Coffee and Blood Sugars

I read on what appeared to be a reasonably reputable site that coffee was implicated in increasing insulin resistance.  Given my blood sugar levels this is a bit of problem for me.  I love coffee but actually if it is going to elevate my blood sugars well maybe I need to re-evaluate.

So I did some quick research on line.  Here is a sample of what I found:

Caffeine Increases Blood Sugar In People With Type 2 Diabetes (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/95380.php)

• A small US study suggests that people with type 2 diabetes who drink the equivalent of four cups of coffee or more a day may be causing their blood sugar levels to go up by 8 per cent (compared to non caffeine days), thus making it harder for them to manage their condition.

• Other recent studies have shown that in habitual coffee drinkers with type 2 diabetes, caffeine appears to raise glucose and insulin after intakes of standardized carbohydrate loads. Lane and colleagues decided to investigate if this effect manifested after meals in the everyday life of type 2 diabetics and how it might undermine their efforts to manage their condition.

Ten Reasons to Quit Your Coffee - http://drhyman.com/blog/2012/06/13/ten-reasons-to-quit-your-coffee/#close

Habituation to caffeine decreases insulin sensitivity, making it difficult for your cells to respond appropriately to blood sugar.  High blood sugar levels lead to arterial deterioration and increased risk of mortality related to cardiovascular disease.

Diabetes.co.uk - http://www.diabetes.co.uk/food/coffee-and-diabetes.html

• The effect of coffee on diabetes, when presented in the media can often be confusing. News stories can in the same week tout the benefits coffee can have on diabetes and shoot down coffee as being unhelpful for blood sugar levels. This doesn’t mean the articles are contradictory though. Put slightly more simply, coffee contains different chemicals, some of which have beneficial effects whereas others can have a less beneficial effect, such as caffeine which can impair insulin in the short term.
• Caffeine has been shown to impair insulin sensitivity in people with type 2 diabetes, indicating that coffee may see higher blood glucose levels.
• However, a regular high caffeine intake has been linked with improved insulin sensitivity.  Coffee and its effect on risks of developing type 2 diabetes have been studied a number of times and has indicated a notably lower risk of type 2 diabetes being associated with coffee drinkers.  A 2009 study of 40,000 participants noted that consumption of 3 cups of tea or coffee a day lead to a 40% lower risk of type 2 diabetes

Mayo Clinic - Does caffeine affect blood sugar? http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/expert-answers/blood-sugar/faq-20057941

• Caffeine impairs insulin action, but doesn't necessarily affect blood sugar (glucose) levels in young, healthy adults. However, if you have type 2 diabetes, the impact of caffeine on insulin action may be associated with a small, but detectable rise in blood sugar levels, particularly after meals. About 250 milligrams of caffeine — or the equivalent of 2 to 2 1/2 cups (473 to 591 milliliters) of plain, brewed coffee — a day may cause this effect.
• If you have type 2 diabetes and you're struggling to control your blood sugar levels, limiting the amount of caffeine in your diet may provide a benefit.

But then .....

Effects of Coffee Consumption on Fasting Blood Glucose and Insulin Concentrations - http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/27/12/2990.full

• Higher habitual coffee consumption was associated with higher insulin sensitivity (1) and a lower risk for type 2 diabetes (2–6) in diverse populations. In contrast, short-term metabolic studies showed that caffeine intake can acutely lower insulin sensitivity (7–9) and increase glucose concentrations (10–15). Randomized intervention studies are needed to examine whether tolerance to these acute effects develops after longer-term consumption (16). We therefore examined the effects of coffee and caffeine on fasting blood concentrations of glucose and insulin over 2–4 weeks in two crossover studies in healthy volunteers.
• After 2 weeks, coffee consumption tended to lead to higher fasting glucose concentrations, but no appreciable effect was observed after 4 weeks (Table 1). Fasting insulin concentrations, measured only after 4 weeks, were higher after the coffee period than after the no coffee period (Table 1). Tests for carry-over effects did not indicate that these existed (insulin: P = 0.79; glucose: P = 0.27).
• Fasting glucose concentrations were similar after the caffeine, coffee, and placebo period (Table 1). Compared with the placebo period, fasting insulin concentrations tended to be higher after the coffee and caffeine periods (Table 1).
• In conclusion, the present results indicate that tolerance to the adverse effects of high coffee consumption on insulin-glucose homeostasis does not develop within a 4-week period. This stresses that it is premature to advocate high coffee consumption as a means to lower risk for type 2 diabetes. Long-term trials of coffee consumption that include detailed measures of insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism are warranted to elucidate the apparent discrepancy with studies that observed an inverse association between habitual coffee consumption and risk for type 2 diabetes.

Pretty much all of these sites quote the one study so while it is early days in understanding the impact.  That said, there has been a lot of reseach on the health effects of diabtesNot health benefits of antioxidants.  Here is an example - http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270202.php

So, What to do?  I love my coffee but perhaps it has to go.  My blood sugars are stable at the mid to los 7 area but I would like it to be lower.  Maybe I should stop drinking coffee but can I stand the headaches!!!

From the Jaws of Defeat.

About 8 months ago I decided it was time for me to arrange for income protection insurance.   I have been out on my own for nearly two years and while things had gone pretty well we were completely dependant on me turning up to work on a daily basis.   All went well.   I found a provider who had what I wanted and they seemed keen to help.   As with many personal  insurance products this one required medical checks to be completed. If you want to know your results then visit your doctor they said.   I didn't really want to know my results but after some prodding from my wife I went to see my doctor.

I'm not that fond of doctors. Maybe it's a bloke thing, but it's almost certain that if you see a doctor you will come out sick even if you were well when you walked through their door.   If only I had known because on this day in August 2013 I walked into the doctors office feeling fine and I walked out with type 2 diabetes.  Bugger! 

I honestly don't remember a great deal of what else was said that day except that none of it sounded good.   The best prognosis seemed to be we can slow down the inevitable progress to disaster.  The measurements were too extreme to consider reversal (I have now learnt that the key measure they look at is HBA1C which measures blood sugar levels over a three to four month period.   Mine was 91, healthy is under 53 or 48 depending on which organisation you are with).

Disaster was what I heard. Treatment starts with some pills now (metformin) but eventually you will need to inject insulin, you'll probably go blind and loose feeling in your limbs especially in your feet.  It's likely this will lead to amputation!  He probably didn't say this but total breakdown to a humiliating and painful death was what I heard with no possible reprieve. 

This prognosis was not something I could live with (pun intended) so after a relatively brief period of wallowing in self pity my natural contraian kicked in and I began to turn my attention to defying the odds and the doctor.   It was about then that Tom Rath released a book "Eat,  Move,  Sleep".  I bought it because the title intrigued me and I was a fan of the strengths work that Tom was a major part of.   The book was useful and set me moving but most importantly eat move sleep has become my mantra.

One blog is not enough to tell the full story to date. That will have to wait for future blogs but let's roll forward 8 months and report progress.  I am off metformin (which is a story of its own) and my latest HBA1C is 42.  A great start and my doctor is amazed, it is just a start though as dealing with this reality will take a (long and healthy) life time.

Active Living

I hate exercise. It's not so much the doing of exercise I hate as the whole concept of putting aside time with the express purpose of torturing your body. While I know it's good for me it seems so unnatural.  And I reckon I have proof that it is unnatural. Well perhaps not proof but supporting observations.

A few years back our family went on a holiday to Africa. As I look back at that trip I don't remember seeing anyone, animal or human, exercising. What I saw was two things.   For the vast majority of the time everything moved slowly, very slowly.   While the movements were slow they were constant. You didn't see a lot of lazing around except for the lions maybe.

The second thing you saw very occasionally was full tilt sprints for a short period.  Sometimes this was a fright response to seeing us tourists, in natural settings it is more likely to be the food chain in action as hunter and prey burst into life.  I began to wonder.

Then last year sometime I watched a program on BBC called Horizon. On this particular episode they talked about exercise and it's impact. Simplistically their conclusion was that if you focused on moving constantly and then occasionally stressed to body to maximum (3 x 20 second sprints 3 x a week) then you would get the vast majority of benefits that exercise has to offer.  Seemed pretty consistent with what I saw I Africa.

Of course when I began to compare all of this to my life the difference was stark. I mainly sat and movement was typically limited to walking to and from the car or between meetings. I always thought that I needed to do more exercise but that hatred of it meant that it never happened. Slowly  however I began to realise that maybe I didn't need more exercise but rather what I needed was create an active lifestyle. A way of living that caused me to move naturally and often. So I have set about experimenting to do just that.

For me it started by putting the car away and walking.   Walking is a natural act we are designed for and now I only drive to work as a last resort. Instead I walk to and from. I have begun to organise my formal meeting commitments in a way that means I have time to walk there.  My phone has a pedometer built in so I can track how far I have walked. What a difference. 

Historically I have walked about 1500 to 2000 steps now on average I am doing about 8000 to 10,000 with a record of 17,000.  Interestingly I have more energy and better focus when I work and I sleep better.  The only down side was an early blister on my big toe and some fatigue in my legs occasionally.  The best thing however is I enjoy it,  it's becoming natural and it feels right.

Idea-Log is back.

We're back but perhaps a little different.  While I am still not going to give a blow by blow description of my life going forward this blog will capture my relatively unfiltered thoughts on issues and challenges I am currently focused on. There will be posts on all sorts of topics from personal and family to community and society to sport and business, whatever I'm thinking about at the time.

This blog will be a way for me to begin to actually clarify my ideas as I try to understand why things are the way they are (my favourite pursuit from a very young age) and if I don't like that answer then to try and find a better way.  There is always a better way. We just need to find it.

If you'd like to follow along, welcome, and I look forward your feedback comments and challenges.

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

The number cruncher’s guide to delivering IT value

I’m a qualified accountant. I even sometimes read the Accountants Journal … there, I’ve said it!

As an accountant and a CIO I am intrigued by the debate within the IT community about how businesses should account for IT. Should it be a cost centre? A profit centre? Or a stand alone, semi-independent business unit? From what I can tell, the argument is that how an organisation chooses to do its accounting determines, or is an indicator of, how IT is seen strategically in the organisation. The logic seems to be that if you want to be an IT team that is strategic and adds value, then you need to be a profit centre as a minimum, or better yet a semi-autonomous business.

If you find yourself as a cost centre, watch out, because this means that you are seen as a non-value addition and simply a cost of doing business. It gets worse. As a cost centre the only questions that are asked of you is how can you reduce IT costs even lower than they are now. You are never asked about how IS can contribute to the strategic value of the organisation by driving revenue growth or helping to open up new markets.

The recommendation is that you get out of this cost mentality by becoming a profit centre or independent business unit. Charge the business for your services, create a profit, control your own balance sheet and then the business will begin to see you as adding value. As a result, the focus will shift from how can we drive down IT costs to how can we maximise the IT profit and strategic value?

My experience is that this whole debate is spurious. If I use The Warehouse as an example, it doesn’t matter if you are a cost centre or a profit centre your costs are scrutinised mercilessly. How the accounting works does not shield the profit centres at all. I admit that The Warehouse is particularly skilled at cost management. However, every organisation I have worked for or worked in for any length of time is the same. Costs are scrutinised in detail. I hear some of you saying that this cost focus is counter productive, as a company cannot cost cut its way to greatness. This is true enough, however no organisation ever became great by being lazy about its cost control.

To me this whole cost centre/profit centre discussion is a waste of time. In the complex world that we live in value is primarily about perception, not accounting numbers. If you are seen as a non-value addition cost of doing business, your focus should be on understanding why that is and putting in place an action plan to correct it. Most likely the issue will be in one of three areas, or a mix of all three:

• The services you are delivering are not meeting the service level expectations of your business. This can be both under delivery of service and over delivery of service which embeds higher costs.

• You are seen as slow and bureaucratic in working with your colleagues to plan and deliver changes. That is, you are not agile enough.

• And finally, when you do deliver, the projects are late, over budget, cause disruption on going live and do not deliver the planned benefits (or some combination of these).

Delivering solutions to these three issues is core to a CIO’s job. If you have these issues, or are perceived to have these issues, it means you are perceived by your colleagues as not doing your job properly. Mucking around and arguing about how the accounting works is not going to solve this problem. The only resolution to these issues is solid, customer-focused delivery day after day.

First Published on www.cio.co.nz

Using IT for Competitive Advantage

Over the Christmas break I read Nicholas Carr's "Does IT Matter". I figured it was about time I read it as I believe passionately that IT can make a difference to companies and within the community we operate. Based on a very quick skim read of his article and all the hype and hysteria it seems that Carr disagrees with this. If he was right or at least made some relevant thoughts I really should know.

My synopsis of his book is as follows. Competitive advantage is typically gained by "owning" items that are proprietary in nature. This makes them hard to replicate as it is expensive and takes a long time. Thanks to the long running effects of Moore's law and IT's relentless march towards openness and standardisation IT has rapidly become cheap and widely available. As a result competitive advantage cannot be obtained from IT as anything you do can be easily replicated by others so individual organisations cannot use IT for competitive advantage.

This is not true however for countries and or regions. Increasingly IT is becoming an open and easily accessible infrastructure. If a country or region does not have a "world class" IT infrastructure in place to support their local economy then they will be at a disadvantage compared to regions that do. The use of the word infrastructure is deliberate as this is how Carr sees IT evolving like other key infrastructures such as electricity, rail roads and the much more closely related telephone. A region with a good stable electricity supply has an advantage over one that doesn't. However individual firms cannot use electricity per sa to gain a competitive advantage as it is comparatively cheap and widely available.

His arguments make sense. The book appears to be very well researched and very well written and while there is likely to still be some way to run for true commoditisation of IT, particularly software, I have come away from reading the book believing that it is the most likely outcome.

So, if Carr is right what could this mean for the IT industry?

Hardware Manufacturers

Equipment manufacturers will continue to try and differentiate themselves by building bigger, better and only available here features. While this may allow one firm to perform better than their competitors at the margin increasingly this will become irrelevant as Moore's law will overtake all their efforts and continue to drive the industry to commoditisation.

Software Companies

Carr argues that traditional software companies provided the first major step towards commoditisation for software as packaging software made the IP widely available at a fraction of the price of in house bespoke systems. This model however will come under increasing pressure by the next wave of innovation/commoditisation. This includes both SaaS and open source software solutions which threaten to undermine the current model of licence, maintenance and on going expensive upgrades.

IT Service Providers

Whether they are currently software companies, hardware companies, Telco's, outsourcers or one of the many other service providers and contractors to the IT industry the IT service provider of the future will be the equivalent to the electricity company of the present and their support infrastructure. They will truly be "service providers" rather than product companies.

Corporate IT teams

Probably my main area of interest as this is where I work.

I don't see this as the death of the corporate IT team, at least not while I am still in the workforce. I do see the rise of the truly services oriented IT organisation. Many, maybe all, IT services will be outsourced to standardised utility providers. This can only be achieved successfully if the internal IT organisation is service oriented. That is, a service oriented IT department is be a prerequisite to be able to outsource standardised services to service providers. The main focus of the internal IT team will be to integrate these services both with each other and into the businesses operating model. I expect that an increasing number of these standardised utility providers will be open source communities. Corporates will actively contribute to these communities developing the open source software as well as using it for their core operations.

So my starter for 10 from my Christmas reading. I may well revisit this as I think some more about it.

Delivering Real Value

At the Warehouse, we run regular courses on “Managing successful projects”. I often get asked to provide support for these courses on behalf of the executive, by welcoming the participants and leading one of the sessions. The irony is that the session they always get me to lead is “What leads to project failure”? During this session we interactively identify why projects fail. There are many reasons why projects can fail. However, I always emphasise what I believe to be two key causes of project failure.

The first is sponsors who are not active champions for the project. I tell our participants that yes; I and my executive colleagues are one of your biggest risks. Normally this is not because we do not believe in the project or that they are inherently bad leaders. Often it is because we try and do too much too quickly and simply run out of time.

If you have issues and your sponsor is not willing to provide the time and support that you need to resolve issues or align resources effectively for your project, then the project manager needs to have a conversation with the sponsor to resolve this issue.

The potential resolutions are many and varied, however you need to consider the possibility that the project should be stopped or put on hold until it can be given priority. Better to stop early than muddling through with the likelihood of ultimate failure.

The second major cause of project failure is that we stop too soon. A huge effort goes into delivering the project; we get to go live and provide a small amount of post-go live support. We have a party to celebrate success and then leave looking for our next opportunity. We arrogantly assume that what we have implemented the first time is the total and ultimate solution.

We fail to measure on a consistent basis to ensure we get the benefits we expect and we spend virtually no time working with “the users” to ensure they successfully make the transition to the new process. As a result the change usually doesn’t stick and we do not get the benefits we planned, and we wonder why the project didn’t work.

To help reinforce the point, I compare a project to raising a child. There are three phases to each process and below is the short G-rated (approved for general viewing) version.

In stage one both are conceived to high expectations and celebrations. Everybody celebrates what will be and see only the benefits to come, and none of the hard work.

In the project world, we call stage two, implementation. In parenthood it is called pregnancy. During implementation, there is a lot of hard work that needs to be done. There are many reasons for that, however one of the main ones is we often expect people to carry on with our day jobs while at the same time supporting the project.

The culmination of stage two is “go live”. Go lives are often momentous events where everyone is under immense pressure and as a result things are said that perhaps shouldn’t be. The result of go live is, however, miraculous. In one a child is born. In the other a new way of business is given birth too and handed over to the expectant parents.

Stage three is where we raise the child to adulthood so they can effectively leave home and independently contribute to the world. In childhood this process takes years, about 18 years if you are lucky, and lots more if you are not! In projects, however, we spend little time “raising the child”. In essence, we abandon the child to look after itself and seem to expect that everything will work out as it was intended.

In more corporate speak, we spend very little time institutionalising change from our projects. Usually it is a few weeks and we expect everything will work out. The reality is that often it doesn’t.

If as a project manager, or an IS department, we want to add value to our organisations, then I believe we need to ensure the change sticks and delivers the benefits.

Metaphorically, all the value is realised from raising the child to adulthood, it is not in the conception and implementation. If we are truly interested in value creation, we need to stick around for and be active in the terrible twos, through puberty and on into adulthood. If we don’t, the chances of everything working out decrease dramatically.

First Published on www.cio.co.nz

Paid to do nothing

First Published on www.cio.co.nz

One night after a long day at work I came home wanting to chill out and relax. As a father of four that is seldom an option. This particular night I arrived home right on bedtime and soon found myself in the middle of stories and good night cuddles. In our house the bedtime ritual usually includes a period of time where we ask each other questions about our day. On this particular night my daughter asked me, “Dad, what do you do at work?”

This was not the first time she had asked me this question. On this particular night, being tired and not really thinking, I gave a glib “well, I get paid to do nothing”. I followed this up with what I thought was a pretty good attempt at describing what my job as a leader of a fairly large team actually is. It included an analogy between the principal of her school and what I did at work.

The story went that at school her job was to learn as much as she could and the teachers job was to help her learn. The school principal’s role was to support her teacher and all the other teachers in the school and make sure it ran properly so she and her friends could learn as much as possible.

He didn’t get paid to learn, but he got paid to make sure all the children did learn and to help the teachers to make that happen. At work I don’t get paid to work with computers, I get paid to support the managers, team leaders and all of the team to do their work as effectively as possible and make sure the work is done, I told her.

My daughter went very quiet and looked to be thinking about the ramifications of the answer I had given. I was quietly quite pleased with the answer I had given and then she said, “Dad, if you get paid to do nothing, why does it take so long?” I was stunned, quickly said goodnight and left disgruntled.

Now, when I said I get paid to do nothing I was half joking, but it was only half. If I look at how I actually spend my time, virtually all of my day is spent in meetings.

The form and topics of these meetings are many and varied. They may be one on ones, team meetings, executive briefings, steering committees, operating reviews, meet and greets or many other forums and topics.

If I am not in a meeting chances are I am preparing for a meeting, doing the occasional necessary action that comes out of meetings or reading and answering email and occasionally doing some personal research and study. Not a “productive” task there anywhere!

The organisational focus on meetings is often criticised loudly and with passion. How many times have you said or heard others say, “if only I didn’t have so many meetings, I could actually get something done!” Well what if you didn’t have meetings? How would we get our job as CIOs or senior IT leaders done?

In reality, as leaders of large teams, meetings are the job of CIOs and senior IT leaders. It is how we do what we do, which is to inspire, motivate, align, communicate, prioritise, discuss, decide, reward and recognise our team. There is no other effective way to do these things.

So, if you find yourself or your team lamenting about too many meetings, the problem isn’t too many meetings but that your meetings are ineffective and don’t add value. The answer is not to stop your meetings, but to find out how to have more effective, value-adding meetings. How do you do this?

As some of my previous columns have suggested, thro-ugh focusing on the basics. In this case be prepared, have a clearly defined objective and supporting agenda and ensure you have clear outcomes and next steps that are followed through.

Indeed, I believe meetings are so important that anything we do outside of a meeting should be completely focused on making our meetings more effective, so we can make a difference for our teams.

LGP Fundamentals - an Update

LGP Purpose

Games for Living; Supporting New Zealand as a place where everybody is safe and loved by harnessing the power of immersive games technology to foster the development of life skills and positive lifestyle choices.

Values

We believe that collaboration and leadership occurs naturally in an environment where everyone feels safe and loved. We do this by:

• living life with a sense of play
• acting with integrity and for the highest good of all
• learning and improving
• seeing people as the best they can be
• encouraging action
• being open and inclusive

BHAGs

1. Create a self managing framework for the New Zealand IT industry and Educationalists to engage and connect New Zealanders with today's immersive games experience to teach life skills in fun and sustainable ways.

2. Deliver a pilot LGP Project by Christmas 2009

3. Measurably impact the lives of 2,000 kiwis, their family and friends through the delivery of immersive games technology by Christmas 2012 by:

• Establishing 50 effective Games Delivery Operations by Christmas 2012
• Commissioning two immersive games for our communities and for sale

Operations Guidelines

• LGP delivers Products and Services through LGP Projects based around individual Underserved Communities
• LGP people honour the LGP Values
• LGP Teams collaborate to establish and support LGP Projects that deliver measureable outcomes to Underserved Communities

• LGP Projects contribute to the LGP Purpose and BHAGs
• Each LGP Team develops and applies effective Selection Criteria and Outcome Metrics

Finance and Administration

The LGP is looking for an existing and related registered Charitable Trust as a home that will support, nurture and administer us so that we can concentrate on ‘doing stuff.’ Is this you?

Invitation

To participate and Do LGP Stuff, start by joining the LinkedIn Life Game Project Group and Subgroup that suits you best ...

Life Game Project (LGP)

LGP Vision

Games for Living - Harnessing the power of immersive games technology to foster the development of life skills and positive lifestyles throughout New Zealand communities.

LGP Purpose

Creating a self managing framework for the Auckland based IT industry and Educationalists to engage New Zealanders with today's immersive games experience to teach life skills in fun and sustainable ways.

Background to LGP

The concept for LGP was born recently out of a meeting between Ian Howard, Parikshit Basrur and myself. Exactly how it came about is something of a blur to me. However, in my brain this is what happened.

My family and I are committed to making a difference in New Zealand society. The vision we have for this is that we want New Zealand to be a place where everyone in New Zealand can be and is "Safe and Loved". I have been thinking about what I could do to make a difference and move us forward towards this vision. As I thought about this several threads of internal conversations began to form:

• I believe in the power of technology to make a positive difference. It is one of the main reasons that I do what I do as everyday I get to think about and work on real solutions that make a difference for The Warehouse and for New Zealanders. I wondered, how could I apply technology to this broader mission?
• The current trends in technology are beginning to change how people are defining reality and community, and how people interact with each other and can support each other. While this movement has huge positive potential, it also has the potential to simply ingrain the "have and have not's" in our society through the digital divide. Once again, communities most in need could miss out as they cannot afford access.
• I believe in the power of education. When I say education I mean education in the holistic sense. Yes, this includes reading writing and arithmetic; but it also includes learning how to lead a successful life and develop yourself to fulfil your potential. It has been a major part of my life and has provided me many opportunities and there are many examples of programs that show that if people have the skills to be successful in society then virtually everyone will choose a positive role. My favourite example of this is the Delancey Street Foundation who turn around the lives of hardened criminals through peer support and mentoring. Over 90% of Delancey's graduates never offend again. This compares to their peer group where recidivism is typically well over 90%.

I was thinking about all of this and thinking about how I could put it together. As I pondered this my mind turned to the possibility of introducing learning labs into less advantaged communities. That is when I met Ian Howard (thanks to Baz).

Ian introduced me to the huge potential of using modern games to educate in a compelling, fun and personal way. Many modern games today are driven by participants decisions and their ability to complete specific quests or tasks. As Ian showed me some examples I began to see how you could shape the experience in a way that the gamer would begin to naturally assimilate powerful lessons in life in a fun and positive way. I could also see how gamers could be supported by peers and mentors with social networking technologies.

Thus the concept of the Life Game Project was born; and the rest will be history in the making. Game On!

If you would like to know more or contribute in some way then contact me and let's talk!