Your IT Has No Customers

Have you ever heard the head of sales, marketing, or manufacturing describe any other part of the business as his or her customers?

Have you ever heard the head of sales, marketing, or manufacturing talk about “aligning” those functions with the business?

The only people in any organisation who ever describe anyone except the people who buy the organisation’s products and services as “customers” are IT people.

The only people in the organisation who ever talk about “aligning with the business” are IT people.

Maybe the head of sales has talked about aligning her function with a new strategy or a new value proposition, or the head of manufacturing has talked about aligning with new key performance indicators—but aligning with the business?

That view can’t be good for IT.

It is a legacy of the era in which the “data processing” organization was almost entirely populated with people who had very little day-to-day connection with the rest of the business.

Those days are gone, but the mind-set subtly persists, and it separates IT from the rest of the business in an unhealthy way.

What executives ultimately want from IT is not alignment, nor being treated like a customer.

Executives want business outcomes. 

Increased sales, increased margins, and increased market share are examples of the outcomes that executives want.

If the IT team is talking about and helping to deliver those outcomes, then “alignment with the business” is a nonissue.

But if alignment is the goal and the topic under discussion, then the IT team is in effect showing that it is not focused on the outcomes that matter.

In a nutshell: IT is an important part of the business and must focus on business outcomes.

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Your Project Is Not Disruptive. And That Is OK.

Innovation means the application of ideas that are novel and useful.

Creativity, the ability to generate novel and useful ideas, is the seed of innovation but unless it’s applied and scaled it’s still just an idea.

Innovation must lead to the introduction of new products and services that add value to your organisation and your clients.

Innovations can be big or small, but breakthrough or disruptive innovation is something that either creates a new category, or changes an existing one dramatically, and obsoletes the existing market leader.

So we need to stop calling everything breakthrough or disruptive, especially in internal company discussions. It is more than OK to have a balanced pipeline of big and small ideas, and we need to get comfortable with that again.

If we demand nothing but disruption or breakthrough, (delivered tomorrow and on small budgets) then that is all people want to work on, and to accommodate this, everything gets labeled in those terms.

But language matters, and once we start calling good but smaller ideas breakthrough, we lower the bar.

This is a recipe for mediocrity, and is one of the reasons why so many companies struggle with too many small initiatives and not enough big ones.

In a nutshell: It is important to have a balanced pipeline of big and small ideas, and we need to get comfortable with that again.

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Understanding and Managing Your Project’s Complexity

One of the main reasons technology projects fail so often is their (underestimated) complexity.

Managing this complexity should be an urgent concern for any organization doing large technology projects.

Stephen Carver, Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management created a simple but very useful tool to assess and help you manage project complexity.

But before we look at the tool and how you can use it, we have to start with some results of the research of Stephen and his team about what complexity actually is.

Not complexity, but complexities...

There is more than one dimension to complexity. Instead of a binary understanding of complexity in projects (it is complex, or it is not) you should be thinking in three dimensions of complexity:

> Structural complexity
> Sociopolitical complexity
> Emergent complexity

Structural Complexity

Structural complexity is associated with size, variety, breadth of scope, the level of interdependence of people or tasks, or the pace of the work.

It is the most easily recognized of the complexities by both practitioners and researchers and is also described as complicatedness or the level of interconnectedness.

The complexity associated with pace can be particularly challenging as the faster the pace, the greater the resource intensity and therefore the more complex the project is to manage. Luckily just for a limited time.

This may be the case, for instance, in a project developing a new piece of consumer electronics. See my article on Cost of Delay that explains why the pace in consumer electronic projects is typically so high.

Sociopolitical Complexity

Sociopolitical complexity is associated with the project’s importance, its people, power, and politics, both within the project team and in the wider stakeholder communities.

The number of stakeholders in a project represents a structural complexity, but their different agendas cause sociopolitical complexity.

Emergent Complexity

Emergent complexity comprises uncertainty and change. Uncertainty is typically the result of novelty of technology or process, a lack of experience, a lack of availability of information, or some combination of these.

Change, on the other hand, is part of any project - including changes in requirements, in technology, in stakeholders, and in the organization itself.

Emergent complexity is identified as a challenge caused by a potential or actual change in either a structural or sociopolitical element.

Complexity Assessment

The three complexities provide a useful high-level classification, but greater granularity is needed to guide discussions about specific complexities and their management.

Therefore Stephen and his team created the Complexity Assessment Tool (CAT), a simple list with 32 yes/no questions, designed to identify the elements of complexity in a project and guide discussion of those elements.

You can view and download the CAT here, and you can download the original research paper here.

In use, the benefits of the CAT arise not directly from the questionnaire but from the subsequent conversations between people involved in the project. The CAT is, in other words, a tool for transparency and sensemaking.

The framing of the elements as statements facilitates the discussion with the team and stakeholders. All of the items are phrased as particular challenges, designed to identify real, significant sources of complexity.

The Emergent Complexity is a result of potential or actual changes in the state of one or more of the 32 items captured by the CAT’s list of statements. As a result, the tool measures emergent complexity differently, capturing it as the number of expected or possible changes in structural or sociopolitical sources of complexity.

For example, managers might agree with the statement that “the budget is sufficient for the task” at the beginning of the project but express uncertainty over potential funding changes that may cause the budget to be insufficient for the task at a later stage.

That uncertainty represents a potential emergent complexity, tracked in the right hand column of the tool by an indication that the element may be unstable and therefore subject to change.

Sociopolitical Complexity is King

One very interesting result of Stephen’s work is that it can also lead to better targeted learning and development activities for managers.

“Structural complexity is hard. The rest of it, now that’s proper hard.”

In a teaching session on complexity, they asked 246 project managers, “In your work, which of the three complexities are the most difficult to manage?”

They then asked the same group, “In your own formal training and development, which of the three complexities has received the most attention?”

The contrast between the complexities they faced and the organizational response through learning and development was clear—the area most project managers (68 percent) found most difficult to deal with was socio political, yet a great majority (87 percent) said their training and development had focused on structural issues.

Having this language for discussion enabled the identification of a significant area for development by the organization.

The capability to manage sociopolitical complexity can be enhanced by development activities that focus on stakeholder engagement, project leadership, and change and communications management.

Many elements of this complexity can be turned to benefit through focusing on relational rather than procedural aspects of management.

In a nutshell: Managing complexity should be an urgent concern for any organization doing large technology projects.

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Change Management and Your CAST of Characters

There is a simple truth about projects. All projects result in change.

Some projects bring about small modifications to the status quo, and others introduce a large-scale transformation.

Many people in many roles will be affected by and instrumental in the change you’re promoting.

It’s important to tend to their needs throughout the change journey.

Here’s the CAST of characters you will meet:

Champions: These are people who want the change and work to gain commitment and resources for it.

Agents: They implement the change. Agents have implementation responsibility through planning and executing. At least part, if not all of change agent performance is evaluated and reinforced on the success of implementing the change.

Sponsors: They authorize, legitimize and demonstrate ownership for the change. Sponsors come in at least two varieties. They possess sufficient organizational power and/or influence to either initiate commitment of resources (Authorizing Sponsor) or they promote the change at the “local” level (Reinforcing Sponsor).

Targets: They are called on to alter their behavior, emotions, and practices. (During the change process, everyone is a Target at one time or another.)

People in different roles have different needs. Staying aware of those roles will help you with your messaging, coalition building, and every other aspect of your change work.

Here are some character rules to help your change to be effective and fast.

> Agents must have trust and credibility with the Sponsors and trust and credibility with the Targets

> In major change, there will always be overlap in the roles. When roles overlap, treat the individual as a Target first. This includes Sponsors.

> Building a cascade of Sponsors at each level of the organisation who each demonstrate commitment by what they Express, Model, and Reinforce is the single most important factor in getting swift implementation and value realization for your change.

> Your change is accelerated when the other three roles (Agents, Sponsors, and Targets) are also Champions.

> Project teams should recognize early on the importance of building the network of Agents and ensure these individuals have the skills and knowledge to be successful in this important role. After all, it's not the Champions that will have implementation responsibilities-- it's the Agents.

In a nutshell: Many people in many roles will be affected by and instrumental in the change you’re promoting. It’s important to tend to their needs throughout the change journey.

Read more…

Case Study 11: How BBSI Blew Millions on an Oracle Cloud Solution

Oracle and its partners KBACE Technologies and Cognizant were sued in January 2019 by Barrett Business Services, Inc. (“BBSI”)  in San Francisco Superior Court, for fraud, negligent misrepresentation and breach of contract arising out of one of Oracle’s Cloud Service offerings.

BBSI (NASDAQ: BBSI) is a so-called professional employer organization ("PEO") in the business of establishing "co-employment" relationships with small and medium-sized companies. It assumes responsibility for their payroll, payroll taxes, workers' compensation coverage, employee benefits and other human resources functions. The clients retain responsibility for day-to-day operations and employee management.

BBSI bills its PEO services as a percentage of client payroll at the end of each payroll processing cycle. The gross amount, including direct payroll costs, employer payroll related taxes, workers' compensation coverage (if provided) and a service fee, is invoiced.

In 2017 BBSI supported in excess of 5,600 PEO clients with approximately 110,000 worksite employees located in twenty-four states through a network of sixty branch locations in different states of the US.

In 2019 BBSI had net revenues of $942.3 million and gross billings of $5.97 billion.

Before we continue with this case study...

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Timeline of Events

According to BBSI it all went down like this.

Early 2017

BBSI utilized a combination of commercial and custom applications to manage its human resources, payroll and financial functions. BBSI believed that its legacy systems needed upgrading to improve scalability and stability, decrease reliance on manual 5processes, streamline its operations, increase efficiency and ensure that its user experience keep pace with its business objectives.

Thus, BBSI made the decision to upgrade to an Enterprise Resource Planning ["ERP"I Systems Integration Service. Galen Weaver ("Weaver"), BBSI's Director of Information Technology, undertook this task.

To this end, Weaver prepared a comprehensive and highly specialized list of human resources and payroll requirements mandated by BBSI's operations. Unlike other companies, BBSI did not have one payroll, with one tax identification number. Instead, it handled thousands of payrolls for thousands of employees in multiple companies across different states with varying state payroll tax requirements. Importantly, unlike most other companies, these payrolls were also BBSI's mechanism for generating revenue.

Among other things, BBSI's list of key functionality requirements included but were not limited to:

> Application Program Interfaces ("API") that would allow seamless integrations with its other key business systems for importing benefits, time and labor, absence and payroll data on a daily basis (like TimeNet, TimeClock and Bullhorn, Swipe, Busy Busy, etc);

> Ability to calculate certified payroll;

> Ability to file local taxes under BBSI's Employer Identification Number ("EIN") and not the customer's state EIN;

> A time entry grid-style screen with a customizable lay-out that shows all customer employees;

> A user interface for customers with a single uniform log-in point;

> A single screen that brings together all the various items that have to be created or managed for the clients;

> Ability to show multiple work relationships for employee self-service;

> Ability to allow clients to process payroll through a simplified professional user screen;

> Ability to enter time as a grid for a specific client's department, division, worksite location or project;

> Ability to include both positive and negative wages, deductions, hours within an employee's timesheet entry and many other requirements.

Weaver distributed this requirements list to several companies to determine if they had a compatible product, service or solution and interviewed thirty of the industry leaders in software technology.

June 2017

Among the several companies interviewed by Weaver was Oracle. Weaver conveyed BBSI's list of specific requirements to Oracle and on June 30, 2017, participated in a conference call with an Applications Sales Manager and a HCM Applications Sales Manager from Oracle.

After Weaver went over the requirements list and sought to carefully explain the uniqueness and complexity of BBSI's situation and unique needs as a PEO, the Oracle team represented to Weaver that their HCM Cloud system could and would be the best fit to provide BBSI with an integrated human resources and payroll system that would ensure satisfaction of its requirements. Oracle never presented BBSI with any other options.

July 2017

Because of these representations, BBSI invited Oracle to present an onsite demonstration on July 20, 2017 at BBSI's offices in Vancouver, Washington.

During that demonstration, Oracle informed BBSI that Oracle would have to be implemented by KBACE, Oracle's No.1 HCM Cloud implementer. KBACE is part of Cognizant, the 15 Billion IT service provider giant.

Oracle represented to BBSI that KBACE was a consulting and technology services company that specialized in cloud strategy, implementation and integration, which was certified and experienced in Oracle's HCM Cloud product implementation.

Oracle told BBSI that KBACE could successfully implement the HCM Cloud to fulfill all of BBSI's complicated human resource and payroll requirements.

August 2017

August 3, 2017 there was a conference call attended by Weaver of BBSI; several representatives from Oracle and several KBACE representatives.

Oracle and KBACE again told BBSI that KBACE was Oracle's No.1 HCM Cloud implementer, that KBACE had done in excess of 300 HCM Cloud implementations, had knowledge of the special requirements of PEOs like BBSI and was, in fact, currently deploying a PEO implementation for another company. Oracle never mentioned or recommended any other implementer.

Because of Oracle's and KBACE's representations, BBSI began considering the HCM Cloud product in earnest. BBSI had several hours-long in-person meetings and telephonic conferences with Oracle and KBACE.

At each of these meetings, BBSI took great pains to educate Oracle and KBACE as to the precise nature of its business operations, its peculiar needs and the business functions that informed BBSI's extensive list of requirements.

In meticulously discussing its list of requirements with both Oracle and KBACE, BBSI underscored its need for ease and efficiency of user interface and processes relating to payroll, time entry, billing and taxes given its human resource and payroll management challenges and the fact that payroll was also its revenue source. At all of BBSI's discussions with Oracle and KBACE, BBSI's list of requirements remained unchanged.

At all of BBSI's discussions with Oracle and KBACE, BBSI's representatives also made clear that they were ignorant as to Oracle's HCM Cloud system or any other Oracle products or how they performed and were relying wholly on Oracle and KBACE to advise them as to the suitability and capabilities of the product or system vis-å-vis BBSI's requirements.

The Oracle and KBACE representatives assured BBSI that Oracle's HCM Cloud system could handle BBSI's PEO requirements, which would be implemented by KBACE quickly and efficiently.

September 2017

On September 6, 2017, Oracle and KBACE were at BBSI headquarters to do an Oracle Cloud Roadmap Presentation. Multiple Oracle, KBACE and BBSI representatives were in attendance. During the presentation KBACE affirmed that they could configure Oracle's HCM Cloud to comply with BBSI's human resources and payroll requirements.

At the same meeting, KBACE also claimed extensive knowledge of payroll systems, and an understanding of the complexity of BBSI's PEO payroll needs.

December 2017

Finally, on December 5, 2017, after seven months of performing what BBSI
believed was Oracle and KBACE's due diligence, and with Oracle's apparent knowledge, involvement and consent, KBACE presented BBSI with a HCM Cloud implementation package according to BBSI's requirements at an estimated cost range of $5,410,000 to $5,950,000.

KBACE's "project overview" slide reflected an Accounts Payable/General Ledger ("AP/GL") "go live" date of July 29, 2018 and a "pilot population" and Accounts Receivable/Platform as a Service ("AR/PAAS") "go live" date of January 7, 2019.

What Went Wrong

Missing key functionalities

According to BBSI, soon after the implementation process was underway, KBACE began identifying significant and critical gaps in the functionality of the HCM Cloud product relative to BBSI's expressed requirements which were not previously disclosed to BBSI.

The HCM Cloud, among many other failings:

> Did not have sufficient APIs to allow for seamless 8integrations with BBSI's other key business systems;

> Required custom reports to be created to calculate certified payroll;

> Did not have the ability to file local taxes under BBSI's EIN;

> Did not have a grid-style screen for rapid time entry by either the customer or BBSI;

> Did not have a user interface for customers with a single uniform log-in point;

> Did not have a single screen that brings together all the various items that have to be created or managed for the clients;

> Did not have the ability to manage shared employees;

> Did not allow clients to process payroll through a simplified professional user screen;

> Did not have the ability to enter time as a grid for a specific client's department, division, worksite location or project;

> Did not have the ability to include both positive and negative wages, deductions, hours within an employee's timesheet entry; and

> Did not include Oracle's Time and Labor application thereby precluding BBSI from performing necessary automated record keeping of worker time and attendance.

BBSI received no notice of the existence or extent of these deficiencies prior to contracting.

BBSI had been under the impression that in recommending the HCM Cloud to BBSI and in the seven months before providing BBSI with implementation cost and duration assessments, Oracle and KBACE had conducted the necessary due diligence on the suitability, capabilities, functionalities, vulnerabilities and amount of customization necessary for the HCM Cloud system to comply with BBSI's architecture and requirements.

Because these critical gaps in functionality were "showstoppers" meetings were convened to address these issues.

At a June 5, 2018 at a face to face meeting, somebody from KBACE/Cognizant advised BBSI representatives that the Oracle HCM Cloud system was not the right system for BBSI's business functions and that BBSI should never have bought the system.

To BBSI's shock and dismay, this is the first time that BBSI heard any suggestion that the HCM Cloud system was not the right system for BBSI's functions or that they never should have bought the system.

No experience with PEO

At the same June 5, 2018 meeting, KBACE admitted that in fact, their only experience with a PEO implementation took place eleven years prior and did not involve the HCM Cloud.

Further, they admitted that KBACE lacked the expertise and ability to propose a solution that would meet BBSI's needs and indicated they would have to draw on Cognizant, its parent company's resources to devise a plan of action.

Expensive implementation services

On June 13, 2018, Oracle advised BBSI that unless BBSI changed the way it processed payroll, the HCM Cloud system would never perform to BBSI's current level or be able to process as fast as BBSI did before the HCM system was in place and that BBSI would need to schedule payroll by pay groups.

Thereafter, on June 25, 2018, KBACE/Cognizant purported to present BBSI with a revised proposal to provide implementation services and address the gap functionalities it had identified.

The new proposal withdrew the original implementation price quote of $5,410,000 and instead presented a new "Labor Total" of $33,059,274, almost six times greater than the original quote.

Extended go-live dates

In addition, KBACE/Cognizant's new proposal extended the original go-live dates. The new proposal now reflected:

> Completion of Phase I (i.e. Core Human Resources/BBSI Corporate, Financials, Legacy Accounts Receivable and Procurement) by April 15, 2019 instead of the original July 29, 2018

> Completion of Phase 2 (i.e. Core Human Resources, Financials, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, Absence Management, OTAC, Taleo and PaaS Extension Development for SaaS) by May 10, 2021 instead of January 9, 2019.

"Bait and switch"

Even with this price and time jump, however, the new proposal still offered no workable solutions to BBSI's satisfaction.

By email to Oracle dated November 14, 2018, BBSI's Chief Financial Officer, protested Oracle and KBACE's apparent "bait and switch" tactic. He noted that "[y]ou quoted BBSI a cost of $5.4M to implement and then when you were done with Accelerate, the quote was now $33M and would take twice as long." Because of the critical functionality gaps in the HCM Cloud solution that were never disclosed to BBSI before contracting and which neither Oracle nor KBACE could cure within the price and time quoted, Kramer advised Oracle and KBACE that BBSI would make no further payments for a system they did not and could not use and was rescinding the contracts.

Losses

BBSI alleges to have suffered economic harm in a myriad of ways. BBSI was forced to pay sums to Oracle and KBACE for which it received no value and also as a consequence of payments to third parties, including but not limited to, the following:

> $171,920 paid to the independent consultant
> $266,306 paid to KBACE for their useless services.
> $1,008,586 paid to Oracle for their useless products and services.

February 2018, BBSI employees began devoting significant resources to the implementation of the Oracle system. For instance, BBSI dedicated a seven person "project core team" working full time on the Oracle implementation. The project core team devoted over 9,000 hours to this project.

Further, there were 58 BBSI employees who devoted time to "project read-in." Some employees doing "read in" devoted as much as 29 hours per week to this work. These employees devoted over 1,800 hours to the project.

In addition, from March 2018 to present, there have been  BBSI employees working as "backfill" on the project. These employees worked over 2,000 hours. The cost to BBSI in terms of hours worked by its employees on this project exceeded $900,000.

If these BBSI employees had instead been working on revenue-generating ventures, these employees would have generated in excess of $3,000,000 in revenue, the exact amounts to be ascertained at trial.

Additionally, BBSI has lost time and opportunities with respect to system upgrades as well as incurred other damages, the exact amounts to be ascertained at trial.

How BBSI Could Have Done Things Differently

Independent third party assessments

Because of the many difficulties encountered during the HCM Cloud implementation, and the admissions by Oracle and KBACE representatives regarding the true limitations of the system and of KBACE, and the astronomical leap in the implementation cost range and duration, BBSI began talks with other consulting companies regarding the HCM Cloud.

These companies expressed shock that the HCM Cloud solution was recommended for BBSI and voiced concerns that, based on their knowledge and expertise, the HCM Cloud was not the right product for BBSI.

BBSI then hired an independent consultant to undertake a full review and assessment of the suitability of Oracle's HCM Cloud for BBSI's stated requirements. The independent consultant reported that the HCM Cloud was ill-suited to BBSI's requirements for several reasons.

BBSI could have saved a lot of headaches by hiring this independent consultant before signing a contract and spending serious amounts of money and effort.

Consider your industry-specific needs and solutions

PEO is a fairly unique industry. Standard Cloud HCM systems are less likely to address the variety of distinctive needs of companies in this space.

Be skeptical of concepts like SAP’s Model Company, Oracle’s Unified Model, NetSuite’s Suite Success and other software industry hoaxes that may mislead you to unrealistic expectations.

Industry best practices baked into software don’t exist. Neither do silver bullet implementation solutions. It is important to plan and execute accordingly.

Be a responsible buyer of technology

Being a responsible buyer of technology and implementation services, and working well with suppliers during projects are crucial skills for any organization.

Yet, the absence of those skills explains more project failures in third-party projects than any other factor. You will find some prominent examples of these among these and other project failure case studies.

Some may argue that suppliers should have all the skills required to make their projects a success, but any company relying completely on the skills of a supplier is making themselves dependent on good luck.

If you are not a ‘responsible buyer’ then you risk not spotting when the supplier and/or the product is failing. Things will always start to drift and get off track. That’s a normal part of complex cloud projects like these.

But the key is how we identify risks, mitigate risks, and take action when warranted.

Ask for reference clients to call

BBSI could have asked Oracle for a reference client to call. Ideally of course another PEO. These ten questions are a good starting point any software reference call:

1) How long have you been using the software?

2) Describe the process for getting up and running in the software. How long did it take, how much time and investment was required of you and your team, and did your experience match what the vendor had promised?

3) What are the top three things you use the software for today? Have the product features lived up to your expectations?

4) Have you identified any feature gaps or shortcomings in the product? If so, how has the vendor handled your feature requests? Is the solution updated frequently?

5) How would you describe the business value the software delivers to your organization?

6) How would you rate the customer service you receive from the vendor? How would you rate the quality and caliber of employees you interact with at the vendor? Do they know and understand your business?

7) If there are parties outside of your company who interact with the software (e.g., investors, partners, advisors), how has it been received? Have you received compliments or complaints?

8) What other products did you look at before deciding on vendor [x]? Why did you choose vendor [x] over the others?

9) Is there anything else about your experience with the software or vendor that you think I should know?

10) Can you recommend the vendor without reservation?

Closing Thoughts

As with any dispute, there are at least two sides to every story. There are many questions that will need to be answered to understand what really happened, but no matter what the answers are, BBSI did not act as a responsible buyer.

You can never just trust a vendor alone when it comes to fulfilling requirements. You have to put in some work to validate this.

You can delegate authority to the supplier but you cannot delegate responsibility.

In a nutshell: Responsibility for the project — including responsibility for it failing — always rests ultimately with the buyer.

Other Project Failure Case Studies

> For an overview of all case studies I have written please click here.

> To subscribe to new Project Failure Case Studies just click here.

> To download all my Project Failure Case Studies in a single eBook for only $4.99 just click here or on the image.

References

> BARRETT BUSINESS SERVICES, INC vs. ORACLE AMERICA, INC, 04/08/2019

Read more…

How to Talk About Technology With Senior Executives

One of the biggest hurdles that keeps senior executives from getting closer to technology is the complexity of today’s IT environments, further obscured by the endless stream of buzzwords, jargon, and product names.

Working with executives over the last 15 years I realized that we can make it much easier for executives to “speak technology” if we split it’s “language” into two parts: grammar and vocabulary.

Grammar: A language’s grammar defines the structure and rules for composition of words into meaningful sentences. Similarly, the grammar of technology is the set of architecture rules and constraints that define how systems and components can be combined.

Vocabulary: This is the long list of (buzz)words and technologies that we use, often wrapped in jargon and fuzzy marketing terms.

Executives are largely put off by technology’s seemingly endless, unnecessarily cryptic, and ever changing vocabulary.

In contrast, it’s grammar, the rules that define how technology operates and makes decisions, is relatively static, and much more approachable to executives.

So to establish decision transparency you should leave buzzwords and products aside and instead focus on the available option space, the inherent trade-offs between the available choices, and the principles that guide these decisions.

Senior executives can much more easily grasp technology concepts and be involved in decision making once you remove the fog of jargon.

They are used to making decisions affecting their organizations, so the “grammar” of our world is actually quite familiar to them. This often comes as a surprise to both sides that always assumed that executives “aren’t technical”.

Presenting technology decisions in a way that emphasizes constraints and trade-offs without falling into buzzwords and jargon is incredibly difficult, but actually very helpful for IT teams and CIOs.

Things may be complex, but nothing is ever confusing in and of itself.

If something is confusing, that’s because you made it so.

In a nutshell: To established decision transparency you should leave buzzwords and products aside and instead focus on the available option space.

Read more…

Raising Expectations and Performance

We always compare performance on a relative basis. “Well, it’s better than it was last month…”

My toddler son, for example, seems like a freaking genius compared to the baby he used to be.

Some people around us have embraced a strategy of always lowering expectations so that mediocre effort is seen as acceptable.

Over time, we embrace the pretty good memo, the so-so presentation, or the decent leadership moment, because it’s so much better than we feared.

And some? Some relentlessly raise expectations, establishing a standard that it’s hard to imagine exceeding.

And then people do.

If you are working with, or lead by someone in the first group, an intervention can be rewarding. For you and for the person trapped in this downward cycle.

Raising our expectations is a fine way to raise performance as well.

And no, working more hours is not the same as raising performance, just as working fewer hours is not the same as dropping performance.

It is about the quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of hours worked. Not quantity.

And in the case individual performance is actually dropping, the plentitude of reasons can be split into three buckets;

1) Personal issues (family, health, etc)

2) Engagement issues (engagement to the vision, interest in work, leadership, politics)

3) Skill issues (does not have the right skills to do the job)

The first bucket needs support, the second bucket needs re-alignment, the third bucket needs training or replacing.

If you see someone’s performance dropping address it immediately.

Have hard conversations first.

Never underestimate how much one individual's performance will impact team performance.

In a nutshell: Raise expectations and address individual performance problems immediately.

Read more…

More Leadership. Less Management.

Why do so many projects continue to fail? An important aspect is the increased complexity of projects and the environments in which they are undertaken.

Many factors contribute to this growing complexity – social and technological change, growing global interdependence, increasing numbers of stakeholders and the need to communicate and coordinate cross-culturally.

Traditionally, a good project manager was someone who was logical and rational and effective at dealing with events, tasks and processes. It was someone who would work to the client’s brief and use his or her authority to deliver the desired outputs.

Often, this type of project manager would study best practices and company procedures so that the individual could play by the rules and ensure that the standards were upheld.

But this approach no longer works.

Or as one executive put it.

"If a project manager just follows orders he is not much use to me."

Building high-performing teams, creating great relationships and ensuring that the project actually delivers what the customer needs cannot be achieved solely through logic.

It requires creativity, empathy, risk-taking, vision and, most important, the ability to connect with people at a very personal level.

It requires leadership.

Managers work to get their employees to do what they did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper.

Leaders, on the other hand, know where they’d like to go, but understand that they can’t get there without their team, without giving those they lead the tools to make something happen.

Managers want authority. Leaders take responsibility.

We need both. But we have to be careful not to confuse them.

Leadership is not attained through a job title but through a continuous journey of introspection, observation and development.

In a nutshell: We need more leadership and less management.

Read more…

Projects Fail at the Beginning. And This is Why.

Beginnings are always difficult.

Projects are about people, people are about relationships, relationships are about trust, trust comes over time.

So at the very moment your project is at its most vulnerable because you don’t have enough information, credible plans, nor stakeholder support, you also don’t have the relationships with key people to fall back on.

The only way to start is to trust your instincts.

Something they won’t tell you in any project management methodology book.

It’s also not just what you do at the beginning of the project; it’s how you do it.

The ‘what’ is no huge mystery. Perfectly straightforward project management theory.

Go and buy any project management book for a list of all the things you need to get done at the beginning of a project; it’s no more complicated than the shopping list for a cooking recipe.

But what none of them will tell you is ‘how’.

The reason those books won’t tell is simply that there is no magic formula.

There is no list of successful habits to kick-start a project that works in the real world.

You aren’t going to learn it from any textbook because it’s all about people and relationships.

And that is one reason why so many projects fail at the beginning.

A project management certificate does not help anybody with their people and relationship skills.

Also what works for one project or company will not work for another.

You need to be able to read people, relationships, situations, and organizations,

You need to be able to trust your instincts.

In a nutshell: The only way to start a project is to trust your instincts because it’s all about people and relationships.

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Project Success is a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Project success is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Go around admitting doubt, and your project will fail.

Tell everyone that it will succeed and they will believe it too, and you have every chance of getting there.

You’re thinking it cannot be that simple?

That it just sounds like self-help psycho-babble?

All I can say is that I have never once in my life have seen a doubting project manager succeed.

The opposite is of course not necessarily true.

Believing in project success is necessary.

Believing alone is not sufficient to get the job done.

In a nutshell: Go around admitting doubt, and your project will fail.

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