What do you think of when you think of  ‘the cloud’ what do you think of?  Do you think about Amazon‘s EC2 or S3 or do you think about  “Parallel and Distributed Processing”?  Both could be right but neither are instructive to the ‘business’ user.  For that matter, is “the cloud” instructive to the business? Probably not.

The New CIO & Language

There’s a lot of talk in the business world about finding IT leaders who can speak to the business. I agree wholeheartedly…but I also think the business needs to learn to speak to the IT world too….but I’ve covered that in detail in a post titled Information Technology Leadership and Alignment. Moving on.

To help align business and IT, The New CIO needs to first look at the language of IT.  Get rid of the big words….and perhaps the small words if they aren’t clear enough.  Look at your IT group’s language to make sure acronyms and tech-jargon are purged from the external facing documentation and communication.  Take a long look at what you communicate to the organization and how you communicate to make sure you aren’t letting the tech-speak take over.

Want to really take it up a notch and make sure you’re communicating what the organization needs to hear? Bring in a marketer and a   communications person to build an IT marketing and communication plan for your team.  Your organization has marketing plans for how you’ll attack the market, why can’t you have one for how you’ll communicate to the rest of the organization?

Be careful though…you don’t want to get too far into business language or you’ll end up using the same marketing/business jargon that every other group within your organization uses.  Keep it simple and real and you’ll be fine.

Next time the CEO asks you “what’s this cloud computing thing I keep hearing about?”, how will you respond?  Big words or the right words?

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. Join me next week for another article in the series.

John Baldoni had a great article on HarvardBusiness.org titled “Five Things John Madden Teaches Us about Leadership.”

Apparently John Madden has announced his retirement…I’ve been so busy with work and school to not know this.  Baldoni took Madden’s announcement as a chance to look at what leadership lessons can be learned from Madden….and I was impressed.

The lessons are:

• Commit to what you do
• Innovate as you go
• Tell Stories
• Love what you do
• Know when to say when

Now…I’m going to make you jump over to the article to get Baldoni’s take on these lessons but I will provide my own commentary here too.

I don’t think anyone would argue with these points.  Leaders need to be committed towhat they do, love what they do, innovate and know when to throw in the towel.  But what about the third one (tell stories)?  Do many leaders do that?

I think they should.

Think about John Madden’s commentary during football games (American football that is).  He never sat there and just called the plays as they happened…he provided insight into what was happening and share stories from his many years of experience.

He used stories to educate people watching the games and he made people smarter by doing so.  This is what leaders need to do to.

Don’t just tell people that the organization is changing…tell them why its changing. Tell a story that highlights the reasons for the change.  Provide examples and a narrative to help people take the information in and internalize it.

In addition to football jargon, let’s learn something else from John Madden. Describe where you want to go and draw it out for your team….you may be surprised that people will be on-board with your vision if they understand it more clearly.

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These reasons are:

• Customers aren’t just confused-they’re offended
• Big prices + lack of specificity = frustration
• The sin of inclusion
• All marketing-speak sounds the same
• Marketing-speak makes the purchasing decision more difficult

You aren’t surprised are you?

Everyone’s been subjected to ‘marketing speak.’ From my experience, when a vendor talks to me in plain English and addresses my issues without any marketing speak, they tend to get much more of my time than the marketing-speak that spews from some vendor’s mouths.

I’m sure there are many of you that have been involved in creating marketing-speak too. I have.  Think about the last time you were in a meeting and someone asked you how you could help them.  Did you speak clearly and simply and describe how you can help them?  Or did you revert to the marketing material you memorized?  I know there are times when I’ve reverted back to marketing-speak and within seconds I regret it.

The difficulty of marketing is that it is tough to use one approach to market your product/service these days.   I think this is why so many people/organizations are excited about using social media…you can target your message to your audience (theoretically).  Even with this ‘new’ approach to marketing, you’ve got to listen to your target market first, then market to them.

Regardless of what your message is or who you are speaking to, you’ve got to communicate in a simple, real and honest method.  In other words, have an Authentic Conversation with your customers/clients and you’ll find that they’ll listen intently….after you’ve listened to them.

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• Get Closer to Your Customers Now

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter-and getting smarter faster than most companies.

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

Remember…this was written in 1999.  Sounds a lot like what you read today about why organizations need to use Social Media.

The Cluetrain Manifesto continues (taken from the same page):

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.

But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.

Again….sounds like stuff I’ve read recently about the use of Social Media by organizations.

Here we are, 10 years after The Cluetrain Manifesto was written and we’re still hearing/saying the same thing.  Organizations still don’t seem to ‘get’ that their customers are human beings who are smart enough to understand when they aren’t hearing the truth from them.

Today, organizations are trying to figure out how to use Social Media to embrace their customers.  I’m all for embracing customers and using Social Media to do this and, in fact, I think it’s important and vital to the success of an organization today.

But…unless organizations change their approach to  Social Media and/or any other method/idea/tool for embracing customers, the results will be the same as every other approach.

What do organizations need to do differently?  Forget the tools. Forget Social Media (not really…but keep reading).  Forget marketing.

What organizations need to do is go back to the basics of having an Authentic Conversation with their customer.

What is an Authentic Conversation? An Authentic Conversation is one in which an organization (or person) has a simple, honest and real conversation.

Sounds good right? I think so. Of course, the idea of authentic conversations isn’t new…but it seems as if it needs to be defined again with everyone talking about Social Media.   Why?

Simple…You can spend millions of dollars building platforms and tools to use social media but if your message isn’t authentic (e.g., simple, real, honest), the money will be a waste.   Forget the money for a minute…you could get into Social Media for free and still waste your time.  Why?  Because the second your customers get a hint of un-authentic conversations, they’ll revolt….and tell all of their friends.

Organizations need to start looking at ways to have simple, real and honest conversations with their customers on whatever medium makes sense.  Do this and customers will thank and embrace you.

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In the class I learned language patterns and that people have different thinking modalities: Auditory, Visual, Kinesthetic, Gustatory, Olfactory. The training leans toward the sales side, but the information can also be used by managers or change agents.

Fact is, the Project Management Institute tells us that management is 90% communication. And yet, the only thing I remember from my PMI training is that there’s a sender, a receiver, a message. I’m sure there’s more. Perhaps I dozed off during one of the key 44 processes.

Steve makes a great point. I’ve said for a long time that Project Management should focus more on leadership and communication skills over process.  That said, process and standards are important…but without the proper leadership and communication capabilities, a project will fail. We need to get Project Managers to spend more of their time leading projects and less time working through the 44 processes.

Now…I’ve got to go find out what “Gustatory” means

Before I get into the review, let me define “moose on the table.”  According to the author, it is a rephrasing of the old saying “the elephant in the room”…as in…the thing nobody wants to discuss (or can discuss, etc).

Jim Clemmer uses a fable to tell the story of an organization that is in need of leadership and change…but the ‘leader’ is brow-beater who only wants someone to agree with him.  The story follows Pete Leonard as he works his way through some issues at work and at home.  Pete attends a seminar and realizes that the way his boss is acting is forcing the organization down into the depths of failure and that he and the other folks need to make an effort to “face the moose”.

The author provides some concepts about how to deal with the moose on the table…some are novel and others aren’t but all are great ideas that can be implemented by anyone trying to approach solving a problem like a moose on the table.

The basic outcome of the story is this:  When a problem rears up, communicate and solve the problem rather than rather than talk around it, place blame for the problem or go into ‘pity city’ (e.g., poor me, etc).  Leadership and communication are key to solving the “moose on the table” problem.

This book is a good read and is short enough to finish quickly.  The concept is a good one and the story is engaging.  I’d recommend it to anyone out there who is dealing with a “moose on the table”.

NOTE: This book was provided by the publisher as an advanced review copy.

Oracle today introduced Oracle(r) Communications IP Service and Network Management, a new market offering designed to simplify the lifecycle management of complex IP-based services. This offering enables communications service providers to manage growing IP service complexity, scale operations efficiently and facilitate ongoing network change by providing one integrated solution for IP service management and network change control. Included in the offering are updated versions of two key Oracle Service Fulfillment Suite applications, Oracle Communications Configuration Management and Oracle Communications IP Service Activator.

If you were playing the technical version of Buzzword Bingo, you probably would have won!

I think what Oracle is trying to say is “hey guys…we have a new product that manages your IP service offerings and helps you get a grasp of the complex nature of these services”. I think.

Ben Worthen at WSJ’s Business Technology blog pointed me to this press release. He agrees that there is way to much ‘Gobbledygook’ in this press release. Apparently, some of the snide comments directed at Ben disagree…a few people mention that since this product is targeted at technical people it’s OK to use technical mumbo-jumbo and buzzwords…but I disagree. If you can’t communicate the value of a product in a clear and concise language, then perhaps you don’t truly understand the value of that product (or there is no value in the product).Leave the technical language and other terminology for tech specs, manuals or white papers.

Did anyone get a bingo from Oracle’s press release? If so, let me know

[tags] communication, buzzword bingo, Business Technology [/tags]

For example, on one of the projects I’m working on now is a content management system implementation. My role is as overall program manager responsible for managing internal and external resources as well as managing the vendor relationship.

The vendor was in town a few weeks ago to work with the client to develop requirements for the initial phase. Their plan was to return to their office and get a proposal (including project plans) to the client the following week. When the vendor left, everyone was quite happy with their work and felt very comfortable with their ability to do the job at hand.

The following week we heard nothing from the vendor. Not a peep other than the occasional reply to an email sent from me or my client.

The end of the week came and went with no proposal or project plan and no communication from them. The client started getting very nervous and started asking questions like ‘are they doing anything’ and ‘did they forget about us’. Phone calls and emails to the vendor were left unanswered.

After a few days the client decided to make the call to the vendor’s VP of Sales to find out what was going on. She said ‘we got busy with a few other projects but we are making progress on yours’….this small simple explanation was all it took to ease the mind of my client.

The moral of the story:

The simple act of sending a quick email or making a short call to your client can really do a lot to set their mind at ease. This simple act makes them understand that you are working on their project and progress is being made.

I don’t understand why more people don’t do the easy yet critical step of keeping in regular contact with clients.

[tags] Communications, Project Management [/tags]

Sheth and Sobel state that most people are “only able to absorb and remember three main points from a discussion or presentation” (Clients for Life, p. 123). Because of this, it is key to keep messaging as short and simple (without being simplistic) as possible. The authors provide a nice easy reminder for helping us to focus on our messaging with the following:

Before any client meeting or presentation, ask yourself: if someone encounters my client in a week and asks him what we said today, how would I like him to respond? What are the main points I want him to remember? (Clients for Life, p. 124)

These are some nice questions to ask yourself while you prep for a presentation or client meeting. I think they’re probably just as good for writers to use when writing a new post/article as they should help to focus the message…and I know I need help focusing my posts sometimes!

There are many very good blogs/authors that dive into this topic in more detail. They are:

• Presentation Zen
• Seth Godin
• Signal vs Noise
• Steve Neiderhauser

[tags] Communications, Clear messaging, Clients for Life [/tags]