Performance Controller

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results"...WC Print

Here is something to ponder. The Corporate Executive Board Company, says five years ago, less than 25% of business leaders rated their IT function’s effective to deliver the capabilities they needed. They go on to say in 2010 the number has not changed.

IT functions have strived tirelessly to understand demand, set priorities, deliver effectively, and capture value, yet the results still disappoint. Business and IT leaders alike feel they should be getting more—more efficiency, more innovation, and more value—from technology.

In their recently published study of the IT role its findings cover  5 levels of shift.

1. Shift 1: Information Over Process

2. Shift 2: IT Embedded in Business Services

3. Shift 3: Externalized Service Delivery

4. Shift 4: Greater Business Partner Responsibility

5. Shift 5: Diminished Standalone IT Role

At a practical level, in my work in business intelligence and information, I find so many business enabling discussions these days hinge on good information. This invariably leads to a discussion on the capability or lack thereof of IT, as the traditional owners, to deliver it. 

Being in the business end of business intelligence, I also observe the shift in the tasks to set up and coordinate information. As an activity that is now largely falling to the end user business functions like finance, marketing and operations with software vendors and specialist implementers working with them to make it all happen.

Like process applications that have long since been commoditized with highly advanced process packages, management information is now being delivered the same way. In large generalized database applications with configurable end users web tools for both administration and end user use now to deliver the information. There in is the issue for IT as they have become just environment managers with limited skill to be involved in the business strategically.

In many organizations I see significant investments that have occurred on complex systems, are, aside from being in use in the core process, scarcely understood technically by IT. The fact that IT defers the information based deployment task to market system vendors means they also devolve a once hallowed territory of process change management with it. So the argued best placed leaders on joining all the dots of the business processes, being IT, is now scarcely even aware.  

Among all the talk of engagement, alignment, and “being part of the business,” one assumption is never challenged—that for information technology to grow in strategic importance, so must the IT function.

But what if this is not the case?

What if a dedicated, standalone IT function is no longer the best option and the function’s resources and responsibilities were better located elsewhere?

What has occurred is vendors have become de-facto managers of change and are more often than the resident experts in inner workings of their client’s organizations. As cost pressures increase they have also becoming less tolerant and less willing to withstand the continuing conservative commodity based thinking of now quite limited in-house IT functions who try to hold onto power with things like the control of security. For this they are still needed to manage things networking and authentication although even that is changing. There is so much more to IT of course including redundancy standards and communications but the relentless shift continues to vendor services for IT and to cloud based computing for delivery of infrastructure management. With this being cut away from IT it is fast moving the direct control of the business functions who will naturally rely on end to end serviced IT models more and more.

Typically now applications all have their own infrastructures (servers etc.) with communication and hardware to fit the internet generally. And With major vendors are now spending huge sums investing in cloud infrastructure change is now inevitable and one-way from in-house IT. This totally new world of computing in the next few years will also see business knowledge based IT skills move to the  business to work in service based mode. As is the case with most small to medium sized business now who use low cost and even free service based models the big end of town businesses will also be fully outsourced to the service providers as a demand based service.

As to the timing and transition, the huge cloud based investment vendors like Microsoft and others speaks volumes. In the last three years the massive deployment of resources now sees Microsoft, for example, emerging as a high end hosting company. Of the 40,000 or so Microsoft based developers around the world it is estimated that 90% are currently focused on cloud based applications. This rapid move of the Microsoft business too, from traditional mass markets of desktop and database services to an infrastructure provider, will be seen very soon at all virtual levels

“The IT function of 2015 will bear little resemblance to its current state.  Many activities will devolve to business units, be consolidated with other central functions such as HR and Finance, or be externally sourced.  Fewer than 25% of employees currently within IT will remain, while CIOs face the choice of expanding to lead a business shared service group, or seeing their position shrink to managing technology delivery . . . This study argues that the changes will be rapid, permanent, and radical.  We have advocated for a decade that IT leaders become demand shapers, not order takers.  Similarly, we now recommend that IT leaders devote the time, energy, and resources to actively shape the coming transition.”

The quotes are taken from the paper that you can download here, entitled The Future of Corporate IT . Authors are The Corporate Executive Board, a consulting firm. This provides research and analysis to business executives and professionals around the world. In addition on my recommended reading list is a post by   Irving Wladawsky-Berger called IT in the Age of the Cloud In this he makes balanced comment of these issues.

 

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A popular myth in business and life is that it is only money that motivates. Consider why you go to learn to play a piano or join a speech club and why you find so many professionals doing more creatively work for others for free when their employer pays them for the same type of work.

End user tools such as Gmail plus backend server tools like Lynx and Apache are some of the world’s highest used technologies. These are examples of things that would have never happened were they not motivated to be created by something other than money.

It may be true that the more money works to get better results when the task being done involves mechanical skills based on a set of rules. Then the more you scale up the pay as the  reward the more likelihood there is for a better result.

However MIT and other studies conclusively find that once a task calls from even rudimentary cognitive skills, the results most often get worse when you use more pay as the incentive to get more results. Profit motive then gets unhinged from purpose and bad things start to happen.

This is discussed in this Royal Society for encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) Animate Video – “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”

This calls into question that if you reward something you get more of the behavior you want and if you punish something you get less.

The video that is has had extensive viewing since it was published on you Tube in April 2010.

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and the workplace. www.theRSA.org

It bears no more comment except to say it may the best 10 minutes of essential information you can get to help you understand and pass your next creative leadership challenge.

 

Here also is the live version of Dan Pink’s RSA talk if you prefer to see him in action.

I wonder what others think?

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Who in their right mind would ever want to become a project manager?

It is a thankless task that puts you in the middle of someone who wants something to change to get a benefit and someone else who does not want to change because it involves unsettling what may be a comfortable state. For the latter too it may even mean they will lose a benefit they already have.

And then as you turn inside out and do cartwheels to get everyone moving to get it done you always get squeezed to give them more value under the same scope.

And if you take it then managing people, no matter what your style, the famous 4 stage process cannot be avoided. Forming Norming Storming and Performing stages are so important to be mindful of to make sure it gets done. They cannot be avoided and when it seems to be going pear shaped you need to know what stages your in and the skills needed to get it back on track .

Getting people committed to a well thought through plan is the first trick. Then keeping them boxed in and focused to get on with the work done is next. Then as the going gets tough and people try to slip out or change the game plan you need to sort out their issues so they have no choice but to perform like a team and get it all done. All that takes a bit of work.

In the end, regardless of the journey, bringing about to change to a state of being, so a process can be improved, is what project managers do. Once done the process manger tales over.

In business, it is said, the best project managers come from the business with support from IT. Or when projects are managed  by IT they must have a strong business presence. IT is clearer on managing and changing environments, so often have the best project manager skills and the mindset to take on that role. But the business cannot abstain and needs to have project leadership too. Either way they both need to be involved.

AND DONT FORGET THE USER.  LEAVE THEM OUT AND YOUR PROJECT IS DEAD. Many projects when abdicated by users to technical people will see it declared done once the technical stage is complete. That may even include some form of user sign off. But then getting the value falls to the beneficiaries who are stuck with the change. And that’s where they fail if they are not involved along the way.

Getting cooperation of people who need to change for a purpose and then making it happen is a tough job. Good luck to everyone who takes it on. The rewards are so much more than personal credit.

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Getting people to do new work and change needs skill. In business and especially large enterprises change takes more than skill. It also needs good teaming with binding cross functional management dialog processes.

Getting objectives clear from the top can be tricky, but the hard job comes getting buy-in and finding a way to align people to change and keep them there. Both are critical steps.

Then as things proceeds you need a good leader to manage the roadblocks and keep it on track. Having a champion is vital too but even champions can falter as threats emerge and cloud the issues and as luddites undermine.

It is said that people change so organizations get the value or benefit. It is not the reverse as many think. So getting commitment is vital to ensure stakeholders can see a win. With nothing to gain or lose for the people effected, change projects will inevitably fail.

When change is needed, bad habits are the most difficult to break even when obvious to all. Operations people will always do operations work first and in the way that works for them even though they may appear supportive of change. The reality is, if they don’t have something at stake to get them involved when it comes to show time, they will be busy.

In our organizations we often find a popular fountain of knowledge where we can get all the answers. This is usually sees one or two people in so called indispensible jobs who are like gold in the business. But unfortunately when it comes to change if they are not managed well they may become dinosaurs and actually hold progress back. Identify them is important. Dinosaurs, friendly or not, become intent and divisive to survive. Taking them out of their operational job and placing them in a important roles as subject matter experts in a change project is often a good strategy. If they join the team and focus well you are likely to have a great outcomes all round.

At the organizational level to be successful you must find a way to engage and make change a continuous process. Selling is such a process that does that and works well when people buy. So when embarking on change we must consider selling and communications as a key ongoing part of projects.

Here is a useful perspective from change-management.com

Individual change management

Organizations don’t change, individuals do. No matter how large of a project you are taking on, the success of that project ultimately lies with each employee doing their work differently, multiplied across all of the employees impacted by the change. Effective change management requires an understanding for and appreciation of how one person makes a change successfully. Without an individual perspective, we are left with activities but no idea of the goal or outcome that we are trying to achieve.

Organizational change management

While change happens one person at a time, there are processes and tools that can be used to facilitate this change. Tools like communication and training are often the only activities when no structured approach is applied. When there is an organizational change management perspective, a process emerges for how to scale change management activities and how to use the complete set of tools available for project leaders and business managers.

This next graphic illustrates some linkages of organization process with individual behavioral aspects important for change .

Substring activity aside, delivering or selling change to others and/or responding to change forced on us by market competitiveness is at the very heart of what management and markets are all about. Making it all work requires attention to all these areas and more.

What drives a change is often a need to be able to respond faster to market pressure or simply grow the sales to achieve a stated business ambition.  Hence aging core systems and processes may first need replacing to allow ongoing improvement. As stagnant systems fast reach their used by date, resistance to change is often the highest, as people hang on to their comfort zones.

Like selling, long cycles are not good and invariably fail. And to a salesman, getting and maintaining total commitment with no way back, is the first and last step to shore up against risk to ensure a success. In change projects it is the same so work is best competed in small stages so success can be declared and continuous improvement resumed quickly.

But its not done there. To make it stick you then need the added energy to exploit the value in the new state with the old state now completely gone.

 

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Here is a video we did for internal discussion:

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