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- So many management concepts!
Smoking or non smoking management concepts? I really like this one !
Remind me an old chart about management concepts life cycle...
- A good manager has surely to be stress tolerant, have to feed his curiosity, ...
In daily life, some nice vizualization tools can help him (look at the demos...)
Ignorance is his basic state. Can Artificial intelligence, this prothesis to natural ignorance help him?
("Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity?" Steve Polyak)
And so much tasks, contradictory, so many mails, sometimes useful, sometimes just "umbrella" mails ("I copy you, so I am clean"), sometimes just business intelligence information. Microsoft showed that over 70% of information workers spend a fifth of their time or more on e-mail related tasks.
How do people deal with these queues of "things to do", are their trade-off, to decide to do or not, based on their own personal priority system or on organization priority system ?
Recent studies by IDC, the Working Council of CIOs, the Ford Motor Company, and Reuters found that:
* Knowledge workers spend from 15% to 35% of their time searching for information.
* Searchers are successful in finding what they seek 50% of the time or less.
* 40% of corporate users report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their intranets.
* Some studies suggest that 90% of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports is spent recreating information that already exists.
* An IDC report suggests that rework costs an enterprise about $5,000 per person per year for an estimated annual total of $12 million dollars across the U.S. Furthermore, not locating and retrieving information has an opportunity cost of $15 million dollars per year.
People are still interested in "learning" how to deal with email better. Maybe Web2 can offer some solutions - for a recent analysis of the situation, see Michael Sampson's series of posts on the topic that starts here..
...but is there a danger that Web2 opportunities amplify the problem?
So many publications mentionning this topic. Does that mean that
- nobody understand anything?
- there are some unsolved problems in the concept and its application?
- it is now just a way for vendors (consultants, gurus, SOA solutions providers, scorecard specialists ) to market
- Organizations, in spite of the "official speech", are very very far from that?
One of the permanent criticism is that too much governance can kill agility, can kill innovation and adaptation.
It is sure that governance concepts and techniques are mainly "mechanistic", and sometimes far from systemic and "organic" adaptation.
Often too, within governance speeches, a "human" point of view is developed, but is it sincere or just "window dressing"?
Some rebounds on that:
- Is governance, agility incompatible? May be, not?
- SOX and management decommitment !!!
This can occur in some big companies, that are sometimes exceptional at the IT Governance point of view (IBM, ...), and now try to find the right balance between control and need of organic adaptation...
- the key Application Portofolio Management (APM) again and again
- as everybody knows, indicators are connected to Governance. BSC concept is not far, strategic mapping tools too...
Some example of comment on a good usage of bsc...
...a lot of education in business schools on BSC, in a lot of different disciplines
(financial control, governance, strategy, business plans, ...)
examples of students thinking on bsc...
CIO is just in the middle of all that.
- a lot of choices to do in the permanent pressure of demands...
- ...with end user power at last...
- Governance often means contracts. But contracts don't solve everything:
SLA (Service level agreements contracts) cannot replace cooperation in case of outsourcing
- How can CIO solve application challenges? Replace everything by an ERP ? Bridge everything with SOA and Web services? Good question.
- ...And CIO has to use already existing models like ITIL (and others, Cobit, CMMI, ISO xxx, ...)
After conducting this test (takes 5 minutes for the first test..), I must admit I am a typical procrastinator (but maybe you are too...)
(I defer very important thinks to do, creating permanent stress for myself...).
I like this article and formula on the topic.
It is surely too late for me to change !!
My permanent auto-justification is the fact I consider not doing things (at the end, I do some things...) is a way to unconsciously regulate myself, to leave non evident priorities/urgencies emerge, in the increasing stress of solicitation created by new communication world and media.
- A rather good online set of articles on Strategic Planning
- IT Gouvernance: Pénétration d'ITIL en augmentation, et quelques règles utiles pour réussir
- All companies nowadays know that main profit gains can come from supplier side, in a globalized world.
(and ....too bad for some suppliers, many ethics issues, where is win-win strategy?, ...)
This article give some good rules to follow in that perspective:
Strategic alignment, Cross-functionality, Simplification, ICT enabling, Process sourcing (BPO)
KM:
- Killer applications in KM? Good synthesis, but nothing new...
- Information is not knowledge! Wiki example
...and an opposite opinion there...
- As mentionned in my 14/1 contribution, role of KM for economies and ... need of KM adapted to specific cultures...
- About the permanent fight of librarians inside KM strategies...
- Back to basics: Deming on KM and management
- Good synthesis in this short executive abstract of some current IT market heavy trends:
Outsourcing for stable operations, new emerging technologies bundles, software subscription rather than ownership, ...
- Net Neutrality: an permanent issue, not solved...
and...
Some Hi-Tech news for teckies...
- BI (Business Intelligence) data delivered on phones: realistic?
- Moore law again: why not play on connectivity?
- Touch screens for many fingers: applications?
- Bug free software: open source a solution?
Created at the beginning of 90's, Mass Customization is still a heavy trend of the future:
How can a company can offer the high quality/low cost/fast delivery product and service to the market, and, at the same time, customize it perfectly for the client?
How can we play simultaneously a cost strategy and a differentiation strategy?
(french readers can look there to read a short contribution on role of time in MC...)
You will find, in this recent update on the topic:
Page 5: A very nice interview of Joseph Pine II, the author of the initial book on the subject.
Good thoughts about Web2 / Mass Customization synergies, cultural aspects.
Page 8: About personalized newspapers
Page 15-21: Mass Customization and fashion. Key for you life, key for your girl (if you are a boy, otherwise key for you...)
Look at this nice contribution, insisting on the fact processes are first and IT projects are just after.
The last sentences about Toyota sounds nice !
but....
all that concerns organization improvement and optimization.
What about innovations coming from synergy between:
creative new ideas of new services + use of emerging technologies to protect these ideas ?