The Technology Conversation- How The World Should Work

This is a monster chapter, with tons of stuff and just enough jargon to make you angry – even if you’re a technologist. The challenge here is to focus on the important issues and avoid as many of the relatively unimportant ones as we can. Like anyone developing an agenda, this conversation has something for everyone but hopefully not too much of any one thing for anyone. Here’s the list:

The Turf Conversation- Who Does What to Whom

Not too many controversial topics here. Here are the turf topics we’ll discuss: • Figure out how to neutralize the politics around turf: I have no magic here … it’s been going on since people began to congregate … but take it seriously because it undermines effectiveness. • Forget titles: you have to organize your companies to collaborate, support collaboration and enable it with integrated technology … you may or may not need “chiefs,” or “directors.” • Forget about consensus-based decision-making in flat management structures … forget about big teams. • Command and control works … even in decentralized organizations – which, by the way, I’m not that crazy about. • Innovation is special: make sure your organizational structures encourage business and technology innovation.

There's Just One More Thing

We’ve been through a lot during just the past few years. Y2K, e-business frenzy, free capital, dot.bombs, corporate scandals, integration technology - and we’re still standing. Of course we are. Because all of these “major” events, “disruptive technologies,” and once-in-a-lifetime stories are anything but. Life goes on, as they say, in the trenches and in the clouds. It’s all about commitment. Business is not always complicated. We sometimes convert simplicity into complexity so we have something to do, into some problem that only we can solve. I guarantee you that if you change the way you think about business technology and practice sane management you will save money and become more competitive, more profitable. There is huge leverage here. Companies are wasting millions and in some cases billions of dollars a year because their business technology relationship is fractured. Here are the questions: • Do you think about business as heading toward collaboration? • Can you identify the technologies that enable collaboration – and the collaborative business models that pull technology? • Do you get the importance of technology integration? • Will you organize things differently? • Will you re-visit your business technology management best practices? • Will you be a little more careful about who you invite inside your company?

The Tough Conversation - It's Still (And Always) About People

What do we have here? We’re going to the other side, to where civilized men and women seldom venture, to where the people who live and work among us are exposed. Here’s the agenda: • Who are you best people – defined in terms of intelligence, motivation and energy? • What are the areas – like obviously collaboration and technology integration – that you want them to know and learn about? • How do you keep nasty, stupid, arrogant, obnoxious people out of your company? • How do you nurture and keep the best of the best, the people with knowledge, intelligence, experience, personality and character? • How do you keep the culture clean? • How do you groom 21st century business technology leaders?

The Convergence Conversation - We're Finally Ready

If you don’t want to read this whole chapter, here’s the essence of the following conversation. But if I’m going to practice what I preach, I have to give you an overview of the conversation we’re about to have. I guess this is what we’d call an Executive Conversation Summary.

The Management Conversation- It Still Needs to Make Sense

Here’s what we’ll discuss here: • Measurement – or do you know where your computers, processes and skeletons are? Without benchmark data it’s impossible to converge anything: measure or fly blind. • The standardization of your computing and communications technology. If people want to buy non-standard, non-supported hardware or software make them pay for their own support. Watch three infrastructure levels: access, coordination and resource, and measure everything so you know what works and what doesn’t, and what things cost. • Outsourcing, or the love/hate relationship you should have with the people inside that are good/bad and the people you hire from the outside who are good/bad/expensive/cost-effective, and why you should outsource only to partners willing to share risk. • Funding, or figuring out who pays for what at your company, and dealing with the inevitable conflicts between the “enterprise” and business units. • Return-on-investment (ROI) and total-cost-of-ownership (TCO), the “I-see-no-compelling-reason-at-all-to-fund-this-project” twins – who really are your friends (so long as they stay on their medication).

The Business Conversation- Where We're Going

So what do we have here? This conversation will focus on: Collaboration and all of its flavors, including supply chain management, personalization, customization, optimization, automation and trust – and how if you’re not thinking about collaborative business models you’re toast. Continuous versus discrete transactions – the big change from the 20th century which, among other things, has obliterated the distinction between business and e-business and forced us to think about “whole customer/supplier/employee/partner management.” Real-time analytics – your next best friend. • The collaboration and integration investment filters as uber-filters: if business technology investments don’t pass, you don’t do them. Business scenarios and how to build them, because you have to model your collaborative future before you can make the right business technology investments.

Who's Here?

All conversations have participants. In this case, they include all of the decision makers that directly or indirectly influence the nature and direction of the business technology relationship. It’s important to understand who they are, what they believe, how they prioritize projects and the politics implicit in their roles.