Creativity is often stifled in many companies - people just do not like change. If you are not willing to accept debate, dissension, or alternative ideas, your organization is probably not ready for change. Take care - your competitors are changing; if not the ones you know, then the ones you don’t.

1. If you have a lot of off-the-wall thoughts, you’re creative

2. If you use those thoughts to degrade or disrupt progress, you’re a troublemaker

3. If you can turn those thoughts into something of value, you’re innovative

Cultures that support the free flow of ideas, without “personalizing” the activity, excel at innovation.

• “If Julie thinks Fred’s idea is all wet, don’t you think it would be refreshing for Julie to say ‘Fred, that idea is all wet. Here is why I think so, here’s what I think is better and why.’

• If your team had that kind of conversation, and nobody takes offense, you have a healthy team. Otherwise, it’s time to figure out how to fix your team.”

From “IS Survival Guide” by Bob Lewis

You probably have someone in your organization that is outspoken - maybe even classified as a troublemaker. Embrace that person - they are one of your most valuable assets - someone that is willing to challenge the status quo. This person can be the catalyst of innovation in your organization - you just need to learn how to work with this creativity. Innovation seldom comes from doing things the same way you have always done them. These people are not evil - if they wanted to be subversive, they would take their dissent underground. By working out in the open, they are striving to bring the best out in everyone.

Our principal has been part of many significant innovations over the years. He was a member of the development team on the original IBM PC, co-founder of the first Mac users group, one of the early Novell CNEs, inventor of the first laser interferometer measuring device for disk drive accuracy, co-developer of the first portable spectroscopy device, the process modeling technique (swim lanes) that later became Rummler-Brache, and numerous other industry innovations.

If you want to harness the nascent innovation in your organization, contact us - we can help.

One of the more common issues that impacts business today is something that appears simple, but is so critical to understanding everything from strategy, to architecture to project requirements. People naturally jump into the solution - the how. That is because most people relate to concrete concepts.

Abstract concepts - the what - are foreign to most thought processes.

The critical aspect of this, in any area, is the definition of solutions - the how - predisposes the users to accept that solution as gospel. If they had instead defined the needs - the “what” - then alternative approaches might have been identified. These alternatives afford the opportunity to implement other aspects of strategy, such as common delivery.a“The best solution to any given point problem, may not be the best enterprise solution”

Let’s explore a tangible example; project requirements. Nearly every reader probably would have experienced requirements gathering at one point or another. More often than not, people have a pre-conceived idea as to how to deliver the project, and solve the problems. However, it is exactly this pre-conceived notion that gets in the way of innovation.

You really need to get requirements into the realm of “WHAT” and not “HOW”. Once you determine what the root needs are, alternative solutions (how) can be developed. Often these can be in line with a corporate enterprise architecture, and in line with the strategic plan - solutions that may not be the user’s initial impressions of requirements, as they were thinking “how”.

Contact us - we can get you on the track to more effective business value delivery through information technology.

THERE ARE NO INTERNAL CUSTOMERS.

THERE ARE NO INTERNAL CUSTOMERS.

[repeat as necessary until understood]

There is only one customer - the person who makes the decision to buy the product or service. It is not the guy in the next department, the other business unit, or even the person that writes the check - it is the decision maker who, by their choice, adds bottom line dollars to your company.

Internal relationships are all part of the value chain, not customers as such. Everything you do with the internal operations of the company are optimized to produce lowest cost, or maximum performance, not matching each customer need as requested.

Customer focus reflects a value orientation that indicates “Preferred Business Partner” or “Strong Customer Commitment” and all that implies. And yet, with these internal “customers”, often it is “prudent financial management” that drives decisions.

The reality is that you optimize the business value, ignoring unique internal relationship requests, and deliver for minimum diversity and maximum manageability.

And you thought you were customer focused ......

Contact us - we can get you on the track to more effective business value delivery through information technology.

Target – the business direction

Look, most strategic planning processes are hopelessly broken. They typically produce a 1-3 year financial projection (goals/outcomes), rather than actionable items. These plans become “shelf-ware” very quickly.

Quick, concise, actionable – strategic planning is the foundation to establishing business direction …. and the appropriate operations and technology  – enabling the business to drive to their future and succeed in their goals.

Strategic planning does not have to be hard, nor does it have to be time consuming. But the quality of the strategic planning effort is essential to effective business – and for all the functional organizations to be able to effectively work together to enable that business. Strategies are “whats”, not “how”, each with an associated set of goal/metrics, and some functional area “whats” to go with. Then it is up to each of the functional areas, to produce their “how”, supporting the defined metrics. 

Not much happens today in competitive business that is not enhanced by computers. The more effective the information technology environment is, the more effective the business can become. We bring extensive experience in the IT strategy and management arena as well.

Linking IT and the business together up front in the early strategic planning processes is the holy grail; the elusive thing called business-IT alignment will exist by default. It is not, however, a monolithic approach to a solitary goal, but a structured and variable delivery through the enterprise architecture process, built upon the foundation of solid strategic planning goals.  

We can help……contact us

Why Your Core Values Matter in Shaping Corporate Culture

1. Culture is shaped by behavior, and behavior is created by personal and corporate values. 
2. These core personal and corporate values, used to make all decisions within a business, are defined by the Senior Executive team. 
3. In practice, these values, applied to every decision made, enforces Executive Intent throughout an organization.

Using principles as a driver of change is the opposite of the vast majority of business change efforts, where technology, standards, or management dictates attempt to drive change. Change can only be effectively delivered through a change of behavior, and this behavior is defined through Executive Intent.

“If only everyone worked together effectively, we would be so much more successful.”

Unique Approach – Consistent Success

We look at business in a totally different way. We don’t look at business as projects and budgets, but rather as a systemic inter-relationship of human behaviors – behavior, that when understood, can be managed to radically change how you work, optimizing the performance. Critical thinking and the decisions making process are greatly enhanced when you have a consistent value based framework to facilitate consistency in those decisions. 

Strategy execution through executive intent

We avoid being involved in “fire-fighting”, but preferably, building “sprinkler systems”. Rather than focus on the individual projects, we concentrate on identifying and improving the systemic, cultural, organizational, or behavioral characteristics that impede effective delivery of business value through information technology, leveraging your existing wealth of talent, and getting everyone making decisions for the same reasons and in line with core decision values.

Turning executive intent into action.

Our track record speaks for itself. With over $2B in tangible, measured savings delivered, and a clientele that includes more than a dozen Fortune 1000 companies – including 5 Fortune 100s – and equally useful to small as start up organizations, we can bring real value – in very short timeframes – to your organization.

People think governance and enterprise architecture are technical disciplines - they are really business management of technology. Making it about technology, makes it the realm of the very few, dictating to the many. Effective change does not often come from an oligarchy, and few businesses are really driven by technology.

However, it IS all about executive intent. You pay the big bucks for the people at the top, and yet, that superior knowledge and leadership seldom gets translated into the day-to-day behavior of the rank and file.

If you can articulate the core VALUES (principles) - statements that reflect why you make decisions the way you do - you have a good start to effective change, but only a start. These are not things, these are values - statements that reflect why you would make a decision one way or another.

How is this, you ask? We have principles defined, and yet we still struggle with decisions and change.

Most companies preach that they are customer focused

Not likely - at least not across the board.

Step 1 - Allocating Principles into Groups

No, core decision values need to be classified into affinity groupings - things like customer, business and employee perspectives. Through this, it will be immediately obvious that the customer perspective and the business perspective are opposed views.

Let me provide an example: You are a customer focused organization. Your users request a LINUX desktop computer. You are a Windows shop. You deny the CUSTOMER request, because the BUSINESS perspective - in this case, prudent financial management - dictates that the increased diversity in the environment, increases my software, and support costs.

SO, you behaved in a diametrically opposed perspective to the stated corporate principle - customer focused.

And you wonder why you have problems in consistent delivery.......

Step 2 - Prioritizing Values

Typically, principles are in conflict. You can’t equally apply every core value to every decision; it creates schizophrenic behavior - what I call the bible approach; pick chapter and verse to support whatever decision that you want to make.

In order to make principles work effectively, they must be allocated to the parts of your organization that behave synergistically. In developed this technique, various grouping were tried - most failed. The one that worked, is not immediately intuitive, but is highly effective.

Create a view of the business providing a consistent view of how technology is managed, irrespective of where, or by who.

This structure or view is NOT based on geographic, organizational, workflow, or business interaction; it is the I/T decision making view - where we make the same level of I/T investment around the management of technology. This provides consistent delivery characteristics (e.g. level of IT Enterprise Management, dollar investment, data criticality, etc – see appendices) and consistent value alignment against this view - a view facilitating all decisions against a consistent set of value criteria as defined by the Senior Leadership Team.

It is amazing to observe the resultant change in an organization. Call to find out more, and we can share some real world examples that will astound you!

1. Culture is shaped by behavior, and behavior is created by personal and corporate values. 
2. These core personal and corporate values, used to make all decisions within a business, are defined by the Senior Executive team. 
3. In practice, these values, applied to every decision made, enforces Executive Intent throughout an organization.

Using principles as a driver of change is the opposite of the vast majority of business change efforts, where technology, standards, or management dictates attempt to drive change. Change can only be effectively delivered through a change of behavior, and this behavior is defined through Executive Intent.

“If only everyone worked together effectively, we would be so much more successful.”

Unique Approach – Consistent Success

We look at business in a totally different way. We don’t look at business as projects and budgets, but rather as a systemic inter-relationship of human behaviors – behavior, that when understood, can be managed to radically change how you work, optimizing the performance. Critical thinking and the decisions making process are greatly enhanced when you have a consistent value based framework to facilitate consistency in those decisions. 

Strategy execution through executive intent

We avoid being involved in “fire-fighting”, but preferably, building “sprinkler systems”. Rather than focus on the individual projects, we concentrate on identifying and improving the systemic, cultural, organizational, or behavioral characteristics that impede effective delivery of business value through information technology, leveraging your existing wealth of talent, and getting everyone making decisions for the same reasons and in line with core decision values.

Turning executive intent into action.

Our track record speaks for itself. With over $2B in tangible, measured savings delivered, and a clientele that includes more than a dozen Fortune 1000 companies – including 5 Fortune 100s (and equally useful to small as start up organizations) - we can bring real value  to your organization in very short timeframes.

Management is all about controlling risk. You need to know what these risks are, and how good/bad you are at containing the issues.

Risk Factors

1. People

2. Process

3. Technology

4. Leadership / Culture

5. Organizational Effectiveness

Ideally, you would understand a set of factors around the risk elements.

• Have you identified the majority of the risk topics?
• To what degree does the risk exist in a given topical area?
• What things are triggers to the risk?
• What things are symptoms / observations that a risk is occurring?
• What is the probability that the risk might occur?
• What do you have in place to detect / flag those symptoms?
• How could you minimize / avoid the risk from occurring?
• How are you going to recover, should the risk occur?

We have developed a comprehensive set of risk questions, with range response answer (to constrain variability in the understanding of the questions/answers), and some great presentation tools. Combined with our comprehensive experience across a broad range of industries, we have seen a wide range of risk mitigation approaches, and have seen what works, what doesn’t, and why.

We can help!

Contact us to help you work through getting a handle on the things that will negatively impact your organization.

One of the things that we observe is companies that attempt to remove stressful environments from the workplace - that corporate performance degrades along with it. By doing that, they inadvertently remove the impetus to perform. You should not attempt to eliminate stressful environments, you should remove anxiety - concern with potential inability to succeed.

The military consistently uses stress to drive performance. Their operational environment - like most businesses - is not under their control. Troops that are unable to perform their function, are dangerous; not only to themselves, but to the people that depend upon them.  They would suffer from high degrees of anxiety - what we have called stress. To counter this, the military trains, trains, and trains more.

Most stressful situations should NOT be eliminated - even if they could be. Let me give you an example......

Public speaking - a high stress situation if there ever was one. The solution to the resultant anxiety over public speaking is most often found with speaker expertise in the subject area. People that are very, very familiar with the topic being presented - familiar enough that no audience onslaught could not be countered - are typically not anxious at all. The stressful situation still exists - nothing happened to change that - but the anxiety over the situation is eliminated, and performance is superb.

Translate that parallel into other work situations. Removing stressful situations is not the answer - preparing workers to deliver is.

We can help - contact us