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INFORMATION & TECHNOLOGY IT MANAGEMENT. Bridging the Gap Between IT and Your Business by THOMAS C. REDMAN AND BILL SWEENEY

For the past several years we have watched with increasing dismay at the increasing chasm between information technology (IT) groups and their business counterparts. From where we sit, both sides have legitimate beefs: IT complains that, despite the increasing penetration of technology intoevery nook and cranny of the business, it doesn’t have a seat at the table and no one understands how difficult their jobs are given the constraints under which they operate. The business complains that IT doesn’t understand the business, consistently overpromises and under-delivers, and slows innovation. CEOs, following the advice in Nicolas Carr’s famous HBR article, “IT Doesn’t Matter,” perceive little strategic opportunity in IT and devote as little time as possible to the issues. Finally, the usual calls for IT to get closer to the business only exacerbate the situation. Neither side fully appreciates how difficult this is. And half-hearted efforts are akin to putting in just enough energy to jump halfway across the stream.

Frankly, we are sick and tired of the bickering, especially since the most important point gets lost — the failure to derive the full advantage of information technologies does enormous disservice to companies. Further, the pace of technological change and the demands to do more with the data grow exponentially and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The problem, strategic or not, must be resolved. Smart leaders will ignore the posturing and work to close the gaps.

While we have no “silver bullet” solution, we do offer three steps that can help.

Quit making the same mistakes over and over again. It seems to us that, in far too many companies, IT doesn’t have a fair chance. We see the same mistakes — some subtle, most not so much — over and over. IT is asked to do things, such as improve data quality, which it simply cannot do. People are not given adequate opportunity to provide input, nor educated on the new process and applications they are expected to use, and they blame IT for imposing something on them they do not like. IT is asked to the table far too late to advise on the difficulties ofconsolidating systems after a merger, then faulted when the task takes longer and costs more. Or business silos blame IT because “systems don’t talk,” when the root issue is that siloed departments don’t like working together.

None of these examples are new or different. Worse, too often we find people on both sides fully cognizant that they’re heading for a train wreck, and then hopping onboard anyway. It is time to put a stop to this. Both sides must acknowledge the mistakes of the past, resolve not to repeat them, and develop the courage to speak up.

Find common ground on medium-term issues. The motivation for our second step is the simple observation that organizations develop trust when they know what to expect from each other. We propose business and IT work in that direction by bringing a few tough technological trade-offs front and center, with the goal of finding some middle ground. These may include the COO’s demand for high systems reliability vs. the product manager’s desires to bring new capabilities online quickly; the CFO’s desire that systems standardize processes to keep costs low vs. the CMO’s demands that these same systems be flexible to promote innovation; or the apparent attractiveness of the cloud to CEOs vs. legal counsel’s concerns about data protection.

To find that middle ground, both should describe the trade-offs from their perspectives, illuminating important subtleties along the way. There will be plenty of differences, but the secret here is to find areas of agreement. It’s not so hard. We recall one case where six big issues came up — and 27 areas of agreement. At least for a time, forget about the six, select a few of the 27, and get to work on them. Good things happen. And in time the business becomes a better consumer of IT and IT a better provider of business services.

Finally, companies should ask, “How do we expect IT to help us compete?” Today, this topic simply doesn’t come up often enough, leading to a one-size-fits-all approach to managing IT, often as a cost center. That’s fine for most functions and processes in most companies, where middle-of-the-pack IT is good enough.

But all companies have areas where middle-of-the-pack IT is not good enough. Companies must invest in these parts of IT for the long term. Importantly, the critical investment is less in any particular technology and more in building organizational capabilities. For while few information technologies qualify as strategic — after all, they will be woefully out-of-date in three to five years — developing the ability to keep pace with the technology curve in these areas must be viewed as strategic.

Seen sequentially, step one clears the emotional clutter that poisons the relationship, step two enables IT to achieve “trusted supplier” status, and step three helps build a true business partnership in the areas that need it most. But we’re less interested in the order. Like it or not, we live in a tech world, from Apple to Hadoop to Zip files. You can’t ignore the fact that technology touches every facet of our lives. Better to get everything you can, leveraging every byte and every ounce of knowledge IT can bring.

Toyota Way

1) Permitir o empoderar (por usar un anglicismo de empowerment) a los empleados para que decidieran, desde los niveles básicos de la organización o, mejor dicho, en los niveles más cercanos de donde están las decisiones a tomar. 2) Que tomaran decisiones por consenso, más que por mandato, decidiendo en la línea (y no en un cubículo). 3) Que decidieran basándose en los controles que se ven y no en impresos de una computadora. Este es el corazón de la cultura de Toyota, esto es lo que la hace tan competitiva

Obama proposes brain mapping project

Obama proposes brain mapping project



The president announced an initial $100m investment
US President Barack Obama has unveiled a new initiative to map the brain.

Speaking at the White House, he announced an initial $100m investment to shed light on how the brain works and provide insight into diseases such as Alzheimer's and epilepsy.

President Obama said initiatives like the Human Genome Project had transformed genetics; now he wants to do the same with the brain.

The project will be carried out by both public and private-sector scientists.

The project is called Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies - or BRAIN.

Mr Obama said: "There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked, and the BRAIN initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and learn and remember. And that knowledge will be transformative."

Next frontier

The project will begin in 2014, and will involve the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The $100m investment will be used to develop new technologies to investigate how the billions of individual cells in the human brain interact.

Scientists will also focus on how the brain records, stores and processes information, and investigate how brain function is linked to behaviour.

Mr Obama said that while our understanding of the brain was growing, there was still a long way to go.

"As humans we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than the atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the 3lb of matter that sits between our ears," he said.

The project will also involve partnerships with the private sector.

This includes the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which has committed to spending $60m annually on projects relating to the BRAIN initiative, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which has dedicated $28m.

An ethics committee will oversee the work.

Mr Obama said that it was worth investing in science, claiming that it would help to create new jobs and boost the economy.

He said that basic research was "a driver of growth".

"We can't afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead," he added.

The funding announcement comes after recent news of another push in neuroscience in Europe.

About 80 European research institutions and some from outside the EU will take part in the Human Brain Project, which is estimated to cost more than 1bn euros.

The project will use supercomputer-based models and simulations to reconstruct a virtual human brain to develop new treatments for neurological conditions.

BBC © 2013

The Right Way to Give Your Boss Bad News

No one likes a difficult conversation with the boss, but it can be a valuable tool for building a trusting relationship. Try these four steps the next time you need to share upsetting news:
Describe the problem. Provide a general overview and show the specific impact it has on your work and the company’s goals.
Identify your solution. Explain how you’ve already tried to solve the problem and what you’ve learned from those attempts. Recommend a specific approach, along with alternatives to give your manager options.
Discuss the benefits. Focus on concrete examples of how your idea will succeed. If you have tested your approach on a small scale with good results, share that information.
Accept responsibility. Demonstrate your commitment to ensuring success. Work with your manager to develop a final action plan.

Turning an Aging British Icon into a Global Luxury Brand

Burberry's CEO on Turning an Aging British Icon into a Global Luxury Brand
BY ANGELA AHRENDTS
Comments (0) January-February 2013

Photography: Getty Images

The Idea: Before Angela Ahrendts became Burberry’s CEO, licensing threatened to destroy the brand’s unique strengths. The answer? Centralize design and focus on innovating core heritage products.
When I became the CEO of Burberry, in July 2006, luxury was one of the fastest-growing sectors in the world. With its rich history, centered on trench coats that were recognized around the world, the Burberry brand should have had many advantages. But as I watched my top managers arrive for our first strategic planning meeting, something struck me right away. They had flown in from around the world to classic British weather, gray and damp, but not one of these more than 60 people was wearing a Burberry trench coat. I doubt that many of them even owned one. If our top people weren’t buying our products, despite the great discount they could get, how could we expect customers to pay full price for them?

It was a sign of the challenges we faced. Even in a burgeoning global market, Burberry was growing at only 2% a year. The company had an excellent foundation, but it had lost its focus in the process of global expansion. We had 23 licensees around the world, each doing something different. We were selling products such as dog cover-ups and leashes. One of our highest-profile stores, on Bond Street in London, had a whole section of kilts. There’s nothing wrong with any of those products individually, but together they added up to just a lot of stuff—something for everybody, but not much of it exclusive or compelling.



In luxury, ubiquity will kill you—it means you’re not really luxury anymore. And we were becoming ubiquitous. Burberry needed to be more than a beloved old British company. It had to develop into a great global luxury brand while competing against much larger rivals. Among luxury players, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) had almost 12 times—and Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR) more than 16 times—Burberry’s revenue. We wanted a share of the disposable income of the world’s most elite buyers—and to win it, we’d have to fight for prime real estate in the world’s most rapidly growing consumer markets. In many ways, it felt like a David-and-Goliath battle.

One “Brand Czar”
On the surface, I might have seemed an unlikely CEO for a company that was considered quintessentially British. I was raised in a small town in Indiana and educated at Ball State University. I was a classic midwesterner—something the Financial Times had fun mocking when I first took the job. But I’d been fortunate enough to work with and learn from some of the most inspirational leaders in the fashion industry, from Paul Charron to Donna Karan. And I had 25 years of experience on my side.

I also clearly had one attribute that made me a good fit: I admire and respect great brands and helped to build some over the years. From Apple to Starbucks, I love the consistency—knowing that anywhere in the world you can depend on having the same experience in the store or being served a latte with the same taste and in the same cup. That’s great branding.

Unfortunately, Burberry didn’t have a lot of that. An experience in any given Burberry store in the world might be very different from the customer’s previous one. As part of my transition, I spent six months working closely with my predecessor, hitting the road to get a sense of Burberry worldwide. In Hong Kong, I was introduced to a design director and her team, who proudly showed me the line they were creating for that market: polo shirts and woven shirts and everything with the famous Burberry check, but not a single coat.

Then we went to America, where I was introduced to another design director and design team. This team was creating outerwear, but at half the price point of that in the UK. Furthermore, the coats were being manufactured in New Jersey. So we were making classic Burberry raincoats that said “Made in the U.S.A.” I later learned that we had outerwear licensees in Italy and Germany making trench coats that were even cheaper than those in the United States.

Great global brands don’t have people all over the world designing and producing all kinds of stuff. It became quite clear that if Burberry was going to be a great, pure, global luxury brand, we had to have one global design director. We had an incredible young designer named Christopher Bailey, with whom I’d worked at Donna Karan and who I knew was a sensational talent. So I introduced him early on as the “brand czar.” I told the team, “Anything that the consumer sees—anywhere in the world—will go through his office. No exceptions.”

How to Get Feedback When You're the Boss

How to Get Feedback When You're the Boss
by Amy Gallo | 9:55 AM May 15, 2012
Comments (55)


The higher up in the organization you get, the less likely you'll receive constructive feedback on your ideas, performance, or strategy. No one wants to offend the boss, right? But without input, your development will suffer, you may become isolated, and you're likely to miss out on hearing some great ideas. So, what can you do to get people to tell you what you may not want to hear?

What the Experts Say
Most people have good reasons for keeping their opinions from higher ups. "People with formal power can affect our fate in many ways — they can withhold critical resources, they can give us negative evaluations and hold us back from promotions, and they can even potentially fire us or have us fired," says James Detert, associate professor at the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management and author of the Harvard Business Review articles "Debunking Four Myths About Employee Silence" and "Why Employees Are Afraid to Speak". The more senior you become, the more likely you are to trigger this fear. "The major reason people don't give the boss feedback is they're worried that the boss will retaliate because they know that most of us have trouble accepting negative feedback," says Linda Hill, the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and coauthor of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader. While you may be tempted to enjoy this deference, the silence will not help you, your organization or your career.

Acknowledge the fear
As the boss, you have to set the stage so people feel comfortable, says Hill. You need to break through their fear. Detert suggests being explicit. Tell them that you know everyone makes mistakes, including you, and that they should call out those errors without feeling embarrassed or threatened. Explain that you need their feedback to learn.

At the same time, you should recognize how hard it might be to hear this tough feedback. "It's human to feel bad when people criticize and no matter how senior you become, you're still human," Hill says. Still, you can't let that anxiety hold you back.

Ask for it, constantly
Ask for feedback on a regular basis, not just at review time. "You need to be the one who is actively collecting and soliciting information all the time," says Hill. You can say something like, "I know that these are the goals that we set together. What can I do to help you achieve those goals?" You shouldn't assume your team members will be upfront the first time you ask. "You have to do it for awhile and then the information will flow and you can ask more pointed questions," says Hill.

Request examples
In the same way that you want to give concrete examples when giving feedback, you should also request them when you are receiving it. When someone tells you, "You run our team meetings really well," or "You don't delegate enough," follow up by asking for an example. This allows you to better understand the feedback and ensures that what you're hearing is true. "I tend to think the more people can back up their assertions and input with concrete examples or numbers, the more it's probably honest," says Detert.

Read between the lines
Of course, you may not get honest feedback all the time. But it's your job to figure out what problems people are trying to help you identify. You may need to triangulate between several points of feedback. Hill suggests, for example, that you ask five or six people the same question. "You're trying to collect the data so you can you go back and put the story together about the impact you're having," she says. Detert agrees about casting a wide net: "If nothing else, it'll help you figure out whether there are gaps and inconsistencies in what you're hearing, and what you might need to do about it."

Act on it
If someone is brave enough to give you input, recognize it. "People hate feeling that speaking up was a complete waste of time," says Detert. "You have to actually thank people for doing it, and other employees have to see those people get promoted rather than fired or shunned." Show everyone that you receive feedback well and can change your behavior as a result. These examples will turn into "urban legends," encouraging more people to give you constructive feedback.

Find a few trusted people
If you suspect that most people in your organization aren't going to be honest with you, or feedback is just not part of the culture, Detert suggests finding one or two people you trust to tell you the truth. It could be someone on your team, a peer, a mentor, or a coach. Whoever it is, be sure he or she has access to the right data and is able to talk to the people who interact with you on a daily basis. Don't just turn to confidants who will tell you what you want to hear.

Start anonymously
It can be hard to get people to open up. One way to get around this is by doing a 360-degree review or using a coach to gather feedback anonymously. But then you should respond to it. According to Hill, if you talk openly about what you've learned it sends a signal that you're open to hearing criticism. "Once you've done that, people are more comfortable telling you to your face," says Hill. She shares the example of Vineet Nayar, the CEO of HCL Technologies, who posted his own 360-degree feedback on the company intranet and encouraged his senior team to do the same. It was a bold move, says Hill, but the result was that people felt much more comfortable giving Nayar feedback directly when they knew he took it seriously.

Principles to Remember

Do:

Always say thank you and explain how you'll respond to the feedback you've heard
Turn to a few people you trust who can tell you what others really think about your performance and ideas
If you think people won't open up, start by gathering feedback anonymously to show them you're receptive
Don't:

Wait for review time to ask for input
Assume you are going to get 100% honest feedback, especially at first
Rely on one source for feedback — triangulate between several points of data

Case Study #1: Find a champion on your staff
Michael Green, the founder and executive director of the Center for Environmental Health, knows that it's tough for his team — 23 full-time employees and another handful of interns — to give him candid feedback. "When I founded the organization 16 years ago, one of my board members told me that I needed to be aware of my privilege and position of power," he says. Since he knows that people take a risk whenever they do give him input, he is sure to respond appropriately. "Whenever possible, you have to do what they ask to prove that you're listening. You need to develop relationships with people so they know they can tell you the truth without getting anyone in trouble," he says.

He also takes every opportunity he can to tell his staff that he's open to feedback. In meetings, he regularly says, "If there's anyone who wants to talk with me about this offline, please do. You can also talk to Charlie about it." Michael relies on Charlie, the organization's associate director, to be candid with him and to serve as a sounding board for the staff. Michael knows that wouldn't work if employees perceived Charlie as "Michael's guy." Rather, the team sees him as an impartial leader who will give Michael their feedback, without naming names, and keep things to himself when it's appropriate. "They trust his judgment to know what to tell me. And I'm sure he doesn't tell me everything," Michael says.

He also says he encourages feedback by giving it. "There's nobody you can't find praise for, even an underperformer," he says. "When they get regular, positive feedback they feel like they are part of a team and they are willing to tell you more."


Case Study #2: Make feedback fun
Sunita Malhotra, the managing director of People Insights, a coaching and consulting firm based in Belgium, has earned the nickname "feedback monster." Thanks to a formative experience in her teens (a friend told her that her tone of voice was too sharp), she now goes out of her way to solicit opinions from colleagues and subordinates. "If someone doesn't tell you, you don't know," she explains. At first, she thought it would be easy. "I just thought people would walk into my office and tell me what they thought," she says. But she discovered that, as a boss seeking feedback, she needed to be quite deliberate. As head of human resources for the European division of a global company overseeing 7,500 people, she made three promises to anyone who joined her team:

She would always give positive and constructive feedback.
She always wanted feedback.
They would all try to have fun.
Sunita also solicited feedback in all her meetings. Whether they were one-on-ones with her 20 direct reports, larger staff meetings, or sessions with internal customers, there were always five minutes set aside on the agenda to gather input. "My aim was to create a feedback culture," she says. And it worked. Eventually, people stopped waiting for the designated time in the meetings and gave her input in real time. For those who were more hesitant, she used humor. Each person on her team was given a set of green, yellow and red cards — to reward or penalize behavior as a referee would in a soccer match. For example, if someone was listening well in a team meeting, a colleague lays a green card on the table and explains why. Similarly, if someone interrupted a co-worker, a third person would call out the behavior with a red card. Sunita made it clear she expected to get as many yellow and red cards as she deserved.