Gleanings from Fusion 2009

Posted by Robert Merrill on March 9, 2009 under Uncategorized | Be the First to Comment

I was privileged to be able to attend WTN’s CEO-CIO Fusion 2009, themed “Innovation and Business Transformation,” with the inevitable subtitle, “during economic uncertainty.”

From Jeff Post, CEO of CUNA Mutual Group, I learned that about one-half of America’s private wealth—25 trillion dollars, primarily in stock and real estate—has evaporated in the past year, and the unwinding of about 12 trillion in debt is about one-fourth complete. This is a very big deal, both for our businesses and our communities.

(IMO, our current national character is being revealed, and we may not like what we see. Can we get beyond pointing fingers and begin saying, “How have I helped get us where we are? What can I do differently to help shape a better future for us all?”)

Rob Roy, CIO of CUNA Mutual Group, affirmed my beliefs that small projects with quick returns, and an ability to stop initiatives that aren’t paying off, are the best way to proceed under the present conditions. Roy says, “If a project is to take more than six months, you have a lot of explaining to do.”

(IMO, this mindset may be part of what’s driving the agile methods of software development rapidly into the mainstream. But who among the Early Majority will make the common mistake of partial adoption, unknowingly cut through Agile’s load-bearing walls, and then blame Agile for the demise of their software-intensive business?)

Ajel Gopal of CA exhorted me to keep innovating, especially in hard times. My consulting practice is a personal innovation; when I left CDW in January 2007, for the first time in my life I had nowhere to go next. I found myself a 50-year-old white male square peg who didn’t fit any of modern HR’s round holes. Thankfully, I was able to assemble the pieces and parts of my two previous careers into something that created value—which is the definition of innovation. Mr. Gopal reminded me that now’s no time to stop, and reminded me of all of the businesses and products that were launched during the Great Depression and are still with us today.

(Mr. Gopal has me thinking about how we sell and buy consulting services, and how I might want to challenge that with something new.)

Because I consider myself a point-of-the-pyramid, differentiating software guy, I’ve been ignoring “cloud computing.” Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com shook me out of my complacency by showing me that, increasingly, what’s out there in the cloud IS the pyramid. I knew about the infrastructure services(storage, in particular) and I’m a user of as-is cloud applications like Basecamp and PivotalTracker. What I didn’t see out there in the cloud were the pieces and parts to construct differentiating applications, too. But Coffee says I shouldn’t blame myself, since these didn’t exist two years ago.

Tom Koulopoulis of the Delphi Group told me that “uncertainty is the opportunity that we don’t architect,” and agreed with Gopal that innovation—finding ways to create value and not just create stuff—is more essential than ever in tough times. There are many obstacles, though. Innovation can originate anywhere, but leadership can either stifle it or create a place where ideas can go and be filtered, nurtured, and developed, not ignored or co-opted. Can your organization track all its ideas, and everyone who touches them, from their sources to their commercialization? Partners Health Care can, and does. Wow!

Unbeknownst to him, Koulopoulis also affirmed the importance of one of the load-bearing walls of agile methods, namely re-scoping projects based on actual progress, rather than trying to manage projects to initial estimates and commitments. Koulopolis did this when he said, “Don’t be so sure of your ability to predict that you refuse to take a detour into reality when you encounter it.” He also said that specialization, in business schools and in organizations, can be the enemy of innovation, which is an essentially holistic activity.

Peyton Engel of CDW (Berbee) warned me of the “Nirvana fallacy” when thinking about information systems security, and encouraged me to think “good enough,” and focus on minimizing the loss per incident as well as the rate of incidents.

(IMO, this well illustrates the agile principle of diminishing returns).

Finally, Mike Jackson, CIO of Rockwell Automation, reminded me of what can happen when business and technology leadership come together around a vision and a strategy and pull hard in the same direction, rather than fighting each other. Start with simple principles and make sure everybody understands them. Shift the focus from the org chart and the systems to core business processes and their owners. Assemble combined teams of business and technology people, and they will begin to acquire each others’ sensibilities, with powerful results. Don’t lose sight of good people-management basics. Listen, address concerns head on, take care of people whose jobs are changing or going away, over-communicate, and listen. Use your own staff as much as you can, and strengthen your knowledge balance sheet. When a project goes off the rails, think “How can I help get this thing going again?” and not “Who can I blame?” What they accomplished at Rockwell Automation sounds breathtaking, and reminds me of what can happen when people really team up.

My only regret about Fusion 2009 was that, as a vendor and not a CEO or CIO, I was unable to sit in on the roundtable discussions held on the first day. If you’re involved in a software-intensive business and can go to Fusion 2010, go. Watch for the announcement in late summer 2009. Thanks, WTN!