Interesting view on whether business needs more or less regulation. You could argue either way but more important for me is whether or not regulations can be enforced. Worth a look at the update from the 2020UK team What’s new at 2020uk today.

Requirements aren’t clear or even in place

I know this one’s simple but I have in the past embarked on a reasonable size public sector project for which the sole initial requirement was to refresh the existing equipment to make use of new services. The new services weren’t actually defined at the point of order, so were added as the project went along. Far from ideal but there happened to be a third party involved which leads me on to the next point.

Management consultants get involved

Not always a bad thing but if the basic business requirements aren’t defined before engagement then a project or initiative will end up with a growing community of consultants who sit between the client and their suppliers. I’ve come across a couple of occasions where I’ve been working with consultants on an agreed set of project parameters that were in fact different to those agreed between the consultants and the client. It did make the project meetings very interesting for a time but didn’t help the end client to achieve their results. Professional services companies by their very nature will do all they can to sell in additional people and services which will make any project more complex and ramp up the number of in-flight changes. There is a space for Professional Services companies to fill gaps in the client side organisation but these need to be scoped in some detail before engagement. It’s always a perceived safer option as well to go for a big player but there’s usually better value from using niche specialists who have the relevant systems or business experience.

The ‘Man from Del Monte’ culture within suppliers

When JFK committed the US to going to the moon he had quite a bit of money to throw at the problem and awful lot of resources. I don’t know of any IT company that has a lot of cash or experts on hand so why do they commit their businesses to delivering a system that they have little chance of building, delivering or supporting?

The simple answer is that for large projects the decision is taken at a strategic level without the understanding of the true cost of delivery or the impact of supporting that service on the business once implemented. This is where IT seems to differ from other specialist areas. If a tender went out to build a tunnel between say the Wales and Southern Ireland the first pass would be a feasibility study which would go into a great deal of detail about the rock strata, tunnel locations & support infrastructure. If the experts agreed that it could be technically done within a notional budget figure it would move to the next stage. Of course if it isn’t feasible this is fed back and the project shelved. In the IT world it appears that if the experts highlight that something isn’t feasible then the sales teams and senior management override them and press ahead. I have had numerous uncomfortable discussions over the years with clients and legal teams where a supplier has over promised and under delivered.

Suppliers tendency to say Yes can be driven by short term incentive plans, nothing more or nothing less. Most management and sales teams are remunerated when the contract is put in place and very rarely on the on-going performance of that deal. If a deal of £3m is sold but the actual cost of delivery over that term is the same then it’s not profitable business. Often deals are taken on this basis to bring in other contracts, which can be strategically beneficial but then compensation should only really be paid when those new contracts are signed, sealed and delivered.

Everyone is an expert

My personal feeling is that IT experts are looked on as being less important than technicians within other disciplines. This is probably due to the fact that most people can now drive a computer without a second thought, so assume that creating a Database for 30 million records is as simple as popping a DVD in the drive and downloading some software. If it’s not that easy how difficult can it be? It’s a slightly strange situation as we all drive cars but not many of us can now fix them and even less design and build one from scratch but we assume that this can be the case for IT.

These are the main reasons for me at least as to why I have seen large IT projects fail over the last twenty five years or so and I am sure there are a whole lot more. The biggest issue by far though is the real amount of taxpayers money that is being wasted day in day out on Public Sector IT projects and the seeming lack of informed people that are making the contractual and procurement decisions. Is there a better way of providing more effective governance of Public Sector IT spend?

The difference in view comes down to the way that I manage people. I happen to think that most Performance Management is just there as an expensive self serving distraction and doesn’t help anyone fulfil their job role. Some performance management tends to dictate that you set objectives over and above the job role but why is this? If someone is looking for a promotion then fair enough they may seek training and experience to help them achieve this but what if you enjoy the role you’re doing and have no ambition to change grades. I know as a manager that piling stretch objectives on the latter will only introduce stress which will impact on their ability to do the job and more importantly on the way that they feel doing the job. So in effect then I took the approach to manage people as individuals and not as points on a bell-curve. Oddly enough most of my peers seemed to think that this was the wrong approach and went off to raise the performance bar and manage people out who dropped off the end of the scale.

From my point of view it is crucial to have a variety of skills and capabilities in a team and having all the same type of personality in the same group doesn’t work well at all. As an aside, this is why a lot of senior management teams and boards are particularly ineffective. I would include most politicians here as well. Typical performance management tends to promote behaviours of a couple of personality types over above the rest of the team, which potentially has a negative impact by dis-enfranchising those people with other traits. These people often do a fantastic job but are not married to the company, and they also don’t see that performing their role has any similarity with the dedication and focus of olympic athletes. For me everyone is an individual and their needs change on a daily basis so the trick of good management is to recognise this and have some empathy with your team whilst delivering value within your business. I don’t think a rigid performance management structure takes individuality into account and often removes the manager from their team by enforcement of compulsory one to one meetings at set times. A manager should be aware of a team members performance at all times and be dealing with issues as they arise and not once every six months or so.

The constant need to improve performance also goes against what people are really about. So Usain Bolt can run really fast and has broken record after record but we seem to use his talents as a view that people can do anything, and that everything is indeed possible. In theory we can probably do anything if we set our minds to it, but as an example I am a pretty dire guitar player, and acknowledge that even with practicing 8 hours a day I wouldn’t be able to challenge Jimmy Page. A friend of mine who’s an NLP coach reckons that I can achieve such six string virtuosity but he also hasn’t factored in external matters such as the need to earn money for food and shelter and of course the need to do the ironing. In the work environment we seem to be setting stretch objectives and optimising employees based on the ‘Can Do’ culture whilst ignoring environmental factors and more importantly the fact they we are all individuals with different motivators. I believe that we make too many assumptions around behaviours of team members and this really does impact the success of the organisation.

Just for the record I haven’t always thought this way. Some years back I was programme managing a set of projects to bring together three businesses and there was a very tight deadline. Getting caught up in the culture of the organisation I pushed the team and myself extremely hard and we got the job done. However, at the end of the programme I managed to collapse with exhaustion but what hit me hardest was that I had pushed a member of the team well past their limits. In fact the person involved was so stressed he developed a heart condition and the phone conversation with his partner blaming me personally for his condition was uncomfortable to say the least. It is something I would never ever want to repeat so if I get asked to do the impossible now I will always respond with what’s possible. It’s Ok sometimes to drive fast when appropriate but you do need to know when and where to use the brakes.

1. Quality, not quantity. Any measurements that are put in place should be quality based and not quantity based.
2. Your team are the experts and you are there to provide support & guidance to them, in line with the goals of your organisation.
3. You are dealing with people who have the same hopes and fears as you. Empathy is therefore key.
4. Performance Management should be kept as simple as possible and should not be aligned with Bonus or Pay Rises. I would recommend no more than three categories
1. Doing more than the pay grade asks – Earmark for promotion
2. Doing the job. Fantastic
3. Not doing the job. Look at development needs or it could be that this is not the  right for them
5. In finding solutions for problems don’t add too much complexity and as Einstein allegedly said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
6. Understand the motivations of your team and recognise when this changes. Peoples motivation will change, constantly.
7. Be as flexible and adaptable as you possibly can.
8. Be brave. Don’t be afraid to go against the flow if you believe in an idea or concept which is considered off the wall.

If you read this and disagree then that’s really cool but I also bet that you won’t comment either and dismiss this post as naive, and may be taking a too simplistic view of the art of management. Happy to have the debate.

On the flip side if you agree with some, or all of this post I’d like your comments and anecdotal observations as that would be really helpful. Who knows I might even write a book………….

Simple Straightforward & Successful

What interests me is the take up of B2B. Facebook and other platforms provide a resource for businesses to connect with each other in a relatively simple manner and also permit the dissemination of product and service information into news-feeds quickly and efficiently. For most businesses the capability of using instant updates on a social media platform is far less complicated than carrying out the same tasks on their website. There is a problem though with the current B2B scenario. As a small company looking to sell into a larger enterprise, Facebook in particular will be an ineffective approach into this market.

The reason behind this last statement is mainly due to the fact that larger companies block their employees from accessing Facebook. From a technical point of view it is easier to put a blanket ban across an organisation than it is to allow partial access for those departments that may need it. In any major organisation the Procurement and Technical teams should have access along with recruitment. If you’re searching for a small business quite often the top results returned are from the Social Media sites but if they’re blocked then the website will be the default. For a lot of small businesses this does not always show their best side.

The main reason that Facebook is blocked in many organisations is that companies fear that it will distract employees from the business of the day and no work will get done. The secondary reason is that company resources will be used to the detriment of business critical applications. Possibly the most worrying point is that the person accountable for setting the policy does not fully understand the concepts and principles in play and is creating an information management scheme based on out of date practices. The latter is in effect caused by the resistance to change of many large organisations and the person who creates the policy is really stuck between a rock, (usually the Board) and a hard place, (change).

The really is no need to block Facebook, Twitter etc. within an organisation if there is a clear, concise, policy in place. If the organisation has a staff handbook then this is an ideal place for such a policy to be included or even referenced. This is’t the time and place to go into management practice but there does need to be a more balanced view in the UK of how time is spent in the workplace. and to be more outcome focussed, rather than clinging on to the vestiges of presenteeism. There is lot more that could be written on this subject and its impact on corporate culture so watch this space.

So if Facebook and other platforms become un-blocked, so what. Well the hope is that it will provide a level playing field for freelancers and small businesses to compete with larger more slicker enterprises from a marketing perspective. The time and investment for a small business to keep their website current outweighs the benefits, and can turn out to be an expensive white elephant. This is a hope as there are other factors at work, such as preferred suppliers lists and different cultures within countries to small businesses but at least a potential barrier would be removed.

In the press the last few days there has been a backlash against apple and even the Independent went all The Sun on us and called it a Mac-Lash which wasn’t very PC. Some of this is down to the media feeling aggrieved by the subscription cut of 30% levied by Apple when the transaction is carried out in-app but Apple allow subscriptions to be done outside the app so not sure what the problem is here. For smaller publications though it may make a lot of sense as the e-commerce pain is taken away, and it’s easier for potential customers to hook up with the service. The key point here is that you choose a service that fits your business model and therefore meets your requirements.

So I use Mac’s for business and most of my customers use Windows, but up to this point I have had no problems exchanging documents or collaborating on projects, so at the level we use our diverse technologies there are no issues. However, if more specialist applications are required that run on one specific platform then there would be an issue. If that was the case my business model would be different and there would be a set of very specific requirements that need to be fulfilled.  These requirements would in most instances dictate the platform I would buy, so as long as I followed these to the letter I can be pretty sure that the system chosen would meet my needs.

For consumers then the same thought process should still apply, but in a way they are perhaps more complex, as there are greater number of potential uses than there is within a business. Here’s a few questions and answers as an example.

Q. What’s my budget
A. Good question!!!

Q. Which applications do I use
A. Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Video Editing, Photography, Music, Browsing, E-Mail, Social Media

Q Where do I use these applications
A. Home: WP, Spreadsheet, Video Editing, Photography
A. Home & Away: Music, Internet, Browsing, E-Mail, Social MediaA Away: Music, Browsing, E-Mail, Social Media

Q. Mobile phone integration
A. Yes I would like it to be integrated

Q. Will you be buying all Music, Applications and Media from a limited number of suppliers
A. Yes

Q. How much control do I need over the system
A. Happy to let the system do all the work

This is a really simplified view but it could start to lead you in a certain direction on the technologies you need to meet your requirements. So to me it looks like a Desktop system allied with a smartphone and the last question tends to steer towards a Windows PC with a Windows Phone or a MAC with an iPhone. If the answer was no to mobile phone integration then this could be a steer towards a tablet for mobile needs.

So is the Android vs. Apple vs Windows argument irrelevant. My view is that it is and the most important thing is to understand the requirements and what you want to get for your cash. We all do this when buying cars, you wouldn’t buy a Mazda MX-5 if you needed four seats, but it does appear that we don’t do this when buying technology.

The Art of Strategy

I have had many discussions around organisational strategies over the last 25 years or so and keep coming back to the Sun Tzu’s Art of War as a good example of how to create and deploy a workable strategy. I mentioned this to a client the other day and got a quizzical look so I thought I would adapt the summary on wikipedia for The Art of War as a bit of an illustration. At a high level this seems to work really well so I thought I would just throw this out there for comment at this early stage in its development. I am planning to expand and refine this further over the next six months or whenever time permits so please look out for updates. The original wiki text and link are included below for reference.

Simple Change Strategies for Organisations

1. Laying Plans/The Calculations. Understand the fundamental factors (The Vision, Environment, Customers, Leadership, and Management) for your organisation and the four elements that determine the outcomes of change (Culture, Customer Experience, Employee Experience, Organisational Performance). By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a manager can calculate his chances of success. Habitual deviation from these calculations will ensure failure via improper action. Change is a critical step for any organisation, and must not be commenced without due consideration.
2. The Challenge Understand the economy of change, and how success requires winning decisive arguments quickly. Implementing any change is dependent on cost and whether there is sufficient pay back for implementing change.
3. The Plan of Attack The source of strength within any organisation is unity, not size, There are five factors that are needed to succeed in any organisation. In order of importance, these critical factors are: Frontline Teams, Strategy, Alliances, Back Office Teams, and Locations.
4. Tactical Dispositions/Positioning It is important to defend existing positions until the organisation is capable of moving from those positions in without undue risk. In any change driven project it is important to ensure that the current levels of service are maintained and not impacted by loss of resource to new initiatives.
5. Energy/Directing Make best use of creativity and timing in building an organisations momentum. Allow teams to be innovative but ensure that they acknowledge time constraints.
6. Weak Points & Strong/Illusion and Reality An organisations opportunities come from the openings in their environment. These opportunities can be identified by carrying out a simple Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats exercise.
7. Manoeuvring/Engaging The Force Some internal organisational changes will be difficult to implement as there will always be barriers to change. It is important to understand the dangers of direct conflict and how to deal with such confrontations when they are forced upon the leadership.
8. Variation in Tactics/The Nine Variations The most important element in any organisation is the need for flexibility in an it’s responses to internal and external factors and events. An organisation should have a strategy in place that lets them respond to shifting circumstances successfully.
9. Moving The Force To use a cliche most organisations are on a ‘journey’ and will come across many different situations as it moves into new territories. An important element is to focus on evaluating the intentions of people and organisations that will be impacted by your strategies and organisational change projects.
10. Terrain/Situational Positioning There are three general areas of resistance (environment, risk, and constraints) so it is important to plan and work through scenarios to consider their impact on programmes and projects
11. The Nine Situations/Nine Terrains Sales strategy is vital for any organisation whether this is actually for real sales in a market environment or for people selling ideas. It is therefore important to have a defined strategy and plan when addressing Sales & Marketing. There are many methodologies available, even one based on the Art of War, so there will be one to suit your organisation.
12. The Attack by Social Media Ensure that there is a strategy in place regarding the general use of technology and the specific use of the Internet as an enabler. Social Media and Collaborative Tools will help your organisation communicate with it’s customers, internal teams and stakeholders at all levels as well as providing the platform for moving projects and initiatives forward.
13. The Use of Intelligence The importance of developing good information sources and managing these can not be underestimated. Understanding the qualitative performance of an organisation is difficult to measure but is the most important measure there is.

Extract from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War

The Art of War – Chapter Summary

1. Laying Plans/The Calculations explores the five fundamental factors (the Way, seasons, terrain, leadership, and management) and seven elements that determine the outcomes of military engagements. By thinking, assessing and comparing these points, a commander can calculate his chances of victory. Habitual deviation from these calculations will ensure failure via improper action. The text stresses that war is a very grave matter for the state, and must not be commenced without due consideration.
2. Waging War/The Challenge explains how to understand the economy of warfare, and how success requires winning decisive engagements quickly. This section advises that successful military campaigns require limiting the cost of competition and conflict.
3. Attack by Stratagem/The Plan of Attack defines the source of strength as unity, not size, and discusses the five factors that are needed to succeed in any war. In order of importance, these critical factors are: Attack, Strategy, Alliances, Army, and Cities.
4. Tactical Dispositions/Positioning explains the importance of defending existing positions until a commander is capable of advancing from those positions in safety. It teaches commanders the importance of recognizing strategic opportunities, and teaches not to create opportunities for the enemy.
5. Energy/Directing explains the use of creativity and timing in building an army’s momentum.
6. Weak Points & Strong/Illusion and Reality explains how an army’s opportunities come from the openings in the environment caused by the relative weakness of the enemy in a given area.
7. Maneuvering/Engaging The Force explains the dangers of direct conflict and how to win those confrontations when they are forced upon the commander.
8. Variation in Tactics/The Nine Variations focuses on the need for flexibility in an army’s responses. It explains how to respond to shifting circumstances successfully.
9. The Army on the March/Moving The Force describes the different situations in which an army finds itself as it moves through new enemy territories, and how to respond to these situations. Much of this section focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.
10. Terrain/Situational Positioning looks at the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers, and barriers) and the six types of ground positions that arise from them. Each of these six field positions offer certain advantages and disadvantages.
11. The Nine Situations/Nine Terrains describes the nine common situations (or stages) in a campaign, from scattering to deadly, and the specific focus that a commander will need in order to successfully navigate them.
12. The Attack by Fire/Fiery Attack explains the general use of weapons and the specific use of the environment as a weapon. This section examines the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attack, and the appropriate responses to such attacks.
13. The Use of Spies/The Use of Intelligence focuses on the importance of developing good information sources, and specifies the five types of intelligence sources and how to best manage each of them.

With the advent of CD’s there was a gradual move away from Vinyl with most people putting their record players in the attic. So I guess most people re-purchased their favourites on the new media and paid again for something they already had. I’ve done this, as often it was a cheaper way to get vinyl converted to MP3 or AAC as well and I don’t really fancy playing my entire record collection and recording via USB to a computer. With storage getting cheaper lossless encoding becomes a possibility as well so the tracks already bought on MP3 will become available as lossless file. Do we need to pay again, I think not.

Here’s what I would like to personally to see happen in the future;

• All music is digitally stored in the highest quality available,
• You buy the licence for that song or collection which is valid in perpetuity,
• The end to national and international restrictions. This should be a global industry.

The purchasing options would then be to use your licence to;

• Go into a store and download an audiophile copy onto CD or Flash Drive,
• Choose to download to your Home Computer in a choice of formats such as FLAC, Apple Lossless etc.
• Purchase a vinyl copy of the music at a reduced rate,

Of course when new formats become available you should be able to upgrade for the price of the media,

I am hoping this would help artists as the licence fee would go straight to them with the media overheads being covered by the download/CD costs which would be generic. Stores could offer additional extras such as interviews etc. and be more flexible than they are today with use of space. As Vinyl is making a comeback more space could be allocated to records for instance. I know that the devil is in the detail but some vision is required or else the industry will fail and we will lose out on all the great music that is out there today and in the future

The current view is that Social Media is something ‘we block at work’ so our employees can’t even see what we’re doing on Twitter and Facebook. Obviously , if we enable Social Media then people will waste more time on-line and will not be doing any work. I have used the royal ‘we’ here but this attitude is fairly typical. The answer to this problem by the way is to provide some real management as opposed to management by numbers, but that argument is for another day.

So my view, is that Social Media or in effect Social Collaboration will enable businesses to radically change the way they operate and create a whole new raft of opportunities. The biggest change is to increase flexibility for both employers and employees and change the model of how we work today. What interests me is creating new types of jobs which bring benefits to organisations which would help to alleviate the current high levels of economic inactivity. So how would this look?

The first example which I think would be really useful is a bureau function that can be used to update internal and external communications. Internally companies tend to disseminate information via e-mail most of which is long winded and because of this fact its is often ignored. If this could be done via something akin to a Twitter feed on an employee home page then it’s more likely to be read. Joanne Jacobs raised a good point on her blog at joannejacobs.net/ around the use of brevity and this is a real skill that needs to be developed. This bureau looks to be an internal organisation at the moment but I reckon that this should be a standalone business providing services to all sorts of companies and organisations. Their main selling point would be to take raw information and convert it into targeted and focussed communication streams. This isn’t marketing, as it could be used by schools to remind parents about events, and students about homework for example. A stand-alone bureau would mean that expertise was focussed in one group and experiences could be shared, and let’s face it no small to medium size organisation could afford to employ some-one full time to do this in any case.

At this stage I should point out that maybe I should have taken more note of keeping things short and concise!

However, there is a second example which could augment Contact Centre functions which is to use Social Media platforms to provide communications. This is already happening in the USA, but with some mixed results. This is understandable as people are still learning their way around the processes.  The ability to see the status of an issue via a feed however, is really useful especially if it’s impacting multiple customers. Within an organisation this could be used to provide updates on the status of IT services or even to provide updates on issues affecting buildings. The main premise is to stop calls coming into the Contact Centre for large events and to keep operators free for dealing with ad hoc customer effecting issues. You could also take this further and use a Social Media platform to handle issues and crowd-source resolutions. This happens outside of many organisations today but some companies are starting to adopt this approach. Crowd-sourcing in this case should be a paid activity and provided by a bureau type organisation so at least there are some checks and balances in place. An interesting thought occurred to me around following customers on Twitter which would allow them to report problems and also allow organisations to get a real world view of how their products and services are performing and address any issues straight away. With some limitations this could also apply to Public Sector organisations but there may be more reluctance to go Social in this area. Having said that I think the opportunities out there to engage people and services are potentially huge.

Lastly and I will keep this brief is that we can use new technologies to create co-operatives with specific skill-sets. Setting up functional co-operatives requires the use of collaborative tools and utilising Social Media platforms allows that to happen at little cost. I’d like to explore the principle of creating co-operatives  a lot further but in the interests of brevity I will leave that for another blog entry. I will say though that my vision for this style of working is to encourage apprenticeships and to create a collaborative approach to work that brings benefits to the people engaged and their customers.

I think it’s a great time to look at doing things differently and I’d like to think that others out there are thinking along similar lines.

I have been to a few events and at a couple I have procured services from contacts and these have been really valuable. For me then networking has proved to work when I am actively looking for specific services, but I would suspect I am in the minority when doing this. The flip side is that I haven’t actually managed to pick up any business so I’m not sure if my area of business is unsuited to this type of event or I’m not selling well enough. To be honest I suspect the latter but I have no baseline information really to provide me with a definitive answer.

So I’m interested in your views and I would like to take the debate a bit further into Virtual Business Networks such as LinkedIN and Focus. I don’t believe that anything can really replace a face to face meeting but if are there any success stories out there in the virtual world, I would like to know.