Category Archives: Stuff that Interests Me

What’s the value of a CIO?

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The role of the CIO continues to be debated – operational? strategic? digital? data? innovative? keeping the lights on?  It is a mish-mash of expectations, skill sets, and desired outcomes.  These days it seems like CIOs are expected to do everything from keeping the lights on for the operations of the business to creating the next new innovation to be competitive and differentiated in the market.  This comes in part from the fact that it wasn’t very long ago that having what we now consider to be operational was actually innovative and differentiated.  The ERP systems of the 90s that companies actually told their customers about because it was SO COOL are now expected to be a part of how you run your business – they are table stakes. So CIOs who made their mark implementing those systems are now saddled with keeping them running in the face of rapid changes in technology, business expectations, customer expectations, and product support.

But one thing remains true – a C-suite level role is generally about a component of the business that is a strategic asset or a strategic differentiator. CIOs became popular in the 1980s and 1990s – prior to that, few companies had a C-level role focused on technology. Did you know that prior to 1990, the majority of companies did not have a CIO role defined?  So it is a young role, just hitting adolescence as a fixture in an organization. And we all know that’s an awkward time of life – full of strange things happening, changes, and growth.  What’s your thought on the role of the CIO in your organization? It is conflicted today?

The WSJ recently had an interesting article on the topic of the CIO, check it out for some good perspective.

Who do you think was the first CIO of a major US corporation, and when was the role assigned?  An interesting little research project.

Transformation? I’m not sure that means what you think it means.

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Lately it seems like everything is “transforming” (when it isn’t being “disrupted”).  There’s transformative change, transformation of businesses, and a need to transform or “have a transformation”.  It often sounds very glamorous and exciting. It is also often described to me as being something being done for other people.  As in “the only way we can transform our business is if everyone (else) starts doing things differently.”  It is rare that someone says to me “we have to transform our business and that means I have to start doing things differently.”

That’s where I have a problem. For me, transformative change means that I feel three very conflicting emotions, and they materialize in my stomach (so I guess I could go on a “transformation diet” hmm…)

  1. I feel excitement that gives me butterflies in my stomach
  2. I feel anxiety that makes my stomach do flip flops
  3. I feel a sense of loss that is gut wrenching

If any one of those is missing, it is usually not what I would call transformative. It might be a big change, but it isn’t rocking my world. I have to be willing to own getting myself right with all three of those emotions to step out of my comfort zone and start to do thing differently, and to help the people around me to do thing differently.

Maybe that’s not everyone’s definition, but that’s what I mean when I say I’m working on transformation, and I challenge my clients to think in those terms. I get that it isn’t easy – especially the 3rd one. But transformation should be hard – otherwise it isn’t that big of a deal, right?

Commoditizing knowledge and expertise

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Here’s a great article by Jessie Hempel from Fortune Magazine on the ways in which information fuels our economy today, and going forward.  It ties to my interest in the future of work and how knowledge is playing a role in shaping what we understand to be work. Tools like Watson (highlighted in the article) will challenge the assumptions around knowledge workers, and what it means to be an ‘expert’ by creating new ways to quickly aggregate and understand massive amounts of data in a specific and contextual way.  What happens then?  We will find out….. companies like the grocery chain Kroger’s (highlighted in the article) are experimenting with how to leverage Watson in their call centers.  It will be fascinating to watch and see what happens.

If it isn’t uncomfortable, it probably isn’t “Disruptive”

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Seems everyone is talking about disruption (in a positive way) these days.  Just this past week, I’ve seen executives waxing poetic over how their company is ‘disruptive’, because they demonstrate the characteristics described in an HBR article on disruption in their industry. Hmmm…. I thought…. if it is described in an HBR article, it probably isn’t incredibly radical, right?  I mean, it is understood well enough that HBR is writing about it.

It makes me think of all the people who say they want ‘innovation’ in their culture, but what they really want is the output of successful innovation. They don’t really want to do the hard work of believing in and then cleaning up after the failed innovations that are an inevitable part of creativity.  Innovation takes a willingness to fail, it takes accepting sunk costs as possible losses in the service of potential future success. It requires investment without a guarantee of return, and taking a long view on profits. It means not having an efficient process with predictable results. See my post on September 16 for a link to an article from the NYT on just that thought, and another on September 19 for a link to an Information Week article on a similar vein.

Likewise, when people say to me “what we need around here is disruptive change!” or “I want to be a disruptive force around here!”, I always ask a few questions.  First, I ask “what does it feel like to be disrupted?”.  Second, “what does it feel like to be disruptive?”. And third, “what does it feel like to be in a disruptive environment?”.  Those three questions tend to make people pull up short, stumble over their answers, and the results are usually timid and incremental instead of bold and slightly crazy.  I’m sorry, but timid and incremental don’t equal disruptive to me.

We need to stop throwing bold words around and trying to make them fit into timid visions. You know what?  It is OK to want to do things incrementally. Maybe you aren’t at a point where risking your career is a worthy undertaking. Maybe your organization needs to play it safe for good reasons. Embrace it and make the most of it.

If you truly want disruptive change than be willing to accept that it is uncomfortable. It doesn’t always feel good. It isn’t always exciting.  Sometimes it is scary, and hard, and forces you to reevaluate things you hold dear. The return you get for accepting the lows is that the returns can be amazing. You can find yourself moved to new heights in your industry, or moved into new industries. You can go on a great adventure, if you are willing so risk an adventure gone very wrong.  If you can honestly say that you are OK with that, then be a disruptive force of change in your company.  Push your company to be disruptive in your industry. Just please don’t abuse the language by implying that incremental changes are disruptive in nature, and that innovation can somehow be managed into a neat and tidy process with predictable results.

I always tell clients, “if you already know what the answer is, don’t pay me to tell you.  If you can predict what innovation will produce, it probably isn’t innovative.” And now I’m also telling them, “if it isn’t uncomfortable, it probably isn’t disruptive.”

 

What will people think?

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It was confirmed earlier this month that Voyager I has left our solar system – the first humna powered craft to do so. It takes a while to confirm in part because the tiny spacecraft is so far away from home, it takes a long time for it to communicate back – what we are hearing from it now actually happened a while ago.

It was launched in the 1970s and has been transmitting amazing images back to us ever since. As I read about its on board technology, which includes 8 track tapes and less memory than the lowest of low grade cell phones, it got me wondering about what people will think of my fancy IPhone, high def DVD players, and flat screen TV in 30 or 40 years.  Will it be as quaint as what is on board Voyager?  Will it still be reliably transmitting anything at all?  Who knows.  But in its day, Voyager was ahead of its time, outfitted with the latest and greatest, and few could have forecasted that it could be out-tech-geeked what we would carry in our pockets today.

Innovation requires space for thinking – are you willing to give that?

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I wrote a post earlier this summer about innovation and creativity, pointing out that many companies say they want it, but what they really want are the outputs.  They aren’t necessarily willing to embrace the messiness that comes with it.  Today in the New York Times there was a great opinion piece about creativity and how we systematically eradicate it from the workplace and from the skills of our workers while saying we ‘really’ want it.  Managing innovation really means managing the space around it – providing breathing room for life to happen. Are you willing to provide that in your company?

My favorite quote from the article:

“Creativity requires giving self-directed original thinkers space for the missteps and dead ends that are often prerequisites for groundbreaking work”.

Check out the full opinion piece here.

The Innovation of Loneliness

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Check out this great animation by Shimi Cohen about the influence digital social networks are having on how we connect, how we have conversations, and how we over-manage presence.  I thought it was a facinating point that “social” gives the opportunity to select, to craft, to manage how we sound, how we look, and what we say (of course, for many that is a learning process, but we are getting better and better at it in the digital-social world). Real life requires us to be vunerable to the silly moment, the stupid comment, and for those with whom we have a relationship to be forgiving and kind, right to our faces. Real relationships must endure hardship, they must have trust that miscommunication can be overcome, and that reality will not disintegrate the relationship.

Many thanks to my colleague Sean McKenna for bringing this to my attention!

Don’t be boring (advice from Jeff Bezos)

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In The Washington Post’s article about the acquisition of the Post by Jeff Bezos, he was quoted as telling a small group of Post reporters that all businesses “need to be young forever,” and that “If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s. The No. 1 rule has to be: Don’t be boring.”

He also emphasized three things that have worked well for him at Amazon: “Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.” Any industry and any business can benefit from remembering these lessons from a company that has continually reinvented itself since its start in 1994 as an online bookstore in a world where such a thing was largely unimagined.

Are you shifting your services to meet the needs of an aging customer base, or are you continually reinventing to meet the needs of the newest generation of customers in your markets? You probably need to be doing both. Giving a hard look at your products and services to evaluate them with fresh customer eyes can be painful, but it is critically important. Give it a try. You might start to see a need to invent something new.

Click here for the full article, dated Sept. 4, 2013, by Steven Mufson

The power of rhetoric to change the world

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I listened today to the original footage of the speech Martin Luther King gave where he declared “I have a dream….”  It was a powerful reminder of how words can change the world. 50 years later, much has been accomplished, and much remains. I asked some colleagues to share with me what they have done in the last day, week, month to really connect with someone who is different from them. Different in visible ways, and in less visible ways.  What have they done to include someone in their world?  The answers were encouraging, startling, sad, and hopeful. What would you say?

To see the speech, check it out: