mmitII

Another year, another job title… It seems that the summer is the time for role changes at Microsoft, and my role is changing this year as we enter into the (hopefully) warmest months. There are times when I wish I were something like a plumber – a profession where the job title is readily understood by folk even if they don’t necessarily understand the (literally) nuts and bolts of what they do. I change today from being an Evangelist Lead to a Principal Evangelist.

Errrm?

In terms of what I’m actually going to be doing, well, I’ve been asked to move my focus onto gaining increased influence for Microsoft within the advertising and marketing sector so that our platforms and services are seen as an increasingly vital part of the tools and channels available to marketers in the UK.

So, having in the past found myself providing software to software developers, I’m now in the business of marketing to marketers. A sort of meta-role, I guess. Should be interesting.

So another piece of Green Field thinking for you (remember: it’s not necessarily what you should do – just what could you do if you weren’t constrained by legacy)… do we need IT Projects any more?

There are two threads to this: firstly that in a world of commoditized services, the need for IT infrastructure projects will diminish in organisations other than those that provide commodity IT as a service to others; and secondly in a world of perpetual software enhancement, the management of applications and services becomes operational rather than project-centric.

On the first point, this isn’t to say that organisations will no longer need to run projects. It’s just that as the need for organisations to “do their own plumbing” subsides, the focus of business change projects can become absolutely on the business change, rather than what we still too often see today which are “IT projects” with a sliver of “communications” tacked on to them to give lip service to the needs to change cultures, behaviours, structures and capabilities that are the hard work associated with changing a business. IT truly becomes an enabler, rather than an end to itself, when the deployment of systems and services doesn’t require complex engineering to establish software and hardware infrastructure.

On the second point, as we witness the constant incremental changes that mark the way in which many consumer web services are delivered (as an aside, there was a wonderful tweet recently comparing disquiet to changes on Facebook’s home page to disquiet when supermarkets shift their aisles around), constant iterative enhancement of software becomes more of an operational rather than project activity.

So: no more IT projects; business change projects that have IT as a work stream, and constant incremental changes to software in a operational model once the big business change projects have been implemented…

In my early-thirties I set myself a specific career goal – to be a CIO by the age of 40. It was a very specific target, time-bound and measurable in the good tradition of SMART. I achieved it when I took the role leading IT at Imagination, actually somewhat ahead of schedule at the age of 38. Since then I’ve been working without quite such a specific goal in mind: I know I want to be able make a difference, to have impact, and to enjoy and be enthused in my work, but I’ve not necessarily had a clear vision of success.

Whilst the CIO goal was really good to motivate myself (just in the way that, say, passing A Level Music drove me to go from Grade 6 to Grade 8 on Saxophone in about a year in my teens), looking back it was maybe a bit too specific. I’d confused, perhaps, milestones with a vision of success. Once I had achieved it, then what? The same role again, maybe at a bigger scale, and then repeat until retirement. It’s the reason I decided to make the move to my current role – new challenges in a new field.

But with what vision? It’s been troubling me.

I needed to find something challenging, but within the boundaries of the achievable, and importantly something that will sustain me through this role, the next and beyond. I’ve written before about the inspiration that I’ve had in life from my granddad. It’s, in a way, to him that I’ve turned to give myself a new focus as I (shudders to admit this) enter the second half of my working life.

The work that granddad did in the 1970s in Zambia to establish their first satellite telecommunications earth station helped to provide the country with crucial links to the rest of the world. It was so important that it was celebrated by the nation in the form of a stamp (amongst other things). And that’s what my new goal is – to do something in my life that is significant enough to be celebrated on a postage stamp.

Who knows what it will be? I certainly don’t yet. Will stamps still exist by the time I achieve whatever it is? That’s probably the single biggest risk. But anyway, as advanced notice, if anyone knows anyone who works in the right department of a postal service, do let me know. I’m now need to be busy working towards something that will be suitably deserving…

In the presentation I gave last week, I talked about the concept of Green Field Thinking – imagine what you would do if you had no constraints imposed upon you by way of legacy, and then work out what you can learn from that in the real world. The here and now can provide a huge block to thinking about how we can change things – and this Green Field approach hopefully can help people appreciate (rather than just react against) radical ideas, and then learn from them accordingly.

Continuing on that Green Field theme, if one were to set up a new organisation today from scratch, what boundaries would be placed on choosing whether to develop software in house or not? My feel now is that, in an ideal world, software should only be generated where it directly generates revenue.

Let’s unpack that a bit.

There are plenty of models from within the realm of Enterprise Architecture and IT strategic management where 2×2 matrices define appropriate approaches to outsourcing, buying off the shelf products and services, or building from scratch (you can see my own interpretation on a whiteboard session here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATwNGNdZLjQ). My experience has see that those focus on the idea of “core business” and “market differentiation” and that’s where things get murky… whether something core to your business or not is remarkably subjective. More importantly, defining something as core today, and therefore building software around it, can lock your organisation into uncompetitive positions when you need to pivot into a new direction in the future.

Imagine, say, you run a taxi firm. You see that you can steal a march on your opposition by building your booking and dispatch system so that it is better than all your competitors. You implement, provide a better service to your customers, and therefore gain advantage over other cab companies. That’s great.

However, there are millions of cab companies across the world, so after a while a number of software companies start building booking and dispatch systems and selling them as commercial services. The software that you invested in so heavily is now out-dated and your competition now have access to better systems without the overhead of the management of the software… your competitive advantage has switched to being a disadvantage because your are a cab firm, not a software house…

So this is where my Extreme Enterprise Architecture position comes in… if you want to build software then it should directly generate revenue. In the taxi company example, build the software from day one in a way that it’s designed as a service to sell to others – a concept I’ve written about in the past here with the idea of spinning software initiatives out as real start ups. Skunkworks, or R&D ideas are fine, but incubate them, manage them as a portfolio, and set targets for how many ideas will be killed off because not all of them will work out.

There are some examples of software development that is revenue generating but not sold or designed as a product or service – some of the algorithmic trading code used by investment banks springs to mind – but those cases are few and far between, and getting rarer as the commoditised world of Cloud services continues to reduce the cost of successfully delivering software as a service on a global scale.

Remember, this is Green Field thinking… the legacy that most organisations hold will determine that certain software just has to be built in house. But what projects would have made the cut if this Extreme Enterprise Architecture had been adopted, and how many will in the future? What competitive advantage could be protected, costs saved, and revenues generated as a result?

Some of the titles on my (virtual) bookshelf at the moment:

Imagine: How creativity works Jonah Lehrer
Looks at creativity and innovation at the micro (individual) and macro (team and organisation) levels. Pulls together scientific research plus a stack of illuminating examples from business. Well worth a look.

Ad Land: A global history of advertising Mark Tungate
Pretty much what it says on the tin. As the worlds of marketing and IT increasingly collide, a great way to get to understand some of the cultural history of the world of Mad Men

Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet Charles Arthur
The Guardian’s Technology Editor examines what’s happened in the world of consumer technology in the time since Google was founded. An interesting take, although the omission of Amazon from the book’s subtitle is telling of the way in which books about technology really suffer from the lead time involved in creating them…

Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down Vineet Nayar
Haven’t gotten too far into this as yet. As someone who believes in the primacy of the customer or client, I’m looking forward to having my assumptions challenged, or just getting very cross… Nayar turned Indian tech services company HCLT around by taking the approach of putting its employees first

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography: A Biography Walter Isaacson
That the above is how the book appears in the Kindle store is telling enough. Fascinating insight into the man and the myth. My biggest fear for the future is that Jobs will be held up as an example to emulate when it comes to management in large corporates… Amazing achievements; mostly unacceptable behaviour.
The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses Eric Ries
A take on how to do start up that’s become something of a bible in some start up circles. Haven’t really got into it in depth yet, but interested to see what non-start up businesses can learn from the approaches.
Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do: A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web Euan Semple
My old chum Euan only went and wrote a book… (Euan and I worked together now and again back at the BBC). Whilst a bit happy to just “bash the IT department”, some good insight into coping with the world of Social within a corporate environment.

The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century Stephen Denning
A critique of established management practices, and thinking about what organisations need to do to align themselves for the challenges of 2012 and beyond.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us Daniel Pink
Probably the single writer who has had most influence over my thinking in the past three years. Simply put: money doesn’t motivate people to work better/harder unless it’s a very clearly bounded, generally physical activity (think bricklaying).

Future Minds: How the Digital Age is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters and What We Can Do About It Richard Watson

Or – how Facebook and stuff is making us all, like… uncommunicative.