CIO Strategy

HBR – How to Navigate a Digital Transformation

Here’s a simple approach from the Harvard Business Review to get started on improving your organization via digital.

An organization is essentially the sum total of its physical, financial, human, intellectual, and relationship capital. Different industries and different business models have always maintained different percentages of these asset types. Manufacturers invest most of their capital into physical assets, while high-tech firms invest in R&D to create new intellectual capital. But all assets are not created equal, especially as the technological landscape changes.

In today’s market, tech platforms enable IP and relationships to scale rapidly, and at near-zero cost. This is the phenomenon that has led to exciting platform businesses like Facebook, LinkedIn, Match.com, Uber, and Airbnb. Even when these firms rely on physical assets, like cars for Uber, they own the technology, not the physical asset. Meanwhile, the laggards continue to spend their time and money on assets that do not scale so easily — physical goods (such as manufacturing plants or inventory) and human capital (such as highly trained employees that deliver services). Digital transformation requires that companies reallocate their asset portfolio to support new, digitally enabled business models.

There’s no question why legacy organizations are tackling digital transformation now. Digital native upstarts are gutting traditional industries one at a time, leveraging scalable technology and participative networks. But shifting a firm’s asset portfolio is a lengthy process and is fraught with uncertainty for leaders comfortable with older asset types.

More of the Harvard Business Review article from By Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Barry Libert, and Megan Beck

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28
Jun 16

Are you mistaking a business decision for a technology decision?

For the past ten years, I’ve been talking to CIOs, CTOs and business leadership about the role technology plays in making their organizations better. And while the conversations have become more business-centric, I’m still surprised at how many times we mistake business decisions for technology decisions.

This problem is understandable; information technology is complex, and today there are 20 ways to solve a problem with technology in contrast to two or three ways to solve the same problem ten years ago. So why do we mistake virtualization for business agility, disaster recovery for risk mitigation, and leasing or other financing options for cost control?

I think it’s because many IT leaders came up through the ranks as problem solvers. We’re ready to throw out solutions before we hear the whole story. The YouTube video “It’s Not About the Nail” is a fun example of this behavior.

But technology solutions don’t address all business problems. Try to solve the problem of attracting and retaining high end infrastructure talent with software and see what happens. Implementing cloud infrastructure without considering the risks associated with the provider can end in disaster. A perfectly implemented disaster recovery scenario can sink a business if the the most critical business data is not being protected.

The simplest way to stay on track is to map all technology decisions to clear non-technical business requirements like:
• Agility
• Speed of Delivery/Time to Market
• Innovation
• Cost Control
• Availability
• Risk Mitigation
• Business Productivity/Efficiency
If you can’t map the technology to a clear business requirement, drop it.

Then ask yourself what parts of the business requirements remain unaddressed, even with the technology. Chances are, people and process issues will still need to be considered and addressed, and these are often much bigger issues that what the technology can solve.

How are the most successful companies addressing business requirements? Contact me.

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23
Jun 16

HBR – Every Fast-Growing Company Has to Combat Overload

It feels horrible: You’re scaling up aggressively and working harder than ever, but with each passing day you feel more overwhelmed. Your business is a success, but you feel like a failure. You used to be able to track everything with an Excel spreadsheet, personally designed by your CFO; now you’ve got an SAP installation in its place, supported by an entire IT department. You and your founding team used to feel like members of the same small tribe; now you’re working with unfamiliar layers of staff hired from companies whose culture is not like yours. You used to know your key customers by their first names; now you know them only as averages on PowerPoint slides. Every employee used to know what made your mission special; now most of them don’t. Things are spinning out of control, and you don’t know what to do.

What’s going on? You’ve hit overload—the internal dysfunction and loss of external momentum that strikes young, fast-growing companies as they try to rapidly scale their businesses. Overload is one of the three predictable crises that companies experience as they grow. With overload everyone in the company becomes stretched and loses the focus on the customer. A helpful image to keep in mind here is that of a plate spinner. As the spinner sets more and more plates in motion (growth), he obviously has to keep them in motion. This gets harder and harder, especially if he hasn’t prepared adequately for the challenges involved. Soon what once was a satisfying process becomes a deeply troubling and threatening one (overload): plates start to wobble, and the spinner has to scramble ever faster to keep them all in motion. His mission has changed. He’s no longer thinking about serving and delighting his audience (customers). He’s just trying to manage the chaos and avoid catastrophe.

More of the Harvard Business Review post from Chris Zook

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21
Jun 16

Data Center Knowledge – FedRAMP’s Lack of Transparency Irks Government IT Decision Makers

Four out of five federal cloud decision makers are frustrated with FedRAMP, according to a new report from government IT public-private partnership MeriTalk. Federal IT professionals said they are frustrated with a lack of transparency into the process.

MeriTalk surveyed 150 Federal IT decision makers in April for the FedRAMP Fault Lines report, and found that 65 percent of respondents at defense agencies, and 55 percent overall, do not believe that FedRAMP has increased security. Perhaps even worse, 41 percent are unfamiliar with the General Service Administration’s (GSA) plans to fix FedRAMP. The GSA announced FedRAMP Accelerated in March.

“Despite efforts to improve, FedRAMP remains cracked at the foundation,” said MeriTalk founder Steve O’Keeffe. “We need a FedRAMP fix – the PMO must improve guidance, simplify the process, and increase transparency.”

More of the Data Center Knowledge article from Chris Burt

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17
Jun 16

IT Business Edge – Leadership Lessons for IT Professionals from an Iraq War Hero

A lot of IT professionals find themselves in positions they never really envisioned themselves being in: leadership positions. They had always felt fulfilled career-wise by meeting technology challenges, and never really aspired to be leaders of anyone. And yet here they are, with responsibilities involving the professional well-being of other people. To whom should they turn for advice?

I’d start with Justin Constantine. He knows what it’s like to be in a position he didn’t expect to be in.

On October 18, 2006, Constantine, a U.S. Marine Corps officer deployed to Iraq, was on patrol when a shot rang out from an enemy sniper. In that split second, Constantine’s life changed forever. The bullet entered his head behind his left ear, and exploded out of his mouth. That he survived is attributable to the miraculous efforts of a brave Navy corpsman on the scene. Today, he can’t see out of his left eye, and part of his tongue is missing. But he can speak, following multiple surgeries to rebuild his jaw with bones from other parts of his body. He also suffers from post-traumatic stress and a traumatic brain injury.

More of the IT Business Edge article from Don Tennant

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16
Jun 16

CIOInsight – Why IT Must Pursue an Information Governance Plan

Most organizations can benefit from outside help on governance. Call me if you’re looking for resources.

The majority of IT executives said their organization is either implementing a formal information governance (IG) program or is planning to do so, according to a recent survey from Veritas. The resulting “State of Information Governance” report defines IG as “the activities and technologies that organizations employ to maximize the value of their information while minimizing associated risks and costs.” To support this, the research reveals that most companies are issuing formal data use policies and requiring employees to identify data that is confidential. They’re also training staffers on data storage and archiving. In addition, findings break down organizations into those which are “high performing” on IG, and those which are not. While overall adoption rates among both are strong, high performers are more likely to deploy email and file archiving, while issuing formal use policies. “Information is both the lifeblood and the bane of any business, no matter its size, industry or location,” according to the report. “Enterprises collect and analyze data from a myriad of internal and external sources to improve business efficiencies and decision-making processes.

More of the CIOInsight slideshow from Dennis McCafferty

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15
Jun 16

HBR – The Dirty Little Secret About Digitally Transforming Operations

Earlier this year, we walked the halls of the Hannover Messe, one of Europe’s largest events for industrial manufacturers. The newest robots, 3-D printing systems, and data-mining hardware and services were all there along with a host of people hyping Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT), Digital Manufacturing, and big data and advanced analytics. It seemed as though everybody from the best-known software giants to basic industrial parts providers was marketing a “latest technological breakthrough” — even if it amounted to little more than a new sensor attached to an old piece of equipment.

Amazing dreams were being sold: A black box that could be installed in your plant and would improve your competitiveness — all by itself; big data servers and algorithms that would tell you how to improve your process — with no additional engineering investment; virtual-reality glasses that would make your workforce more productive — just by putting them on.

It was all reminiscent of 19th century advertisements for cure-all patent medicines.

More of the Harvard Business Review article from Markus Hammer, Malte Hippe, Christoph Schmitz, Richard Sellschop and Ken Somers

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13
May 16

CIO Insight – How Security Laws Inhibit Information Sharing

Third-party vendors could provide compliance services to companies and ISAOs, a likely market solution given that they already have expertise and can spread the cost among many clients.

A new report finds that although there is a need for actionable threat intelligence and information-sharing worldwide, significant obstacles exist because of data privacy and protection and national security laws. The result is a chilling effect on cross-border cooperation that must be addressed. In that spirit, the report, “Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations: Putting Theory into Practice,” by Price Waterhouse Cooper, analyzes global legal hurdles to information-sharing and offers potential solutions.

More of the CIO Insight article from Karen Frenkel

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12
May 16

HBR – https://hbr.org/2016/05/the-impact-of-the-blockchain-goes-beyond-financial-services

The technology most likely to change the next decade of business is not the social web, big data, the cloud, robotics, or even artificial intelligence. It’s the blockchain, the technology behind digital currencies like Bitcoin.

Blockchain technology is complex, but the idea is simple. At its most basic, blockchain is a vast, global distributed ledger or database running on millions of devices and open to anyone, where not just information but anything of value – money, titles, deeds, music, art, scientific discoveries, intellectual property, and even votes – can be moved and stored securely and privately. On the blockchain, trust is established, not by powerful intermediaries like banks, governments and technology companies, but through mass collaboration and clever code. Blockchains ensure integrity and trust between strangers. They make it difficult to cheat.

In other words, it’s the first native digital medium for value, just as the internet was the first native digital medium for information. And this has big implications for business and the corporation.

Much of the hype around blockchains has focused on their potential to fundamentally change the financial services industry – by dropping the cost and complexity of financial transactions, making the world’s unbanked a viable new market, and improving transparency and regulation. Indeed, it is already having a big impact on that sector. However, our two-year research project, involving hundreds of interviews with blockchain experts, provides strong evidence that the blockchain could transform business, government, and society in perhaps even more profound ways.

More of the Harvard Business Review article from Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott

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11
May 16

CIO Dashboard – 3 Strategies to Decrease IT Costs and Increase Business Impact

Guest post by Suheb Siddiqui and Chetan Shetty

A veteran CIO recently said, “The last few months felt like I time traveled back to the 1980s. Business stakeholders are demanding the applications they want, designed the way they like, and at a speed dictated by their priorities.” He wasn’t talking about an AS400 based Cobol program; he was talking about custom apps written on industry standard platforms, provided by numerous Platform as a Service (PaaS) providers such as Salesforce, Oracle and ServiceNow.

Our industry has undergone numerous transitions. In the 1980s and part of the 1990s, business users were in control. They could pick their favorite “best of breed” applications, and design and customize them how they wanted. Integration and governance was expensive and difficult. Then, Y2K fueled the growth of Megasuite ERPs. Starting in the late 1990s, IT started controlling the agenda and strong governance led to cost efficiencies, albeit at the expense of user satisfaction.

Fast forward to 2016, Software as a Service (SaaS) and PaaS solutions are empowering users to be in control again. As a result, we are witnessing a growing gap between the total IT spend of an organization, which is increasing as users buy their own SaaS solutions, and the IT budget controlled by the CIO, which is under constant cost pressure. Successful CIOs have to find new strategies to bridge this growing “Digital Divide.”

Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.