- 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?
- Just found a good new book about KM and performance manager. It examines the partnership between decision-makers and the people who provide them with information to drive better decisions and suggestions for 42 decisions areas, taking into account the need to understand your data, but also plan and monitor performance.
- One way to start KM in an organization is to consider it as a service
- KM often needs technology, what do you do in front of that kind of people (good funny story about relation with technology ! I know so many people like that...)
More seriously, I like Martin Koser blog, with this relevant post on Management tools and Bain article
- The conventional wisdom today is that the flow of knowledge cannot be organized and driven by IT
- Management of K is not enough, you have too to do things !
- ...and always this relation between Innovation and KM techniques
- Librarians are the historically first "knowledge managers" in organizations. Now, all managers are supposed to be ! Are librarians out? Or any manager is the librarian?
- But classification not so easy: look at this good literature synthesis of some connected concepts
- Teaching (I'm a teacher) and KM tools: a relevant list of techniques
- PKM, a new buzzword or individual productivity still a key challenge?
and Davenport's thoughts about it
- Against dominant thoughts, creating knowledge, tagging changes and improves KM...
- I like this idea about KM strategy to capitalize on know-how can be counterproductive, in the case the know-how you store is average, too low level. It can inhibit employee's will to experiment.
- KM, organizational learning gurus still alive, studying how KM can be a link between NGO and companies, in case they want to cooperate.
-...and a good way to use knowledge at the bottom of the pyramid...
- Are incentives on KM good enough to stimulate K improvement?
Is BI so far from KM? Where is the real frontier?
Does BI concerns more "weak noises", unknown things, intelligence of outside and KM more known things, inside existing knowledge?
BI tools can be applied inside, e.g. to discover new concept through BI analysis of internal stream of messages!
So, what new on BI?
- Good strategy and BI: there is a clear convergence between strategy and BI
- Data mining is the central tool of any BI mechanism...
BPM: Processus, toujours un thème central. Ce séminaire a lieu en Europe pendant tout 2007.
Some very nice useful charts, from Gartner, about best of BPM, and a lot of additional charts.
Among these, this one about BPM and SOA relation, or another one...
but... what about HOP (Human and Organizational Performance)?
Must human problems be treated before technological and organizational problems? Old debate.
Is corporate performance depending from good management of management processes?
Sure it is a key necessary condition, but not sufficient!
Projects and processes are closely related:
- What is a process ? many good definitions, but one way is to see it as a never ending project.
So you can apply some of project methodologies to processes.
Why not, for example, prototype a process as we, in agile companies, prototype projects?
- Alignment of projects with strategies is key. To do that, we have to recognize that 90% of projects are created to optimize way of doing, processes. So, project prioritization needs first processes prioritization!
...so what's new about IT projects ?
New world of IT projects, towards globalized agile companies...
and some still alive good laws about conditions of IT projects success (systems integration, databases, IT governance, cost reduction, and delegating work to IT)
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, ...)
I like this one:
MIT's Michael Schrage explains why getting highly relevant results from a search can actually inhibit the iterative process by which we discover and learn.
Idea we have about relevance of our search evolves while searching. Creativity can come from that iterative process too:
I search something, I am partially dissatisfied of the result, that makes me refocus on new idea about my search, I search again, ....
So: If you find what you search immediatly, you stop your brain ! Nice philosophical thought.
You can find there nice high level contributions about searching...
Just took this one too:
Jim McGee talks about the need for businesses to allow employees time to think, and the extent to which thinking can be done in the social public of blogs.
About fast thinking, I adore this fast (at the speed of the brain ), intelligent video from Michael Wesch (Kansas State University) about Web2 (but don't like the music, I stopped the sound...)
Some additionnal comment on it....
Ultimate and permanent challenge for people, companies, societies is to innovate (to survive?)
This week, a lot of point of view on this topic, re-emphasizing some basic evident ideas:
First, innovation in IT is often nowadays coming from "transgressive renegades".
Continuous flow of new emerging technologies allows permanently unsatisfied end-user to invent their way.
A good IT department must consider/absorb these innovations, considered as valid prototypes, and to transform them into reliable professional solid applications...
This idea is not far from the need, for organizations who want to adapt and change, to capitalize on "change agents" (This way is the only way! Organizations, closed in their today's paradigm, cannot event imagine the methods of to-morrow. Fortunately, some people, these change agents, are already in to-morrow's paradigm....)
Not far too from this idea is the search of "bumpy bits"
If the world is flat, seek out the bumpy bits, in an aligned, flat world....
But innovation must be highly stimulated by collaboration, toward collective creativity. That is a new key mission for CIOs...
Some people can think there is a conflict then between IT Governance (driving to a flat aligned world?) and creativity stimulation (subversive guys...). Good debate, where opinions (and experiences) are mixed...
Informal network concept, illustrated by 1993 famous article "The Company Behind the Chart" in Harvard Business Review, still the key condition, following Booz-Allen-Hamilton, for collective creativity.
Some french thinking now...
Les universités, lieu d'innovation, devraient quant à elles être en pointe. Mais...
Le budget de R&D de la Chine, dont les grandes universités s'inspirent du MIT ou de Stanford, va dépasser celui du Japon... qui achève une réforme sans précédent de ses universités... tandis que l'université de Cambridge investit dans des « hedge funds » pour ses placements !!!
Why did I focus on Innovation this week? Just because a friend of mine sent me a personality test, to check if I was really a "strategist" (my official title on my business card...). And guess what? I am not a "strategist", but an "innovator" !!! And you?
J'était hier à une très stimulante réunion, rassemblant les penseurs avancés (et multi-disciplinaires) français dans le domaine du Marketing .
(Au fait, ne manquez pas le site visionnarymarketing , tout y est bon et sensé, jetez un oeil au dossier Marketing des produits ICT, au blog bien vivant...)
Allez donc voir aussi ce site de base sur votre nécessaire bibliothèque de base !!!
La discussion d'hier aurait bien mérité un "bribecast".
Parmi les sujets de discussion et de débats, stimulante interaction avec Thierry Maillet, autour de son livre très moderne et cultivé: Génération Participation .
Partiel, partial et en vrac:
- Débat animé ce soir là entre les optimistes croyant fermement dans une tendance participative montante, dans l'espoir d'une noosphère à la Theillard de Chardin (pour les très très vieux lecteurs, il y a eu bien d'autres auteurs et approches depuis...) et ceux qui y croient moins, malgré la montée de valeurs nouvelles et les possiblités coopératives offertes par les techniques (Web2 and Co). Les "philosophies" pour le Marketing découlent bien sûr fortement de ces postures initiales.
- Rebonds sur la perception de la rationalité (limitée...) du consom'acteur (terme crée dès 2001 par Thierry) , qui peut certes tout comparer, choisir les prix optimaux, être totalement actif, participer, voire créer le produit (voire la démocratie? ) par sa demande mais qui peut aussi préférer rester passif, dans un confort accepté de manipulation par les marques, les archétypes et standards véhiculés par icelles...
Présentation également par Jérome Delacroix, auteur précurseur sur les wikis
Le débat a beaucoup tourné autour de wikipedia
Le contenu d'une telle encyclopédie universelle est-il de la science (au sens universitaire du terme), c'est a dire étayé, démontré, reconnu à l'intérieur d'une discipline, ne disant sur le monde réel que des choses suffisamment valides (à un instant donné, dans une culture donnée), ou "bottom-up", spontané et transverse, reflétant de façon plus journalistique et événementielle un autre réel, aussi consistant, du monde?
Le savoir présent est-il neutre ou suspect?
Joli débat non fini!
Le consom'acteur va-t-il avoir à terme plutôt envie:
scenario a: de participer à ces nouvelles cathédrales du savoir...
scenario b: de pencher pour le N.A.O. ("Narcissisme assisté par Ordinateur"), à travers des blogs, des articles non lus dans l'opulence communicationnelle, ces journaux personnels, ces bouteilles à la mer...
scenario c: de plonger dans les réseaux virtuels, certains visant à créer des clubbismes stables dans des objectifs variés (business, plaisirs, jeux et mondes virtuels à la "second life", ou mouvants et infidèles, conformes à l'esprit initial de Rheingold ?
Là encore, le Marketing doit sans doute regarder ça plus finement qu'aujourd'hui !
A lot of informations recently published on this theme.
What are the "new" issues and opportunities for CIO's ?
Let's take a quote from this one
Ovum analysts say in their Summit Seven predictions. "Virtualization, service-oriented architecture, management automation and integrated workflow tools will increasingly be coupled with externally provided software-as-a-service (SaaS), utility computing, business process outsourcing and other network-hosted applications and business services to create highly dynamic enterprise service delivery environments."
Not a bad list! but so many challenges inside! Just to take an example, SOA not so easy, and the article warns on that.
(for those who are not SOA experts, a good recent synthesis there)
See too the feelings of James Champy, ex reengineering guru: IT budget growth, but under control, lack of professional talents, offshoring still on, no technological revolution...
And McKinsey view: SOA and Lean production...
I like too the personal analysis of JP Corniou in his blog (e-voeux 2007), reemphasizing some challenges like level of CIO within organizations, need to prove continuously the value generated by IT, challenges of standards for IT, outsourcing and offshoring decisions, cultural and educational aspects, ...
Determine too what kind of CIO you are (business leader, innovation agent, operational expert, turnaround artist) in this nice report with quiz and ...look at global statistical results!