Fifteen years ago venture capitalists [VCs] sought to convince the world that the time had come for digital groceries. With much pomp and circumstance George Shaheen, the alpha-technologist at the über-integrator [Anderson Consulting] switched teams. Mr. Shaheen jumped ship, departing the old world of atoms for the new and much more lucrative world of bits. Three years and more than $800 million dollars later, the co-poster-child of overfunded ideas – the Webvan Group – filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations. [The other poster child was Pets.com]. VCs are a persistent bunch. They are back touting a spectrum of online delivery services “whose time has come.” The question I have is – if executives had applied analytics effectively – “if we had done analytics right” – would we have been able to avoid these value destroying debacles?... Read more

In contemporary culture today, attention, as measured by column-inches and sound bites, elevates hackers, terrorists, mis-behaving divas, twenty-something billionaires and done-something-wrong sports heroes as “persons of interest.” The media pattern today obsessively celebrates creators of disorder. Little remarked upon – in fact essentially invisible to mainstream consciousness are the creators of order – people who get things done, people who move the ball forward in the face of uncertainty. I would like to reintroduce you to a true hero in our complex world – the project manager.... Read more

Adam Smith’s “division of labor” is one of the earliest and most important innovations in early capitalism. By dividing the manufacture of pins into eighteen distinct tasks [essentially creating a pin factory] a capitalist could increase productivity 240 times. The early industrial age manifestation of this concept was to divide those who think [i.e., plan] and those who do. Over time “thinkers” [i.e., managers] began to extract ever increasing percentages of the productivity gains. In some circles the value of “doing” [i.e., action] became an afterthought.... Read more

The sic executives at the IQ reducing, productivity destroying and ridiculously over-valued media company BuzzFeed have tapped into a universal human weakness – we love lists. Lists by their very nature reduce one of the cognitive qualities which sets us humans apart – the ability to create categories. This is not to say that lists don’t have purpose or can’t create value. Indeed, physician and public intellectual Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right documents eloquently how, in the case of applying known and tested best practices to fully understood problems, lists can save lives.... Read more

Some medieval scholars believe that institutional information management originated in 540 AD with the scriptorium created by Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus [Cassiodorus]. A scriptorium is a room, typically at a monastery but sometimes in the castle of a king or a lord, purpose built as a place for the collection, copying, and preservation of texts. The scriptorium Cassiodorus built at Vivarium [southern Italy] featured self-feeding oil lamps, a sundial, and a water-clock. There were desks for the monks to sit at and copy texts, as well as ink wells, penknives, and quills. This could be considered the first “data center” of the Dark Ages.... Read more

The year 2020 is very popular with the futurist tribe. Prior to a few years ago 2020 was thought to be a safe terminus for bold forecasts as it was perceived as being far enough in the future to avoid precipitating most “that will never happen” skepticism. If history teaches futurists anything it is that just about anything can – and does – happen. 2020 has the benefit of having an ophthalmologic double entendre. If you have 20/20 vision, you can see clearly at 20 feet what should normally be seen at that distance. Futurists if they do their job properly not only assist enterprises to see what they should see [i.e., future markets, future customers, future skill sets] but also to design actions in the present to prepare for what the future brings.... Read more

“Evolution” the noun; “evolve” the verb; and “evolved” the adjective are typically misunderstood and highly controversial terms. An evolutionary lens is important for IT leaders today as it focuses attention on three critical issues:

A] what is the environment we are trying to adapt to;
B] how well are our leadership style and methods adapted to current and emerging requirements; and
C] if there is a leadership disconnect with the environment, how long will adaptation take?

At the Value Studio I recently asked senior executives what word, phrase or image comes immediately to mind when they hear the phrase “evolution”.... Read more

In the Victorian England of romance novels, every year a new set of hopefuls [both men and women] would be “introduced to society” at a series of balls and cotillions. While the dancers changed every year, the dance steps, the dance floors and the dance halls didn’t. [See: Sheila Adina, Lady of Devices, A Steampunk Adventure Novel]. Historically, the same kind of dynamic has held sway regarding new comers to the executive suite. Every ten years or so, a new C-level executive would fill the seat of a departing predecessor. In the modern economy, the stately pace of executive change has given way to a frenzy of enterprise musical chairs going on.... Read more

The master narrative being test written in many board rooms today features a new digital world. This new world presents modern executives with challenges not entirely dissimilar to those described in Dean Acheson’s autobiography Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. Truman’s Secretary of State and his colleagues were confronted with a post-War world very few understood and which was new to everyone. That world required new maps, new mental models, new skills, new institutions and new roles.... Read more

If you are working in IT today what will you be doing ten years from now? For some, the happy answer to this question will be “Nothing. I will be retired.” For twenty two of the twenty seven years that Gary Beach, author of The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America’s Future worked at IDG [publisher of Computerworld, Network World and CIO Magazine] the median age of an IT worker was 42. Today the median age of an IT worker is 51.This blog post is not for those of you who will be retired in the next ten years. For those of you who will still be working, I have been examining what IT work will look like in the future.... Read more