CIO Thoughts

Over my career to date I have built a number of teams, and restructured many more (not necessarily redundancies, rather changes in direction or scope as required).  In doing this I have come to the realisation that there are essentially 3 broad types of people – the do’ers, the planners and the planning do’ers. Now clearly the ones you generally want are the Planning Do’ers; the ones that work out what needs to be done and then get on and do it against a plan (obviously there is a bit of a continuum here). What I have found interesting is the ways in which to get planners doing and do’ers planning. 

What I have generally found is that it is easier to get do’ers to plan than it is to get planners to do.  Something in the paralysis by analysis, and a fear of making a mistake seems to hold planners back from getting on and getting things done.  Additionally, when you speak to a planner, there is an intrinsic need to ‘get everything just right’ before taking action.  Now those who are do’ers will say there is no point in planning, because as we all know, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men…’ and they will have experienced that taking action builds momentum, and momentum and excitement build new ideas and approaches (if they are flexible enough) and that things ‘will change anyway’ as they discover new ways to tackle things.  Both sides have their merits, and both are of course correct, just not all the time.  Like all things in life, balance is key.  Action without planning devolves into meaningless effort and wastes resources. Planning without doing is just as meaningless and unhelpful.

All in all though I really do prefer do’ers (perhaps it’s because I am so delivery oriented myself). You can pull a do’er back, restrict access to resources and generally put in controls before you let them go.  Then make sure they report back regularly against those controls.  Now, they will really take an intense dislike to you initially, but once you have one or two smaller projects, or phases of projects done successfully they will come around.

A planner on the other hand needs lots of encouragement, both carrot and stick, to get them to take the first step.  They also need to be forced to take a step when they will not feel they are sufficiently prepared.  Essentially their judgement on when enough planning has been done is impaired.  They need to be told directly that they have done a terrific job, and that the first task, and then the next, and then the next must be taken.  Unfortunately there is a need to sit on top of these perfectionists through each and every task, because at the first sign of something going slightly differently to their well laid out plans, they will panic, revert to type and resort to further planning! Eventually they will come around – they just need a series of successes, and to get the feeling of momentum and energy that builds up in a project as it gets going.  They also need to fail a few times, and recover from that failure (there really isn’t any failure – only feedback).  When they fail though, it is important as a manager to encourage them to keep going, think outside the box, focus on solutions and get things moving. Reflect, adapt and then implement – not stop (unless of course it is a truly major stuff-up in which case why weren’t you noticing what they were doing??).

Often when I interview people, I ask a series of questions which are designed to elicit where on the continuum of do’ers to planners they are. Can they do both, do they understand an 80/20 approach, can they build momentum and energy in a project.  All of these are important if you want a team who deliver and keep delivering, but do it with direction, purpose, reflection and adaption.

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Over time, most managers will create specific ways by which they prefer to manage teams. Most of us do this by trial and error, hopefully a bit of training or by discussing approaches with others – some of us were even lucky enough to have a mentor. What I thought I would share today is the framework I use for managing a wide variety of teams, which all have both project and day to day activities to take care of, all while meeting SLA’s. This balancing act is often one which managers in IT find quite difficult to manage. Sure, the ITIL framework provides some approaches, and incident management is very helpful for day to day activities, but how do you do it on the ground – and when you have multiple teams, what are some of the ways of controlling all this activity without losing track of where things are?

Generally I break activities down into a couple of different areas – projects and incidents. Projects as a rule of thumb, are any activities which require 3 or more resources or will take more than 3 man-days of work. Everything else fits into the ‘incident’ category. Naturally you need to have a little bit of flexibility on this, but as a general rule-of-thumb, this works quite well. Projects are then split into two types – Major and Minor. Minor projects are relatively short duration, low impact (although often high visibility) and are run by the manager creating a ‘Simplified project Initiation Document’ (SPID). These SPID’s require some essential information such as; Project Sponsor, Project Objective, Success Criteria, Key Milestones, Resources required, Costs and an approval process.

Projects larger than this get managed through a Project management Methodology, based on prince 2 and standard project management practices (I generally find the paperwork and admin generated in a full Prince 2 project excessive, and so prefer a ‘skinny version’).

Day to day activities are managed through ITIL Incident Management (and Problem management). The key to balancing between immediate tasks generated by Incidents and longer term project requirements is twofold; 1) Get managers to break projects down into manageable day to day tasks and 2) Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise based on business impact. All projects be they small or large and all incidents and problems get prioritised as they come in, before any work is done on them – that way the managers of the teams can make a judgement on a) whether there is enough resource and time to do them and b) where to allocate resource.

The final piece of this management process is regular reviews – as an Exec I am not terribly interested in the detail of every project unless it is going off the rails (then, like most I can suddenly get very interested!). So I ask each of my managers to provide a weekly highlight report which is broken down into this week (what just happened) and next week (what is planned to happen) on a project by project basis. Each project section is further broken down into several sections – a Risk and Issues summary with RAG status, and the tasks for the project along with comments and timelines for each. Note that no action ever goes without a timeframe….!

Finally, at the bottom of the report a summary of the number of incidents and amount of resource being used by those incidents is given, along with any other business. This gives me a way of making sure my team are organising their thoughts, planning at least a week ahead (I’ll cover longer term projects in a sec) and managing risks and issues on a regular basis. It also gives me a quick sense of project progress and resource utilisation. I ask for these on a Friday by lunch (giving me some time to review Friday afternoon/evening) and I have a Management Meeting on the following Monday. This line management meeting is used to focus on any specific issues, and provide some cross-team focus on problems. It is also an opportunity to bring attention to new information from either the Exec or the staff from the previous week.

Longer term projects I generally have a weekly review with the project manager or the line manager, covering the detail, risks, issues, resources, timelines, deliverables, etc. We also maintain a timeline of all the projects for the year, and a framework for when they are scheduled to begin and finish, which is reviewed monthly. This overall timeline is structured from the IT strategy document, which is written and aligned with the companies board level expectations.

In this way, I am able to make sure that what we are doing on the ground aligns with the board and exec strategies and that I have control over day to day activities without micro-managing people.

The teams I have done this with generally find this a good balance, and the feedback has been that they find it useful themselves. When this type of framework is put in place initially, it can be seen as onerous, but within 3-4 weeks most managers are spending no more than 30-60 mins doing the report and it has become a part of their own planning routine. The point I make is that it is a darn sight less intrusive than me asking questions everyday and sticking my nose in where they are perfectly capable of handling things.

As time goes by, you can of course gradually back off on the amount of reporting so that the do it every 2 weeks, but it really depends on the number of projects, time sensitivity and tolerances you have on them. As I do transformation work primarily, tolerances are small and timelines very tight, so this works well as a balance for me.

Naturally there is a lot more to managing teams than just the elements I have described here – but this will hopefully give you a feel for one way of managing some of the core activities for one or many teams. It doesn’t cover any of the performance, HR, training or other parts of management, nor is it intended to – it is just a nice simple way of managing workloads really…

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Anyone who knows me, knows that I love gadgets, and I suppose it comes with the territory when you are a CIO, or just because I have an engineering background. As a boy I was fascinated by anything electronic that flashed, whizzed or made cool sounds (heck, even if it didn't but just looked cool I was interested). Indeed over the years I must have spent thousands of pounds on gadgets - most of which have now been relegated to the rubbish bin or that 'study drawer' that all blokes keep. You know the one - filled to the brim with electronic stuff and cables which you will need 'one day'.

I recall purchasing the very first black and white (grey?) Windows Mobile device, followed quickly by the Palm Pilot. The Windows device had a battery life of about 20 minutes and a nasty habit of rebooting itself at random intervals - not really terribly useful as a business device... The Pilot on the other hand quickly became a favourite and stayed with me nearly 18 months before I was onto the next device. Easy to use, functional, lots of applications and it told me where to be at the right time.

Of course, it didn't take long before I was onto the next device and then the next... So why the obsession with all these gadgets? And let's face it, I'm not the only one - we have millions of people obsessed with getting the next mobile phone across the world (and yes, I had an analogue phone with a 'portable' battery pack) . Of course the obsession doesn't end with personal productivity gadgets - it can also be extended to our cars, stereo's, TV's and so on. In fact, it seems that gadgets surround us in our modern lives. The question then becomes, do they add any value?

Now you would expect as a gadget-man my answer would be a resounding yes, and you would be right... sometimes... The Sat Nav for instance is one of the best devices ever created in my view - the number of 'discussions' on navigation with my partner has been reduced considerably as a direct result (and substantially improved the likelihood of our arriving) thus vastly improving my driving experience. The modern mobile phone with it convergence of technologies means we now carry around with us the capability to be contactable by phone, email, text, locate ourselves, order tickets online and compute our way to the moon and back. Without a mobile phone, many of us feel lost, bereft even, as it is also the device that tells us what we should be doing where and when. Indeed the current generation has never known what it was like not to have personal communications at all times.

Now, I have just returned from a little place I have down in the South of France. A relatively unsophisticated area who seem to have only just recently cottoned onto the advantages of having mobile phones. They stop work for 2 hours in the middle of the day to enjoy lunch, and many wouldn't know a PDA from a brick (although normal mobiles are now pretty ubiquitous). As an economic area they do pretty well - but they do seem to take time to enjoy life more than some of us more 'sophisticated' folk. People often turn up a bit late to do the plumbing, or to an appointment, but it's not something that is bothered about much, as they all accept it as a way of life and business. So why would they even want a PDA - it would be wrong all the time!

So has the constant churn of gadgets added to our life? Have they given us more leisure time? I would ague they have given us less in reality, but have probably made our working time more productive. Once again, technology enables us to do things faster, but not necessarily better.

The trouble with technology is that it is easily replicated - you get a new gadget, and it gives you a competitive advantage (even if just in the workplace) only until the next new gadget comes out. This puts us on a constant learning curve, so we are just getting productive when the next device arrives. Gadgets are fun, and they can make our lives easier, but only with an equal amount of personal discipline to control when and how they are used in our lives. They rarely enable a disorganised person to suddenly become organised, instead allowing the disorganised person to become even more disorganised faster. Using technology to enhance something you already do well, or have a defined and working process (read: repeatable process) for, will free up time, otherwise it will just be another time sink.

As the world goes 24/7 and life gets faster and gadgets do more and our lives become more and more automated, I think it is worthwhile remembering that if the purpose of the gadget is to make out lives easier then we should use it to achieve that aim and take the additional time to live more of our life. The folks I spoke about who live in the south of France do this, and their lives are more relaxed and meaningful as a result.

In the meantime, the gadget show remains a favourite, and probably will do for some time...

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One of the things I have discovered through a number of implementations of ITIL processes, is that it doesn’t really matter how many processes get put in, or measurements applied, if you don’t have ownership, it will all come to very little.

In almost all of the organisations I have been involved in there has been some element of what I call ‘fence-throwing’.  This is when one team passes an incident or ticket to another team without taking any ownership of the customer, checking to see if it is received ok, or determining whether they should be taking a deeper look.  It leads to dissatisfied customers, a reputation of IT being a ‘black hole’ and inefficient solutions.

Pretty much everywhere I have been I have solved this issue in the same way.  Whenever a problem crops up that gets my attention (and it is usually the higher impact ones that do, but it can be almost any of sufficient complexity), I form a cross team group to resolve it.  I will choose the best person placed to add value from each team in the department, describe the problem, and then get them to work through it.  Inevitably there will be the usual slopey shoulders, but by using questioning techniques designed to bring them together  (eg. ‘That’s one solution, but how could it work better if you involved John from the DBA’s?’)  and showing them the difference in a solution that is self-generated and one that is team generated I usually get buy-in. Of course, having the courage to allow robust, challenging, and constructive discussions about solutions is also important – it helps to build the team feel, and establish a notion of the solution being one they agreed on.

Now, I am not suggesting you need consensus on all the solutions generated, although that may be useful in some instances.  Often it is best to get a few solutions on the table, list out the risks, timescales and resources (pro’s and con’s) and then make a decision yourself, explaining why the decision was chosen.  This shows you are both willing to listen, and willing to back what you believe to be the right solution. Finally, it is important in these discussions that you always have one person taking the customers perspective – even if it has to be you. Otherwise you won’t really be balancing all the risks.

The whole idea here is of course to get them thinking as a team outside of their normal day to day team.  There are other ways to do this as well, such as forming project groups, where the results are the responsibility of the group – be it success or failure. Showing leadership by example is important too – when a request comes across my desk, I will make sure I understand it, send it to the Service Desk for logging, make sure the problem is being resolved, and then do a quick check to see if the team have handled it well with both the solution and customer in mind. It is effectively random checking, and where I find it done well (including handover between teams) I look for opportunities to praise and reward the individuals.  Where it is done wrong I determine whether it is one of three things: the process for doing it is wrong, the communication has been incorrect, the skills of the individual are insufficient or the person has simply stepped out of all of those and gone off on a tangent.  Once I know that, I make sure the corrective actions needed are put in place, along with a timescale.

To get teams to work together you need to show trust in the teams, and an expectation that they will and can work together well.  Once you have this, the ITIL style processes will really start to fly.  Don’t expect it to happen immediately though – it takes consistency in approach, constant care about the customer and a consistent belief in your people over a period of time.  How long? Well, that depends on how well you do it, how receptive your people are, and a few successes to prove the point. In my experience, about 6 to 9 months usually does the trick.

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After over 20 years in IT, across quite a variety of industries, this is one of the questions which I am often asked, especially as technology has continued to offer so much over the years in this area. Unfortunately, many companies have learnt that while a lot is offered, only occasionally has it offered sustainable competitive advantage. So why is this?because certainly without new technology, an organisation can be quickly left behind and made uncompetitive.

A number of reasons can be provided as to why technologies have failed (or succeeded), including; poor implementation; poor selection; lack of project management; technology failure; inflexibility, the list goes on. All of these are reasons why a technology has failed, rather than merely failing to deliver sustainable competitive advantage.

So, let's focus on what sustainable competitive advantage is. Sustainable competitive advantage in its wider context, is the ability of a company to create a market leading advantage over a substantial period of time. Making it sustainable can be a product of the advantage thereby creating barriers to market entry, creating a sizable price differential, creating a unique selling proposition or the delivery of cutting edge products.
All of which you will note are marketing terms rather than anything to do with technology per se.

Now most of us can see the potential for technology to make a product or service cheaper or better, or add a unique selling point. So why has it failed to deliver so often? The answer lies in the technology itself - Information Technology is for the most part is easily replicable. The average lifetime of a technological innovation in information is approximately 3 months. That is, any new Information Technology introduced to the consumer market can be replicated (without infringing on copyright) within 3 months, and improved on within 6 months.

Let me give you an example - the worldwide phenomenon of facebook, which has only been around for a couple of years, can now be bought as an off-the-shelf product for websites by other providers - that is, it is relatively straight-forward to build a site with similar capabilities to that seen in the online facebook application. Ahh, but facebook is doing incredibly successfully you might say - and you would be right, it is successful - but as a result of being first to market with the concept, using excellent online marketing and PR and having captured a large portion of the marketplace as well as providing continuous innovation through an open platform for developers.

In essence, the continuingsuccess of facebook has not been due to the technology, which was certainly innovative, unique and ground-breaking when it arrived, but rather because of the underlying business model. A model which created an environment which fosters continuous innovation, generated huge market awareness and market capture in a short space of time and as a result in many ways become the default social networking tool. It will be the continuing evolution of the business model (and underlying business processes) which will ensure the ongoing survival of facebook, not the technology.

Don't believe me? Ever hear of Netscape? Microsoft proved during the browser wars that having an innovative technology (as the Netscape Browser was when it first arrived) did not assure a company of sustainable competitive advantage. The browser wars did cost Microsoft a heck of a lot of money to be sure - in the billions in fact - but it wasn't the technology which provided a barrier to entry, it was the market share which Netscape had achieved. The technology itself was replicated within 6 months of Microsoft deciding to enter the market (arguably inferior some would say, but replicated nevertheless).

So, if technology does not provide sustainable competitive advantage, how can it help companies? Well, technology can make a good process far more efficient. Basically, a company with a business model and business processes which have competitive advantage can be greatly enhanced by technology. Information Technology can also help with the rapid uptake of a new product or service going to market in many instances. But it is rarely able to provide sustainable competitive advantage of its own accord. The right people working in the right business model, with the right products and services for a well-defined market, supported by strong and repeatable business processes will always be far more sustainable than relying purely on technology.

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So to introduce myself to the world, I thought I might start by saying a litle bit about who I am, and what the point of the blog is all about. I am a CIO working in the United Kingdom (although an Aussie by birth), who specialises in transformational work with organisations. I have pretty much worked in most verticals, and have over time built up a storehouse of techniques, approaches and experience which lets me create rapid change in organisations without excessive risk. All pretty boring stuff reading it like this, but in real life it can be very exciting indeed.
Given the current economic climate, the need for people who can do transformational work rapidly is increasing quickly, so you may say that my skills are in demand. What I hope to do in this blog is share with others some of my thoughts on how Information and Technology can be used to radically improve company survivability and what it takes to turn an organisation or even just a department around.

Over the course of the next few months I am going to be talking about some of my experiences in management, leadership, technology, processes and probably a few random thoughts which don't completely sit with any of those areas. The question you may be asking yourself, is does this guy talk with any authority? Well, judge for yourself - I have had nearly 20 years in the IT industry, hold an MBA and three degrees (Engineering, Education and Business), and have risen reasonably quickly in my field. I have built, run and sold my own company, worked for multi-nationals and smaller organisations ranging from 150 to 400 staff. I even had a few years in the military early in my career.

So if you are someone who aspires to be a CIO, a manager or is just interested in how and what a director/executive of a compay thinks, then do come back from time to time. If all that holds little interest for you, then I'm sure you will find other blogs to read. I hope you get a little out of it, just as I will get something from writing it.

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