Being in the Information Technology business, I have a bunch of sort of nerdy friends (oddly, some of them would describe me the same way). As a rule, when we get together we often talk about the sorts of things that people think techie people talk about – web sites, cool applications, project we are working on, and of course Star Trek (original version, the movies and occasionally TNG).

A while ago some friends and I were talking about the first computers we owned or used. One used a Commodore 64, someone else used the TRS-80 sold by Radio Shack. It was interesting to consider how far these devices have come in 30 or so years, how ubiquitous they are now and how integral they have become to our everyday lives.

I had been thinking that the first computer I used was a mainframe at university where I used punch cards to enter the programs, but on the weekend another thought occurred to me.  I was listening to a radio broadcast about iconic brands that mentioned the Etch A Sketch, and I was thinking that surely the Etch A Sketch was as iconic in it’s day as my iPad tablet is now. And long before I bought my first iPad, before my first laptop, even before my first home computer, the first personal tablet-type device I ever owned was an Etch A Sketch.

While it didn’t have a touch screen, it also didn’t have a keyboard, and you couldn’t type on it even if you wanted to. It had a graphical user interface.

It had two knobs that let you draw or write, one that moved the cursor vertically, and one that moved it horizontally.  I recall that the original patent application for the computer mouse (actually called an “X-Y position indicator for a display system”) was a wooden shell with 2 wheels that marked horizontal and vertical positions on a graphic display. 

It wasn’t able to store and retrieve the image I created, although when I did a particularly good one I put the Etch A Sketch on the shelf like a picture frame so that nobody would accidentally erase it.  There are now artists who work using Etch A Sketches and they have figured out a way to make the image permanent, although it does require taking the device apart.

And while the image that was created wasn’t actually an electronic image but rather a physical once, it sure felt pretty high-tech when I was a kid. 

And what other kid’s toy has an tech support FAQ?  http://www.skrause.org/humor/etch.shtml

Sounds like a real computer to me…

Christy DeMont

In a recent Globe and Mail article entitled The positive side of pessimism, reporter Wency Leung wrote about people’s tendency to overlook the protective benefits of negative thinking. She cited psychology professor Julie Norem’s term “defensive pessimism” and Norem’s explanation that “by considering the specific ways that an anticipated situation could go awry, people can actively prepare themselves and prevent disaster”. Leung was writing about an individual’s approach to optimism and pessimism but the same consideration can be applied to Boards of Directors thinking about their organizations. Or in other words, what keeps the Board members up at night?

Risk management has become a very hot topic for Boards in the last few years and a key part of their due diligence. For example, the March 2103 issue of the Journal of the Institute of Corporate Directors has a special feature on risk management. Estelle Metayer, a consultant and professor writing in the journal, talks about cognitive biases that contribute to Boards missing opportunities or falling victim to blindspots. Robert Crosbie of Marine Atlantic talks about the broad range of political risks such as strategic uncertainty and the government’s willingness to invest. In short, risk is everywhere and Boards need to identify it and plan how to deal with it. As Crosbie says, “When you’re right in the middle of it, you can’t be learning as you go.”

In my career experience, risk management first came as part of planning insurance coverage and assessing financial risk to the organization. In the early ‘90’s, when I was in an IT role, it was all about disaster recovery, hot sites and protecting your data. The next iteration was business continuity and what are you going to do if the building becomes uninhabitable (trailers anyone?). My most recent risk related work has now expanded to Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) which encompasses the previous components and more.

ERM looks at the organization’s entire operation to develop concepts such as the organization’s risk universe, their appetite for risk, ranking of risks and mitigation strategies. At the hospital where I was involved in developing and implementing an ERM, we defined risk as the uncertainty and potential to impact on the achievement of the organization’s goals and strategic directions. This comprehensive approach to risk looked at governance, communications, clinical care, infrastructure, public image, innovation, people, finance, technology, legal and regulatory matters. We also wanted to minimize any incremental cost and effort and made sure to integrate ERM with other activities such as hospital accreditation and the risk self assessment we did for our insurer. At the end of the process, the overarching concern was reputational risk – what would happen if we lost the confidence of our funders, our regulators and the public? The top specific risks to achieving our objectives – not dissimilar to other healthcare organizations - came down to human resources, IT and policies and procedures. As we put it to our Board, do we have the right people with the right tools doing the right things to live our values and achieve our goals?

To me there were a few key lessons learned from the ERM approach to risk. The first was that the people who know it best are the people in the organization who deal with operations every day. Consultants can bring a lot to the table in terms of process and tools but your people are the ones who know what’s going on. The challenge is to get them thinking in an ‘out-of-the-box’, non-defensive way about what might go wrong and how the problems can be avoided. Secondly, the organization has to follow through on the mitigation strategies. The Board needs to be aware of the risk assessment results and receive regular reports on the implementation status of the mitigation strategy action plans. The final learning is how useful and important it can be to look at your organization through the often unfamiliar and sometimes uncomfortable lens of risk. Most often, organizations and Boards like to focus on the good things we’re doing and to celebrate our successes. This is more inspirational and satisfying than dwelling on what might go wrong. As Leung stated in her article, “people have tended to neglect the upsides to pessimism because optimism seems well … nicer”. On the other hand, if we can identify and deal with those things that keep Board members up at night, maybe that can help us all sleep a little better. And in our sleep deprived world, that’s not a bad thing.   

Eric Preston

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”

This must be one of the simplest formulations of an economic rule. This phrase describes opportunity cost – that getting something that we want usually requires that we give up another thing that we also want (although presumably not as much, or not as urgently). To say it more precisely, we trade off one goal or objective against another.

In the IT world, this situation comes up all the time.  Typically, the tradeoffs you have to make are between 3 objectives:

1)   Getting a set of systems implemented that have some defined business benefit, usually revenue increases or cost savings;

2)   Meeting budget (i.e., you have a finite amount of people, money and equipment to work with)

3)   Achieving work delivery goals (i.e. getting work done within a defined period of time).

Let’s say that that you have a slate of 10 projects (objective 1) that need to be completed by your team of 15 people (objective 2) within the fiscal year (objective 3).  You and your team sit down and look at this slate of projects and determine that the work required would take the equivalent of 20 work-years. 

So you are going to have to choose between these 3 objectives, as you can’t fulfill them all. You have 3 options:

Reduce the number of projects

Relaxing objective 1 and implementing fewer solutions will cost the organization the benefits that would arise from the projects that have to be taken off the current workplan.  So the thinking here is to find the projects that make the least contribution to the success of the organization, balancing long term and short term needs.  It’s important here to guard against putting too high a priority on the urgent or short-term work over the important but long-term work.

  Increase the resources allocated to this work

Relaxing the budget constraint can alleviate the pressure, but may not always be possible if, for example, the organization has limited financial resources to work with. Other risks are taking on temporary staff to get work done and then not having the resources and skills to do ongoing management, and increasing the base maintenance demands on the team which limits the new work that can be taken on in future years.

Lengthening the schedule

The final option is to take longer to do the work – keep the projects on the list, keep the budget the same, but extend the schedule. As this means that some benefits will take longer to arrive, making this choice also has to look carefully at which projects get slowed down and implications for the business.

As you think through this process and make recommendations for changes, be sure to talk to your colleagues in the business so that they know your thinking and can support it, and to ensure that you haven’t overlooked anything in your analysis.

Questions?  Want to give me some feedback? Send me a note at cdemont@osborne-group.com.

Christy DeMont

The theory is that there are no stupid questions. Okay, this is not quite true – but more on this later. First, a story.

I had a client a few years ago who was nervous about an interview I was about to do with a difficult business user in the early stages of a project. He asked for my list of questions for the interview in advance. I gave him my list:

 “How does your department contribute to the success of the organization?”

“What works well and what areas/products/projects could be improved?”

“What do you need this [new computer system] to do to help you achieve your mandate?”

“What are the risks that I need to consider as we plan for and implement this [new computer system]?”

My client seemed unimpressed with my list and unsure that we would actually need the 2 hours we had booked for this conversation.  Of course (because this is my blog entry, not yours), we had a great meeting, garnered the support of the previously difficult business user, and after the meeting, my client told me that he couldn’t believe that we had such a great meeting when I went in with a simple list of 4 questions.

As you can imagine, I actually asked many more questions than just the 4 listed, but all as part of a dialogue.  The four questions keep the focus on key meeting outcomes and serve to get the conversation started.

Whether you are collecting business requirements, learning about a vendor proposal, or managing a staff member, asking open-ended, neutral questions is the key. And there’s nothing wrong with asking really basic questions (“why do you do that?”) that drive the discussion back to the first principles – i.e., what are we trying to accomplish with this project/department/product  - that can get lost in the urgency of day-to-day operations.

And as for the no stupid questions theory, rest assured that there are entirely stupid questions – questions that demonstrate that you haven’t been listening, or don’t care about the answer you just got, or trick questions that get asked because somebody has a hidden agenda.  But those are for a different blog entry.

Christy DeMont

While we provide solutions that drive success in business, IT doesn’t directly make money for the company – so while what we do is business critical, we are still primarily in the business of providing service to other functions.

So what happens when something goes wrong?

There are two possible responses to a customer service problem.  The first response is, “This is unacceptable. This must be resolved immediately”.  The second response is, “It’s a problem, but it’s not a big deal. We can figure out a work-around until it gets fixed”.

Now here’s where the light bulb goes on:  if you are providing service to a customer, and a problem comes up, you get to pick your response first.  The 100% always true no fail guarantee is that whichever response you pick, your customer will pick the other one.

The cool thing is that it doesn’t matter if it’s a broken cellphone or a million dollar piece of software - it still works this way. (It also works the same way if your restaurant meal isn’t satisfactory or you are trying to return something to a store or somebody messed up your tee time – try it and see!)

And when people in your organization see how seriously you take the fact that their blackberry isn’t working properly, they will understand that you also take their big problems seriously, and the next time you have a significant issue you will have their support. It’s amazing how much support you can get from your business colleagues by sending somebody out to the store to spend a couple of hundred dollars on a phone.

Christy DeMont