Project X Discussions

Getting Most Out Of Technology

How can we get the most out of technology?  Are you a digital native or are you a digital immigrant?  I expect the people who grew up with using technology will be able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by technology more easily.   The people who come to technology later in life find doing things in new ways more difficult.  Imagine changing the way you have done something for the last ten years quite successfully.  However if we are going to become more productive we need to embrace change and use technology to become more productive. 

The revolution in subject research is absolutely amazing.  Children in middle or high school have resources at their fingertips that would be difficult in the past for graduate students.  The reports and insights from my eleven year old grandchild about Mayan culture was incredible.  They seem to be able to use the new tools with great facility.

The new tools available on the web for learning are absolutely mind boggling for digital immigrants like myself. 

I found this neat metaphor on the following site about the use of technology in education.  http://www.edutopia.org/adopt-and-adapt   This article presents some of the challenges our schools face in introducing the digital world. 

I think one of the things that digital natives expect is challenges in using new approaches whereas digital immigrants find difficulties frustrating and discouraging. 

I think one way of becoming more at home in the digital world is to learn the language and use it.  Apparently the best way for any immigrant to be successful in their new home is develop facility with the language.  In the digital world, the language is difficult to understand and uses many short forms.  We need to experiment and after you use the words several times they become your own.

Can You Boil The Ocean?

I thought I would cross-post these thoughts I blogged about over on my personal blog as they have direct relevance here a Project X's blog.  Hope you enjoy it!

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My 7 year old daughter asked me what I meant while I was talking on the phone and used the phrase "Don't try and boil the ocean?"  I was working from home and talking to a client and used the term that we are undoubted all familiar with.  When I got off the phone she asked me, "Dad, how come you can't boil the ocean?"

I simply said, "It's an expression sweetheart.  You know, if you try and do something too large you can't do it.  Just like you couldn't boil all the water in the ocean away.  Understand?"

She scrunched her nose and I could see she was thinking.  Then she replied, "You could if you used mom's pot."

I replied, "A pot would be too small wouldn't it?"

She answered, "Yeah but you would just do it over and over again.  One pot at a time."

To this I smiled and chuckled as I reflected on the truth of her statement.  It got me thinking about the approach that my consulting group and I take when approaching client problems.  Project X leverages a Rapid Results approach, striving to chunk things down into 100 day initiatives that deliver value.  In effect, our approach for producing value through short engagements that make up a larger organizational strategy is akin to boiling the ocean one pot at a time. 

Using Technology as Transformation Tool

How often is technology used as a change agent?   The readiness for the organization to embrace the change is often a problem.  In data warehousing we talk about having one version of the truth.  The data comes from a single source rather than various spreadsheets or spreadmarts.  Senior management wishes to see one set of information rather than dueling spreadmarts. 

The discipline required to manage the data warehouse replaces the challenge of dealing with inconsistent reports.  The technology moves the management problem from one issue to another.  Often the people will shift the burden to the data warehouse and the data warehouse requires new disciplines from the people people suppling data. 

A successful change requires cooperation and recognition of the important of the change.  With the right approach and understanding of the objectives of the project, major transformations can occur.  We believe the best approach is to introduce the new approach in shorter three month sub-projects rather than on big change.  With this approach small issues can be solved before they become big problems. 

Education Transformation

I thought I'd cross post an article I wrote on my blog regarding some thoughts on transforming education here on the PXTLD blog since it directly relates to some of the work we do.

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I've spent some time over the past few months carrying out some strategy work in the education market as a part of our Education Transformation solution offering.  The way technology is leveraged by kids has always been something I've been interested in (here are past posts), both because I have children of my own & because I am always looking for ways that organizations can extract real value from their investments in information technology.

As I have worked with my own children over the past couple of years, I've come to see more and more that this generation of children is really changing due to being a digital generation. I saw this as well when I created and operated the Youth Technology Camp program for children.

Our children are changing, the world they will enter after school is changing, so why is it that education has not changed that much?  I don't think that it has kept up with the changing nature of the world with which it has found itself (a good video that drives home the point of rapid change is this one titled Did You Know).

So how is education changing and where is it all going?  What does it mean to transform our education system into a 21st century model?  To best understand this change, we need to understand the changes as they relate to the various stakeholder, processes and objectives.  The transition from Education 1.0 to today's Education 2.0 and eventually the future Education 3.0 is causing a fundamental paradigm shift in various aspects of education.  The diagram to the left tries to capture this change.  Most importantly is the move to a customized approach for each student.  That is truly disruptive.  It is akin to the the level of customization we receive in so many other areas of our lives.  For example, banks have embraced technology to try and deliver us a more customer-intimate experience, a one-on-one relationship between the bank and its customers.  The expectation is part of the culture today and kids are growing up with that.  Education needs to strive to deliver that type of learning environment to today's youth. 

Moving at the Speed of the Slowest Participant

Is the pace of a project determined by the slowest participant?  My friend was on a canoe trip with a group of families and on a canoe trip it is important that they all stay together.  They moved very slowly because some of the paddlers were not a strong as others. 

My friend found it very frustrating because he likes a hard paddle and loves a good pace.  The only solution was to put a strong paddler with a weaker one to improve the pace. 

He also realized that depending on the objectives of the trip he needs to pick his fellow paddlers.  On a family trip, he must realize the pace will not be to his liking.  For a "real" canoe trip, he will select more capable paddlers.

I think these insights also apply to our projects.  If you have slower paddlers on the team, putting them with stronger paddlers will increase the speed of the project.

Niche Consulting Firms

Project X Ltd has now been around for just under 5 years and have evolved into a Niche Advisory and Technology Services organization.  In discussions over the weekend, I had a great conversation with someone from industry about why we are choosing to stay niche and what value this brings to our clients.

So let's frame this a bit and provide a some context for this blog post.  eHealth Ontario has come under fire lately about their use of consultants and the associated costs that have produced no return for the taxpayers.  Sadly I do not know anything other than what is published in the papers or web, so I can't comment on this.  But it was a good starting point about how big does not necessarily mean good and the staffing model at the other extreme can also not be as manageable.

When Graham and I first described what we wanted to build we modeled our company off of Gellman Hayward and Partners Ltd who we both had been exposed to.  It was a great place with some great people doing great work.  Most importantly, it provided real, tangible value to its clients. 

We then looked at the gap that frequently exists between the business and technology and how finding a select area of expertise and a mind to this issue we could help facilitate the better utilization of IT by the business.  This lead us to Actionable Strategy and then eventually Rapid Results.

Why Rapid Results?

1. Mainly because this is what the business needs to be able to address the changing landscape of their business.
2. Our large competitors are not about that and need massive projects that last years.  We wanted results in 90 to 100 days.
3. Staffing resources though good, would not have the necessary glue and accountability to bring best practices to the client to help drive value.
4. We want to empower our clients to be able to utilize the same methods and breed change agents and most of our competition should be scared of this type of thinking.
5. Be fast, be nimble and most of all be focused on the results.  Use the process as a tool not the answer.

Whether we like the name of the approach of Rapid Results or the things it gives us the ability to do.  This is one of the underpinnings of us and how we operate as a niche firm and strive to drive value.  Our clients seem to like it and our competitors don't seem to want to do it.

Driving Value from Technology

How often does the technology not deliver the value that was expected?  The challenge is to discover why does it fall short.   Frequently the delivery people are blamed for not providing what was promised.  The delivery people blame the users for not being clear on the requirement. 

I expect that the underlying issue is related to change and how the change is being managed.  Unfortunately mentioning change and management in the same sentence evokes a "change management process."   Change management is treated as an element that is separate from the project as opposed to be integral to the process. 

Most organizations realize how important the new system is and the changes required.  However often the expectation is that the new system can be implemented as one big change.  My experience is that approach gives the organization indigestion and maybe even constipation, if you will excuse the metaphor. 

I believe that a phased introduction that delivers value and benefits quickly gives the organization confidence and momentum.  The design of a phased introduction is more complex than the big bang and requires more from the project designer.  The support of key people in the business is important for a phased introduction.

I recall a project where the key business users were reluctant to make a change to a new customer master file and the change required active and persistent support from their director to get them to make the change.  He patiently met with the team weekly and made it clear he was going to persist until than moved to the new system.  We ran into resistance at each phase but the director's support made it happen.  

In the long term we have all seen the value from technology.  However I think the pain of the change can be eliminated by the correct approach to the introduction.

itunes U

I recently discovered university courses on-line free at Itunes U.  For an introduction for go to

http://www.apple.com/ca/education/mobile-learning/

There are video and audio courses from some of the best universities in the world.  You can watch professors from Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, and many other places give undergraduate and graduate courses.  You do not get credit for the course but you sure can expand your knowledge.  Some of the content is more impressive than others but every single site delivers value.

They also have demonstrations for many schools in the K-12 range about new ideas on how to teach subjects.  One I looked at showed Grade 4 kids going for a walk everyday with a pedometer.  Then keeping track of their progress using Excel.  The ideas presented really stimulate your imagination.  Another showed a grade 12 biology class teaching grade 5 about cell biology. 

Great find!  Have a look.  I have been wondering about the business model that makes people publish to the site.  I suspect it is another way to promote your courses and also make them available to your students for review. 

Making Technology an Asset, Not a Liability

Is technology really providing value to your organization?  So often the business depends on the IT organization to deliver value rather than using technology to support the business to deliver value.  Often the project is proposed by IT and they promise value.  However the value is not intrinsic in the application of technology, the value comes from the use of the application by the business to deliver value.

I recall so many times the IT folks came up with a great idea for a project and got agreement to proceed.  However the reluctance for the business to change and the reluctance of management to push for the change results in a project that does not the promised value.

I remember a huge inventory management project was initiated by a large mining company based on an IT Strategic Plan.  The project was intended to managed the parts inventory throughout the integrated facility.  However the project was really a big IT project using the latest software.  After two years, the project was scraped because it was not delivering the desired results.  Many theories exist as to why the project failed. My thought was that this was not an business initiated project but an IT project, without support from the people who could make it work. 

The partnership between the business and IT is really critical to the success of a project.  The leadership and determination of the business is essential for success of the project.

Our approach to this issue begins with planning and engages the business in a dialog.  The strategy work involves assessing where the business is now, what others are doing, strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities.  Based on all this data the key stakeholders work on where they want to be and set direction.  Once the direction is set, we look at the top priorities and develop action plans.  This key step is to develop actionable plans that can produce results quickly for the business.  Creating rapid results for the business, gives the organization momentum and courage to move forward.  We call this business value through rapid results.

The key principle in the planning process is assessing the readiness of the business to use IT to enable their business to be more productive, competitive and  differentiated from the competition.  Often the history of frustration with IT reduces people's readiness so creating early success is essential to create momentum.  The business must have confidence that IT can really help the business and become an asset rather than just another cost.     

I welcome comments from people who have had similar experience or contrary ideas.

To Use Facebook or Not?

Is Facebook an addictive site, an invasion of privacy, or simply a neat way to stay in touch?  A recent article in the New York Times says people are leaving.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/magazine/30FOB-medium-t.html?_r=2

I do not believe it is perfect and one must use it carefully.  A Canadian court ruled that Facebook must remove all you information when you quit facebook.  Facebook says they will comply but it will take several months for them to change.  

I find it a neat way to stay in touch with some people whom I would not normally keep in contact.  One of my cousins and her family was over the top on her use of facebook and suddenly removed herself.  I think she was one of these addicted people. 

One difficulty I think is if I comment on a picture of someone on my network, everybody on my network can see the pictures of that person.  That makes me a little uncomfortable.  However I think we should accept as reality that our posting may not be very private.  Awareness of this fact helps me manage how I use it. 

I am still a participant but am not addicted to it.  Caution is really important.

Anybody have an opinion on Linkedin?

The Parable of the Boiled Frog - Another Learning Disability

When you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water, he jumps out.  Throw him in cold water he swims around, heat it up and he is happy till he boils.  He reacts to quick change not slow relentless change.  When I first heard this in the 90's I wondered if GM would get out of the pot.  I think they just slowly boiled.  Funny that the world could see it, but not them.  I bet they still blame the credit crisis for their current problems.

I was working at a client who was in a declining business and I challenged them with the parable of the boiled frog.  I think the story really stuck.  At the end of my consulting engagement, they gave a green ceramic frog as a thank you.  Sometimes a neat metaphor will really stick.  I am happy to tell you that they have thriving business still but have diversified into many products to the same client base.  I think there real core value was the focus on the clients needs and providing excellent service.  They also used technology to make them more productive and competitive.  They were never complacent even though their profit margins were excellent.

Many organizations who are making good margins are reluctant to change and get stuck and slowly boil.  Sometimes the introduction of a new systems is a way to shake up the organization.   My client mentioned above did that regularly over the years.  I think they really kept searching for ways to improve and provide new services.  In the old days most of their people worked in manufacturing the product, today their product is really their systems for serving the customer and most of their people work in the customer service area.  They are a great example of evolution, "Dealing with Darwin".     

"The Enemy Is Out There" - A Learning Disability of Organizations

How often in golf when I am putting, do I blame the greens for my missed putt?  Too fast, too bumpy, too .....  Each of us has the propensity to blame to someone or something outside ourselves when things go wrong.  Marketing blames sales, sales blames engineering, etc. 

This disability is a byproduct of the another disability called "I am my position."  See previous blog.  When we focus on our position we do not see that our actions extend well beyond the boundary of that position.  Often we also blame the competition, the economy and anything else we can think of.

Peter Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline, identifies this concept as one of the learning disabilities of an organization.  How often in your organization do you blame someone or something else for your problem?   

The best putters realize that it is their job to look beyond just putting a good stroke on the ball to putting the ball in the hole.

As Pogo says, "We have identified the enemy, he is us."

"I Am My Position" - Learning Disability of Organizations

When we formed Gellman, Hayward & Partners, it was the first time I had my name on the letterhead.  My dilemma was "Am I the fellow on the letterhead or me?"  For some time I found the question quite distracting, and certainly not helpful. 

Peter Senge in "The Fifth Discipline" talks about this dilemma as one of the learning disabilities of organizations.  I was trying to behave as I thought a Partner in a consulting firm should behave as opposed to being myself.  I suspect many people who become CEO or President try to act as they think a person in that position should act as opposed to bringing themselves to the job.

People often define themselves in a even more limiting way by thinking "I am just a programmer."   

People who find themselves out of work will resist retraining because for their whole career they have defined themselves in a specific role.   These days changing jobs and specialties is very common and we all must be careful not to define who we are in a limiting way.   

A friend of mine was taking on a role on a project as a planner.  His previous roles had been the fellow in charge.  He was finding it difficult to adapt to the new role because he had defined himself as the fellow in charge.  I encouraged him to set as his objective as getting things done as opposed to taking charge or credit.

I suggest you look at yourself and your organization to see if you can see "I am my position" learning disabilities.  I bet you will see some.  I encourage to look beyond your position to the results you produced and your unique contribution.     

Control of Your Time

"What is the best use of your time right now?"  In his book Alan Lakien calls this the Lakien question.  I think this is a question we need to ask ourselves often.  The question brings in all the time management principle in one simple question. 

Alan Lakien's book "How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life" is a classic.   http://www.amazon.com/Control-Your-Time-Life-Signet/dp/0451167724  I thought it was such an important book I bought it for everybody in our company when I first read it. 

If I ask myself this question right now, I first must decide about how I decide what is best.  The key element in this decision is what is most important in my life.  However in addition I must think about how much time I can devote to this task right now.  In all cases several choices will appear and we then chose from those that move forward our list of "A" goals.  The "A" goals are another of Lakien's ideas from his exercise on deciding on you most important goals.  I wrote about this exercise in another blog 

http://pxltd.typepad.com/project_x_discussions/2006/05/time_management.html

Even if you have not decided on your high priority goals, you will have an intuitive sense of what is best.  Using this question and you intuitive sense, you will become much more productive and more in control of your life. 

"What is the best use of my time right now?"

I welcome comments and suggestions. 

Visualization instead of Dashboards and Reports

As a major part of what Project X Ltd does, we look at aligning business value as quickly as possible.  We term this loosely under the Rapid Results monicer.  I have had feedback from colleagues that using the term Rapid Results in IT scares the IT folks and often even the Business folks are skeptical.

Recently I have watched a transformation in how people are thinking about Business Intelligence in which it is now refered to as Visualization instead of Dashboards and Reports.  I think that though this might be viewed as changing the words, there is a powerfull double edged sword on meeting the needs of our stakeholders as we transform this view of BI.

For me the difference is about creating constructs that allow our stakeholders to create their own view of the information so that they can start to come up with their own objects that help them in their work.  Whether the construct/object ends up being a report, dashboard, alert, call to action or something else the double edged sword is that with freedom comes confusion.

In the case I watched, the users found it hard to live in a loose environment, though the data was governed and structured how they evolved their use of this information was a real challenge.

Simply, running a SQL query on a database is very different from working with a Microstrategy schema objects in a proper model.  This has caused confusion in results, approach and value.

For me the lesson is in training and change management are crucial when changing the viewpoint of a word.

The Cloud Theory of Strategic Planning

In setting strategy, we need to have an overall vision or overall goal.  The diagram is a way of thinking strategy and planning. My idea comes from the theory of Alfred Adler who talked about motivation and said the human organism is motivated to goal.  Without a goal, the organism will cease.  Therefore our psychology always keep the goal just out of reach.  Thus he said we keep our goal "dimly envisaged".  Thus that is my cloud.  It is a dimly envisaged goal. Having the cloud defined, we then need to set a strategy. The boundaries in the diagram represent the strategy which defines the direction we must go to get closer to our goal.  Then we decide on the next few steps to take us closer to the goal.  Then we embark of the first 100 day project.  At the end of that project we evaluate how we are doing towards the goal.   How does it feel and have we made improvement?  That gives us an opportunity to alter the next project slightly.  It is a strategic but incremental approach.  A simple example might help. As you think about your company, you have a image of what you would like it to become. Let's imagine you want your company to become a company that makes a difference for your customers and makes good living for all the employees. This image would be the cloud. To move toward the cloud, you need a strategy. You decide what kind of product or service you will offer the customer. This decision will help set the boundaries of your plan. You decide you will offer customers services in the use of computers for planning for example. Based on that decision, you now make an action plan to get business from customers. As the test your ideas, you find that customers really want something a little diferent and you adjust your action plan. You take an incremental approach to your action plan in the context of your overall strategy. For each strategy, you decide to take some action. For a partner, you decide to look for certain kinds of people. You try that for a while and discover you are not finding the right people. You then change you action and try a different approach. The key with testing if an action is moving you in the right direstion is how the results feel. This approach to implemting strategy is called incrementalism. The approach is quite different form creating the five year plan. The value of the cloud theory is that it gives you a visual model of strategy and the rapid results process.

I Don't Have Time

When somebody tells you don't have time, what do they mean?  Time is an interesting commodity.  We all have twenty-four hours in every day, not a second more or less.  The real issue is what we do with that time.  So what do people mean, when they say "I don't have time."

I do not mean to be smart about this but they really mean that what is proposed is not a priority for me.  Unfortunately most people do not think of the answer that way and do not think it through.  They likely mean their "To Do" list or calendar is full.  We often do not distinguish between things that are important and things that are urgent.  

We all have very busy lives and we fill our days.  Do we have control of our time or do we allow the world to control us?  The key question is are we doing the most important things or are we just continually putting out fires?

These are difficult issues and ones that we all struggle with.  So next time you think or say "I don't have time", pause and consider what you really mean.  Do we really mean that the item is not as important as how we are filling our time?

The other side of the coin is being able to say "no" when things really are not important.   

What Can We Learn About Data Quality From Financial People

Data quality is always a challenge for data warehousing work.  How to create confidence in the answer provided for business questions?  I think we could learn some lessons from our financial people.  How do financial records have the reputation for being so accurate? 

I think the financial people work very hard at developing a set of rules that governs how finances are reported.  However we have some very important organizations that created big surprises recently and their books were audited.  Enron, Worldcom, and Nortel are famous examples.  These organizations flouted the rules to the maximum and destroyed our confidence in the rules. These examples pointed out that a set of balanced books is not sufficient and new rules were introduced to prevent blatant abuses.

Although financial reports have a good reputation, the answers provided on financial statements depends on the approach you take.  It may surprise you that they are rarely dead right.  We must look behind the numbers and understand the rules that were used to produce the numbers.  Things can be presented in many different ways showing quite diffferent results. 

In the reporting world of data warehousing, we often have difficulty reconciling the financial reports with operational reports.  Revenue and sales are one of the classic problems but there are many.  I would guess that one of the issues is that the rules for non-financial item are not rigorous and the same discipline does not exist.  We should not be surprised that developing rules to consistently provide quality answer is a challenge.

The challenge of producing good cross-functional reports also should make us look more carefully at some of the reports people get from spreadsheets.  The rules and formulas used in a spreadsheet are usually created by the author and often not tested and check by others.  Often spreadsheets are not created with discipline and rules.  Again the lesson of having rules and procedures is very important. However the real answer for data quality is use the data warehouse to produce reports and outlaw spreadsheets.  Unfortunately the largest user of spreadsheets are the financial people.  I will write more about spreadsheets in a future blog.

 I think we can learn some important lesson from the people in finance about how we do all our reporting.  The development of discipline in procedures will really help move us to a more confidence in the numbers.     

One thing about the financial reporting is that if the same rules are followed every time then we can compare periods with some confidence.  Similarly in other reporting if we are rigorous in our rules, period to period comparison can be very helpful.  

However even with all that rigor, we have a problem because things are changing very rapidly and our rules and procedures are having difficulty keeping pace.  I think we need help from some good financial people to help us create more discipline in all our reporting.  The experience they have in reconciling conflicting numbers and achieving closure would help all the business analyst. 

In summary, data quality is a challenge for everybody and requires rules and discipline to create confidence in the answers.  Even with the excellent reputation in financial reporting, financial people have their challenges.  We can learn some lessons about rules and discipline from our financial friends.      

I would welcome some comment here. 

Being Right Versus An Effective Consultant

One of the things that is always a challenge in consulting is being effective.  We are in the business of helping people change the way they do things, whether using a new system or a new approach.  Is the measure of success that we are right or that the client has changed? 

I thought for some time that the important thing was being right.  If you tell somebody the way things are, then you have done your job, right?  However I discovered that being right is only good for your ego and really if it does not help the client, it really is not successful.  Therefore being effective is the key.  People must be able to do something with the information you provide, so the process you use present your ideas is as important as what you present.

Often a consultant will do a study and prepare a report or build a system.  Then, if the report is right or the system is bug free, is the project successful?  I believe that you cannot tell because the success depends on what actually happens.  The product can be the best in the world, but if it sits on the shelf gathering dust, I believe it has failed.  The consultant has wasted the clients money. 

The successful system or project must take into account the clients capability to use what has been presented.  It is far more important that the project show results than be the best report or system.  Many consultant will say that is not my problem.  I strongly disagree.

What do you think?

The Curse of Knowledge

How often when we try to convey a message do we get caught in the details and miss communicating the key message?   Rather than giving the headline we start with all the details.  For communicating an idea, the devil is in the details in a different way.  Often detail devil hides the message.

If we couch all our ideas with all the details and conditions, our key idea is in danger of getting lost and never gets transmitted.

If a reporter wrote a newspaper article like a mystery story keeping the message till the end, we would never read the newspaper or at least not that news story.  

The reason this is called the Curse of Knowledge is that we know so much about  a subject the overall concept gets lost in the complexity.  To accurately describe an electron as a negativity charged probability cloud revolving around a nucleus would not help a high school student understand a molecule.  However a metaphor of the stars and planets would be more helpful to the student.  If we always want to be absolutely correct, our key ideas will get lost in the details.

Once the overall concept has been understood, we can then start weave in the details.  Hopefully the details will support the big idea or concept.