Charles A. Araujo, Jr.

Creating the "Wise" IT Organization

I was recently contemplating the nature of wisdom and what it really meant.  Was it something that had relevance to an organization? Could you create a "wise" IT organization?  And if so, what did that mean?

I think wisdom really has three elements:

• Knowing what is right
• Knowing how to apply that knowledge to the situation (what's right for me)
• Knowing when and how to take action on that knowledge (and when not to)

Isn't that what wisdom really is - applied knowledge for the greater good?  But does that have meaning to an IT organization as a whole?  I think it does.

In ITIL v3, this is actually addressed somewhat in the context of a Service Knowledge Management Systems (SKMS). Within it, it lays out a structure of Data-to-Information-to-Knowledge-to-Wisdom.  It basically describes the process in which discrete pieces of data are provided context to become information, which is then analyzed and associated to become knowledge.  Wisdom, then is the judgment and discernment to apply that knowledge in a meaningful way.

I think that this is the essence of organizational wisdom and frankly, a missing element in most IT organizations.  Most IT organizations are awash in data - particularly the technical kind.  But what happens with that data?  The entire context of ITIL's SKMS is to lay out the need to do something more - to add context and analysis so that the data transcends into something useful and meaningful and actionable. 

I think that this is what it might mean to become a "wise" IT organization and I think it should be a stated goal of any IT leadership team. Every IT organization should strive to create a "wise" culture that seeks to do three things:

• To know what is right.  To know the needs of the customer. To understand the true goals and objectives for the organization. To truly understand their reason for being.
• Create Understanding and Knowledge.  To gather data and apply the context of customer needs.  To analyze it in the context of business impact and so convert that data into information and then knowledge.  To transform the relationship between the data and the customer to go from a disconnected, dissociative relationship to an intimate one that applies to everything IT does.
• Seize the Moment.  To leverage this knowledge and understanding and take the prudent action - or inaction - to meet the present and future needs of the business.  Through this knowledge, to seize opportunities that leverage technology in ways that may be new and innovative.  To see the coming changes in the business and create flexible, adaptable business approaches that enable the IT organization to react quickly to the changing business needs.

If you could create an IT organization that operated like this - holistically and baked into its culture - would you call it a "wise" IT organization?  Whatever you'd call it, it would be a highly effective organization that was driven and bound by a "higher purpose." It would be an organization that wasn't merely providing technology or even IT services, but one that was fully connected with its customer and able to provide true, lasting and meaningful value through its application of knowledge for the greater good of the business. That sounds like an IT organization I'd love to be a part of.

Roadblocks to Innovation: Knowing What Your Customers Want

Ok, so this isn't really about technology, but Malcolm Gladwell gave a talk at a TED conference in 2004 that talked about something that I think often perplexes IT leaders - understanding what your customer wants.

We know the basics.  We know that our customer needs us to deliver ERP and financial systems.  That we need to deliver and support an infrastructure to enable these, etc.  But when we have reached a level of maturity and are looking to take that next big step forward - to move beyond the stale strategic planning process and really begin to bring new, innovative ideas to the table - we are often stumped at the starting gates with the simple question - what does my customer really need and want?

It's a question we need to be able to answer if we are to cross the divide and become true IT innovators.  I know it's a stretch to make a connection between IT and spaghetti sauce (you'll see), but take a look and see if it doesn't stir up some ideas.  If nothing else, it's very entertaining.  Enjoy!

The Rise of the Lifeguard CIO (It's not what you think)

Fortune Magazine recently (well, November!) published an article entitled, "Meet Your New Leader."  It described an apparent transition that is underway in CEOs of large, publicly traded firms from the "Visionary", charismatic, autocratic CEO to a new form of leadership that the article likened to the make-up of a Lifeguard. 

But this isn't about racing to the rescue. Rather, the article pointed out some key characteristics of this new type of leader:

• Calm in the face of crisis
• Comfortable not knowing what's going to happen
• Ability to scan the horizon and anticipate coming shifts
• Ability to work with a team and with rules set by others

And while this article was about CEOs, I couldn't help but feel that it applied equally to CIOs as well. 

I largely "grew up" in the era of the technically-focused, autocratic CIO.  Vision and strategy would be set at some high up level and passed down to us minions to go implement.  It basically worked - but let's face it, technology was a lot simpler then.

The combination of the sheer business criticality of technology and customer visibility to it, coupled with exponentially increasing complexity makes this approach woefully outmoded and frankly, fraught with risk.  So, like the new vision of the CEO, the CIO of the future is going to have to have a very different approach to building and managing the technology landscape.

If you'll indulge my interpretation, I believe that the modern "lifeguard" CIO is going to have to look at their role very differently.  They will need to focus more on:

• Building adaptable and agile organizations - rather than architectures
• Identifying where technology may impact their business - rather than on how the business may impact their technology
• Integrating technology into business strategies - rather than aligning IT to business decisions
• Harnessing the creative innovation within their teams - rather than capturing only organizational efficiencies

Admitedly, most IT organizations are nowhere near this state of maturity - and in fact many of the "rather" statements are stepping stones along the maturity path.  Still, I think it's important that we always be mindful of where we are going so that we can constantly evaluate if we are on the right path. 

It seems clear to me that as technology architectures continue to increase in complexity, and while the impact of technology on the business becomes more and more mission critical, the demands on IT leadership are going to change and grow.  The leadership required will look a lot less like the "in command" General most common today and much more like the Lifeguard.  It's probably the only way that IT will finally get to where it needs to go.  So the question is, as you go through your career, which skills will you work at developing?  Sunblock anyone?

Note: You can read the article by clicking here.

Checklist for Change

A client recently sent me this article about the utilization of checklists as we were going through some discussions on the implementation of a new ITIL-derived change management process. 

What I love about it is that it has nothing to do with IT.  It's about operating rooms.  Yet the lessons still apply - and my client was wise enough to see the correlation.  At the end of the day, most of what we do, well, isn't surgery.  It can be complex and can be incredibly important and risky for the business, but most of the time it's not life or death.  So where we can find lessons from people or organizations who are playing where the stakes are that high, we should look at them carefully and ask ourselves how we might learn something from their challenges and solutions.

My client did just that.  If you read the article, though, there is an extremely important piece of information that is easy to miss.  The checklist is important - but the real value comes from verbally going through the checklist as a group.  It is this interactive and interrogative process that creates the true power of the checklist - and when that step is skipped, the checklist loses its effectiveness.

I think that this is a perfect corollary to the Change Advisory Board (CAB).  There has been a lot of push recently to this concept of a "Virtual CAB" - a change authority body that doesn't actually meet, but reviews and approves changes based on a review of the RFC by using some automation tool.  Don't get me wrong - I'm a fan of the "Virtual CAB" for minor, low-risk changes.  But I believe that their use is becoming too prevalent and organizations, in their zeal for automation, often miss the true point of the CAB - to discuss and evaluate the risk of the change with all stakeholders to ensure that the risk has been adequately quantified, mitigated and accepted.  It's tough to do that with a click of a button.

So perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here.  We should use a checklist to help the CAB ensure that risk has been mitigated and that RFC approval requirements have been met.  But to really make it effective, we must require that the CAB does it verbally.  Maybe by doing so, we will get that dialogue that supposed to occur and perhaps we will begin to get a more complete understanding of the true impact and risk of proposed changes.  And maybe, just maybe, the process will work a little bit better.

Read the article by clicking here and see how you think you might apply it yourself.

How to fix the innovation gap: A conversation with Judy Estrin

McKinsey has recently posted a video interview with Judy Estrin on the state of innovation and how companies need to be looking at driving greater innovation.  There are definite lessons to be learned for CIOs and IT organizations.  Check it out here.