http://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2013-06-14T09:00:00ZRecent research suggests that only 30% of workers are fully engaged in their job. It's time to break down bureaucracy and do right by our employees.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/stop-being-a-hated-it-overlord/240156633?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioBased on recent Gallup research, <em>Fast Company</em> contributor Mark Crowley recently offered a great mental picture of employee engagement in America: "Imagine a crew team out on the Potomac River, where three people are rowing their hearts out, five are taking in the scenery and two are trying to sink the boat." Do any of us who have worked at large, dysfunctional organizations think he's wrong? <P> Because of the complex and nuanced work that we do, IT is one of the industry segments that needs the <i>most</i> engagement from employees (apart from medicine and nuclear reactor work), so this message is compelling. Crowley interviewed Jim Harter, Gallup's chief scientist of workplace management and well-being, and if you've not seen <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3011032/creative-conversations/gallups-workplace-jedi-on-how-to-fix-our-employee-engagement-problem">his conclusion</a> yet, you should. He offers excellent takeaways based on data collected from 150,000 workers: <P> -- Only 30% of workers say that they're fully engaged in their job. <P> -- Too often employees are given managerial roles as a reward for success, meaning that the promotion is unrelated to whether they can effectively support and positively manage human beings. <P> -- Doing what's right for people turns out to be beneficial to the larger organization: Organizations in the top decile of engagement outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share, and have 90% better growth trend than their competition. <P> -- Leaders must be simultaneously results-oriented and authentically concerned about the development of every worker. <P> -- Most people come to work with good intentions and turn sour only when their basic needs aren't being met. <P> <strong>[ More advice for aspiring CIOs, from the school of hard knocks: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/so-you-want-to-be-a-cio-4-tips/240155134?itc=edit_in_body_cross">So You Want To Be A CIO? 4 Tips</a>. ]</strong> <P> This riffs on a theme we've heard before. Earlier this year I wrote about <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-to-scare-off-your-best-it-people/240146195">HCL's "employees first, customers second" approach</a>. I then heard from HCL employees that even this well-intentioned slogan didn't rid the company of dysfunction, nor did it guarantee employee engagement. <P> So I've been doing some deeper thinking about this topic, and I've come to the conclusion that most of us, including Crowley, are missing one key notion: Form follows function. The way we create and structure organizations creates the way people feel at organizations. <P> Most organizations are <i>not</i> an exciting boat race in the middle of the Potomac. Most organizations are dank, hot caves, deep underground, with the din of infernal machinery everywhere and confusing conveyor belts that lead to parts unknown. Inmates are expected to perform work where they don't quite understand the whole picture, with a <a href="http://everything2.com/title/Why+there+is+no+moloch13">grim overseer</a> who constantly changes the rules and dishes out rewards and punishments based on obedience and the outputs of some dials and bright lights on the machinery. A corporate overlord sometimes appears on the scene like a bad dream and tells the exhausted inmates what a great job they're doing, how lucky they are to work for the company and to hang in there -- with no specific recommendations as to how to hang in there -- and then quickly exits before any significant conversation can take place. <P> Harter and Crowley clearly understand that the workplace <i>must</i> be as much about satisfied employees as it is about business outputs. But business must convert from the underground people-factory model to the crew boat model if we want any chance of getting people's best work. <P> Let me be crystal clear about what I mean: the bureaucratic "factory" model of business, with its multiple layers of overseers, overlords and obsession with a flawed notion that top-down leadership creates efficiency, is broken. It has been broken for 100 years. It needs to be replaced. Employee disengagement is a natural consequence of that model. We can temporarily treat the disease, but we will <i>not</i> cure it until we change the model. <P> So what does a better model look like? My experience with the startup community suggests to me that tech startups, in addition to creating better technology, have also created better business models and ways to work with teams. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> I am particularly fascinated with <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/17/heres-how-spotify-scales-up-and-stays-agile-it-runs-squads-like-lean-startups/">Spotify's notion</a> of "squads" (small teams) and "tribes" (related sets of squads). In particular, each tribe is not allowed to include more people than "Dunbar's number," a number (estimated to be between 100 and 150) that comes from an anthropological observation that human beings don't have the cognitive capacity to have relationships with more than a certain number of other people. <P> While you might argue that a typical hierarchical company does split teams into units of less than Dunbar's number, in practice, these teams are not self-sufficient in the same way that Spotify's are. The self-sufficiency is what makes them a rowing crew with a keen sense of where they're going, not laboring in the mines, oblivious about their purpose. (Now watch the disgruntled employees from Spotify come out of the woodwork, right? Ha.) <P> Is this a perfect model? All I know is that it appears to be better than what we've got. I will observe that on small, self-contained teams, it's a <i>lot</i> harder to "coast" than it is in the bureaucratic "factory" model. That model is clearly not working, and we need to at least try something else if we truly want to take advantage of Harter's vaunted benefits of employee engagement.2013-06-07T13:42:00ZPRISM shows companies can't assume their data is safe in the hands of commercial providers.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/nsa-dragnet-debacle-what-it-means-to-it/240156243?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/information-management/new-yorks-32-story-data-fortress/240151545"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/968/Intergate-Manhattan-Data-Center_01_tn.jpg" alt="New York's 32-Story Data 'Fortress'" title="New York's 32-Story Data 'Fortress'" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">New York's 32-Story Data 'Fortress'</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed Thursday that the U.S. government has been <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/06/07/intelligence-chief-says-massive-data-collection-is-no-big-deal/">secretly collecting information</a> since 2007, exploiting backdoor access to the systems and data of major Internet and tech companies in search of national security threats. That NSA dragnet, revealed by <i>The Washington Post</i> and <i>The Guardian</i> and <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/government/nsa-prism-creates-stir-but-appears-legal/240156233">code-named PRISM</a>, reportedly taps into user data from Facebook, Google, Apple and other U.S.-based companies. (Those providers have <em>mostly</em> denied that the NSA has such backdoor access.) <P> If news of the NSA dragnet is true -- and it's hard to believe at this point that it's not -- it's hard to justify combing through <i>all</i> of the providers' data and records without a specific due process. One contributor to <em>Forbes.com</em>, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/nsas-prism-sounds-like-a-darn-good-idea-to-me-this-is-what-governments-are-for/">thinks it's a capital idea</a>: "This is in fact what governments are supposed to do, so I'm at something of a loss in understanding why people seem to be getting so outraged about it." <P> I strongly disagree. While Clapper's release states that surveillance is "subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive Branch and Congress" and must be "specifically approved by the court to ensure that only non-U.S. persons outside the U.S. are targeted," the release also acknowledges that information about U.S. persons could be acquired in this dragnet. <a href="http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized-under-section-702-of-fisa">The release</a> states that such acquisition, retention and dissemination of "incidental" findings about citizens will be minimized, but surely there are other, more nuanced ways to catch bad guys. <P> <strong>[ Find out how consumers are driving the government's video surveillance capabilities. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/information-management/whats-next-in-video-surveillance/240155161?itc=edit_in_body_cross">What's Next In Video Surveillance</a>. ]</strong> <P> Some sources also say that <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/05/nsas-verizon-spying-order-specifically-targeted-americans-not-foreigners/">Americans were targeted</a>. It's hard to know what the truth is. <P> In any case, we need to be extraordinarily careful of using surveillance technology in a way that ever starts to put ordinary, law-abiding citizens under the microscope, even "incidentally" or "minimally." There should always be probable cause and a precise investigation, not broad, sweeping data collection. There is always a tension and balance between liberty and security. This type of broad data collection is unbalanced and has a huge potential for abuse; it feels like a police state. <P> The NSA operation isn't only bad for personal freedom, it's also bad for business. What foreign company will want to do business in the U.S. if it's our government's acknowledged practice that it performs warrantless collection of the data stored in the cloud by major U.S. companies in order to combat non-specific threats? If I worked for a foreign company, I'd also suspect nationalized corporate espionage as part of the U.S. government effort. <P> And if you work for a multinational corporation, you're going to have to think seriously about how a provider might be disclosing your data to the U.S. government. While the disclosure thus far seems limited to consumer companies (AOL, Google, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook, Apple), that's only what we know now. It's not much of a leap to assume that the feds are also monitoring enterprise cloud providers. And the NSA trumps contractual obligations every time. <P> The NSA operation also calls into question the cloud computing movement -- because where there's scale and centralization, there's a far easier ability to monitor. It's much harder to monitor many small providers and thousands of businesses with on-premises computing. <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Another key takeaway for enterprise IT leadership: You better make sure that your data is encrypted when it leaves your premises. The paranoid among us might note that the Patriot Act, which gave U.S. law enforcement far-reaching powers, was signed into law in October 2001, and then the Advanced Encryption Standard was announced in November 2001 -- an eerie timing coincidence. However, AES, based on the work of Belgian researchers, has been publicly inspected globally and is considered technically sound. <P> But will the software itself be flawed? Would the U.S. government go so far as to coerce independent software vendors to install backdoors? In a country where officials can search your laptop at the border <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/feds-say-they-can-search-your-laptop-at-the-border-but-wont-say-why">based on a "hunch,"</a> and where law enforcement <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/supreme-court-says-police-can-take-dna-samples.html?_r=0">can sample your DNA</a> whenever you're arrested, and where the <a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/patriot-act">Patriot Act</a> and <a href="https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca ">Digital Millennium Copyright Act</a> are allowed to stand, why would you be surprised by this dragnet or any further revelations? <P> My final business technology takeaway: The lack of clear boundaries on government surveillance should be a major motivation to use open source software for security and encryption. While the very largest multinational corporations have the buying power to make sure that proprietary software vendors don't allow a third party to inspect their source code for flaws and backdoors, smaller enterprises don't have such clout or finances. Proprietary software has better feature sets, but until the U.S. government regains the trust of citizens and businesses alike, better to ensure that the encryption software you use hasn't been tampered with.2013-06-06T19:47:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10497/IT-Business-Strategy/Research:-2013-IT-Spending-Priorities-Survey.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio2013-06-06T17:19:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/81/10155/Business-Intelligence-and-Information-Management/Strategy:-Google-Leverages-Open-Data.-Should-You?.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio2013-05-31T09:06:00ZImproving the way government shares data will make it more efficient -- if IT commits to getting that work done.http://www.informationweek.com/government/leadership/government-it-cant-pass-the-buck-on-open/240155813?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/mobile/mobile-government-10-must-have-smartphon/240149858"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/958/01_Spacex_tn.jpg" alt="Mobile Government: 10 Must-Have Smartphone Apps" title="Mobile Government: 10 Must-Have Smartphone Apps" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Mobile Government: 10 Must-Have Smartphone Apps</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> I was dumbfounded. While giving a talk about open data a couple of weeks ago to folks from a variety of municipalities, an audience member asserted that government IT should stay out of open data. <P> His line of argument went like this: It's not IT's data. It's the finance department's data. It's the police department's data. <P> Well, not quite. Each department is the <i>custodian</i> of its data on behalf of citizens' representative government. They no more own the data than IT owns the servers. And when these departments get requests for data, who do you think fulfills them? Right, the IT organization. <P> The audience member's argument continued: If municipal departments don't want to make "their" data available to the public, then IT needs to back off. <P> <strong>[ For more on open government data, read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/policy/the-freedom-from-information-act/240152471?itc=edit_in_body_cross">The Freedom From Information Act</a>. ]</strong> <P> Well, if a department can point to a statute that prevents the release of data, then true enough. But my argumentative friend then went a step further, saying in so many words that if a department were to refuse to release data classified by law as an open record, then IT should just go along with this obstructionist behavior. <P> My response: So keeping your pals at your local government happy is more important than following the law and fulfilling your responsibilities to the citizens you ostensibly were hired to serve? <P> I understand that the release of data can be a contentious issue, especially when city staffers think someone is playing gotcha games. But when the law requires municipalities or any other entity to release records, they must release them. And in such cases, it is <i>absolutely</i> IT's role to make that release easier on everyone. <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> As I've been saying for some time, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/unlocking-big-government-data-whose-job/240008202">automated and on-demand access to open record data</a> lets citizens make better personal decisions; lets entrepreneurs create value, jobs and new services; and frees government personnel from the stultifyingly boring task of fulfilling data requests manually. <P> Without automated open data, some delay is inevitable, because every record request is treated as a unique event, requiring assessment, redaction of non-public data, double-checking, etc. Automation and providing for self-service not only connect the spirit of the law to the letter of it, but they also save staff time and, over the long haul, keep costs down. <P> Yes, open data can get political when city staffers release data sets without a plan. My advice: Focus on pragmatics: Where's the biggest bang for your efforts? Where will you save a lot of time for legal, public information and IT staffers? Leave the politics and the policy wars to the political process. <P> If your local government's IT is being run by folks like my argumentative friend, a common way they'll avoid responsibility is to delegate up: Throw the question of "should we even offer open data" to the mayor or other policy makers. It's a tactic akin to asking policy-makers if electronic forms should be used instead of five-part NCR paper. <P> Let's agree on this as a starting point: If we're going to promote more efficient, accountable and agile government, we need more open data. I'm not suggesting that policy-makers can't get involved in prioritizing data sets. I'm just saying that delegating up shows a lack of IT leadership. When data is opened up to the public, it should be done so in the most efficient way.2013-05-24T20:31:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/5/10118/Cloud-Computing/Informed-CIO:-Moving-Legacy-Apps-to-the-Cloud.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio2013-05-24T20:18:00Zhttp://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/6/10096/Data-Center/Research:-Data-Center-Debate:-Standardization-vs.-Specialization.html?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio2013-05-20T09:06:00ZIf you have C-suite aspirations, consider these four pieces of advice from the school of hard knocks.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/so-you-want-to-be-a-cio-4-tips/240155134?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/galleries/social_networking_consumer/linkedin-10-important-changes/240154479"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/990/LinkedIn-original-screen_birthday-hat_01_tn.jpg" alt="LinkedIn: 10 Important Changesr" title="LinkedIn: 10 Important Changes" class="img175" /></a><br /> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">LinkedIn: 10 Important Changes</div> </div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->I sat on a panel at <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/">Interop</a> two weeks ago titled "So You Want To Be A CIO." It was a stimulating conversation with a highly engaged audience. <P> I hope some of the following tips that came out of that conversation and my many years of experience in IT are helpful in planning your own management career. <P> <b>1. Grow Your Employees</b> <P> The panel was asked about "promotability" -- that is, the most important characteristics up-and-coming IT pros need to get on the CIO track. The two most important ones, in my mind, are communication skills and emotional intelligence. You must be able to handle and communicate difficult situations with customers, for sure, but just as important, you must be able to grow your employees -- and communication skills and emotional intelligence are critical there. <P> I've observed that some people new to leadership roles feel like they need to abandon their common sense and use a cattle prod on employees instead of applying everything they've learned growing up through sports, scouting or any other positive team-based activity. There's this incredible transformation that turns otherwise decent people into small-island dictators. Leadership is about influence, not complete control. <P> <strong>[ For some big-league IT leadership advice, read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/sf-giants-cio-quit-bellyaching-start-lea/240154560?itc=edit_in_body_cross">SF Giants CIO: Quit Bellyaching, Start Leading</a>. ]</strong> <P> I just finished an excellent book, <a href="http://leadersopendoors.com"><em>Leaders Open Doors</a></em>, in which author Bill Treasurer discusses two types of leaders: "spillers" and "fillers." A spiller approaches work from a negative angle: What keeps me up at night? What makes me afraid? A filler approaches work from a positive angle: What makes me want to come to work in the morning? <P> Bottom line, both from my experience and the author's: Fillers elicit deep loyalty from the people they lead. Spillers get deep resentment. Which set of employees do you think do better work? Note that I didn't say <i>more</i> work. <P> I can't emphasize enough how important it is to take a genuine interest in the welfare of your employees. Late in the panel session I was asked how a former infrastructure and security guy such as myself made the leap to CIO. My answer: One of my biggest strengths, revealed by Tom Rath's <a href="http://www.strengthsfinder.com/home.aspx"><em>StrengthsFinder</em></a> personality assessment, is that I really, really like to help others succeed. <P> As a CIO or other IT leader, you're going to spend a lot of time on other people's careers. You must invest in people as well as tech. So my question to you is, do you like to see other people succeed? If you don't, you might want to consider another career goal. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <b>2. Know Thy First Team</b> <P> During the panel, we discussed the role of the CIO as a bridge between technology and the overall business, the role of the CIO in cutting through BS and reducing complexity. Sometimes the CIO needs to call BS on his or her own staff. Yes, you need to develop your people, but you also need to be candid with them, call them out when they're being obstructionist or they don't have the best interest of the business at heart. <P> Another book that has functioned as a beacon for me is Patrick Lencioni's <em><a href=" http://www.tablegroup.com/dysfunctions/?tab=books">Five Dysfunctions of a Team</a></em>. The notion of the "first team" is the team that you owe the <i>most</i> allegiance to. And in the case of the successful CIO, the first team is the executive leadership team, not the IT team. <P> That's painful to hear and talk about, because a good CIO spends a lot of time growing his or her staff. But first things first: The business must prosper if IT is to prosper. <P> <b>3. Play Politics</b> <P> An audience member asked whether I spend more time with operations or politics and marketing, and I detected a note of disdain in his voice when he mentioned the latter. <P> My response: Politics and diplomacy are the alternatives to war, so don't underestimate their importance. Every CIO must acknowledge politics as necessary. And there's a world of difference between backstabbing politicos and diplomats interested in win-win outcomes. <P> Marketing and PR are just as important. Who do you want to tell your organization's story: IT or someone else? And how does <i>any</i> organization, commercial or internal, garner support for a product or service? Through marketing and PR. <P> While we're all aware of the negative aspects, my successful CIO mentors drilled into my head that you must communicate value (marketing) and tell your story (PR). How much time you'll need to spend on those things depends on the organization, but I guarantee you it won't be zero. <P> <b>4. Encourage Skunk Works</b> <P> Our panel discussion turned to innovation, and someone talked about IT folks having a low tolerance for risk. Agreed, to a point. <P> Do IT pros tend to have a low tolerance for risks they don't fully understand? I pointed out that IT takes risks all the time. Every time someone patches a server, updates firmware or otherwise messes with a working system, it's like surgery. You call on your expertise and take all the necessary precautions, but there's always an outside chance that things could go wrong. Nothing good happens without taking risks, and that's as true in technology as it is in business. <P> One risk IT folks don't take often enough is operating outside the chain of command, otherwise known as "ask for forgiveness, not permission." Huge innovations can come out of such skunk works because without the cold eye of upper management upon your people, they're more likely to say, what the heck, let's try something new and see what happens. <P> Nobody wants to fail at something while management's watching. Some of my staff's most notable accomplishments emerged from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunkworks_project">skunk works</a>. FedEx calls this "little i," the innovations that happen from the bottom up (as opposed to "big I," which come from formal, structured labs and programs). <P> Create an atmosphere in which the leadership tolerates risk-taking, one where everything that people work on doesn't have to be listed on a project management docket.2013-05-09T10:43:00ZSF Giants' CIO Bill Schlough gives winning advice to <em>InformationWeek</em> CIO Summit attendees. Lead by example, he says.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/sf-giants-cio-quit-bellyaching-start-lea/240154560?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioYou want to learn about creating innovation in a large organization, even with a small IT team? Listen to San Francisco Giants' CIO Bill Schlough. <P> Wednesday morning at <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/interop">Interop</a>, I attended the <em>InformationWeek</em> CIO summit, "Innovate or Go Home: The CIO's Critical Role in Driving Growth, Opportunity & Breakthrough Ideas," and was fortunate to be able to chat a bit with Schlough after his on-stage interview with Fritz Nelson. As you may know, Schlough was named <em>InformationWeek</em>'s <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/san-francisco-giants-bill-schlough-infor/240144065">Chief of the Year</a> in 2012 due to his team's numerous accomplishments with business focused technology innovation. (Schlough will also speak at the upcoming <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAX ">E2 conference in Boston</a>, June 17-19.) Here's what I learned about innovating with a small IT team -- Schlough has fewer than 20 IT employees. <P> <strong>Quit Bellyaching and Start Leading</strong> <P> I told Schlough that sometimes I talk to some IT leaders who tell me that their CEO just doesn't understand IT or the value that IT brings to the organization, and asked him what he'd say to those IT leaders. "You have to control what you can control," he said, adding, "it doesn't do any good to bellyache." Many times, if IT will control what it has control over, the organization will copy it if it is successful, he said. <P> This is an awesome instance of leading by example. That is, when Schlough arrived at the Giants organization, there weren't a lot of formal mechanisms for goal-setting or employee reviews. He implemented his own for the IT organization, and when there was an HR executive turnover, the new HR leader liked what Schlough had done and implemented it throughout the larger organization. Who says nobody ever listens to IT? Sometimes you just need to be patient. Success is contagious. If what you're doing is so awesome, you can expect that it will be supported and replicated. If it's not, maybe what you're doing isn't so awesome and you need to re-evaluate after a period of time. <P> <strong>Mission Focus</strong> <P> Schlough gives a lot of credit to his CEO, Larry Baer, for setting the tone of the organization. But it's also pretty obvious, to hear Schlough talk, that he sets a great tone for his employees. What is that tone? Innovation and mission focus. When he arrived at the Giants in 1999, the mission statement was that the SF Giants were "dedicated to enriching our community through excellence and innovation on and off the field." He's not aware of any other MLB team that has the word "innovation" in its mission statement. I was impressed to find out that not only does he wear a World Series championship ring, but also, the intern at the time got a ring. The IT team lives and breathes baseball: They are baseball fans who work in IT, not IT people who happen to work in baseball. "Our whole office walked in the parade, got on floats in the parade. It's a mindset that permeates from the top," said Schlough. Nelson noted during the on-stage interview that "your team believes that they were part of the winning of the World Series," and Schlough didn't disagree. <P> It is no surprise that a team with mission focus like this has innovated in things like dynamic ticket pricing, and has moved on to experiment with automated video data collection of metrics during the game. <P> Specifically, Schlough's team is tracking 15 factors about ball players on the field at 20 frames per second; they track during the entire game. The data will answer questions like, "Who moves the least over the course of the season?" "Which shortstop moves the least?" "How does that contribute to shortstop success?" A team without mission focus would NEVER commit to this, they'd be too busy fixing infrastructure and tending to what they would perceive as "their own knitting." <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <strong>Customer Focus</strong> <P> Open to innovation, Schlough isn't so wrapped up in it that he is willing for customers to be collateral damage. During the session, when talking about in-seat delivery of concessions, he said, "we're not going to do it until we can ensure that the hot dog is hot and the beer is cold." He's not just thinking about the ordering and the fulfillment tech, he's thinking about the whole customer experience. <P> <strong>Constraint Produces Excellence</strong> <P> <em>InformationWeek</em> editor Chris Murphy asked Schlough how he picked innovation ideas. Schlough described a pretty consistent "idea funnel" year to year, but noted that what they don't do is at least as important as what they DO take on. <P> "If you try to do everything you'll fail at everything or at least do a terrible job. You've got to be laser focused," he says. Great advice for any IT organization, and not just about innovation: IT organizations typically have an ongoing project list, an internal new project list, an external new project list ... and typically don't do a very disciplined job at winnowing down the list.2013-05-08T12:42:00ZThe 5 job factors that matter most to IT executives have nothing to do with compensation. Are you ready to deliver?http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/what-it-staffs-want-more-than-salary/240154463?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/internet/social-network/5-new-linkedin-tools/240152212"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/972/LinkedIn-collage_tn.jpg" alt="5 New LinkedIn Tools" title="5 New LinkedIn Tools" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">5 New LinkedIn Tools</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span> </div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> A few weeks ago, I sat down to examine the data surrounding <em>InformationWeek</em>'s <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/166/10380/Professional-Development-and-Salary-Data/Research:-2013-IT-Salary-Survey:-Executives.html">2013 IT Salary research</a> for executives. You may be surprised that the data tells us salary isn't really what matters most to IT executives. The five things that matter most have NOTHING to do with compensation. <P> While you might think that IT execs' higher level of satisfaction with compensation might factor in here, digging into the data a little bit tells us a different story. <P> As I wrote in the report, "Compared with IT staff, who are either satisfied or very satisfied with their salaries 59% of the time, and satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs overall 63% of the time, IT execs are only a few percentage points better. Sixty-five percent of IT execs are very satisfied or satisfied with salaries, and 70% are very satisfied or satisfied overall with all aspects of their jobs. The slight edge over staff in these categories isn't quite the 'let them eat cake' level of smugness that IT staff might imagine." <P> All of which is to say: CIOs aren't significantly happier with their jobs or salaries than IT staff. <P> <strong>[ Is your job satisfaction lacking? Read <a href=" http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/careers/5-social-blunders-job-hunters-must-avoid/240153423?itc=edit_in_body_cross">5 Social Blunders Job Hunters Must Avoid</a>. ]</strong> <P> So what <em>does</em> matter to CIOs? Well, among the 340 CIOs who took our survey, the top answers for "what matters most to you about your job" were, in order: My opinion and knowledge are valued; Involvement in setting company strategy and determining goals; My work (job) is important to the company's success; Challenge of job/responsibility; and Corporate culture and values. <P> If you simplify these factors into five basic questions -- and if the answer is no -- they read very much like any employee's reasons to leave a job: Am I being listened to? Does my work matter? Is my work presenting an interesting challenge? and Am I working for people that I respect and like and who seem decent? <P> To some of us, this logic is patently obvious. Others with free-market-myopia will point to the finding in the research that shows that higher compensation is the No. 1 reason why IT executives look for a new job. <P> Yes, of course it is. All other things being equal, that is. When folks answer questions about what is most important to them, you can usually take them at their word. We can rest assured that folks would <em>not</em> accept a higher salary to work in hell. And, when they say that they would leave for more money, one can assume that they would take the job with a reasonable degree of confidence that the answers to the above five basic questions are "yes." <P> If it was just about salary, talented IT executives would simply change careers and become CFOs. After all, you could add 50% to your salary. I say this because I went comparison shopping at Salary.com to compare CIOs to CFOs. While Salary.com obviously has a different data set than <em>InformationWeek</em>'s, and doesn't offer data for a job called "CIO" or "chief information officer," they do offer "top IT executive" data and call their category "chief information technology officer" -- close enough. Their data for the top IT exec showed a median salary as $192,000, with CFOs weighing in at around $300,000. <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> What conclusions can we draw from all of this? <P> If you're the CIO's boss, note that retention and motivation isn't just about compensation, although compensation matters. <P> If these five things matter to CIOs, it's not too much of a leap to say that they probably matter to staff. And, they likely matter to your most confident and employable staff, if you catch my drift. HR is busy crunching numbers to make sure that your salaries are reasonably close to industry. But only IT leadership can help with the big 5. <P> When hiring, do your best to express that the answers to the five basic questions <em>are</em> yes. Perhaps the best way to do this is to expose your candidates to others in the organization who seem reasonably happy, and allow the interview process to be a two-way street. <P> Finally, the most basic question of all is this: Why do we have people working for our organizations in the first place? To merely show up and do as asked? Or to do something on a higher level? We all want the next Steve Jobs or Linus Torvalds to launch from our organizations, but just how do we get there? <P> I would suggest that the thinking of positive psychology pioneer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow">Abraham Maslow</a> provides a good way to frame this question. Maslow studied how exemplary people became that way, and theorized that there is a hierarchy of basic human needs. That is, once humans get past physiological and safety needs (which salary could be said to be a part of), only then can humans focus on higher goals and achieve "self actualization" higher purposes, whether that's doing work that earns a Nobel Prize or inventing a transformative product like the iPhone. <P> We constantly ask IT folks to focus on higher-purpose business goals outside of infrastructure. It's not such a leap to ask those who manage IT folks to focus on higher purposes as well. Is it? <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing, and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-05-06T08:00:00ZRespondents to our IT Spending Priorities Survey say they're playing catch-up.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/why-it-spending-is-stuck-in-a-vicious-ci/240154096?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- May 6, 2013 InformationWeek Digital Issue--> <div id="inlineGreenPromoTop"> <div class="greenBand"></div> <div class="inlineGreenPromoContent"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/050613?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1365/smallcov.jpg" alt="InformationWeek Green - May 6, 2013" title="InformationWeek Green - May 6, 2013" align="left" class="greenIssueImage" /></a> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/050613?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/graphics_library/misc/Green_leaf_88x88.jpg" alt="InformationWeek Green" title="InformationWeek Green" align="right" class="greenLeaf" /></a><br /> <div class="greenPromoText"> <strong><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/050613?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">Download the entire May 6, 2013, issue of <em>InformationWeek</em></a>, distributed in an all-digital format (registration required).</strong><br /><br /> </div> </div> <div class="greenBand"></div> </div> <!-- / May 6, 2013 InformationWeek Digital Issue--> <br /><!-- leave as a br to not interfere w/ the insights boxes --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1365/365TOC_circle_110.jpg" width="110" height="110" alt="IT Spending: Vicious Circle" title="IT Spending: Vicious Circle" width="110" height="110" class="artInlineTopImage" /> Technology professionals want to deliver business value, but it's hard to break out of the vicious circle of underfunding and catch-up. That's the main takeaway from <i>InformationWeek</i>'s <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10497/IT-Business-Strategy/research-2013-it-spending-priorities-survey.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130211" target="_blank">2013 IT Spending Priorities Survey</a> of more than 500 IT pros who set, manage or have a working knowledge of the tech budgets at their companies.</p> <P> Although only 20 respondents who added comments to their survey referred to underfunding or doing more with less, other data points from our survey confirm that IT funding continues to be a big issue. One of the more plaintive cries came from a respondent who says IT continues to be viewed "as a cost center to be constantly cut and underfunded, not as an innovative investment that allows business tech to support and enhance business growth strategies." In other words: We want to be a strategic partner, but our employers aren't letting us.</p> <P> Our research hints at another vicious circle: Because some IT organizations aren't perceived as very strategic or otherwise helpful to business decision-makers, their funding gets cut, throwing IT pros into crisis and survival mode, at which point they become less helpful. </p> <P> We all know of situations where IT is part of the solution, and our survey does reveal bright spots. But it also shows that IT organizations continue to prioritize infrastructure and security projects over those that engage the business in creating ongoing value, even if respondents' top two goals are to "improve business value" and "create better internal customer service."</p> <P> These are laudable goals, so what's causing the disconnect? Our survey shows flat (43% of respondents) or decreasing (13%) IT funding for more than half of organizations, so visionary and discretionary spending is likely off the table for them. For those that do have increased funding (39%), they may not be out of the hurt locker long enough to do anything but play catch-up with deferred maintenance. This situation contributes to the same vicious circle: In an atmosphere where IT pros spend more of their time in the data center than helping customers, those paying the bills are apt to consider IT as a marginal player. In such an environment, nobody's consulting with IT before adopting consumer and cloud products (for file sharing, note taking and CRM, to name just a few) that promise instant gratification. And if those products and services don't work for the business units, it's easy for them to blame the infrastructure, which puts IT in the unenviable position of having support responsibility without planning authority -- fodder for more vicious circles.</p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- inline Report Promo --> <div class="inlineReportPromo right"> <div class="reportHeader"><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10497/IT-Business-Strategy/research-2013-it-spending-priorities-survey.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130506" target="_blank">Research: 2013 IT Spending Priorities Survey</a> </div> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1357/357CS_Reporcover.jpg" width="175" height="110" alt="Report Cover" title="Report Cover" class="reportCover" /> <div class="reportInfo"> Get our <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10497/IT-Business-Strategy/research-2013-it-spending-priorities-survey.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130211" target="_blank">full report</a> on IT spending priorities for more exclusive data from our survey. All of our reports are free with registration <center><strong><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10497/IT-Business-Strategy/research-2013-it-spending-priorities-survey.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130211" target="_blank">Get This</a> And <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/">All Our Reports</a></strong></center> </div> </div> <!-- / inline Report Promo --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Now add the mega-meme of the chief digital officer, here to let business units do all of the cool stuff they want to do on the Internet without any of the fatty IT control-freak calories, and you have a pretty good picture of the state of affairs at the modern enterprise.</p> <P> It's possible that IT staffers and even some managers and CIOs are focusing on what they know they have some control over: infrastructure. Yet most would agree that business units generally prefer their IT projects the way they prefer their marketing: relevant and easy to tie back to business goals. Virtualizing servers isn't exactly the type of thing that makes a business unit leader's heart go pitter-pat. </p> <P> Tim Monahan, director of IT for JW Aluminum, sums the conflict up pretty well. He compares two tech projects: a manufacturing execution system, which standardizes processes across discrete plants, and a migration of Microsoft Exchange from on-premises to the cloud. The former project, Monahan says, "provides clear insight as to where the business is making money or has its biggest challenges. " The latter is, at best, "cost- and impact-neutral to the business." </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center><strong>To read the rest of the article,<br /><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/050613/?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">download the May 6, 2013, issue of <em>InformationWeek</em>. </a></strong></center><br clear="all" /></p> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->2013-04-22T09:06:00ZLeaders and staffers alike had better stay focused on helping out, no matter what that looks like.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-it-can-stay-relevant/240153286?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/internet/social-network/5-new-linkedin-tools/240152212"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/972/LinkedIn-collage_tn.jpg" alt="5 New LinkedIn Tools" title="5 New LinkedIn Tools" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">5 New LinkedIn Tools</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span> </div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->I recently gave a talk at the University of Mary Washington <a href="http://www.umw.edu/">Center for Honor, Leadership and Service</a> on the challenges of leadership in a digital age. I discussed my experiences with changing jobs and taking on the scary task of reinventing ailing IT organizations. <P> My point to the audience: When the task is daunting, not only must you take small steps to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-apocalypse-demands-courage/240152278">build your "courage quotient"</a>, but you must also abide by what I call "the helpfulness rule." <P> One of my turnaround roles required relocation. My eldest son was 10 years old at the time, but canny for his age. On a "good night" phone call during the transition, he asked me: "Dad, what happens if they don't like you?" My heart skipped a beat, and I kept my voice level as I replied: "Son, my father always told me that if your purpose at work is to help out, you will always be OK. People always need help." <P> <strong>[ IT salaries finally are beginning to thaw. Read more: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-salary-survey-2013-11-career-insights/240152665?itc=edit_in_body_cross">IT Salary Survey 2013: 11 Career Insights</a>. ]</strong> <P> This principle might sound simplistic, but it has always assisted me in cutting through the chaos surrounding the first 100 days at a new job and then getting on with what needs doing from that point on. <P> Here's the rule in a nutshell: If your main focus at a job is the glory, the money or the career advancement, you'll find yourself in an untenable situation. What you want will not be what your employer wants. But if your focus is to help out, as long as what you're doing is legal and ethical, you will rarely be out of step with what your employer wants and needs. <P> The helpfulness rule applies to long-seated IT leaders as well as new ones. You might have been brought on board for a variety of nominal reasons: to turn around poor customer service, to institute modern practices, to fix a botched software implementation. But to stay relevant, abiding by the helpfulness rule will help you understand what your <em>next</em> priority is. <P> This rule also applies to staffers. IT is a helping profession, first, foremost and always. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"><div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a><div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div><span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span></div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> I don't know of any IT organization that's 100% confident in the business environment right now. The crazy winds of change have challenged the scope and role of most IT pros. Companies are <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/cios-must-embrace-digital-business/240151400">appointing chief digital officers</a>, leaving IT leaders to ponder a difficult question: Why is our top management not enlisting us in something that clearly smells a lot like business technology? The tough answer: Because they don't perceive IT as capable of rising to whatever the challenge is. <P> Why? Because they don't perceive the IT organization as being helpful. IT is perceived as having a different agenda. <P> Helpfulness has two parts. As I've discussed with my staff, the first step is to make sure you're in a position to be helpful by keeping your skills sharp and learning new ones. Step two is all about attitude -- being <em>willing</em> to help and letting other folks know it. <P> Whether you're just getting your start in IT or entrenched in the business, you will see the reinvention of IT over the next decade. In five or 10 years, IT will look nothing like it looks today. We can't know exactly what it will look like, and that produces stress. <P> It helps to focus on what <em>is</em> certain. Or, as <em>Harvard Business Review</em>'s Rosabeth Kanter writes, <a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2011/07/five-tips-for-coping-with-unce.html">"provide certainty of process."</a> <P> Helpfulness is the most tangible, certain attribute I can think of, perhaps the most valuable one on earth. My prediction: Those who commit themselves to the helpfulness rule will be fine, no matter what the budget looks like, no matter what IT transforms into, and no matter what the very uncertain future holds.2013-04-15T09:06:00ZOur 2013 IT Salary Survey shows most employers don't care that much about your fitness. But you should, if you want to do your job better.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/geek-physique-why-it-managers-must-get-f/240152834?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioOnly one out of 10 tech executives gets a health club or gym membership as a job perk, according to the latest <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/166/10380/Professional-Development-and-Salary-Data/Research:-2013-IT-Salary-Survey:-Executives.html"><em>InformationWeek</em> IT Salary Survey</a>, so odds are that your employer doesn't care all that much about your fitness. But it should. And you should. A healthy level of athletics will help you do your job better. <P> As an IT exec or manager, every day you're making tough calls. You're expected to show good judgment. You're expected to understand complex systems as well as or better than your staff and vendors, and judge whether they're performing. You need the mental toughness to withstand short-term criticism, to stay on course to achieve long-term gains. You need to step into emergency meetings with the CEO or other execs and explain what you need in the five minutes you're granted. In short, you need some serious brain power. <P> Turns out, if you want to generate more brain power, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/trends/british-programmers-told-to-fight-pudge/240150282">exercise helps</a>. A lot. Most people intuitively understand this link, but <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/how-exercise-benefits-the-brain"> there's science behind it</a> as well. Beyond the science, regular exercise and competition teach us to keep calm and focused under pressure. <P> It doesn't matter whether you have that gym membership or pursue fitness on your own. Each method has its merits -- group accountability versus personal accountability. Either way, we learn lessons about business accountability. <P> <strong>[ If you don't change, you'll die. See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-apocalypse-demands-courage/240152278?itc=edit_in_body_cross">IT Apocalypse Demands Courage</a>. ]</strong> <P> America is a nation of untrained sprinters who turn into quitters on longer hauls. (Bear with me here.) We're a nation of day traders rather than long-term investors. Our companies plan for the next quarter more than for the next year or decade. Those with the conditioning and patience to go the distance are a rare and precious commodity. <P> We often hear the phrase "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon," but who really understands it? Well, those (like me) who have actually run a marathon. <P> Every race that I run teaches me something. During a recent one, I was having a terrible day. It was unseasonably hot and humid. I hadn't brought enough water. My stomach was giving me problems. While I had prepared for this situation (it's not uncommon to need ginger or another stomach remedy during a long race), my just-in-case supplies had fallen out of my fanny pack. I was ready to quit. <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> But quitting wasn't an option, simply because at 15 miles into a "straight-through" 30-mile race, a runner has two options: Run back 15 miles or run forward 15 miles. The quitter culture would dictate "just don't do 30-mile straight-through runs" in the first place, but the lesson I took away, given the profound sense of accomplishment I felt when I finished, is that most worthwhile achievements have their bad moments, and if you don't see things through, you don't get the reward. <P> This is as true in IT as in running. As tech executives and managers, we're up against so many challenges &#8211; inadequate budgets, detached boards of directors, incompetent vendors, project saboteurs -- that it's tempting to shrink away. But quitting isn't an option. <P> Lessons are forever, but brain benefits aren't. <P> This is an important point for middle-aged and mid-career executives and managers to understand. It's tempting to think: "Hey, I've done plenty of exercise in my life. It's OK to slack off temporarily, because I'm really busy." <P> Sadly, while investment in exercise does have long-term muscular and cardiovascular health effects, brain benefits come <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/to-keep-the-brain-benefits-of-exercise-keep-exercising/">only if you continue exercising regularly</a>. <P> Want to be the sharpest exec or manager in the room? You don't have to run marathons, but invest continually in your fitness, even if your company doesn't. <P> <i>Every company says it wants to innovate, yet few know how to create an organization and culture to drive it, fund it, measure it and ultimately profit from it. At the inaugural InformationWeek CIO Summit at Interop Las Vegas, leading CIOs will gather to discuss the CIO's and IT organization's critical role in driving innovation at their companies. Use Priority Code MPIWK by April 29 to save an additional $200 off All Access and Conference Passes. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/conference/cio.php?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for Interop today</a>! In Las Vegas, May 6-10. </i>2013-04-05T09:06:00ZIT as you know it is not long for this world. Take these small steps to move out of the fearful realm of problems and into the realm of solutions.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-apocalypse-demands-courage/240152278?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/galleries/global-cio/interviews/232700431"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/772/01_Steve-Haindl_tn.jpg" alt="10 CIOs: Career Decisions I'd Do Over" title="10 CIOs: Career Decisions I'd Do Over" class="img175" /></a><br /> <div class="storyImageTitle">10 CIOs: Career Decisions I'd Do Over</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->I have little doubt that an enterprise IT apocalypse is on its way. I've written about the underlying factors: a tendency among IT organizations to stick to old practices despite the consumerization of technology; the tug of war around cloud computing adoption; resistance to the notion that centralized IT is dead; and even the <a href=http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-age-discrimination-youre-not-the-dino/240150553>dysfunctional hiring and layoff practices</a> of some large tech employers. <P> A reader comment -- essentially, "I won't take action because it's too scary" -- put things into perspective for me. If you want to survive and even thrive post apocalypse, you will need to muster the courage to accept change and own your destiny. <P> It's true of cloud computing. As I've said to my staff, we can either be driving that bus or get run over by it. It's true of IT consumerization. Despite fears that consumer features will destroy our carefully constructed networks, we must modernize those networks to make them more resilient. (If you're too scared to modernize, rest assured that someone else will, perhaps the new chief digital officer's minions.) <P> <strong>[ LinkedIn is making it easier to look for a job. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/careers/10-key-facts-about-linkedin-search/240151721?itc=edit_in_body_cross">10 Key Facts About LinkedIn Search</a>. ]</strong> <P> It's true of the so-called 40/40 rule, the practice of laying off technologists who are over 40 and make more than $40,000 a year. If you work for an organization with such a dysfunctional history, you must, at the least, have an employment contingency plan. <P> What's not an option: Sticking your head into the sand; constantly complaining to your peers and family members; expecting a rescuer in the form of some government dictate, a new CIO, a new CEO or a knight on a white palfrey. <P> Problems loom large for IT. They're not going away. Unfortunately, the fear factor looms large as well. In the words of one courage-at-work expert I spoke with, that means you're stuck in the "problem space," not the "solution space." We have got to get to the solution space. <P> Both of the experts I consulted agree: Small steps are in order. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"><div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a><div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div><span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span></div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Bill Treasurer, author of <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Right-Risk-Powerful-Principles-Taking/dp/1576752461>Right Risk</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Courage-Goes-Work-Backbones-Performance/dp/1576755010">Courage Goes To Work</a>, is also a former high diver who started that career afraid of heights. "We're so conditioned to be afraid," Treasurer says, but we can overcome that conditioning. To wit: No high diver would ever attempt a 100-foot jump until he had done many smaller jumps. <P> Whether you're taking a career risk by diving into new technologies or a new employer, such a bold move must "be about more than compensation. It has to be about destination," Treasurer says. In other words, people are so fearful of losing their livelihoods that they tend to make the wrong long-term decisions for themselves and their organizations. <P> Treasurer recommends considering a "worst-case grid." On one axis, plot a 1-10 scale of "badness," where 1 is not so bad and 10 is catastrophic. On the other axis, plot a scale of "probability," where 1 is not likely and 10 is definitely. Then multiply the numbers. It's a better way to consider your options than the conventional pro/con list. <P> IT leaders and staffers must also be open to the notion of "try and try again," because the challenges of work and organizational change can be much more daunting than purely technical challenges, said Mary Lynn Manns, author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Change-Patterns-Introducing-Ideas/dp/0201741571">Fearless Change</a>. <P> Technical folks often think they can solve organizational and life challenges with the same type of comprehensive engineering and planning they use to map out a BGP routing problem or a complex data warehouse malfunction. But workplace challenges, with their hard-to-measure emotional and political aspects, are as complex as chaotic systems. Because all variables aren't known, tight engineering and planning are virtually impossible. It's jazz, not classical music. <P> People often think they should be able to do one simple thing to solve those chaotic problems, Manns says. And even when people take multiple and adaptive actions, some of them inevitably fail. "And that plays into the fear," she said. "When things don't work, people totally freak." <P> Doubters will point to the one failure as a reason you never should have left your fear zone in the first place. But Manns and Treasurer maintain that taking small steps and evaluating and adapting along the way are key to overcoming that fear. <P> It might be true that the IT apocalypse will damage institutions and practices we hold dear. But tepid and fearful approaches might be just as damaging. Should we have held on to mainframes and SNA instead of moving to Intel and the Internet because of the riskiness of such change? Actually, I knew some of those guys, and it didn't end well. <P> What we must cling to is a focus on adapting and overcoming. Some of the changes sweeping our industry might seem like they're not what you signed up for, but a job isn't an entitlement. It's a responsibility to produce value both for yourself and your employer. We can't face up to our responsibilities unless we start thinking rationally about what we fear and taking small steps to overcome it. <P> <i>Attend Interop Las Vegas, May 6-10, and learn the emerging trends in information risk management and security. Use Priority Code MPIWK by April 29 to save an additional $200 off All Access and Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 300+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for Interop today</a>! </i>2013-03-18T13:00:00ZThe email brouhaha that erupted at Harvard recently did not meet my definition of spying. If your company monitors, do it with reasonable cause.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/monitoring-vs-spying-are-employers-going/240151017?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/vulnerabilities/anonymous-10-things-we-have-learned-in-2/240149686"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/955/01_Mask_by_Edans_110.jpg" alt="Anonymous: 10 Things We Have Learned In 2013" title="Anonymous: 10 Things We Have Learned In 2013" class="img175"/></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Anonymous: 10 Things We Have Learned In 2013</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span> </div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->I'm on the side of organizations being able to monitor their technology assets without apology. But that's a very different thing from spying. <P> I'm alluding to the brouhaha that erupted after Harvard University reportedly "spied" on its employees while attempting to find out how a sensitive document left the organization. I use the scare quotes because it appears <a href="http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/content/deans-communications">Harvard did nothing of the kind</a>. <P> The Boston Globe reported: "News of the incident could nonetheless anger Harvard faculty members, whose <a href="http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/03/09/harvard-university-administrators-secretly-searched-deans-email-accounts-hunting-for-media-leak/d5lYY8vXLyZQYWtTNGxWkL/story.html">privacy in electronic records is protected</a> under a Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy." Not the way I read it. <P> Indeed, Harvard makes it pretty clear in its <a href="https://www.fas-it.fas.harvard.edu/services/facultyStaff/policies">Faculty and Staff computer rules</a> and responsibilities that system administrators may "gain access to users' data or programs when it is necessary to maintain or prevent damage to systems or to ensure compliance with other University rules." The policy also states that "users understand that timesharing and network-based system activity is automatically logged on a continuous basis. These logs do not include private user text, mail contents or personal data, but do include a record of user processes that may be examined by authorized system administrators." <P> <strong>[ How to wrangle another employee hot button: bring your own device. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/byod-why-mobile-device-management-isnt-e/240142450?itc=edit_in_body_cross">BYOD: Why Mobile Device Management Isn't Enough</a>. ]</strong> <P> The policy also specifies: "In cases of computer misconduct, HUIT may notify the appropriate dean or University official, who in turn will determine the course of any investigation or disciplinary action." <P> So how is Harvard's tracing a forwarded email on a sensitive university matter an act of spying? It's not. It's reasonable monitoring. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"><div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a><div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div><span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span></div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Says Harvard: "While the specific document made public may be deemed by some as not particularly consequential, the disclosure of the document and nearly word-for-word disclosure of a confidential board conversation led to concerns that other information -- especially student information we have a duty to protect as private -- was at risk." Based on university policy and the situation, Harvard had a clear business requirement to try to identify the source of the leak. Any other responsible organization would have done the same. <P> And any faculty member angered by the incident doesn't seem to be living in the 21st century. <P> Let's call monitoring with a purpose "probable cause." In this care, there was probable cause to examine the logging systems. <P> Monitoring without probable cause <i>is</i> what I would call spying. The most egregious example I can recall was when officials of the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania allegedly <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-19/justice/laptop.suit_1_laptop-program-webcam-district-s-two-high-schools?_s=PM:CRIME">went through pictures of students</a>, taken in their bedrooms, via Webcams mounted on student laptops. The school district claimed that anti-theft software installed on the district-issued computers had triggered the laptop Webcam. <P> If anti-theft was the probable cause in this case, how come the school district didn't press charges against the students it has monitored? Instead, it came forward with evidence that the students were dealing drugs or engaging in improper behavior. No criminal charges were filed, but the school district ended up paying more than <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2010/10/11/lower-merion-school-district-and-blake-robbins-reach-a-settlement-in-spycamgate/">$600,000 to angry parents</a>. <P> Even in this post-9/11 era of digital cameras and other surveillance systems, neither IT nor random supervisors should be permitted to use these systems for reasons other than safety or a bona fide criminal investigation unless legal and HR lay out a clear policy or procedure first. But that's the easy part. The hard part is in the middle: When should employers do logging to check up on employee behavior? <P> The answer, I think, is contained in the wisdom of one of my early career mentors, who frequently said: "Don't confuse management with an accounting mechanism." You can spend a tremendous amount of time listening to every phone call an employee makes, looking at every website an employee visits and reading every email or IM an employee sends, making sure that every communication corresponds to work. But that's the coward's way out. <P> Before you consider doing that, ask yourself: Why am I checking up? Usually, the answer is that you're unhappy with the employee's performance, and the honest answer is that you're afraid to have that difficult conversation with the employee to get more information about his poor performance. So you search for some "objective data." <P> Get that objective data, but use it for due diligence (probable cause to follow up) rather than to look for a smoking gun (random spying). Too many managers, looking for the Easy Button, forget that the data is nuanced and at least as difficult to interpret as having that difficult conversation. Was the employee teleworking on a document where a VPN wasn't needed? Almost three hours of video during the week? What time was it? Was the employee taking a half hour lunch break in her office instead of taking a full hour going out? <P> Nothing will tank employee morale faster than the outing of random employer spying. As my mentor taught me, the accounting mechanism of employee management provides you only with data about a particular activity. It doesn't provide you with the complete set of inputs needed to manage and lead. <P> The old saying is that "locks are for honest people" because most crooks can bypass them. Management due diligence that uses accounting mechanisms is also for honest people. In most cases, leakers of sensitive company information, if they had mal intent and some level of sophistication, would have covered their tracks. <P> Employers can and should use accounting mechanisms at times, but without probable cause, they're headed for trouble. <P> <i>InformationWeek is conducting a survey on security and risk management. Take the <a href="http://informationweek.2013strategicsecurity.sgizmo.com/s3/?iwid=pl">InformationWeek 2013 Strategic Security Survey</a> today. Survey ends March 29.</i>2013-03-13T08:00:00ZCan you run that old ERP system on AWS? Yes, and it just may save you money.http://www.informationweek.com/software/infrastructure/moving-legacy-apps-to-the-cloud/240150184?ct=1022?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioThe idea that you should wait until you're ready to update a legacy application before moving it to the cloud is frankly crazy. With portfolios of hundred or thousands of apps, CIOs must take advantage of the economies of scale cloud computing delivers. Trust us, the startups gunning for your customers aren't being held back by a circa 1992 CRM system. </p> <P> Don't get us wrong. The question isn't, "Can all legacy applications live in the pure and fluffy cloud?" Clearly, the answer is no. But can many legacy applications leverage at least some of the technology advances inherent in infrastructure-as-a-service? The answer to that is yes, certainly.</p> <P> Note that "Can this legacy application shift to SaaS?" is a different and less interesting question that hinges on whether a given software provider can revamp its business model and provide a specific application as a service. This ain't Salesforce; it's "Can SAS provide SaaS?" One interesting finding of InformationWeek's 2013 State of Cloud Computing Survey, which asked 446 business technology pros about their cloud use, is an eight-point drop in the percentage of cloud adopters using SaaS.</p> <P> It turns out that many independent software vendors aren't equipped to meet the demands of today's enterprises. Their infrastructure costs tend to be high and their response times poor because they're not running IaaS -- they're running multitenant, big-box, hosted infrastructure in one or two data centers. Because it's "as a service," they call it cloud, but it's really not. It's hosting. If the price point and features work for you, great. But our experience is that ISVs turned hosting providers tend to charge more and deliver less.</p> <P> True IaaS providers deliver savings, agility and scaling benefits. So why do IT shops run so many applications on their own servers? "Part of the reason you don't see apps aggressively moving to the cloud is because of the refresh cycle," says Josh Crowe, senior VP of product development at Internap, a content delivery network and cloud hosting provider. </p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- inline Report Promo --> <div class="inlineReportPromo right"> <div class="reportHeader"><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/5/10118/Cloud-Computing/Informed-CIO:-Moving-Legacy-Apps-to-the-Cloud.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130318" target="_blank">Informed CIO: Moving Legacy Apps to the Cloud</a> </div> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1360/360F2_reportcover.jpg" width="175" height="107" alt="Report Cover" title="Report Cover" class="reportCover" /> <div class="reportInfo"> Our report on <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/5/10118/Cloud-Computing/Informed-CIO:-Moving-Legacy-Apps-to-the-Cloud.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130318" target="_blank">deciding when to move an application to the cloud</a> is free with registration.<br /><br />This report includes <strong>16</strong> pages of action-oriented analysis. What you'll find: <ul> <li>Eight steps to move a legacy CRM system to the cloud</li> <li>A sneak peek at our 2013 State of Cloud survey data</li> </ul> <center><strong><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/5/10118/Cloud-Computing/Informed-CIO:-Moving-Legacy-Apps-to-the-Cloud.html?cid=pub_analyt__iwk_20130318" target="_blank">Get This</a> And <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/">All Our Reports</a></strong></center> </div> </div> <!-- / inline Report Promo --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> In short, IT teams have other stuff to do, and they're content to wait. But CIOs need to push back, given the benefits to be had. Here are the top five objections to moving apps to the cloud and our suggested responses.</p> <P> <strong>1. Our legacy applications are too complex to move to IaaS.</strong></p> <P> Erik Sebesta, CTO of Cloud Technology Partners, a professional services firm, says he sees plenty of companies "taking legacy spaghetti and making it cloud spaghetti." We would argue that most complex applications started like those 100-foot, perfectly wrapped cords you bought six months ago at Home Depot. Over time, they all end up as spaghetti, thanks to moves, adds and changes, so set your expectations accordingly. By transitioning away from in-house infrastructure, most companies can save money, but don't insist that the deployment be elegant.</p> <P> How much can they save? Sebesta says his firm helped a large telecommunications organization move off expensive legacy hardware that wasn't well utilized and recoup more than $20 million annually. </p> <P> <strong>2. It won't save money because we still have to run a data center.</strong></p> <P> True, you probably won't shutter your data center. However, there are three compelling scenarios from a cost perspective that CIOs who want to take advantage of sophisticated cloud capabilities can cite.</p> <P> &gt;&gt; A combination of private and public clouds to do cloud bursting. You keep the ability to host internally and realize savings over a 100% cloud approach, while still being able to scale up for usage spikes. If you've ever paid the bill for running an app 24/7 in Amazon Web Services, you'll appreciate this model. In fact, some n-tier architecture enterprise apps are just about ready to support cloud bursting, though customization may be needed to programmatically monitor, load and request more servers from the provider when needed. Select target applications carefully. Customer-facing apps are much more likely than internally focused systems to need elasticity. </p> <P> &gt;&gt; Business continuity and disaster recovery. Look at your budget and you will likely see one of two things: massively expensive operational contingency contracts for disaster recovery for important systems, or capital expenditures for building out and maintaining disaster recovery hardware and associated data center assets, yours or hosted.</p> <P> BC/DR fairly begs for the automation and pay-as-you-go capabilities offered by IaaS providers. You can spin up apps in the cloud for a fraction of the cost of your own infrastructure build-out or using a conventional DR -- or SaaS -- vendor. We recently spoke with a CIO who was being pitched by a SaaS vendor on its costly DR capabilities: "You just have to let us know a week before you test so that we have the people in place to handle it." Oh, yes, that's just what we want -- a vendor that demands warning before testing its premium-priced ability to handle a disaster.</p> <P> &gt;&gt; Development and testing. This use case seems piddly compared with the resources expended for business continuity and disaster recovery, but over time, costs add up. Since there's always infinite demand for a free service (or apparently free, since most app dev costs aren't well aligned with or transparent to departmental spending), business units think nothing of building multiple test environments. We've seen more than a dozen for some enterprise apps. Think about being able to tell business units: "You can have as many test environments as you want for $20 per hour, each." All of a sudden you're not only reducing the number of test environments from "willy-nilly" to what's really needed, you're also likely saving considerable staff time, since setup will be far more automated.</p> <P><strong>3. Why would we move this application outside its life cycle?</strong></p> <P> The biggest pushback will likely come from the guardians of the application life cycle. In the data center model, applications are identified, architectures defined, and hardware and software procured -- then comes the agonizing manual labor of loading and configuring, which can take a week or more. In the cloud, there's still agony in loading and configuring, but instead of grunting over individual servers, the heavy lifting is associated with building templates and scripts that will auto-build, or orchestrate, servers and apps.</p> <P> Your application life cycle guardians will remember well what an effort it was to configure the servers for that legacy system. Though they may smile politely while you unveil your big cloud plans, as soon as you reveal that those plans involve destroying their servers and rebuilding them off-site using templates and scripts, the conversation is over, in their minds. </p> <P> This isn't always the case, but the point is that IT leaders think, "No big deal. Just write some scripts and templates and move the app to the cloud." Application and infrastructure teams often view this quite differently and will push back that the app shouldn't be moved outside of the life cycle. Frankly, it's hard for a CIO to argue with that, especially when teams point out the amount of effort required. Yet if we wait until the end of life for applications that may hang around for a decade, we lose much of the benefit of cloud, and for what? </p> <P> <strong>4. We'll end up locked into some cloud provider.</strong></p> <P> There are many ways to migrate an application to the cloud. Some involve consultants, manual processes and being melded to a cloud provider. However, there are tools to help avoid lock-in while bringing the benefits of automation.</p> <P> You can follow the lead of The Associated Press, CBS Interactive, Zynga and a slew of sophisticated startups: Use a platform such as RightScale, Scalr or enStratus that abstracts complexity. These systems provide management and orchestration and are typically built around components of on-the-fly provisioning technologies, such as Puppet and Chef.</p> <P> Using a platform like RightScale requires a completely different way of thinking than what enterprise app teams are accustomed to and, to be fair, while these management platforms have templates for building things like SQL Server, you won't find templates for most legacy applications. Your app team will have to build these, and, as we've said, it's just about as much effort as creating the server farm in the first place. Don't expect people to be excited about this, particularly because there are new technologies to be learned and new obstacles to overcome, such as creating a virtual private cloud or dealing with a new and borderless server architecture. </p> <P> Another issue that tends to bring IT pros outside their comfort zones is when outside services require internal resources. When a customer used CliQr to deploy a .NET app into a cloud provider's infrastructure, the question of how to print on site came up. The answer was to use a CliQr feature that allows for service proxy of given services -- no VPN was needed. Creativity is required.</p> <P> <strong>5. It's not broken, so why the heck risk a security breach?</strong></p> <P> To paraphrase Dilbert, do you trust a vetted cloud data center with a crackerjack security team and a CSO who used to be with the FBI more, or the programmer who's been outsourcing his job and sending his physical authentication token to China via VPN? </p> <P> In shops with hundreds or thousands of apps that are working just fine -- apps that people like, that are reliable, that provide benefits to the business -- there's no compelling reason to burn it all down and rebuild it in the "cloud way." But make no mistake: Today's rich IaaS provider ecosystem means low prices and little risk of lock-in, and automation means you can quickly provision systems to meet your organization's needs. </p> <P> So start now, and be pragmatic with legacy apps. If you sit back until applications run their natural life cycles, you'll be waiting a long time.</p> <P> <center><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1360/360F2_chart1.jpg" width="585" height="364" alt="How Cloud-Based Apps Measure Up: chart" title="How Cloud-Based Apps Measure Up: chart" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin-bottom:7px;" /><br /></center></p> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center> <div id="printfeaturePDFpromo"><div class="printfeaturePDFCover"><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10175/IT-Business-Strategy/informationweek-march-18-2013.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1360/smallcov.jpg" alt="InformationWeek: Mar. 18 2003 Issue" title="InformationWeek: Mar. 18 2003 Issue" /></a></div> <div class="printfeaturePDFCopy"><strong><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/10175/IT-Business-Strategy/informationweek-march-18-2013.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os">Download a free PDF of <nobr><em>InformationWeek</em> magazine</nobr></a><br /> (registration required)</strong></div> <div class="clearBoth"></div> </div> </center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2013-03-12T10:25:00ZIn our discussion of IT ageism, many IT pros say they feel caught in a hiring trap. Don't wait for some big, slow and stupid organization to snap you up.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-age-discrimination-youre-not-the-dino/240150553?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioIn response to my <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-age-discrimination-or-employee-inerti/240149938">last column</a>, in which I suggested there's a big difference between employer age discrimination and employees' failure to keep their skills current, I heard from quite a few readers who insisted I was missing the point. Their prevailing viewpoint: There's an "open secret" that big companies tailor their hiring and layoff practices to replace senior IT staffers with less expensive ones, irrespective of the talent they're losing. <P> My response to them: If that's the case at your company or organization -- if, as you say, your employer is idiotic and dysfunctional -- why would you want to continue to work there? Even if you don't get laid off, run. Run fast. <P> Again, I want to make it very clear that there's a world of difference between doing thoughtful cost cutting and dealing with employee inertia, and engaging in ageism to make the books look better. <P> Business environments legitimately change, and organizations have no choice but to adapt. For example, most data centers used to have "operators" who would change paper on massive line printers, change job tapes -- things that are no longer needed. Are those operators still employed? No, not unless they updated their skills. Good employers will help transition those folks humanely or attrition those jobs out. Organizations that don't are at a competitive disadvantage against those that do. <P> But what about those IT employers that actively engage in slash-and-burn age discrimination? The data suggests they're very much out there. <P> UC-Davis professor Norm Matloff, a critic of the U.S. H-1B visa program, says in his newsletter that he sees a pattern in Silicon Valley in particular: "Limit hiring to new or recent graduates, freezing out the people over 35, and then claim there is a 'shortage.' Once again, the young are cheaper, both in salary and benefits, so the driver here is money. &#8230; Of course, H-1B directly ties into this. The data show that most of the H-1Bs are young, especially true in the computer field." <P> Another critic, Rochester Institute of Technology professor Ron Hira, says that more than two-thirds of employer H-1B petitions in fiscal year 2011 (the latest year for which there's data) were for workers age 25 to 34. Only 9.8% of petitions were for workers 40 and older. <P> The <a href="http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/employment/langbein.pdf">IEEE has tracked member employment</a> since at least 1999, and at least from a perception standpoint, age has ranked No. 1 in "barriers to re-employment." That survey finding is easy to shrug off, but the objective data shows that across professions, for each additional year of age the delay between unemployment and re-employment increases. <P> Given the evidence, I can't disagree with my friend and tech colleague who said: "Smart older workers should not count on the loyalty of anyone around them. It doesn't exist. You should have your eye on the next thing you want to do, and be ready to pull the trigger at any time." <P> In my last column, I wrote that if you've had a rich, accomplished career and you've kept your skill set sharp, there's more work to be had and done. One snarky reader replied: "Yeah, move to India." <P> Really? So you're saying on one hand that you're expert, skilled and motivated? But on the other hand, you're saying there's nowhere else in the U.S. for you to contribute value and get paid for it? Perhaps you're not looking beyond the big, idiotic IT employers. It's time to take a look at small and midsize companies, those that are growing quickly and whose business practices aren't steeped in generations of dysfunction and shortsightedness. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Bruce Nussbaum, professor of innovation and design at Parsons, recently echoed that sentiment in <em>Wired</em> magazine when he said that companies less than five years old "have been responsible for all the net new jobs in the United States for the past three decades." Nussbaum touts the benefits of what calls "<a href="http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/03/how-to-put-the-indie-in-capitalism">Indie Capitalism</a>," where startups are leveraging the Internet and innovation best practices to capture big slices of markets. So don't tell me there's nothing out there ... unless you've got "I will work only for the people who don't want me" tunnel vision. <P> Which brings me to the bigger point: Don't complain about things you really can't change. Older IT pros talk about unfair H1-B visa regulations and ineffective age discrimination laws, but those kinds of issues are what the late Jerry Sternin, former director of Save The Children in Vietnam, would have called <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1514493/switch-dont-solve-problems-copy-success ">TBU: true, but useless</a>. In the same way that Sternin made a massive difference with Vietnam's malnourished kids without solving the root problems of poverty, unsafe water supplies and poor sanitation, you need to think about how you're going to improve your personal lot <i>without</i> having to wait for the root problems to be solved.Let's say that every time you interview with a big corporation, you think it's a <a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_squirrel ">"purple squirrel"</a> interview. Every time you apply, you're sure that your gray hair or years of experience will rule you out because your healthcare and salary requirements will be too costly for the employer. Don't you think it's a bit strange to keep trying and not consider something else? <P> At the root of many readers' aggravation is a sense of depression or hopelessness. But if you're a talented IT pro, you need to overcome the rocks and glass that life throws in your career path. Contrary to what some readers implied, I've had many of my own to overcome. We all need to pick ourselves up and keep going. <P> I reached out to Dr. Annemarie Carroll, a licensed clinical psychologist and college professor. She told me about a psychological theory called <a href="http://www.units.muohio.edu/psybersite/control/overview.shtml">locus of control</a>, which frames where people believe the control in their lives comes from: internally or externally. For those who believe in an external locus, "they can't even begin to understand the argument that they can do something about their situation," Carroll says. And they tend to surround themselves with people who agree with them, when they need people who will bring their control locus inward, show them that they have some control over their own destiny. <P> <strong>What To Do?</strong> <P> One awesome reader acknowledged that age discrimination is alive and well, but that he's taking action. He has started a company that commercializes technologies with which he's very familiar. And when he's ultimately successful -- and he will be -- that's his old employer's loss. <P> Whether you've been laid off because you're too experienced/expensive, or you're waiting in fear for that day to come, here are a few things to consider. <P> <strong>Talk with others.</strong> Be open to feedback from a friend or counselor. Conversely, be aware that a friend or colleague may need a little kind nudging to get started. This process <i>is</i> grief-like. <P> <strong>Build social resiliency.</strong> If you think the only way you'll get fired is because you're too expensive or experienced, guess again. People get fired for plenty of other crazy reasons. That's why I always recommend building social resiliency -- that is, cultivating a life outside of work or job seeking. Volunteer. Pursue a hobby. Join a club. Not only will you have 20 people who'll want to connect you with your next gig should you lose your job, but you'll also have a healthier work-life balance. <P> <strong>Learn the new world of work.</strong> I recommend a few books: <em>$100 Startup</em>, <em>Escape From Cubicle Nation</em>, <em>The Startup Of You</em> and <em>Free Agent Nation</em>. They're data-based and include action plans. Get involved with events like <a href="http://startupweekend.org/">Startup Weekend</a> and <a href="http://fi.co/">Founder's Institute</a>, either locally or nationally. You'll learn a lot and meet like-minded folks who will be part of your new world of work. <P> <strong>Write your future, not your past.</strong> I've seen far too many resumes that read like a museum brochure. As you move out into this non-dysfunctional world, don't waste valuable resume (or LinkedIn) space listing skills that don't matter anymore. I can list my experience with DCL and the VAX/VMS batch control language, but will anyone want them? No. And it will just make you seem old school and obsolete. Write the resume of your future, not of your past. What you leave out is just as important as what you put in. <P> So get to it! Don't wait for some big, slow and stupid organization to hire you. The big corporate dinosaurs are the ones that are obsolete, not you.2013-03-06T09:06:00ZThere is bona fide ageism and there is failure to learn new skills in a constantly changing field. Let's not confuse the two.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/it-age-discrimination-or-employee-inerti/240149938?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cio<!-- Image Aligning right --><!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/galleries/social_networking_consumer/240007253"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/867/Google-Plus,-1st-screen_full.PNG" alt="10 Best Business Tools In Google+" title="10 Best Business Tools In Google+" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">10 Best Business Tools In Google+</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- / Image Aligning right -->A reader wrote me last week about my column "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/4-it-leadership-failures-that-make-emplo/240149266">4 IT Leadership Failures That Make Employees Leave</a>," pointing to the practice of driving away graying employees as yet another leadership failure at IT organizations. "This is supposedly being done because senior IT staff are not keeping up, when it is actually being done as cost control," the reader wrote. <P> Not to be harsh, but we need to be clearer about what's happening. <P> I agree 100% that driving away senior, experienced personnel is just bad business. But there's a big difference between getting rid of people because they're old and shedding people who aren't cutting it. To put a finer point on the matter: Thoughtful cost control doesn't equate to age discrimination. <P> You often get what you pay for. But as we know in the innovation game, sometimes you can pay less because of market or business developments or because of new, less expensive processes. So the question gets reframed: Can you spend less and get the same quality of service? If you can, you have no choice but to make changes. <P> <strong>[ Computer programming is the answer to joblessness, says organization. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/outsourcing/codeorg-urges-students-to-embrace-progra/240149502?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Code.org Urges Students To Embrace Programming</a>. ]</strong> <P> We see this in our IT environments all the time. For example, we got rid of expensive circuit-switched phone calling in favor of less expensive IP-based services. If there's a staffing equivalent in your organization, well, that's regrettable, and we hope that your business handles the matter in a way that preserves the employee's dignity and provides some transition time. But fundamentally, you must part ways. <P> Let's also consider the argument that companies are getting rid of older employees under the guise of competency issues. Let's all agree that plenty of senior IT pros are <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/information-management/fed-workers-cite-barriers-to-tech-adopti/240001954">eminently competent</a>. Looking to another field, my dad, in his 80s, is still practicing medicine. Lest you say that his patients are in danger, I'll point out that he once again passed his medical boards recently. And although medicine might not be moving at the breakneck speed of IT, when my dad started practicing in the 1960s, it was leeches and bloodletting compared to the sophistication of today. He has surely had to keep up. I've known his equivalent on the IT front lines as well. <P> But a fair number of senior IT pros rest on their laurels, not because of their age, but because of inertia. I once told an employee that we were getting rid of a certain type of technology, his specialty, in a few years and that it was time for him to start preparing for the transition. We wrote as much into his goal plan, but he didn't avail himself of the training opportunities. A year went by, and we had the same conversation and again wrote it into his goal plan. Nothing. The tech transition happened as planned, the employee wasn't ready, and it was time to have a difficult conversation about parting ways. Had I not documented our expectation, I could have been accused of ageism. My point: Don't confuse ageism with accountability. <P> All of the above points assume a competent, reasonable leadership team, when we all know there are plenty of dysfunctional ones out there. If all you're hanging on to is the <a href="http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm ">Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967</a>, best of luck. It's a 10,000-word document that's incomprehensible by the common man. According to two of my trusted legal and HR colleagues, it does <em>not</em> prohibit organizations from laying off "the expensive people." Typically, if the layoffs have a well articulated, plausible reason and don't affect older people exclusively, it will be hard to prove age discrimination. <P> My question to you: If your employer is engaged in true age discrimination, are you better off taking it to court or finding another, more ethical company that will value your experience and talents? My advice: Leave the question of ageism to the class-action lawyers. If you've truly had a rich career with many accomplishments, and you've kept your skill set sharp, there's more work to be had and done. Leave the idiot employers behind and find it. <P> <i>Attend Interop Las Vegas, May 6-10, and attend the most thorough training on Apple Deployment at the NEW Mac & iOS IT Conference. Use Priority Code DIPR03 by March 9 to save up to $500 off the price of Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 350+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. Register for <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?CID=MP_ILV_IWK_Article_TL&_mc=DIPR03">Interop</a> today!</i>2013-03-04T09:24:00ZCloud naysayers will insist that this incident shows why we should never use the cloud. Give me a break.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/evernote-breach-what-it-means-to-enterpr/240149853?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioBy now, you have heard about the latest in SaaS security woes: Evernote. As a user of the service, I was notified of the breach on Saturday. Evernote's systems were compromised to the extent that individuals were able to access user information, which included encrypted passwords. Unlike the LinkedIn breach, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/linkedin-confirms-password-breach-phishi/240001674">where the passwords were encrypted, but not "salted"</a> (which provides protection against brute force dictionary attacks,) Evernote's passwords were both encrypted and salted. Evernote, correctly in my view, decided to implement a system-wide password reset, even though there was no evidence of a breach of customer content or credit card information. But this episode does have me thinking about a couple of things. <P> <strong>The Future Of Passwords:</strong> One reason why Evernote likely called for a system-wide password reset is it's unknown whether brute force attacks would have yielded passwords to the attackers. Question is, would a system wide reset have even been necessary if two-factor authentication was in use? "Oh, it's too hard." "Too expensive." Not really. As usual, the gaming world leads technology. Blizzard Entertainment's Battle.Net gaming service offers a <a href="https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/battle-net-authenticator-faq">$6.50 hardware authentication token</a>, and if that presents too much of a challenge to people using the service, Blizzard also offers a <a href="https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/battle-net-mobile-authenticator-faq">mobile phone two-factor authenticator</a>. <P> There are bright spots in the enterprise when it comes to two-factor authentication, notably in highly regulated industries. However, while most enterprises finally have complexity requirements when it comes to passwords, far too few enterprises support two-factor authentication on all of their remotely-accessible apps. <P> <strong>Attack Surface:</strong> The cloud naysayers are always saying that cloud is less secure. That's not quite true -- as I've pointed out before, many cloud provider data centers have a cleaner audit than many mid-sized enterprises. And, these providers have crackerjack security teams at their beck and call due to their scale. But, the bigger you are, the more of an attack surface you present to attackers. So, to that extent, I think that cloud providers have their work cut out for them. <P> One possible value add that SaaS providers could offer: Instead of forcing a password reset, offer what Blizzard Entertainment does. But that doesn't reduce the massive attack surface. If you're a huge investment bank, you've got a similar attack surface, but the question for smaller enterprises is, is it really true that <em>your</em> attack surface is smaller? Kind of, but not really. If you're using widely used software such as Microsoft Exchange, you have a smaller IP address attack surface, but your software is an enormous target. <P> Also, with rogue security researchers selling the latest zero day exploits instead of reporting them for fixes, I still don't think that internal is "more" secure than cloud. It's just a question of what type of attack surface, not a "smaller" attack surface. <P> <strong>Use Case:</strong> Cloud naysayers will be out in force this week, declaring that this incident shows why we should NEVER use the cloud. Give me a break. When I was in the security business, I saw vulnerabilities in the banking industry that would curl your toes. We all know that internal IT isn't quite as super duper secure as it could be, due to resource limitations and high work load. <P> As I and others have said before, you need to reframe your "secure/not secure" argument into a "risk management" argument. How risky is something vs. how much in the way of resources do you want to spend on it? <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <P> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <P> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <P> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <P> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> <P> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> There is no "100% secure," so the question is, are the benefits of using something worth it, given the risks? For my news clipping file that I keep in Evernote, the answer is a big fat yes. I've not considered using it for another use case, but I wouldn't rule it out, and as Evernote (and other cloud services) provide improved security, I absolutely would consider it. <P> I would be shocked if commercial providers do not follow Blizzard's lead. We all have big, fat attack surfaces, and protecting these with passwords, no matter how complex, is probably a bad idea in the long run, whether you're an enterprise or cloud provider. But to simply chortle and claim that cloud services are simply untenable is to misunderstand the nuances of security at cloud service providers and inside enterprises. <P> <i>Attend Interop Las Vegas May 6-10 and learn the emerging trends in information risk management and security. Use Priority Code MPIWK by March 22 to save an additional $200 off the early bird discount on All Access and Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 300+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register today</a>! </i>2013-02-25T10:40:00ZWhen it comes to creating IT job satisfaction, it's not what CIOs and other IT leaders say. It's what they do.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/4-it-leadership-failures-that-make-emplo/240149266?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioA few weeks ago, in "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-to-scare-off-your-best-it-people/240146195">How To Scare Off Your Best IT People</a>," I noted that with the job market heating up, organizations must fix the disconnect between what they say ("Employees are our most important asset!") and what they do. Readers and colleagues weighed in that the problem goes well beyond poor communications. Too many of our leaders fall down in the following areas. <P> <strong>1. They're Inconsistent</strong> <P> Strong leaders behave the way they expect their people to behave, or as Kouses and Posner state in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Leadership-Challenge-4th-Edition/dp/0787984922">The Leadership Challenge</a></em>, they "model the way." <P> I remember working at a place where top executives talked about our having to sacrifice, having to cut back on training, only to book an expensive "destination" trip for themselves. Leaders must think about what they're telling their people and then ask themselves if they pass muster. Your people are watching, and they're not stupid. <P> <strong>2. They're Not Accountable</strong> <P> Leaders <i>always</i> talk about accountability, but do they expect to be held accountable? A question for leaders: Has anyone given you critical feedback lately? <P> When one of my staffers invites me to sit down privately for some critical feedback, I consider that being held accountable. I thank the employee for the feedback and -- critical to accountability -- follow up after a period of time to make sure that I have acted on it. <P> If you're not hearing any critical feedback, it's not that you're perfect; it's that staffers think you view yourself as above accountability. Or they're afraid to tell it to you straight. It's what my <em>InformationWeek</em> colleague Charles Babcock calls a master/slave relationship. And what's the first thing on any slave's mind? Escape! <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <strong>3. They're Inauthentic</strong> <P> A mentor of mine once said to me: "If you don't give a flip about an employee's kids, don't ask about them. It's worse to be a fake than to not ask." <P> Employees spot fakery a mile away, and it's incredibly damaging to a leader's credibility. Credibility is critical because leaders must often ask employees to trust them and do things outside of their comfort zones. <P> <strong>4. They're Not Candid</strong> <P> Authenticity is a close cousin of candor. In describing <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/san-francisco-giants-bill-schlough-infor/240144065">San Francisco Giants CIO Bill Schlough</a>, <em>InformationWeek's</em> 2012 Chief Of The Year, an AT&T VP recalls a difficult conversation that Schlough, his customer, initiated with him after a problem. "I knew I was in trouble," the AT&T VP recalls, "but I didn't feel like it" -- because Schlough treated him with blunt candor. Similarly, great leaders don't avoid difficult conversations with their people. They meet them head on -- but with humanity, as a partner. <P> According to a recent survey by staffing firm Randstad Technologies, 54% of employers plan to offer higher starting salaries for new IT employees, up from 42% last year. So take note, fellow IT leaders -- the "slaves" have plenty of other options. <P> IT pros continue to tell me that the No. 1 reason they consider leaving their employers is bad leadership. (I either attract the disgruntled or I'm easy to talk to.) I always tell those people that they should consider themselves free agents. At the end of the day, it's not what leaders say that creates job satisfaction; it's what they do. Your actions do speak far louder than your words.2013-02-11T12:10:00ZSometimes we in IT act as our own worst enemy. IT leaders must study these mistakes with brutal honesty.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/3-ways-that-it-still-fails-itself/240148277?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioMy <em>InformationWeek</em> colleague Chris Murphy recently wrote a pair of columns: "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/6-ways-it-still-fails-the-business/240144288">6 Ways IT Still Fails The Business</a>," followed by "<a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/5-ways-business-still-fails-the-it-organ/240146582">5 Ways Business Still Fails The IT Organization</a>," both of which struck a nerve with some of my colleagues at the city where I'm CIO. But let me suggest another way to look at this complex relationship: There are times when we in IT fail ourselves. <P> Change starts from within, and IT leaders must examine with brutal honesty the ways we act as our own worst enemy. <P> <b>1. We Fail To Automate IT</b> <P> This is my No. 1 pet peeve: IT merrily automates <i>others'</i> business processes, but not its own. As a peer of mine observed last week, it's a vicious cycle: Nobody seems to have enough time to automate the little things (resetting passwords, clearing browser cache, etc.), so we continue to let our time get leached away. <P> We've been most successful at automating the big stuff -- system management comes to mind. Yet because there's not a huge ROI in automating the small things, we hand them to various IT personnel. Big projects tend to be complex and take lots of time, so I wonder if automating five simple things would yield more of a payback than one big effort. It's hard to measure. <P> <strong>[ You say your staff is your "most important resource" -- but do you really mean it? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-to-scare-off-your-best-it-people/240146195?itc=edit_in_body_cross">How To Scare Off Your Best IT People</a>. ]</strong> <P> One technique we're using to start automating the small stuff is to get some bright people together, add food and fun, put a problem in front of them and then knock it out. We used just such a "barn raising" social to design and deploy a portal that automates the time-consuming process of responding to citizens' open-records requests, freeing up not only IT pros but also legal and public information staffers. <P> <b>2. We Don't Ask Our Business Colleagues For Help</b> <P> I still encounter project managers and network engineers who complain along the following lines: "'They' asked us to do XYZ. Can you believe it? They want more and more! We just don't have the resources!" <P> The missing piece here isn't to respond "no, but ..." It's to say "yes, and ..." Being busy is a great problem to have. If you're a startup, you're thrilled when you start to have too many customers. <P> IT's problem is that most of us are rugged individualists who want to do things on our own. But sometimes you can't. While we can't say no to another amazing project that promises to help the business succeed, we can give our colleagues a heads-up about the impact of taking on the new project. How about: "Yes, we can take it on, and we have options to kill another project ..." or "we'll need X additional resources to complete this one on time." <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <b>3. We Fail To Report What We Do</b> <P> Only 39% of business technology pros outline service metrics, such as customer service feedback, uptime and defect/outage rates, to their colleagues using a formal quarterly or annual report, according to a <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/8438/it-business-strategy/research-service-oriented-it.html">2011 <em>InformationWeek survey</em></a>. And that percentage was down seven points from the previous year's survey. <P> The problem is that a lot of IT folks look at ongoing reporting as a dog-and-pony show, but that's simply not true. It's a great way to consolidate the good, the bad and the ugly -- celebrate success and raise morale; adjust and fix things that aren't going so well; and remind colleagues just how much work we're doing on their behalf. Maybe if we reminded our colleagues what we do for them on a more regular basis, they'd be more understanding about our project load. And maybe they would offer some fresh ideas on how to fix some of our challenges. <P> We can debate endlessly how "the business" is failing IT or the other way around. But I would suggest that we IT pros could make our world substantially better simply by focusing inward and fixing our own self-destructive behaviors. <P> <i>Wily attackers are using shape-shifting malware to fool your defenses. Are you ready?Also in the new, all-digital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/drdigital/020413dr?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Malware's Next Generation</a> issue of Dark Reading: The shift in hacking requires a new defense mindset. (Free with registration.) </i>2013-01-31T11:57:00ZThe company formerly known as RIM can't just copy the same things Apple and Google did to steal the top spot.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/blackberrys-new-enterprise-candy-wont-te/240147500?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioI don't pretend to be one of the smartphone technorati. I'm a business technology guy who relies on staffers to provision smartphones that make employees and their work more efficient. And I try to bet on financially sustainable vendors unless the short-term benefit outweighs the longer-term risk. <P> So on the day after <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/blackberry-debuts-z10-q10-smartphones/240147339">the big BlackBerry announcement</a>, I'm doing what guys like me do: reading what the smartphone technorati have to say on the subject and surfing the BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion) website to see how this is all relevant for me. I have bad news for the company formerly known as RIM: I'm not excited, and I don't think my peers are, either. <P> Hovering over the banner on the <a href="http://us.blackberry.com/">new BlackBerry website</a>, I read: "Take advantage of offers, tools and resources to help you leverage your existing BlackBerry investment!" Um, what BlackBerry investment? Unlike <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/blackberry-10-has-this-cio-singing-taylo/240147209"><em>InformationWeek</em>'s Secret CIO, John McGreavy</a>, we decommissioned our last BlackBerry Enterprise Server about six months ago. While McGreavy's organization has given in a bit to the iPhone and Android wave, it still runs BES. But most CIOs I speak with are somewhere between "decommissioning" and "have decommissioned." BlackBerry's focus on "leverage your investment" is just too little, too late. <P> <strong>[ Want to see what all the fuss is about? Take a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/blackberry-10-visual-tour-of-smartphones/240147378?itc=edit_in_body_cross">visual tour of the new BB 10 smartphones and operating system</a>. ]</strong> <P> But I clicked on the "get the details" link anyway. Turns out I can get a free BlackBerry 10 smartphone for my organization, begging the question: Can I get our people to let go of their beloved iPhones to take it for a test drive? I can also get a free upgrade to our existing BES licenses -- pretty cool -- if we hadn't decommissioned the BES server and if our staff hadn't taken it out back and beaten it like those guys do in the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IwzZYRejZQ">movie Office Space</a>. <P> What else? "Get actionable insights from weekly webcasts you can use to ensure your enterprise will be ready." And look, they're coming to a city near me so that we can get super duper excited <em>and</em> ready! But does my municipal enterprise <em>want</em> to be ready? <P> Not really. <P> The same things Apple and Google did to steal the top spot from the company formerly known as RIM are <em>not</em> going to help the company now known as BlackBerry regain the top spot. Neither my IT nor line-of business co-workers will care. <P> BlackBerry is trying to entice end users with the same kinds of candy -- books, videos, music -- that Apple and Google used to overtake the company formerly known as RIM. That tactic worked for Apple because there was a "candy gap" in the market. BlackBerry toys never cut it, unless you considered Brick Breaker state-of-the-art entertainment. And as a CIO, I'm not particularly interested that BlackBerry 10 promises a slew of "apps, games, music, videos, books, magazines and more." <P> Apple offered awesome consumer features and enough enterprise features to force execs like me to enlist a mobile device management vendor to provide the needed enterprise control. Most of us have taken our "consumerization" lumps and implemented solutions. We're living in a detente era, my friends, and without a really <em>great</em> reason to change the balance of power, nobody will want to. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> The new social contract between end users and IT requires a smartphone platform rich with end user candy and IT pragmatics. For BlackBerry to regain its crown, it must do as well or better at both, plus offer some innovation that Apple or Google couldn't quickly match. I'm not optimistic. <P> It does appear that BlackBerry is trying hard, announcing 70,000 apps for its new platform. That's not surprising considering that the company gave away a reported 25,000 units to developers <a href=" http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57565905-94/meet-the-man-who-would-make-blackberry-apps-cool/">to encourage application development</a>. <P> From an enterprise standpoint, I'm not in the camp that thinks the super high BlackBerry level of device control is necessary or effective. A more pressing issue for me is the extent to which enterprise application developers will support this new mobile platform. <P> In addition to rolling out email and personal productivity apps such as <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snap2pdf-scan-documents-share/id472940721?mt=8 ">Snap2PDF</a> and <a href="http://www.toodledo.com/">Toodledo</a> on smartphones, my shop is starting to roll out enterprise apps. A lot of IT shops are. We didn't develop these smartphone apps; they came with the enterprise software we bought, so we must use the platform those developers support. So, for example, for our building safety app, we can choose one of two platforms: iOS or Android, not BlackBerry. Point is, both Apple and Google have had so much market success that the enterprise software developers want to ride along. It will be difficult for BlackBerry to convince the ISV crowd that it's back from the dead, making it that much harder for enterprise IT to re-adopt BlackBerry. <P> In my mind, RIM was dead at the point when it mustered <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/rim-outage-explanation-leaves-big-questi/231900785">a lousy response to a four-day service outage</a>, at a time when salespeople and the C-suite of multibillion-dollar companies were afflicted with iPhone envy. This can't end well, I thought. <P> Rather than ask the question "Will the company formerly known as RIM survive?" we need to ask a different question: "Would a startup succeed with what BlackBerry is bringing to the table?" <P> Only if it totally lets go of its failed legacy and disrupts the market and the balance of power with true innovation. But with new products that don't go beyond what's now leading the market, and a focus on "leverage your existing investment," I'm highly skeptical.2013-01-28T10:23:00ZPointing to startup failures is a lame excuse for clinging to the status quo and mediocrity in an IT organization.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/startup-culture-and-innovation-defended/240147099?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioIn response to my last column, in which I argued that <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/we-must-run-government-it-like-a-startup/240146629">government (and big business) IT should run more like a startup</a>, a colleague wrote to object: "Given the statistics on startups," he said, "that means going out of business." <P> Not quite, for a number of reasons. <P> A large, mature IT organization is no more "one small startup" than a mutual fund is one small stock. It's absurd to think that any large IT organization could reinvent itself as one startup all at once. <P> What I'm suggesting is that we run government and enterprise IT activities in the same way that <a href="http://theleanstartup.com/">lean startups</a> are run. That means engaging in small experiments, measuring the results, learning and iterating based on the metrics and learnings. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't successfully transform most government IT shops all at once because of the sheer scale involved. And "all at once" isn't exactly startup thinking. <P> Think of a large IT organization as a portfolio of activities. Focusing on one particular "startup activity" failure is counterproductive. It's sort of like saying: Some people fail when they attempt 50-kilometer mountain trail runs, so that's why I don't exercise at all." <P> Of course startups fail, and some of your organization's IT and business process innovations will fail. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't engage in them. Experiment with some of those activities; continue the regular bureaucracy with the other activities. But dare greatly, and seek great rewards. <P> If all your organization wants out of IT is operations, it would have outsourced it. My IT organization tracks and reports on hundreds of thousands of dollars of benefit to our city each year that's a result of innovation, not operations. Innovation can and must be part of in-house IT. <P> I'm not sure that the number of startup failures exceeds the number of bad IT shops out there. I'll tell you this: I hear a lot more about bad IT than I do about failed startups, and I'm pretty active in both circles. <P> Mature, <em>Fortune 100</em> companies are learning from the startup community. At this year's <a href="http://leanstartup.co/">Lean Startup conference</a>, Beth Comstock, a senior VP at General Electric, talked about bringing Lean Startup to life at GE, a company with a $230 billion market cap. GE isn't too worried about these practices bringing the company to its knees, so I suggest that you don't worry too much about these practices screwing up your IT organization. <P> <strong>Small Failures, Big Benefits</strong> <P> Why should we in IT care about startup best practices? Because we have a key role in process and business innovation at our organizations. Let's face it: The way that established companies do things isn't all that super duper. We need to challenge our long-held aversion to experimentation and allow for incremental failures. <P> The challenge for every organization is to take small, discrete risks rather than bet the farm on the next innovation. These risks, properly managed and taken in aggregate, can yield big benefits. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Back to the idea that startups "mean going out of business." An economic developer I know, Chris Miller of <a href="http://www.illuminomics.com/">Illuminomics</a>, kept track of the actual wages created per dollar spent in attracting Daimler-Chrysler to build a factory in the Savannah, Ga., area, versus a program that did the same for startups. Miller found that Daimler-Chrysler created 50 cents in wages for every dollar the government spent on activities surrounding the company recruitment; the company pulled out of the deal after two years of negotiations. In comparison, he found that the startups created almost $12 in wages for every government dollar spent. Another comparison: Area taxpayers laid out $106,666 per job Daimler-Chrysler created, while paying $4,912 per job startups created. <P> So if we're slandering the startup way, let's include big companies in on the fun. According to <a href="http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/firm_formation_importance_of_startups.pdf">a study by the Kauffman Foundation</a>, startups create most net new jobs in the U.S., while mature companies are destroying them through layoffs and offshore relocation. <P> I'll take a portfolio of "startup" operations (the equivalent of a portfolio of experiments in an IT organization) over traditional big organization practices any day. Yes, some of these activities will fail, but it beats wallowing in mediocrity. <P> What is technology except innovation? What are startups except the leading edge of innovation? Instead of holding on to what you know, open your eyes and help yourself to a portion of amazing.2013-01-22T08:36:00ZGovernment 2.0 is about more than social media. It requires throwing out outdated processes and adopting new models of success.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/we-must-run-government-it-like-a-startup/240146629?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioA recent piece on <em>InformationWeek.com</em> by David Carr pointed me toward the federal government's HowTo.gov and the site's digital strategy guide. It's a well-intentioned body of work consisting of all of the consultant models, numbered steps, PMP-type milestone tables with action owners and, of course, acronyms. It includes a quote from President Obama: "I want us to ask ourselves every day, how are we using technology to make a real difference in people's lives?" <P> Indeed. But making a difference in people's lives through innovation isn't just about technology; it's also about throwing out flawed process models and adopting new ones. <P> I agree with Carr, who <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_networking_consumer/the-government-leaders-guide-to-social-m/240145966">wrote</a>: "If you work in government, be prepared to lose control. If you don't go out and meet social media head-on, it will happen anyway, all around you." <P> <strong>[ Find out how the federal government innovates with less. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/government/leadership/busting-through-the-federal-it-budget-ce/232901153?itc=edit_in_body_cross">Busting Through The Federal IT Budget Ceiling</a>. ]</strong> <P> Most government entities are simply <em>publishing</em> information; they're not engaging in discussions with constituents. It's not social if there's not a two-way exchange of information. Please don't tell me you're not resourced for it. That's like a private-sector business telling me it's not resourced to handle those annoyances called customers. <P> Carr's assertion that government entities could lose control is just the tip of the iceberg. Government needs to completely change. Yes, technology is involved, but the <em>way</em> governments use technology also needs to change. It's not just about using social media. It's about decentralizing. It's about instituting agile processes. It's about delivering benefits to citizens rather than adhering to bureaucracy. <P> Governments -- slow, lumbering and unresponsive -- must adopt a startup culture. Old way: command and control. New way: decentralized collaboration on shared goals. Political factors and life in a fish bowl discourage government staffers from engaging in experiments with any risk. After all, if their experiments don't work out, they'll be derided for spending taxpayer money on a boondoggle, a potential career limiter. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"><div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a><div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div><span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span></div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Within our city's IT organization, where I'm CIO, I've been gratified that some of my staff have gone out, with very little prompting, and gotten educated about startup culture. Some of them participated in a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/startup-weekend-made-me-a-better-it-lead/240006541">Startup Weekend</a>; others have integrated agile principles into project management. <P> Here's one recent, incredible example. Using the principles of "minimum viable product," "short, iterative product cycle" and "small experiment" from the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-to-innovate-like-a-startup/240002067">lean startup</a> camp, my staff preempted our city's plan for a truck routing system based on off-the-shelf software with a cheaper, less complicated idea of their own. <P> They set up a small experiment without telling me or any other executives in our organization. They talked with sanitation truck drivers, in effect saying: "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could save some fuel? Want to do a small pilot that won't take a lot of time?" The answer, of course, was yes. They marked down the odometer readings on a brush pickup truck for the start and end of a run. Then they plugged all of the address locations for the pickups into our existing geographic information system and ran a route optimization. <P> It turns out that, with basic route optimization, we could cut mileage by more than 20% on our own! The "minimum viable product" for drivers is merely a set of turn-by-turn directions on a piece of paper. Getting fancy, we could upload the data points into Google Maps for iOS and let it shout out the directions. Point is, we figured out that we probably don't need the capital project -- once we started acting more like a startup. <P> Government doesn't need to change all at once. If we take iterative steps and acknowledge that everything won't always work out, we can make small changes that will later scale to larger changes. We need to start getting out of the way of our staff and let them start to solve problems. And most important, we have to stop doing things the way they've always been done, and start copying the success of our private-sector brethren. <P> <i>InformationWeek's 2013 <a href="http://informationweek.2013IWgovITinnovatorspre-reg.sgizmo.com/s3/?iwid=pl">Government IT Innovators program</a> will feature the most innovative government IT organizations in the 2013 InformationWeek 500 issue and on InformationWeek.com. Does your organization have what it takes? The nomination period for 2013 Government IT Innovators closes April 12.</i>2013-01-14T10:22:00ZWe put so much into our communications with customers, yet we spend comparatively little time communicating to "our most important resource."http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-to-scare-off-your-best-it-people/240146195?cid=SBX_iwk_related_mostpopular_Executive_insights/interviews_global_cioAnother talent war is shaping up for 2013, especially for <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/12/01/pf/jobs-outlook-2013.moneymag/index.html">highly skilled people</a>. Demand for tech skills in particular is on the rise, according to 71% of the respondents to a recent <em>InformationWeek</em> survey. <P> Attracting the best and the brightest is hard enough without shooting ourselves in the foot. And we regularly do that in two ways. We don't bring enough message discipline to our recruiting process, instead letting all manner of employees put out feelers on email and social networks without appropriate guidance or checkpoints. And we continue to let managers say and do stupid things, heading off any chance of retaining the best people. <P> Most CEOs would freak out if customers were sent a poorly written sales brochure or catalog. "Customer-facing" managers who don't exhibit professionalism don't last long. Yet the equivalent of those transgressions is epidemic at large organizations when it comes to dealing with employees and potential employees. <P> <strong>[ Will GM practice these lessons in Atlanta? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/general-motors-hiring-1000-it-pros-in-at/240146022?itc=edit_in_body_cross">General Motors Hiring 1,000 IT Pros In Atlanta</a>. ]</strong> <P> Here's a recruiting notice I saw the other day from someone at a company doing some informal recruiting. "I am sending this email to everyone on our email address list, hoping that someone may know somebody who would be interested in these positions." How's that for precision? Describing one of those positions, the individual wrote: "This is a person who will be replacing the person who is in the position right now. He has ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), so [we] need someone to come in and learn the ropes before he dies. He is in a powered wheel chair and has no use of his limbs but has a high-functioning mind and still comes into the office every day." <P> Needless to say, I forwarded this email no further. <P> Let's agree that conversations about difficult job situations need to wait until a face-to-face interview. Such a communication also says something about the hiring company: It has no tact or grace. <P> If we're having trouble recruiting talent because we can't control our messaging, at least we're good at retaining our top people, right? Mmmmm, no. I wish that were the case. I coach and mentor a highly talented and diverse group of up-and-coming IT pros, and the No. 1 issue that drives them away from their current jobs isn't low pay, tough work or a dysfunctional "organization." It's their <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/when-nice-bosses-fail/232600211">well-meaning but ineffective bosses</a>. <P> Here's an actual quote from one of the folks I coach. "My boss expressed 100% satisfaction in my job performance and said the only thing he'd like to see me do is for me to do less -- let the @#% hit the fan a few times and force others to step up and clean up some of their own messes." Really? So let me get this straight: I'm going to achieve high performance by ignoring something, failing to help out and creating a crisis within the organization? How about addressing the bad behavior before it becomes a crisis? <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Most of the high performers I work with seek three things in their work: mastery of their craft, as much autonomy as they need and a purpose. At least two of those attributes get messed up by this "let them fail" advice. The cure for both bad communication to prospective employees and bad communication to current ones is to place as much organizational emphasis on these communications as we do on the communications we send to customers. And we won't do that until we place at least as much value on our employees as we do on our customers. This line of thinking would be heresy at most companies. <P> Not at HCL Technologies, where CEO Vineet Nayar has instilled an <a href="http://hbr.org/2010/06/how-i-did-it-a-maverick-ceo-explains-how-he-persuaded-his-team-to-leap-into-the-future/ar/1">employees first, customers second philosophy</a>. Nayar attributes HCL's financial success to just this concept. <P> It's an insidious problem, because employees don't call the customer service line and complain when there's an issue. In most of our organizations, there's no way to complain. There's no 360-degree feedback. There's no ombudsman to settle disputes. There's only the "scientific management" chain of command. <P> "What am I going to do?" I get asked frequently asked. "He's my boss and there's nothing I can do." When that's the case, when a company's most talented and committed employees aren't treated as well as customers, they quietly move on and rarely get replaced by people of an equal caliber. <P> The solution to that brain drain? I doubt that many organizations are going to adopt HCL's approach wholesale, but they can take small steps. Adopt 360-degree manager evaluations. Put some resources, perhaps outside the organization, into a neutral ombudsman charged with listening to and acting on employee complaints. Executives need to make themselves more available to employees and start to teach (and learn about) what constitutes good and bad hiring and management behavior. If you're feeling really brave, toy with the idea of paying new employees to quit. The practice, pioneered at Zappos, is meant to <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-09-16/why-zappos-offers-new-hires-2-000-to-quitbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice">weed out cultural misfits</a> before they become entrenched. <P> We need to do something or risk losing our current and future talent to the HCLs of the world.