Bridging Business & IT

Roger Moore (no, not 007) is our guest today. Roger currently teaches Analytics at the University of Chicago where he’s also an alum of their MBA program. Over his 30-plus year career he’s been with a number of major consulting groups such as BCG, Gartner, Booze and PWC. He’s currently running his own Data and Analytics firm. This conversation is foundational. Roger helps us unpack the critical components and structures of a good data, analytics and reporting organization / strategy. Unfortunately, due to the enormous expanse of this topic, we weren’t able to get into detailed discussions on the mechanics of the process. Fortunately, Roger’s already agreed to come back for deeper dives in the near future. Stay tuned.

Our guest in this episode is Jomo Starke, Director of Innovation at Canton & Company. Jomo’s 30-plus year tech career started with developing video games—which he almost sold to Atari before they realized he was twelve. From his early days as a 17 year old wunderkind analyst to his years in project management, sales and biz dev, Jomo shares his insights into what makes tech enabled business projects successful and the simple, yet critical oversights that so often cause them to fail. 

We’re joined today by Ray Weale, currently COO of IDMerit and formerly Director of Digital Innovation at Nestle. Ray helped lead the global unification of literally thousands of Nestles processes and systems on to 34 standard processes on SAP—realizing staggering benefits along the way. Our conversation starts with Ray’s background and carries into how Nestle accomplished this remarkable global integration and unification. 

Personal note:  I must confess to feeling a bit sycophant-ish as we fawned over Ray’s story. However, I think anyone who’s been around a large transformation effort knows the challenges of pulling it off successfully. In this case, after learning from their first failed attempt, both Nestles and SAP should be commended for this incredible achievement. This is a story well worth hearing and an excellent example of what an organization can accomplish once they realize they’re not running an IT project—they’re running a business project that just happens to be enabled by technology—Dave

In the last episode we talked about how a CIO (or IT leader) needs to prepare their business counterparts for their roles and responsibilities in an upcoming tech-enabled business project. In this episode we talk about IT department leadership, expectations and accountability. We share five “ground rules” that tech leaders need to share with their teams to position them for project success and to provide better service to their business counterparts. We are again joined by our CIO guest, John Fisher.

This episode shares five things that the tech team needs to share with business executives, project sponsor(s), process owners and subject matter experts to set their expectations and explain their obligations before a project kicks off. We’re joined on this episode by an old friend and colleague, John Fisher, who has held multiple CIO positions over his 35+ year career and currently teaches at DePaul University.

Part 2 of this episode builds on the foundation of part 1 and is dedicated to examining the details within each of the four stages and twelve steps of the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL”).

Suggested readings:

• “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande
• “Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
• “Incognito” by David Eagleman
• “The paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong” by Itiel E. Dror
• “The Coming Software Apocalypse” by James Somers in the Atlantic
• “The Lost Language of Execution” by David P. Burrill at www.bridgingbusinessit.com/solutions

This episode introduces a simple solution to bridge the gap between everything the business knows and what they communicate to the IT project team. We propose a checklist of questions to cover each step in the Business Execution Lifecycle (“BEL”). Execution is not a one-off, linear exercise, but rather a continuous cycle with four distinct stages (Do, Manage, Assess, Refine) that is common to every business process. If you understand the BEL framework, you can create a checklist to unpack the details of a process (or project) to ensure that you’ve covered everything you need to cover.

Continue to Part 2

Suggested readings:

• “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande
• “Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
• “Incognito” by David Eagleman
• “The paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong” by Itiel E. Dror
• “The Coming Software Apocalypse” by James Somers in the Atlantic
• “The Lost Language of Execution” by David P. Burrill at www.bridgingbusinessit.com/solutions

Part two continues where part one leaves off by attempting to explain—as well as a non-scientist can—seven unconscious and uncontrollable ways our brain works to unwittingly sabotage IT projects. These “sinister seven” are by no means unique to IT or business. They inject themselves into and impact every human interaction.

Suggested readings:

• “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell
• “Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
• “How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer
• “Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst” by Robert Sapolsky
• “The Brain” by David Eagleman
• “Incognito” by David Eagleman
• “The paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong” by Itiel E. Dror
• “Subliminal” by Leonard Mlodinow
• “Free Will” by Sam Harris
• “Flourish” by Martin E. P. Seligman
• “Shine” by Ned Hallowell

Our entire approach to running IT projects is based on an unspoken assumption that is so deeply engrained in our culture it’s treated as a given. There’s only one problem with this assumption—it’s wrong. Humans are not rational actors who control their thoughts and actions. We don’t control our brain. Our brain controls us in ways, and to an extent, we never imagined. Part one of this episode begins to unpack this discovery and explain its consequences.

Continue to Part 2

Suggested readings:

• “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell
• “Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
• “How We Decide” by Jonah Lehrer
• “Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst” by Robert Sapolsky
• “The Brain” by David Eagleman
• “Incognito” by David Eagleman
• “The paradox of human expertise: why experts get it wrong” by Itiel E. Dror
• “Subliminal” by Leonard Mlodinow
• “Free Will” by Sam Harris
• “Flourish” by Martin E. P. Seligman
• “Shine” by Ned Hallowell

We take a deep dive into the nature of the divide between business and IT. We lay out our research on the frequency, costs and cause of roughly 75% of all enterprise IT failures. The primary cause is usually labeled a communications issue. It’s actually a function of silence. It’s the sum total of all the details the business forgets to share, all the questions IT never knows to ask, and all the assumptions they both make but never confirm.