Fail to adapt to change equals failure

Am I as good as I say I am?

alexanderkeenan — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:41:01 +0000

From Wiki, Americans, at least sometimes and under some conditions, have a tendency to inflate their worth. It is interesting, therefore, to see the phenomenon’s mirror opposite in another culture. In research comparing North American and East Asian self-assessments, Heine of the University of British Columbia finds that East Asians tend to underestimate their abilities, with an aim toward improving the self and getting along with others.

In a article “Why we overestimate our competence“, the case for this cultural difference is clearly made. In America culture those with low skill may not see themselves as such. One possible solution to this seems to be offered by training. It appears that awareness is the key to understanding competence. The more competent one become the more aware of the level of competence one really has.

From a business standpoint this is interesting. If one applies work breakdown one can identify the competencies and the level of each compentency required for a given work. With this information one can measure competency and design training programs.

Something to think about. We are now in a Global world. It is not uncommon to work in a workplace that is multi-cultural. Understanding how one views their competencies can be important.

for want of a nail competitive advantage was lost

alexanderkeenan — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 14:37:37 +0000

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Individual competency determines the capabilities of the individual.
Teams are made up of a collection of individuals.
Team competency determines the capabilities of the team.
Groups are composed of a collection of teams.
Group competency determines the capabilities of the group.
An organization is composed of a collection of groups.
Organizational competency determines organizational capabilities.
Organizational capabilities determine competitive advantages.

Now trace the competitive advantage back through the above chain. Think of it as a stream. Apply the LEAN concept of lowering the water in the stream to expose the rocks. What you are exposing is the weaknesses in capabilities with associated competencies required for those capablilities. Thinking in this manner one can hopefully identifiy the need for the critical nail before the kingdom is lost.

Read the interview with C.K. Prahalad and his take on core competencies. He argued that accumulated intellectual knowledge — the intellectual capacities in organizations be called core competencies and that it represented a new form of currency since the products of the intellectual capacities can be traded or sold.

Per Prahalad, “When you look at an organization’s core competencies as its most valuable resources, you can begin to think of learning, creating strategy, and innovation as parts of a single long journey. The journey is iterative, interactive, and full of small steps. Nobody gets a big aha one day. Instead, there is searching; there are missteps, experiments, and doubt.”

Confusing Learning with Failure.

alexanderkeenan — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 12:08:04 +0000

I have been reading The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes & Posner . A good book, a little light on details but it does cover a large number of important topics. One I liked very much in part five was the catch-22 of people lacking confidence so they fail to challenge themselves. They lack confidence because they lack competence. They have little or no experience in the area they have the opportunity to challenge themselves in. If they had experience in the area they would have acquired learning from this experience. Thus they would have competence gained from the learning and this would have made them confident in their ability to handle this type of situation. People fail to challenge themselves because of lack of confidence and fear. Fear of failing, fear of unknown, etc. In many organizations FEAR makes sense. Why, because mistakes happen as a part of learning. If one is going to challenge themselves by doing something they are not competent in then one will have to become competent by learning. However, many organizations do not handle mistakes associated with learning well. In many organizations mistakes are seen as FAILURE nothing more. The common theme is that if you are given the opportunity you will rise to the occasion, if you do not, then you are a failure. Not everyone may rise to the occasion the first time. Others may not be able to make the rise in one giant leap. What is needed is an environment where learning opportunities can be created in which mistakes can be accepted as the price of learning. This requires a system of continuous personal improvement. Such a system would have a goal of developing confidence and competence so that people within the organization are willing to challenge themselves. Too often I see companies fail to do this because it does require work and effort. They instead take the approach of hiring the talent they require at the time they need it. This is one reason you see people who have worked at a job for ten years with only one year’s worth of experience. They never challenged themselves so they never grew. When change makes their services no longer needed they have little to show for all the time they invested in the organization. They FAILED to grow and will suffer for it in the job market.

One final thing to leave you. Think about your organization, are mistakes commonly treated as learning experiences or failures? Then ask yourself, are there safe opportunities for me to gain competence and confidence within my organization? If yes, then have you developed a plan for continuous personal improvement? If no, then maybe it’s time to look elsewhere!!!

Change happening now !!!!

alexanderkeenan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:29:26 +0000

Last Thursday I saw change! I was at one of the CloudCamps that Dave Nielsen has been holding. What I saw matches well to what Ericka Chickowski outlined the Corporate Executive Board predicting for the future:

1. The Rise of the Knowledge Worker: As processes are automated and outsourced, most employees are becoming knowledge workers.

2. Ubiquitous Data: As mobile devices and real-time applications skyrocket, data volume and throughput increases exponentially.

3. Social Media: Customer and consumer interaction habits are changing, as are their expectations of how they do business with organizations.

4. Emerging Market Growth: New global markets are going to be a big source of enterprise growth, going toe-to-toe with developed markets.

5. Efficiency Shortfalls: Main functions such as IT, finance, supply chain, HR and procurement are reaching the limits of efficiency based on the current corporate structure.

6. Tech-Savvy Workforce: As the average worker gains technology knowledge and confidence, there will be a need for a deeper, rather than broader technology expertise among certain workers.

7. Technology-as-a-Service: The availability of infrastructure and applications in highly virtualized, configurable and scalable service form within the cloud is changing the way enterprises ‘buy’ technology.

8. The Industrialized, Externalized Back Office: As industry standards emerge for back-office business processes, third-party external providers will step in to offer more efficient outsourcing.

9. A Blueprint for Service Delivery: Standards changes in ITILv3 are likely to offer a path for reorienting IT around service delivery.

10. Desktop Transformation: The convergence of virtualization, SaaS, unified communications and an increasingly mobile workforce is going to enable device-agnostic service delivery.

Now add in Apple CEO Steve Jobs playing oracle for the next phase in personal computing—and it probably doesn’t include PCs. Jobs proved that you can build an entire platform around a mobile Operating System. Jobs also showed that one can build new experiences. The iPhone is think and do so is the iPad. Apple did not have to maintain legacy and old ways of doing things with its OS. Anyone who used an iPhone knows how to use the iPad. The Apple OS is a new user experience that anyone can easily use.

If you look at what I have written above you see two important trends.

Many “( Put name here) As A Service” are all about something becoming a commodity. Instead of people and organizations have to provide (Put name here) organizations that specialize in (Put name here) will offer those goods and services. Because they specialize they will likely do a better job and at a lower cost compared to any single individual or organization. This is also the path towards something becoming a commodity.
Apple has now exceeded Microsoft in terms of worth. One can see this as the rise of user experience. We have now entered the “Think and Do” world. It has always been about value. Decades ago VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It was the first major application for a PC. Some say the without the word processor and spreadsheet the first PC’s would likely not have taken off. Why because the word processor and spreadsheet allowed people to do what they could not before. They were not “Think and Do” but they required a small amount of training and offered a lot of value. They created the first PC experience. Now these new mobile OS’s are appearing which have the potential to provide the means for new applications that really are “Think and Do”. They will offer new forms of value as they create new experiences.

Great organization know the importance of culture

alexanderkeenan — Sun, 30 May 2010 12:28:19 +0000

Yes, another blog about Wal-Mart. Why because I needed an example of culture and love them or hate them then know the importance of culture. Bob Buchanan, a former retail analyst who now teaches finance at Saint Louis University, defined Wal-Mart as being all about price and all about one-stop shopping. If you go to the Wal-Mart website you find the vision of Sam Walton the founder. The statement is, “Saving People Money So They Can Live Better”. This is a simple and strong vision. This is in line with Wal-Mart being THE low cost store and one-stop for all your needs. So what does this have to do with culture? Strong, clear corporate vision tend to lead to strong corporate culture. Almost every great organization develops a strong culture. The culture defines “How we do things here”. At Wal-Mart culture is given its own section on the investor website. Below are key points in Wal-Mart’s Culture taken from http://walmartstores.com/AboutUs/

Grass Roots Process

“Listen to your associates. They’re the best idea generators.”

Sam Walton said that, and he believed it. For years, he traveled continuously so he could visit all of his stores at least once a year, listening to associates and asking for their ideas.

3 Basic Beliefs & Values

Respect for the Individual
Service to our Customers
Striving for Excellence

The 10-foot Rule is one of our secrets to customer service.

During his many store visits, Sam Walton encouraged associates to take this pledge with him: “I promise that whenever I come within 10 feet of a customer, I will look him in the eye, greet him, and ask if I can help him.”

The door is always open.

At Wal-Mart, our management believes open communication is critical to understanding and meeting our associates’ and our customers’ needs. Through our “open door” policy, associates (employees) are free to share suggestions, ideas, and voice concerns. Whether it’s help with a problem, guidance or direction, or simply getting an answer to a question.

Servant Leadership

Effective leaders don’t lead from behind a desk. It’s more important than ever that we develop leaders who are servants, who listen to their partners – their associates – in a way that creates wonderful morale to help the whole team accomplish an overall goal,” Sam Walton, our founder said that.

Teamwork

Sam Walton believed it’s our teamwork that makes us special. “What makes ordinary people do extraordinary things?” Sam Walton, our founder once asked. “Aren’t we a group of ordinary folks? We really are. And I think we, together as a team, have done extraordinary things. We’ve all grown, we’ve all accomplished much more than any of us ever thought that we could.”

Wal-Mart Cheer

Mr. Sam believed work can be fun. As he once said, “Just because we work hard, we don’t have to go around with long faces. It’s sort of a ‘whistle while you work’ philosophy and we work better because of it.”

Sundown Rule

Our founder Sam Walton created the Sundown Rule. It’s really just a twist on “why put off until tomorrow what you can do today?” Observing the Sundown Rule is very simple. Whether it’s a request from a store across the country or a call from an associate down the hall, we do our very best to give our customers, and each other, same-day service.

These are the official points Wal-Mart wants to see in its culture. A great organization builds and maintains its culture. Executive level management cannot monitor the behavior of every employee every minute. Corporate culture is the ”beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals”. Wal-Mart clearly understands this.

Wal-Mart considers its culture the key to its success, and to this day employees continue to think about “how Sam would have done it’’ when making decisions.

The balancing act optimize, innovate

alexanderkeenan — Wed, 26 May 2010 21:08:19 +0000

Below are two views from two directors at MIT who deal with technology.

“Moss and Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the school’s MIT Center for Digital Business, argued that IT professionals should dwell less on automating and controlling business processes — that work is done — and focus more on the people who are generating data and on ways to help them make sense of that data. Brynjolfsson talked up the value of controlled experiments to find out what customers really want, on a person-by-person basis.”

“ Dr. Jeanne Ross, director of the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT Sloan, and Marilyn Smith, MIT’s new head of IS and technology, were not convinced that IT professionals should give up control anytime soon. Nor were they ready to pronounce that the productivity gains realized from automating and optimizing business processes are in the past. Many businesses run on legacy systems that can’t be thrown out, Smith noted, and would benefit from being optimized. Most organizations have “sacred transactions” that need to be gotten right, Ross said. Stable platforms give people the freedom to innovate.”

There is truth in both statements. IT has always been about information. However, enterprise IT has always involved business processes. Making sense of data is what creates information. To make sense of data it must be put in some type of context. Many times the context comes from the point in a business process the data relates to. Going down to a person-by-person basis requires a new level of ability. To go to this new level will require a measure of stability in the existing platforms that the new abilities must now interface with. This is a constant balancing act, sort of a chicken and egg situation. How stable must the current system be to add new functionality? How far can we push effectiveness in the new before we are forced to optimize and stabilize? Will we optimize too early before we are effective, will we push too far without stopping to optimize. Failure is anything outside this thin balance between the two.

Failure of continuous improvement

alexanderkeenan — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:18:28 +0000

This blog is about change. So I am changing this entry because I have found more data the helps explain this very important concept.

I found an interesting article published by IndustryWeek. At the 2010 IndustryWeek Best Plants conference, which was held in late April, Lonnie Wilson, principal consultant with Quality Consultants, talked about how continuous improvement activities fall along a continuum that he has divided into three segments. Lonnie Wilson is the author of “How to implement Lean Manufacturing”. I was able to talk to Mr. Wilson and now have a link to the slides from his presentation. I recommend reading his presentation to get a better picture of this topic. Below is my take on three important points.

1. The least effective form of improvement is “continuous catch-up”. This is a reactive approach based more on fixing unstable processes. Highly repeatable processes do not exist at this point because there has been little or no standardization of processes.

2. An improvement on catch-up is “reactionary continuous improvement (RCI). Processes have become standardized at this point. They may now be highly repeatable with consistent results. However the improvements are squeaky wheel based. The focus is on how we make this problem go away. An example is responding to customer complaints. Here one finds problem solvers.

3. The highest level of improvement occurs at “proactive continuous improvement.” Improvements are internally driven based on creation of value. Intentional stressing of the system takes place to identify weaknesses. Here one finds proactive behavior. A culture of problem finders develops.

These concepts of improvement apply to processes. But one finds a parallel to this in CMMM as explained by Per Bauer, Technical Account Manager at TeamQuest Corporation.

Slide taken from maturity-model white paper by Per Bauer

If you read both papers and look at the main points you will see that both follow a similar path. There is an evolution of process control. There are stages to any organization working to improve their business processes. It does not matter if it is manufacturing or information technology. These principals are common to all processes. One has to get a level of control before one can make any level of improvement that will last. And certain level of control has to be obtained after change in the form of improvement takes place.

Customize and fail in the long run!!

alexanderkeenan — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:18:18 +0000

Does IT matter? This was a question that caused a lot of debate a number of years ago. The question should be, what will give your organization a competitive advantage! I have recently blogged about Wal-Mart taking over all transportation functions from suppliers. This gives them a competitive advantage. As such it is core to Wal-Mart not just context. Most organizations do not seem to know what is core and what is context. Context can be defined as functions that must be performed at a certain level of performance to run the organization. However, these functions do not provide a competitive advantage. Core is what will allow the organization to survive and grow. When innovation can take place in core it can have great impact. With context there is not advantage in not adopting industry best practices. I see this misunderstanding take place with many projects. It takes the form of customization. A new innovation reaches critical mass to the point where it is standardized so that the provider of the innovation can roll it out to as many customers as possible. The provider has identified best practices around the value the new innovation provides. However, the customer decides that they want the innovation to work with their existing practices. So what happens is that the innovation is adopted with high levels of customization. The innovation then evolves based on best practices of the industries using the innovation. The greater the degree of customization the harder it becomes to keep the innovation working with each new release of improvements and refinements. In time a great deal of the value is lost because of the expense of maintaining the customization. This can easily be found in information technology. An organization buys some sort of software. The vendor of the software has standards that they recommend. The vendor needs to standardize so they can roll out to many different customers. The product will offer value but it does not offer a competitive advantage because it is being adopted by others in the industry. The product is in the process of becoming the industry standard. This standard will include best practices. The vendor is likely to focus new improvements and enhancements in new releases on the recommended standards and best practices. However, the functional groups within the organization demand that the software be modified to the organizations current practices. What they do not realize is that their current practices are not core, and that their current practices do not match the new industry best practices. So the functional groups force the customization anyway. Each patch and new release of the software does not have the customizations in it. The organization has to pay to keep the customization working with each new release. In some cases a point will be reached where the next release cannot be installed because the customization can no longer be supported. At that point an expensive rip and replace has to be undertaken. The old processes now must be changed and the organization must align its practices to what can be supported.

Now if the function offered competitive advantage then it is core. So in that case the organization should have been out front in identifying a potential advantage in the form of the innovation. This is important because it would benefit the organization if it could influence the new industry best practices. You can see this in the software industry by the way industry leaders commonly are heavily involved in standard boards. They want to make sure that they have input and influence in the development of any new standards that could impact them. Much competitive advantage can be obtained by this influencing of new innovations. If something is core then innovations related to that core matter. If the organization can influence them then their competitors have to react to the new ecosystem created. Just look at the innovations Wal-Mart introduced to the retail supply chain. Wal-Mart changed the retail supply chain to their advantage and forced their competitors to have to react to the new ecosystem they created. They did this because supply chain was core to Wal-Mart being THE low cost provider.

Change and the 800 pound gorilla

alexanderkeenan — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:45:01 +0000

When you are the 800 pound gorilla in the retail world how do you increase your strategic advantage? If you are Wal-Mart Stores Inc., you take over U.S. transportation services from your suppliers in an effort to reduce the cost of hauling goods. “The vendors might say, ‘My other overhead costs will rise,’ ” said Gallese, who has spent 25 years in the industry. “And Wal-Mart will say, ‘That’s your problem.’ ” Wal-Mart will reduce its cost, forcing suppliers to lose economies of scale. This will likely mean increased costs for good to the competitors of Wal-Mart. 800 pound gorillas can play rough and Wal-Mart has a history of using their weight to change the retail ecosystem to their advantage. Just read “The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know” to see just how rough the 800 pound gorilla can play. Wal-Mart creates disruptive innovations that leave their competitors no choice but to adapt to the new ecosystem the gorilla leaves in its wake. 800 pound gorillas have major impacts to any ecosystem they belong to, see “What You Can Do to Fight Wal-Mart“. But, that is what Wall Street likes about 800 pound gorillas. It expects them to obtain and maintain competitive advantage based on their market share and buying power.

More distruptive innovation from Google?

alexanderkeenan — Sat, 22 May 2010 13:40:41 +0000

At Google’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, California, Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware was quoted as saying, “By working with VMware to bring cloud portability to the enterprise, we are making it easy for developers to deploy rich Java applications in the environments of their choice”.

This seems like just another press release about a nice development. However, could this be disruptive innovation? I have worked in IT for decades now. I saw the rise, fall, and rebirth of the dot com world. This was radical disruptive changes. Yes, some was market hype. But all the dot coms were made possible because the barriers to entry were so low. One can look at the announcement coming from Google I/O two possible patterns could emerge.

1) When I started in IT people literary had businesses out of their garages. You only needed a few good people and some IT hardware. The cost of entry was very low when you looked at the potential return. Those days are long gone. The costs have risen because the industry has matured. People have higher expectations and the ecosystem for IT is much more complex. So the cost of entry is now much higher. So what if the cloud can lower the cost of entry. Does the cloud hold the promise of out of the box architecture? Can one now put a SCRUM team together and use rent-a-architecture as their development environment. If so then the focus now becomes the SCRUM team and producing value. The architecture now becomes a commodity that is selected like renting a car. If issues of the development environment are simple to deal with then the cost of entry is lowered. If the cost of entry has been lowered enough it can be expected to see an increase in developer activity and software offerings.

2) I have worked in IT for decades. One thing has been constant. That is what students learn in college is what they push when they enter the job market. If they were dot NET then they push dot NET. If they were JAVA then they push JAVA. The point is they tend to want to use what they know instead of trying to learn something completely new. So does Google have a golden opportunity to capture the hearts and minds of students? Many centers of learning are trying to save money. A simple cloud development environment could offer cost saving for teaching Information Technology just as it offers savings for the enterprise. I have already seen some centers of learning start using Google’s email service. They did this because it works well enough to meet their needs and the price is right. Could Google offer a standardized development environment for learning IT? The parts all seem to be in place now. The second advantage Google has is offering like YouTube. In traditional teaching one is instructed then tested at the end for outcome. However, in community colleges testing is used at the beginning for placement. Do you know enough of the subjects to take X class on that subject? There a number of learning videos on YouTube. Google can develop a simple set of classes that use testing to determine which videos to watch. The tests tell Google what level of learning is required and the appropriate videos are selected. The next test determines if more learning on the subject is required or if student is ready for new material. Progress is monitored by teacher who now has the ability to group students on projects based on progress. Even if a traditional education model is used Google can still gain hearts and minds by students becoming familiar with Google’s cloud system for application development. If the cost is low enough it will be an attactive alternate to buget tight centers of learning.

So there you have it, two reasons I believe we may be seeing a disruptive innovation coming out of Google.