Nothing's rotten in the state of Denmark

A very interesting and important experiment is being carried out in Denmark at the moment.

Sixth-form students at 14 colleges are sitting their Danish language and literature finals while being allowed access to the Internet during the examination.

The primary concern for the authorities – quite reasonably - was that cheating would ensue. For context, some of us will vividly remember the giant leap of permissiveness in allowing calculators into the classroom, let alone the exam room. The worlds of education/mathematics/engineering/science were going to end … children would become stupid/lazy/disaffected and so on.

Well, they didn’t, and we’ve all seen the huge leaps in science and technology that have transpired from this facilitation and sharpening of our powers to calculate. There probably was some cheating but more power to industrious ingenuity in my mind, and those who are going to cheat are always going to cheat whatever tools they have at their disposal. Teachers just have to be much sharper and completely up to date which surely is a good thing in this rapidly changing world of ours.

The answer in Denmark has been remarkably simple - they educate the kids and identify very clearly what cheating is and what the consequences will be. They also spot check but, in essence, its pretty self governing; maturity and trust is key and the results will speak for themselves in any case.

The students can’t communicate directly with anyone but have access to research and online resources. The pupils are not being tested on pure facts and figures but on the ability to research, analyse and extrapolate the data they uncover and, latterly, on the way they present the results clearly and intelligently in response to the questions that have been formulated.

Quotable quote by an English professor of education polled for the article: "Why should children be capped on how far they can go? Why should they be capped on the breadth of what they can do..?" and thus: "Why shouldn't we prepare them for the 21st century ..? Right now we're preparing them for the 19th."

I can’t wait to see this proliferate and become an integral part of our academic portfolio. Let's prepare our children to ride the crest of the technology wave, not cloud their potential with our own inadequacies.

The internet and a readily accessible abundance of information is part of their everyday lives now. Just imagine, if you can, the benefits to future business of a fully engaged and technically astute workforce completely at home with the informatics based tools of their trade - and qualified to use them.

Let's open our minds to possibility and recall Michelangelo who said: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free".

The board whisperer

“A horse whisperer is a horse trainer who adopts a sympathetic view of the motives, needs, and desires of the horse, based on natural horsemanship and modern equine psychology,” – so says Wikipedia.

Thus, I could choose to define a board whisperer to be a CIO who personifies a sympathetic and proactive view of the motives, objectives and nuances of the board of directors, based on a clear understanding of the business, its markets and the psychology (politics) of the organisation.

All good so far but how could we accelerate the process to positively influence the outcome, to the ultimate benefit of all parties? Well, I think I may have found a unique angle on this in a story I picked up on the BBC the other day.

An Oklahoma-based skunk (name probably witheld to protect him from the ridicule of his peers) has been freed from an embarrassing and potentially dangerous peanut butter jar incident by a “skunk whisperer”.

Now, that has to be the coolest job title in the world and I am more than a little green with envy. Just imagine the business card and straplines. No, on second thoughts… Stop me, please.

Apparently, our little stripey chum got his head stuck in a peanut butter jar during a session of dumpster diving and was thereafter spotted in some distress by a passer by who called for assistance. Enter the Skunk Whisperer to a loud fanfare of trumpets!? Here it gets really interesting and its where I see real linkage to accelerating the solution to alignment issues in the modern business.

Our whisperer used chloroform – well, deployed would be more accurate in a very technical skunk whispering sense, you understand - to soothe the savage and potentially odiferous breast; much as Congreve would have us believe music will do.

You can almost imagine the conversation: “Pssssst, Flower, sidle over here and cop a waft of this old cloth .... no, no, no, keep looking at me … don’t turn round, for God’s sake.”?

Lets intensify the situation with a little role play. Imagine you’re presenting a business case to the board asking for a huge – let’s say Windows 7 huge – upgrade. You’re in full possession of all the facts, your ROI is incontrovertible and the business unit managing directors are clamouring to underwrite the case on your behalf (I didn’t say it was real, I said it was role play). But you can see the costs and the technical nature of some of the justification are causing the board's eyes to water and glaze over in turn. You sidle over to the aircon unit and surreptitiously introduce a small hit of chloroform to the room. Job done, motion carried, minute noted by semi-nerveless fingers.

Ok, so there a few flaws, like why I am I wearing a gas mask to a board presentation …. but that’s just detail.

I wonder if the chairman likes peanut butter?

The bankable CIO

I just read a terrific post by Information Week's Bob Evans in his excellent Global CIO blog.

Hallelujah. At last, a verifiable source and precedent that shows the value of remuneration packages that reward the back office in line with its contribution to bottom line and real customer satisfaction.

Boy, is this idea overdue. I really cannot see why businesses don’t get it yet, especially given where we are in the chaos of recession and the absolute necessity to use technology and the creative drive of business-focused technologists as a major component on the pathway to recovery.

I quote: “Last year, CIO Michael Harte earned $2.8m at Commonwealth Bank. This year, 40 per cent of his total compensation—based on $2.8m, that would be $1.12m - will be tied to customer satisfaction.“

Imagine that. A genuine example of skin in the game. Talk about sharpening the focus and the drive to customer satisfaction, ergo better business and better results. That’s alignment in action and due recognition of the influence of technology in the modern organisation.

I quote again, mainly because I cant say it any better: “I think a whole lot more CIOs should pursue similar pay packages that help ‘focus the mind on a daily basis’ because forward-looking chief executives will soon be seeking to clarify the priorities of their chief information officers away from technology operations and management and toward customer-centric growth, performance, and excellence.”

And the bank is extending this new model to include suppliers and whole chain of delivery, wherever it affects the customer. I’ve often thought how good it would be to retain some fairly significant part of supplier payment in a form of escrow delivered or paid on real performance and not have to rely on series of meaningless service-level agreements (SLAs) that really can’t be properly defined in terms of value or consequence. After all, what good is a monthly 99.99 per cent uptime if the .01 per cent downtime occurs during a crucial billing point or customer engagement? Oh, I hate SLAs.
As the article says, we need incentives not penalties.

We need to be inextricably linked to the outcomes of our actions, both good and bad. Failure to meet the terms of the agreement results in loss in exactly the same way that success will beget reward. With 40 per cent of my salary and the salaries for my team in the balance I’m completely sure I can predict upside not downside.

Perhaps Gartner and others of the same ilk should concentrate on defining a formula for performance-linked remuneration for technology and technologists. Preferably a very simple yet comprehensive one that doesn’t use terms such as “information anthropologists” or “social data miners”. Then we may just get chief executives to listen with both ears and we could end the interminable alignment debate.

Winston, you beauty

A wonderful example of the completely aligned business: Frustrated by the poor data transfer speeds between their call centres in South Africa, a wonderfully innovative company called The Unlimited have resolved their technical issues and hired the talents of an avian data maestro called Winston. And at a cost of a little less than 8p per day the idea has real merit.

Yesterday morning, 9th of September, 11-month old Winston, a homing pigeon, took off from a call centre in Howick, South Africa with a 4GB datacard strapped to his little leg. In precisely two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds the data had been  transferred onto the card in Howick, attached to Air Winston, flown the 70kms to Hillcrest and been transported by car from his coop to the site systems and uploaded.

Going head to head with this, and between the same points, an upload of the identical data on an ADSL line had only achieved a four per cent completion in the same time. Winston had, very sportingly, even given the ADSL transfer a head start of some 26 minutes while he stretched his wings in a gentle warm up as the data was loaded ready for take off. In an hour and eight minutes he was home... a bit of a 'coop de grace' !

The South African data carrier, Telcom, was unavailable for comment to representatives of The Unlimited, though a promise was made to that a reply would be forthcoming  … at some point …sometime … maybe … send us an email….

Perhaps I need to consider something similar for my BT connection at home. Wonder if I can catch and train a 40GB pheasant. 

The social CIO

Warm, inclusive, outgoing and friendly, a truly social and connected CIO animal.
 
Regrettably, those who know me well would probably describe me as being about as social a creature as a misanthropic pitbull. But, according to this press release from dear old Gartner, I’m going to have to leverage my “social” skills if I’m to succeed in “consumerising” corporate IT.
 
The future looks web to me too and we do need to align our talents toward this medium if our businesses are to succeed and keep pace with the consumer driven trends we see developing all round us.
 
We’ve got the tech skills, we’ve got the infrastructure and now we need the next generation of skills to transform the utilitarian into the exceptional.
 
Gartner identifies four key areas or roles in the organisation of the future and interestingly for me, and with apologies to Gartner, they aren’t IT roles at all but fall rather splendidly into that mythical, grey and mist-shrouded land that once was the “alignment” between business and tech.
 
Soapbox on: Anyone who still believes there is an alignment gap that is anything other than self imposed has either been smoking some seriously strong weed or living under a rock in a very boggy swamp. The global financial fiasco should have taught us (if nothing else has) that any organisation worth its salt has only one set of objectives, common to all members. Perpetuation of the alignment cliché is now a rather tired old irrelevance sustained by anachronistic management. Soapbox off.
 
The roles and role types that Gartner propose are:
 
•      Web user experience roles
•      Behavioural analysis roles
•      Information specialists
•      Digital lifestyle experts
 
They sound sort of techie don’t they. But if you read a bit into the press release and dig down then the only similarity with technical specialties are the ambiguous and rather kiss *ss titles themselves, loosely identified as social sciences. They have the feel of something created to maintain a secret and specialised aura; hotshots and elitists, and we don’t need more of those.
 
The real beauties for me, as I waded through the release, were “information anthropologists” and “social network miners”. Gee whiz! Remember the old joke: What do you say to a social sciences graduate? “Hi, can I have fries with that, please?” And yes, I did once study sociology as a rather world-weary mature student in search of a university place.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I love the thrust of this premise but I just wish people such as Gartner – and all the others of their ilk - would speak plain English so that senior management could easily understand what they mean and embrace the opportunities for the future of our unified businesses. Instead, we run the risk of this being seen as a murky IT initiative - thus costly and incomprehensible – and therefore paralysing the drive to blend front and back office into a coherent fighting force, with identical values and objectives.
 
“The future is solidly connected to the seb and new work streams clearly need to arise to support this,” said Gartner’s Kathy Harris. “Creative, artistic and clever people will develop the early iterations of these new jobs. This will enable businesses and government to take early advantage of new capabilities and develop them into mainstream skills.”
 
We’ve got the smart, savvy and creative people in IT already. What we need are those skills to be mirrored in the vision of those with the power to change the organisation. The future is upon us…..
 
Lets party!

Trust me, I’m a CIO

Good news abounds, or so the world’s media would have us believe. Green shoots everywhere and entire economies lumbering out of recession like gigantic stegosaurs freeing themselves from the clutches of a Jurassic tar pit. Let us all pray that the green is from new buds of growth and not just the early bloom of algae on the cesspit of our financial infrastructure.

You may have gathered that I’m more than a little cynical of the triumphal fanfare that three giant economies are “officially” out of recession, after a mere quarter of miniscule growth. I also lack trust and confidence in the ability of our leaders, globally, to manage us out of it without even more erosion. Especially after the press and government barrage earlier this year that attempted to gloom us into a psychological recession, leaving us in fear that our jobs, our houses and our savings would be subsumed into repaying the debts of the greedy kleptocrats.

This dissonance of message to real experience has left me confused and concerned for both my future and the future of those I care about. It’s going to take tremendous will and some very tangible examples before I take any prognostication at anything more than passing face value. Trust has taken a hammering and its more than just on the surface. It’s deep-seated and embedded in the common psyche.

I remember sitting on a lovely paved deck watching the sun go down on a balmy Greek evening when all of a sudden I noticed the birds had taken flight and within seconds an earthquake shook the entire floor and surrounding buildings. I was left with an almost unearthly feeling of disquiet deep in the very essence of my being, engineered, no doubt, by this sudden lack of safety in the formerly rock solid foundation of the earth. No more could it just be taken for granted and the dissonance created probably lives with me to this day, albeit in a subtle way.

Yes, I am getting to a point soonish…

This cognitive dissonance, this uncomfortable feeling engendered by the disconnection between what’s happening and what you’d imagined to be true from past experience is a very real issue for all management going forward. Mostly, we’re not even aware of it at a conscious level because it’s invisible, insidious and roots deep.

Have you, as an IT leader, taken your department through a series of redundancies in response to the global economic meltdown? If you have then chances are the logical inconsistency of working hard and putting their all into building their IT career with their chosen employer (you) and seeing colleagues fall by the wayside, quite blamelessly, in the attrition of redundancy has probably left your staff feeling fearful and unstable. Unconsciously discomforted and prone to all the behaviours you have laboured so hard to eradicate over the years, as they struggle to come to terms with the new reality.

Is the new leaner IT group faster to turn things round or slower because a climate of distrust has developed? Are you seeing more politics, more rivalry and less transparency between teams than you did before - and I’m not just talking about IT here. Distrust is infectious. And we don’t need sluggish right now, we don’t need more politics and we certainly don’t need an endless negative debate on intent, competence or values.
 
We need to build trust back up again, just as we’ve tried to build the trust between front office and back office over the years. We need speed to market in our ultra-competitive and upside-down world and we won’t achieve that with friction, internecine rivalries and a laager mentality.
 
It is up to us all from the very top to the very bottom to eliminate the “punishers” in our operant conditioning and beget the reinforcing and positive stimuli that will rebuild trust and the behaviours for growth as we prepare for the recovery.
 
It’s worth remembering in our linear and metrics-obsessed world that, as Einstein said: “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."

A tabloid view of IT

I have found a new and very worthy nominee for the Most Specious Headline Award of 2009.

One of the main monthly IT magazines recently headlined an article on the enormous banking profits by the two giants: “Barclays and HSBC banking results from cost cuts” and subtitled “Big banks have reduced IT headcounts and begin to see profits return”.

Anyone reading this could be forgiven for assuming that the credit crunch, the global economic meltdown and the recession were all down to the cost of IT salaries. Cuts of 1200 IT jobs across both banks have, seemingly, resulted in a miraculous turnaround to profitability at the two giants of HSBC and Barclays of some £6bn during the first half of 2009.

Those must have been some IT salaries they were paying. Where was I when this gravy train was taking on passengers?

Oddly enough, not even a hint or mention in either statement of the questionable practices, dubious debt and ludicrous bonuses paid out to benefit short-term interests in the banking sector itself that have landed us all in this sorry mess.
 
Nary a reference, even, to the statement by Barclays chief executive John Varley, who told The BBC that he was upbeat on the bank's prospects for the rest of the year.
 
"The investments we have made, particularly in our international businesses, are driving very strong income performance and allowing us to absorb the consequences of the economic downturn," he said.
 
"Our goal for 2009 is very clear: we seek to deliver another year of solid profitability. Our first half performance is a good start to this."

Nothing in there about “reducing IT headcounts and beginning to see profits return”. I should think not. Why spoil a good headline with a couple of facts. It would be a shame to see good IT magazines going tabloid.
 

The wishful CIO – the further adventures of Bob

Like a phoenix, Bob has risen from the ashes of his once fast-tracked career. He is pursuing a green agenda as he toils to rebuild and recover the tattered shreds of his dignity and career.

Just the other day he was reviewing progress with the contractors assembling his new “green” datacentre when a clumsy fitter misjudged his distance and broke through a false wall to reveal a hitherto unknown compartment. Upon inspection this proved to contain a dilapidated rack with a single ancient server in situ.

Bob was astonished to find this secret place at the very heart of his high-tech core and found his one good eye drawn to the ”Netware 286 Rocks” stickers emblazoned across the faceplate. Then Bob noticed an even more amazing thing - the green light was on and flickering in the half gloom. Intrigued and remembering the legends of his early career he stumbled forward through the shattered panel, ignoring the shop steward’s cries of “asbestos, asbestos”, and with trembling fingers stroked out the old familiar key combinations on the dirt encrusted keyboard.

Nothing happened…. Of course it bl**dy didn’t, this isn’t a fairy tale.

In the peripheral vision of his injured eye (damaged in an unfortunate solvent accident, cleaning Wite-Out off the HR director’s monitor) he spotted the unmistakable shape of a very early Motorola mobile phone, the size of several house bricks. Bizarrely it began to ring and in a state of nervous apprehension Bob reached down and gingerly released the handset, lifting it to his ear.

A disembodied voice spoke up and said: “Hullo Bob, this is the internet speaking. You have discovered the secrets of the first node and to reward you I will gather together my enormous commercial power and the might of my connected brain, to grant you one wish. But be quick -. the battery life on these things is appalling.”

A lesser CIO than Bob would have been struck dumb at this point but hardened by years of opportunistic budget negotiations with a financially astute - tight-fisted – chief executive, he responded immediately: “ Build me a bypass that will allow me to travel all the way from my home in Slough to the corporate headquarters in Reading. Thus, allow me to avoid the dreadful motorway commute and enable me to lie in of a morning listening to career management podcasts.”

The phoned buzzed with static for a minute and the internet replied: “Two things, Bob. Firstly, your request is overtly materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking; the supports required and the churning up of the shrinking countryside of the Thames Valley. Think of the concrete and steel it would take. It will nearly exhaust several natural resources and pollute the environment. I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for such selfish and damaging things given your newfound environmental awareness.”

The internet continued: “Second, you are failing to take into account Moore’s less well known 8th Law of Bandwidth and Capacity which states that no matter how much you increase capacity and/or space, a bunch of buffoons will very quickly clog it up with all sorts of rubbish. Take a little more time and think of something that could possibly help mankind and exemplify my ethical conscience and social responsibility.”

Bob thought about it for a long time while the internet became increasingly agitated. Finally, he said: “OK - I’d like you to explain the benefits and logic of Microsoft’s European pricing policy for upgrading to Windows 7 at this point in the global financial meltdown .”

The internet replied: “You want two lanes or four lanes on that bypass?”

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!