IT change: Improving your odds
September 6, 2010 by janet · Leave a Comment
The software is selected, the hardware is installed and the training has been delivered. Yet 70% of IT change projects never achieve desired results. Worse, there is a general lack of agreement on how and why technology succeeds and fails in organizations, Earlier this year I undertook a research project on the topic of IT change with the goal to improve the odds—to create successful IT change projects. 
Building on academic research, this project focused on 5 factors of influence which work together to drive technology use in organisations.
Buyers, vendors, and even academics sometimes confuse technology acquisition with technology change—believing that selection and planning alone is enough to achieve the organisational strategy. But, features don’t solve business problems, people do.
The reality is that 2 similar organisations can acquire 2 similar technologies and yet experience very different results.
Core to understanding these differences is the concept of ‘agency’—the people who influence technology use…the developers, designers, leaders, project managers and users. They all come to IT change with expectations and goals.
And, while we like to think we have control over these agents, the fact is people can be a bit…well, unpredictable.
Understanding technology use requires attention to people, their goals and, most importantly, their interactions.
The five factors will be explored in this blog over the next few weeks…each using the following case study:
The case of the ad hoc database
In 2004, iWork (a pseudonym) selected and implemented a new software for administration. The system was being used by a number of similar organisations to iWork. The software was intended to be a total solution that customers, partners, leaders, and employees could use to connect through a single application.
However, one department within iWork did not fully adopt the technology. Instead, they created a new technology—a database and user interface, which has now been in use for approximately 4 years. A series of interviews conducted with stakeholders across the organisation were used to understand the factors that influenced the creation of this ad hoc database.
Getting things done
August 11, 2010 by janet · Leave a Comment
If you are having trouble getting things done, maybe it’s time to examine your rocks – the big things. There is a class
ic time management story that goes something like this:
A professor stands in front of his class. On the desk, sits a jar and a pile of rocks. He asks a student to fill the jar with as many rocks as possible until it is full. When the student finishes, the professor asks the class if the jar is full and they all say ‘yes’. The professor presents a pitcher of sand. He pours the sand into the jar and it fills the space around the rocks. He asks the class again if the jar is full. They exclaim ‘yes’. He then takes a pitcher of water and pours it into the jar until it begins to spill over the top. Now the jar is full.
The lesson is that there is often more room in the jar than you think, but only if you put the big rocks in first.
For the last 6 months, I have been extremely busy – a bit over-committed with client work. As good as that is for my bank account, I know it’s not really a sustainable business model. I have been so busy delivering, I haven’t really made time for business building. So, last week I allocated time for big rocks – 4 hours per day working on my list:
1) Begin design on that new client training/coaching program I’ve been meaning to do
2) 2011 financial planning and set up of systems and files
3) Re-write that research paper I did into a more usable white paper for my audience
4) Mindmap/outline the Flying Solo Live talk for September
5) Create a schedule and library of future blog posts
Over the week, I was able to make significant progress on items 1, 2, and 3 and make a good start on 4 and 5. It’s not as much as I had hoped to achieve, but it’s significantly more than I’ve achieved in the last 6 months.
But, I can’t do that every week. So, how I will I sustain it? Clearly, these tasks have to go in the jar first. Each of these tasks required significant head space just to make a start. They can’t be squeezed in between client work or meetings. For my business, that means being more careful with my time:
- Set an appointment in my diary for this work. Treat it with the same respect and attention that I would give a client
- Keep a prioritised list of ‘big rocks’ to tick off the list – aim for 1 per week. That could be 50 per year!
- Remove distractions – no email, phone calls, or Twitter while working on the big rocks
- Get moving - If I get stuck on something, don’t turn to the internet for a distraction…get moving! 45 minutes of walking time is great for new ideas
Can people really change?
July 28, 2010 by janet · Leave a Comment
“Our mental development, unlike our physical development, does not have to end at age twenty; we
can keep growing and developing in adulthood”**.
The question that has been central to me is: ‘can people and organisational cultures really change?’ I am now convinced that the answer is ‘yes’.
I became intrigued with the work of Robert Kegan while studying for my Masters in Organisational Coaching. It’s the most powerful way I have found to understand patterns of thought in myself and others and how those patterns impact the way we see the world.
The basic proposition is this:
Our mental development and growth helps us overcome our immunity to making other changes in our lives – it is when we begin to see and understand the commitments we hold around not changing, that we can begin to change.
I realise that our libraries and bookstores are littered books about personal change and growth. There is a reason for this – it’s something people seek. Unfortunately, it’s not something people often find. The problem with that literature is its inability to close the gap.
That gap between wanting and doing is a learning problem and closing it is about learning and changing the way we think about change. Kegan and Lahey’s book is a great way to understand this learning.
**Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work.. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass
Can innovation be planned?
July 23, 2010 by janet · Leave a Comment
Experiment: Take 6 chefs with approximately equal skill and give them a difficult task. Give 3 chefs an advantage: the recipe and 24 hours to plan. Give the other 3 chefs no planning time.
Hypothesis: Chefs given the advantage should perform better than those with none.
Actual result: 2 out of 3 chefs with advantage performed worse than those without any preparation or planning time.
Welcome to the unpredictable nature of human beings and performance. Welcome to management lessons from Masterchef Australia*.
According to Alvin, who was eliminated from the competition on Monday night, “I had an advantage, but cooking is a whole different story”.
Ralph Stacey** would agree. Cooking requires innovation and innovation cannot be planned in advance. Innovation occurs in the moment and in reaction to the conditions of that moment. The task of cooking Adriano Zumbo’s amazing V8 cake contains too many unpredictable elements for the planning time to be an actual advantage.
So what kind of planning could Alvin have done? Peter Senge*** would suggest to focus on the conditions for success by carrying on a learning conversation with the self –
- use the planning time to imagine the self creating the cake – what are the positive and negative thoughts that occur? Examine them and address them honestly.
- be curious about how the brain is thinking about the task and try to create an internal picture of the future that the self believes
- give the brain space and permission to learn in the moment instead of panic - practise mindfulness by observing the thoughts without becoming the thoughts
These are some of the same skills our wise leaders are trying to learn for the same reason – the ability to think and react innovatively when things are not going to plan.
It’s not that planning is not important or useful – just make sure you are matching your level of planning to the nature of the task.
*Not watching Masterchef? This short video will help: http://www.masterchef.com.au/video.htm?channel=S2MCLastSupper&clipId=2729_822MC200710CR”
** Stacey, R. D. (1996). Strategic management and organisational dynamics (Second ed.), London. Pitman Publishing.
*** Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art & practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Gross National Happiness
May 22, 2010 by janet · Leave a Comment
“Forget GDP, we should be measuring GNH – gross national happiness”. That’s what John Raulson Saul said in his 
Sydney Writers’ Festival talk on Thursday night (actually, he was just repeating what a Sultan had said – I can’t remember which one).
It’s really a question of money vs. happiness that seems to be a theme repeated at this year’s Writers’ Festival. Mike Daisey (The Last Cargo Cult) challenges our relationship to money by handing it to the audience as they enter the theatre – his money – the stuff that he was paid to perform the show. After 2 hours of amazing story-telling, the audience has the option to give it back.
So, after all the years giving lip service to the line ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’, these authors and philosophers seem to be saying ‘no really, it’s not a throw-away line…we are serious…what does it really mean?’ But it’s not just a concept for individuals, it’s being asked on a global scale.
Saul says that capitalism is only a valid concept for economies NOT in surplus. Once we have everything we need, more doesn’t get us anywhere. So, measuring ‘more’ in terms of ‘product’ is the wrong measure. What to measure instead? How about happiness and satisfaction?
It’s his example of how to start thinking spatially, not linearly. He says we should blow up all of the University Philosophy departments (get the people out first, ‘cause we still need them) – but blow them up into little pieces and catch them as they land. Then, put the pieces together in a new way.
To learn about this new way, we should turn to our indigenous populations and learn the ways of their dreamtime stories – they can teach us much more about philosophy in the way we need it today – spatially…not in the silly linear way taught by western philosophies of the Greeks and Romans.
So, what does Mr. Saul have against philosophers? (actually, his thinking extends to economics and business departments, too, as well as economic journalists and consultants – ouch). Well, he just doesn’t think we have evolved much since our 19th and 20th century thinking. We haven’t stopped to challenge ourselves – it’s been too long since we had a revolution of ideas. Or, said another way, we can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them (problems being GFC and environment to name a few). Our problems are complex, and linear models just don’t cut it when trying to solve complex problems.
Do you agree? I do. As (an evil) consultant working in organisations, I see it all the time. Organisations don’t solve their own problems very well because the tools and models we have given them in business schools don’t match the complexity that is their reality. One thinker on organisation change (Kaufmann) puts it like this: linear thinking might help you get to the top of your current mountain, but if you need to climb a new mountain, you will need to change your ways – going sideways or even down before you go up again. You’ve got to be willing to put your models at risk and re-think the problem in a whole new way.
If we aren’t challenging ourselves the think in complex ways, we won’t be able to solve complex problems.
Decision Dominos
March 12, 2010 by janet · 1 Comment
Take a look around your desk right now. How many decisions are hanging around waiting for you to make them? Have you thought about the costs of NOT making them? Slow decisions can have a domino effect in organisations – creating unnecessary urgency and prevent learning.
Let’s say that you have asked someone for a recommendation on changing the venue for your next conference. She has put forward 2 alternatives and her recommendation and is now awaiting your decision. It’s been 2 weeks. Domino 1: The venue gets booked by someone else. Domino 2: the rates start to go up. Domino 3: The event invitation is delayed and registrations suffer.
But the costs actually go deeper than that. Domino 4: People stop working on the conference and turn to other projects in the interim. If you continue to wait to make a decision until the last minute – when it absolutely has to be made – it now has urgency. Once you make your decision, everyone will have to stop what they are doing and start on the conference work again.
Tom DeMarco’s book ‘Slack’ quantifies the cost of switching between tasks as not only the mechanics of moving to a new task, but also:
Rework due to inopportune abort + loss of immersion time + loss of team binding effects = 15% penalty
In other words, each interruption comes at a cost. By waiting until the last minute, you create both urgency and interruption for the people around you.
But I think there is another domino missing to DeMarco’s equation: Learning. 
Each decision you make is an output for which evaluation and learning are inputs to your organisation. Accelerated decision making increases the outputs, which, in turn, increase the inputs*. Things get moving and your organisation gets smarter faster.
So, how do you create a culture that accelerates decisions?
- Be willing to experiment by making decisions even if you don’t have all of the answers
- Establish guiding principles – Don’t punish people for making a ‘bad’ decision and don’t reward people for hard work that resulted from last-minute decisions
- Focus on communication and information flow that encourages evaluation and learning
- Spend more time talking about ‘what’ you are trying to achieve and less on ‘how’ you want it done .
- Empower decisions to be made as close to the problem as possible – not just at the top.
Now, take another look around your desk. Are you creating a domino effect? If there are decisions to be made – make them. Even the wrong decision could be less costly than no decision at all.
* Webb, P. J. (2006). Inspirational Chaos: Executive Coaching and Tolerance of Complexity. In M. Cavanagh, A. M. Grant & T. Kemp (Eds.), Evidence-based Coaching. Theory, research and practice from the behavioural sciences. (Vol. 1, pp. 83-95). Bowen Hills: Australian Academic Press.
Management lessons from the cat
January 10, 2010 by janet · Leave a Comment
Yes, even pets have something to teach us about management and change.
Do you recognise this pattern? You need to make a change. You make a plan and a schedule. But when you start to move forward, you go…well, backward.
Welcome to the complex and unpredictable world of change – the inevitable consequence of managing in a world of choice. It is happening around us all of the time, but the most recent lesson I learned in management came from trying to manage my cat.
In October, Starksy (pictured) was diagnosed with diabetes and prescribed special food and medicine. He now requires an injection of insulin each day at 7:30 AM and 7:30 PM, immediately after food. That should be easy enough, I thought. And, I changed my schedule and his.
But, when I tried to implement the changes, Starsky objected. He following me around the house from 6:00 PM and meowing relentlessly – unable to understand why I was withholding his food. When 7:30 finally rolled around, I would finally put the food down. But, instead of eating, he would just walk away. Since food is required before injections, now I couldn’t give him his scheduled shot. When I tried to force him to eat the food he had been insisting on just 10 minutes prior, he refused and wanted to go outside instead.
My plan and schedule had gone horribly wrong. Managing a cat was proving just as complex as managing humans.
In my August blog on Leadership, I explained managing complexity like this:
Traditional command and control models of leadership were better suited to managing in an industrial age – predictable, orderly structures, like machines and factories. But it’s not the machines doing the work anymore, it is people. And, it’s not a product we are producing, it is innovation and knowledge. And once you rely on people to produce innovation, things get considerably more complex. Management skills of planning, scheduling and delegating are second to those of visioning, boundary setting, empowerment and communication.
Management theory is all well and good, but does it actually work in practise? Well, here is how I used it with Starsky:
What’s happening?
Starsky, like our employees, is applying choice. The more I try to control him, the more unpredictable he becomes. We are interdependent – for every behaviour I try to change, he exhibits a response – often an unpredictable and undesired one.
The alternative
The secret to getting control of the situation was actually to stop trying to control it at all and focus instead on boundaries and empowerment. Now, Starsky can have his food any time after 6:30. I don’t stand over him with a needle waiting for him to finish eating. If he wants to go outside, I let him because I know that he will be back within the hour to finish his dinner.
The result
As soon as I relaxed my standards of control and empowered Starsky with more choice, we both started getting what we wanted.
My Advice
If your projects aren’t getting the results you intend, try changing your focus. Spend less energy on the schedule and more on the enabling the desired outcomes through boundary setting, vision setting, communications and empowerment.
Teamwork…do I have to?
November 9, 2009 by janet · Leave a Comment
Love them or hate them, teams are a part of our organisational language. But, as much as the word is used, it is not always clear what makes an effective team.
Let’s say your team has a goal to produce and execute a marketing plan. In fact, your goal is to write the best darn marketing plan the organisation has ever seen. Since the plan has various sections that need to be researched and written, it can be broken down into parts and assigned to various team members. But wait…is that really the best way to create a stellar marketing plan?
How you structure the work depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Doing marketing as a team is not like painting a house. If you just all go off and do your own sections, you won’t benefit from the collective experience and ideas within the team. A key benefit of teams is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The best ideas for your marketing will likely emerge from the creative process. To benefit from that emergence, you need to make yourselves more interdependent - in other words, how you work together as a team will impact the marketing plan that emerges.
So, before you jump into the details, take some time to get to know each others’ backgrounds and working styles. If the task is important to you, take the time to talk about individual and shared motivations. New research has shown that teams with well-articulated charters and performance strategies create initial conditions that foster the emergence of team success*.
But, you might be thinking… is it even worth it? Not everyone likes these ‘getting to know you’ activities and there is something to be said for ’if you want something done right, do it yourself’. Is there really any benefit to working in a team? Well, that depends on what the goal is – more on that in next week’s post.
*Mathieu, J.E. and Rapp, T.L. (2009). Laying the Foundations for Successful Team Performance Trajectories: The Roles of Team Charters and Performance Strategies. Journal of Applied Psychology. Vol.94, No.1. 90-103
Achieving your goals in 3 easy steps (well, sort of)
October 15, 2009 by janet · Leave a Comment
Imagine if every person in your organisation pursued and accomplished 1 big thing this year. An organisation of 100 people would accomplish 100 big things. How many did you accomplish last year? You can teach the leaders and managers in your organisation to do this effectively and make it fun and meaningful. Want to hear more? Listen to this short podcast with Phil Dobbie on BTalk Australia…
http://blogs.bnetau.com.au/aussierules/2009/10/11/making-goals-work-btalk-australia/
Are you happy about the way goals are set and tracked in your business? In large companies it’s often a HR driven process that is carried out once a year, used as a tool for appraisals, and bears little relation to what occupies people day to day.
On today’s BTalk Australia Phil Dobbie talks to Janet Horton, the founder of Handspring Consulting…it all begins with setting goals that the employee actually wants to do.
Mastering business growth
October 1, 2009 by janet · Leave a Comment
Trying to grow your business? In his seminal work, The E-Myth*, Michael Gerber observes that growth requires you to play multiple roles at once – the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician. But, it’s hard to be strong in all three areas at the same time without losing focus on the big picture or the attention to detail.
The technician is usually the one who gets you into business in the first place – you take the stuff you love and turn it into what you do. But, the business also requires an entrepreneur…a visionary who will dream and scheme to create new things and a manager who will create order.
In larger businesses, these roles are done by 3 separate people and there is a natural tension that exists between them that pushes the business forward. But businesses that are small in size and young in age often do not have the luxury of 3 different people to fill these roles. This means that you tend to gravitate to your favourite role, which can lead to stagnation, or active inertia (lots of activity without change), which can lead to burnout.
What’s the solution to all of this? Gerber says that if you are going to make your business your life, then make sure it’s the one you want. Here is what you need to do:
- Understand your goals and motivations: what specifically do you want to achieve and what would it mean to achieve it?
- Define your organisational strategy: what will this organisation look like when it grows?
- Define your management strategy: By what metrics will I measure the organisation? (cash flow, sales pipeline, etc)
- Define your people strategy: How will I select and motivate them?
- Define your market strategy: Who are your customers and why will they choose to do business with you over the alternatives?
- Define your systems strategy: How will the work get done? Don’t manage the business in your head. Document how things get done so that others can step into roles as you grow. Pretend it is a business that will be franchised, even if it isn’t. That will make what you do repeatable and predictable.
Sound hard? Well it is and it isn’t. The hardest part is finding the time and head space to work on the business instead of in the business. And if you want to reach your goals faster, try using some outside assistance. Read about Two Heads Business Advisory Board services here.
*Gerber, M. E., (1995). The E-Myth Revisited: why most small business don’t work and what to do about it. Harper Collins, New York, NY.
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