Taken with Canon 5D and Canon 17-40 L handheld.

see more photos in my flickr photostream and on my website at photographyminute.com

Foto Friday – Kolob Canyon, Zion National Park is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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Do you know what The Onion is? If not, it’s a satirical newspaper and website that is hysterical…you should read it.

I’ve been a big fan of The Onion for years…but I didn’t know it was a 160-employee company…that’s huge for what I thought was just a funny website/newspaper.

I ran across a NY Times interview with the CEO of The Onion…I had to read it because, well…its an interview with the CEO of The Onion for goodness sake.   Gotta be some funny stuff there right?

Well…I was surprised.  Nothing funny about it….there’s some excellent leadership tips here.

The CEO, Steve Hannah, has a hell of a head on his shoulders.

The interview, published in Business Day’s Corner Office series under the title “If Plan B Fails, Go Through the Alphabet“, is wonderful.

My favorite part of the interview was the 2nd & 3rd question/answers:

Q. How do you interview job candidates?

A. I have two basic questions in mind: “Can you do the job, and would I enjoy spending time with you?” I want to know where you came from. I want to know how many children are in your family. I want to know where you fit in and what your role was. I want to know what your mother and your dad did, what influence they had on you. I find that, without overstepping my boundaries, most people like to talk about themselves.

Q. What is it you want to know?

A. I want to know whether you were a kid who was entitled, whether you worked hard, whether you excelled at school, whether you held summer jobs, how hard you had to work, whether you got the jobs yourself, whether you got promoted. I want to know if you’ll work hard. I’m hopelessly old-fashioned. I want people who really want to work hard. And I absolutely loathe a sense of entitlement.

Excellent stuff.   Nowhere does he say that he wants to know what school they went to or how much margin they made their last company.  He wants to know who they are and what they can do.  Period.  My kind of hiring approach.

Jump over and read it for some extremely good leadership insights.

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Advice on hiring from The Onion’s CEO is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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Links for March 28 2010 is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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It takes a long time to be excellent at something.    You’ve heard of the 10,000 hour rule right?  You’ve got to practice for 10,000 hours to be ‘the best’ at something.

But…is technical excellence really going to make you the best?

You might be able to shoot the perfect three-pointer or setup a database so that its optimized perfectly. But can you do these things in such a way as to make a real difference for your organization and/or yourself?

Can you shoot that perfect three-pointer when it matters in the big game?  Will your database configuration and optimization knowledge help restore the network & databases when the entire network crashes?

While there’s nothing wrong with striving for technical excellence, you should probably stop and ask yourself the following question:

Is Technical Excellence enough to make a difference?

Technical excellence is worth striving for but sometimes it’s only the beginning.

Technical Excellence gets you to “Point Zero”

My good friend Roger Morgan is the Lead Photographer for the Boy Scouts of America.  Roger has decades of experience as a photographer and got his education from the prestigious Brooks Institute.

Needless to say, Roger is a great photographer.  He’s told me a few times that all the years of study at the Brooks Institute gave him the technical knowledge he needed to take a good photograph.  But…all that knowledge only got him to Point Zero.

In other words, the technical expertise Roger obtained allowed him to be able to take a good photograph but it was Roger’s skill, creativity and eye that has allowed him to get past Point Zero.

Roger’s technical excellence served him well and allowed him to get started but it’s his experience and natural abilities that have allowed him to be successful.

Moving past Point Zero

Think about Michael Jordan. The man is one of the greatest basketball players to have ever played the game.  He lived and breathed basketball and definitely practiced the 10,000 hour rule.

All that practice allowed Jordan to become technically excellent as a basketball player.  He could shoot. He could move.  He could really play the game.

But…that technical excellence wasn’t the only thing that made Jordan successful.  He was successful because he was passionate about the game.  He was successful because he allowed himself to fail. He never gave up…he let his passion drive him.

Jordan’s technical excellence got him to Point Zero. It was his skill, passion and drive that moved him past it.

Point Zero in the IT world

In the IT world, we have a lot of people who are really smart and really good.  There are people that are called ‘gurus’ because they are so technically capable at managing databases or managing projects.

But have these gurus moved past Point Zero?  Are they able to utilize all their abilities and skills to build upon their technical expertise and create something of value.

As the CIO or Senior IT leader, have you moved yourself and your team past Point Zero? Anyone can build a server farm to serve the needs of the organization & be disaster proof, but very few have taken an innovative approach to turn those server farms into revenue for the organization (think Amazon or Google).

How will you move yourself, your team and your organization past Point Zero?

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Technical Excellence isn’t enough is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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4. Musings on Passion, Life & Organizations
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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.

Certifications in IT – Worth it or not? is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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The Strategy Trap: Why focusing too much on strategy could be killing your ability to execute by Olivier Blanchard on The BrandBuilder Blog

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Links for March 7 2010 is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
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Hutch recently wrote a post titled “Apple iPad and Google Buzz: Harsh Reality of Innovation” where he argues (successfully I think) that you’ve got to be OK with failure to really be innovative.

In the article Hutch points at Apple and Google as examples of companies that have amazing successes as well as amazing failures.

Hutch does a great job tying innovation with failure and showing that you’ve got to embrace failure to truly innovate.  It’s a great read.

The best part of the article wasn’t written by Hutch though….it’s a quote from Teddy Roosevelt. This quote really resonates with me and is a perfect addition to this argument. The quote is:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Emphasis mine.

Failure and the CIO

Is it OK for your IT staff to fail?

Have you built the proper culture that allows your teams to step out of bounds and innovate without fear of retribution if the attempt fails?

If you’ve said yes…good for you.  But…what would happen if I asked your team?  Would they say the same?

Think about the last three projects you’ve undertaken.  Have they all been a success?  Have they all been innovative? Can you point to projects that you’ve undertaken that have changed the ‘game’ for your organization?

If you can’t think of any innovative projects that you’ve undertaken recently…perhaps you’ve stepped into the realm of playing it safe.

Culture of Failure?

Nobody likes failure.  I hate it…but I’ve had my fair share of it.  I’ve watched my projects fail and I’ve watched my teams fail.  But…I’ve also seen some amazing things happen by those same teams.

So…am I saying that you should create a culture of failure? Absolutely not.

But I am saying that you need to create a culture that makes it OK to fail.

Ask yourself this question:

Do you want your IT staff to be known as folks that put themselves out there and bring  innovation to the organization….or do you want to be known as the IT group that plays it safe?

It might be easier to play it safe for some, but don’t expect to find and keep the best people if you’re playing it safe.  The best and brightest out there want to work on the ‘cool’ stuff. The ‘new’ stuff.  They don’t want to be relegated to a life of maintaining your COBOL application…they want to build a new app that will make the organization (and world) stand up and take notice.

Build a culture that says failure is OK and you’ll build the potential for a high performance team that can get some great stuff done.  Don’t do this and you’ll be relegated to being the also-ran.

Culture of Failure? is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
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Links for Feb 20 2010 is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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Why Planning Is Important, Your Plan is Not by George Krueger and Mary-Lynn Foster on Blog For Profit

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Links for Jan 3 2010 is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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I’m sitting here on Christmas Eve watching It’s a Wonderful Life.

I just saw Clarence jump in the river to save George Bailey from committing suicide.  George was despondent over his life and his business.   He didn’t think he’d been able to do anything right with his life and within his business.

The scene conjured up a thought about CIO’s and organization’s today.  Yes. I know.  Odd.  Why can’t I just enjoy the movie?

What did the scene make me think about?

I’ve talked to many CIO’s over the past year and almost every one has said something like the following:

We can’t get anything done.  We are so busy keeping the lights on, that we can’t get any big projects done!

George Bailey just said “I wish I’d never been born”…something similar to what CIO’s are saying.  Bear with me…I’m going to make the point clear.

These CIO’s can’t see what their team is doing. Perhaps its because their managers can’t communicate the value of the teams contributions and the value of the projects.  Perhaps the issue has to do with the inability of the CIO to really understand what their IT team does.

This mentality has led these CIO’s to move to outsource the majority of their project work.  They think they can let their team’s focus on operations and outsource the ‘big projects’.

There’s something wrong with this approach though. For most organizations, IT Operations isn’t the core business.  The ‘big projects’ are….  Don’t outsource your core business.

So…back to the George Bailey & Clarence scene.  Clarence jumped in to save George from a huge mistake. That brought me to this question:

Do CIO’s today need a Guardian Angel to jump in and save them?

I don’t think they do.

Many consulting companies act like guardian angels.  They jump in and ‘solve problems’ in the short team but often times I find they do little more than Guard their pocket book.  Who can CIO’s trust to help save them?

Its an easier answer than you’d think. George Bailey didn’t think of it though…it had to have a Guardian Angel save him. But..the CIO doesn’t need a guardian angel.   All the CIO needs to do is take a look at their team…they’ve got all the help they need there.

Today’s IT team has a ton of experience and knowledge just waiting to be tapped.  Most of this knowledge, energy and passion is ignored in many organizations.

Think about George Bailey.  After wishing he never lived, he ended up relying on the townspeople to help him out of a pinch.  Today’s CIO should be able to rely on their IT team to navigate troubled waters.

CIO’s – look to your team first before you look for your guardian angel. You probably have everything you need (knowledge, skills, passion, experience, etc) right where you least expect them.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Back to the movie…George is fighting with Bert & Ernie now.

What a CIO can learn from It’s a Wonderful Life is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

Related posts:

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