My CFO thinks he knows technology

After a weeklong discussion on the new business opportunity that clearly defined the process and the strategy, the CMO thanked the IT team and the CIO for their active participation. Then he said something that resulted in pin drop silence and uneasy calm: I think the solution should be ready within a week from now ? You know in college we used to write code and release programs in a few days. The CIO decided to clarify different reality for enterprise solutions that require a bit longer for time measured in weeks and months.

The CIO had invited the CFO to the IT meeting to interact with the team; every month he used to call some of the business leaders to give the team differing perspectives of how they contributed to the business and made a difference. In an endeavor to show off his technical prowess, the CFO asked about the storage environment: why don’t you use the NAS for the ERP ? SAN is expensive; you should know how to economize ! I have been involved in many technology projects and want to help you to choose most optimum solutions !

I had the privilege of working with many CEOs who were tech savvy and challenged me to find new ways to use existing investments as well as keep scanning for new technologies which could be disruptive in the future. The joy of working with such CEOs multiplied the not just my enthusiasm but also kept my teams motivated to put in their best to keep us ahead of the curve. This obviously created a culture of tech adoption that infected the rest of the CXOs to create an enterprise that enjoyed the benefits that IT can bring to the business.

Life gets interesting when some of the CXOs think they know technology better than IT professionals just because they worked in a tech company or studied a programming language in their school. Above are just 2 samples of such dialogues which keep the CIOs challenged and humored at the same time. They would make a great compendium to keep the IT fraternity smiling for a long time; the question that keeps raising its head is how to address such “know IT all” and “been there, done that” situations without creating a scene.

In conversations with many CIOs sharing experiences a few strategies emerged which had worked for most of them. To begin with the general consensus was to humor them by letting them speak out their heart and then keep doing what is in best interest of the project, team and the company. They need a platform to voice their knowledge which makes them feel better about themselves; most are happy doing just that in a harmless way without realizing that their wisdom is no longer relevant to the current technology realities.

The balance select minority of self-professed and declared IT experts who really believe that they know, unaware of when to stop are a challenge that needs handling with care. In positions of influence or power, they can be seriously disruptive to progress. This elite group wants to stay involved, sit through review meetings, add value to discussions with vendors, and get into minute details of deep technology that is best left to the techies. The group had no silver bullet though everyone had faced and managed such individuals in their careers.

Some CIOs had escalated such incidents where possible to the CEO or the Board to get them off their backs. Another avenue appeared to be to get an external third party or consultant on board to provide an expert view to counter the often antiquated, incorrect or incomplete knowledge. For the rest it was about the adverse impact on their deliverables which they were unable to control. So they struggled with shifting goalposts and changing timelines driven by the inane and absurd; they just had to grin and bear it.

One CIO had decided to take on such a CXO head-on and not accept the nonsense; he corrected the CXO in meetings and gave alternative and at times contrary views which almost every time put the CXO in an embarrassing and compromised situation. Unable to withstand the humility of the situation, the CXO confronted the CIO: Why do you keep countering everything I say as if I know nothing ? You make me feel like a chump ! What makes you so right all the time as if you know everything ? Stop doing this else …

The CIO moved on to newer pastures leaving the company to the mercy of half-baked buzzword laden CXO.

Technology shaping human behavior

As a kid I used to watch Star Trek and marvel about Mr. Spock and the technology some of which is reality now. I also devoured (Isaac) Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and other science fiction fantasizing about the future possibilities that will change the way we live. When the internet made its presence felt and mobile technology started gaining traction, the realms of reality stretched imagination. Moving from the humble personal computer to the smartphone, the new world is impacting us in many ways directly and indirectly.

The last few years have seen a lot of technology wanting to attach to human body; fortunately it is still outside the body and not getting inside as yet. Fitness bands gave way to smart watches which doubled up to also show you the time while telling you about who is calling or the latest trends on social media of choice. Glasses anyone ? And there was a queue of people wanting to cover their eyes ! Directions from your favorite map service on your windscreen ? Why not also notify you about what your “friends” are excited about or what is trending ?

Is that a distraction to driving ? Let’s make cars that can drive themselves while you immerse yourself in the pervasive world of noise from all over. Traveling somewhere ? Write reviews and tell your friends, too bad some burglars also took notice that you are away from home. Stay connected wherever you are on WIFI, 3G, 4G, LTE, on your tablet, phablet, phone or at least the watch ? Your health parameters are being monitored and stored by some app. You can use it later to determine your health; so can someone else who you don’t know !

Will you scan before you eat ? Supermarkets would like to help you create your personalized basket of products which they can remind you to buy. All the packaged food companies would also like to know the products you consume so they know more about your eating habits. Next time you renew your health insurance, don’t be surprised by a markup or discount; the health insurance company also has vested interest in this data ! The situation is becoming Orwellian with Big Brother watching every move you make using Big Data.

The question that bothers me is why are we willingly obliging everyone ? What makes us want to obsessively stay connected and share the important to obscure to inane details of our lives ? Why are we allowing personal data to be used in a way that influences our actions and our behaviors ? This was not anyone’s favorite part in any futuristic idea or science fiction ? Digital addiction especially for the new Digital Native generation is rewiring responses; the thinking process is changing, our dependence on technology complete.

People have reported withdrawal symptoms when they are unconnected; the thumb is getting used beyond its evolved state leading to new diseases. Accidents are increasing with distracted mind unable to focus on walking or driving. Eyesight is adversely impacted while our hearing ability is impaired due to constant high volume sound from earphones. Over and above all of this, the expectation to respond to any stimulus (email, message, alert) instantly is putting psychological pressure on the connected generation.

Enterprises want productivity with the connectivity; corporate apps hijacking the personal phone, information driven process velocity is the new normal stretching the already challenged balance between work and life. The lines are blurring and both have intertwined into our awake hours in a way that does not leave any personal space or time. The resultant pressure and stress is increasing rate of heart ailments and lifestyle diseases in 20 something youth that were associated with 60+ in the past.

Some companies and governments have begun to take cognizance of this and are enforcing work hours in an attempt to wean off the addiction. How can parents do the same with the upcoming generation which is born to technology ? I believe that they will have to lead by example for the young ones and also at work for their teams. Wearable technology is here and urging you to participate; I know what you did last summer is now more like I know what you just did and what you are likely to do !

Digital free day anyone ?

The Perennially Dissatisfied User

This laptop is quite heavy; it gives me a pain in the neck and shoulder, I need something sleeker and lighter. Also the battery life should be at least 5 hours if not longer and minimum 1 TB of storage. You know an i7 processor would be great ! Why cannot we shift to the new Windows tablets which are so much lighter and also have a touch interface which makes life so easy ? I would love a larger screen but I am willing to compromise on the screen size if the tablet offers a full HD experience. Did you get what I want ?

This application is so antiquated ! Look at the user interface, this is really Jurassic; it would require a rocket scientist to use it. Why cannot the human machine interface be more like the social media sites which anyone can start using intuitively ? You missed the following key dimensions while capturing the data on the customer ! Where do you expect me to get so much data from ? I am required to sell and not just gather data about customers ! Why do reports take so much time to generate ? Can I see them on my mobile ? Is there an app for this ?

CIOs, software engineers, business analysts, hardware specialists, enterprise architects, for that matter if you are in IT and work with customers – internal more than external – every IT professional faces such questions every day; the above is just a sample of the discussions and challenges that get thrown in almost every interaction. It would appear that whatever you do, it never meets expectations. One interesting observation is that the critique increases with the age of the person and decreases with the tenure within the company.

Typically in the case of software solutions, when you approach your colleagues for inputs on what they want, they would normally start with a broad outline of what they require. You create something, go back for inputs, hoping to get closer to the end point; after multiple iterations you are either going round in circles or far removed from where you started. Do users of technology not know what they want or IT fail to connect to the need ? Every IT guy would vehemently say YES and the requesters would lament that IT guys don’t understand what we want.

Even if we assume that there is a chasm to bridge here, how can the same be extended to a simple request for hardware; can that be so complex ? A piece of hardware is a piece of hardware; differences between devices that organization endorses to the aspirational consumer devices incompatible with conventional corporate legacy systems exist for budgetary reasons more than any other. Mandate, as IT budgets are going up, buy cheaper devices. Yes off course, but why can we not get better battery life and bigger or better screens ?

Diagnosis attempted by wise and sundry professed theories that created industries to remedy the lacunae. Later and not sooner after spending inordinate budgets everyone realised that maybe there was no merit in the models. Evidently it had nothing to do with alignment between business and IT or the fact that the language spoken by the opposing parties has been classified to be incompatible. Then again, the efforts towards change have largely been lopsided. It is neither art nor science; it is to do with the unknown alien characteristic of IT users that IT professionals have been unable to master.

From Hollerith cards to Phablets and wearable technology, the pace of evolution has kept everyone guessing on the next shift. Unsettling yet consistent, the change has created an expectation that does not accept what is, but wants the unreasonable until it becomes reality. Shifting targets keeps everyone running only to find that they haven’t moved much. I do not believe that the game will change in the near foreseeable future. Users will keep asking for the moon, while actually meaning the light bulb and the description matches that of a CFL.

Keep playing the game while you can, sometimes you may hit the target in the dark !

Walk the Talk

Almost all of my posts are based on personal experience or interactions with people from various walks of life. For a change looking for new topics to write about, I started scanning a few websites positioned at CIOs and aspiring CIOs. I also decided to look up a few celebrity bloggers and tech writers who have either been ex-CIOs or respected consultants and speakers in many CIO forums internationally.

I do receive and read more than 50 odd newsletters every day across various subjects; industry specific from retail (my chosen industry for the last 5 years), Human Resources (for people tips and ideas), ecommerce, social media, leadership, current affairs, regional news, politics, and many CIO focused sites. These are supplemented with some internet browsing, 5 newspapers and some IT magazines daily. The summaries and news briefs keep me updated with information which helps me understand trends and stay current with the world.

Coming back to my search of the sites, the idea was to look at what is the world taking about ? Can I pick up a few insights that could help me in creating the next week’s blog ? Are my posts still relevant to the CIO or I am living in a world detached from reality. What new innovation have I missed while running on the technology treadmill (see last week’s post) and getting to be a retailer and a coach to start-up CEOs and future CIOs ?

Headlines on new product introductions (tablets, phones, servers) and some of the hyped upcoming technologies took up 70% of the landing page across all the sites. A few links to notable blogs on the sites, vendor advertisements and videos made up another 20%. Desperately I started scanning for CIO leadership, business challenges, innovation, people management, and customer engagement, anything that was removed from technology.

On one site I did find some hidden behind a menu option; it was a CIO case study on how she overcame a difficult business situation with her expertise in business. On another site a menu button offered expert advice but clicking a few links got me some technology experiments and vendor sponsored white papers.  When every publication rues and makes a case for a business savvy CIO, why is the content not reflecting this ? Why are these sites still about technology and are they really targeting the CIO ?

Take any IT publication (physical or electronic), irrespective of the target audience (CIO, IT Managers, channel partners, broad-based audience), the editorial or one of the cover stories is always about what the CIO should be doing to stay relevant to the business. The underlying theme is always about business before IT. But after the preaching is done, back to business as usual, do you know about the new 64 core server or the next crossover device with zillion pixel screen ?

They proclaim, CIOs should evolve, cite surveys from other CXOs, CIOs, vendors … and then publish technology trends, new servers, tablets, smartphone comparisons, stuff that matters to a technology professional and detached from a CIO who would depend on his/her team to advise him on  the relevant tools required to achieve the defined business objective. Why can they not walk their talk if their defined target audience is indeed the CIO or the senior IT leader ?

I believe that evolution is slower and selective than technology innovation.

The Technology Treadmill

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." – Theodore Roosevelt

There have been predictions on hot technologies and trends to watch for across the board; from vendors, IT consulting companies, media companies (not just IT), academic circles, groups of various kinds and individuals, CIOs or otherwise. The lists short and long, good and bad have caught the imagination of many CIOs as well as others within the company who are asking how will it impact us within the company, and our customers.

It is certain that a few will create enough hype and threaten disruption. Be it personal devices or back end technologies or even consumer facing applications, every new tool or technology promises to change the way business is conducted or we engage with customers. Some are improvements over existing tools with the novelty factor fading away quickly with the response of the existing leaders; the rest fail to follow up on the initial promises.

We occasionally find some actually providing benefit to the enterprise, some measurable, the rest is largely a race against competition to deploy and look savvy. Our employees and customers expect the adoption of almost every new announcement the following day. Thoughts about security or reworking or plain simple ROI are for the CIO to figure out. Vendors and consultants definitely benefit from this running behind the technology.

From the time of the mainframes to the promise of the Internet, social media, and consumerized devices of today with apps and everything in between, technology has created opportunities and challenges for the IT organization. The pace of change is increased with ubiquitous technology; the accelerator is now on auto with everyone running to stay in place. Can we afford to stay where we are and be observers or slow adopters with a hope to survive the mad rush to nowhere ? Is there likely respite from the ever increasing pace of changing expectations ?

The technology treadmill will continue to move irrespective of whether we hop on board or not. It is extremely unlikely that we will be allowed to stay on the sidelines and admire the speed at which the treadmill and its players are going. CIOs will have to stay connected to the pulse and inspect every change from multiple angles. Some team members will have to keep jumping on and off the treadmill to ensure that the ramifications are understood and communicated effectively to set realistic expectations.

In most cases, the call on which ones to stay with or discard will remain with the IT organization. Success or lack of it will however be decided by our internal and external customers and stakeholders. Can the CIO get off the technology treadmill and stay relevant ? I believe that pragmatically the CIO and now even the other CXOs have no choice. They did not enroll into this madness but have been made party to simply by being there; exclusion is not even an option any more.

I am going back to the treadmill with a quote that I leave behind after listening to some retired CIOs. “Strangely enough this is the past that someone in the future is longing to go back to” – Ashleigh Brilliant.

Achieving business agility between ERP and Cloud

An intense debate between two CEOs ensued while I was listening with concentration to them; there was no debate on the need for every business to leverage technology to stay ahead of industry growth curve. Both had experienced success, but there was indeed a bone of contention. One of the leaders vehemently recounted the inability of ERP solutions and vendors to address the market dynamics. He cited many instances where the ERP vendor as well as his IT organization took longer time than business could afford; small solace that his competitors also used the same solutions and thus had similar issues.

The other CEO countered with an equal number of scenarios when the specific ERP had indeed been ahead of others. Now every ERP solution provides a complex array of parameters and settings that can be manipulated to provide functionality for most business processes. This complexity also becomes a bottleneck when any change is required. It is rarely as agile as other smaller solutions that can quickly be customized. CIOs have had difficult discussions on this aspect with Business and Vendor alike. The monolithic nature of the solutions indeed poses a challenge. Not that there are too many options, so the technology ecosystem has created multiple layers to manage the agility requirements.

Grudging acknowledgements later, both glared at me as if to validate their arguments and then turned back to each other. Before they could continue, I pitched in with thoughts on the new opportunity that has everyone confused and wondering with benefit statements ranging from better ROI to TCO, time to market, productivity, and the panacea to all ills that face every enterprise that uses technology.

This brought a smile to the face of the second CEO who began to lecture on the future being cloudy and why current IT models will no longer survive. He elucidated the benefits of the new disruptive paradigm the Cloud is and why enterprises should be embracing this. Now the other looked imploringly at me to help him and I could not refuse the request. After all I had broached the subject so I had to provide a perspective.

Differing flavours of clouds offer different value propositions; the viewpoint put across by the CEO related to Application and Software as a Service. Both offer an easy way to deploy and get started on any new business area or process. The most widely accepted scenarios are sales force automation and collaboration; for SME the benefit is limited upfront investments and no worries about managing complex technology. Beyond these mainstream business process remain firmly grounded in corporate data centres.

Irrespective of their physical location, the big ERP remains the same animal, big monolithic and complex. Separating processes like sales force or collaboration (read email, chat, etc.) does not in any way create an opportunity for agile business process alignment for the rest of the enterprise. In fact with the cloud, the base expectation is that business processes are standard and can thus be uniform across multiple companies. Clouds provide faster start points, but the change ability remains similarly constrained. A question from the audience inquired about ROI models for evaluating Clouds; that is another story for another day.

The two CEOs representing a large business house and a leading global ERP vendor acknowledged the reality and it was time to move on. The CEOs and CIOs listening to the interaction went away with both sides of the coin clear (?) to create their own agenda and discussion in their enterprises.

The vanity show of technology

“Apple announces iPad 2 with better, faster, newer ….. Bargains available on earlier version.”

“When software vendors continue to create new versions of every solution, there is pressure on us to stay with current versions; how do we manage such a paradigm with budget constraints?”

The first is news that everyone saw and reacted to depending on their reference point with the much coveted tablet computer that is a must have on many lists. Some queued up to get the new device last weekend, while others decided to capitalize on the available bargains on the earlier version. Few competing tablet manufacturers wondered on how they can keep pace.

The second was a question from an SME (small and medium enterprise) CEO to a panel of big enterprise CIOs in a seminar organized by one of the large office automation, unified communication, and collaboration solution vendor for the mid-market customers. Majority of the audience nodded to the question as if they all faced the same predicament and did not know how to resolve the situation.

Vanity Fair

There appears to be an inherent desire amongst us to crave the latest version of gadgets or software similar to the desires to keep up with the latest trends in fashion that vanity demands. The technology vanity also permeates organizations; after all the same individuals pride themselves flaunting the latest must have phone, music player, and camera, whatever.

Organizations can ill afford such a race and the break point has a direct correlation to the profitability of the enterprise and the contributions of the IT function. The enamoured CEO and CIO will also cite examples of how and why it matters and the benefit thereof to the business, customers, and off course themselves.

When this is weighed against the basic rules of conducting prudent business with rationale investments filtered using good governance rules, the decision shifts to what matters. Every organization has a set of rules for financial investments; these measure the results and provide a framework that applies in most cases to every decision. However, IT sometimes escapes this rigor with justifications ranging from necessity for security to lack of support on older versions, fear of obsolescence and many in between. In absence of tools to validate or ignorance, and the incessant push from the vendors, the SME customer faces devil’s choice.

Being prudent

Irrespective of size and compulsions driven by technology vanity, vendor threats, competitive scares, boardroom chatter, or peer pressure, the rules of good investment decisions should always stay in the forefront. My answer to the question from the CEO was, “We still think like the SME we were in the past. Every investment has to answer the following questions: Does it help the customer, employee, or shareholders? Does it create a new capability we require to differentiate? Is it required by law? If none applies, then the investment is not undertaken.

But then the thirst for the latest is irrational. We have become participants to a mega race to acquire the next. There is no justifying the next version of laptop with the latest processor, nor any rationale for the next zillion megapixel camera. Why do we need the latest version of communicator or the micro-app on our phone? I think the simple answer is because it is there!