Managing business change

Since my last blog, a key activity has been working with a US colleague on the development of a web site on managing business change.

As those who have developed a site will know, it takes longer than you think. The challenges range from deciding on key messages to generating content to specifying the interface to overseeing the build. In this case, Professor Shore and I decided to outsource the development to an Indian web site developer. This was a great learning experience and reinforced the type of insights we convey in our Henley information management programmes.

The web site is a natural follow-up to my book on IT-Enabled Business Change. It builds on the material in the book and provides the opportunity for topical updates. One key element of functionality for a web site is a flexible content management system. I would not say that we have totally achieved our goal in this respect but there is always a trade-off between function and cost! We have included a feedback page and any constructive comments will be welcomed.

It has been encouraging to see the set-up of a new BCS Business Change Specialist group. There is an inaugural meeting on Wednesday, 16 September 2009 at the BT Centre in Central London. Unfortunately, I cannot attend this session since I will be presenting a paper at the British Academy of Management conference in Brighton. This is entitled Re-energising Business Change: a Thomson Reuters case study. My co-author is the global head of change programmes at Thomson Reuters who provided some great insights from his team’s experiences.

I am also confident that I will gain new lessons from judging at the UK IT Industry Awards. Having been a judge for several Computing awards, it is good to see Computing and BCS come together for this enlarged event. I like the way that these awards promote professional and committed approaches alongside recognising achievements. They are also great fun to attend.

The more that I reflect on the above, the more I feel that we are continuing to progress in driving increased business IT change capability. This can sound somewhat generic but I know from working with business IT professionals that they really enjoy learning a new skill whether that is how to present an IT business case, getting a difficult stakeholder on board or understanding if Zachman has any relevance!

Managing business change in China

I recently returned from my first trip to China and it was a great experience both professionally and personally. As well as presenting at an academic conference in Beijing, I was invited to give a keynote on Managing Business Change to over 100 executives and senior managers in Qingdao. According to the travel guide, Qingdao is a beautiful seaside city located a short distance across the Yellow Sea from Korea and Japan, making it an important place for international trade. 

Of course others may know it as the home of Qingdao (Tsingtao) Beer which I had the opportunity to sample at an evening dinner prior to the conference. I was quickly introduced to the drinking culture for which every introduction is an opportunity for a ‘bottoms-up’ drink - although I did draw the line at the misnamed China Wine, a distilled liquor, which is about 80 to 120 proof. Just as well since my presentation was the first one on the next morning!

I started the presentation with one of the few phrases I learned in Chinese and then switched to English to talk about the hard and soft elements of Business Change. My co-presenter, Jonathan Du, Nimbus President in China translated the presentation into Mandarin. The talk covered the different mindsets of IT and Change Managers, the cultural aspects of doing business internationally and the need for an integrated approach to change. Much of this was based on my book on IT-Enabled Business Change.

It was very encouraging to see the real depth of understanding reflected in the questions from the Chinese executive audience. Clearly they are facing many of the same challenges that we are in the western world. In fact, at the academic conference one paper reported that only about one in 10 enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations in China are rated as successful. The audience recognised that key issues are generally more connected to business and people than IT.

On a personal note, the visits to the historic Great Wall and Forbidden City contrasted amazingly with the tour of the modern Birds Nest Stadium in the Olympic Village. Judging by the number of visitors to the latter, China will be able to recoup a large amount of taxpayers money spent on the 2008 Olympics.

Overall a great experience and one I hope to repeat.

Re-making IT in a downturn

It's been a while since my last blog and like others I am still trying to make sense of what is going on in the world as a result of the financial downturn. I read an interesting article in The Times that challenged the often-quoted view that equities are the best place to invest over a period of about 10 years.

The question it raises for me is how many CIOs are working with their peers to review how appropriate is their organisation's business model in the current climate. I know from my own experiences as a European CIO that this is not an easy discussion but it is really insightful and motivating if you can make it work. You need to be willing to put forward radical ideas and to test these with forward-thinking colleagues.

Another option is to stimulate a broader portfolio discussion by considering what IT investments are needed and why. I have been invited to participate in a web seminar with Computing’s sister-publication Accountancy Age this Wednesday 11 March around the topic Funding IT in the current economic climate.

There are of course some good practices for investments in any climate but some of these are more important in the tough times. I am looking forward to a strong debate.

The speed of change - and of Flickr

The Computing Awards event earlier this month was very enjoyable. It's good to see the delight of those winning the awards - it clearly means a lot to them.

I did have one surprise. One of my fellow judges snapped a photo of me attempting to control a wayward snowboard - part of this year's entertainment. He kindly picked one of my better moments and sent me a copy. Next morning I received a note asking about the picture from our PR team at Henley!

Of course, all they had done was set a Google alert on Henley and the Flickr photo that Mark Kobayashi-Hillary had posted came up automatically. It shows how quickly and how widely these activities can be communicated.

I did my presentation to the Change Directors Forum on IT Enabled Business Change and we had some interesting debates. If you want to know more read the blog of Peter Thomas, one of the attendees.

One question I asked was if they believed that business change should be a profession. As many of you will be aware, the BCS has been promoting IT as a profession. My view is that it is critical to raise the capability levels in both IT and business change and that is one step towards a profession but a lot more would be needed. I have a number of people who want to participate in my research next year on raising capability.

It was disappointing how few people were aware of the IT-Enabled Business Change qualification at the Change Directors Forum and the two Government IT Academy seminars. I hope that word gets round since it is real opportunity to demonstrate a broad understanding of the whole lifecycle from alignment to benefits.

The role of information in the financial crisis

Since my last entry, I had a very stimulating meeting with fellow judges on the Computing awards and have run a couple of seminars around my IT-Enabled Business Change book.

It's been an exciting time, particularly since I have also been trying to get an understanding of the current financial crisis.

Just to link these points, I have used the IT-enabled change model of people, process, information and technology.

Most of the focus has been on people, particularly the greed angle. There has been some process views on risk although this has been limited. Likewise the role of technology in making this all happen so fast has been highlighted but not to any great extent.

For me the biggest question relates to information. No-one seems to understand the value of many of these 'toxic assets'. This includes sellers, buyers, raters and regulators. It appears to be a classic case of information ignorance rather than information asymetry where the seller is better informed than the buyer.

It makes me wonder what role if any the CIO has to play in this. Next month I am presenting another seminar on IT-enabled business change to a group of change managers linked to financial services - perhaps an opportunity to find the answer!

Enabling change with IT

Well, the book that I have been referring to is almost in publication. I have to say that it has been quite a journey. Despite having written many pieces for practitioner and academic audiences, not to mention MBA and doctoral dissertations, writing a book has presented lots of different challenges. There is the initial decision and negotiations to go through and lots of add-ons such as permissions, foreword, glossary, quotes, copyright to consider in the publication. Alongside that is the marketing activity including press releases, supporting articles and other communications.

It's a great learning experience and my advice is to get expert input all along the way. Matthew Flynn and Lance Chinnian at BCS have been very helpful.

Of course this is one opportunity to communicate news about the book which is about the successful management of IT-enabled business change. I will be having a launch event on 22 September. Last time I checked there were about 60 places booked to date and I am looking forward to engaging the audience in the debate.

The big driver for me in writing the book has been to extend the knowledge of IT-enabled business change. My career has been based on being a “hybrid” business and IT professional, manager, consultant and academic. It seems to me this is a core skill required by all if we are really to make a big impression on creating successful major change programmes. That is surely in all our interests.

Prior to the launch, there is the annual judging of the Computing Awards for Excellence. It is always great to see the commitment of IT professionals and leaders to make a difference as represented in their submissions. The one disappointment last year, not to take anything away from the winner, was the limited range of submissions in the IT strategy category. However it was the first year for this award, so I am hoping this year's entries will match the high standards of other categories.

Enable change

What do the following chief information officers (CIOs) have in common: government CIO John Suffolk, BA IT chief Paul Coby and Deutsche Telekom Group CIO Peter Sany?

The answer is that all three are committed to a service and metrics-driven approach to IT, combined with a proactive approach to business change.

CIOs are able to work successfully across diverse domains because they have engineering mindsets that can deliver on time and on budget to specification, while meeting agreed service levels.

You may achieve these goals, yet waste money and miss opportunities if your colleagues do not buy into the change programme within their own groups.

Such collaboration requires IT-enabled business change skills from the CIO, the IT department, the executive team and ultimately the whole business.

One option for acquiring expertise is to hire high-powered business IT consultants who understand how to apply technology. Such experts might have an MBA or business background that includes exposure to successful projects.

Although the solution sounds simple, a CIO focus group I ran recently concluded that such consultants are both scarce and costly. This approach also relies on a small group of people acting as intermediaries and does not change your company's underlying culture.

Technical people will continue to have a back-room delivery mentality, while business users ask for requirements that are not well considered. Both groups end up relying on the business IT consultants to make a satisfactory connection.

As a more sustainable alternative, leading CIOs look to up-skill existing staff because they understand the company’s systems and processes, unlike new hires.

Peter Sany has sponsored a professional development programme at Henley Management College for 40 high-potential IT staff. The programme leads to a Masters in enterprise information management.

Initially aimed at about one per cent of IT professionals, the initiative has a network effect as participants spread the word and influence their colleagues.

John Suffolk engages a network of CIOs in the public sector and organises education seminars that all staff can attend.

Suffolk has a competency lead for business change and his group has promoted the inclusion of a set of relevant skills in version three of the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).

The SFIA is a good starting point for any manager who wishes to benchmark their existing skills.

Finally, Paul Coby’s role covers both IT and business change. He has promoted the message of “business not IT projects” inside and outside his firm.

Yet there has been a significant gap in the education arena for material concerning IT-enabled business change that does not assume prior knowledge.

The gap has been filled by a BCS qualification and a forthcoming book, both of which I was happy to be associated with because of my experience as a former CIO and a business school teacher.

My view, reinforced by talking to CIOs, is that all IT professionals should have core knowledge in three areas: service management; project management; and IT-enabled business change.

A broad awareness provides a base for specialising in one of these disciplines, or in areas such as security, enterprise architecture or information management.

The above-mentioned IT-enabled business change qualification and book are also aimed at business professionals. Our aim is for them to be better equipped for dialogue with IT specialists, leading to improved requirements and solutions.

You might think business change is someone else’s responsibility, but take note of director of information for the Metropolitan Police Service Ailsa Beaton, who says CIOs need to engage colleagues with a message that puts business benefits at the heart of any IT-driven change.

Without this, we cannot realise the potential offered by new technologies.

The challenges for IT leaders

As I noted in an earlier blog, my scope is in three main areas: IT-enabled business change, information management and the CIO role. Recently, I have been focusing on developing knowledge, qualifications and workshops in the first two areas, both of which impact the CIO.

IT-enabled business change

The new ISEB foundation qualification has been launched and I am now writing a book on the subject. It has been challenging and enlightening to capture the corporate, academic and consulting experience of doing business change in one place.

One of the challenges faced by CIOs who are moving into this area is to define the scope and skills required to succeed. My view based on this book and a new course we are developing at Henley Management College is that business change professionals need to be competent in four different areas: processes, people, information and technology. This is starting to happen but very few CIOs and their teams are equally comfortable in all these areas and how they fit together.

Information Management

The Information Management model developed by the IM profession group (including members from Yell, Met Police, MOD, IBM, BCS, CILIP and Henley) has been well received. People seem to like the key message of the model which is that information management has been split into four different worlds due to different technology, language and skills. We need to find ways to integrate these worlds.
A new ISEB qualification in Information Management is being proposed. I am presenting a draft syllabus at a workshop on 6 July. Organisations and individuals are being asked how they can contribute to the development. It’s another potential challenge/opportunity for CIOs to focus on the ‘I’ as well as the ‘T’.

How can IT leaders improve?

My learning, practice and advice is firmly around the question: ‘How do you, as an IT leader, improve yourself and your business?’ This doesn’t just apply to CIOs; it applies to senior IT professionals and also business leaders of IT

There is no shortage of advice for IT leaders from a range of sources. I seek to contribute through workshops, articles and columns such as the ‘Ask the Experts’ section in Computing Business magazine. But I would like this blog to be more a reflection of what I am personally working on and who I am working with.

Broadly, my patch is about IT-enabled business change, information management and the CIO role. In this scene-setter, I will outline some of my current activities.

IT-enabled business change

I am excited by the new ISEB foundation qualification in IT-enabled business change which I believe fills a key gap. When I was invited to join a group to develop this qualification, I had one concern. This is a subject I teach at Masters level on the Henley Management College MBA. Could we cover this in three days of study with a valuable qualification at the end? Well, the work has been completed – so we will soon see the reaction.

Information Management

I am working with managers who are passionate about raising the capabilities and reputation of information professionals. This idea has been embraced by both the main professional bodies, BCS and CILIP. Together we formed an IM Profession group that will be presenting at the IM Solutions event on November 28. We want to help IT leaders extend their influence from structured to unstructured information and from control to exploitation of information.

CIOs

Many chief information officers (CIOs) are only now coming to terms with the middle initial of their title, although unlike some commentators I believe technology remains a major differentiator. I interact with many international managers in my work at Henley and as a management consultant. It is clear that CIOs share a large number of challenges politically, professionally and personally - and that’s a subject for a later blog.