Archive for December 2012
Time Flies!
There is an old adage that comes to my mind “Time and Tide wait for no man.” The year is almost over. Many of us CIOs may feel that there is never enough time to get all the things done. We have a tough job – juggling resources and budgets to align technology to best meet the Enterprise needs. It is a thankless job, for people notice it more when things are not working. That is given. The best we can do is to use the feedback to help us reshape our systems to function better, but we need tools and diligently spend the time to reflect and plan. If you are fortunate to have a job like I do where things do slow down over the holidays, then now is a great opportunity to reflect!
The Role of Analytics to help Managers become Leaders
Amongst, Peter Drucker’s famous quotes, it is hard to choose which is the best for he has so many good ones. But one that I seldom forget is “Management is doing it right, Leadership is doing the right things“. Some loosely label it as efficiency versus effectiveness. A corollary can be seen from our implementation of dashboards. Performance dashboards is all about efficiency where as Business Intelligence is about effectiveness. While one could argue that this taxonomy can be counter productive since without effectiveness, efficiency is not useful. However, looking at hundreds of performance dashboards, I came to the conclusion that implementors and vendors supporting dashboards were more concerned about tactical performance without providing insights into how to help leadership identify doing the right things.
Developing sound analytics may provide some guidance to leadership teams evolve a organizational strategy that is effective, or in Professor Drucker’s words “doing the right things“. There is no magic wand to create analytics. Leadership teams are usually technologically challenged, and technology experts rarely capture the vision of leaders. We can keep arguing whether it is easier to teach leaders technology or technology experts leadership, but the critical link is the CIO. The role of the CIO must transform from mere back-office efficiency to innovation identifying key measures that can help the enterprise leadership team articulate the right strategies. Without the CIO being a core part of the leadership team, this transformation is not possible.