The CIO and the iPhone

Once upon a time in a mist-shrouded and magical land there lived a wise old chief information officer (CIO) called Bob. Bob spent a great deal of time in deep thought about the mysteries of the business-aligned organisation. He was also much given to navel gazing on the possible future of information technology in the new Millennium (blaming Ginsters for the fact that his navel was so visible).
 
Earlier in his career Bob had posited the theory that by dint of sweat, labour and meticulous research he would uncover a marvellous and mysterious device that would draw together the fragmented and disparate strands of his technology-dependent enterprise. He dreamed of a day when the mighty corporate sales and marketing machine would discover the true potential of IT to bring home their bacon and boost their bottom line.
 
He tried many things, including a variation of Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall experiment and he seeded a number of active terminals throughout the Reading HQ. He soon discovered, as the professor had, that: “The acquisition of basic computing skills by any set of business users can be achieved through incidental learning provided the learners are given access to a suitable computing facility, with entertaining and motivating content and some minimal (human) guidance.”
 
Within a matter of 36 hours:

• Fourteen holidays had been booked, 173 songs were downloaded and 47 books and DVDs had been ordered on Amazon;
• Boxes of “exotica” began arriving in plain wrappers and cut-price cases of wine were blocking reception;
• Three moth-eaten sofas, five sets of garden furniture, two barbeques and a folding bike had bids placed for them on eBay;
• Multiple accesses of EastEnders re-runs had collapsed the BBC iPlayer server;
• Page3.com had blocked the IP addresses of every terminal in the building;
• £78,000 had been transferred offshore by “lucky” Nigerian Lottery winners;
• Thames Valley Police had raided the offices twice, investigating multiple online offences including online stalking, illicit gambling and the hosting of a pirate file sharing site;
• The finance director had trousered in excess of £7850.28p after posing online as the Lithuanian teen-brides, Loli and Tchitchi;
• A rogue systems analyst had installed keystroke loggers on all the terminals and was blackmailing three board members and the tea lady.

Unfortunately, though, no corporate systems were accessed, no databases or CRM systems were updated and calls to the helpdesk spiked by 78 per cent.
 
Disappointedly, Bob widened his intellectual net and joyfully discovered the BlackBerry. With amazing rapidity the gaps in the business narrowed as the uptake of the new technology rocketed. The enterprise became connected and available 24/7. Demands for connectivity and updated information soared and Bob was a happy fellow. The business was finally aligning with IT; albeit invisibly.
 
So he rested on his laurels a bit and all was happy in his little kingdom. The chief executive loved him and the board erected a bust in his likeness in the marbled lobby of head office. People in the company began calling him by his given name instead of “Oi!”, “you there” and “techie chap”.
 
And then one day, from out of nowhere, the iPhone was launched and the gaps between the CIO and the must-haves, the I-wants and the give-it-to-me-or-I’ll-tell-the-chief-executives widened into a veritable chasm. The helpdesk was inundated with petulant request forms, death threats began appearing on the intranet and he tired of telling the company how the iPhone didn’t cut and paste, didn’t support the email environment and wasn’t security aware enough.
 
Then, lo and behold, the 3G S model was launched and Bob can no longer be reached on his desk phone and the Samaritans have stopped taking his calls.
 
Shame Bob.
 
But - it is a thing of beauty and a joy to use. Mine arrives next week; although I have to say that new Nokia looks rather tasty.
 

CIOs - the value proposition

I have been conducting a bit of a survey. I haven’t polled thousands of CIOs or chief executives for answers, nor have I applied any real science or technology to the collection of my data.

What I have done is to talk to colleagues, fellow CIOs and heads of various technology functions; all of whom I count as personal friends and/or people who have opinions that I respect. Thus, completely slanted, subjective and with no analytical merit whatsoever.

Notwithstanding all the above, the fundamental question I have sought to answer was implanted in my brain by a quote by Albert Einstein in a book I was reading. He said: “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value”. This triggered a train of thought for me on how I could remove my ego from the equation of IT and business alignment and demonstrate value in our services, infrastructure and most of all our potential to add to the bottom line.

I have churned, extrapolated and crunched the 17 conversations I’ve had and the distillate that remains spans six core points:

1. Get the right people into the right jobs. Now more than ever before, talent will drive and deliver value. Motivate and reward them. Recognise they are the future and empower them.
2. Go to your customer. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Take them ideas and introduce them to your top talent.
3. Understand your customer and your customer’s customer. What does success look like for them? Can you measure and deliver in ways they understand and can absorb. What irritates and frustrates them about your service and delivery.
4. Look for new services and technologies and divert whatever effort and funding you can squeeze from the husk of your current budget and programmes of work into staying ahead of the game and in preparation for the eventual upturn.
5. Know yourself and know your infrastructure. Recognise the good and the bad and make sure you have the basics absolutely right. The delivery of the core services is what you will ultimately be judged upon and nobody is going to care how clever, innovative and futuristic you or your team are if the basics keep failing.
6. Go Guerrilla. Become less formal, more focused and operate “behind the lines”. What can you do better, for less cost and more quickly?

Job done, raging success and all that. Pukka!

The multi-faceted CIO

And so … the debate meanders on around the world, wherever there is a survey or an opinion on who, what, why or when is a CIO or indeed from some commentary, was a CIO. Should we be innovating, cost cutting, building expertise or rampaging into boardrooms with all the answers tucked up our rather neat little double cuffed CIO sleeves?

More confusingly still: have we, like the legendary Norwegian Blue, begun to shuffle off to join ‘the choir invisible’? Are we rapidly becoming ex and demised and will someone have to nail our feet to the perch or at the very least to the boardroom table to prolong our visibility and livelihood?

Thus, should we be reinventing ourselves or is this all really a bit of a non sequitur in the sense that there is no absolute logic to be applied in our turbulent world as everything is just another stage in surviving the recession by adapting and playing to our strengths? In reality we do all this anyway, don’t we, as innovating, cost control and the development of talent are core principles of any CIO.

I believe we, as CIOs, will become whatever we need to become whether we like it or not (please try and rid yourselves of the disturbing vision of a golden-haired me in a blue flowered smock singing Que Sera Sera) and that there is no forcing or second guessing of the issues that we face. Role evolution will simply occur and we will get stuck in and deliver whatever the outcome.

What we can do, though, is take a real upgrade and reinvention of our interest in the business where we work; bring our many talents to the fore in what to me should be a time of opportunity for IT. And if we land up becoming CEOs,COOs, CPOs or whatever at the end of it all, then Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! We’ll do that too with panache, feeling and an undeniable sense of purpose and delight, because the role of the modern CIO is so very much more than it appears on the surface and certainly isn’t just about technology. Today’s CIO is a balanced amalgam of many roles because at any point on any given day a CIO may need to be the:-

1.      Chief Information Officer holding the keys to the information ‘gold’ of the organisation
2.      Chief Innovation Officer who rides the crest of the innovation ‘wave’ and delivers on his promises. May also be called the Chief Imagination Officer
3.      Chief Instigating Officer who initiates and begins work. A CIO is a very good ‘starter’
4.      Chief Implementation Officer delivers the bit in the middle of start and finish. Joined up thinking, planning, organising, leading and controlling because a CIO is a ‘finisher’ too
5.      Chief India-rubber Officer who bounces back and does not accept defeat but simply changes shape and ‘morphs’ to meet the circumstances
6.      Chief Intelligence Officer with complete awareness of trends, competition and markets who communicates these to the organisation. The CIO is also the smartest person in the business, of course
7.      Chief Investment Officer as a wise Investor in technology and people. Motivates and encourages excellence through investment in time, money and analysis.
8.      Chief Investigation Officer operating as the gatekeeper and forensic compliance officer for best practice and technology related behaviours
9.      Chief Irritation Officer when like the grain of sand that becomes a valuable pearl, the CIO irritates to good purpose to remind and embed strategy and corporate direction
10.  Chief Indulgence Officer and smoother of ruffled feathers who pours oil on the troubled waters of change

Like a well cut diamond, each facet of the CIO and their role provides balance to the others - combining in the whole to produce the brilliance and fire of the complete piece.  And of course the value!

Quo vadis, IT ..?

And before you think I’ve come over all Hollywood epic, I haven’t. I’m simply asking where you think we might be at the end of this shocking by-product of the global fiscal kleptocracy. What will be the shape of our IT horizon, what will it all look like for Information Technology and technologists as the smoke clears from the battlefields of commerce and we look toward peace. Will there still be an IT department, as we know it now?

To briefly extend the Roman theme, you will probably have experienced the Ides of March, the obligatory stabbings on the forum steps and the consequential factional purging as the true scale of the disaster became all too apparent in many organisations around the world.

Sadly for many IT folk, the true value of their contribution will have been subsumed as cost calculations have overridden potential and benefit in a stark reflection of the financial emergency. To my mind this will lead to an acceleration of the concept behind Nicholas Carr’s article that “IT Doesn’t Matter” and I was reminded today of something I wrote several years ago in response to this, then, seemingly controversial idea.

“Mr. Carr was essentially correct, and, if people had chosen to look beyond the title’s clever sound bite opportunity, they would have seen the logic of his premise. A premise, which explored the fact that technology is ubiquitous in all businesses and technology, of itself, provides no competitive advantage.

Competitive and strategic advantage within a business resides in its people, the corporate culture, and management and how the company uses technology. He argued that more effort should be spent on stabilizing and securing the ‘core’ technology infrastructure rather than in following a revolutionary, technology driven path to certain business extinction.

He followed through on his arguments in the Spring 2005 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review and produced a sequel entitled “The End of Corporate Computing.” Here he explored the commoditisation of IT to its logical conclusion: a mature industry organized to supply an efficient product (cost effective, resilient and evolutionary). He foresaw the commoditized provision of IT services and products by utility-based technology companies.

To an extent, I can see his vision already at work. When I arrive at work in the morning I expect to be able to gain key card access to a secure building, boot up my computer and open my e-mail account to begin my day. I’ll need to pull up a Web browser to check the latest news online, do a bit of research and then access basic services like file directories and printers. I expect these systems to operate without failure or downtime in much the same way that I expect the lights to come on, the taps to provide water and for there to be air conditioning and/or heat to make my day as comfortable as possible.

These expectations do not distinguish my company from any of our competitors, but sometimes the execution does. I/We pay great attention to security, change control and reliability and employ some great people to achieve this. Because these technology functions just happen, IT has become largely invisible to the majority of the company. IT has evolved into ‘business-as-usual’ and expenditure on the ‘core’ is just an inherent cost of doing business. ”

So, to today and then tomorrow, I believe IT will become increasingly standardised and utilitarian as cost cutting becomes the order of the day. Outsourcing, SaaS, managed services and the Cloud will become increasingly pivotal to many a technical strategy as we pursue the Holy Grail of a frictionless business and the low cost IT model so beloved of the accountants.

I can very easily see a post recession world where the core is delivered by third parties and the technology enhancement function provided by ‘Super IT’ teams (today’s Guerrilla IT) embedded within the main Business units, in a move away from the previous centralised model. The same will apply to other Back Office elements like Finance as core functions are defined and outsourced and key elements like credit control simply bolt on to the delivery teams in a natural reduction of the frictions of commerce.  In an evolved organization this may well leave ‘top table’ roles for IT and Finance as oversight and strategy alone.

I sincerely hope the utilities we create to provide these services offer the same flexibility, resilience and performance that businesses have grown to expect from IT. Thus, that sacrificing IT delivery on the altar of financial expedience does not entirely destroy the personality that enlivens and drives revolutionary technical change and empowers business performance.

For, as John Ruskin once said ‘ A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it'.

A message from the trenches

It’s been a while since I last dipped my metaphorical pen in the digital inkbottle. No excuses, but the last 6 weeks or so have literally disappeared as I have been sucked into the maelstrom of the global recession. It has been a time of ambushes, attacks, strategic withdrawals (euphemism for getting a good kicking) and small victories.

I’ve suffered consequential casualties and learned many lessons. Foremost amongst these is that we must throw away the accepted formats of business life and very quickly sharpen our survival instincts. For, to very briefly borrow from Sun Tzu “ Don’t depend on your enemy not coming, depend rather on being ready for him”.

I like to think I know what I’m doing and I'm trying, diligently, to retain the flexibility to respond to the markets; creating a sense of urgency and dealing in the present. Because the recession is here now, its not a downturn anymore, it’s a global economic train smash where we’ve discovered that Nick Leeson at Barings was less of a one off than a kind of John the Baptist precursor of fiduciary malpractice. So, now we know our budgets are going to be slashed, our headcount decimated and our confidence take a battering. Job done, move on.

Its time to pick ourselves up and stop whingeing about our lot in life. Then get really smart and take a lead position. Go Guerilla and skirmish, baby, skirmish.

I’m, personally, skirmishing like a giant purple skirmishing thing and implementing everything from draconian supplier management to streamlining processes, policies and SLAs and discarding the less than absolutely vital. I’m trying to find quick, simple and effective elements to benefit the business.

Tearing up job descriptions and looking at new ways to merge functional teams. I’m trying to get my data ducks in a row without descending into the mire of ‘super apps’ and turgid development cycles. I’m trying to understand everything the business is doing and asking questions of everybody I meet to identify the ‘sweetspots’ where business activity and technology conjoin into a market beating symbiosis.

It really is the best of times for Information Technology and technologists to show what they can do, with less formality, less money and more courage. Using our natural speed and responsiveness, our capability to assimilate huge chunks of information to good effect and our innate ability to deliver against the odds. Combine this with our natural good looks, wit and charm and we are unassailable.

Evolve or die

Have you guerilla’d yet. Are you dressed for success and does your EBITDA translate fluently into your Enterprise Multiple?

It really is time to be audacious and to step outside the comfortable norm and practices in the uncertain world that surrounds us. That doesn’t mean foregoing the business as usual activities that keep your infrastructure robust and resilient, but it does mean taking that platform and leveraging the hell out of it in new and cunning ways to the benefit of your organisation.

To do that requires adapting the technical nous which is a given in any IT professional and translating it, as a matter of urgency, into an ‘epitechnology’ that transcends the usual and coalesces into a meld of business and technology; which in true Lamarckian form ensures survival (and success) through acquired characteristics. We really don’t have time for a Darwinian evolution of our capabilities. We need to adapt and evolve today, now, this minute.

To become an epitechnologist ….. ’ ya gotta guerrilla’. Remember, intelligence-led mobility, speed of effective response to changing situations, and the ability to blend in with the environment.

Don’t become a Dodo …. Become a Do Do….!! (that hurt me more to say than it will hurt you to read it).

To close, a lesson. In war, successful commanders aren’t the ones who just understood the rules but those who through their genius create them.

A bugle call

Have you harkened to the call of the bugle? Are you falling in neatly beneath the chief executive’s battle standard?

Have you got the message yet that this is war? The global economies as we knew them are crumbling round our ears in a cataclysmic slide that will leave no one untouched on the battlefields of the world’s financial markets. It’s a war you have to participate in, in order to be a winner. Its not a time to attempt neutrality or sit on the fence as a interested observer. Its no time for pacifism or conscientious objection.

 But - and treble but as the Bard would have it - it is NOT a war against your own business and colleagues in the business. You are about to demonstrate your value, valour and indomitable spirit (was stretching for another jingoistic ‘v’ word and, in failing, became impaled on the horns of my own verbosity) to the entire enterprise of which you, as a key IT staff member, are going to demonstrate via guerrilla tactics that your team is absolutely intrinsic to the success and wellbeing of the company you work for.

You will achieve this by proving that information technology is a profit centre not a just a sunk cost.

The internal political shenanigans that will inhibit your road to this acceptance will be as rocky and interminable as you allow it to be. Remember that guerrilla tactics are about mobility, speed of effective response to changing situations and the ability to blend in with your environment. Therefore it is imperative to dress the part, speak the language and intelligently react to any situation that presents itself. Show your mettle and take your true place in the Council of War.

Because as von Clausewitz says: ‘Once barriers - which in a sense only exist in man's ignorance of the possible - are torn down, they are not easily set up again.’

A guerilla war for IT

As we all too vividly know, 2008 closed and 2009 opened in the midst of global stock markets plunging to their lowest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s. These are desperate times for us all as businesses struggle to stay alive, let alone to prosper; a time for desperate measures. A time to declare war.

But this is a war to be declared on the mediocrity, greed and smug acceptance of the corrupted status quo that has brought us to this sorry point in our history. It’s a time for IT to come into its own at last and show just what it can do to catalyse, stimulate and deliver real bottom-line numbers. To paraphrase Associated Press in its coverage of the recent Andrew Bartels report for Forrester Research: “Technology has become so interwoven into how a company operates that it's no longer considered discretionary spending. It is the muscle of companies," said Bartels. "It allows them to do what they want to do." These are my sentiments exactly.

Let’s start flexing these muscles and be determined to win.

Thus, onwards to war. How shall we proceed? Time to dust off our copies of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Mao Zedong and formulate the tactics and strategies for victory. For me it won’t be a long drawn out process of classical warfare. I don’t have the troops, the budget or the time to follow that model. I propose using a carefully managed, highly mobile and targeted pattern of unconventional warfare using small groups of highly skilled and motivated individuals (cross functional). More of an insurgency targeting multiple objectives than a costly and time-consuming approach regulated by overpowering methodologies and layers of command. I’m calling it Guerrilla IT and I’ll be blogging on the topic for the foreseeable future or until the foe is vanquished.

Let me first sound a note of warning to any others brave enough to tread these paths to glory. It is my bitter experience that Guerrilla IT will be met, very rapidly, by Gorilla Business. This is normally characterised by a flurry of territorial chest thumping, baring of teeth and finally an obstinate retreat to the perceived safety of a leafy nest several yards above the bedrock of reality. Do not be alarmed, turn away or show fear in any manner. It’s perfectly normal and will be a minor skirmish if you’ve done your homework and shown you have the nerve to confront the situation. The brutal reality of the bigger picture of the global economy’s faltering steps will add leverage and power to your elbow – and remember you have the muscle. Use it.

In closing, remember that guerrilla tactics rely on morale, intelligence-led mobility, speed of effective response to changing situations, and the ability to blend in with the environment. Guerrillas believe in their objectives and have the courage of their convictions, enabling them to surmount the many obstacles that litter the struggle ahead. It is going to be a long campaign with some bitterly fought battles, not the least of which will be political and while the primary objective will be to win the war and emerge victorious, the secondary consequence for IT will be the visibility and acceptance of the muscle and inherent value we bring to modern business.

For, as Carl von Clausewitz said: “To secure peace is to prepare for war.”

PS: I’ve just realised that the acronym (beloved refuge for techies) for Guerrilla IT is GIT. My lovely wife tells me I have been a miserable old one of those for years so I should be admirably qualified to comment in the future.

A luta continua!

Our marvellously connected world

I read an article this morning about a World Bank sponsored project in Rwanda that plans to lay 2300km of optic fibre as part of an ongoing process for Rwanda to position itself as a regional ICT hub. I had an immediate flashback to a conversation I had recently with a London cabbie.  I thoroughly enjoy talking to cab drivers. They have a million stories if you’re prepared to listen.

We established, early in our journey, that the driver was from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and during the course of the journey we discussed Africa and our hopes for her future (as fellow Africans always do). I learned that as a child he had been awarded a UN grant for further education in nearby Zambia and he and a friend from his small village spent a few years schooling near Lusaka, returning to their village in the east of the country once the money ran out.

During one of the many civil upheavals at home they lost touch when his schoolmate was abducted and forced into one of the many militia groups in the area. Several years passed and the cabbie arrived in the UK as a refugee student where he met and married a fellow student, also from the DRC, and they settled here to build a new life and family.

Fast-forward a few years to the point when he bought his children a computer and started tinkering with it in his spare time. He discovered Skype and suddenly he was online and able to keep in touch with and talk to other members of his émigré family in Canada, the US and Australia.

One day he was about to initiate a call when up popped a tentative message to talk to a Rwandan, who said he knew him. He blanked this unsolicited contact for a week or two - a learned response from the maelstrom of his early life. Becoming increasingly intrigued by the repeated requests, he relented and posed the enquirer a few searching questions. The answers stunned him and he discovered that he was talking with his boyhood friend. Seemingly, he had escaped the clutches of the child army and after being caught up in the horror of the Rwandan genocide, had feared to return home, and was now resident in Rwanda. As an early beneficiary of a Rwandan project to improve the ICT capabilities of the nation he too ‘discovered’ Skype and set about ‘connecting’ to the world. 


So, good old Skype, although I retained the distinct impression that this Londoner still couldn’t quite believe it was his buddy.

Now if only I/we could get ‘the business’ to see how potentially connected we all are today and to realise that simply ‘joining the dots’ will draw a rich map of opportunity. They need to begin understand that it isn’t about technology. But it is about what you do with it.

And if you’re at all familiar with Blake then this opening slice of his Auguries of Innocence may just spring to mind:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Look for the dots. It’s a marvellously connected world.

An election lesson for business

The US elections are over. Thanks heavens for that. It will be quite exciting to discover what else is happening in the world.

I’ve lived the primaries, the campaigning and now the Big Day seemingly for months. I’ve heard the Palin drone, I know all about Joe the Plumber, I even know the voter turnout in Dixville Notch. Surely I’m at least entitled to a Green Card now.

What really fascinated me, though, was the extent to which technology influenced the whole Obama campaign and the way the President-elect used everything at his disposal in terms of social networking, databases, text messaging, email and online tools to help raise campaign funds (to the final extent of $650m) from three million networked donors and then continually motivated them to underpin his campaign and deliver his victory. The combination of his outstanding personal brand and the imaginative use of technology were unstoppable.

What a lesson this should be to business leaders around the world as we enter the dark days of recession and global uncertainty. Stop looking for reasons not to use technology. Get creative. Grab what technology can do for you with both hands.

Far, far more importantly, see what your IT staff can do WITH you to enhance your business processes, brand and service offerings; remembering always that it takes ‘two to tango’ and that it’s a joint responsibility led from the top to make this happen.

I saw a marvellous quote from Joe Trippi in an MIT campaign summary of these elections. He said: ” Even if you have all the smartest bottom-up, tech-savvy people working for you, if the candidate and the top of the campaign want to run a top-down campaign, there is nothing you can do. It will sit there and nothing will happen. That's kind of what happened with the Clinton campaign."

It seems appropriate to close with the Obama rallying call ‘YES WE CAN!’ (where have I heard that phrase before?)