The Hyperconnected Executive

We live in a world of information overload, information thrust at us across all mediums; print, hoardings, building facades, transport buses, taxis, email, SMS, chat, social media, and now multiple mobile devices that wake up and stay with us until we go back to sleep. In bed, while traveling, at work, at home, with friends, in a meeting, relaxing by the beach, even while in the washroom, we are now connected, consuming, creating and contributing information to the ever growing heap.

Information overload was a term I heard long time ago when dial-up internet connectivity was just beginning to get into our homes. Suddenly the world of information opened up; over the years the quantum of information just continued to grow exponentially while technology folks created new terms to encompass the new paradigm. KB to MB took longer than MB to GB did and GB to TB to PB happened in a jiffy. Suddenly it appeared to be more than we wanted. Nostalgically, we did enjoy occasional moments of privacy with sparse cellular coverage, unaffordable handsets and obscenely high tariffs.

So when along with a few CIOs I met a learned senior consultant talking about the disruptive nature of technology innovations, it provoked an interesting debate. He outlined his theory on hyper connected information overload that every executive faces today. He postulated a world of hyper mobility where devices connected or disconnected from people receive information on the go. People consume this information and take decisions that influence business and personal outcomes. Everyone agreed and sought to look at the future. The wise man smiled and refrained from making any predictions.

The phenomenon today is driven by multiple location-aware mobile devices all connected to an ecosystem of corporate data and applications and personal/business social media interlaced with multiple apps. Thus corporate decisions are no longer only dependent on transactional or analysed data within the enterprise. This trend is increasing exponentially with buzz around Big Data which encompasses all the data. It however does not factor in the speed at which information is disseminated to the consumer of information. Are we burning the wires, read wireless, faster than we can process it ?

I do carry 3 devices (almost) everywhere with me; my laptop, my tablet and my smartphone. Across these almost all the information I need on the go is synchronized over the air. They are interchangeable and yet serve different purposes. From one line responses on the phone to approvals, dashboards and longer responses on the tablet, the laptop is still the device for writing posts like this and doing a lot of figure work with formulas or creating presentations. I know many would jump up and say all this is doable on the tablet; I personally find it easier on the laptop.

With divergence being the new convergence, it is certain that we will continue to waddle between screens; a recent study talked about multi-taskers using two or three screens connected to the same desktop computer for enhanced productivity. Really productive ? Velocity of information will continue to increase and our day will continue to shrink. We are doing more everyday thanks to technology. Our world is more productive, our companies more profitable; as individuals we see ourselves evolving faster, achieving goals quicker than we did even a decade ago. Will we ever stop ? I don’t know.

What will be the next disruption in this space ? A connected device to keep us busy while we sleep ?

Do CIOs really take real vacations ?

Last month I was confronted by a peculiar but innocent question from a young professional, “Do CIOs take real vacations ? I mean real long vacations with friends and family free from all the worries of workplace and fighting fires that keep them at work beyond the normal hours ?”. I began to wonder about the question and the more I thought about it, the more it troubled me. I mean, vacations without my email, phone, laptop, no connectivity; that was eons ago.
Today every executive irrespective of hierarchy is consumed by the need to stay connected to the workplace. Downloaded information and alerts keep the buzz going 24X7. Approvals via phone, business intelligence on the fly are the norm; one cannot ever claim that I was not informed or I did not have access to information. To add to the clutter, friends and partners want to stay connected using various social networks.

So what is the vacation about ? Working on the road with interruptions on the phone, balancing the laptop in between site seeing trips, late night responses to emails with long attachments, talking to a vendor while soaking into the natural beauty staring in the face ? For most of us who travel across time zones, the first reflex is to reach out to the phone to see what came through while we caught up with the forty winks.

What does it take to sell the Ferrari and become a monk who has no links to what we call “work”, while immersing into “life”. Is that a possibility in the hyper-connected fast paced activity conundrum ? We CIOs created this paradigm for our enterprises to which every corporate employee is a slave.

Imagine if we did not answer the phone (makes us appear rude), stopped responding to emails and had an active “Out of Office” message, let team fight the fires that make up a regular day at work; would it make a stress free day ? 9 out of 10 times people would say yes, but 9 out of 10 times they will suffer higher stress levels’ wondering about what is indeed happening.

So is there a way out ? I would hazard to say yes and it requires excruciating will power to execute; go at it one hour at a time. That is like taking baby steps and setting a realistic target because stating that I will not look at that device called the phone, laptop, or tablet; for a week is unlikely to happen. Feeling awkward, I called many CIO friends who took vacations recently and asked them if they did what I have outlined above. No prizes for the result of the survey.

I think Bob Dylan had seen the future when he wrote in the year I was born “The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, …”.

Guess what, next vacation I am going to try it. (it’s always the next, isn’t it ?)

Time Value of Information

Every now and then, there’s a flurry of activity, questions and debate around real time information, on inventory, sales, production, process approvals, financial metrics, and so on. The passionate appeals by vendors makes one wonder whether the business is really inefficient or missing out on a large opportunity by not disseminating information to the managers and CXOs in real time. Add to this the new dimension of “complex event processing”, and the picture depicts a Jurassic era of information enablement.

Real time information availability has been business’ aspiration for a long time. IT enablement of the processes and operations in an enterprise expedited availability, but batch processing still did not provide the information as the event happened. As the data mining tools matured and models appeared for predictive modeling, gaps of the present became very evident. SOA Integration and middle layer technology solutions reduced the time gap. Mobile computing removed the physical presence limitation, as trickles of information could be provided on the handheld.

Now cast an eye across industries and various processes that are fed with, or create information. We will observe that today information flows with every step, decision, and event, irrespective of the sector, size or geography, the paradigm is uniform. People create information, people consume information, and people transform information. Managers, supervisors, CXOs, and even customers, seek control with real time information availability. Is it necessary to provide real time information to all the stakeholders? How does it change their behavior, decision or end outcome, if at all?

Take the case of retail. For a customer shopping in a store, price information on nearby stores in real-time is valuable, as it helps her get the best price for a product. To the retailer, a product sold is information, as it indicates that a customer has chosen a product from the shelf, and the stock count is down by one. Based on the supply chain’s agility, the retailer can use this information to plan for replenishment. The information can also be shared with a supplier who may use this snippet for planning next delivery and the impact on production schedule.

All this looks good in a one-one relationship, but when you multiply the dimensions, the complexity renders the simplistic scenario unviable as the optimization across the value chain has multiple constraints that operate on each decision point. Even when the collation and decision points can be automated, “complex events” have a way of making decision making a really difficult task requiring human intervention. In the above scenario, if the retailer received hourly information, will it materially impact the quality of decisions or process triggers (like a replenishment)?

The ground reality is that real time information does matter to an enterprise, but the rule cannot be applied for every byte of information. For a nuclear reactor, there is no other way. In case of a manufacturing plant, PLC data is, inventory data is not. Similarly for a financial institution, risk positions can build up quickly unless near real time monitoring exists, but a trial balance can wait for end of day. The application of technology for real time information is a good tool to be judiciously applied, and not get carried away by the use cases presented by the seller of the technology. If you are not doing it, get started, but ask the question at every stage. What changes with real time information?

Paradoxically, this post is delayed due to travel !