Aligning Technology, Strategy, People & Projects

Links for July 5 2009

Eric D. Brown — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:33:29 +0000

On Social Media and Culture Shift by Amber Naslund on Altitude Branding

The ROI on Flexibility by Peter Campbell on Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

Corporate Twitter? The Three S’s That Must Be Overcome by George Tomko on TomkoTek

Why It Matters Who You Are by Mark McGuinness on Lateral Action

Should We Give the Customer What They Want? by Brad Egeland on Project Management Tips

Sales: It’s About Them, Not You by Diane Helbig on Small Business Trends

Two Tales of Customer Service by Glenn Whitfield on IT Business Alignment (IT2B)

How Beautiful it is, and How Easily it can be Broken by Andrew McAfee

Twitter in the Enterprise by Patti Anklam on The AppGap

Activities vs. Results – the difference makes all the difference by Mark McDonald on the Gartner Blog Network

The Courage to be Wrong by Jonathan Morrow on Copyblogger

Agile Maturity Model – What’s Next? by Scott Sehlhorst on Tyner Blain

Are You an Inventor or an Entrepreneur? by Jeff Stibel on HarvardBusiness.org

Of designers and developers by Tom Grant on The Heretech

As Brands Continue to ‘Pollinate’ the Social Web, Expect Aggregation by Jeremiah Owyang on Web Strategy

How Well Do You Listen and Respond? by Dawn Foster on WebWorkerDaily

Saying Why Is A Powerful Tool by Mike Schaffner on Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

Forrester on The Future of the Social Web (myventurepad.com)
Future Of The Social Web (freshcreation.com)
Are the fish taking the bait? (socialmediatoday.com)

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Post tags: Customer Service, Social media, Strategy, sunda, Sunday Links, Technology

The New CIO: Social Media and the Enterprise

Eric D. Brown — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:25:21 +0000

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

Ahhh…Social Media. THE hot topic these days (and for some time to come I think).

There’s no arguing that the use of social media is a valid and necessary way to reach out and engage your community, but how does the use of these tools affect the IT organization, IT leadership and the CIO?

Social Media can cause a lot of headache’s for IT but with The New CIO in place, those headaches can be lessened by embracing the community (externally and internally). Embracing the community is actually much easier than keeping that community at arms length or worse…ignore the communities.

Why is Social Media important to The New CIO?

Simple…it’s another tool to step into the conversation. If you don’t know what that statement means, go read The Cluetrain Manifesto. If you aren’t in the conversation, you can’t hear what people are saying. Helping an organization listen should be one of the top priorities for The New CIO.

To listen, the organization has to have their ears open and must be fully engaged with their community. In order to engage, The New CIO must provide a means to allow the organization to embrace the community…that might mean rethinking security regulations to provide more access for employees or building velvet rope social networks to draw in the community.

Social Media in the Enterprise requires a mindshift from one of closed architecture to a bit more of an open one. Gone are the days of closed systems and keeping your clients and community at arms length….today you’ve got to reach out and embrace those communities. To do that, you’ve got allow Social media platforms into your organization while also keeping an eye on security….but more importantly, The New CIO has to understand the power of social tools to embrace both external and internal communities.

Challenges of Social Media in the Enterprise

There are many stands to take against Social Media in the Enterprise. There’s the IT security argument and the personal information protection arguments…but are these really viable arguments? I don’t think they are…as long as your IT security team are doing their jobs in the first place.

Of course, there are real challenges to overcome for The New CIO. Topics like personal information protection and protecting intellectual property are valid but can be overcome with reasonable controls and guidance. That said, you’ve got to allow people to be themselves too…don’t lock down security on your IT systems so much that it hampers your users’ abilities to use Social Media tools.

Integration is a key challenge for IT groups. How do you securely integrate a SaaS platform for social networking? Companies like Ripple6 are doing some great things in this space but I’m not sure how far into the enterprise these systems really can go. Some organizations are providing internal platforms that provide internal communities to organizations. An example of this type of technology is Newsgator’s Social Sites which turns Sharepoint into a Facebook-like platform that makes it easy for people across the enterprise to find others with similar interests and share knowledge.

Systems that allow your organization to connect internally and externally will be the smart play. Are there any systems that seamlessly provide internal communities & external communities together? I’m not sure…but if not, there should be.

Don’t just embrace – connect

How cool would it be to have a fully secured platform that provided similar functionality as Facebook and provides your internal users with the ability to connect with each other and with external users. Today this is possible by using separate tools like Facebook & Twitter…but what if you could bring the conversation to your website directly? What if your ‘corporate’ website changes from being a place to yell about your products to being a place where discussions happen. Jeremiah Owyang has a great post on this very topic.

Gone are the days of static websites with marketing material…we’re moving into the days of interaction and engagement directly on the corporate web presence. The New CIO will need to play a key role in this move toward the mixture of internal and external audiences by understanding the technology, security, marketing and social implications.

Engaging your customers is here to stay…whether you call it ‘using social media’, marketing or PR, you’ll need to find a way to embrace your customers and your employees. The New CIO must find a way to allow internal and external communities to co-exist while also keeping IT security as high as possible.

The challenge for The New CIO is to find a way to provide the engagement that Social Media platforms and tools provide while also protecting intellectual property, personal information and the IT infrastructure.

What can The New CIO do today?

Not many organizations are ready to move full-bore into the world of Social Media and very few are ready to step in as far as I think they should. Many organizations don’t understand what it means to engage and listen to their communities…even after 10 years of talking about joining the conversation.

One way The New CIO can help organizations move closer to the community by providing leadership and guidance on embracing the internal community first. This is a much less risky move for most organizations because it removes many of the security and intellectual property arguments from the table. Taking this first step into the world of social media can open up a lot of avenues for collaboration and communication within the organization and can help make people more comfortable with the idea.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition either. If your organization is comfortable with LAMP, Grab Wordpress MU and setup an internal blogging network. Let every employee have a blog…let them talk and help the organization listen to them. I’d be the HR group would love to have the ability to hear what the people are saying. Even better…put BuddyPress on that same box and start building an internal social network. If you are a Sharepoint shop, you’ve already got some functionality for blogging and collaboration in the MOSS 2007 system.

Do the internal pilot and help people understand the power of community…then you’ll start seeing people clamoring for a way to embrace the external community. Once that happens, you’ll be on a fun ride trying to connect your internal and external communities. It will be a challenge…but one worth hitting head on.

Check back next week when I talk about The New CIO and the challenge of keeping IT employees engaged and employed.

16 ways IT can do less with less (infoworld.com)
5 Steps to build Social Media team (marketing.blogtanker.com)
Help IT Run a Less-Risky Business (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)
The Real Meaning of Cloud Security Revealed (devcentral.f5.com)
Trust: The New Business Imperative (myventurepad.com)
The Role of the CTO & CIO in Cloud Computing (elasticvapor.com)
Social Networking and Technical Communicators | On the Write Road (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
IBM launches social network for partners (venturebeat.com)
Why bother with social media? (digital-constructions.com)
What are the Benefits of Social Networking Sites | Johnny’s … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
When it comes to engagement, social media is the art of the possible (socialmediatoday.com)

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Post tags: Chief information officer, Cloud computing, Cluetrain Manifesto, enterprise 2.0, Social media, Social network, Social network service

Jeffrey Phillips on Intense Ambiguity

Eric D. Brown — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:54:24 +0000

I just read a great post by Jeffrey Phillips titled Intense Ambiguity that really brought into light what it’s like working for a boss or organization that has no clear strategy and vision.

What does Intense Ambiquity mean? Jeffrey defines it as:

…significant pressure from the management team to do something – especially new and interesting things. However, there isn’t necessarily a corresponding amount of clarity about what those things should be. So, there’s a lot of pressure to get things done, just no one is really sure what kinds of things should be done.

Intense Ambiguity defines this situation perfectly.

How many readers out there have found themselves in the same situation? You work your butt off in reactive mode trying to do ’something’ but there is no real vision or strategy to help define what that ’something’ should be.

Jump over and read the rest of Jeffrey’s Intense Ambiguity post for more insight.

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Post tags: Business, Communication, intense ambiguity, Leadership, Management, Strategy

So you want to be a Change Agent?

Eric D. Brown — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:00:36 +0000

I was recently reading Dagmar Recklies’ article titled What Makes a Good Change Agent? and started thinking about some of the people that I know who are good at change…and some who completly destroy any opportunities for change.

In the article, 15 Competencies are listed that a good change agent should have. These competencies are:

15 Key Competencies of Change Agents

Sensitivity to changes in key personnel, top management perceptions and market conditions, and to the way in which these impact the goals of the project.

Setting of clearly defined, realistic goals.

Flexibility in responding to changes without the control of the project manager, perhaps requiring major shifts in project goals and management style.

Team-building abilities, to bring together key stakeholders and establish effective working groups, and to define and delegate respective responsibilities clearly.

Networking skills in establishing and maintaining appropriate contacts within and outside the organization.

Tolerance of ambiguity, to be able to function comfortably, patiently and effectively in an uncertain environment.

Communication skills to transmit effectively to colleagues and subordinates the need for changes in the project goals and in individual tasks and responsibilities.

Interpersonal skills, across the range, including selection, listening, collecting appropriate information, identifying the concerns of others, and managing meetings.

Personal enthusiasm in expressing plans and ideas.

Stimulating motivation and commitment in others involved.

Selling plans and ideas to others by creating a desirable and challenging vision of the future.

Negotiating with key players for resources, for changes in procedures, and to resolve conflict.

Political awareness in identifying potential coalitions, and in balancing conflicting goals and perceptions.

Influencing skills, to gain commitment to project plans and ideas form potential skeptics and resisters.

Helicopter perspectives, to stand back from the immediate project and take a broader view of priorities.

Looks like a fairly good list.

Take a look at some of the main terms found in these competencies. You’ll see words like:

Sensitivity
Flexibility
Networking
Tolerance
Communication
Interpersonal
Political Awareness
Influencing

Great list…and one that many many people overlook when they are trying to bring change into an organization.

If you want to be a Change Agent, the first thing on your agenda should be to understand where the organization (and you) have been.

The second thing you need to do? Listen.

Why is listening so important? Because you can’t change what you don’t know or understand. The only way to learn and understand is to listen to the organization and the people within it. In order to create lasting and meaningful change, you’ve got to understand why things have been done before you suggest changing things.

For lasting change, take a look at the 15 competencies above and make them your competencies. Do this and the change you want might just be a bit easier to bring about.

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Post tags: Business, Communication, Management, Management styles, Organization, Project manager, Team building

Links for June 28 2009

Eric D. Brown — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:24:39 +0000

Why Your Corporate Message Isn’t Being Heard by Jason Falls on Social Media Explorer

The 7 Sins of Customer Service by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent

Productivity gains in software engineering are powering innovation by Auren Hoffman on Summation

Boosting Engagement While Cutting Costs by Jeannie Ruhlman and Cheryl Siegman on Gallup’s Organizational Performance Blog

The context for 2010 planning will be challenging by Mark McDonald on Gartner’s Blog Network

Actionable Business-IT Alignment by Tod McKenna on Tod means Fox

Social Media is Rife with Experts but Starved of Authorities by Brian Solis on PR2.0

The Art of Enabling Others to Act by Cheri Baker on The Enlightened Manager

Getting Back to Leadership Wins Back the Trust by Ted Mininni on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Why Is Your Organization Not Human? by Jamie Notter on Get Me Jamie Notter

Leadership Philosophy – CIO to CIO by Arun Manansingh on A CIO’s Voice

Learning from How Designers Think and Work by Becky Bermont on HarvardBusiness.org

Top 10 Reasons Why Employees Leave in IT by Dave Schinkel on Code Zest

Why Trust is Asymmetrical, and What that Means for Trust Strategies by Charles H. Green on Trust Matters

What IT Needs To Give Up by Mike Schaffner on Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

The role of architect by George Dinwiddie on George Dinwiddie’s blog

Why use cases should drive technology design by Tom Grant on The Heretech

Is Execution More Important than Vision? by Sarah Lacy on TechCrunch

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Post tags: Business, CIO, Customer Service, Leadership, Strategy, Trust

The New CIO – An Introduction

Eric D. Brown — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:38:40 +0000

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

It’s fitting that my 400th post is my first The New CIO article. I’ve been ruminating on writing a weekly post/article but hadn’t really sat down to plan it out. I think I’ve got a good plan now and am going to jump in and see where it leads.

The New CIO

What do I mean by The New CIO? The role of Chief Information Officer today is much different than it was just a few years ago and the role in the coming years will change even more.

No longer is the CIO just the main technologist for the organization. The CIO is a leader who has a strong technology background but also understands the worlds of marketing, finance, social media, sales and everything else an organization does.

The New CIO must be as comfortable talking about building the brand as they are talking bits and bytes. The New CIO must be able to help craft strategy as well as tactical plans for implementing that strategy.

Strengths of The New CIO

The idea that The New CIO needs to be business savvy isn’t a new one. People have been screaming about this for years. The CIO and IT group must get closer to the business. The New CIO must be much more than just a technology person who’s business ’savvy’ though. She must be able to sit down and discuss marketing strategy with the marketing group, sales strategy with the sales group and then keep on top of all things technology withing the organization.

The New CIO must understand the new world of technology. Forget the old days of closed systems. Tomorrow’s systems and platforms will be open and transparent. The New CIO will need to understand Social Media and its implications to the Enterprise. Enterprise 2.0, 3.0 and beyond will be the future of IT shops and the CIO must be in front of this.

Tomorrow’s organizations need a strong leader in the CIO role to help integrate technology and processes from many different vendors to do many different things. Gone are the days when a CIO can choose to be fully ‘.NET shop’ or ‘java shop’ and close their mind to all other systems/platforms.

To provide the requisite service to tomorrow’s organization, The New CIO has to be a strong leader, great communicator, excellent thinker and strategist. Above all else, tomorrow’s CIO must understand that their role is to help the organization execute on their strategy. It can no longer be about implementing and managing the ‘cool’ technology..the role of IT is about helping the organization grow.

Who is The New CIO?

The New CIO will come from the people who have successfully integrated technology and business in their career. I think we’ll see people moving into the CIO role who’ve worked in many different areas of the organization but who strong IT backgrounds. That person with the very broad background will be The New CIO.

What’s Next in this series?

As mentioned, this is first article in a weekly series of articles that I’ll be releasing every Thursday. Check back next week when I talk about Social Media, The Enterprise and the role of the CIO.

The Role of the CTO & CIO in Cloud Computing (elasticvapor.com)
Yes, It’s Time for a Chief Social Media Officer (markevanstech.com)
CIO.com tries to explain Twitter to your Boss’s Boss’s Boss (newcommbiz.com)

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Post tags: Business, Chief information officer, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Marketing strategy, Social media, Society and Culture, Technology, twitter

The New CIO – a new weekly series

Eric D. Brown — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:38:48 +0000

I’ve been thinking about writing a weekly article and finally found a topic that I think lends itself well to this approach.

I’m planning on writing about ‘The New CIO” and covering topics that CIO’s today (and tomorrow) need to be thinking about, planning for, and doing to meet the needs of the organization in the coming months and years.

The New CIO not only has to focus on technology issues but must also focus on business strategy and marketing. All areas of the business using technology extensively these days…and with Social Media getting bigger and bigger, The New CIO has to figure out how to allow the business to move into the bold new world of transparency while also providing security and usefulness.

I’m working on the first real “The New CIO” article to be published later this week…look for more. If you have any ideas that you think need to be covered in this new series, or if you’d like to write an artcile yourself, let me know!

The Role of the CTO & CIO in Cloud Computing (elasticvapor.com)
CIO.com tries to explain Twitter to your Boss’s Boss’s Boss (newcommbiz.com)
Rejoicing at Launch of New and Snazzy Utah.gov (ariwriter.com)
Analytics in the Cloud: 5 Lessons Learned (computerworld.com)

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Post tags: Business, Chief information officer, Chief technical officer, Information Technology

Beware of the Linear Thinking Trap

Eric D. Brown — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:31:41 +0000

One of the most visited posts on this blog is titled “The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking“. That one post makes up for a good amount of monthly visitors from people doing a google search for ‘linear thinking‘. Do that search yourself and you’ll see that post in the top 3 (if not #1).

Why is this such a popular topic? Easy…because we are all scare to death of falling into the linear thinking trap. We’re all looking for ways to break out of the linear mindset and come up with something ‘cool’ or different.

Linear Thinking and Me

I found myself in the linear thinking mindset recently and didn’t realize it. For almost 2 years, I’ve been driving the same route during my commute without really considering whether there was a quicker or more direct route.

Over the weekend, my wife mentioned the route she takes to work seems to be quicker and much less congested. It just happened that her route takes her very close to the tollway that I use to get across town…so I figured I’d try it out too.

Know something? It shaved almost five minutes off my travel time from the house to the tollway. Five minutes! I’d been perfectly happy driving the same route day after day…and then BAM…I find another route that’s quicker and shorter too.

Why hadn’t I thought about changing up the route before? Because I’d fallen into the linear thinking trap. I’d allowed myself to think that the route I took was the fastest. I pondered on this all day and found myself thinking about new routes to take on the way home. The tollway is a no-brainer…it’s the fastest and most direct route across town…but the exit I take could change.

On the way home I started looking at exits that might be faster or more direct and realized that if I got off the tollway one exit earlier at the free exit, I’d save a few more miles in travel time AND save an extra 30 cents per commute. Over the course of an average month, this saves me ~$6…enough to buy me a few cups of coffee at Starbux

The Linear Thinking Trap

I realize that you really don’t care about my commuting habits…but it proves a point (I hope). The story shows that we all fall into the trap of allowing ourselves to get comfortable with an idea. We allow a process to take over and forget to question the idea(s) behind the process.

Look at some of the recent innovations in the world. What would have happened if nobody had thought to ask the question ‘is email enough’? Would we have twitter? Would we have social networks?

What would the world be like of Apple (and others) hadn’t taken the ideas they saw at Xerox and built the modern day personal computer? Perhaps it’d be very boring.

Are you in the linear thinking trap?

One easy way to tell if you’ve fallen into the trap is to ask yourself this: Are you doing the same thing the same way you were last year?

If so, better start fighting, because you’re probably deep in the jaws of the linear thinking trap. You may have to gnaw your foot or arm off to get out but it might be worth it.

Just like me and my boring commute, if you let the day(s) go by without questioning your own ideas and methods, you’ve already lost the battle against linear thinking.

Don’t fall into the linear thinking trap…you’ll end up driving the same old boring route ever day. Keep looking for the creative solution and keep questioning.

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Post tags: creative thinking, Leadership, linear thinking, Strategy

Acting vs Being

Eric D. Brown — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:00:52 +0000

I just finished reading an article in the Dallas Business Journal titled Acting like a a ‘Best Boss’ and the only thing I could think about while reading it (and after reading it) was why ACT? Why not BE?

The article has some great suggestions for ‘acting’ like the ‘best boss’. These suggestions are:

find out what your individual subordinates want
keep them informed
give them credit
say thank you
ask their opinions
tell them what the company does

Not a bad list. Some very good things there actually…great advice.

But what perplexes me is the fact that the DBJ (or author?) decided to use the title ‘act like a best boss’ rather than ‘be the best boss’, or even better, how to ‘be the best leader’ (but that’s a different argument altogether…boss vs leader). Perhaps its just an oversight on the paper or author’s part, but there’s a huge difference between acting like something and being something.

Do you want to work for someone who’s acting like a great boss or someone that is a great boss?

Acting is temporary. Acting is a performance. Acting like a great boss won’t last because you won’t completely internalize what it means to BE a great boss.

“Being” is authentic….acting isn’t.

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Post tags: Business, Dallas Business Journal

Links for June 21 2009

Eric D. Brown — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:37:53 +0000

Lots of great stuff out there this past week…can’t share it all but will share some. If you want to track all my shared stories from my google reader Shared Items feed.

It’s Simple, Fix the Problem by Valeria Maltoni on Conversation Agent

Become a More Creative Leader — Think Small by Stew Friedman on HarvardBusiness.org

Systems Thinking: A Technique To Find Project Problems by Bas de Baar on Project Shrink

Service Outages — It’s All About the Response by Scott Blitstein on WebWorkerDaily

Reminder: Know what you’re measuring by Jason on Signal vs. Noise

Hitting The Social Media Sweet Spot by John Jantsch on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Creating Community Through Relevant Local Information by Christine Whittemore on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Conformity Makes Community Comfortable by Micah Baldwin on Learn to Duck

“Technology over Tyranny” managing in a flat world by Mark McDonald on Gartner’s Blog Network

The 10 Questions Every Change Agent Must Answer by Bill Taylor on HarvardBusiness.org

The Future of Customer Service by Frank Eliason on Time to be Frank

Web 2.0 and IT: A Finally Friday CCrit by Steve on No Secret