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.

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.

Our Most Urgent Problem

I believe that the most urgent problem facing IT and, in truth, the future of US competitiveness is the state of our educational system.  Like healthcare, this is one of those issues that we can all agree on the issue, but it's the solutions that get us tangled.

I don't know what the answers are, but I do believe that the students that we are turning out are woefully ill prepared to participate in the global market that we now live in.  Something must be done and done fast.

I came across an article in Fast Company from September of last year that discusses a range of corporate-public partnerships in education.  It's entitled, "Microsoft's Class Action" and as the title suggests, focuses on Microsoft's deep involvement in one such partnership with the Philadelphia school system.

I am not a big Microsoft fan necessarily, but the article is nothing if not thought provoking.  My wife and I were just discussing the fact that our schools seem ill equipped to teach our children even the basics of dealing with the world that she and I inhabit every day.  I don't know that this is the answer, but frankly, anything is better than what we have today.  I hope to circle back to this article as time permits and see how I might help our local schools apply some of these same ideas.  It's a bigger problem than anything I can tackle by myself, I know that.  But I believe that it is something that all of us in IT need to be very aware of and that we must begin to look at what actions we can take to help drive change before it's too late.

An Emerging Form of Capitalism?

Howard Rheingold, who wrote the book SmartMobs, gave a presentation at TED 2005 that was recently posted.   In it, he discusses the concepts of collaboration and collective action.  Interestingly, he associates these concepts with an evolving concept of cooperative capitalism in which people and organizations are simultaneously working in their self interest and in a cooperative manner.

This ties back to my concepts around Market Driven IT organizations and provides additional insights into how IT might act and react to become more strategic and drive business value.  How might IT apply some of these ideas - not so much from a technology perspective (creating social technologies for the workplace), but from a business perspective?  How might these concepts be applied to help IT develop cooperative approaches to delivering services and value to the business that simply cannot be provided independently.

This 20 minute presentation is very thought provoking and is sure to stimulate some new ideas.  It's well worth the time.