07

Feb

Book Review–The Execution Premium


Book Title: The Execution Premium – Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage

Authors: Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton.

My Rating: 4/5

Brief Review:

This is a book that contributes to a series of books by the authors on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) which is a strategic tool for performance management.  The previous books that preceded this book and talk about BSC are (in chronological order): The Balanced Scorecard, The Strategy Focused Organization, Strategy Maps, and Alignment.

The book – The Execution Premium – aims at closing the loop of strategy management by introducing the Execution Premium Process (XPP), and focuses on strategy execution and techniques of linking strategy to operations. 

XPP

What I most liked about this book:

I very much enjoyed the comprehensiveness of this book on strategy management, end-to-end.  It gives a great overview of the full cycle and, in my opinion, the book is a great first read although it came the last of a series of five books on the subject.  It’s full of case studies of commercial, not-for-profit, and government organizations.  It’s very well structured with one or two chapters on each stage of the process in sequence.  Case studies are spread across the different chapters while supporting each other.

You will also find lots of sample and real strategy maps and balanced scorecards that will enrich your discussions if you are planning to develop strategy and translate it in your organization.

What I most hated about this book:

Well, although I liked the case studies presented in the book, I hated the fact that most of them are old (10-15 years ago).  I felt like they were doing research on companies in the nineties and early 2000s, and suddenly stopped to increase the ROI of those existing case studies.   The book is relatively new (2008), and knowing that the balanced scorecard benefits can be realized in 2-3 years, I wanted to see more if note all of the case studies pertaining to 2005 onwards.  I was always wondering how the companies presented in the case studies are doing at the moment and whether their success is sustained.

Also, I wanted to see more of failed strategies than successful ones.  There is one or two examples of how failed strategies been recovered, but that’s not enough.  I would love to see how failed strategies or execution affected organizations, big or small, public or private!

Another thing is how tough the talk about operations and finance concepts and tools was.  This is definitely my issue as I need to advance my knowledge in these areas.  For me, and those who might share the same introductory levels of these subjects, chapter 6 and 7 are tough reads.

Another minor thing is the naming of the second stage of the process as “Plan the Strategy” though out the book.  The authors mean and talk about “Translate the Strategy” (as depicted by a recent figure shown above), but choosing  “Plan the Strategy” is definitely misleading.  Not a big deal! once you know what they mean is “translate” more than “plan”, you can build a mental model to do automatic translation to the correct term and off you go.

In Summary:

This is a great book that will enable you to understand the subject of strategy, execution, and the balanced scorecard in relatively easy ways.  Don’t hesitate to get one, and please use the comments below in case you came across better books on the subject.

Thank you!

473 days ago Short URL Comments

Business

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17

Jan

10 Steps to Develop an IT Strategy


I have been looking for a good guide in the Internet for steps in developing an IT strategy.  I found many of them out there, but they either miss the important, or elaborate on one step in the expense of others.  So, I have decided to pull together a comprehensive list of important steps someone needs to walkthrough in order to develop an IT strategy.  So, here they come:

1. Develop Charter – to get initial agreement on planning

A charter is a great tool of debate and agreement.  Before you spend a great deal of time in developing an IT strategy, it is worth agreeing on and justifying the effort.  Also, a charter serves as a proposal of an project you’re planning to conduct, and will be a great tool to sell the idea to the CIO, and the overall organization.

A typical IT Strategy Charter answers the following:

  • Objectives: why are you pursuing this exercise? and what kind of background work has already been conducted that could possibly contribute to it?
  • Critical Success Factors: what are the rules of engagement? what are the make-it-or-break-it conditions for a successful development of your IT strategy?
  • Scope: to clarify and limit activities and coverage of the IT strategy.  You could scope the deliverables, scope the process, or scope according to available data and capabilities.
  • Governance: how do you plan to run your planning process, and what people and team structure you need to establish? what is the rhythm of collaboration that facilitate the planning exercise?
  • Methodology: are you going to refer to a framework to guide your activity? and which process (relevant to strategic planning) are you proposing to follow to reach your goal (apparently the 10 steps in this post!)?
  • Deliverables: describe the expected deliverables and link to methodology/process above.
  • Timeline: of your strategy development process reflecting dependencies and durations.
  • Budget: what funding and resources do you require in order to conduct the planning exercise?

Remember, your charter is a selling tool, so make it concise and value-emitting.

2. Capture the Business Context – vision, mission, values, and strategic goals

A critical success factor of your IT strategy is to mirror and align with the business.  In this step, you need to capture (or create) a crisp understanding of the business that IT serves.  You usually do that be reviewing the business strategy, which typically contains the following elements:

  • Vision of the organization
  • Mission/Purpose
  • Values that govern the souls and activities of its people
  • Strategic Goals: usually arranged in focus areas or themes.
  • Strategic Initiatives: detailed programs and projects that the business is planning to execute in order to achieve its vision, mission, and goals.

These elements will enable you to build IT’s version of vision/mission, and understand the implications of business strategy on IT (via analyzing the strategic goals and initiatives).

3. Develop IT Mandate: Vision, Mission, and Objectives

Although might not be required, but we as IT people love to tailor everything to our likings.  In this step, you can technologize the organization’s vision and mission, and state your high level goals or objectives.  I love to call this IT mandate, as it really all about what we aim for, what purpose we serve, and what governs our activities.

Someone could expand this step to state all possible guiding principles that govern our choices; An area where Enterprise Architecture is very concerned about.

4. Define Critical Success Factors – or rules of engagement

The play the game, you need to state the rules.  A critical list of success factors will help depict high level requirements that you want to ask top management to secure.  Leave the details to be explored in future steps such as governance and implementation roadmap.  You would usually have 3-5 CSF’s to set the stage for a successful planning exercise.

5. Analyze Current IT Environment

That’s where the heavy-weight lifting occurs.  An analysis of your current environment (current state, or status quo) is required where you do lot’s of reflections and backward looking.  You need to pick the right tools to help you with analysis, such as value chain mapping of processes to systems and services, SWOT analysis, etc.  You will need to combine this analysis phase with input that you can acquire via:

  • Interviews with business and IT
  • Reviewing exiting documents (processes, policies, standards, organization structures, budgets, …)
  • Conducting workshops to structure the analysis and uncover the hidden.

If you need details on this step, then reviewing Enterprise Architecture will be a great source of guidance and tools.

6. Identify Strategic Issues and Outcomes

After scanning and analyzing the current environment, you will come up with a laundry list of strategic issues and outcomes.  These need to be discussed and refined via internal debate within IT, and with the stakeholders as well.  Workshop setups are the best to refine and agree on strategic issues.  This step is critical to feed the benchmarking exercise coming next.

7. Benchmark and Study Best Practices – by comparing to local and global bodies and technology trends

Benchmarking is a great tool to compare your organization with other entities and to share strategic issues seeking what and how others do about them.  It is a practical learning opportunity for your leadership team and staff.

A number of sources and/or techniques can be used when planning to conduct benchmarking:

  • Contacting other organizations that match yours in a number of criteria such as purpose, industry, and size.
  • Attending conferences and seminars that take holistic view of IT; avoid those that cover specific technologies and/or vendors unless it relates to one of your strategic issues.
  • Reviewing off-the-shelf benchmarking studies and research available from a variety of sources (such as business monitor, data monitor, IDC, Gartner, Forrester, … or world organizations)
  • Digging for reports from local government entities (ministries, commissions, …).
  • Studying technology trends from well-known vendors; but be cautious of the marketing nature of such sources.

Benchmarking serves as a reality check on what things are possible and what things that can be taken into consideration when envisioning your future state, next.  It’s also important you consider the local organizations in your benchmarking since each market have a different set of drivers and challenges, and your local market gets you practical answers and advise.

8. Envision Target State and Assess Gaps

Your IT mandate, the analysis of current environment, and benchmarking results should set you on a path to state your strategic goals and conceptualize your future state (target state, target model, vision of success…; name it the way you like).  Again, following a practice like Enterprise Architecture comes in handy with its structured approach and tools to depict a potential future state.

The future state can include one or more of the following:

  • Strategic goals – possibly arranged into strategic themes or focus areas.
  • Architecture models – conceptually depicting the future state in different areas such business, information, technology, …
  • Specific technologies/solutions recommended for adoption to address specific strategic issues (aligned with business goals).

Once you understand your current environment and envision your desired target model, you will be able to conduct a gap analysis to identify what can be done to progress you towards your vision.  This analysis will be translated into actionable strategic initiatives – programs or projects that compose your motion vehicle.  This will be captured in Step 10 – Developing Implementation Roadmap.

9. Develop Governance – to facilitate and enforce strategy execution

This is different (but could be an evolved version of) the previous governance mentioned in Step 1 – Develop Charter.  Studying and establishing an appropriate and strong governance structure will ensure that the plan will be executed, communicated, monitored, and reviewed once commenced in action.  Governance typically consists of the following:

  • Appointing one person who will be the owner and in charge of the plan.  Usually a senior who reports directly to the CIO (in small and mid-sized organizations) or Corporate and/or IT Planning directorates (especially in large organizations with well-established planning functions).
  • Identifying people who will take care of the strategy plan; the core team.
  • Identifying those who will participate and facilitate its execution within IT and Business; the virtual team.
  • Appointing one or more seniors from executive circle to steer and monitor; the executive steering committee.
  • Determining the rhythm of collaboration amongst them all via meetings, committees, workshops, reviews, …
  • Defining controls via standards, policies, and processes (such as change management).

By appropriate and strong governance I mean: physically tangible, empowered by top management with clear authorities, and culturally-fit (having a governance in public sector differs from the private sector).

10. Develop Implementation Roadmap – initiatives with priorities, estimates, ownership and schedules

Finally, we can have some real and tangible stuff that concludes this effort.  An implementation plan will basically consist of a proliferation of strategic initiatives that link to your strategic goals and/or themes.  Strategic initiatives are the result of analyzing the gap between your current and target states.  They will need to be organized to reflect the following:

  • Dependencies and priorities: which initiative to start with, and how critical an initiative is to achieve a goal or theme.
  • Budget estimates: including people, tools, and efforts.
  • Assigned ownership to ensure accountability.
  • Schedules of initiative durations, and when value can be realized.

A roadmap will result to show how we’re going to achieve what we have stated in our mandate, strategic goals, and target model.  Each initiative typically corresponds to a project, which means that they form the contact and transition point between your strategy management and program management.  Program management (typically represented by a Program Management Office or PMO) will detail each initiative into project plans.

We’re Not Done Yet!

In order for any strategy to survive, three more steps are needed that compose a tail and a rhythm of continuous activity.  These are communication, monitoring, and review.  Below is a summary of these recurring activities:

A. Communicate the Plan – consistently

Communication is one of the responsibilities of an IT Strategy Governance.  The governance structure will need to communicate both the planning (while developing the IT Strategy) and the plan (The final deliverables and the execution rhythm).  IT organization need to best utilize this step to consistently show their value, and to achieve a common language with the business.

B. Monitor Performance – regularly

Your goals and initiatives will sure have metrics to reflect on progress towards goals.  This step will be another tool used by the governance structure to monitor performance against targets.  It will usually be depicted using dashboards and key performance indicators.

C. Review Strategy – regularly and incrementally

On a predefined schedule, the whole strategy needs to be reviewed, say every quarter, half, or annually.  The governance structure need to utilize this review for course correction.  There is also another important benefit of this review cycles: incremental development of the strategy.  When you start your effort to develop your plan, you might be very limited in resources (people, budgets, timeframe).  A strategy review will enable you to augment and refine your strategy incrementally, in order to manage scope and complexity.

493 days ago Short URL 3 Comments

Business/Technology

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10

Jan

Scoping an Enterprise Architecture Practice


As a first step in your efforts to develop an Enterprise Architecture, you could think of chartering the EA exercise to answer important questions, such as:

  • Why would you need EA? objectives/goals?
  • What is the vision of your EA practice?
  • What would be your scope in your first iteration (typically, you cannot have EA in one shot!)?
  • What kind of deliverables are expected as outcomes of your EA practice?
  • What kind of governance you’re proposing in order to facilitate execution?

In this post, I will try to answer what goes into a typical scope of an Enterprise Architecture practice.  But first, what’s scoping anyways?!

In its simplest forms, scoping is knowing what to do, and more importantly what not to do. 

In order for you to know what (not) to do, you need to know three (3) important things of any effort or practice:

  • The final outcome desired – result.
  • The steps or activities needed to achieve that outcome – process.
  • The available inputs to those steps that enable them to richly and adequately achieve the desired outcome – input.

By scoping, you might fully consider the whole outcome (the result).  You also might think of chopping that up into smaller outcomes and tackle those one by one to help you achieve the whole result, gradually.  Note that these smaller pieces need to be logical and each need to get you closer to your grand one.

Chopping (scoping!) can affect the steps or activities to be carried our (the process itself).  That can be accomplished by either eliminating or focusing on some of the steps. Also, an important guide to chopping is the available inputs – both hard inputs such as documents and processes, and soft inputs such as people and time.

Let me give a simple example before we dive into how to scope EA itself. 

Example: Developing a new learning website.

This is originally adapted from a great book by Dan Roam – The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures.  As Dan states, in order to develop a new educational website, all you need is the following:

developing a learning website

Everything we need to know to create a learning/educational website
(adapted from “The Back of the Napkin” book)

This constitutes your desired outcome: a website that delivers content to be consumed in a variety of ways which would result into a brand that people will admire.  In order for you to have a manageable and effective scope, you’ll need to chop it up according to the above circles individually while maintaining the overall framework and connections. 

For instance, you may focus on digital text content, and exclude multimedia or vice versa.  You can think of delivering focused content for KG vs. K12.  For the brand, you would need to take it as a whole (no chopping), cause you cannot plan for a partial brand!.  Function can tackle delivering courseware, exams, on-site vs. off-site, self-service vs. sponsorship, etc.

On the other hand, you can see how your process (steps and activities to achieve your above outcome) will be minimized accordingly.  You would take different approaches when delivering different kinds of content (text, media, games, art, …).  You will also have focused activities on the method of delivery and consumption.

If you stop at this stage, then you’re risking the whole thing!  You didn’t consider what available inputs (or resources) you have that will enable you to practically scope that project.  For instance, delivering media content without the right people in your team who are specialized in media production/editing can be dangerous.  Including your entire portfolio of content and consumption will be different if you have a 3-month or a 1-year project, and so on.

What to scope in EA?

Similarly, we need to consider the three important things in developing an EA in order to know what to scope: the result, the process, and the available inputs.

Result – desired outcome of an EA practice:

  • What does an EA look like in its final form? – the hard/concrete part.
  • What is EA set to do or achieve? – the soft part.
  • What are the typical components and/or deliverables of EA?
  • What are the levels of detail for these components/deliverables?

Process – the steps and activities that need to be conducted:

  • Which approach or framework your planning to follow in developing your EA?
  • Which standard process (in the chosen framework or approach for instance) exist to help in knowing the step-by-step process?

Inputs – available data and resources:

  • What kind of data are available at the moment that are crucial to developing your EA?
  • What timeframe, people, and budgets you’re planning to shoot for, or already have in hand?
  • What budget are you possibly allocating for this practice?

To summarize, I’m including here an adaptation of the “Structure of the TOGAF Document” which gives a simplified view of what an EA looks like:

EA TOGAF simplified

TOGAF – simplified

One could scope an EA by chopping off its final form into pieces.  For instance:

  • By focusing on building the capability (the team), and founding the process.
  • By focusing on specific content and deliverables such as business architecture vs. technology architectures.
  • By serving specific units of business vs. the whole enterprise.
  • By affecting critical business operations leaving the rest for later.

You could also guide your scoping effort by looking at the available inputs:

  • Having a documented base of business processes gives you a head start at developing the overall business architecture.  When that’s not available, then you need to consider the effort needed to do at least a high level business architecture for you to have a meaningful scope, and hence a meaningful EA.
  • Having a timeframe of 6 months is tight compared to a 1- or 2-year horizon.  Hence, you will need to chop off your desired outcomes with time in mind.
  • The presence of senior business analysts, architects, and overall knowledge of EA within the leadership team will be a push or a pull to your efforts.  Considering this will enable you to put the required resources and plans of readiness in your scope.

Scoping according to the process steps is also possible.  The risk lies in the potential of not showing enough value in the early stages while waiting for future ones to cover and build momentum.

Objective-driven scoping:

Your objectives and goals out of developing and having an EA practice should be your guide when scoping.  If the main goal of EA is to formalize the relationship with the business and to better align with them then it wouldn’t be wise to excessively document the current and future states of the technology architecture.  Instead, you need to focus on developing the EA Governance (team, committees, rhythm of collaboration, …).

On the other hand, if your approach is technological where you need to better understand current environment to rationalize your application portfolio (by eliminating redundancy, for instance).  This will trigger a need for a scope that focuses on data and application architecture guided by a high level understanding of business vision and processes (business architecture).

This explains why breadth (which architecture domains to cover) and depth (to what degree of details you need your models to capture) of architecture is a critical element and view of your scoping exercise. 

See my post on why would you pursue an enterprise architecture for a bit of details on different approaches in developing an EA.

To Recap

You have the following views to look through when scoping your Enterprise Architecture (EA):

  • Outcome view:
    • Scope of the enterprise (business units, partners, …)
    • Scope of the architecture domains (business, information, technology, …)
    • Depth of details (considering the variety of models)
  • Process view:
    • What does your proposed process of developing an EA look like?
    • How many steps (and which ones) of that process can you plan to conduct for the present vs. the future?
  • Inputs view (works as both constraints and enrichment of your scope)
    • Available time
    • Available team and knowledge
    • Available details (documents, data, previous efforts, …)

Hope you enjoyed it, and please remember me with a piece of comment!

Further reading

For some extra reading, have a look at the following:

501 days ago Short URL Comments

Business/Technology

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02

Jan

Why would you pursue an Enterprise Architecture?


It would sometimes disappoint the reader to look at “why” before “what”, but that is the natural way.  When you compare questions like – “Why use a cell phone?” compared to “What is a cell phone?”, you clearly can spot how the “why” question was asked first, and then attempts to define its outcome started to explode (the “what” part).  Also, the “why” part might have been provoked with other forms such as “I need to communicate on the go, how can I do that?” which is basically an answer to “Why use a cell phone?”!

So, please excuse me for not addressing other important aspects of Enterprise Architecture in this post, like “What is EA, anyways?” which I will do in the near future.  As a first post on my journey on discovering and deciphering Enterprise Architecture, or EA for short, I needed to start with a more provocative mindset.  “Why?” is always a great start!

In my reading through EA literature, I can see two distinct personas for those who pursue an EA effort.  One that looks at it as a core IT function or program to reorganize the house; I would like to call them “EA Technologists”.  The other persona looks at it as a tool to better understand and govern business interactions and deliver value; which I will call “EA Businessmen”.  There is no harm in either, but it then becomes a question of how much value I can gain from an extensive effort in developing an EA.  For example, an EA technologist will always admire the “architecture” side of EA, and will devote most of his or her time in perfecting its outcomes such as frameworks , models, repositories, standards, etc.  He will always value those architecture blueprints that help him address integration issues, business processes, and sourcing strategies, for instance.  On the other hand, an EA businessman will mostly appreciate that tangible benefits of getting closer to business and having a defined way in channeling their needs and reflecting on business satisfaction of IT.  You clearly see him or her worried, and concerned mostly with the “enterprise” side of EA. 

You could see clearly how the second persona (EA businessmen) will have a much greater value in putting together an EA, since IT merely exists to enable and advance (or even lead) business to achieve its desired outcomes.  But, you should perceive both as fine approaches to EA, with different concerns and value propositions.  It’s simply the difference between being “technology practical” and “business practical”.  Both are practical, but have different views on EA, so vote for your favorite side.

Why would an EA technologist pursue an EA effort?

Coming from the technology side, and mostly being concerned with the architectural outcomes, an EA technologist would think of developing an Enterprise Architecture to address one or more of the following (this is not a comprehensive list by any means):

  • Understanding the current environment in order to organize the house.
  • Developing standards in order to have clarity on selection of systems/technologies.
  • Drawing a roadmap of technological improvements to reach a satisfactory level of design.
  • Clarifying and/or developing integration standards to easily hook up internal and external IT systems.
  • Governing the relationship with external vendors and having a blueprint of standards which they can follow.

You can see how EA technologists, in some cases, try to address specific technology problems.  I believe this is where EA gets intermingled with other technology disciplines such as business process management, integration strategies, sourcing strategies and vendor management, etc.

Why would an EA businessman pursue an EA effort?

Coming from the business angle, EA businessmen are usually concerned with value outcomes from IT to the enterprise, which should connect to those of the enterprise as a whole!.  One or more of the following will be on the agenda of an EA Businessman:

  • Making business-conscious decisions in IT, and facilitating/guiding those of the business as well.
  • Connecting business strategy to IT strategy, or facilitating the execution of strategy within IT.
  • Clarifying IT value to the organization in order to avoid marginalizing its efforts.
  • Clarifying business needs in order to govern changes and achieve satisfaction.
  • Establishing a rhythm of collaboration between the business and IT.

EA businessmen are always business value-driven which helps them avoid unnecessary architecture jargon (no offense to EA technologists who should, in my opinion, make sure to justify every single model or artifact they produce in their enterprise architecture).  The down side of their efforts is that it is tougher to pursue and usually needs a twist in the mindset.  It is also much harder to make their efforts as concrete as those of the technologists.

Which side I support?

You might guessed my side from the above, but I wish it’s as simple as voting for one side over the other. In my opinion, you should start being an EA businessman who collaborates with or even lead business to deliver value out of IT.  At the same time, you need to dive like an EA technologist on as-needed basis in areas where you need to have concrete deliverables and tools.  This way, you can balance your act by wearing two hats (or working with a team of mixed hats) and avoid time-consuming EA activities unless they are “really” justified.

Your comments are most welcomed!

509 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

Business/Technology

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12

Apr

Three Rides and a Fall–a Typical Job Experience!


Who loves models?… I do, but don’t get me wrong… this is not about fashion models!  With models, you can picture a scenario of life that’s usually hard to describe or imagine.  A model is simply a representation of an experience to reference, compare to, and validate against.  It helps you find out if some scenario is right or wrong.

Okay, enough of that… let me tell you what it is I’m up to in this post.  I’m going to explain what would a typical work or job experience look like, and how that usually spans four (4) years – but not necessarily 4 – of joyful times.  I model that as “three rides and a fall” which basically is about taking three different rides (the first three stages you would go through), and close with a fall riding as a final stage.  Those three rides are: a learning ride, an excelling ride, and a mentoring ride.  The fall is just a fall, but I would picture it as a ride that’s downwards!

What I describe here is what you should seek – in my opinion – in a job experience that’s you currently are enjoying, or looking forward to as new responsibility.  It would also be what you would expect to experience in a job to make the most out of it and make it joyful.  Here you go, the model and its rides in a bit of detail.

1. A Ride of Learning

That’s usually expected of a typical human when he or she gets assigned a new responsibility!  You need to learn, and you need to learn almost everything: the environment, the work, the strategies, the tactics, the people, and the business overall.  Nothing outstanding is expected of you except delivering what you’re asked for.  Usually, you don’t get stretched or asked for hero performance!  It usually is about delivering the bare minimum, and most people perform the same in this ride of learning.

It’s a loss, however, for you – especially with previous knowledge and expertise – to skip this ride, not only because it is joyful, but also because you will miss an important experience – learning from others!  I personally enjoy this ride the most, and believe everyone should experience it to the extreme whenever possible.

2. A Ride of Excelling

What do you expect of someone who spends quality time learning… of course quality delivery!  That’s what I call excelling at your job and delivering your best.  A hero performance? definitely doable.  This is a ride when you apply the best you have learned, and seek perfection and quality.  You can call it payback time, since you get the chance to give back to your organization which gave you the opportunity to learn.  This is a time of a partial return on investment they made on you.  Why only partial? cause you still can do more and that’s going to be on your next ride.

3. A Ride of Mentoring

Yes, mentoring! Being a role model puts a responsibility on you to teach, to seek out others giving them a hand on their own rides.  This is a stage when you become on top of what you’re doing – remember that this comes after excelling in your job – and are ready to mentor others.  This is a stage that’s hugely missed by most people tempting to seek out the next challenge.  You cannot imagine how enjoyable this stage is to you, to your colleagues, and to your organization.  It’s when you hit an outstanding return on investment, talking people capital of course.  I would allow myself to go extreme and call it selfishness not to mentor when you become a role model – an expert in your job.

4. A Fall – a fourth ride that’s downwards!

It’s no harm at all to fall after three successful rides, right?  You fall because you become saturated of the things you have been doing so far.  You either get bored of what you’re doing, or become the old blood that needs to be donated.  The later being very rare cases, however!

This is a time when you need to look for a change and seek your next challenge either internally or preferably externally beyond the boundaries of your current organization.

This is Just a Model – Life isn’t Perfect

It’s important to understand that models are abstract and life cannot simply match them.  They represent things in its perfect form, and usually reality drifts away from them.  This doesn’t mean models are not correct, it just means that you’ll experience variations of a model and you can keep it as a reference or a guide.

Another factor to consider is the blending of these rides with each other.  You may be learning and excelling at the same time.  You also may be excelling and mentoring at the same time, and that’s logical as well.  You might be mentoring, learning, and bored (falling) all together!  What counts in my opinion is what feels and gets experienced the most – the peaks – and the order of those peaks.  While you’re learning and excelling at the same time, one of them would be dominating or peaking, and that signifies which ride you’re on.

It’s also important knowing that 4 years is a typical timespan for this “model of job experience”.  It can be experienced in less than, and also more than, four years.  Try your best to fit them on the number of years you see deemed.

My own experience of the “three rides and a fall”

I must admit a number of facts before sharing my experience here:

  1. I didn’t recognize the “three rides and a fall” model until recently.  Recently being like a couple of years or so.  This means when I experienced it, it never came to my mind the “three rides and a fall” at all!
  2. I didn’t experience the model fully throughout my career.  In fact, it was applicable only to two jobs I have occupied out of 6 jobs I was blessed with.
  3. The two jobs in which I have identified the pattern of the “three rides and a fall” where the most enjoyable ones between them all!

The first job I have experienced the “three rides and a fall” was the 2-year Systems Engineer at MeduNet.  I went through learning, excelling, and mentoring in that job.  I must say that I didn’t feel the fall ride, since I hopped on my next challenge immediately after that.

The second experience I had with the “three rides and a fall” was the 4-year Technology Specialist at Microsoft.  I went through learning, excelling, mentoring, and falling.  It was of course a great blend throughout those 4 years, and was very joyful.

In Summary

This is a model that is completely my imagination and invention.  It’s not scientific at all, and is not based on deep analysis or research… This is just some thoughts that were cooking lately, and I thought of sharing with you.  I hope it helps you look at your current job differently, and hope it helps you plan for your next job experience with joy!

773 days ago Short URL 5 Comments

Business

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03

Jul

Availing Time is not Rocket Science!


I always wondered how people master the skill of availing time… but conditionally!.  True, especially if you know that the condition from getting time from someone is actually the presence of their desire and clear benefits!

I’ve done a ton of meetings wearing different hats: client, vendor, service provider, … and I’ve been calling or being called for meetings.  I guess everyone would do, as meetings (effective ones of course) are crucial to running business and execution.  During these meetings you hunt for time amongst different parties, and to be able to avail time is to have the desire for it!

To simplify, take two personas when calling for a meeting: 1) one who have a benefit of conducting this meeting and hence has the desire, and 2) a person who is being pushed for that without a clear objective or benefit.  I will call the first a seeker, and the second a dragger.  The seeker would be willing to avail the time for meeting or any other activity even with the busiest schedule.  This is supported by the fact that he understands the objective of availing that time, and have the desire to work with you to achieve a mutual benefit.  On the other hand, a dragger would find a thousand excuses to escape from meeting you, simply because he doesn’t see the benefit of doing so, or would like to spend his time on something he believes would have better return on investment.

We all know that this has a lot to do with time management, and I would like to pinpoint the fact that whether you are a master of your own time or not, you still have free time to avail… it’s not really rocket science.  If you cannot make that time available, then you need to question your desire of putting that time with someone.  This is because the minute you get that willingness, magic starts to discover a lot of slots in your schedule.

By the way, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve been a seeker and a dragger as well, and I’m not saying that being a dragger is a bad thing.  I’m highlighting the behind-the-scenes facts to make sure of two things:

  • Try to highlight the value and benefits whenever you hunt for someone else’s time.
  • Question your willingness of securing time for others if you feel not willing to avail it.

The first will help a seeker transform a dragger into another seeker to move on with business (or personal matters).  The second will help you verify your position and priorities, and can change you from a dragger to a seeker. 

In summary, be a die-hard for shared value when asking for others’ time.  Be a die-hard for availing time for the most important people or objectives in your life.

1056 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Business

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05

Apr

Over commit… under deliver!


Let me be honest with you: I did that before, and might continue doing it.  No promise to let go, but I wanted to share with you my thoughts on over-commitment as I experience it.  This will enable me tell moments of truth, and help control over-commitments, or avoid them altogether.

When over-committing, you simply make a promise to yourself or others to deliver a task.  You end up with either no delivery, or partial delivery in the best scenario.  Hence, you upset the other party who could be your wife, father, mother, manager, customers, partners, or even yourself.  You don’t think I’m insane if I promise myself, right?!

Over-commitment is not just a one-time thing.  It’s more of a habit that one builds over time.  I have examined myself (that’s not insanity at all!) and sometimes others, and in my opinion, I see over-commitment is caused by either of the following:

  • Over-excitement that leads to incautious or blind commitments
  • Sense of under-performance that leads to cautious commitments for up-leveling performance.

In both cases, results are the same: commitments that never get achieved.  I will share with you the internal workings of both cases as others and myself experience them.  That’s not going to be scientific at all, though.

Over-excitement can lead to over-commitment

You meet a customer, and deep dive into discussions on how your company’s solutions can meet their requirements.  You’re passionate about the solutions your company offers, and you feel the value these solutions can offer your customer.  That’s a perfect context for over excitement!  To move things forward, a need for actions on both parties are apparent.  Because of the over-excitement state you are in, you start putting actions on yourself (that’s a good thing), and sometimes you force yourself to commit on things you don’t control, or things you cannot deliver on time.  You’re in a trap of “over-commitment”, where you get caught up on a pile of commitments that you may not be able to deliver.  All that is caused by the moment that blinded you from taking into considerations the available time and resources, and the things you or others control.

Sense of under-performance can lead to over-commitment, too

Another internal working that causes over-commitment is when you have a sense of under-performance.  Weird, huh? It’s true, cause when you are under-performing (or feeling just that), you may feel low, and sometimes depressed.  If you try to get yourself out of that mood, you might tend to pressure yourself with commitments to unleash it and break through the depression.  This is where over-commitment happens, and hence under-delivery is probable!

To be honest with you, that sometimes worked for me, but not always though.  It happened once with me when I was having that sense of under-performance.  On the same time, we were negotiating a proof of a technology to one of our key customers.  This customer happened to have varying and complex requirements which needed the engagement of an external party to deliver the proof on time.  There was a challenge though.  the customer’s requirements could change as it’s more of discovery than predefined set of requirements.  Also, we need to manage satisfaction to win in a competitive environment.  With all that in mind, I have decided to step in and deliver the proof myself, and avoid the engagement of the external party because of the fluid nature of this proof.  This was of course on the expense of my time on other angles, but we were able to adapt as we go and deliver the proof successfully.  We also were able to discover more opportunities to help the customer and position our technologies right.  This was an exception to over-commitment.  I remember I did the same with another customer, but results were not what we planned to have.

To conclude, I want to emphasize the importance of cautious decision on taking up commitments.  Measuring your abilities and available resources should be in the equation that leads to committing on a task.  Pay extra attention in states of over-excitement and sense of under-performance cause they may lead you to short or absent delivery of what you have committed on.

1145 days ago Short URL 4 Comments

Business

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30

Mar

أنا لست “…” ولن أكون “…” !


لطالما كنت من نوعية الأشخاص الذين لايكتفون بتجارب غيرهم، بل يسعون لتجاربهم الشخصية. ومهما سمعت من تجارب الآخرين إلا أن التجربة التي أمر بها بنفسي يكون لها وقعا أكبر وأعمق فائدة.

قد تستغرب لماذا أبدأ بمقدمة كهذه، وسوف تتساءل حتما مالمقصود من العنوان، والذي لن أكتبه كاملا ولكن سأكتفي بإعطاء دلائل عليه من خلال كتابتي لهذا الموضوع. أول دليل على على العنوان: كلمتان محذوفتان، ولكن متشابهتان.

قررت قرارا وبعد عشر سنوات من عملي في وظائف متعددة أن لا أستمر تحت رحمة الوظيفة للأبد، بل سأعمل جاهدا على تكوين عالمي الخاص سواء أكون قائما بنفسي، او من خلال منشأتي الصغيرة في المستقبل. رغم قرائتي في مرات عديدة عن واقع الوظيفة، ورغم سماعي من أشخاص كثر في محاولات لإقناعي بأن أبدأ عملي الخاص وأن أترك رحمة الوظيفة لـ "المرحومين"، إلا أني لم أكن أقدم على خطوة كتلك، واكتفيت دوما بفكرة تشبه الحلم ولم تلمس الواقع بأي شكل (إقرأ إن أردت A Dream of Mine).

السبب؟… عدم تجربتي الشخصية لما كان يقوله الكتاب والأصدقاء وكل من عرفت كان مهتما ومقتنعا بذلك. وعندما أحسست وعشت التجربة بمنظوري الخاص، وصلت لتلك القناعة والتي اختصرتها:

أنا لست "…"، ولن أكون "…"

وما يملأ الفراغ هو اسم كائن حي تضرب له الأمثال بمختلف أشكالها.

مهما وعدتك الوظيفة بالكثير فإنه يبقى قليل، ومهما أعطتك من حريات، فإنها تظل محبوسة في قفص تصنعه رغبات غيرك، وخطط إدارتك (التي أرجو ان تكون حكيمة)، والمرجعيات المختلفة. مرجعيات تتدرج من مديرك، إلى مدير مديرك، إلى رئيس الفرع، ومن ثم مدير الإقليم. ولن تنتهي هنالك، حيث يأتيك مدير الأقاليم، والذي يرجع بدوره إلى مدير إقليم الأقاليم… حتى تصل لنائب الرئيس والذي يرجع لمدير "ما"، وأخيرا تصل للمدير التنفيذي أو مايسمى بالـ CEO. وهو بدوره يعطى حريات داخل قفص رغبات وأهداف مجلس الإدارة Board of Directors.

ورجاء عدم فهمي خطأ… فكثير من الشركات والمؤسسات إن لم يكن كلها، لايتسنى لها تحقيق رؤيتها وأرباحها إلا بمثل هذا التعقيد من المنظومة الإدارية. ما أرمي إليه هنا هو الفرق بين أن تدير مثل تلك المنظومة (صغيرة كانت أم كبيرة) أو أن تبقى فردا يتحرك بحركاتها. وباختيارك الأخير، يمكن أن تبقى عضوا فاعلا ولكن ستضل مكبلا بما يريده الآخرون وهذا هو ما أرفضه فـ

أنا لست "…"، ولن أكون "…"

ذلك الشيء الذي يحمل أحماله من غير كلل أو ملل.

يكفي من فكرة الخروج من تلك المنظومات وإنشاء عالمك الخاص (وربما منظومتك الخاصة) الإحساس والتجربة التي ستعيشها!

يكفي من ذلك القدرة على وضع أهدافك ورؤاك الخاصة والتي تقتنع بها 100% بدلا من محاولة إقناع نفسك برؤى غيرك وأهدافهم، حتى وإن كانت جميلة وسامية!

يكفي من ذلك الحرية المطلقة التي ستمتلكها بدلا من حريات مزعومة تخلقها لك وتعيشك فيها إدارة شؤون الموظفين في منظومتك!

يكفي من ذلك قدرتك على الاستجابة السريعة لمتطلبات العمل وما تراه مناسبا، دون أن تكون حبيس الأرقام ومؤشرات الأداء التي يضعها غيرك، والتي يمكن أن تكون ناجمة عن اجتهادات شخصية من شخص "ما" في منطقة "ما" ولأسباب "ما". وغالبا ما تكون تلك الـ "ما" أكثر تفلتا وتشكلا من "الماء"!

يكفي من ذلك أنك تتحمل أخطاءك الخاصة، ولا تتكبل أخطاء غيرك، أو تتكبد عناء تغيير الصورة التي شوهت بسبب ما، أو تقوم بعمل خطط تسويقية ومسؤولية اجتماعية لتحسين تلك الصورة!

يكفي من ذلك مرونة الحركة التي ستتمتع بها، والخلاص من قوائم طويلة وعريضة من السياسات والأحكام التي إن فهمت منها شيئا، فلن تجده إلا السقيم المتناهي في السقم، والذي لايزيدك إلا تعطلا وبطء في مسيرتك نحو أهدافك!

يكفي من ذلك أني لست "…"، ولن أكون "…"

ذلك الذي يضرب له المثل في التحمل وحق له ذلك، مع كثرة الأعباء التي سيتكبدها من خلال منظومته الواعدة!

ويأتي الحين الموعود، وأنطلق بحرية في سمائي الخاصة… أقوم بإنشاء منظومتي الخاصة والتي من خلالها أحقق أهدافي ورؤاي التي أرمي لها، بطريقتي وأسلوبي الخاص.

تلك المنظومة التي تبدأ بفرد واحد، ثم تتوسع لتشمل من يساعدني في عملي الإداري، فالمبيعات، فالتسويق، وهلم جرا. وحتى أحكم عمل منظومتي، أسن الرؤى المستقبلية وأشارك بها الآخرين. نضع خطط المبيعات والاستثمارات والعائد منها، ونضع مؤشرات الأداء لمراقبة العمل وتحركاته ومعرفة الأوليات.

نوظف المزيد ممن يرغبون في العمل في منظومتنا الواعدة، ويتطلب ذلك إدارة لشؤون الموظفين. تكبر المنظومة وتكثر مجالاتها ويتم خلق إدارات مختلفة للقيام بمختلف الأعمال. يتطلب ذلك المزيد من الجهد لوضع خطط تناسق وتكامل بين أعمال مختلف الإدارات.

تأتي المؤسسات الخارجية لفرض قوانينها وسياساتها والتي تتطلب منا التوافق معها، وبالتالي نكون بحاجة لوضع قوانينا التي تحكم تعاملاتنا مع عملائنا وشركائنا. تتعقد السياسات والأحكام وتكثرويتطلب ذلك المزيد من الجهد والعمل لمواكبة النمو الحاصل لمنظومتنا الكريمة.

يبدأ الموظفون في مراحل من الضغط ناجمة عن الخطط المحكمة والمؤشرات المفروضة عليهم. وحتى نوازن ذلك نحتاج أن نبين أن منظومتنا هي أهل لتلك الضغوط، فتبدأ إدارة شؤون الموظفين بعملها ل
لق البرامج المختلفة لإبقاء الموظف سعيدا في بيئة "حرة"، ولكن حبيسة قفص منظومتنا الواعدة.

يا إلهي!!! لقد خلقت من منظومتي قفصا آخر تجعل من الموظفين فيها كـ "…" لكدهم وتعبهم وتحملهم الضغوط، ولاستحالة تحقيق جميع مايرجونه أو يحلمون به من أهداف شخصية!… وأقول لهم في حينها:

أنتم لستم "…"، ويجب أن لا تكونوا "…"!

فمن أراد البقاء والرضا فله مايريد، ومن أراد التحرر فليفعل كما فعلت أنا سابقا …

فأنا لست "…"، ولن أكون "…"

والفرق أني هنا من يدير تلك المنظومة، ويمكنني إحداث التغيير والمعجزات (إن لزم الأمر)، بينما في الأولى كنت تحت رحمة غيري ولم أكن صاحب القرار!

1152 days ago Short URL 6 Comments

Business

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21

Jan

Value-Centric Business: How creating shared value is healthy for your business


An attractive title, and is usually talked about but rarely practiced for many reasons. Doing business comes usually in two formats: a vendor sells a customer a solution or service, or a company strikes a partnership with another for the former goal; selling a solution or a service. At least that is valid and comprehensive in the world of solution vendors. Whether you’re selling to a customer or partnering with others for that, you need to focus on “value” and that value should be a shared one amongst all parties. This value persuasion should happen from the first time you initiate a business, and should remain throughout your execution towards that business. Most people – if not all – believe in that as a fact of doing business, but they lose that focus down the road. In my opinion, what differentiates a successful deal from failure is the hard grab on “creating shared value”.

To understand the importance of a value-centric business, I will try to compare it with the other not-so-optimal approaches that I could think of, and that most of what I have seen falls under. These are: sale-centric business, metric-centric business, and compete-centric business. I will then close by show the optimum approach: value-centric business.

In a sale-centric business, a salesperson is typically assigned a quota and he usually goes after his quota with no vision and plan. He usually goes without a plan, and hunts down those deals that will make him achieve what he has been assigned. In this mode, the salesperson ignores the deals that require a lot of preparation and efforts and focuses on the quick ones. He usually puts his company and the customer under pressure to make a deal without looking at what his customer really asks for. This approach usually creates unhealthy business relationships, if any at all, and usually end up with failure due to the increasingly unsatisfied customer base it tends to create. It goes without saying; the person who operates in this mode usually lacks the vision, or at least doesn’t try to focus on one, and is usually a short-term thinker. Don’t get me wrong here as some people who work in this mode are smart and hard-working but sometimes get forced to work like that with the great pressure from their companies and lack of leadership in their teams. It’s definitely their responsibility to make a change, and usually requires a lot of work and value thinking to make it happen.

The other approach, the metric-centric business, is a superset of the above as it focuses on getting something done when that is measurable. A sales number is at essence a metric that all organizations are after, and some organizations include more metrics to monitor and enhance their business. Metrics like productivity, readiness, satisfaction, and share are some examples that don’t have revenue at their core, but influence it in an indirect way. Metrics usually are put in some sort of a company-wide scorecard for monitoring and reporting. People who are after achieving metrics could easily lose the focus and the essence of doing real business, and get trapped in how quicker they can mark there metrics green. Getting a green metric becomes – unfortunately – a check mark that simply signifies the achievement. In reality, that check mark hides a great deal of logistical efforts without a real business impact!

We live in a competitive world, where companies are competing for share and winning customers. The competitive market offers great value to end-customers, and usually highlights the uniqueness of a company or an offering that couldn’t be possible otherwise. When focusing solely on getting market share (what I call compete-centric business), a salesperson may lose track of his customer needs, and usually goes head-to-head with his competitors in a way that they all complicate the original requirements in order to win the deal. You may experience this when a customer asks for a simple solution and the different companies competing start to show off their solutions and how feature-rich they can be. The original requirements get complicated without the customer noticing! Unfortunately, if you try to advice the customer how simple his requirements are, and how complicated they are becoming, you may be seen as less-competitive and hence get out of the play easily. It then becomes a hard decision to either go with the follow or stand by your position.

A value-centric business avoids the problems caused by the other approaches, and is very important to create sustainable business; a business that continues to grow with happy customers and partners. On the other hand, it is the most challenging path to go through. Creating value and focusing on how to make that balanced between all parties is not an easy task at all, and usually requires long-term thinking and a great deal of effort to create it. It is, from my perspective, worth persuading since it creates the platform that everything will stand on, and the stronger it’s the healthier your business is going to be. If you are laser-focused on creating shared value, you’ll end up achieving your sales, greening your metrics, and winning share from your competitors. Besides, and this is what I love the most about value-centric business, you’ll end up enjoying what you do because of the deep involvement of both your mind and heart!

1219 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Business

15

Jan

FISH Philosophy: At Work, and At Home


Just finished reading “FISH Philosophy” the book and so great it was. It’s a tiny book (two hours of focused read would do) that talks about how to transform your work place (or even your life) into a fun place to enjoy and be excited to come to again and again.

I don’t want to talk about the great story in the book, and the details of how a fish market ignited the idea – hence the name FISH – for a manager to transform her workplace, as I want to encourage you to get it and read it.

The philosophy is simple, and goes by applying four ingredients that will turn the place from stress and dullness into relax and fun. The ingredients of FISH philosophy are as follows:

  1. Choose your attitude
  2. Play
  3. Make their day
  4. Be there

Ingredient 1 – Choose your attitude:

This is the platform to build upon, and the core concept that everything else depends on. You have the freedom of choice of your attitude: an optimistic and happy attitude, or a pessimistic and sad one. Choose to be happy, smiling, easy going, ignorant of mistakes, and you’ll discover how beautiful and shining you and your place would be. On the other hand, choose to be angry, frowning, hard-headed, picky on mistakes, isolated, and you’ll discover how miserable your day would be!

“Choose your attitude” is the hardest ingredients, but sets the stage for all other ingredients to happen. So work on your attitude, and work on it now.

Ingredient 2 – Play:

Have fun, even if you have lot’s to do with deadlines nearing, and don’t seem to have enough in your schedule. All that stress come from the fact that you prevent yourself from enjoying what you do. Make it a playful project, an enjoyable study, an easy shopping, a fun meeting, etc. If you cannot enjoy what you do, then try to have some pleasant moments between the heavy tasks you work on. Engage with colleagues or family to create a play yard out of your place.

Ingredient 3 – Make their day:

By having fun yourself, work on extending that to others who surround you. Make their day by expressing how you’re grateful to have them, or by cheering them up. Get them out of their misery by offering advice and help. You cannot imagine how cheerful you would be when giving a hand to someone.

Ingredient 4 – Be there:

Be present to your family, customers, colleagues, and people by giving full attention to who calls for you to advice or help. Don’t be ignorant to those calls… get to answer them on the spot, or at least dedicate some time to connect with those you care about to listen to. Ignoring a call for help from your wife, your son, a colleague, or a customer could yield to disappointments and sometimes problems that you could’ve avoided earlier.

Applying FISH to your life:

I actually believe in the importance of these ingredients to have better place whether at home or at work, and below are some ideas I’m thinking of to practice those in my life (both at home and at work):

Ideas

At Home

At Work

Choose your attitude

Be happy, smiling, and open-minded, soft, easy going, ignorant to small acts or mistakes.

Spell out the good thoughts, and ignore the bad ones.

Say hi or salam to everyone you face!

Play

Educate by fun, and stop yelling.

Make the shopping a learning experience for your child where he or she looks for the stuff and picks them up.

Enjoy home fixes.

Watch cartoons with your child while commenting.

Start your meetings with fun or jokes

Post some funny pictures or comics to your desk, or common places

Have a board so employees can post some jokes

Have a gaming console and work on a gaming competition

Make their day

Compliments, Compliments, Compliments.

Bring your wife some flowers.

Invite the family to a day out (I really mean the invite here, and not like … we’re bored, let’s go out).

Bring your child something he or she likes (candy for instance).

Compliment the work and attitude of your colleagues.

Engage with customers and pinpoint their pains and offer solutions with what they already have.

Avoid bad news, and be a passenger of the good ones!

Be there

Listen to your wife and don’t offer solutions, just listen (we all can hear, you need to listen!).

Have a conversation with your child on school or how others deal with him.

Listen to the unsaid, and express your willingness to offer help if needed.

Listen to pains from colleagues and customers and offer solutions

Stop emails and phone calls if someone calls for your advice

Give full attention when talking to your colleagues or customers

Not all people are comfortable talking about their problems, so dig deep within the soles and look for faces that need help.

Remember to work hard on setting the stage by choosing the right attitude!

1225 days ago Short URL 8 Comments

Business

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