How do they know they are important?

Did someone tell them? Or…do they just “know” they are? Maybe a combo of both perhaps?

Regardless of how, if you /your team / your coworkers feel important to your organization, someone is doing something right.

Take a look at this ‘welcome’ letter that’s reportedly given to Apple employees on their first day:

HT: http://www.rescuemarketing.com/blog/2012/05/08/swim-in-the-deep-end/

Whether that is a real letter or not is beside the point.  What’s important is some of the content within that letter.

Take a look at the line that states “They want their work to add up to something.” That’s big.

Imagine getting a letter like this on your first day at work.  Heck…imagine getting it after you’ve been working at your job for 10 years.  When you get this message isn’t as important as getting it.

Messaging like this tells you that you are important.  It tells you that you haven’t already been marginalized by the ‘organization’.  It tells you that someone, somewhere cares.

Most organizations don’t take this approach.

Most places on-board employees using a process designed to get that employee into the ‘system’ and get all the proper paperwork signed.  Then…they put them in a cube and start throwing work at them.

The really good managers / organizations then take time to understand their employees needs and aspirations. They try to help their employees grow. They care about their people.

Others…don’t.

The poor managers / organizations marginalize their employees by forgetting that these people have aspirations beyond doing the job they are stuck in today. These poor managers / organizations use their employees without really giving any thought to whether their happy and/or whether they could do more for the organization.

I’m not asking for utopia here. I’m not saying put your employees above profits or performance of the company. But…spend a few minutes thinking about how you can improve your team’s (or your own) opportunities.

By ignoring the aspirations you are marginalizing your team. You create an environment where people feel stuck and unappreciated.  You are marginalizing your team.

Stop doing that.

There’s a great video over on the  Enterprise CIO Forum  with Enterprise CIO Forum editorial director Bill Laberis describing how CIO’s can leverage the ‘anxiety’ present withing IT Staff today. The video, titled Leveraging the anxiety in your IT staff,  initially put me off…when anyone talks about ‘leveraging’ things like anxiety…I get worried that the wrong message is being sent.

Not to worry though.  Mr. Laberis does a fine job of ensuring that you understand that his use of the word ‘leverage’ is meant with all positive connotations.

I’ve posted the video below for your benefit…take a few minutes to watch it as there are some excellent tips here.  I have a few discussion points posted after the video.

Some good ideas here.

In the past, as Mr. Laberis points out, an IT professional could enter the profession and learn one or two main skills and be set for their career.   This isn’t ideal today.  How many pure COBOL developers do you know today? How many did you know 20 year ago? I’d bet the number was higher 20 years ago.

Today’s IT professional needs to be able to have multiple skills.  But…with that multiple skill set, are we asking these professionals to multitask and de-focus? Will this de-focusing lead to poor performance? Or…will the additional skills that IT pro’s help them work through the information overload and allow them to focus even more?

One of the most important things a CIO and/or IT Leader can do for their organization is to help the IT team members grow.  Whether that’s by offering them challenging opportunities, helping them improve their skill set or even helping them grow into more rounded individuals.

Leveraging the anxiety within your team can be an extremely useful method in improving skill sets…but just be careful how you ‘leverage’ that anxiety.  Rather than use anxiety as a means to drive development, perhaps a better approach would be to consistently and constantly provide growth opportunities for your team.

Image credit: anxiety By FlickrJunkie on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

I’ve written about the market in the past.  See Stop Chasing. Start Focusing and How project management made me a better trader/investor for some of my stock market ramblings.

Beginning in December 2011, the S&P 500 (and the market in general) has been moving in a nice steady upward climb.   During this climb, there have been people expecting a quick roll-over and a fast move down…and others expecting a continued climb up.

The smart traders have been long for a while. The smarter traders have been looking for a small pullback the last few days.  This pullback is necessary, they say, to help the market consolidate and get ready for more upside.

In recent weeks…many more people besides the ‘smarter’ traders have been talking about that pullback. They’ve been rooting for it even.

This week, we got a piece of the pullback…and maybe the entire pullback.  On Monday and Tuesday, we saw the S&P 500 come down almost 3%…which is the pullback that a great number of traders were looking for.

Now that we have the pullback…are these same traders who’ve been looking for the pullback exited?  Are they throwing money at the market?

No.

Most aren’t. Rather than throwing their money at the market (like they said they would)…most are now sitting around chewing their fingernails and worrying about the market.

So…here we are.  These people got what they asked for. But…then they ignored the opportunity.

Why?  Fear?  Inattention?  Misunderstanding?

Who knows why these people aren’t following up with their plans…but honestly…its not something that just afflicts traders.

I see it all the time in business too.

Think about all the strategic plans you’ve run across in your life…how many of those plans have been fully implemented? How many of those plans have been written up and talked up…then nothing happens?  For me…I’ve seen a lot of these plans written up and sit on a shelf.

Why?

Because people are afraid. They are afraid of trying and failing. I can understand that…fear is a big ol’ hairy wall that stops us in our tracks.

But…when you ask for something…and get it…you better grab it and run with it.

If you don’t…someone else will.

Image Credit: Day 122 – FEAR By CraigGrocott on flickr

In the world of IT, we love processes and standards.  We’ve built certifications and standards and processes.

For the most part, this is a necessary thing. Without standards, processes and ‘best practices’, it’d be extremely difficult to control what’s going on within an organizations technology realm.  Before I continue…that word ‘control’ is a tough one…does IT control anything anymore?  That’s worth a post in itself…but this one is about something else.

These standards and processes have been built for a reason. And for the most part, they work well.  The problem with standards/processes is when something/someone comes along that cannot or doesn’t want to conform to them.

What do we do when we get the ‘outlier’?  Do we force them to conform? Do we shut down whatever it is they are doing?  Or…do we avert our gaze so as to not ‘see’ these non-conformists?   Shadow IT has been created for a reason…and our love of standards and processes has driven these shadowy creations.

My main question to you is this: What do you do when you find someone within your organization not conforming to the IT processes and standards?  Do you shut them down…or do you work with them to understand their requirements/needs and try to make things work?

I’ve got a nice little story to help us think through an approach to handling those folks outside of your current standards.

The “standard” height/weight conundrum

For informational purposes…I currently weigh 245 pounds.

If you were to meet me in person, you’d probably think I weight much less than that.  Sure…over 200 pounds not 245.

The reason that I’m heavier than I look is that I was a powerlifter in high school.  I won the National High School Championship and the National Teenage Championship when I was 16 years old competing in the Natural Athlete Strength Association (NASA).

I lifted heavy weights from the time I was about 12 until I was 17. At one point, I had 1000 pounds on my back doing box squats.  When I won the two championships, I bench pressed 325, squatted 550 and deadlifted 525.

Even though I won these championships…I was never the perfect specimen of what people think of when they think of strongmen.  Think of someone lifting weigths and you immediately think of Arnold Schwarzenegger or someone like him.  You would never have looked at me then (or now) and thought “now there’s a natural athlete with a lot of strength”.    Now…if you had taken some time to take a longer look at me, you would have seen the power and muscle…but I wasn’t a bodybuilder. I didn’t care what i looked like…I only cared about how much I could lift using proper form.

So today…my weight doesn’t fit into the standards.  Sure…I have a few pounds that I can  lose. In fact, its my goal to drop 20 to 30 pounds this year and get back to a more healthier weight. Let’s say I drop 30 pounds. this year. I’d weight in at about 215 or so.  I haven’t weighed 215 since I was 14 years old. I think I can get there too…and it would be a nice, healthy weight for me.

According to the ‘experts‘, my ideal weight is 148 pounds (with a range between 132 and 164).   Now…if I were to allow my body to start consuming muscle mass during a weight loss regimen, I might be able to get down to that body-weight - but without going to that extreme, I’d probably never be able to get below 200 pounds even if I lost every ounce of fat on my body.

Last week, I went to the doctor for a checkup. I expected him to tell me that I needed to lose a lot of weight to get to my ‘ideal weight’.  But…he didn’t do that.  He told me to drop a few pounds…10 or 20 and he’d be happy. I was quite surprised by his statement and asked him why he broke from the ‘standard’ ideal weight charts.

His response is something that can help us all in every aspect of our lives.  He said:

Everyone’s different. The ideal weight for one person, isn’t ideal for another.  You can’t force everyone into the same mold.

Powerful words.

What if we took those words to heart and applied them to every aspect of life?

What if you look at yourself and your team-mates with that “everyone’s different” filter?  What if you look at your organization with that same filter?

Applying “everyone’s different” to IT

It would be extremely difficult to throw your IT standards in the trash and let everyone do their own thing in your organization. But…we could take a more open and inclusive approach to those people that don’t (or won’t) fit into our standards and/or processes. Couldn’t we?

Sure…there are some things that you’ve got to tighten down and really ‘control’ (i..e, personally identifiable information, credit card processes, etc) but outside of some of the real key security related issues, does it really matter if your marketing team is using LiveBall to manage and optimize landing pages or an in-house product that’s owned/operated by IT? Does it matter that your communications team is using a hosted WordPress blog to run a communication channel target at partners?

In the past, most IT leaders would try to squash the use of outside systems not managed by IT. But…its harder and harder to stop these “shadow” systems…so why try?  Why not take the “Everyone’s differnet” mindset to heart and try to be inclusive of everyone within the organization. Reach out and understand their needs. Understand their ‘wants’.

Let’s stop trying make everyone in our organization fit into the standard height/weight chart.  Everyone’s different.

Its a big job…but we can’t continue to force everyone into our old ‘standards’. Let’s take some time to at least create new standards and processes that allow everyone to get their job done.

The challenge for the CIO and IT staff today and in the future is to find out how to allow everyone to be different…while keeping a handle on those things that need to be secured and protected.

Image Credit: 20%=73% By Arne Hendriks on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

I read with great interest Eric’s post of January 31, 2012 entitled Do things when you should … not when you have to. I agree with what he wrote, and it really got me going about something I’ve been mulling over in my head for several weeks: An educated and knowledgeable client is better than an ignorant one – especially if you want to help them do things at the right time.

I have a day job, but I do consult with small businesses and nonprofits on a regular basis. When I started consulting, I would do most of the work and not show anyone how to do for themselves or why I did what I did.

While I understand some clients want and need someone to just do for them, I found I really liked teaching, and those to whom I took the time to explain things responded quite well. After consulting gigs where I taught the client in more of a mentoring-like setting, I found the experience exhilarating. Teaching allowed me to have a positive impact in someone else’s efforts by giving them confidence they could maneuver around marketing technologies.

Even better, those people now had the knowledge to make better and informed decisions about strategy and tactics in their online efforts. This actually makes my work a lot easier.

Recently, I was helping the owners of a restaurant in a touristy part of Texas. They wanted to get some social media going, but had no idea where to start. For our first meeting, I put together a presentation which introduced concepts and gave suggestions on where to begin their efforts. After they digested the information and were ready to proceed, we met again. This time, I sat behind them at their computer as we walked through setting up accounts on social sites, claimed their name and location on those sites and even set up “check in” discounts.

While I know it may have been overwhelming at first, they soon got the idea and by the end of the afternoon they were claiming their spaces and setting up deals without much input from me. We’ll need to meet again to go over more advanced concepts, but I knew I did well when they emailed me the next day with the great news that several customers had already checked in and took advantage of their 10% off deals. That gave me (and I’m sure them, too) a great sense of accomplishment.

By taking a teaching/mentoring approach, my clients have become smarter. They have the confidence to move forward, to work online for their business as well as they do offline. They are learning how to “adapt and overcome” to the constant change of the online landscape.

To get back to Eric’s idea: How do we get clients to do things when they should rather than when they have to? We teach them. If we’re going to expect our clients to make those timely decisions, we have to equip them to do so. We have to give them the background knowledge to be able to look at what’s going on around them and be able to ask the smart questions. We have to develop trust with them and establish that we are the experts in whatever field we consult on – and if we can do that before the first time the client calls, all the better.

“How do I do that?” you may be asking yourself. Here’s your tip on doing something when you should: If you just asked yourself that question, then follow Eric’s (and my) lead, start a web site and start sharing some of your knowledge. Go! Do it now! If you want some advice on how to do it, ask in the comments and I’ll show you where you can get information to get going. Read the post I linked to in the preceding paragraph and see how someone else established credibility in their field to the betterment of their business.

As you take on the role of coach/mentor/teacher, both you and your clients will benefit.

Elmer Boutin is a Marketing Technologist and has worked in web marketing for almost 15 years. His first experience was as a free-lancer doing web sites for local businesses such as car dealerships and an art gallery. Later, he ran an online rental property referral web site aimed at assisting military people find homes before they moved. He’s currently Webmaster at a Texas-based decorative surfaces manufacturer. You can read more articles by Elmer at http://www.crossingmarketingandit.com.

Image Credit: education By Sean MacEntee on flickr

In one of the first few chapters, Dr. Kahneman describes the “invisible gorilla test” popularized by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. The test consists of a team of 3 people dressed in black and a team of 3 people dressed in white passing a basketball to their teammates.

Watch for yourself…and really really focus on counting the passes between the white-shirts. (If you are reading this via RSS and don’t see a video, please click here to view it).

Did you get the number of passes correct? How about the gorilla…did you see the gorilla the first time?

Whether you saw the gorilla while watching the video or not…research shows that about half of the people that watch this video and focus on counting passes, do not see the gorilla. Pretty amazing huh? Half the people don’t see a gorrilla walk through the scene, pound its chest, turn and look at the camera, then stroll off.  Half the people.

From this test (and many other tests by other psychologists), we’ve learned that its very easy for us mere humans to get deceived, to miss things and/or just not pay attention that well. The ‘invisible gorilla’ phenomenon isn’t just some theoretical phenomena…Its something that happens in the real world every day. It happens to me and to you everyday.

The invisible gorilla shows up in many workplaces too.  With so many people and organizations focused on “doing more with less” (or whatever other buzzworthy terms you want to use here), we tend to miss some of the very important details that might change our outlook and approach towards those things we are so focused on.

Take a step back in your job/life and look for that invisible gorilla.  Maybe your gorilla won’t be as easy to see as the one in the video above…but i bet there’s one there…if you look hard enough.

PS: If you want to learn more about The Invisible Gorilla phenomenon, Simons and Chabris have written many papers on the subject and have even released a book titled The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us (amazon affiliate link). 

Image Credit: Gorilla By Kris Elshout on flickr

In the article, Dave describes what he calls ‘order takers’ and ‘solution creators’. The order taker does a good job of working with clients to deliver a widget but does very little to ensure that the widget actually will solve the clients’ long term problems.  Nothing wrong with order takers mind you…they can be very reliable and in some instances, order takers are perfect.

But other times, its better to be a solution maker/creator. In his article, Dave describes the solution creator as:

 They’re idea people, they’re results people–not just for themselves but for the customer.  They help their customers envision a new future.  They help their customers think about their business differently.  They help their customer change and improve.

Emphasis mine.

He also writes:

When they engage the customer they talk about what the customer is trying to achieve.  They don’t spend a lot of time on what their solution does, it’s features or capabilities.  They know it’s not about the product but what the customer is trying to achieve.  Instead they focus on outcomes and results the customer will achieve.  They quantify these results, so the customer can clearly understand the impact it will have on their business.

Emphasis mine.

Historically, the IT group has been an order taker. They have existed to do what they are asked to do…and for the most part, we’ve been good at being order takers.

Need a new server? Check….that’ll be $$$.

Need a new application?  Check…that’ll be $$$$.

Need your email backed up?  Check…that’ll be $.

In recent years, some organizations have begun trying to transform the IT group into something more than an order taker.  Some CIO’s and IT groups have even taken the initiative to try to transform themselves into something more than order takers.

Some have been successful. Many haven’t.  Most that have succeeded in this transformation have understood that the status quo will not work going forward. The IT of yesterday will not work for the organization of tomorrow. Business is moving faster and faster every day and the order taker and gatekeeper mentality of yesterday’s IT will leave many IT professionals behind if they don’t change.

I wrote an article a few months ago titled Splitting IT – Operations and Innovation that talks about the need for IT to change or have change forced upon us. In that post I wrote:

Operational IT will focus on the tactics necessary to keep the lights on and servers running. Strategic IT / Business Technology will focus on the strategy use of technology for the organization.   Both groups will co-mingle and work together of course…but the teams will have different goals and different types of people working within each.

Notice the difference between Operational and Strategic IT?  One difference is that one is an order taker while the other is a solution creator.  Operational IT will remain the order takers and the newly formed Strategic IT / Business Technology team will be the solution creators.

So…CIO’s & IT Leaders…are you transforming your teams into solution creators or are you happy being order takers?  IT Pro’s…what about you? Are you happy in the operational world of IT or are you chomping at the bit to help your ‘customers’ create solutions?

PS: A few other posts about similar topics that I’ve published are Driving transformation with IT starts with transforming IT, Not What, but How – Connecting IT and the Business and I own the technology, you own the content for examples. If you haven’t read them yet, I’d love to have you add them to your ‘to read’ list

Image Credit: The Order-Taker By mynameisharsha on flickr

In my last post titled Driving transformation with IT starts with transforming IT, I pointed out a nice video on the Enterprise CIO Forum of Canadian Pacific’s CIO Heather Campbell titled describing her work of transforms the Canadian Pacific IT function by focusing on the needs of the business (among other things).

After I wrote that post, I saw part 1 of that series…which is just as good as the other video I pointed to.  The other video, titled Canadian Pacific: When outsourcing goes too far is a great one to watch as well.  Jump over and watch it…and come back for a brief analysis and my thoughts.

The premise of the interview is this: At some point, the majority of the Canadian Pacific IT group was outsourced. This outsourcing destroyed their ability to function, destroyed morale, careers, ambitions and a long and thorough knowledge base held within the IT group.

I’ve seen the effects of outsourcing on IT groups…and in most cases, it is devastating.  That said…we aren’t here to debate the pros/cons of outsourcing…we’re here to see how Ms. Campbell was able to recover from the devastating outsourcing that occurred at Canadian Pacific.

According to the interview, Ms. Campbell joined Canadian Pacific as CIO and had the difficult task of rebuilding the IT group.  What was her first task? Was it to clean house and bring in her own team to run things? Nope.  Her first task was to get to know her team.  Simple but powerful.  How can you “clean house” if you don’t understand how the house got dirty (or if its really dirty at all)?

Rather than clean house, she started another tough task…changing the culture of IT. She began helping her staff rebuild their skills (and their confidence?).  Rather than just focus on pure technical skills she also helped her team build / rebuild their project management skills.  Why PM skills specifically?  So she could be sure the projects that they needed to get done actually got done on time.

The key outcome here is this:  Ms. Campbell was able to rebuild her staff’s skill-sets, their confidence and their capabilities by focusing on them rather than on how much more to outsource or how to save more money.  She focused on her people first and their capabilities.  She turned a staff of IT ‘workers’ into IT Professionals…she turned a group of people who were embarrassed to call themselves IT employees and made them proud of what they do and who they are.

Kudo’s Ms. Campbell and to the Canadian Pacific Team.

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

This piece of art just sold for $4,338,500.

Let’s take a look at this expensive photo…I mean “art work”:

Interesting photo.

In my opinion…its a horrible photograph. Ugly too.

It breaks all the rules for landscape photography.  Not only is the horizon placed in the middle of the screen, but its just generally uninteresting to me.

That said…what the heck do i know?  Sure…I’m a photographer…an amateur one to be sure…but I know what I like and this photo isn’t something that I like.

That said…what if Mr. Gursky showed me this photo after he took it?  I would have looked at it and shrugged my shoulders and said “I don’t like it…”  If that had happened…would he have deleted the photo and moved on?

If so…he would have lost the opportunity to earn $4million for this piece of art.

That’s the basic moral of this post…don’t let me or anyone else tell you that you’re wrong. You’ve got to figure that out for yourself.

If you are constantly looking for someone else to tell you that you’ve done a good job (or a bad one), you’ll get nowhere in life.

Don’t let me…or “them”… tell you that you are wrong.

Don’t let me…or “them”…tell you that you’re right either.

Have some conviction in your approach and do what you feel is right.  If you fail…you’ve learned something. If you succeed…you’ve learned something as well…and perhaps you’ve made a nice living at it too.

Image Credit: Rhein II by Andreas Gursky

The report provides the results of a survey completed by 596 IT and Business executives with the majority of respondents being IT professionals (476 out of 596 were IT professionals).

The results are interesting.  A quick summary of the results is provided below:

• 75% of respondents admit that their projects are either always or usually “doomed from the start”.
• 80% of respondents admit that they spend at least half their time on rework.
• 55% of respondents claim that business objectives of IT projects are clear
• 23% of respondents state that they are always in agreement when a project is done.
• 73% of respondents claim that the IT team is successful or very successful in delivering projects that meet the business expectations. Note: “successful” was claimed to be meeting 70% or more of the project goals.
• 75% of respondents  claim that IT is a valued, trusted partner and critical to the company’s success

Interesting stuff.  Good to see that last point for sure.

I wanted to take a second for a little discussion on a few topics…

At times, I think that part of the problem with most IT projects is the attitude of the IT team…and this survey seems to highlight that with the fact that 3/4 of respondents believed that projects are doomed from the start.  You start a project expecting it to fail, you are going to most likely fail.

Almost 3/4 of respondents claim the IT team is successful in delivering 70% or more in project deliverable.  Since when did meeting 70% of a goal mean success? Calling 70% of project goals a success is kind of like saying ‘meh…just do the bare minimum to squeak by’. In school, a 70% is a “C-”….I don’t know many teachers that would be telling a student that they were successful if they finished the year with a “C-” average.

If meeting 70% of a project’s goals is considered a success, then yes…the projects are doomed from the start.

Image Credit: 110..365 | The End? By Katkamin on flickr