Turns out, I have sleep apnea based on the outcome of the sleep study.   So…I get to go back to do another sleep study with a CPAP machine.  Joy!

What I didn’t share in my earlier post was that, in addition to the sleep study, I’ve been having some other health issues.

A few weeks ago, I’d been noticing that my legs were feeling numb, tingling and just felt ‘weird’.  I attributed this  to the fact that I’d been doing a lot of ‘sitting’ lately with little exercise.

Here I am…a 37 year old male in OK health but I get little exercise due to a hectic work/school schedule.  I don’t get out into the ‘wild’ as much as for photography as I would like, which is about all the exercise i usually get.

So when my leg issues wouldn’t go away, I started researching what the troubles might be.  I started seeing things like ‘poor circulation’ and Multiple Sclerosis and Diabetes.  I started to get worried. Very worried.

I also noticed i was feeling a little fatigued. And I just generally felt ‘weird’.

I made an appointment to see my doctor and was told it would be a few days before they could get me in. I didn’t feel like it was an emergency so I didn’t bother pressing for a visit sooner.

I focused on these problems for days on end. I got myself pretty worked up about the health issues and I think I even got myself into a panic attack one day thinking I had some really wrong with me.

I searched Google. I searched WebMD.  I looked at all the info out there. I saw things about diabetes causing poor circulation. I saw all the heart troubles. I saw the many many health problems that all had symptoms like mine.

I don’t have to tell you that I was pretty worried. Downright scared even.

One day last week, I started feeling really weak. I started sweating and my chest felt tight. I was dizzy and just generally felt like poo.  I came very very close to droving myself to the emergency room that day but the feeling went away after I had some orange juice. Note: I’ve always had a low-blood sugar problem – if i don’t eat enough protein for breakfast, I have problems all day.

Once I settled myself down and started feeling better, I realized that it might be that I was worrying myself into poor health. Of course, my lovely wife told me the same thing…that it was all in my head….but did I listen to her?  No. (I do listen sometimes…just not this time.)

So i took a step back and thought about what got me to where I was.

I had a strange feeling in my legs. So….how did i get from that strange feeling in my legs to feeling like I was about to have a heart attack?

Simple…I was taking things into my own hands. I was googling. I was searching. I was picking and choosing symptoms. Heck…at one point, my symptoms pointed to menopause. MENOPAUSE dangit. I’m too young for that! (<~~~ that’s funny right there…because I’m a man.)

All the Google searches in the world won’t help. All the generalist knowledge I have or can obtain about medical issues means very little when it comes time to diagnose and treat those issues.

My doctor’s appointment came and went. He took blood and ran tests. He used his (and the medical lab’s) expertise to find out more specific information about what my problems might be.

Turns out – I don’t have poor circulation. I don’t have diabetes nor do I have any heart problems. What I do have is a bad back that is pinching my Sciatic nerve causing discomfort in my legs. In addition, I have a vitamin D deficiency and a very minor case of Polycythemia (too many red blood cells), which has some of the exact symptoms that I was experiencing. This Polycethemia is something that I’ve got to keep my eye on but isn’t anything to worry about right now as its very minor. The doctor told me to get some exercise and take baby aspirin. I love me some baby aspirin, so I’m good with that approach.

Now…I’m feeling fine. I know there is something wrong with me and I know what lies ahead, which is taking baby aspirin and exercising…horrible i know

There’s a lesson here though for those of us in business – that lesson is this: While generalists are good and can provide real value, sometimes you need specialists. Sometimes you need experts.

There are times that you have a problem that can’t be solved with your regular consultants or employees. Maybe the problem seems simple but turns out its difficult….but you keep throwing generalists at the issue.  There comes a time when you just have to stop searching and reach out to an expert to solve your problem. The key is knowing when to reach out for help…and who to reach out to.

I’m glad I decided to reach out when I did. At least I know now that I don’t have menopause.

Image credit: Trust us, we’re expert By phauly on flickr

If you can’t measure something, its very difficult to manage that ‘something’.  If you want your websites to load faster, you need to know what ‘fast’ means and have something to compare past, present and future measurements too.

You must measure to manage…but I”m not a proponent of measuring every little detail.  I only want to measure what i need to measure (there’s a catch-22 here…do you know what you need to measure?).

I’ve known people / companies to go overboard on their measurements.

Some believe they need to measure their employees time in order to manage their workload properly.  I’ve known companies that have implemented time-tracking projects that require every employee to input their time in 5 minute increments and assign each 5 minute segment to a project cost center.  Those same companies have a hard time getting anything done too.Now…I’m not saying every company that tracks time like this cannot accomplish anything, but i can tell you the ones I worked with didn’t accomplish much.

A recent example

This past week, I went in for a sleep study. My doctor told me that he thought I had sleep apnea due to the way my throat looked.  He said my Uvula looked like it had taken quite the beating…I believe his exact words were “your throat looks like someone uses your uvula for a punching bag”.    So…he setup a sleep study for me.

During one of these sleep studies, a contraption (that’s the scientific word for it I think) is placed on that measures all sorts of things. Heart rate, eye movement, breathing, leg movement, chin movement, etc etc.  Go read more about it here and see what the contraption looks like here after its been placed on you (note: if you can’t tell, that is not me in the photo!).

My sleep study appointment day arrives off I go the sleep center at the appointed time. When I arrive, I’m shown my room and told that the technician will be in shortly to get me all ready for the study.  After a few minutes, a nice tech walks in and begins hooking me up. This process takes about 30 minutes and I end up with wires connected all over my body.

I immediately realize that I’m going to have a tough time sleeping this contraption.  I’m told that I can sleep in whatever position I choose, but they need me to sleep part of the night on my back…which is good because once I got into bed i couldn’t move into any position except for laying flat on my back.

Now…I’m sure I got some sleep that night, but I don’t really feel like I did. I was uncomfortable with all the wires, I was in a strange room and I was being watched via video camera.  Not exactly the most fun I’ve ever had, especially when you have to get up in the middle of the night to go the bathroom (because you are an idiot and drank a bottle of water before bed).  Did I mention that in order to get out of bed you have to call for the tech to come unhook you from the machine and re-hook you when done?  fun times.

My point of all this?  This sleep study was intrusive.  I’m sure there is useful data gathered this way but is it truly the best way to measure the things that need to be measured while a person sleeps?  Perhaps with current technology it is.

But in my case, and in many other people’s cases, the very thing that this sleep study was attempting to measure (sleep) was disrupted.  Was the data gathered that night in the sleep study true data? Is it really an accurate picture of how I sleep?  I don’t know.

But…what I do know is that the process of gathering the data just about destroyed the data.  I barely slept. It took me two days to recover from that night.

Measure it, but don’t destroy it

So my story is just a simple word of caution to everyone.

Sure…measure what you need to measure (again…do you know what you need to measure?).  But don’t destroy what you are measuring by the process of measuring it.

Find the simplest, least intrusive method of measuring what you need and use it.

Do you think the employees entering their time in 5 minute increments like their work? If you need to track their time in five minute increments…perhaps something is wrong with the culture of the organization. If you need to know what your employees are doing all day, ask them.

To manage it, you do need to measure it…but don’t destroy it in the process.

Image Credit: Tape Measure By dirkjankraan on flickr

From that post, you’ll remember that cognitive dissonance is: an uncomfortable tension caused by holding contradictory thoughts simultaneously.

Cognitive Dissonance is everywhere in IT today, especially in the Project Management side of the house.

I think everyone would agree there are a lot of IT project failures.

Now…there are some arguments made by some about what ‘project failure’ means.  To me..failure means that the project didn’t fully realize the scope of the project, meet budget and/or meet the timeline.  Some argue that failure means only those projects that aren’t completed are failures while the others that don’t meet scope/budget/timeline are ‘challenged‘.   Regardless what term you give it, the fact is that something like 68% of IT projects either fail or are ‘challenged’. That’s 2/3′s of all IT projects that aren’t considered successful.

So….we have a 1/3 success rate in IT Projects….and we continue to follow the same project management processes and methodologies.  We continue to fund projects in similar ways.

That’s cognitive dissonance in action.

We continue to think that projects will succeed although we know that, statistically, the project is more apt to fail than succeed…yet we continue down the same path with an uneasy feeling.

The stakeholders know the project is most likely to fail. The CIO knows the project is most likely to fail.   Heck…many on the project team think the project is most likely to fail.

Michael Krigsman, who does a wonderful job dissecting and discussing project failure on his IT Project Failures blog, recently wrote a short article titled Three simple truths of failure.  The article is based on a Dilbert cartoon discussing complicated project plans and Michael dissects the cartoon perfectly…its woth the jump to read. In the cartoon & Michael’s analysis, the following three truths are provided:

Complicated plans don’t work

Wishful Thinking doesn’t work

The boss really doesn’t care

While I’d like to think that the boss does care, I’ve found that many times they don’t have the time to care.   I know one mid-sized IT group that had over 150 projects on their list…there’s no way the CIO had any knowledge or interest in all those projects.

More interesting than Michael’s article are the comments to the article….anyone with more than 6 months experience in the world of IT can empathize and understand exactly what the commenters are discussing, lamenting and describing….the world of IT Project Management is full of failures.

But…those failures shouldn’t be focused on a person or on a process (or lack of one).  Those failures exist because previous failures weren’t learned from and those lessons learned weren’t acted upon. Those failures exist because of poor leadership.

In an article titled When an IT Projects go right, its simple to make projects succeed…all you need is a clear vision, support and commitment of the stakeholders, an understanding of the problems to be solved and sufficient resources & staffing.

Wow….so THATS all we need to do to make IT projects succeed.

Those are very important aspects of good project management, but there has to be more to it, doesn’t there?

Do we implement a new project management process?  Get people trained in project management procedures?  Get people certified?  Hire more people?  Outsource the project?

I’ve seen organizations build project management groups and fill them with certified project managers…and fail miserably.  I’ve also seen IT groups bring in temporary project teams and/or project managers and succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

So what do we do?

Can it be as simple as clear vision, support, resources and proper understanding of project goals.

I think that’s where we have to start.

Make it clear what needs to be done. Make it clear what the people need to do.  Then make sure the necessary  resources and support are there.

Whether you use an agile approach to projects or the old tried-and-true waterfall approach, without proper vision, clarity of purpose and the proper support and resourcing, your project’s chances of success are approaching zero.

Maybe we don’t “fix” project failures…maybe we need to fix leadership within IT to ensure projects have a better chance of success.

What do you think?

I was about to resign myself to the fact that my knees would ache for the rest of my life or I’d have to have some form of knee surgery, until one day I happened to realize that my feet began to hurt a bit before my knees hurt.  It seemed that the foot pain was a precursor to the knee pain.

I did some research and found that when you’ve got bad foot support in shoes, it can cause knee pain.  About that same time, I saw the Dr. Scholl’s FootMapping Machine and its ability to ‘read’ your feet and tell you what type of orthotics to buy.   I found a machine at my local Wal-Mart and tried it out…sure enough, it told me that my low arches were forcing pressure on other parts of the feet, which is exactly what my research said would cause knee pain.

I bought the recommended orthotics and now…no knee pain.  I’ve been pain free for a few days now.

It would have been very easy for me to call up a Doctor and describe my knee pain and my history.  It would then have been just as easy for that Doctor to prescribe surgery for that knee pain.  And…it would have been easy for me to spend tens of thousands of dollars on medical expenses on something that turned out to be poor support for my feet.

Instead…because I spent some time research the issue, I found that I could solve my problem with a much simpler approach.  For $50 I was able to solve the real problem causing my knee pain.

Much like the current business environment isn’t it?

Many organizations today are in pain and are looking for solutions.  They’re patients looking for a good doctor.  They’ve got a lot of pain, and there’s a lot of people willing to offer medication or surgery for that pain, but very few people willing to treat the real problem(s).

Take social media as an example.  There are problems that social media can treat well.  But…there are a lot of people prescribing social media for many different ‘pains’ and ignore the underlying problems.

For instance…if your organization has a history of poor customer service, would you first take a look at the customer service organization, culture and processes for ways to improve? Or…do you do as many organizations are doing today and join twitter,  FaceBook and other social media platforms to ‘engage’ with your customers?

Many consultants & companies will tell you to ‘get out there’ on the social media platforms to engage with your customers.  These people are treating the symptoms rather than the real underlying causes.  The pain is the blow-back created by poor customer service and many people would argue that by ‘engaging’ with these customers, you’ll somehow magically improve service.

While this might be true in some instances…it doesn’t address the underlying problems. You may improve service for a few people (or few hundred people) using social media but the underlying problem still exists….the problem of poor customer service. Social Media won’t solve the underlying problem of poor service culture or processes.

Of course…treating the symptom works in many cases.  Have a headache…take an aspirin.  No more headache…for now.

But what happens when that headache isn’t the actual problem?

What if that headache is actually just a by-product of meningitis or a tumor?  Without taking the time to really understand all the symptoms, just treating the headache may not treat the real problem.

That aspirin would help the headache today…but it’ll return tomorrow.

So…next time you see a problem in your organization, take a good long look at it and make sure its the real problem before throwing money & bodies at it.

Make sure you’re solving the real problem…not just addressing the pain.

Most of the things I’ve read on the topic of small business IT outsourcing has been fairly light in terms of advice for small business owners. Most articles are written with the vendor in mind but there are a few focused on the small business owner who’s looking to outsource.

One of the better articles was found on Small Business Computing in an article titled “Ten Points to Ponder before you Outsource“. The “ten points” offered in the above article are quite good but I felt like they could be expanded a bit to include some examples.  Below is a summary of the ten points plus some additional discussion and examples.

Outsourcing Small Business IT & Technology – Key points to consider

• Look at the big picture. Do you need to be focused on keeping an email server or web server running or focus on marketing and business development?   Should you be focused on keeping your small business technology running or growing your small business?  If you want to be around next year, you’d better focus on growing your small business.
• Look at value over price. As a small business, you need to save as much money as possible whenever and wherever you can…but….you also get what you pay for.  If you pay someone for email service, do you pick the cheapest vendor that will setup a few email accounts for you and then never answer your phone calls….or do you pick the mid-tier vendor who asks for a bit more money and then holds your hand throughout migration process and offers 24/7 support?
• Pay for expertise. If you are going to spend your hard earned money for something, you should get as much value as possible from that outsourced service/product/person.   Part of the decision making process for outsourcing should include the amount of expertise you are paying for.  For example, if you outsource your payroll, you sure as heck better get an expert payroll provider.
• Stay on the cutting edge When you outsource your IT functions, do you want to give your business to someone who’s using yesterday’s technology or tomorrow’s?  Let’s look at a web developer as an example.  You need to outsource your new website…do you hire someone still using Frontpage to design/build websites or do you hire someone who can build a website using a much more modern technology/platform?  Hint: go with modern on this one.
• Does the vendor have similar values as you? Have you ever hired someone to do some work for you and then found out that they didn’t have the work ethic you had?  That would be a huge issue for a small business owner outsourcing IT functions.  When looking to outsource, take some time to get to know your vendor(s) (and they should want to get to know you too) to make sure your values are their values…or at least that their values don’t clash with yours.
• Meet the Vendor’s team before signing the contract.  While many people meet with the sales person or perhaps the vendor’s leadership team, I strongly suggest that you reach out and try to meet with the team that would be working on your project.  Sometimes this is impossible to get to know the whole team but if possible, do it.
• Know what you’re getting.  This is a no-brainer on the surface. Let’s say you want to outsource the design/build of a new website.  You hire a firm to design and build your website and you expect them to completely migrate content and/or create content. Content is part of the website correct?  They sell you a design/build project without clearly stating that content migration isn’t included.  When they finish, you have a website that looks pretty and works well but with no content!  Now you’ve got to spend more money to get content into the website.  Not a good situation to be in.
• Understand Responsibilities. While the deliverables of the service/product should be clearly outlined in any contract, you’ve also got to fully understand the responsibilities of each side.   This should be clearly stated in a scope of work document when working with a good vendor…but you need to be absolutely certain you know who’s doing what before signing the contract.
• Should you outsource to a big player or small business? This is a personal decision for each business.  You can outsource your email service to Google or you can find a local small business that can do something very similar for you.   You’ll sometimes pay more to the local business, but you’ll also receive more personalized service from a good vendor.
• Find a vendor that can educate. Ever talked to an IT person and heard lots of acronyms and technical mumbo-jumbo and had no clue what they were talking about?  Would you hire them to do your IT? Maybe you would…but you’d have a hard time understanding what they are doing or want to do for you.  Find a vendor that can speak to you in terms you can understand.  Find someone that can educate you along the way. That’s the person you want to hire.

Outsourcing anything, whether email, payroll or brochure design, takes the same type of thought process for small business owners.   While price is a consideration for you, there are many other items to think about when outsourcing part of your business.

Stay tuned for more small business technology related posts…looking to make this a regular feature.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Small Business IT Outsourcing – don’t go to far (ericbrown.com)
• Secrets in Choosing a Reliable Vendor (slideshare.net)
• Global CIO: Outsourcing Flip-Flop: A CIO Brings IT Back Inside (informationweek.com)

In one of the best forewords I’ve read in a while, Covey speaks about “insufficient resources” as an issue affecting business when he writes:

For some forty years I’ve have worked with organizations that were grappling with “new demands, insufficient resources”. I have become convinced that the biggest leadership challenge of our times is not insufficient resources per se, but rather our inability to access the most valuable resources at our disposal.

Emphasis mine.

Pretty powerful statement, especially when you think about the ‘do more with less‘ attitude that pervades most organizations today.

Doing more with less

If you’ve spent any time in business over the last few years, you’ve no doubt worked long hours over many days (and nights perhaps) to get your job done. You feel like you’re doing the job of 2 or 3 people and you don’t see any end to the work that comes your way.

Everyone in the organization feels the same way as you. Everyone’s overworked and overloaded.  There’s just too much work to do.

Many managers talk about how they’re ‘doing more with less‘ these days.  Some of these managers even brag about how much work their teams have and how few people they have to do it.  Some companies have even added “do more with less” to their core values, as evidenced by Zappo’s statement here.

It seems like there’s even a badge of honor that many managers like to show off to their peers.  In fact, I used to work for a CIO that loved to tout his experiences cutting costs (via cutting people) and adding additional technology functions. This CIO required the following paragraph be added to his corporate bio:

He’s well known for his ability to bring productivity and efficiency into an organizations’ IT group.  In his current role, he’s famous for adding functionality to the organization by increasing the number of IT platforms from 3 to 6 and cutting costs by decreasing IT headcount from 100 to 60 while maintaining the same level of service across the organization.

This statement, by itself, is quite impressive.  This CIO was extremely proud of his accomplishments and received a ton of ‘kudos’ from his peers, including being named to CIO Magazine’s Top 100 CIO’s list one year.

Good for him right? Reducing headcount by 40% and doubling the number of IT platforms is a heck of an accomplishment….but as you’ll see shortly, it isn’t the entire story.

Managing in the time of constraints

When you’re asked to do more with less, what’s the first thing you do?  Think about how to implement processes? Think about what technologies to use?  Or…do you take a second to ask a few questions of your manager to see what the real driver is behind the changes and /or new projects and determine the right priorities?

Do you accept the constraints blindly and do your job or do you stop and look at your organization to truly understand the available resources to determine how best to get those resources aligned to get everything done?

The CIO mentioned above took the first approach.

He was forced to to cut costs while at the same time deliver the necessary technology platforms to take the organization into the future.  He took a look at the objectives handed down from the CEO and board and ran with them.  This CIO saw an opportunity to use technology as a way to cut costs by replacing people.

Not a bad approach…not one I would take if I were in his shoes, but worth looking into right?  There are many places in business where technology can create efficiencies and/or allow cost cuts.  And the CIO’s job is to use technology to solve business problems correct?

That said, you can’t automatically equate new technology with “X” number of jobs; which is what the CIO above was trying to do.  In fact, according to his calculations, he could get rid of four people after the implementation of a newly implemented content management system (his exact words to me one day were: once you are done with this CMS implementation, which four people can I fire).  I’ve never figured out where he got that number but it seemed to be the approach to his job: new system = “X” people replaced.

Take a look back at the CIO’s bio where it talks about doubling the major  IT platforms and reducing headcount by 40%.  This CIO did a a wonderful job doing what he was asked to do.  He cut costs and kept the technology initiatives moving forward. But…if you look past his statement and get closer to the organization, you’ll see a different story. You’ll find an IT group who are overworked and extremely stressed out. You’ll find people who are looking for any way out of this organization.  You’ll find an IT group (and an entire organization) who are beaten down by the motto “do more with less.”

Look further than the IT group and you’ll see an organization who can’t trust IT to get anything done.  You’ll see an organization who’s tired of excuses about why technology projects aren’t getting done. You’ll see an organization who look everywhere but the IT group for technology and technology projects.

The CIO did as he was asked.  He cut costs and managed the constraints.  But…he turned his IT team into a shell of its former self.  He implemented technology to replace people….and you can believe the people left know they only have a job until the CIO can find a piece of technology to replace them.

Managing the constraints or leading the people?

Back to the Covey quote from earlier:

I have become convinced that the biggest leadership challenge of our times is not insufficient resources per se, but rather our inability to access the most valuable resources at our disposal.

The CIO I mentioned above has taken the road that many take.  They are confronted with the challenge of constrained resources (cost cutting, low / no budgets, etc) and try to ‘manage’ their way through these challenges rather than step back and think about how best to lead their teams through those tough times.

You may argue that the CIO above was leading his team.  He was providing the ‘tough leadership’ required to make it through the rough times, and you may be right.  Because I know this CIO personally, I know this isn’t the case; this man was managing his way through this crisis by trying to find ways to replace his people.  He was managing the constraints…not leading his team.

If he were leading his team, he would’ve realized that there were people working for him that had a tremendous amount of organizational knowledge, passion and commitment to the organization and to their job.  Rather than listen to that team and finding ways to allow them to help the organization cut costs and implement the requisite technological changes, he removed a good portion of those people and absolutely destroyed any passion, commitment and drive that the remaining team members had.

If you focus on managing the constraints first, you’ve allowed those constraints to own you.  If you lead your people, you’ll allow yourself, your organization and your team to own the constraints and find creative approaches to overcoming them.

Lead your people first and the constraints will follow.

I’m a big fan of Zappos and the things that the company has been able to do. I love the idea of a culture driven company and Zappos has been the poster child for this idea for quite some time.

When I saw this book, I knew I had to read it.

Quick Review

The first section of the book covers a great deal of time (birth to Tony’s start as Zappos’ CEO).

Tony provides provides a pretty interesting, and at times funny, walk-through of his childhood, high school and college.  While describing his life, its easy to see the entrepreneurial spirit alive and kicking throughout Tony’s life.

One of the really interesting parts of this section is the description of the building of Tony’s first company LinkExchange (LE) and the subsequent selling of that company to Microsoft.  The building and sale of LinkExchange isn’t chronicled in detail but an interesting summary is provided the gives the reader a good feel for what happened.

In addition, Tony describes the years after the LE sale and his search for something to do.  In this part of the book, Tony details the lessons he learned playing poker…and tries to equate them to strategies for business…and he does a pretty decent job of it too.

About half-way through the book (starting with Section II) Tony gets into the details of how Zappos became the company it is today.  The trials & tribulations of an internet company trying to survive the bursting of the dot.com bubble, the economic troubles of the early 2000′s and other issues (9/11, etc).

This part of the book is pretty interesting as Tony gives the reader some insight into how Zappos was kept afloat during the initial few years.  Basically, if it weren’t for Tony putting his own money into the company (and almost going broke doing so) Zappos might not have survived.

While describing how Zappos was built into a thriving business, Tony also provides some insight into his approach to building the Zappos culture that we’ve all become aware of.  There are some great tidbits of knowledge in this section of the book.

While I found the first two sections of the book (described above) interesting, the final section of the  book is where the real lessons can be learned about building a culture that fits an organization.

In the final section of the book, Tony describes the concept of Delivering Happiness.  This section is very interesting and worth reading a few times (which I’m doing).

This book is a winner.

I like this book for a few reasons.  First, its just an interesting read.  Being able to hear about Tony’s life from Tony is interesting to me.  Second….it provides some excellent insight into what its really like running a startup and the ups/downs that comes with the territory.

Will you like it?  I think so…but here’s some advice for those of you who are on the fence about the book:

• If you have any interest in building a business, read this book.
• If you have any interest in a building a culture that ‘fits’ your organization, read this book.
• If you like reading about success stories in business, read this book.
• If you are a grammar nerd and hate it when people don’t write in perfect grammatical english, you may not like this book.  But heck…if you’re reading my blog, you probably aren’t a grammar nerd

Buy this book when it comes out…great read and some excellent insights.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Delivering Happiness: A Movement (techcrunch.com)
• Zappos Extends Its Culture Into Product Videos, Sees Results (threeminds.organic.com)
• Lessons on building Zappos to an exit (vator.tv)
• Weekend Reading: Delivering Happiness, by Tony Hsieh (Preview) (readwriteweb.com)
• Zappos CEO on How To Deliver Happiness with Social Media [INTERVIEW] (mashable.com)

In this post Gene highlights the pros/cons of IT Certifications and asks these questions:

Do you rely on IT certification when hiring? What has your experience been, good or bad, when hiring IT resources with or without certifications? Do you have an IT certification or more than one? Have they been helpful to you in your career as far as being a gate item or helping you get more money?

Some interesting questions here that might be worth looking at.

When I’ve hired folks in the past, I’ve looked at certifications as part of my overall view of the candidate.  If I’m hiring for a Database Administrator, a DBA certification helps me understand that this person has knowledge in the area…but it doesn’t help me determine their experience or skills in the area.

On the other hand, if I’m hiring for a Project Manager for a large enterprise implementation, a Project Management Certification like the PMP really doesn’t do much for me.  The PMP certification tells me that the user has experience in the project management world and has passed a test…but it doesn’t tell me anything about that person’s real abilities.

At the end of the day, the certification helps quantify a candidate’s skill-set but not their abilities and experiences.

The certification is a piece of the puzzle but, in my mind, a small piece.

What’s your thoughts?  Leave a comment here or jump over to Certification: No Guarantee of Competency – But it Can’t Hurt and leave a comment there.

Great book.

What’s so great about it?  It provides a good reminder that being a good manager is just as important as being a good leader.

Mintzberg does an excellent job of bringing the importance of managing well to the forefront.

Like I said…good book.  Buy it today at amazon (affiliate link).

CIO as Manager or Leader?

I ran a quick unscientific test on google and searched for “CIO as Leader” and “CIO as Manager”. The results weren’t surprising:

• “CIO as Leader” – 45,900 results
• “CIO as Manager” – 14,800 results

Not surprising to me since most articles I’ve read (and a few that I’ve written” talk about CIO’s and Leadership.  But there aren’t as many discussions about CIO’s and Management.

Mintzberg’s “Managing” book might help bring the art of managing back to the world of IT and the CIO’s office.

So which is it?

The role of IT is changing and the CIO must lead that change while also ensuring that the IT group is performing for the organization.

The CIO must be a both a Leader and a Manager to bridge the gap between strategy and tactics. Lead the strategic initiatives while managing the tactical operations for the organization.

Both sets of skills are necessary for The New CIO.

I’m not talking about ‘not following through’ on things.  That’s a performance issue and one that can be addressed with some coaching and basic management skills.

What I’m talking about are those folks (or organizations) that like to tell everyone how something should be done, why it should be done or why it’s important for the organization to do ‘project X’.

I’m fine with being told how or why something is important…everyone has their opinions.  But don’t tell me the same thing for 6 months without ever taking a step forward and doing something about the project. If you think Project X is so damned important, then DO IT.  Or Don’t.  Just stop talking about it.

There are a lot of reasons for people to talk about doing something but not executing. Analysis Paralysis can kill any project before it starts.  Lack of courage is a killer too (you know…those folks who are scared of making decisions?).   Ego plays a role as well (people like to show how smart they are right?)

I’ve run into many leaders within organizations that talk about undertaking the big ‘strategic’ projects.  And they talk.  And talk.  Talking doesn’t “move the needle” (sorry…I promised someone I’d insert “move the needle” into this week’s blog post….they’re playing buzzword bingo and I want them to win!).  Talk without action does little more than frustrate people.

The New CIO has to “do it or don’t”

We all know  the foreseeable future of an IT group will be one of being understaffed and overworked.  There are a lot of projects that need to get done and a lot of projects that won’t get done.

The role of the future CIO is one of project executive. The New CIO has to step up as a decision maker and decide (along with the leadership team of the organization) which projects get funded and which don’t. After the decision is made, communicating that decision down the chain of command has to be done quickly and efficiently so the the entire organization knows what projects are a ‘go’ and which aren’t.

You notice that in the last few paragraphs I never say that the CIO and his/her IT staff should stand around talking about the projects and why they are important. There isn’t a lot of discussion about why Project X should be done.  A decision is made whether it should be done or not and the team moves on. The New CIO has to take the lead in not talking things to death and just get it done.

Now….I’m not saying you should stop discussing the value of a project or a strategy.  Quite the opposite actually.  You should discuss. You should debate.   That’s something that must happen.  But…there is a time when the debate has to end and something has to be done.

The New CIO needs to foster open debate on a subject but quickly make a decision.  With resources as constrained as they are in this economy, talking means wasted time and money.

Discuss, Debate, Decide.  Either DO or DON’T…just stop talking about it.

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.