Status Check

In response to those who have inquired about the lack of new posts (and those who haven’t and are curious), here’s a quick update.

As you know, I’m currently doing IT Strategy consulting work via the ITST web site, DeMatteo Monness, GLG Councils, and Primary Insight. Those engagements take me on short notice to client locations for indefinite periods of time. I also continue to look at new full-time IT executive opportunities, which entail preparation, travel and interviews.

Recently, an exciting new project has surfaced, working with a few partners and potential investors on a start-up business. We’re developing the business plan and a path forward for the proof-of-concept, so it is very time consuming (I haven’t started a new business since Fresh Approach, in the early ‘90’s and had forgotten how much work it is).

Given that it is a new venture, I’m bound by a non-disclosure agreement and really can’t discuss the initiative in detail. What I can say is that it is a “Green” business, utilizing a web presence that offers information, goods and services.

For the near future, ITST posts will continue to be sporadic and very much focused on topics that are either reader-inspired or new business-related, so be sure to email me with suggestions.

Thanks very much for your patience and understanding, and please stay tuned for more information on the new initiative.

Delay of Game, Part IV

I wanted to insert a note of explanation for not having put up a new post recently. My son Max had a soccer injury that required knee surgery (like father, like son), plus a welcome uptick in consulting and recruiting activity hasn’t left much free time for writing.

I’ll be getting to the next topic this weekend and should have something posted on Monday. Thanks for your patience!

Business-Centric Change #4 – Coda

After the last milestone of the transformation program, the IT Organization always has one question: “Are we done?”

The true and discomforting answer is “No.”

Despite the great effort expended in identifying “The Problem,” refining “The Solution,” and executing it with particular attention to Organizational Change Management and counsel, the change is not complete – simply because it never can be, as the transformed organization is always evolving.

The true and perhaps more comforting answer is “No, and here is why.”

•    “We will have Process, Technology and Organizational changes due to Service Delivery Failures and failing to meet Service Level Agreements brought about by Problem Management and Root Cause Analysis.”

•    “We will have improvements to our IT Services caused by the Continual Improvement Process led by our Service Managers.”

•    “We will have improvements to our IT Service Management Processes caused by the Continual Improvement Process led by our Process Managers.”

•    “We will have new IT Services demanded by the Customers of our Business and our Business Customers.”

•    “We will have changes to Technology as new technologies become available and other technologies mature.”

•    “We will change our Organization to reflect the changes in our Business Strategy, IT Services and Technology.”

These changes are on the surface smaller than the recent transformation, and can be every bit as full of impact on the organization, particularly if the change is in the sourcing of IT Services.

The Transformation Triangle can be used to assist in the explanation, as it has arrows indicating a cycle of impacts around the vectors of Process, Technology and Organization. None of them are static for long.

With all that said, do no forget to take the time to declare victory and celebrate the completion of a successful transformation with your organization. It’s been a tough road and you’ve all earned it. But you must also create an expectation that the process of change has not ended as the organization continues to evolve within the new paradigm.

Business-Centric Change #3 – Counsel

One of the greatest quotes on the frustration of executing a plan comes from a poem by Robert Burns called “To a Mouse.”

The line from the poem that most people are familiar with is

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,”

The poem is about a farmer who turned up the nest of a field mouse with his spade during fall plowing. The mouse had built her nest and planned to spend a comfortable winter in it. Now, she would have a difficult time surviving the winter because there was no time or material for her to build a new shelter. The poem is an apology to the mouse and a display of empathy by Burns who compares his lot in life to that of the mouse.

The quote from the poem is generally thought of as a resigned recognition that with any plans, issues are inevitable. True enough, but in the context of the poem, I see the meaning somewhat differently.

People get sick and tasks get delayed; changes need to be made to the plan. This is work that good program and project managers handle all the time, no worries.

Getting whacked by the farmer because you built in a place that gets plowed every fall is another story. The revised moral of the story – don’t set yourself up for failure.

The remainder of this post is my “Top Ten” list of considerations to minimize the potential of “getting whacked” during program execution.

1.  Leadership Time Impact: Recognize that the transformation is a large amount of work and will require dedicated resources. It cannot be managed “off the side of the desk” in a part-time I-still-have-my-day-job fashion. The program team (including support resources from Finance, HR, Procurement, Legal, etc.) needs to have that as their only job, with ample time for your leadership team included as well – perhaps as much as 30-40%. Your time will also be in high demand – anticipate well over half of it being consumed by the transformation.

2.  Alignment of External Resources: If you opt for external help (consultants), make sure that they and their rewards structure are aligned with the results that you seek, and not only the process or other aspect of the solution executed in isolation (a sure recipe for an “extended engagement”).

3.  Communication Management: Understand that transformational change is hard. Your job is to lead the organization though it. If you have a capable program team, your best return on time invested is in Organizational Change Management and communication activities. Remember that if you are not managing the communication, it will very soon be managing you (which is a really bad place to be, trust me).

4.  Organizational Resistance: As the vision or end state is communicated, there will be perceived winners and losers. Those who believe that they are “losers” in the new world will resist the change and can be quite effective at it. Spend extra time and effort with this group to help them understand the future state and the opportunities that they will have there.

5.  Organizational Pulse: Remember that people move along the change curve at different rates. Have feedback loops built into the OCM process reflecting where the organization is so that the process can be adapted to the changing needs of the organization.

6.  Participative Change: There are different change management styles. The transformational change that you are bringing about almost always needs to be a collaborative style to be successful. More coercive approaches only usually work in the short run and almost never result in organizational buy-in to the change.

7.  Positive Confirmation: Make certain that there are detailed transition plans to the future state and that they are well communicated and understood. My simple rule for the organization during this time is that nobody can give up a job responsibility until the new-world recipient says affirmatively, “I have it.”

8.  Customer Service: Mechanisms for “Business as Usual” must be well known by both IT and by the customers of IT. If the customer is used to having a particular service provided by “Joe” and he is now part of the transformation program team, then the customer has to know now to go to “Rick” for that service. Perhaps there will be an entirely new method to get that service, like via an intranet form, and that needs to be understood as well.

9.  Face Time: There is no such thing as over-communication or too much contact with your organization during the transformation. You and your leadership team are the face of the change and need to be out and about, not sequestered in your offices or in back-to-back planning meetings all day.

10.  Cut the Cord: Once the transformation is in its final stages, find and complete any activities (usually projects in-flight and well-intentioned folks who want to do favors for friends) that are being done outside of the new model. There’s a reason that Cortez burned his old boats after landing in the New World; it greatly increased the commitment of his men to going forward and exploring. You’ve committed to the new model, now make it work.

There are probably a few more, but upon refection, these seem to be my most valuable experiential learnings on execution of a transformation program. As always, feel free to respond with any comments, additions or questions.

The final post in the series will be Business-Centric Change #4 – Coda.

Business-Centric Change #2 – The Solution

Let me begin by offering my apologies to those of you who may have been thinking that this post would contain the solution to a particular business-centric change problem.

This post is not so much about “the” solution to a particular business change problem as it is criteria for the solution.

From BCC-1, we have a crisply and clearly articulated business problem and constraints around the solution that have been bought into by executive leadership. Now all of our efforts will focus on development of potential solutions, so it is important to understand what characteristics a solution must have to be brought forward for successful approval.

Before we begin that effort, given the number of folks involved in developing “The Problem,” we have expectations to manage and stakeholder needs to consider. The solution will not be developed in a vacuum. As the effort will most likely result in a significant change program, a communications plan (as a part of a larger Organizational Change Management workstream) needs to be developed and implemented.

Executive stakeholders will want to have some knowledge of what solutions are being considered. Take the time to set up a formal or informal method to keep them informed at a level that makes each one comfortable with the solution process (having a few sounding boards will be invaluable in the socialization of the eventual solution).

Once that is done, our objective is now to develop and present a solution that executive leadership can understand, support and commit to (approve), and will be successful.

First, in the same way that we approached the development of the problem holistically, the solution must also be approached in the same comprehensive manner. Everything that has to change and what actions those changes will require must be identified and well understood. Every aspect of the solution must have a corresponding implementation plan. This will make executive leadership aware of the full scope of the change and give them the necessary information to make a decision to go forward with the strategy.

My suggestion is to use the Transformation Triangle to frame this information, with particular focus on the “Management Systems” changes that will need to take place outside of IT. Each executive stakeholder needs to understand what is happening and what he or she is signing up for within their own respective group.

Next, taking a page from Lesson 5 of Colin Powell’s Leadership Primer, the solution must be able to be implemented. A brilliantly conceived solution isn’t worth much if it cannot be implemented within the constraints discovered in the problem definition process or subsequently in the development of solution alternatives.

As solution component options are considered and modified, be sure to explore any potential secondary impacts on the other components and the overall solution to ensure that you remain within your solution boundaries (and the laws of physics). This will enable you to confidently check off against both the aligned objectives and constraints.

Finally, the solution must include an executive commitment to empowered leadership. An empowered change leader has responsibility for the end result and accountability for the outcome. They will have or have access to the skills, tools and resources needed for implementation and have the authority to do what is necessary to get the job done. This request for commitment must be made explicit in the presentation of the solution and made a part of the communications plan.

With those three criteria in place:

•    Full Disclosure of Scope (everything that needs to change and what those changes will require)
•    Ability to Implement (positive check off on both objectives and constraints)
•    Empowered Change Leadership (explicitly agreed to and communicated from executive leadership)

Our solution should be able to go forward with executive leadership support and stand a very high probability of successfully solving our problem.

But, as they say in the military, “The map is not the territory.” We now have a map that shows our destination and we have a plan to get there. Our success now depends on execution – on actually getting from here to there.

And that will be the subject of my next post.

Business-Centric Change #3 – Counsel

Business-Centric Change #1 – The Problem

From my previous post, the problem seems pretty straightforward: “IT isn’t delivering what the business wants or needs, or it is perceived that IT costs are not in line with the value being delivered”

Solve for that statement and we will fix the problem, correct?

It’s possible, but not likely. Jumping to a premature solution is like a doctor prescribing a cure for a serious ailment based on a symptom or two. If you want a cure that works (and doesn’t kill the patient) you must thoroughly understand the ailment, its history, and its symptoms.

Now back to our problem. Chances are that like a sickness, the problem didn’t appear overnight. Sufficient time must be spent gaining a comprehensive understanding of what has been happening from different perspectives. Business leadership, business customers, IT leadership, IT staff and perhaps key vendors will have a perspective to share that will contribute to the understanding of the problem.

Taking time to meet with these stakeholders and gain their perspectives is the first step in understanding the problem.

If the solution were simply to fix the articulated problems, then we would have a pretty good chance of being able to use the information received to put together piecemeal solutions. However, very little of that information is what IT needs to be, only what it shouldn’t be. Getting information from executive business leaders is the next step.

These conversations almost always begin with issues, which is fine for gaining additional perspective. The discussion must eventually turn to a positive statement of what the business seeks to do in the next 18 months (or pick a suitable length of time that is future-oriented enough for strategic purposes) and what contribution or capability IT will need to have in order to support the business objectives. Done well, that part of the discussion will be incredibly rich and will form most of the objectives for our solution.

But we’re not quite finished gathering information for our solution yet. Again, from executive business leadership, we’ll have to get some idea of any constraints for our solution. These usually take the form of budget, capital or time-to-results and may extend to dimensions of company values, strategic concerns, or “unwritten rules.”

For me, the most interesting part of the process is working with the executive business leadership and working through the “disconnects” between executive business leadership that inevitably arise in the discussions. Be prepared for several follow-up meetings for clarification and collaborative issue resolution before being able to create a first draft of the problem statement, with constraining parameters for the solution and what “success” looks like (complete with proposed top-level metrics and measures).

Usually, the document will need some tweaking before the executive leadership team fully buys into it. However long that takes, it is vital that this part of the process results in a very crisp and clear understanding by the executive team of the business problem that is being solved (actually now more appropriately phrased as what IT needs to do to support the business objectives) and what success looks like.

Next post: Business-Centric Change #2 – The Solution

Leaping Onto The Change Bandwagon

In most organizations where I have recently consulted, business executives are dissatisfied with IT. This dissatisfaction is usually because IT isn’t delivering what the business wants or needs, or it is perceived that IT costs are not in line with the value being delivered.

Last year’s BES posts expressed high expectations by executive leadership for IT to deliver on both critical business imperatives and cost improvements. Sadly, it would appear that this has not happened.

Whether real or perceived, this is an important problem to address because IT is now seen as contributing to the failure of achieving important business objectives and wasting significant budget dollars on low-value activities.

The size of the problem varies, and therefore the executive leadership appetite to address it does as well. But if it is a big problem, with critical business objectives missed and/or IT costs way out of proportion to the services provided, then why isn’t the problem being fixed?

The answer almost always can be classified as one of these three statements:

•    We are planning to fix the problem.
•    We are in the process of fixing the problem.
•    We have tried to fix the problem and it hasn’t worked.

When pressed for more detail about how the fix will be approached, or what actions are being taken, the response is usually an IT-centric one that focuses on process and organizational change.

Frankly, and from experience, I believe that an IT-centric approach to solving the problem is fundamentally flawed and will invariably lead to the result in the third statement.

Which brings us to the point of today’s post – the introduction of a new series.

Entitled “Business-Centric Change” this series will describe an approach to solving the problem (captioned in the first paragraph) of “IT isn’t delivering what the business wants or needs, or it is perceived that IT costs are not in line with the value being delivered” that is business-centric and IT-led.

Like BES, the BCC posts will appear weekly (or so, depending on my schedule). The first – entitled “The Problem” will be on the site next week. I hope that you enjoy the series and remember that your feedback and comments are always appreciated.

My First Attempt at Political Technology Commentary

President Obama will soon be appointing a Chief Technology Officer for the country. This has been known and discussed as one of the major features of the Obama ’08 Technology Plan (still available for review at the campaign web site).

This is an interesting “new” position. Our Federal Government already has a top-of-the-house Chief Information Officer role (the Administrator of the Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology at the Office of Management and Budget) that seems to have accountability for most, if not all, of the responsibilities articulated in the CTO role. Per the plan, CTO will specifically:

•    Ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century
•    Ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices
•    Focus on transparency, by ensuring that each arm of the federal government makes its records open and accessible as the E-Government Act requires
•    Focus on using new technologies to solicit and receive information back from citizens to improve the functioning of democratic government
•    Ensure technological interoperability of key government functions

Both CIO and Deputy CIO roles also exist at other levels in the vast Federal Executive Agency structure and many of these people are members of the Federal CIO Council.

Also, the nation will be getting a new head of the National Cyber Security Center in the Department of Homeland Security (a.k.a. “Cyber-Security Czar”) as part of the new administration as well. That position should not be confused with that of the CIO of the Department of Homeland Security.

If you’re beginning to become confused as to the structure of IT in the Federal Government, you are exactly where I am on that subject (although that really isn’t the point of this post).

Outside of the articulation of the new CTO role and its responsibilities, the rest of the plan is a statement of how technology (not just information technology) will be used to accomplish some important transformational goals. All of them to some extent rely on a critical enabler – the existence of a digital high-speed communications infrastructure – that is listed as a specific goal in the plan as well.

So the new administration appears to be tasking the new CTO with critical interagency work, the creation of a digital infrastructure and is planning to “Employ Technology and Innovation to Solve Our Nation’s Most Pressing Problems” (another technology-enabled set of goals) in the plan.

Sounds like a challenging job! Unfortunately, given my own experience with the way IT is structured in the Federal Government, I don’t believe that it is positioned for success as it is currently envisioned.

As noted earlier, CIO leadership is at multiple levels in the Federal Agency structure. A federated-style CIO Council exists, along with designated leaders for important activities, like Information Security. The initiatives that the new CTO is responsible for cut across Agencies/Departments and no authority (or budget) currently exists to accomplish them. Add to this the overlap with the Federal CIO (OMB) job and/or its limited success with inter-agency technology governance, and I just don’t see how the new role can be successful without substantial reengineering of IT decision-making authority.

In the private sector, this would take the form of a negotiation between the various IT groups about governance (architecture), funding (budget authority) and investment for IT for each IT service domain. A simplified decision-making authority matrix to be drafted might look something like this.

Translated to the task at hand, the IT groups participating would be from the Agencies (representing LOB IT), Departments (representing business-domain specific IT, like Treasury), the CIO Council (representing central IT to-date), the OMB CIO (ditto) and the CTO (ditto).

Their mission would be to agree on who gets to makes the decision on architectural direction, investment, and spending for each domain. The groups would need to normalize a bit, perhaps with a future state diagram showing one combined central IT organization under the CTO (?) consisting of the various architectural domains (Enterprise Architecture), an interagency Program Management Office, perhaps some sort of Managed Services Organization and Security function. The key would be to have strong support and sponsorship for this as the single central (?) Federal IT Organization.

Therein lies the major problem as I see it. As loathe as I usually am to come up with organizational solutions to technology problems, I believe that this case may be an exception. The new CTO role, if it is to be successful, should be a direct report to the President – a Cabinet-level position. Otherwise, it will lack direct political linkage to its sponsor and be at risk of becoming another great idea that languishes (like in the private sector) because the legacy structure will not allow it to move forward.

I’m sure that many of you have experiences where a position or program of work was less than successful because of its positioning within the organization. Given this is my first foray into this subject area; I’d love to hear your thoughts one way or another on my thinking here.

Also, because I’m quite confident in the ability of our Federal Government to “find” information on the Internet, I very respectfully offer the following:

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on the new job! Hope the move is going well and that you and your family are getting settled in the new place.

The information that you’ve seen on my site regarding the new CTO role is intended only as a suggestion. I’m sure that there are many things that you are working on to ensure the success of this new role.

That having been said, if you happen to wish to discuss this further, or perhaps need a special consultant on the matter, please give me a call on my mobile (224-234-8682) or email me at www.itstraighttalk.com and I’ll be happy to assist at my special new inaugural rate.

Thank you for your time.

Best Regards,

Eric Davis

(From FAQ) I’ve heard a lot of talk about the Value Proposition of IT. What is it?

Value, at least economically speaking, is simply what you receive for what you are spending. In determining the value of IT services, depending on the business and the particular service, that value may have other dimensions than cost. The value proposition of IT depends on the services offered by IT, the measures of value articulated for these services by the business, how well IT is delivering against those measures and the weighting of that performance across services.

For example, I would suggest that for commodity services, where industry standard measures of service quality exist and may be benchmarked against, that the main dimension of value is cost at the standard service level. For delivery of business solutions or capabilities, the main dimension of value may be speed to implement (versus the most economical method), thus enabling a business advantage in time to market. For other services, quality may be the most important dimension of value to the business.

The business plays a key role in ensuring that the appropriate value proposition is defined and realized. IT can help frame the discussion, but it is the business that has to articulate the appropriate weightings for the dimensions of value. From that information, and agreed-upon measures, an objective scorecard may be built and maintained to determine how well IT is delivering against that value proposition.

(From FAQ) Isn’t IT transformation to a managed services model a big deal – and what about the people in IT?

Before going further, let’s make an important distinction between transforming to the managed services model and outsourcing or multi-sourcing. One is not the other.

Implementing a managed services model gives you the tools to run IT like a business. That includes the ability to source services in different ways (insource, outsource, multi-source), but does not require it. The changes for IT people during the implementation of a managed services model are primarily in roles and responsibilities that correspond to new or modified service delivery processes. People’s jobs are changing. When implementing a multi-sourcing strategy, jobs are at stake.

The transformation to a managed services model is a big deal. It involves fundamental changes to processes, organization and technology. Extensive support is required from the Finance and HR functions. Customers of IT will interact differently with IT in procuring services. It’s a lot of change. In my experience, IT people can learn and operate successfully in the new paradigm fairly quickly – a matter of a few months – so long as the management team invests heavily in time to communicate the vision and value of the new managed services model (not just speeches, true interactive sessions) and provide training.

Implementing a multi-sourcing strategy is much more difficult to manage from a staff impact perspective. Presuming that you have already done the diligence and have a compelling case to pursue significant outsourcing of services, my advice is for full disclosure as soon as you have any sort of timeline for the process. If you are in an IT leadership role, you will soon find that your communications and staff interaction on this topic consume the lion’s share of your time. It’s time well spent, since you’ll want to minimize attrition – particularly of your best people, who know that they have options and can easily make a move.

Unfortunately, the answers that IT people most want to know (what happens to me, specifically) aren’t generally available until the end of the process. That is deeply unsatisfying to someone who is directly impacted. What I’ve found to be of value is to communicate throughout the process about what the various steps of the process are and will be known when.

The bottom line is that people will have choices to make and a time frame in which to make them. If someone is in the outsourced services scope, then the choices are generally pretty straightforward:

• A non-IT role at the current company
• An IT role that is not in-scope at the current company
• An IT role with the company that the services are sourced to
• Severance Package
• Retirement

The timing of when each of these will be known and available varies; so impacted staff will probably have multiple decisions to make. HR will be your best friend in helping to manage the information and processes for the various options.

Successful transformation programs invest heavily in an Organizational Change Management program of work that runs in parallel to the transformation workstream. These efforts are mostly communications-based and are vital in keeping the IT group informed and engaged during the transformation.

One of the most important points in these communications is that the transformation to a managed services model does not mean that IT jobs are being outsourced. In fact, unless both the goals of the business and IT transformation are best met by outsourcing as soon as possible, I would strongly suggest against the two efforts (IT transformation to a managed services model and IT outsourcing) being done as one – and then even so, I would caution that it will be a very bumpy ride for both the business and IT.

Again, the transformation to a managed services model positions IT to be able to source its services internally, externally or in any combination along the sourcing continuum. I believe that this multi-sourced model is the only way for IT to be competitive from cost, service quality and capability dimensions in today’s continuously changing global technology marketplace. However, it is highly advisable that the managed services structure first be in place and operational before implementing a multi-sourcing strategy.

Be prepared that no matter how well you communicate and execute this process, you will be the least popular person in IT for some time. Read Colin Powell’s Leadership Presentation – particularly the last page on “Command is Lonely.” It may help you though a difficult time.