Unlearn, Unlead & Then Lead

Unlearning and un-leading (I just made that word up as I got spellcheck error) is unnatural for leaders especially C-level leadership.  Leaders are hardwired, fused with their learning/experiences of the past into their brains. The areas of business acumen, time tested management principles and process practices  they have acquired over the years are hard to let go. And it is hard to let go your experience & unlearn what you have already learnt. I believe with technology, evolution/erosion of business models and changing marketplace and design dynamics shifting rapidly its important to unlearn faster and keep a clear mind in absorbing how wisdom can show a different way. It may turn out to be a innovation or seizing a opportunity that creates a niche, or demolition and rebuilding can only come from unique insight. For CIO'/CTO's you want to be vulnerable with other business leaders inside your enterprise as well as outside to keep an open mind moving from being technology distributor to becoming a strategic counselor. I like this latter word because it means going out and conversing with other business leaders, listening and listening more and asking a lot of questions. Revealing up front you don't  know much but are willing to listen and unlearn and then learn again through unlearning. It almost shows that you are weak but believe me this is a powerful technique.

When its comes to subordinates, teams and the departments your lead - ,unlead first meaning listen and keep listening and make yourself vulnerable to the point of acting dumb. Almost opposite of giving orders and showing who is the boss!. The objective then is to move from just collecting and analyzing data to taking an outside-in approach. There are outside data available compare with internal data your staff is telling you about and then merge for effective decision making. Leading will follow. The prevalent popular ideas of big data and making sense of crunching large amounts of data it to get unique insights is nothing but I call the process of waiting and using wisdom for making decisions.  Finally the last part is to delegate and empower effectively so you can set aside time to dream, engage leadership to know their dreams and give insights to propel their vision. Unlearn, Unlead and then lead!!

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Disrupt or Be Disrupted!

As competition in the free market increases every day - business models and business strategies continue to evolve. Innovation will drive disruption in business models from players that will disrupt the current practices of existing business's in order to create a niche in the marketplace. The challenge for existing business's is to continue to disrupt or die in this game. Famous examples of a disrupter was Netflix who with its innovative web content streaming for movies, TV shows and a robust supply chain resulted in the closing down of traditional movie rental shops like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. However players like Amazon, Hulu, Google have entered in as disrupters in this space threatening the very disrupter (Netflix) and stopping their march of web-media delivery domination. It seems like it is a familiar pattern the disrupter comes into the market with an innovation, flys high for a while and then gets disrupted with evolving market and technological changes. As a CIO I feel the pressures of evolving strategies, changing the game plan from time to time (though it makes your internal staff and management discomfortable) I believe it comes with role to warn colleagues of "conventional thinking. CIO's have to recognize when competitive strategies (tested and proven) can become inherent weakness. This inherently becomes a pattern of thinking that develops over the course of time as management gets into the practice of "this is/was always the way its done here". This creates myopia and inertia that brings the organization's to complete stand still. CIO's who confine their interests and practices only to leading technology and improving business processes will surely not make any significant impact in their tenure. They need to constantly have an entrepreneurial spirit, have the ability to tinker and experiment, know the heart beat and pulse of your customers and stakeholders and reduce unhealthy interdependencies. The four things I just mentioned need to be taken apart one by one:

Entrepreneurial Spirit: This is the ability develop a peripheral vision where if we can help the bottom line by distinguishing yourself with a innovative product or service that brings value add you will survive and thrive. For example when Walmart couldn't enter the financial services market as a regular bank they joined hands with American Express to create Bluebird credit cards.

Experiment: Top managers who allow for experimentation encourage innovation. The Post It note innovation at 3M, or the ad's appearing in Google Mail are examples of management allowing for experimentation. It is to recognize that most of them will fail but some will succeed. It's about allowing for a culture of trying out different things and then measuring what worked and what didn't.

Know the heartbeat of Your Customers & Stakeholders: When you have middle players or vendors that separate you directly from your customers or stakeholders either build mechanisms that give you good feedback or eliminate them so you can avoid not knowing what your customers or stakeholders. You cannot afford this.

Eliminate Interdependencies: If you have business partners who are in the same field avoid the interdependency. For example Netflix has all its content delivered through Amazon cloud services, now that Amazon has entered the same space the interdependency is not good. Google had to delink from Apple because they want to be major dominant player in the mobile space. Avoiding interdependencies in your supply chain is also very important if a supplier is threat or in direct or indirect competition.

Thoughts for today,

Sam Kurien

Three takeaway's - maybe 4!

Last night was revisiting a talk by Seth Godin on Tribes. Some important takeaways for the new year as I post this first post of 2013.

The new way of leading is about:

1. Challenge the Status quo - Why are we doing this?
2. Create a Culture (Tribe). People want you to step up and lead.
3. Commit to a philosophy in believing in people and empower them to achieve. The few strong believers you have in your (idea/philosophy/mission/vision)- they will take it forward!

Lastly - Figure out the people part and the technology gets a whole lot simpler.

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Integrative Thinking

For a last few months I have been baffled with the idea of a integrative thinking before I realized that "hey there are entire theories written on it" (nothing new under the sun).  What is integrative thinking? Before I get into it, let me give you insights with what my observations have been so far in management thinking process. Growing up in the east with a western form of education, my primary management shaping & education was about moving from point A to C in a logical progression. If it was moving people from less desired state A to desired state C, you create chaos isolate the wrongs and move in linear fashion towards C. However in the eastern context where I lived the thinking was primarily circular in nature. Where the idea of getting to C may not be a exact linear process but may also have relational and time components that are not always strictly adhered to. Then there is the Jewish paradoxical way of thinking where except for the absolute truth all other ideas are held in the perfect tension of diametrically opposite ideas. They rest in the middle and the solution always lies not in either or but an entirely fresh mindset of ideas or solution that emerge out of that kind of paradoxical thinking. Now these observations are not new, but revelation-ary to me as I think about the paradoxical integrative thinking process.

Integrative thinking may not be a Jewish idea but certainly practiced by many of their scholars, philosophers and scientists for thousands of years. It is very much permeated in their culture, education and lifestyle.  A wikepedia entry or possible definition about integrative thinking states:

"Integrative Thinking is a field in Applied Mind Science which was originated by Graham Douglas in 1986. He describes Integrative Thinking as the process of integrating intuition, reason and imagination in a human mind with a view to developing a holistic continuum of strategy, tactics, action, review and evaluation for addressing a problem in any field. A problem may be defined as the difference between what one has and what one wants. Integrative Thinking as described may be learned by applying the SOARA (Satisfying, Optimum, Achievable Results Ahead) Process of Integrative Thinking devised by Graham Douglas to any problem with which the learner is dealing.The SOARA Process of Integrative Thinking employs a comprehensive and easily remembered set of triggers of internal and external knowledge. This facilitates the making of connections between what may have been regarded as unrelated parts of a problem."

Roger Smith's definition who is also credited for this theory writes: "...integrative thinking is the ability to constructively face the tensions of opposing models and instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generating a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new model that contains elements of the individual models, but it is superior to each." 

It seems in linear method of thinking our impulse is to determine what is right, less risky and by a process of linear reasoning and rationale - eliminating the wrong. This often discredits us as we don't necessarily have time or the necessary comfort zone of dealing with opposing models. Successful leaders often don't use linear or circular thinking. This leads me to reflect of past observations in successful leaders like Jack Welch, Steve Jobs or Bob Young who seem to have made decisions not using linear or circular thinking but clearly paradoxical integrative thinking which brought them immense success in the marketplace. They have developed this unique ability to hold opposing tensions and come up with an entirely different approach that doesn't neatly fit in the either or category. It seems integrative thinkers keep in mind relevant factors don't necessarily focus on obvious ones. Integrative thinkers also love looking at multi-directional touch points and non-linear relationships between variables compared to linear thinkers who are naturally bound to think about the logical interaction of variables.

For me the most obvious ways integrative thinkers are different from linear or circular thinkers are they see the whole and see how scale-able the solution can be in balancing how an innovative solution can itself resolve opposing tensions.

In future posts I may delve into finding real world examples to process this through till then....

My thoughts,

Sam Kurien.

Service Design

I have talked about Service Design in terms of Enterprise Architecture strategies but take a look of another video from Design Consultancy firm Continuum. I like the emphasis of connecting everything together so one message, and your set of core values is communicated through multiple touch points.

   

One of my senior leaders in the organization calls the same concept using the analogy of building ramps to connect to the highway which we nurture to build relationships with the customer, our end user or FAMILY!!

 Thoughts,

 Sam Kurien

One of the Best Videos I have seen on Scrum...enjoy!

I like the flexibility of Agile development methods, the idea of great tool is to spend less time with it and produce great results that match with business objectives, mission and Strategy.

Thoughts,

Sam KurienPublish Post

Key Components of Enterprise Portfolio Management

When organizations grow in business complexity in terms of products and services they offer, the senior management is always concerned with if resources are being effectively used and if the stakeholders (internal as well as external) are getting the right returns on their investments. Hence in the market lots of software products that do multi-portfolio management of projects and programs. Most of the products out their aim at managing the project life cycles but a true EPM will take into consideration the entire top-down planning approach to include strategic planning, investment analysis, capacity planning and tune it with the components of Demand & Change management in lieu of projects that are being executed. They also thus take into account resource management and pop in the dashboard metrics related to them with the monies or finances being allocated and thus incorporating or integrating components of Financial management.

Strategic Planning in management of enterprise portfolios entails about how mission and objectives align with the strategies and tactics employed in execution of projects. A true EPM will thus allow to manage trade-offs before taking or executing that strategic path, allow for accurate assessment of allocation of funding and staffing and most importantly employ strategy that covers the entire business continuum plans.

Investment models within portfolios then make it simple if employed correctly within EPM to identify the risks associated, calculate the cost, evaluate the value variances, and give clues how best to optimize the project investments, balance innovations to sustain business continuum processes.

This then from a operational point of view helps in portfolio management to plan for capacity where demands of the business and resources are matched to support the key business strategies. A EPM software will thus give you an understanding where the resource are lacking, what is the excess capacity that can be transferred or reserved, and forecast resource capacity within the framework of roles and responsibilities of individuals on various teams at different times on various projects. Capacity planning is closely aligned with metrics that demand management cycles produce like number of work requests, status checks, incident and problem requests, mean time between failures, life cycle reviews etc.

At the granular level of EPM then is the ability to track projects, their scope, time lines and actual costs to the project value to the Enterprise. Tracking of project times against expenses, managing associated risks, and getting quick snapshot views of projects and their progress in lieu of organizational objectives.  The financial management and resource management are tied in closely  and portfolio manager can look in using the EPM software that link organizational financials to project plans and strategic initiatives to the final operational delivery of products, programs and services.  I personally haven't seen a EPM that gives clues or hints to what is the level of strategic alignment in terms of operational delivery of the four P's (programs, projects, plans and people) to overall strategy in a assigned % form even if there are lots of qualitative data involved.

Finally on my wish-list would be plug-ins for EPM's that will allow for high level integration with all office products and project management software's to give operational PM's up to date instructions and get up to date feedback on projects in action which in turn populate the EPM dashboard.

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Change Is the Only Constant

Everybody talks about "Change" and importance of "Change management" as the only "constant" with dynamics in the global economy changing rapidly. Global competition necessitates that traditional organizations service or product line models incorporate innovation for on-going differentiation.  However little is said about the Change Agent leaders who lead this change. One of our clients (I will not mention the name) is going through a change management process. My observations on this are little effort has been made by the leadership in understanding the business model of how and why the change needs to be done along the lines how to lead by participative trust. Instead the model of "divide and conquer" is assumed making the change management process a painful, chaotic and chasing after the wind affair.

I think the fair questions that a change management leader needs to ask before he embarks on one are:

1. What are the main dimensions of innovation that can be brought before disrupting a business model holistically?
2. How do I enable my organization to pursue business model innovation?
3. How does the role of technology, software and people integrate in supporting my business transformation?

I feel answering those three questions goes in parallel with self introspection within the change leaders and may translate to something like:

1. How am I contributing to build this organization and how can I involve the existing people so that growth takes place in them as well?
2. How can I be innovative myself ...what the changes that I personally need to make before I dictate?
3. How am I using technology, software and people skills to support my transformation in alignment with the business transformation?

 Circling back then on the innovation organization go through different models of business innovation to facilitate change this can be customer-centric, process innovation centric, or supply chain centric. In the past lot of emphasis has been given to customer centric innovation but management specialists have realized the internal stakeholders are also a type of customer who make up the organization and provide the services. If change is not accepted by the them, change management and change initiatives will fail, even if you alienate them or throw them out of the organization.

My suggestions are simple here:

1. Understand why the change and outlay the metrics for transparent discussion
2. Be the change first before you dictate change.  
3. Involve everybody in the road map. This takes time but is very essential. There are proponents who may say we don't have that kind of time...but believe me if this is not done well ...we will be spending lot more time and resources fixing stuff. 
4. Improve responsiveness and service with love and trust. (Boy this is a hard one!!) 
5. Optimize pricing, think or creative sources of funding.
6. Research, monitor and gather feedback, incorporate back the good and refine the process. 

Change is the only constant but how we manage this change will enable our constancy in the marketplace.


Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Change Management Process

True to my previous post entry the service transition phase heavily depends on the the Change management process and can be enumerated to have the following, I have attempted to keep my explanation blurbs small and self explanatory:

1) Steps : The steps are the actions an ITIL implementer will take in handling a change, including handling issues and unexpected events during the service transition

A good idea to remember here is why is the change implemented, what benefits will it derive, the risks associated to it and what impact will it bring in the service delivery.

2) Sequence: as the word suggests is the chronological order in which steps should be taken with any dependencies and co-processing that is or may be involved.

3) Responsibilities: Include the definitions and descriptions of tasks undertaken by individuals and teams.

4)  Time Definitions: Will encompass the timescales, thresholds, and schedules for the actions to be undertaken.

5) Escalation Procedures: Escalation procedures specify who should be contacted and the timing for this contact.

The primary goal of Change management is to respond to change and the sources are mostly customers, competition and market threats or opportunities. The objective of the CM process then becomes that all changes are recorded, evaluated, authorized, prioritized, planned, tested, implemented and documented.

Thoughts for today...

Sam Kurien

Availability Management

On continuing to discuss infrastructure management processes - the objectives of Availability management process can be summarized as the following:

• To produce and maintain an appropriate and up-to-date Availability Plan that accurately reflects current and future needs of the organization.
• To offer advice and guidance to all other areas of the organization and IT on availability-related issues.
• To ensure that availability achievements meet or exceed targets.
• To assist with the diagnosis and resolution of availability-related incidents and problems.
• To evaluate the influence of any changes on the Availability Plan and on the performance and capacity of all services and resources. 
• To ensure that all cost-effective measures to improve the availability of services are implemented. 

I like the fact that Availability Managements processes incorporate reactive and proactive activities.  We can't get away from reactive activities as service level activities are dynamic in nature hence involve monitoring, measuring, fulfilling, analyzing and fixing problem on unavailability. Proactive activities refer to more into planning, designing, re-designing  and process improvement steps. So we see reactive activities are operational in nature whereas proactive activities of Availability management process fall under more planning functions.

Thoughts on Availability Management.

Sam Kurien

Fit Analysis- Is it Business ‘Fit’ or Technical ‘Fit’?

Enterprise Architects/IT Teams along with their business counterparts struggle with the idea of how to effectively engage the senior leadership regarding an application system that clearly does not fall in architectural/technology standard or simply the business standard. Recently talking to senior leader in our company his suggestion was – IT seems to have too much time on its hands to do a “What If” analysis. The comment didn’t catch me by surprise as the individual has hard time understanding not just technical but the business side of things too. A simple technique called FIT analysis can help in preparing a presentation for the senior leadership. The objectives mainly revolve around convincing the management about validating the IT road map for an application, make a strategic decision for better IT alignment and better maintenance of your application portfolios.

In Fit Analysis the first step is to always answer the question what is the business requirement or need that is trying to be met or in other words what is the problem we are trying to solve if its initiation of a project. Answering this question is an iterative task and covers more than one point on the vertical axis. The next step is to answer the question how the relevant business requirement fits or meets the technology standards in place, or if the organization is in transition towards a IT alignment roadmap the iterative process is carried out in asking the questions how “technical fit” is the application going to be. The result can be mapped out in a matrix quadrant with x-y axis.The result is four quadrants which are identified as “A” through “D.”

Quadrant A: High Business Fit but Low Technical Fit.

Projects or applications that fall into high business fit and low technical fit Quadrant A have a strong case from the business front but weak support or problerms in implementing on the technical front a good example here is at work we have a mission critical membership application piece written seven years ago, time to update it has long gone past but the lethargy of the management to change it or put substantial effort to revamp it lacks. On the other hand the code base is hard to maintain, is older technology and don’t meet upgrading or current IT standards. Sometimes an application or project may have a high business fit because the application owner or the project initiator has power of say or decision making but in reality the application may have a low business fit with other corporate strategies or a low technology fit that hinders standards alignment.

Quadrant B: Low Business Fit and Low Technical Fit.

Sometimes applications and projects fall into a category where it is a low business fit and a low technical fit. At work we have an application that does not have a monetary value or even a perceived benefit value, yet time and resources are spend sometimes behind these small applications. Support of replacing such systems in an organization is strong but again it hinges on who the application or program owner is. Traditionally the application remains without any measurement of the perceived benefit.

Quadrant C: Low Business Fit and High Technical Fit.

Applications and projects that fall into this quadrant do not have a strong business support but have a strong IT support because of its meeting the IT alignment standards. When this happens it becomes imperative for IT to do more detailed  "what if" analysis of how it affects the business ROI and find substantial reasons as to how it plays into the strategic positioning of the benefits matrix in the organization. The important thing here for enterprise architects is also to show how other functional requirements can be added or scaled to make it more relevant or congruent with being business fit.

Quadrant D: High Business Fit and High Technical Fit.

Applications and projects that are mapped into this quadrant typically have strong support from both the business and technology. This quadrant is the most comfortable quadrant for the EA. The EA does not have to worry convincing the stakeholders for undertaking such projects as most of the times they are mission critical.

Effectiveness of the Tool

This tool is most effective when this exercise is carried out in partnership with stakeholders or application owners most of the time senior leadership. The management is asked to plot or give their take on Business Fit and Technical Fit and rationale or reports they want to generate. The IT architect takes this rationale and along with the CIO  story boards the technical side and comes up with a model of how optimally can this application move towards being business fit and technical fit keeping IT alignment in mind. The plotted data will give how close the points fall to Quadrant D and then decisions are to be made are we going to go for it or not. Or go for it keeping strategic advantage in mind.

Thoughts,

Sam Kurien

Business Analysis Cost Matrix

I have long maintained the view that cost accounting is art and science. You can master the mechanics and science for a given industry or domain but the art is a debatable matter. Part of every cost accounting is the function of budgeting and it usually falls under two spectrum one is accounting for every cost possible and fix the costs and spend strictly around the allocated costs, but in real world we know this is sometimes not accurately possible so we operate within margins, this is my favorite method, the other is what is practiced in the industry most of the times that is to take estimated costs of the items and take an educated guess about things that you cannot account for or allocate x amount of resources add all of it and spend what you can afford as operations pan out.  The first approach when integrating technology as a strategic component becomes inflexible because in three or five year cycles corresponding maintenance and service cycles do not match with your cost accounting schedules. Also new initiatives and new projects cannot be thought of to react to market conditions. The companies that enforce the first method strictly are like elephants strapped under the weight of inflexibility and unable to innovate because of the fiscal straps from the CFO and the CFO wonders why IT solutions are not up to date. The other spectrum is where top dog has the final say what can be spend and what cannot be spend which also can stall innovation or it’s a hit and miss game. 

So Is there a middle approach that can marry cost accounting effectively with IT integration, alignment and new project initiatives.  The idea is to avoid shooting from the hip or avoid extreme control. My proposition is to develop the business analysis function in such detailed way that an organization can have a matrix system of decision making where all the details and outputs of a business analysis research plan can be plugged in and decision for  “yay” or “nay”. The CFO and the CIO are strategic members of this team along with the business analysts where infrastructure, cause/cost for project, market needs, market analysis, expected outcomes, expected returns and requirements strength are all producing outputs that determine significance for the pre-determined ratio of acceptability.  This ratio of acceptability is something the senior management decides in terms of overall profitability and direction they want the organization to move towards. I personally think this can be game changer but the catch is development of such an business analysis matrix that aligns with cost accounting takes time to develop along with the thorough process of a fine tuned business analysis machinery where we have expert BA’s collecting the requirements keeping the cost matrix system in mind. I would even go to the extreme of having a team of analysts that work on every strategic plan or project initiative the organization wants to embark upon.

Thoughts for today.

Sam Kurien

 

3 Tips, 3 Ways and 4 Things For Effective Leadership

From my gleanings from Harvard Biz.. I am re-posting some good tit-bits on 3 tips for strengthening big picture skills, 3 ways to handle disruption and 4 things to empower your employees with:

The critical skills of seeing the big picture is really a right brain activity but also draws from the left in detecting patterns, relating narratives and linking the concepts that relate to your program or organization's mission and vision. The valuable 3 tips are:

1. Identify Parallels: When faced with a new situation or project, ask yourself if it reminds you of anything. Are there elements that are similar to or relate to other situations in which you've been?
2.  Expand your thinking. Look for non-obvious factors that may affect the situation. Seek out underlying causes or events.
3. Articulate analogies.To communicate what you are seeing, use metaphors and analogies to which others can easily relate.

On the third point I want to emphasize is talk in narratives, tell stories, we relate with good stories and especially stories that inspire, teach a lesson in character and arise them from ashes.

Coping with the unexpected isn't just a good leadership skill, it's critical. Expect change and be flexible for change. Create a plan where you are not reacting to change but being proactive to change. Know with change comes disruptions and to minimize the effects of disruptions you response need to have three ways:

1. Have a back-up plan: You may not always be able to rehearse Plan B, but you should have alternative approaches that can help get you out of a bind. In the absence of actual plans, mental flexibility can help you respond more quickly.
2. Speed up communication: Information needs to move through your company quickly and efficiently. Find ways you can collect and disseminate data in short cycles.
3. Instill values: Values help people know the right thing to do without being told or waiting for permission. They also bind a company together when surprises happen and therefore can help companies recover more quickly.

Harvard Biz quotes transformational leaders know and recognize that employees want much more than that. Here are the four things your people need to succeed with you and for you:

1. Love.This may sound touchy-feely, but love simply means focused concern that is exclusively for that person's good. Show your employees you care about them and their futures.
2. Growth.No one wants to be exactly where they are forever. Create a culture that allows your people to grow and expand.
3. Contribution.To feel fulfilled, employees must know that they are contributing to the whole. Emphasize the ways that their work matters to the organization
4. Meaning. We are meaning-seeking creatures. Share a vision that demonstrates that all of your employees are engaged in a larger purpose.

The caption for people who cannot read the fine print: "The leader always sets the trail for others to follow"

Forwarding thoughts @ssnautilus:

Sam Kurien

'Open Innovation' - Knowledge Brokering

I have always been fascinated with the concept of open innovation, a few years (well many years) back while I was in B-School I read Tom Peters famous pictoral book 'Circle of Innovation' and ever since been arguing (with myself mostly) if - Is it innovation that sustains you in marketplace or is it better processes that nurture that innovation?. I am slowly beginnning to understand that its actaully a  balance of both and more importantly right timing. I say right timing because innovation at the wrong time is thrown out of the marketplace because the market is nor ready to accept that innovation.  Innovation at the right time changes the landscape of the society and brings financial success and sustainability to the company .  So what is open innovation? Since it has begun transforming global companies coming out with new products and been influential in bringing variety of strategic-operational solutions to organizational problems.

  Open innovation is creating a culture of participative management thinking and is rooted in the practice of knowledge brokering which is systemic approach to seek ideas externally from people from cross contextually from various disciplines and finding how combining them to your industry result into a innovation in the marketplace.

The idea here is the tap into people who are ready to share their experiences and most of them are ready to share that experience for free and this is a place where we generate ideas from the marketplace and leverage it back to the marketplace. It is more than just doing a survey , it is an ongoing active participation, knowledge brokering, knowledge storehousing, and then knowledge benchmarking. The on-going activity of generating experiences and ideas from the marketplace can go back in revising the benchmarks and knowledge sharing.

A closer look at the way forward-looking organizations use knowledge brokering to improve their business processes offers practical lessons for companies of all stripes and suggests how senior managers must adapt to thrive in a digital era characterized by increased collaboration.

Knowledge brokering offers companies an analogous capability. I suspect this idea must have come or pioneered by product designers in companies such as the design consultancy IDEO. In practice knowledge brokering is about forming project teams that initiate conversations with knowledge brokers—people willing to discuss their experiences to serve the teams’ needs—and then combine the external ideas with internal ones to improve these companies’ business processes. Sometimes the art of gathering or brokering this information can be tricky but is not rocket science by any means; a genuine interest to be a change agentp; a diplomatic front to seek good and the idea to give credit where credit is due will automatically enable you to gather these ideas.

Consultancy firm Mckinsey confirmed and reported in its study over the past four years,  the use of knowledge brokering among more than 50 teams they deployed at ten multinational companies in industries such as banking, consumer goods, high-tech products, shipping, engineering, retailing, and utilities. Each team used this approach to devise an innovative solution to a project assigned by senior management in areas including strategic planning, supply chains, sales and marketing, corporate social responsibility, and HR. When surveyed afterward, team members unanimously agreed that knowledge brokering increased the effectiveness of their projects—and two-thirds said it did so “greatly.” On average, it helped the teams design new processes twice as quickly as they would have expected to do by using conventional techniques.

Knowledge brokering is not copying but sharing ideas to innovate and bring that innovation when the market demands it or bringing it when the market is ready for it.

My thoughts for the day!

Sam Kurien

Employees First, Customers Second - Value Maximizers

I recently read a case study surprisingly coming from a little known (internationally speaking) hardware/software company from India called HCL.  Coming from India I knew HCL from its garage phase and followed its visionary leader Shiv Nader who was instrumental in taking this organization to good heights in spite of bureaucratic controls of the late eighties.

The management philosophy they follow is 'Employees First and Customers Second'. The attempt here was not to emphasize some HR satisfaction or motivate employees to do a better job by giving benefits or even just implementing good HR policies/practices but discover within the company how employees can add value to services. The ethos behind this thinking is brilliant because adding value to existing services or adding value to bring something new into the market encouraged innovation within HCL. Added value meant higher levels of achievement among employees translated directly to the end result being transferred to the market place as a company that brought value and innovation to customers.

'Employees first' was a indeed a revelation to me because I thought customers drive the company but its not that way, a customer will pay for added value, a customer is retained because of added value and employees are the one who are directly responsible to bring that added value.  Vineet Nayar has written a book on this theme and is worth reading and the catch statement is very true - "turning conventional management upside down".

My thoughts for the day.

Sam Kurien

Purpose Maximizers

Just saw a fantastic presentation and findings of Dan Pink on what motivates people and how we can build organizations that better serve for the larger purpose of common good. I like the term he uses 'Purpose Maximizers' as they are people who are motivated by challenge, purpose, and are drawn into building something bigger than themselves. For example one of my foremost passions and purposes is to build the kingdom of God and that may translate in my realm & passion  in terms of bringing education and a biblical world view to the customers that I serve. Though this may be the purpose that drives me I still need to pay the bills and provide for my family. But the latter becomes secondary in terms of achieving something great collectively and that really becomes a motivating force/factor when you get people who are like minded in executing this purpose. I follow Bill Gates foundation and at his last speech at Harvard and TED the challenge he has been throwing out to the brightest minds is 'how are we going to solve the biggest problems of the world?' rather than be driven by the objective of a successful career or making money. He propounds that financial success will come but when you are motivated to solve the larger problems, the world becomes a better place by your small contribution which becomes a part of the larger tapestry.

Enjoy the video you will understand the idea I am rambling about.


RSA_Animate from Sam on Vimeo.
Purpose Maximizers real motivation come from challenges, significance, and the drive to put a dent in the universe.

Enjoy!!

The New Face of Business Computing

Business has a new face: increasing commoditization, globalization, mobility, and collaboration define today's technologies. Enterprise business is conducted without wires, between mobile devices, across social networking sites, and in the virtual environment. IT departments must heed the call: The call is to use socially merging technologies to satisfy users in number of ways and connecting with them at the call and beck of their convenience.

Markets and Customers in those markets will no longer come to you but will access you over the phone, social networks, web pages and the attention span is less than an average of four seconds and in that four seconds business's have to react to get their attention, assess their needs and cater to those needs. The freedom of choice and freedom of accessibility of those choices is delivered through technology. So business's not only have to harness technology as tool and a solution engineered not only as strategy but more importantly as an oiled integrated part of organizational structure and business functions.

My thoughts for the day till I find an organization that does this well.

Sam Kurien

Every Employee As a 'Business Analyst'

Business Analysis along with operational research have always been fascinating subjects to me. I have been lucky to have been part of requirement analysis for projects that need translation of business needs to geek for business process (BP) implementation. Business analysis provides a foundational stone of building especially when new changes are implemented in business processes, initiation of new projects or while making paradigm shifts in operational management. When an organization goes through these changes the tools sets in the BA's life becomes a combination of skills and behaviors he or she has developed over the course of years in terms of modelling, systemic thinking, inter-personal communication, root cause analysis, and general analytical skills. Keep in mind however, the end result in whatever way these skills are employed by the BA, the end objective is to improve and make the business better.

Using prototypes and models have long been and become the life source of rich communication for a business analyst. Modelling and UI designs especially help in reducing vital mistakes, understanding of bottlenecks and capturing of information from the end users that may have been missed. It gives the analyst the understanding of what people do, not what they say they are doing to make BP more optimal. So it boils down to communication and cultural.

Communication within the organization and between vendors/partners though crucial and a BA is a bridging gap being the assigned professionals who does full time business analysis a cultural change from the top down to treat every employee as BA has even greater merits. This means employees who are empowered to be a process improver's or be a  generator of ideas to improve BP's will ultimately help those project leaders and professional BA's to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. Business analysis is after all ....the art of improving the business and every employee when treated as a professional with job descriptions filled in with details of improving process's, the end result is an ever evolving organization that is optimized to take advantage of the opportunities that come up in the market place. A culture like this discovers the business policies re-visits, re-evaluates and reforms these policies from time to time.

My thoughts till the next time,

Sam Kurien

Treating IT as Investment Strategy

As budgets tighten and economies of scale change resources in the IT sector are under purview to cut backs.Traditionally support systems are where these cutbacks take place first. I have evangelized and advised otherwise where ever I have worked, my idea is until you start viewing IT as vital investment piece that correlates closely to corporate strategy and planning functions, organizations will not be competitive or flexible in the ever changing landscape of business.

So when it comes to IT projects  a culture of treating each IT project as an investment right from the top of the chain of command to the project directors and project managers who bring the implementation to fruition becomes vital in driving  of overall corporate strategy. That is why in IT Governance models,  CIO's, CTO's, CEO's and CFO work in tandem and are key contributors in guiding the overall processes to align with the big picture of the organization. A culture set that way is always able to recognize when it’s time to cut loose projects that aren’t delivering sufficient value. A good example here would be that of Yellow Technologies which in late 90's after a spree of acquisitions had a novel idea of setting up something like the People's court where key managers took part in reviewing software licenses, agreements, projects, partnerships. Once a month 4 IT managers heard functional managers and projects managers and in the people's court of the organization these IT judges came back with a metric evaluation whether the said function stayed or was cut loose from the set of activities the organization was to pursue. A matrix of acceptance and elimination under the governance models were applied and propagated throughout the company. Over a period of time it became the culture and a norm which turned them in the competitive edge for the IT services sector. Another factor and benefit that developed for Yellow Technologies was the element of speed that got built in and IT projects getting done in a faster and reliable manner which in turn saved costs and increased revenues.  

Another stellar example while I study business cases is that stands out for me is what the folks at GE Industrial Systems have achieved. For them, small projects must achieve payback in less than one year, large projects in less than two years—and the idea is to tighten the screws on project time frames and budgets every year. (Only compliance projects, like those required by Sarbanes-Oxley, are exempt from the strict time limit.) The whole idea o philosophy was if a given project is repeated next year that has similar outcomes and similar processes it should be achieved 50 percent faster and in accounting terms which means if it cost $1 to put in the general ledger the next year it should be 50 cents. 

So in conclusion I think a pattern that can be followed is, technology can't be isolated but is to be used as a strategic investment tool where return is expected (hopefully a profitable one)  once that is recognized, a governance model helps to lay down the structure, a matrix of evaluation, elimination and enforcement should guide the ethos of keeping what is needed and throwing off what is not producing results and the end objective is to optimize processes to complete projects or organizational tasks in less time and less cost. 

Cheers till the next time.

Sam Kurien

Professional Development Or Shooting From The Hip

I couldn't resist putting this Dilbert strip here. Scott Adams nails it and how true it is in many of the organizations of our day.

Professional development for employees and management is key as we nurture and grow talent. If we don't nurture and grow the talent we have they are bound to leave. It is innate in the nature of the human being to grow, to develop and be rewarded for that development. It is not surprising that money is not the top most factor in organizations with high turn over. From my observations the top three factors boil down to employee-employer relationships (trust), lack of growth/career path, and finally lack of commitment or alignment to employee's purposes with the vision-mission and goals of the organization.

Training and professional development of an individual to equip him/her for the tasks/projects of the organization. They should be aligned with the three factors that I mentioned in the last paragraph. Budgeting and planning should include this vital piece and HR management professionals who have these skills in closely grafting this in with the finance & functional managers are the ones to keep cherishing in the organization. Plus if you have a matrix for measuring the outcomes of this development in the execution of projects, that becomes the meta-data for future training and development programs. Retaining and keeping talent is important for the competitive edge in the marketplace.

Cheers,

Sam Kurien