’m going with this:

Those who make IT decisions based on a wide base of technical knowledge are less likely to fall prey to hidden costs.

In fact, if you didn’t understand the title of this article…  you may be part of the problem.

“Commodity computing means that you spend X, with no expectation of improving Y… and that’s why it offers no value.”

“Failure is the default.” –

Currently, the most obvious source of hidden costs are in large project undertakings, where a poorly conceived request for proposal can doom a project from the start. I challenge anyone to show a multi-$Million ERP project on the planet that has NOT incurred major costs that could have been mitigated through competent technical oversight. 

But the less obvious, and far more costly errors are those that occur as a response to every day questions… little decisions that have seemingly no impact, completely unnoticeable… even to a lot of IT managers.  Do you spend money on extra ram for your user’s machines, or a faster processor?  Do you conduct a training session on Office, or create a few screen capture videos?  Do you spend time automating your systems, remove a service, or expect users to manually accomplish certain tasks?

It may seem like minutia, but you would be shocked at how much money is wasted on poor choices at the most basic levels.  It’s not always easy to see this effect behind the closed doors of business, but we get an education on this *literally* every day in academia, between organizations that would otherwise be identical in terms of responsibilities, resources, personnel and cash.  Over surprisingly short amounts of time, any two IT groups will wind up at two completely different levels of effectiveness, with vast repercussion on the business and culture of the organization… purely as a function of their approach to common every day IT value questions.

How much impact does it have in the business world?  Enough to give thousands of consultants and outsourcing organizations a reason to exist!  So don’t ignore it.

The commodity lie –

If very subtle changes to your approach to IT can have multi-$Million consequences, then how does one make the case that there is such a thing as commodity computing?  Well, keep in mind that a “commodity” is a concrete term.  CEO’s and CFO’s like this term because it puts a specific dollar value on a service.

But, as is made evident above.  “Commodity” in IT does NOT mean that you spend X, and you get an industry-standard Y, there is no such thing – and anyone who says so is selling something.  Commodity computing means that you spend X, with no expectation of improving Y… and that’s why it offers no value.

There is simply no case for the notion of “commodity computing”… as it makes the assumption that operational questions have simple answers that vary as a function of money.  This is clearly not the case, but it is this mentality that defines the state of IT this decade.

In short, few organizations extract value from the IT resources they have at their disposal RIGHT NOW.  Not because they wouldn’t jump at the cost savings, but because they literally don’t have the knowledge to recognize, much less evaluate these kinds of choices.

And of course, who’s responsible for evaluating such choices?  The IT leader… and so we’ve full circle.

Are you an idiot? The Vendors think so! –

You can tell what advertisers think of their targets in how they advertise. For example, Apple clearly believes that their average consumer is so dim that the difference between a Mac and a PC is best when reduced to culturally stereotypical human icons engaging in inane, but amusing banter.

And of course… it’s the most effective Mac campaign in Apple’s history.

The state of IT decision making can likewise be seen in how vendors advertise.  Ever seen a whitepaper from an ERP vendor? Ever delved deep into Dell’s pricing models?  Ever negotiated a contract with Oracle?  Technology vendors, from software to hardware, are in business to make money, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which member of the herd they believe is weakest.

Conclusion –

Alright, enough on that.  Our IT managers have taken enough abuse for now.  I, of course, welcome any comments you might have on the subject, as I think that this aspect of the IT industry just hasn’t received much attention.  I’d like to get some dialog going.

And so it blows…

"Here’s your dorm key and your RIAA bill…"

by with No Comment InternetPolitics

RIAA institutes collective billing practices? –

If you managed to miss this week’s RIAA wrangling, you probably don’t use the internet.  Here’s the skinny: The RIAA has sent 405 so-called “pre-litigation” e-mails in various quantities to a group of 23 selected universities.  The RIAA has asked each university to identify and pass on the appropriate e-mail to the appropriate student.

As I thought about this, a couple questions have come to mind.  One, what is the difference between a letter that specifies a fiscal responsibility and a “bill”?  Two, is a public institution legally allowed to serve a bill on behalf of an outside party?

Is it a settlement, or a bill? –

The RIAA calls the e-mail a “pre-litigation letter”… I call it a “bill”.  There could be a special legal definition here I am unaware of, but to me, it seems like a bill.  You could say that your electric bill is a “pre-litigation letter”… if you choose not to pay, they have the right to sue you.

But if the RIAA notices are a “bill”… that may put the RIAA into a whole new legal frying pan.  It’s one thing to litigate on behalf of a group, it’s another to engage in collective billing.  Does this make the RIAA a company in and of itself?  Who chooses the prices?  How does it pay taxes, etc…

We’ll let the lawyers figure it out.

“I am not pleased that taxpayer money is being used to deliver bills on behalf of the RIAA.”

Compelling students to comply –

Universities have to deal with a little thing called FERPA, or the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.  This is the law that requires institutions to protect student information.  A university cannot, for example, disclose the name of a student who was using a particular IP address at a particular time without a valid subpoena or permission of the student.  Now note, universities have not been complicit in file sharing activities, despite the assertions of the RIAA… they have simply been dealing with the problem as the RIAA sends complaints about specific activity they believe is infringing.  Usually, this results in threats of expulsion for misusing university resources as stipulated by university policy.

This time, however, the stage is set for some unusual legal wrangling.

Let’s say that a university delivers an e-mail from the RIAA to a student.  The letter instructs the student to contact a 3rd party and identify themselves.  They will have the option to pay the “bill” by credit card or other mechanism.  By the university legitimizing such instructions to identify oneself to a 3rd party, it seems reasonable to think that a university would be in a bit of a FERPA quagmire.  Perhaps not in specific breach, but at least in breach of the spirit of the law.

Again, we’ll let the lawyers figure it out.

Doing the right thing? –

Two of the universities on the list have made bold moves.  The University of Wisconsin gave the RIAA the collective finger by choosing to not forward such emails on to the students without a valid subpoena, as has always been the accepted practice.  The University of Nebraska, on the other hand, is exercising its right… nay… responsibility… to charge the RIAA for the processing work incurred by delivering the RIAA’s bills… and has notified the RIAA that it does not keep records of which computer uses which IP address past 30 days.  The assumption, of course, is that if the RIAA’s information is a little stale, most of the e-mails will not be able to be served as there will be no way to identify the infringer.

These two universities, currently, are the exception… but that may change with the first student who receives a notice, particularly if it’s by mistake, and feels that a university has overstepped its bound by compelling them to call the RIAA and identify themselves.

Sympathies, not empathies –

As someone who creates copyrighted content, I am not condoning copyright infringement… I would like to be paid for my work like anyone else.  This position, however, is NOT in conflict with my stance against the practices of the RIAA, which I’m not sure can be characterized in any other way than “anti-competitive” and “extortionist”.  This has resulted in legal actions that aren’t just “innocent accidents”, but some of the most ludicrously moronic abuses of the legal system in this, or any other age.  The RIAA is getting a free ride to harass the public with impunity, where other copyright holders have to meet a higher standard to protect their content.  Getting public institutions to bill for you is just one of the ways this is expressed.

I am not pleased that taxpayer money is being used to deliver bills on behalf of the RIAA.  As such I am pleased with the University of Wisconsin’s responsibility in the matter…. and that the University of Nebraska is making sure there is at least some cost recovery in response to the abuse.

Of course, if you’re really pissed, consider Gizmodo’s RIAA Boycott. 

Should be an interesting couple months.

j.ello on IT Part 7: Who’s dealing with your s***?

by with No Comment CIOITj.ello on ITManagement

Who da man? –

What does it matter that the top IT leaders of today are more and more akin to the Pointed-Haired Boss instead of the Pocket-Protectored Practitioners of the past? An IT department is just a commodity service provided by a collection of people needing to be supervised, so any MBA will do… right?

Well, interestingly enough, the US Dept. of Labor says that while other IT jobs evaporate, IT management continues to grow, and fast, up about 50% the last 6 years. The statistics are based on job description as opposed to title… so it’s not that there are more people carrying the manager title or above, but more people charged with – or as they may say “burdened with” – direct decision making authority within their organizations.

How is that happeing? –

There are several perspectives on why this is: Increased integration of IT within specific business units of an organization requiring management of smaller, more nimble IT groups. Increased variety and complexity of software, hardware and services requiring specialized individuals to make business decisions independently from the larger IT group. Even the effects of outsourcing resulting in an increased need to manage the outsourced relationships.

I agree that all these have impact, but if organizations recognized these roles as “Management”, and were actively delegating such authority, or had any idea that decisions being made at lower levels actually do have significant strategic impact, then the number of management titles would be increasing at the same rate, which is not what’s happening.

“…there’s a natural progression toward hiring the most qualified ineffective IT leadership money can buy.”

Leading from within –

Here’s where the last article fits in. With IT leadership becoming more and more disconnected from the collective IT knowledge base, critical decision making has to occur at lower levels, where the technical knowledge still exists. So, ultimately, it’s not that technologists are being “asked” to make the critical business decisions one would expect IT leadership to make, nor are they expected, as a result of job title, to do so. They simply find themselves in a situation where taking matters into their own hands is favorable to training the supervisor to a sufficient level to get a valid decision on the problem.

Don’t think it doesn’t happen.  Good technologists have no problem making an executive decision when they are faced with an IT supervisor who isn’t technically knowledgeable.

The appropriate Ghostbusters quote is “I guess I’m just saying that shit happens
and somebody has to deal with it.”

“I’ve got a Treo, of course I know technology…” –

I think we can all agree that ideal IT leaders should be technically minded, creative, posses management skills and business savvy. But the fact is that there are far, FAR fewer people possessing all these traits than there are jobs requiring them. No matter what, an organization has to sacrifice some degree of one or all of these skill sets in order to hire a candidate for the top job. I think it’s also fair enough to say that it’s easier to “appear” technically knowledgeable than it is to show leadership qualities when it comes to interviewing with non-IT organizational leaders like CEO’s, CFO’s, COO’s… who are more sensitive to such qualities.  So logically, there’s a natural progression toward hiring the most qualified ineffective IT leadership money can buy.

This isn’t intentional, and again, we’re talking about smart people being lead to a “less optimal” result by applying perfectly valid wisdom that works in other areas of their businesses.  The Peter Priciple brings incompetence up from the bottom, and there is a yet to be named principle that, with the best of intentions, pushes incompetence down from the top. Up until the 80’s, there was a clear favoring of technical prowess at the expense of managerial credential, and while the smallest of today’s organizations still tend toward this persuasion out of necessity, the rest almost exclusively go in the opposite direction.

Intuitively, this seems smart. The simple truth is that if you’re the leader, you have to have leadership skills, no question there. All the bad behaviors indicative poor management apply, and it’s hard enough to find good managers independent of technical competence. 

Foreshadowing –

But as I’ve said before and will say again, computing is art… and in fact, today, within our own IT departments, there’s far more existing technical capability than there is creativity, and therefore leadership, to use it… and that’s a management problem that costs big bucks.

What do I mean by that?  Check in next time to find out. 

j.ello on IT Part 6: Being Great at Everything But the Job

by with No Comment j.ello on ITUncategorized

CIO Magazine has an archive of issues stretching back to 1994.  If you want to know what’s been on the minds of IT leaders over the last decade, CIO Magazine is a definitive source.  Notable among their works are the CIO Surveys.  After a decade of unparalleled innovation in computing, one might expect that the role of the IT leader has changed quite a bit, so I found this interesting:

In 1995, CIO’s reported that their number one priority was aligning IT and business goals. 
In 2005, CIO’s reported that their number one priority was aligning IT and business goals.

Allow me to illustrate the term “Alignment” for all the non-CIO’s out there.  Let’s say you’re in IT professional and you’ve been told to change a hard drive.  Instead, you choose to play Solitaire.  Your goals are not in “alignment” with the business goals.  Go ahead and extrapolate.

78% of the time, I have no sympathy for the 78% of the organizations that get absolutely zero value from their IT.

The truth is not quite so ludicrous, but certainly related.  What CIO’s are really trying to say is that they often don’t know what the goals of the business are, nor are they able to influence the organization in ways that would maintain continuity for IT, so they “think” they are doing the job, only to find out that they are not.  CIO’s feeling this way are either a victim of poor management, or are the poor management… and I am inclined to agree with both statements.

I return to the mantra, “IT is a reflection of the organization’s values“.  If IT is not a valued component of the business, those who hire the IT leaders will favor certain aspects of an applicant over aspects that would more readily serve the organization.  Once that happens, all bets are off.

In well-defined roles, it’s easier to find the best candidates.  COO’s, CFO’s… etc… there are time-honored benchmarks by which one can find people who create the best value for the organization.  There are no such benchmarks for hiring IT leaders, and even fewer for measuring performance.  So, organizations gravitate toward “general executive qualities”, which may or may not have anything to do with the job of managing the organization’s IT group.  That’s where the problem starts.

In CIO Mag’s 2006 Survey, despite the fact that 3/4 of CIO’s report an IT background, CIO’s overwhelmingly report that the skills most pivotal for their success are “Ability to communicate effectively” (70%) and “Strategic planning” (59%).  On the opposite side of that is “Thorough knowledge of technology options” (22%), “Negotiation Skills” (12%) and “Technical Proficiency” (12%).

Now, keep in mind that this survey question was “choose all that apply“.  Which means that 78%  of the #1 technology professionals in their organizations DO NOT believe that knowledge of technology is important enough to their jobs to even check the box.  Whaaaa….???

Imagine your CFO saying “Finance?  Not important.”… Or a contractor saying “I don’t need to know about building houses, I’ve got people for that.”…

And yet, these CIO’s are correct… knowing about technology actually isn’t pivotal to their “success”, insofar as it relates to going up the ladder 78% of the time.  This is why, 78% of the time, I have no sympathy for the 78% of the organizations that get absolutely zero value from their IT.

The CIO’s job can be summed up very briefly:  “To make technology available to the organization.” This is not to say that the CIO has to be the technical god of the group.  But the CIO is the person who has to make recommendations to the Executives, so if the CIO isn’t a champ at evaluating technology options, at knowing the critical questions to ask and at maintaining a relevant base of knowledge… even the best communicator, leader, planner in the world will still be a completely incompetent CIO.

I think there is at least some support for this argument based on the Survey’s 10 “Biggest Barriers to Job Effectiveness”.  Among these, CIOs report above all “Overwhelming backlog of requests and projects.”… “Shortage of time for strategic planning“… “Unrealistic/Unknown expectations from the business“… “Lack of alignment of IT and business goals” and “difficulty proving the value of IT“.

So, a CIO’s #1 priority is to align IT and Business goals, but it’s the biggest problem that prevents them from being successful.  That’s like someone who hangs drywall for a living saying “my biggest problem is falling drywall”… very disconcerting.  70% of CIO’s prize their ability to communicate effectively, but they find it difficult to prove the value of IT.  Many value their strategic planning skills, but have no time to do it.  But more importantly, with such low concern for technological competency and negotiation skills, is it any surprise that the requests and projects are out of control, and the expectations are so hard to manage?

Of course not… that’s why those things are a perpetual plague in the IT industry.

Now don’t go running to your CIO saying “this guy thinks you suck”.  This isn’t the fault of the CIO.  Every CIO I have met has been smart, engaging, and brimming with positive leadership qualities.  Damn fine people.  Many just lack very critical qualities that create big problems for an IT organization.  But CIO’s are hired based on the values of the organization, and as organizations begin to value IT more, more IT-critical qualities will be used to judge those they hire.

You don’t have to be an IT professional long before you see the big disconnect between what organizations want, and what they value.

How do you know organizations don’t value IT?

Deloitte conducts a CFO Survey. Interestingly, Controlling costs and providing better information to support the business are the two highest rated priorities, while Enhancing Information Systems barely registers on the chart. I’m not sure what accounts for those numbers… maybe they want to hire Scribes.  Additionally, CFOs report that “Implementing new technology” is the least of the main challenges facing the business.

You don’t have to be an IT professional long before you see the big disconnect between what organizations want, and what they value.  Over time, those two things will come more into line… until then, IT is going to have an unstable, ambiguous role in the organization… and all that implies.

Yes, that’s a bit of a downer, but I want to end this on an up note.  All this instability and lack of direction can actually be a really big positive for those willing to push the organization, champion and validate new technologies, and take charge on emerging issues that will undoubtedly go unnoticed at the upper levels.  You may not be thanked or paid any better now, but you’ll look a lot better as those qualities, that truly define an IT leader, become more critical in landing the big job.

New Geek Haiku

by with No Comment Uncategorized

There are surprisingly few computer geek haikus (Haiku/Haikus? My Tao is weak on Haiku pluralization) out there, and most are over a decade old.  Here are some j.ello originals. If you like them, Digg ’em & I’ll bring more.  And yes, Digg, you can use the I-Ching one.

12/03 – Welcome to the [H]ardOCP gang!  I’m flattered to make the big feed!  I’ve added a special [H]aiku at the bottom!

Of I-Ching and Digg:
Your words can be at once wise
and irrellevent.

Two cores, four cores, more…
what wonders they must ponder
as you word process.

Does content exist
if no one browses the site?
Digg this article

Know thy interface,
The video you clicked may
need to be closed fast.

Lose not the true Tao
Music formats are fleeting,
Encode from CD

Your post pleases me
I digg that which has been dugg
Feed your fellow geek

Cruel irony
You blog about rejection,
yet no one reads it

Love the written word
But lust not! Each word is lost
from your print quota

Like a Porche in blue,
Your truth is rejected by
Wikipedia.

Tis not war, nor strife
that vexes thee. Tis thine own
poor file management.

Error so complex,
Far beyond your conscious mind.
Send to Microsoft?

We wish to restrain
hell’s mad fury. Anger subsides,
Un-send does not work.

Behold the fear, rage
of a URL mistyped.
Pop-ups engulf me.

Ripples in a pond
Once computer, now anchor,
still impedes progress

New video card!
re-Activate Windows now
Share your glee with Bill.

We seek tech wisdom.
Marketing hides the true Tao.
The [H] teaches much.

j.ello on IT Part 5: Gardening with a Flamethrower.

by with One Comment CIOITj.ello on ITManagement

Mistaking good values for good values –

There are a few themes that I’ll go back to over and over again. Here is one:

“Your IT is a reflection of your organization’s values.”

That’s a good thing, right? You organization values the work it does, those it employs and those it serves, so if your IT is following suit, that’s a great thing, right? In fact, it may be the opposite. Rarely does an organization actually value good IT as a means of success, which is why we just aren’t realizing the potential.

Let’s start with the common premise that IT is about customer service.

Most businesses understand that IT can be a really great thing, transforming not only how you do what you do, but expanding what you can do, reducing the labor to do it or increasing quality. But that just not what happens when we add an IT group to our organization. Instead of putting its muscle toward building a better business model, it generally spends most of its time helping people do mail merges. An important task, to be sure, but when your primary function becomes simple “service” and your coworkers become “customers”, we no longer talk about process improvement, long range vision, or innovation. Instead, we talk about “customer service” as a primary measure of IT performance. When the conversation switches to Customer Service, the bean counters are satisfied. True services are easy to comprehend, manage, staff, and define expectations for… therefore, even easier to pay someone else to do, preferably overseas, for pennies on the dollar.

Now, don’t get me wrong, customer service is a valuable aspect of all kinds of work; there is no shortage of lessons that can be learned from customer service done right or wrong. But reducing IT to a “service” is the business failure that makes outsourcing seem attractive.

Smart CIO’s, and in fact smart CEO’s, know that IT is part of the division of labor for the business. It’s a colleague relationship, a team-based operation focused on making computing advantageous, even profitable for the organization.

Everything looks like a nail –

It’s easier to see the distinction noted above in the academic IT environment. Universities contain true customers, the students, and several types of colleagues, including the faculty and staff (though some faculty shrug the word “colleague”). With few exceptions, however, you’ll find that academia organizes IT as a service organization, where everyone is a customer. Not because that’s best, but because it meshes with academic values, one of which is the open availability of all resources. That’s a positive value, but has implications that inhibits the IT group from having any real “strategic” value for the institution beyond keeping the hard drives spinning. Putting IT in the Service role makes it a passive constituent of an environment where computing isn’t just a necessary component, but the key to moving the whole institution to new levels.

Keep in mind that these are really, really, smart people, and there’s a lot of thought that goes into building and rebuilding IT in academia. In all businesses, however, there are organizational realities that are tough to overcome.

“Service providers, as a rule, don’t particularly care if you received what you needed, rather, that you believe you got what you wanted.”

Every organization has a set of values. Those values influence all aspects of the organization, particularly those which are not well represented, understood, or integrated into the function of the business. At the same time, where something is misunderstood, the closest “understandable” model will be substituted. IT is seldom well represented as a strategic resource – even when that is the intention… and as such it seldom rises beyond that separate, passive, service organization awkwardly shoehorned into a corporate structure. Make no mistake, this is a management problem… a pervasive management problem that permeates the industry, whose ultimate expression of failure can be summed up in one word: Outsourcing (a topic for another article).

Universities, of course, don’t go extinct because the IT is so-so, or awful, or even outsourced. Other kinds of businesses, more sensitive to competition, may very well pay the price of bad IT with the bank role – but IT is seldom to blame because remember, IT is a reflection of the organization’s values.

Some relationships are more productive –

So, why shouldn’t internal IT groups be considered “service organizations”?

As a customer, the relationship you have with an electric company is entirely different than the relationship you have with, say, a gardener. Both provide service to you, but the model is different. Everyone knows what to expect from the electric company. You want the electric on, all the time. You want to pay as little as possible, and you don’t want any lip. It doesn’t take a lot of research to know, accurately, whether your electric company is good or bad. With a gardener, however, it’s not quite that simple. They may share your taste, they may not. You may like them, personally, trust them, but they don’t stand out as a gardener. They may be the most innovative gardener out there, and you may even like their work, but your lack of comprehension of the skills involved may have you saying “Why don’t I just pay someone else less to do this?”. A lot of people can claim to be a gardener, and you probably don’t know the difference. You may not notice the gradual decline of your landscape due to a poor gardener because you may simply have no idea what you should be expecting, and you may not want to take a chance with someone else.

From the Service provider’s perspective, the relationship with a customer is adversarial by nature. A provider defines the service, the customer pays for such service, and theoretically they make adjustments based on your measurements of the customer’s satisfaction. The idea is to charge as much as possible, minimize the expenses and do the least amount of work, while keeping the customer’s confidence.

Service providers, as a rule, don’t particularly care if you received what you needed, rather, that you believe you got what you wanted. Burn that sentence into your head.

Like IT, there’s no way to really “measure” gardening, most of the values are arbitrary. But experience does teach at least one valuable lesson – If you try to buy gardening services like you buy electric services, you are guaranteed a crappy garden.

How to lose with Customer Service –

So you create an IT group, and you tell them to service the other employees. The other employees call and ask for service. Only, you don’t charge them because, well, you’d be charging yourself. You also don’t have any explicit service agreement because, well, why would you limit yourself on a service you own? So the users can, technically, ask for anything, and do, whether the requests are valid or not. When IT says no, they become unhappy. But you value customer service, so you measure customer satisfaction, which is a measure of the customer’s belief that they received what they wanted. The only problem is, the customers are employees, and what they want isn’t necessarily what they need, or in the best interest of the business.

In an organization like this, in fact, the more satisfied the customers, the more likely it is that your IT group is mired in work with no strategic value. Your other employees are not IT professionals… so why put them in the role of creating work for the IT group?

To make matters worse, what happens when, for example, a sales employee does have a reasonable, strategic idea that requires change on the part of the IT group? Few, if any, organizations have an “institutionalized” way to assure such recommendations are considered – leaving few options but complaints or negative campaigning.

The moral of the story – Don’t garden with a flamethrower

Most businesses (…maybe not gardeners) would benefit from the strategic integration of, and perpetual evolution of, computing resources as a means to corporate success. Yet, that is not the measuring stick by which IT is judged nor IT leadership is hired. Introducing the adversarial Customer Service relationship internally is precisely what leads to the marginalization of IT as a whole. This is the core misunderstanding from which failure in IT flows. This is also the misconception that makes outsourcing seem like a reasonable option.

It’s not good enough for the organization to have “positive” values, it has to have “strategic” values.

“But j.ello, we spend a lot of money on IT, our CIO is a VP, we have committee on top of committee… what could we possibly be doing better? How can you possibly structure an IT group in any other way than as a service?”

It starts with hiring. We’ll talk about that next time.

Tech Moronique: Identity theft, the HP way.

by with No Comment ManagementPoliticsTechnology

I was thinking to myself about how many setbacks the industry has had in the last few years, and how all those setbacks have a face… so I want to take a quick break, and celebrate the poster children of retrograde progress. 

This month, Patricia Dunn.  

I truly wish I could have been a fly on the wall, watching her brush her hair, put on the makeup, dressing for success… as thoughts of securing her success at HP danced in her head.  She’s about to become the hero of HP, the one who called out the whistleblower, the one who weeded out the unfaithful, the disloyal.

Confident beyond smug, she laid out the framework of her heroics to the Board of Directors, proudly pointing out that the villain who had plagued HP for so long had been ratted out, by his own phone company.

What a coup!  She had proven that she could get the job done where Carly failed… that she would go the extra mile and make sure HP was safe from espionage… errr… except her own.  She did what she truly believed was right, using only the logic in her head.  Only, like dozens of Aggressive Self-Starters (A.S.S.)s before her, she failed to pick up on the obvious reason why it’s more difficult for other leaders to get tough jobs done.  People who have character… morals… and even semblance of adherence to the law… simply won’t consider certain options.

Many organizations value loyalty above character.  A liability the organization ultimately pays for, in true Galactic Empire style.  While it is true that those of good character also possess loyalty, it is not the more valued trait.  One need only look to the government to find a superb example of an organization composed of those with superior loyalty, matched with the character of a… hmmm… let’s just say that it would be something spineless, slimy, without eyes or particularly useful brain.  Dunn, Bush, Palpatine… all examples of how Loyalty is the cornerstone of every successful empire.

“Dunn, Bush, Palpatine… all examples of how Loyalty is the cornerstone of every successful empire.”

Which brings us back to HP’s predicament.  Dunn made a bold move, (bold and stupid and with any luck, illegal) but this type of behavior is seldom disconnected from the organization’s culture.  She made it to a high level with her particular (particularly low) level of character, which says something about HP in general.  Allowing someone with little candor and even less respect for personal privacy into high office doesn’t happen in a vacuum, those kinds of traits are hard to conceal.  The new HP way has congress interested, (ex-)employees angry, and the rest of the population disgusted. 

Was HP in a worse state when their long-range visions were being relayed to the media, which made HP look like a company confident in its in-your-face business strategy… or now, that its leadership has admitted to the use of identity theft and impersonation as a mechanism to sew shut the loose lips?  The HP way sure doesn’t sound too appealing these days.  That’s a shame, I have always preferred HP machines myself… I have visited the HP campus a couple times… and frankly, I have a whole new perspective on the company as a whole.

Of course, I hold out little hope that she actually comprehends how in the wrong she was, but I have little doubt that she’ll be back.  Hard to keep a major A.S.S. down, ya know.  HP is under new leadership, but not different leadership.  Hurd has been up at the top with the others for a very long time… he had a big hand in putting Dunn in charge, so how different can he be?