Moving On ....

Life changes and takes new roads.  In this case I am moving on, and so is my blog. 

My life has met a major fork in the road recently.  I have left the Warehouse and the comparative comfort of a corporate job and I am setting up my own consulting practice.

My personal focus remains the same.  That is looking to harness the power of technology and create value for businesses, communities, families and individuals but my business focus changes a little.  Rather than being a  CIO with the aim of  delivering value of  technology investments for one organisation I am intending to work with many CIOs, CXOs and senior technology executives and supporting them to be successful in delivering value from their technology investments to their organisations.

 As a result of this my blog is changing.  This blog will continue to capture my personal thoughts and ideas however my more business related ideas will move to a new blog at http://www.successfulcio.com/.  If you like some of my ideas or are intrigued please, join me there.

Owen.

What is Success in Corporate IT?

It’s 8.50 am and you are working on the IT help desk.  You receive a panicked call from the Chief Executive’s PA.  There is an executive meeting due to start in 10 minutes and she has a number of documents that she needs to print for the meeting.  The problem is that the printer is not working!  What do you do?   

This scenario is one that my team often use in an interview for new team members.  The answer normally comes in one of two generic forms.   

In the first style of answer the person focuses on fixing the offending printer(s).  They will go into  great detail about how they would go about diagnosing the problem with the printer and getting the printer fixed so that it can be used and the PA can print the required documents.  Often their answer shows that they have a logical and well ordered approach to problem diagnosis and an excellent understanding of how printers work.  Some will go further and discuss collaborating with others to help them solve the problem with the printer.

In the second style of answer the person focuses on getting the documents printed within 10 minutes for the PA. Typically their first action is to print the documents to a different printer or to take a copy of the documents to a different desktop and get them printed.  They then begin to look at the issue of how to fix the printer.

The answer to this question is often an “employment breaker” for our candidates.  If you were the interviewer and this is all the information you have, who would you employ? The answer to this question depends on how you define success for your team.  There are many possible answers to this.  Here are some common ones:

1. IT operations comply with all agreed SLAs (operational and project)
2. Delivery of budget commitments including operational costs, recharges (if you recharge) and capital costs
3. A highly engaged IS team who love working here
4. Operating at or above “benchmark performance” for our industry and size of company
5. Our customers are happy with the service I provide to them (ie customer satisfaction)

All of these measures are important however when it comes to hiring decisions the major impact that a person can have is performance against agreed SLAs and/ or customer satisfaction.  

If your criteria for success is SLA performance then I suggest you would employ the first candidate because they are much more likely to get that printer up and running quickly because of their technical knowledge and their demonstrated problem analysis skills.  You would be supported in this decision by most of our industry best practice.  Many industry frameworks highlight the importance of SLAs and your ability to meet them.  How many times have you sat in a meeting where you (or perhaps your vendor) have claimed to be providing great service because all the SLAs have been met?

If however your criteria for success is customer satisfaction then I suggest you would employ the second candidate as their focus on solving the PA’s problem is much more likely to give you a satisfied customer even if your SLAs may suffer as it takes longer to actually fix the printer.  

Which is right?  I think the answer can be found by differentiating between means (what we do) and ends (why we do it).  Or to put it another way we can find the answer by understanding why IS departments exist within large organisations?    Simply put, IS teams are not responsible for the overall success of an organisation.  Instead, the IS teams exist to support the organisation to be successful.  As an example, the IS team at The Warehouse is not responsible for the execution of our retail business.  We are however, responsible for providing technology and information to the rest of the organisation to support them to be as effective and efficient as possible.  If this is the case, the best people to judge your ability to do this are the people you are here to support.  That means that the “end”, or success, for an IT team is a highly satisfied customer and therefore I would hire the second candidate.

First Published on www.cio.co.nz

LGP'ers - Welcome to 2011!!

http://www.lgp.org.nz/news/6-events/30-welcome-to-2011.html

Happy New Year and welcome to 2011!  Well, 2010 was an interesting year for the Life Game Project.  We achieved a number of really good things.  My favorites are:

• The release of the LGP video.  Thanks to everyone who gave their time for this, especially thank you to Reuben Pillsbury who was the creative brains behind the video and produced the video.  Awesome Reuben!!
• Relaunching our website in Joomla which has many in built features and a strong development community that will allow us to advance the site.  More on this later.
• Forming an agreement with Brian Lawrence and the Ark to provide tech logistics to LGP.

As well as the good things we have achieved we have learnt a lot about how to not make substantial progress as a self managed community.  We have really struggled to turn inspiration for LGP into forward momentum.  Ian and I have taken advice and thought about why this is. Our conclusion is that there are two really important things currently missing from LGP:

1. Clarity about what people who want to support LGP can actually do, rather than a general invitation to exercise your passion in an area that supports LGP.
2. A central point of contact as the "Go To" person who coordinates all LGP activity.   

What does this mean for 2011?  

It means we have 2 key initiatives for the beginning of 2011 that we believe will allow us to accelerate our progress in 2011.  These are:

1. Help bridge the gap between inspiration and action by continuing to develop www.lgp.org.nz  - with the priority on ‘gamifying’ it to provide clearly defined tasks, quests and roles for LGP volunteers to undertake.
2. Appoint an LGP Manager as the central point for all things LGP.  We see this as a part time paid role with the primary responsibility to support and coordinate all LGP volunteer and community activity.  If you are interested or know someone who would be brilliant at the job please contact either of the LGP Co-Founders; Owen McCall or Ian Howard.  Be warned; after an initial period one of the responsibilities of this role will be to source the funding for this key role.

 So here’s to 2011 and here’s to LGP taking better steps towards supporting New Zealand becoming a place where everyone is safe and loved.

Remember Who You Are.

As a teenager growing up in rural New Zealand if I ever wanted to go out I needed to borrow my parents’ car. Borrowing the car involved a pretty standard ritual of asking for it, explaining where I was going and who I would be with and when I expected to be home.  Based on this explanation I would be given access to the family car (or the farm truck, depending on what was available).  The final part of the ritual was that just before I left Dad would always say “remember who you are”.  Every time he would say this and it drove me nuts.  I interpreted “remember who you are” as an overt attempt to control me and my actions to ensure I didn’t sully the family name.  As a teenage boy I wasn’t about to be controlled by anyone, especially my father!

As time went by I left home and went to University.  There I met Jo, the love of my life.  After a couple of years I took the big step of bringing her home to meet the parents.  I was very nervous about this meeting.  Much to my surprise she liked my parents and they liked her.  One day while Jo was at my parents place we wanted to go out.  I went through after the standard “can I borrow the car please” ritual and Dad added the usual “remember who you are”.  As we left I muttered under my breath something about what a control freak my father was, although the language may have been a little more colourful.  Jo just stared at me “what are you talking about?”.  So I explained to her in simple clear (emotional?) language what the problem was.

She just shook her head in disbelief “is that what you really think?  That’s not what he means at all.  What he means is ...” and she proceeded to give me a big long explanation on what he really meant.  I don’t remember exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of don’t go and get all caught up in the moment, cave into peer pressure and do something that you know is wrong and will regret later.  Arts students!!  Always reading stuff into things that doesn’t exist.  I mean really, she barely knew my father.

Time continued on.  I embarked on my career as a consultant and over time began reading a number of book and participating in a series of personal development and leadership courses.  Many of these courses and books raised the notion of self awareness and authenticity as being critical to success in leadership and in life.  Daniel Goldman’s EQ being one good example.  Having been exposed to both highly authentic leaders and inauthentic leaders this rang very true for me.  People can smell authenticity a mile away.

As I contemplated this new learning “remember who you are” came back to my consciousness in a new and unexpected way.  It began to dawn on me that “remember who you are” was really short hand for “remember who you really are and act with integrity to that true self”.  Or more concisely be authentic.  Jo was right and perhaps my father was actually quite wise to say such a thing.  

This caused me a bit of a problem however as it posed a question I couldn’t easily answer. “Who am I really?”  It’s very difficult to “remember who you are”, and then to express that consistently if you have no idea who you are!!  

So my quest to find out who I really am and to act in a way that is consistent with this has begun.  I know that as I have become more self aware I have been able to express myself more authentically and that this has had a tremendous impact on people around me.  In those moments I am a more effective person and leader.  I also know that I mess up daily and act inconsistently with who I know myself to be.  I’m human.and to borrow a phrase this is a “never ending journey”, a journey that begins each day by asking who am I really? and reconnecting to the answer with “remember who you are”!

So now I ask you.  Who are you, really?

First published on www.cio.co.nz

The "I" stands for Information

"If you can't measure it, you can't manage it". Peter Drucker. or;

"If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." Lord Kelvin

The title on my business card says's "Chief Information Officer". The CIO title is considered by many to be the most coveted in the IT industry and typically represents the top IT decision maker in an organisation. I often wonder about the title of Chief Information Officer because as an industry we dwell on technology not information. We seem to spend more time discussing Blackberry vs iPhone than we spend talking about information and the use of information to drive performance. Interestingly, as much as we dwell on technology our biggest fear as an industry is that we will be seen by our colleagues as geeks. We are needed because someone has to keep the computers running but we are irrelevant to strategy and business decision making. It's a reinforcing circle. We focus on technology therefore our colleagues see us as geeks. When we do think about information mainly what we think about is fancy new technology tools not about improved use of information per sa.

I believe we need to re-balance our focus so that we spend our time more or less equally between use of technology and use of information, as our CIO title suggests we should. The question is how?

Peter Drucker and Lord Kelvin provide us with a clue to where to start and it is not with fancy BI tools. Step 1 is to understand your organisation and how it adds value. Step 2 is to provide accurate, or perhaps more correctly put, consistent and relevant measurement to key decision makers to allow them in optimise business performance.

Relevance is the key. The information needs to be relevant to the context of the decision maker. If it isn't then it doesn't matter how good the information is it will not be used. Those of you who have read a number of these columns, or my blog, will know that I believe that Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a great analogy to define relevance, in this case relevance to what the decision maker is trying to understand and to guide a journey towards improving maturity. Below is my version of an Information Needs hierarchy to guide an organisations maturity in the better use of information.

As Maslow teaches us you need to begin with the most very basic needs and become more sophisticated over time. For decision making and information analytics the most basic need is help me understand what happened! While we may have access to many tools that can provide sophisticated and predictive analytics to be relevant you must start with the basics and build capability and awareness of the higher order needs over time.

First published on www.cio.co.nz

The Three Blind Mice Need Your Help!!

An enthusiastic team has formed within The Warehouse Information Services who are in training to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing in November to participate in Delta's Mad Mountain Challenge and our goal is to raise $10,000 for the Kia Timata Ano (KTA) Trust.

The Delta’s Mad Mountain Challenge is an attempt to cross the volcanic alpine terrain, four times, non-stop, in 24 hours, a kind of Tongariro ping-pong. The group will be walking some 77.6kms, climbing 4200 metres up and 4200 metres down... and be busting a gut (or legs) to get this done in 24 hours.

Why is The Warehouse IS team doing this? To raise much needed funds for the Kia Timata Ano (KTA) Trust. This Trust is an independent women's refuge based in Rodney’s West District. It's for real people suffering real fear and physical abuse, right now, right here, at home in New Zealand. It is a charity to help women and children escape from intimidation and bullying, caused by those most able to cause them pain.

How can you help us achieve this BHAG (Big Hairy Audicious Goal)?

1) We would love you to donate $$ directly onto our fundraising page - Click here to donate.

2) Come and get your car washed at TWL Support Office on Friday, 12th, 19th & 26th November from 9am-12noon. Email carwashfundraising@thewarehouse.co.nz for pricing and bookings.

3) OR better still - Get me out of Car Washing!!! My PA believes there are many IT providers out there who never get past her great gate-keeping skills and would love to pay $500 for an hour of time with the CIO of The Warehouse to showcase/sell their product or services. I think she knows of my car washing skills but either way I'm committed to helping the team raise $10,000. If you'd like to take up one of these exclusive offers, please email: lynn.power@thewarehouse.co.nz

For all further info on the Event, please go to www.threeblindmice.co.nz.

I'll keep you updated with our progress and other initiatives we will soon be launching. Thank you for reading this email – and I hope to see your support soon!

Insource, outsource, everything as a service

I have spent a long time in and around the IT industry - 24 years and counting. During this time I have been a consultant, lead an outsourcing team and now I am a CIO. As a result I have been both a seller and buyer of services.

Currently as the CIO of The Warehouse, I get approached many times a year by vendors who want to sell me something. Some of them (but not many) actually want to help me and my organisation succeed.

Trade magazines and online forums are full of articles about the merits of cloud computing and outsourcing. Most of these stories urge CEOs and CIOs to change the way they buy computing. The current theme is that everything should be bought on demand; don’t own anything as others can do it better and cheaper.

Not so long ago strategic outsourcing and ERP filled the magazines and while the buzz has gone from the media, vendors still knock down doors on a regular basis to impress upon you, your CEO and your team that their services are the ones that will make the difference. It is great to have choice, but how do you decide? Whenever I am approached by a vendor the questions I ask myself are:

• Is the process or functionality being discussed strategic and/or a source of competitive advantage for my organisation?

If the answer is yes then I am unlikely to commit to an externally-provided solution. Why? Because building and maintaining sources of competitive advantage are critical to the future success of the business and core to my job as an executive and as a member of the executive team leading the organisation. While you do need to avoid the tendency to see competitive advantage in everything you do, where it is genuine I will keep that in-house. Because to outsource the most important services, is in effect to outsource the primary responsibility for your job.

• Can the provider meet the service levels that I need?

Many vendors bombard you with a huge list of certifications and performance statistics to show how credible they are. ITIL and CoBIT compliant, ISO X, Y and Z certified, CMM level and so on.

Most vendors talk about availability, many are proud of there 99.99 percent or 99.999 percent availability. This list of achievements is impressive and very few corporate IS teams can match the full array of certifications and point to 5 9’s availability. The real question however is, does it matter? While some of the services I provide do need to be highly available (Eftpos for example) very few of my services need to be at 99.99 percent.

What does matter to me is geographical diversity. I need to provide services into many of New Zealand’s small towns. Greymouth, Alexandra and Kaitaia for example. The point is, I don’t want generic solutions and certifications I want my specific needs met.

• Are your services cheaper than what I can provide myself for the required level of service?

It will not be a surprise that cost is a major factor in any deliberation of how to source. I have had many discussions with sales teams where they have tried to convince me that cost is not all that matters. There are the vast array of value adding services that they can bring. Value adding to who?

As the services that I am looking for an external party to provide are unlikely to be strategic or critical to my competitive advantage (see question 1!), cost for the agreed level of service that I need IS THE criteria and anything past commodity prices is added cost for no value.

• Are you prepared to share my risk?

Most vendors are very good when talking about risk early in a sales cycle. Most vendors however, want no part of risk when it comes to the detail of the contract.

While you can never truly “outsource” risk as it is my business that suffers when a service fails, suppliers need to recognise the critical nature of what they do for their clients.

They also need to demonstrate they believe in the quality of what is on offer and the value of those long lists of certifications. The best way I know to do this is to put some skin in the game and agree to put things right when they go wrong.

So, how do you decide? What will you have to pay in order to meet the required level of service?

First published on www.cio.co.nz