0 to 60 in 1.6 Gigaseconds

From 0 to 60 – that really is the measure of a car, at least if in you’re my age bracket.  GPS navigational systems, rearview cameras, automatic parallel parking – all features for the technology dependent if you ask me.  I want to feel G-forces on my back when I floor the accelerator!  I guess that dates me as a product of the 70’s which I feel strangely compelled to apologize for.   My growing up has interestingly basically coincided with the evolution of Information Technology (IT) in industry today.  When you think about all the cool technology we have today, you might wonder why not “0 to 90” or “0 to 250”?  I suppose a site named “0 to Google” would be a fun play on words.  But I picked 60 because I’ve been brainwashed (another word for influenced) to think in terms of business outcomes, not technology “coolness”.  Yes, I do think all the technical gains of the past 1.6 gigaseconds (something over 50 years if my math is right) have yielded business value in the aggregate.  But I don’t think the business value realized from technology gains is in the same ballpark as the technology gains themselves.  If it had been, we would have wiped out the national debt 100 times over.  No, if we have cars going 200 mph and planes flying at Mach 3, I can live with IT having metaphorically accelerated up to 60 mph at this day and age in terms of the value IT brings to business today.

This site will not be a history of IT – too boring.  But I can’t help bringing a perspective to things that reflects the experiences I’ve had, which somewhat correlates to the history of IT.  This site will be a place to find discussions on the ways and means for businesses today to get more value from their information technology.  These discussions will reflect my experiences, but perhaps more meaningful, my influences. 

There is a great feature on many of these digital music services available today.  Often seen next to each recording artist is a list of other artists that have influenced them.  So when you like a band, you can see their influences and more than likely, you’ll discover other bands you like that you never would have heard of otherwise.   We’ve all been influenced in ways we often don’t think about.  By understanding my influences, you’ll have a sense of where I’m coming from when I say one of my more outrageous things.

Like anyone else, I’ve been influenced heavily by my parents, family, teachers, coaches, bosses, and colleagues I’ve encountered.  I could opine on several of these people, but if you don’t know them, it won’t help you know me any better.  So with respect to everyone that has helped me grow over the many years, I’ll restrict my comments to those you might have heard of.  If you could see my bookcase, you’d notice there are more than a few 3” technical manuals.  But there are many more books from the “management” section of Barnes & Noble.  You might see some themes:

• Quality – Yes, I think Deming was a brilliant man.  I’ve read Out of the Crisis about a dozen time and it makes more sense to me each time.  I think The Memory Jogger was and is one of the best things every printed that fits into a coat pocket. 
•  Organizational Change Management – Let’s face it, IT has already addressed the easy problems.  By default the only problems left are complex, complex enough to introduce disruptive change on people and organizations.  I’m fascinated with the psychological effect IT has on people as individuals or in groups.  Some of the best thinking I’ve seen includes the works of Daryl Conner, Joseph Grenny, Patrick Lencioni, and my past and present colleague Vaughan Merlyn. 
•  Innovation, Process Re-engineering, Systems Thinking – I only really watch two kinds of shows on television: sports or Discovery Channel.  I love shows that explain how things work.  But more than that, I love learning how someone came up with the very idea of doing something new in the first place.   The Innovator’s Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) is one of my favorites, but the list here is too long to enumerate. 

Henry Mintzberg authored the book Structures in Fives – Designing Effective Organizations.  While tough for a non-academic like me to read, I really took a lot of his key points to heart and think they complement Deming’s passion for standards in a very useful way.  You see, while Deming preached the value of standardization, he was based in a manufacturing paradigm which generally talked about process standardization. Mintzberg expands on this by suggesting there are basically three ways you can standardize something: you can standardize the process, you can standardize the deliverables, or you can standardize the people.  Mintzberg elaborates on this by stating that to some degree you always have an element of each of the three forms of standardization in any activity you undertake, and that the proportion of each form should be a function of the complexity of the activity.  Brilliant! When applied to the context of IT, you see some really interesting implications.  For example, producing business value from IT changes dramatically in complexity throughout the process so if Mintzberg is correct (and I think he is), the proportion of the three forms of standardization should change as well.  Whoops, tell that to the IT Methodologist and see where it gets you.  I’m always amazed how people in IT tend to want to bring the same level of process standardization to business analysis as they would bring to system construction despite the variance in complexity between the two.

The guy that told me to read Mintzberg is another key influencer: John Parkinson.  John and I were colleagues at Ernst & Young many moons ago and John is still a key player at Cap Gemini.  Having John around was kind of like having a walking, talking Wikipedia before the Web was even born.  When I didn’t know anything about something, I could count on John to tell me something about anything.  And the accuracy rate of what he knew was an astounding 99% (of course, that 1% could really kill you so it was helpful to be a natural born cynic).

While working with John at E&Y, I also meet Vaughan Merlyn who as luck would have it, is again a colleague of mine with BSG Concours.  Vaughan has an unbelievable ability to get more out of the Readers Digest version of a story than anyone else would out of reading the full novel.  He has a remarkable ability to follow implications and understand the “question behind the question” which makes him a highly sought-after advisor to both CIOs and peers, as well as me.

Don’t get the big head, Vaughan.  I’m also overly influenced by Dilbert.

If this was an award show, I’d go on making sure I thanked and recognized all the people that have influenced my thinking over the years.  But then this posting would never end and no one would ever return to read anything else. So I’ll end here in hopes that you have a better idea of what this site is about and where I’m coming from as I make my postings.

Cheers!