Project X Discussions

Consulting and Systems Integration Firms - People Centric

Most good consulting companies marry a balance of people, process and technology to create a practice that meets and sometimes exceeds a client need.  This is a lovely motherhood statement.  But it forgets that the word consult means the bare use of people to listen, discuss and then guide clients.  In the beginning of that statement is people.

So this does come back to people and how they work together.  So if our people are always working with clients all over the place, how do they end up coming back and focusing on being a part of a larger whole.  It is easy to go native and really be tighter with the client than your organization.  This is where we need to find ways to create the glue that reminds and builds the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

I was reading a great series by Bill Ives that I found very provoking and was in part trying to deal with this issue.  It is a six part blog that overviews Booz-Allen's embracing Enterprise 2.0.

Everyone who works for or owns a consulting should read the series as it has some great insight and a couple of great lessons at the expense of Booz-Allen.

Over the next couple of weeks I will add some of my thoughts in parallel to the ideas that Bill shares in this series.  Thanks Bill for pulling this together.

CoffeeCAST - #53 - BI Governance

Michael and I sat down after a great morning of review on lessons learned and wanted to quickly chat about Business Intelligence Governance.

In today's CoffeeCAST we talk about the main four areas of focus without going too deep on any one.  They are:

1. BI Governance committee
2. BI Lifecycle / Process
3. End-User Support Structure
4. BI Program Review

53 CoffeeCAST #53 - BI Governance

This was a broad and interesting area.  I think next week I will sit down again and talk specifics on these areas as a single discussion.

This is just a starting point to the conversation, so feel free to join in and add your thoughts.

KPI - Key Performance Indicators

KPI's are very important components of our strategy to monitor and report our organizational effectiveness.  Wikepedia has a great definition that links to the similar ideas of BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) and Scorecards.

In context these often seem like very daunting tasks as often you are aligning to best practices to compare say utilization vs best in class, others are counting customers, churn and cycle time against targets. 

One of the interesting starting points when I look to understand a business is to read their annual report as well as their competitors.  Annual reports are a great starting point as public companies have often identified some early KPIs that they report to the street.  It's a great place to start, but certainly not even close to the finish.  This often allows a quick win for the Business Intelligence team to then leverage the time it takes to properly identify and align to others for the organization.

There are two dysfunctions I often see in these types of exercises:

1. The Measurement Sets the Behaviour - often what we measure will set the behaviour of our teams.  In Sales I have seen people move new business to January as one of their KPIs was Annual Booked Revenue (revenue realized in the year the business was signed).  This often moved business from Dec. to Jan.  Not what the organization wanted I would think.
2. Too Many KPIs - How can you have 500 KPIs?  Often every metric and fact are determined to be a KPI as opposed to just being metrics and facts.  Often aiming for less than 10 will give you less than 20 as the result.

Otherwise, you want to leverage the Rapid BI and iterative approach to developing these so that the organization can learn as you work and evolve these measures of success and improvement.  So guide the discovery and iterate from the learning.  This is one of the approaches we have found successful at Project X Ltd.

MicroStrategy World 2010 - What did You Learn

Had a great week Las Vegas this week at MicroStrategy World 2010.

Michael our VP Consulting and I went down with very different objectives, so I thought I would share with you the evaluation of how I did against objectives (rank is out of 10 with 10 being high).  Maybe you could share yours as well.

1. Spend Time and Support our Partner - MicroStrategy - Rank: 9
2. • Spent time with our alliance manager and the Canadian folks. 
   • Really enjoyed the time and opportunity to drive some good conversation both personal and professional
   • Started some discussion on strategy in some areas
3. Exposure to New Ideas and Concepts - Rank: 8
4. • Mapping and Visualization - really like the new opportunity to overlay with location
   • • BigDataLabs
     • Visual Crossing
     • KXEN
     • Agile BI
5. Discuss BI with Various Companies and Vendors - Rank: 7
6. • Customer Presentations
   • • Citi - MarkHubbard - talked about the SaaS architecture and their implementation.  It was good as he shared some good best practices on dealing with multiple stakeholders as well as some of their lessons learned.
     • McCain Foods - Roman Coba - talked about his Teradata and MicroStrategy vision.  He also did a great job discussing how he broke the re-platform project into it's components to allow for strong iteration in BI as well as standardized metrics.  Also interesting conversation on how he sold the approach to the business and got them on board.
     • A variety of other really interesting conversations throughout on best practices, challenges and general thoughts on BI in their organizations
7. Show Michael more about this area of our business - Rank: 9
8. • I think he almost fell off his chair when he saw the vision of BI.

Listening to Others

I have so many personal biases, I find it very difficult to listen to others without filtering all the information through my biased perception.  Everything somebody says, I quickly make a value judgment on the importance to me and my view on what was said.  I understand this is normal but I think I miss out on many things because they are outside my view.

I like to use the example of looking at a garden.  I may see a beautiful garden.  However if I am familiar with the names of flowers and how difficult it is to grow certain types, I will see many different things.  I am looking at the garden with two different biases.

So in listening to people, if I could focus on the uniqueness of that individual I might hear much more.  Every person sees the world though a unique set of experiences.  Often because I disagree with that person, rather than listen to his point of view I am busy mustering arguments and protecting my view.  I miss so many opportunities to learn new things.

I recall when I was working to get a Master's degree in Adlerian psychology, to qualify for the program I had to take undergraduate psychology courses.  I was an engineer by training and took one industrial psychology course in all my years of study.  As I entered the undergraduate psych courses, I was concerned that I would lose some of the good Adlerian stuff and get corrupted by other ideas.  I quickly changed my approach because I realized I would lose out on such a great opportunity.

Being open to new ideas and different approaches makes life, the universe, and everything much more interesting and fun.

The Sinatra Test

Can your product or service pass the Sinatra Test?   You know how the song goes "If you can do it there, you can do it anywhere."  

The issue is one of proving credibility of your product or service.  If the most critical customer buy it, it should be good for everybody.  

A reference who is well known critical consumer proves you have passed the Sinatra Test. 

In the data warehousing business, Walmart is one of the leaders and if you can give them as a reference, you have passed the Sinatra Test.

In a recent project a reference from a credible third party, helps us get an important project.  These references are worth their weight in gold.  However you must earn your reference and reputation by doing good work. 

I really like to metaphor and it really sticks with me.  Comments?  

The Curse of Knowledge

Why do we give details and lose the key message in details?   Is it because we know all the details and believe they are key to the understanding of the message?  If people miss the point, the details do not help.  How often when we try to convey a message do we get caught in the details and miss communicating the key message?   Rather than giving the headline we start with all the details.  For communicating an idea, the devil is in the details in a different way.  Often the detail devil hides the message.

In "Made to Stick", he points out assuming people know all the four letter acronymsand launching into all the details, may leave you audience lost.  Knowing all the details and providing them up front, will turn people off before you deliver the key point.   Four letter acronyms can be helpful short hand for people who know the language but you will lose many people in the process.   

If we couch all our ideas with all the details and conditions, our key idea is in danger of getting lost and never gets transmitted.

If a reporter wrote a newspaper article like a mystery story keeping the message till the end, we would never read the newspaper or at least not that news story.  

The reason this is called the Curse of Knowledge is that we know so much about  a subject the overall concept gets lost in the complexity.  To accurately describe an electron as a negativity charged probability cloud revolving around a nucleus would not help a high school student understand a molecule.  However a metaphor of the stars and planets would be more helpful to the student.  If we always want to be absolutely correct, our key ideas will get lost in the details.

Once the overall concept has been understood, we can then start weave in the details.  Hopefully the details will support the big idea or concept.  

How do you handle the curse of knowledge?

   

Use of Words to Encourage Ourselves

How do you talk to yourself? Do you scold yourself or encourage yourself? The words we use are very important to the way we communicate with ourselves and others.  We must always choose the way we express our thoughts.  The words create images and feelings.  Images cannot see the negative.  So saying to ourself or another "Don't worry" only creates an image and feeling of worry.

We cannot "not do something," we can only do.  So in the words you use, avoid the use of "not" and "no", as much as practical.  Express things in the positive.

Thoughts are expressed in words and words create feelings.  Our self talk can be creative or destructive.  I suggest we deliberately resolve to be kind and gentle with ourselves.  Love ourselves and praise our efforts instead of criticizing our shortcoming.

One thing I have trouble with is how I talk to myself after I make a mistake.  I say "Jim that was really stupid or !@#$$%^%%$."  However a far better thing to say is what you might say to your child when he falls while trying to walk.  "Good effort.  Well done."  I hereby resolve to give myself credit for the effort when I fall short of my ideal.  Look for the learning in every experience. 

 

Making a Message Stick

Why do some messages stick with you?  "We try harder."  "A stitch in time saves -------."   "Sour grapes."

A great book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath , has  lots of stories and analyse of the issue. They came up with six principles.  They are the Princioles of Stickiness, using SUCCES to make them stick:

S Simple

U Unexpected

C Credible

C Concrete

E Emotions

S Stories

Have a look at the book and the wonderful stories.  More on these principles later.

We will be discussing this in our Senge Group, our business book discussion group, soon.  I will share some of our thoughts.

Getting Most Out Of Technology

How can we get the most out of technology?  Are you a digital native or are you a digital immigrant?  I expect the people who grew up with using technology will be able to take advantage of the opportunities presented by technology more easily.   The people who come to technology later in life find doing things in new ways more difficult.  Imagine changing the way you have done something for the last ten years quite successfully.  However if we are going to become more productive we need to embrace change and use technology to become more productive. 

The revolution in subject research is absolutely amazing.  Children in middle or high school have resources at their fingertips that would be difficult in the past for graduate students.  The reports and insights from my eleven year old grandchild about Mayan culture was incredible.  They seem to be able to use the new tools with great facility.

The new tools available on the web for learning are absolutely mind boggling for digital immigrants like myself. 

I found this neat metaphor on the following site about the use of technology in education.  http://www.edutopia.org/adopt-and-adapt   This article presents some of the challenges our schools face in introducing the digital world. 

I think one of the things that digital natives expect is challenges in using new approaches whereas digital immigrants find difficulties frustrating and discouraging. 

I think one way of becoming more at home in the digital world is to learn the language and use it.  Apparently the best way for any immigrant to be successful in their new home is develop facility with the language.  In the digital world, the language is difficult to understand and uses many short forms.  We need to experiment and after you use the words several times they become your own.