A sampling of links from this past week we thought you’d find interesting.

Back in December, I asked a question to my readers.

The question was “What’s your focus?” and immediately after publishing the post, I read a great post titled “The HR Professional – Chasing two Rabbits” over on Fistful of Talent that basically asks the same question.

In the article, the author points out an old Chinese Proverb that says:

“A hunter who chases two rabbits catches neither one.”

Great proverb…and one that fits the current HR world perfectly according to the author.  The post continues with:

I’m thinking this is a similar situation in HR. There are two rabbits in its cross hairs – the strategy, the big picture, seat at the table – and the little stuff, I-9′s, Benefits Enrollment, 401K enrollment, policies, procedures.

I’d say this is the same problem IT faces today.  There are at least two rabbits in the CIO’s cross-hairs – Strategy Rabbit & Tactical Rabbit.  Which do you focus on? Can you focus on just one?

CIO’s – What’s your focus?

The role of the CIO has always been one that required an ability to handle multiple projects and juggle multiple priorities.  The problem with juggling multiple priorities is the same as the hunter trying to chase two rabbits.

While there are some CIO’s who’ve been able to handle the multiple priorities put upon the IT group, I’ve not met many who’ve done a good job of it.  I’ve met some IT groups who were great at implementing new systems but poor at maintaining them after ‘go live’.  I’ve met CIO’s who have a great mind for tactics (i.e., operations) but did a poor job with the strategic thinking that is necessary in today’s world.

So what’s a CIO to do in this fast-paced world with multiple priorities?  It’s impossible to say that you should pick the Strategic or Tactical and focus on that…but one of these ‘rabbits’ must win out over the other.

Should the CIO be focused on the Strategic or Tactical?

I think the CIO’s focus should be on the strategic aspects of IT & business…but perhaps there are some CIO’s out there who want to focus on the tactical.  Fine…pick one and focus…but you’ve got to find someone on your team to focus on the other. Find your focus and get moving….let members of your team focus on other aspects (e.g., operations, etc).

You’ve got 2 rabbits to chase…chase them by yourself and you’ll most likely miss them both.  Find another hunter to help and you’ll get both rabbits.

A sampling of links from this past week we thought you’d find interesting.

This post is a re-publishing of  ”The Future of IT and the CIO” from EricBrown.com

A few months ago, I asked a question on LinkedIn about the role of the CIO (read the original question & responses):

Will the CIO role change in the next 5 years? If so, how…and why?

Quite a few folks responded with some excellent points. I’ve been ruminating on this question (and the answers) and finally realized that I may have asked the wrong question.   Why?  Because organizations want to be more nimble. Users want to be able to do more with the IT assets.  The ‘cloud’ is growing rapidly.

I think the better question to ask is:

How will IT’s role change in the next 5 years? Can current IT groups and CIO’s provide the value that organizations need?

Find the answer to how IT will change in the coming years and the CIO’s role will be clearer.

The Future of IT

I’m not an expert nor am I a ‘futurist’.  That said, I’m going to make a few wild guesses here on the future if IT.

The big IT group of today goes away.  No longer will we see large IT groups with tons of Developers, Project Managers, Network Security, Database Administrators, IT Operations, Desktop support, etc etc.  The IT group will splinter into much smaller groups more closely aligned with the organization.

Instead, I think we’ll see IT Groups split into multiple smaller groups.  There will still need to be desktop support and database administrators and all the other things that fall within IT operations.   That said, why wouldn’t IT operations move into other ‘operations’ areas.   Is IT operations really that much different than facilities management?  They both have to keep things running don’t they? Should IT to be split into an operational team and project team and have them report into different reporting structures.

Most of the real activity will happen around the business analysts and project management teams.   Will we see the CIO migrate into a Chief Project Officer and manage all aspects of business analysis, projects and technology strategy?  Will the IT operations team be managed just like any other part of an organizations facilities are?

Conjecture and Hyperbole

While the statements above are just wild conjecture during a bought of stream of consciousness writing, I think there are some good things to think about there.  Have you taken a second to think about the future of IT and the role of the CIO in your organization?

The New CIO will need to step back and revisit the IT group to see if the organization is delivering the value it should deliver to the organization. Should IT operations be your focus or should it be on analyzing the business requirements for new IT projects?  Should you continue to pour money into legacy systems or make a clean break and move to more agile systems?

Many of you may not agree with me…but that’s the whole point of this post.  Is the Future of IT and that of the CIO certain?  Do we know that we have a valuable place in the future of organizations in our current form?

The New CIO has to look five to ten years down the road to see where you and your IT staff will be.  If you can’t see a clear picture of yourself and your team helping the organization, perhaps you need to start working to defog that future.

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A sampling of links from this past week we thought you’d find interesting.

Communication is a great tool. It helps you build relationships and get things done. But I’m seeing some issues in a number of the companies I’m working with that’s very disturbing.

I’m talking about a serious lack of face-to-face interaction and communication. There are people sitting in the same general vicinity who use IM and e-mail to communicate before they’ll walk over and interact face-to-face.

In vertically siloed organizations, we see this all the time. Marketing doesn’t talk to PR, the sales team has no idea what’s happening in product development, and IT has been working on a huge infrastructure project for 3 months only to find out that the facilities group has already initiated the project and signed a vendor. Sound familiar? I thought it might.

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say. – Abraham Lincoln

How do you fix this disconnect? It’s going to take a little work via the human touch, but it can be done. Now, I’m not talking about revamping a broken corporate culture; that’s a huge undertaking best left to serious agents of change with robust body armor and an antidote for hemlock. What I’m suggesting is starting small, doing one or two things to plant the seeds of change, at least in your world.

Here are three simple steps you can take to improve the quality and frequency of the communication in your organization, whether it’s inter-departmental or within your own team.

1. Get out of your chair. Venture forth and meet your colleagues. I’m blown away by people who tell me they’ve worked at a company for 5 years and still “…have no idea who that guy is over there.” I know one guy whose approach to breaking the ice revolves around chocolate chip cookies (and these are some really good cookies). He works the cookie angle to death. Everyone at work gets to sample the cookies at one point or another. It breaks the ice, it leaves an impression and it opens the door to future interaction. If cookies aren’t your thing, that’s fine – goodies aren’t a necessity. Wander around, stick your hand out and introduce yourself. Get out of your chair and stop using IM and e-mail as your primary methods of communication.
2. Listen. Once you’ve introduced yourself, try to do more listening than talking (because it’s tough to listen with your mouth). One way to avoid the verbal vomit syndrome is by asking relevant questions and then listening carefully to the answers. Be genuine, look ‘em in the eye and listen. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn.
3. Make time. Make face-to-face communication part of your daily routine at work. Set time aside to engage your colleagues on a regular basis, and I’m not talking about attending meetings. Invite someone for a coffee, have lunch, take a walk – get out of the office, if at all possible. Sometimes it’s easier to chat when the phone isn’t constantly ringing or incoming e-mail isn’t a distraction. Oh, and make sure you leave your cell phone at your desk.

The list above is by no means intended to be comprehensive, but it’s a start. Please share your communication strategies as a comment below. We’d love to hear what you think.

[This post originally appeared on www.genedelibero.com on January 29, 2010.]

A sampling of links from this past week we thought you’d find interesting.

This post was originally published on Ericbrown.com  under the title of Minding the Gap between Strategy and Tactics – The New CIO Series.

I’ve seen many strategic plans for organizations. A few of these plans have sections for Technology Strategy while some don’t mention technology at all.   While these strategic plans are nice and thick, have lots of words and graphs and are usually well designed, they are missing something very important: a discussion of, and a plan for, implementation of the strategy.

This may not be anything new to you but its appalling to me.  Why take the time to create a strategy if you don’t know how you’ll implement it?

If you’ve read any of the leading books on being IT Strategy, IT leadership and other topics, you’ll most likely find chapters like “Weave Business and IT Strategies Together” (found in The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results) or something similar. BTW – The New CIO Leader is a great book…go read it.

These types of books and articles go into great detail about tying business and IT strategies together using things like portfolio management, financial returns, and other really important things, but very few talk about one of the most important topics: the people who will be asked to implement the strategies.

Not only does The New CIO have to consider the financial investment required of a new strategy, you’ve got to consider the human investment as well. The financial side of IT strategy and projects is important, but the human capital piece of the equation is just as important.

Where did the Gap come from?

The gap has always been there in the organizations that I’ve observed.  My personal opinion of why the gap exists differ depending on what day it is…and whether I’m drinking at the time you ask.

Today (and most days actually), I’m going to argue that in many cases, the top level leaders who are building these strategic plans are so far removed from the day to day operations that they’ve lost track of the real capabilities of the organization.

This lack of understanding of what can be done and who can do it leads the organization down the path of building a strategy inconsistent with the capabilities of the organization.

The gap is created when the human capital of an organization isn’t factored into the strategic equation.

Minding the Gap

What can The New CIO do to bridge the gap between the strategic plan and the implementation of that plan?

First: understand your business, the market and your people.  Without this understanding, you’ve got no chance.

Second: In addition to asking the normal questions about investment, ROI, governance, IT infrastructure, IT architecture, risk analysis and all the other major questions,  ask yourself a few additional questions to help you (and other senior leaders) understand the human capital affect:

1. Will the team understand this strategy?
2. Can the team implement this strategy?
3. Will the politics of the organization allow this strategy to work?

Don’t just answer these as yes/no…really think about them.  If you get a negative on any of these items, your strategy will most likely fail.  You can spend millions of dollars for McKinsey to build your strategic plan, but it will fail if you don’t have a true sense of how it will be implemented as well as buy-in and understanding from your team.

Let’s look at Social Media as an example.

Yeah…I know…i’m talking about Social Media in the Enterprise…again!

Many of you are probably discussing Social Media and how you can dive in to use this great ‘new’ tool to help drive your business.   You’re probably trying to determine a strategy for how you can use Social Media in the Enterprise or perhaps you’ve already built your strategic plan.

But have you thought about the people involved?  Who will implement your strategy?  Will it be your PR team?  Your marketing team?  IT staff? Will you bring in an external team to implement it?

I would argue (and I’m sure many will agree) that these things should be considered and included in the strategic plan. Perhaps the human capital equation is considered in your strategic plans, but from experience, I’ve not seen it happen much.

Let’s look at the three questions as they relate to this example:

Question #1: Will the team understand this strategy?

Does your organization understand social media? At a more granular level, does your marketing and IT teams? How many people within your organization are active in the social media space?  If the answer is very few, you are in trouble. You can’t possibly hope to implement a social media strategy without at least a few people around the organization that ‘get’ Social Media.

Question #2: Can the team implement this strategy?

So you think your team understands the strategy…but can they implement it?

More importantly, does your team have the capabilities to implement Social Media tools into the enterprise? Do you have cobol developers or do you have .NET, PHP or Ruby on Rails developers? Does your IT staff have the bandwidth to take on another ‘big’ project?  Are you already ‘doing more with less’ to the point where taking on a project like this will overload the team?

Answering this question (can they implement it) has as much to do with your team’s bandwidth as it does with their capabilities.

Question #3: Will the politics of the organization allow this strategy to work?

In my experiences, this is one question that is often overlooked.  Will the many levels of bureaucracy and the different silos within the organization allow your new strategy to work?  If not, what are you going to do about it?  Will your PR team see Social Media as an encroachment to their ‘turf’?  Will portions of the IT team undermine your social media efforts because they feel it opens you up to new security vulnerabilities?

You’ve got to figure these things out before finalizing your strategy so you know how you’ll address the political issues that will arise.

Start Minding the Gap

By answering these questions, The New CIO can better mind the gap between strategy and tactics by considering the human capital within the organization. Thinking about the human side of strategy & tactics will also help with the communication of these new strategies because the people will have been considered while the strategy has been created.

In addition, if you’re doing your job right, a good portion of your team should have been involved in creating your strategies anyway…so you’ll have their buy-in.  Once they see that the organizational capabilities are considered when creating an IT Strategic plan, they’ll get excited because their situation, bandwidth and capabilities have been considered.

In a previous post titled ‘Strategy, Tactics and Hope‘, I argue that its not enough to just have a great strategy nor a great plan for implementation…you’ve got to have both. In addition to strategy and tactics, you’ve got to throw in a sprinkle of hope to help bridge the gap.

Thinking about the human equation while developing strategy will help bring out that hope.  You’ll start seeing an optimistic team rather than one that feels overworked and under appreciated. Not only will you get buy-in to the strategic plan, you’ll also have an implementation plan that considers the human and financial capital required to make the strategy a success.

Next time you start thinking about strategic plans, mind the gap…think about your team and your capabilities before committing to that strategy.

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According to a recent research report released by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), and reported on by CIO Insight, jobs that are currently seen as IT Jobs will be moving to other parts of the organization.

The report has some very interesting numbers….here’s a sampling from the CIO Insight slideshow:

• Less than 25% of employees now in IT will remain in IT
• Most activities IT currently manages will move into other areas of the organization
• The current functionally organized central office (with IT, HR, Finance, etc) is reaching the limits of its efficiency
• Technology is moving to more of a platform as service rather than platform as  infrastructure

Interesting stuff…I looked for the actual report from CEB but couldn’t find anything else written on it with more details.

Without the report, I can’t really argue the points above…but I think the are fairly accurate.

We are already seeing a large move to virtualization and the cloud as a platform.  With that move, is there really a need to have a large IT staff to manage a virtualized IT Infrastructure?  Perhaps not.

If anyone knows of a more in-depth review of the CEB’s report, please pass it along…I’d like to read more about the report.

A sampling of links from this past week we thought you’d find interesting.