leadership – Agile Elephant making sense of digital transformation

April 16, 2020 By David Terrar

Clarity, Cloud, and Culture Change at IBM

As we all know “business as usual” just changed for every person, team and organisation on the planet. In this “new normal” there are plenty of lessons to learn, unlearn and relearn. Essentially, we need to keep calm and carry on, at the same time as recognising the significant new opportunities this throws up alongside the common problems we are all facing. With that backdrop IBM just made a very significant change, the timing of which was prescribed before these new events overtook us. A new CEO, Arvind Krishna, took the reins on Monday 6 April. I’d like to comment on the new direction this signals, as well as the implications of the other management changes and strategic points that are described in the open letter he wrote to all employees on his first day in the job. I must disclose that I have a soft spot for the IBM company as I worked there and first learned about business for nine years straight out of University. I lived through a good CEO and a bad CEO, but that’s a story for another time. For me the changes that are already happening in the new guy’s first week trigger a realignment, the continuation of a significant culture change, and the clear consolidation of the company’s strategy.

Arvind’s predecessor, Ginny Rometty, has been helping IBM shift gears over the last couple of years, handing off collaboration and other software products to HCL, repositioning their approach to the Cloud after some early missteps, mentioning the Watson brand a bit less and AI and cognitive a bit more, and then making the most significant acquisition in their history – $34Bn for Red Hat, which finalised last year. A move that massively positions IBM at the heart of the open source world. Insiders tell me her last internal video briefing got a bit emotional as she passed on the baton. Combined with Arvind’s open letter what does it all mean?

In the letter Arvind references the mainframe and other successful platforms in their history, and he says:

“I believe now is the time to build a fourth platform in hybrid cloud. An essential, ubiquitous hybrid cloud platform our clients will rely on to do their most critical work in this century. A platform that can last even longer than the others.”

Putting aside what he talks about as platforms two and three, he is quite rightly referencing that IBM “owned” and still owns the mainframe market and has been strong with other products, platforms and services too, but what he is really making clear is their intention to occupy the mission critical, hybrid multi-cloud applications space. He goes on to spell out the strategy in three clear steps:

“First, we have to deepen our understanding of IBM’s two strategic battles: the journey to hybrid cloud and AI. We all need to understand and leverage IBM’s sources of competitive advantage. Namely, our open source and security leadership, our deep expertise and trust, and the fact that we enable clients to build mission-critical applications once and run them anywhere.
Second, we have to win the architectural battle in cloud. There’s a unique window of opportunity for IBM and Red Hat to establish Linux, containers and Kubernetes as the new standard. We can make Red Hat OpenShift the default choice for hybrid cloud in the same way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the default choice for the operating system.
Third, we all must be obsessed with continually delighting our clients. At every interaction, we must strive to offer them the best experience and value. The only way to lead in today’s ever-changing marketplace is to constantly innovate according to what our clients want and need.”

I particularly like the continuous innovation message made explicit that underpins the third strand of the strategy. I understand from IBM insiders he has doubled down on the hybrid story and his intent with further internal videos. Importantly, Krishna comes from a technical rather than sales or operations background, ran IBM’s cloud and cognitive software unit and was the architect of the Red Hat purchase. This isn’t any sort of pivot or change from the recent direction of travel, it’s just laying it out with refined clarity. IBM have been saying for a while that the easy 20% of workloads have moved to the cloud, but the next 80% are the complex, legacy style applications, often mainframe based, that have been running banking, credit card transactions, big business and big retail for decades. IBM’s track record with those customers and that style of secure, mission-critical application marries up with the strategy to make Red Hat OpenShift and containers as the standard choice for an enterprise customer’s hybrid “develop once, deploy anywhere” multi-cloud strategy, making IBM an attractive proposition compared to the typical choice of public cloud providers. IBM can see a big revenue opportunity for the next generation of cloud applications beyond the straightforward public cloud infrastructure market, maybe even bigger and longer lasting than the mainframe market.

Microsoft with Azure are obvious competition in the hybrid multi-cloud space, along with some of the other players, but maybe the closest to IBM’s platform strategy are VMware, now part of Dell EMC. Thereby hangs an interesting proposition and internal coopetition challenge for IBM. They have a significant amount of revenue in customers using VMware – they will have to balance those revenues with Red Hat OpenShift inside the cloud and cognitive software business and make it work.

And that leads me to the next key point, which is the significance of two of the leadership changes Arvind just announced. Jim Whitehurst, who was the CEO of Red Hat, in his new role as President, will head IBM Strategy as well as the Cloud and Cognitive Software unit which Arvind used to run. This is effectively splitting Ginny’s role between Arvind and Jim, and importantly bringing the Cloud and Cognitive Software unit both under Jim’s wing and direct into the CEO. Intriguingly it means Jim is directly managing that coopetition between VMware and Red Hat OpenShift. It also means Jim will have a huge and direct influence on the culture of IBM right now rather than at some point in the future as the next potential “CEO in waiting” for the company. The other leadership surprise was bringing in Howard Boville from Bank of America to become Senior Vice President in charge of the IBM Cloud Platform. An outsider from both IBM and Red Hat. A customer. A CTO. A fresh set of eyes.

How will Jim influence the IBM culture? To try and understand that question I’ve just started reading his book The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance. The foreword by Gary Hamel is very much my cup of tea and sets the scene beautifully. Here are the first two sentences:

“Here’s a conundrum. The human capabilities that are most critical to success – the ones that can help your organization become more resilient, more creative, and more, well, awesome – are precisely the ones that can’t be managed.”

The foreword, obviously written before the acquisition like the rest of the book, goes on to explain how Red Hat is one of the small but growing number of companies that have transcended the old trade-offs between scale and agility, efficiency and innovation, and discipline and empowerment. I’m only a few chapters in, and Jim’s whole message of why opening up your organisation matters is coming across loud and clear. And he’s bringing that to IBM.

One of the IBM insiders was telling me earlier today about an open “Ask Me Anything” internal Slack session that Arvind had just set up for that day. They went on to tell me how everyone is aligned to and excited by the new strategy.

IBM’s been around for 109 years. It’s been through ups and downs and the elephant has learned to dance. This might be one of the most significant weeks in its history as it sets foot on the path to “opening up”, with a refined and defined market differentiation, and a clear and transparently explained strategy.

This post was first published at Bloor Research. Agile Elephant is a strategic partner of Bloor Research. To find out more, please contact us.

March 14, 2019 By David Terrar

Reframing the Digital Transformation conversation in 5 steps

I’ve spent the last 2 days at Cloud Expo Europe, the premier London based event covering cloud platforms, hybrid and multicloud approaches, cybersecurity, AI, blockchain and more, as well as well as all of the ingredients of the data centres that support those technologies. A wide set of tech topics, but within them everyone’s talking digital transformation and it’s dangerous. Dangerous because, like talking cloud 10 years ago, it means different things to different people, becoming a catch all with too much emphasis on the technology itself, rather than the business outcomes it supports. It’s the classic mistake we technology marketers have been making with our “widgets” for decades. We need to reframe the digital transformation conversation!

First, how do we define it? On the first day I was chairing the Techerati Keynote theatre. During the stand out session of the morning an audience member asked the speaker that very question. The speaker was Ian Johns, Chief Architect at Kings College London, who was talking about how you should ride the wave of digital disruption, rather than being swamped by it. A message close to the heart of us Agile Elephants! His session properly explained the disruption we are all experiencing, and he did a great job of defining digital transformation too. I’m delighted that various blogs have referenced, and the latest Cloud Industry Forum research has adopted, our own definition which is:

“Digital transformation is the process of shifting your organisation from a legacy approach to new ways of working and thinking using digital, social, mobile and emerging technologies. It involves a change in leadership, different thinking, the encouragement of innovation and new business models, incorporating digitisation of assets and an increased use of technology to improve the experience of your organisation’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders.”

The crucial point is that emerging technologies and innovation are driving it, but the true transformation is all about business, mindset and leadership change.

Allan and Will interviewing me on the
Disruptive.Live studio/stand

I spent a lot of my time at the Expo with my good friends at Disruptive.Live co-hosting some of their live #Techerati interview shows, but then switching sides and coming on as a guest to be interviewed by Will Spalding and Allan Behrens (see later). “Where are we at with digital transformation?” was the first question they asked me. So if we put the technology aside for a moment, how do you go about integrating these new approaches while running your existing business? How do you reduce risk and increase your chances of success? I believe we need to reframe the conversation. Here are my five suggestions on how to do that:

1. Encourage good behavior

Digitally savvy companies have leaders who encourage teamwork, explain their purpose with clarity, and promote an environment of openness and sharing. The particular organizational structure you have in place is less important than getting employees and leaders to embrace these behaviors. In her book The Management Shift, Vlatka Hlupic shows that many successful companies share a management style characterized by an open mindset, an unbounded culture, strong team cohesion, inspirational leaders, a strong sense of purpose, and passion for the work the company does. Check out the absolutely excellent Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal, Chris Fussell et al translating their experiences in Iraq War 2 to today’s complex supply chains where teamwork across organisational boundaries is crucial. These are the characteristics that 21st century leaders and managers need to be able to handle today’s rapidly changing business landscapes.

2. Think holistically

Adding mobile apps and new digital business components on top of existing systems can provide some help, and even give short-term benefits in key areas. To really transform your business, however, you need a holistic approach. According to recent Forrester research, most digitally mature businesses recognize that they must break down business silos in order to realize their digital visions. One helpful tool is the McKinsey 7-S framework, which has been tried and tested over decades. The 7-S framework emphasizes the role of coordination, rather than structure, in organizational effectiveness. First you assess the business in terms of strategy, structure, and systems. Then you examine your staff, skills, and style, as well as the shared values of the company. This approach helps to integrate all the factors needed to add value, find efficiencies, and make a real difference in your organization. You don’t have to use this particular framework, of course—there are many other useful tools out there. The point is that digital transformation becomes much easier when you think about it holistically.

3. Be agile

You need a plan to integrate your digital transformation project so that it works with your legacy systems. Your plan should draw on agile thinking while still satisfying the financial demands of the C-suite. Think in terms of short time scales and multiple iterations. Don’t fear experimentation or failure. The Forrester research already mentioned highlights agility as one of the top five metrics to measure the success of digital programmes. True agility requires you to think like a startup. First, identify the problem that needs to be solved with a new digital approach. Next, develop a minimum viable product that you can implement. Use the resulting feedback to improve and iterate your product. Pursue multiple, parallel streams of change with a six-to-eight-week cycle or shorter. Focus on achievable outcomes rather than individual tasks and steps, and be sure to foster regular communication at all levels across the process (back to Team of Teams).

4. Build a social network

True digital transformation touches all of a company’s teams and processes. You need sound cross-functional governance to get everyone on board with the disruption that’s to come. Our research shows that organizations that have implemented some form of enterprise social network or social collaboration platform, such as Workplace by Facebook, Jive, Microsoft Teams, Kahootz, GitHub or Slack, are more successful with their transformation than those that don’t. This kind of communication harnesses the collective intelligence of teams in ways that aren’t possible with old communications technologies such as e-mail.

5. Create your transformation story

Unless you are a digital native startup, your digital transformation will most likely be a complex series of incremental and strategic initiatives that fundamentally change the company over time. To get employees, customers, and investors on board, leadership needs to communicate the big idea—the “why” of what you are trying to achieve by reinventing your business. Start thinking about the principles of story telling. Start thinking in terms of the visual tools and communication processes you are going to use get the whole company as well as your partner and supplier ecosystem on board.

Here is the interview, with the answer that triggered this post. Allan and Will also ask me about Blockchain technology, and what I think of the show too:

Please check out the hashtags #techerati and #disruptivelive for more CEE19 content from this year’s show.

In summing up how to go about integrating digital transformation:

Digital transformation requires an open mindset, an unbounded culture, strong team cohesion, inspirational leaders, a strong sense of purpose, and passion for the work the company does.
You need agile thinking, a mix of incremental and strategic initiatives, and short development cycles.
Leaders must communicate why they are reinventing the company so that everyone is on board with the overall goal.
If you need help defining, adapting or communicating your particular digital transformation story, please contact us – we’d love to help.

Note – this post is an evolution of an article I wrote for enterprise.nxt the HPE Insights blog.

June 4, 2016 By David Terrar

Two lessons from Muhammad Ali on leadership

I’m sitting listening to the many tributes and reactions on the sad death of the greatest boxer of all time, the man who BBC viewers voted sports personality of the 20th century, somebody who was instrumental as an activist in the US civil rights movement of the 60s, who has died at the age of 74. He exemplifies leadership and I want to remember just two lessons from him.

The first was explained in When We Were Kings, the superb 1996 documentary about the “rumble in the Jungle” – the Don King arranged fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. In the last passage of the film, the great journalist George Plimpton is describing the intelligence and eloquence of Ali. He described Ali making a speech at a 1975 Harvard graduation ceremony which enthralled the audience. After he spoke, somebody shouted “give us one of your poems”, and Ali thought for a moment and said “Me…. We!”, which brought tumultuous applause. Plimpton goes on to say how he got this listed as the shortest poem in the English language. A poem which encapsulates in two words what the role and focus of a true leader is. That we are stronger, not from consensus but from the aggregation of our ideas and thoughts and decisions. The wisdom of crowds.

The second is the elegance of the punch that Ali never threw in that fight. He lands the winning punch, but has the humanity not to throw another. He watches Foreman go down with his fist cocked but does what most other fighters would not do. See it here:

We need leaders who think “we” rather than “me” and place themselves at the bottom of the organisation chart supporting their teams rather than pushing their heads to the top. We need leaders who think of the big picture and way beyond just winning.

Photo unknown – [1] Dutch National Archives, The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANEFO), 1945-1989

April 22, 2016 By David Terrar

“Are you saying the map’s wrong?” – “Oh dear, yes!” – an example of Liminal Thinking

Earlier this week I met with Dave Gray and he gave me an advance copy of his new book, and then I went to his talk at Postshift on Wednesday night. He talked Liminal Thinking, so what is that?

You might know that I am a huge fan of The West Wing (and Aaron Sorkin’s writing in general). There is a great sequence in the episode “Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail” in season 2 when people and causes get the chance to pitch to White House staff for attention and funding on “Big Block of Cheese Day” (a day which recurs a number of times in the world of West Wing). One such team from the Organisation of Cartographers for Social Equality are pitching the idea of a government initiative across the school system that would change our maps and atlases from the Mercator projection of the World to the Peters projection. The argument is that stretching out the longitudinal lines so they are parallel at the north and south poles (back in 1569) to help navigators on ships, and so that the map fits on a page rather than a globe, actually skews the relative representation of the size of countries, and reinforces centuries old European Imperialist thinking. Those countries in the First World nearer the North Pole look unnaturally large – for example Greenland looks massive and similar in size to the whole continent of Africa when in reality its area is only one fourteenth of the size of that continent. We compound this incorrect filtering of land mass reality by putting, say, the UK on a page in the Atlas, and then Australia on the same size page, when actually that country is over 33 times the area of the UK. It’s why we Brits just don’t get how big the place is! The cartographers on West Wing argue that the maps influence our thinking in terms of World priorities and prejudices. The Peter projection (which should really be called the Gall-Peter projection) gives a much fairer representation. You have to see the look of incredulity on C. J. Cregg’s face as she looks at the new reality and says “what the hell is that!?”. Then when they suggest a North-South inversion of the new map (because there is absolutely no reason why North has to be at the top of the page), she just freaks out completely! This scene and the story behind it is a perfect example of Dave Gray’s Liminal Thinking approach, as described in the new book and at Wednesday’s event at Postshift’s offices in Shoreditch.

First sample the map presentation scene:

Liminal Thinking is the art of creating change by understanding, shaping, and reframing beliefs. The dictionary says liminal is an adjective relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process, or occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. As Dave knows, things happen at the edge, in the boundaries, in the spaces in between.

At Postshift in a sort of fireside chat, Dave related that he actually started out writing a book on agile software which morphed in to something different along the way. As he interviewed people for the book he realised there was a larger story than just talking about an agile mindset for developing software or technology more quickly and efficiently. If you are talking Agile, then Dave reckons Amazon ticks all the boxes, but their people don’t tend to talk or go on the record much about how they do what they do. He interviewed people who have to be agile in their thinking, like soldiers on the front line of the World’s trouble spots, or humanitarian aid workers in similar conflict zones. They have to maximise their ability to adapt yet still exert a level of control, and that’s agile. But in talking to them Dave realised that effecting change is connected with people’s beliefs. People in organisations who want to change things often don’t have the power, or the authority, or the budget to do what they want to do. Dave thought through how he could help that kind of change – and Liminal Thinking is what addresses that question.

Dave built a a sort pyramid of layers of thinking from reality, experience and attention, through to something that is “obvious” – what Dave calls you, me, everyone – see the diagram below.

He quoted a neuroscientist called Zimmerman who says that our brains experience 11 megabits of information per second, but actually we can only take in and understand 50 bits per second. How do we open our minds to process more or different? Dave related stories in the book from the Vietnam war where the USA viewed the conflict in terms of the domino theory and the rise of communist China, without looking at the history, the fact that this was a civil war and that most Vietnamese actually hated the Chinese anyway. The wrong beliefs and the wrong frame of reference, and so the USA could have avoided that war if only those in charge had stepped outside of their bubble, and reframed their beliefs.

We talked Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Iraq conflict. Dave talked about the stupidity of self validation, and the difficulty of anybody taking on board something that is truly new. If it’s really new, it will make no sense to you because it falls outside of your current frame of reference. Actually you have to test stuff that falls outside of your “bible” and expand your experience. Dave believes that moving the needle of experience is the most powerful thing! Of other needles, he said that so much of our thinking is like a stylus on a record (we’re going retro here, remember long playing records and singles?). We hang out in the same network friends, and at any given moment there is a way we act – that’s culture. But Dave believe’s the problem of culture is his autopilot and your autopilot, and a well worn groove – a routine of doing the same things the same way, which we need to break. He related another story about someone who changed their life completely simply by parking in a different place in the company car park – that small change triggered a new, different chain of events for him leading to a new job and more. Beliefs are true only because we make them true. The key message here is shut off your autopilot – do things differently.

Dave told more stories about soldiers and special forces in Iraq, about his biomedical engineer brother, or about groups on the two sides of the abortion debate coming together to try and verbalise the opposing argument properly to the other side’s satisfaction. They didn’t change their core beliefs, didn’t find compromise but they did find significant common ground in the welfare of children and family. We talked about organisations using the carrot and the stick and the problems that certain incentives embedded in a corporate culture can cause, making the employees feel like lab rats in a maze, looking for the cheese. We talked about the issues around making change, around the power of the negative often outweighing the possibilities of the positive.

Dave believes everything starts with experience. How we should focus on people’s emotional needs, and how we need to create an environment that makes it safe for people to express themselves, as so many people hide their real emotions in the work environment. He went on to suggest we get distracted too much by the stuff we disagree on. About how the biggest barrier to a leader changing is that even when they talk the talk, they aren’t aware that they’re not really changing their behaviour. The higher you are in an organisation the more insulated you can get from reality, and you should be constantly asking – what is my bubble?

Dave talked about the amygdala, the lizard brain responsible for our fight or flight response that still has so much influence on why we do what we do. When Dave works with a new group or new organisation, he asks them “how can we help you design this organisation so you are jazzed to come to work each day”. What can we do to help us make this company great? What works? Who is doings awesome things in spite of the environment and the circumstances?

Dave talks about belief being the stories in your head, and ended the session confirming how vital stories and story telling are to the process of change. A great session. Thanks to Lee and the Postshift team for facilitating the talk. I’m halfway through the book, enjoying it (and Dave’s drawings) and looking forward to writing a review here soon.

Top image captured from Dave’s website, and diagram from his Liminal Thinking book

January 1, 2016 By David Terrar

Henley Business School’s free Digital Leadership course

In 2015 Digital Transformation was the hot and hyped topic, with that “d” word used and misused more than in any other year since Negroponte and Tapscott helped us start talking around it in 1995. Heading in to 2016, more than ever, we need a new kind of digital literacy at all levels in our organisation and a new kind of leadership, both personally and collectively. I have a suggestion on how to make a start that is both specific and general.

I was honoured to be asked to do a guest lecture on the digital transformation topic at Henley Business School a couple of months back. I’m delighted to report the session was enthusiastically received, and they subsequently asked me to contribute to their trailer for an upcoming online course. The course is my specific suggestion. Take a look at the introduction to their free online course Digital Leadership: Creating Value Through Technology. In under 2 minutes you will hear a lot of the issues and thinking that we at Agile Elephant believe are important for organisations of any size to consider.

The course is aimed at middle managers and the C suite, delivered online with 3 hours of material each week for 4 weeks. It includes videos, articles, case studies, discussions, quizzes and activities based on the participant’s own experiences. The intention is to help you get the most out of technology for your business, understand emerging technologies and how relevant competencies and skills can help your sales and competitiveness. It covers the strategic issues and aligning IT with your business. It’s free, starts on the 8th of February and is well worth a look.

As well as this specific course, you should check out the Future Learn platform in general. business, management, creative arts, media, online, digital, and psychology but also history, politics, teaching, health and more. All of them are free.

Future Learn is a private company wholly owned by The Open University. They partner with 76 institutions including UK and international universities, as well as accessing the archive of cultural and educational material from the British Council, the British Library, the British Museum, the National Film and Television School and more. The platform itself is an example of digital transformation in action and highlights the way the world of education is changing. The education sector is thinking differently with many institutions realising they have to risk traditional revenue streams as they explore different business models. Many universities are providing free, online courses and resources and opening up their archives, as part of the digital shift.

The core message of the intro to Henley’s course is that everyone needs to keep learning. We recommend you check it out, review the Future Learn course schedules and include this kind of personal development in your resolutions for 2016!

October 1, 2015 By David Terrar

Essential TED Talks – Simon Sinek – Start With Why, how great leaders inspire action

Following on from Sir Ken Robinson on education and creativity, this next TED talk recommendation is about inspiration. It explains something that is so simple, and yet so powerful. A vital ingredient that is missing from many of the companies we work with, or work for, or buy products and services from. An idea that can galvanise action, or if it’s missing can make the message fall flat so that we say – meh!

This talk comes from the independently run TEDx talks rather than the main conference. It is from TEDxPugetSound which happened on 16 September 2009. The video was loaded to YouTube a few days later and to date it has 1,382,600 views. Simon Sinek explains that we should “Start With Why” because that is the way great leaders inspire action. It applies to marketing, business, politics – anywhere that you need to inspire action.

Simon’s talk doesn’t use fancy graphics. It’s low tech, using a flip chart and some coloured pens to draw diagrams, but he amplifies the message with some great stories and examples that we already know from history or our daily lives, but he shows us something different, something that should be obvious – like so many great ideas.

His examples include wondering why Apple is so innovative and loved, when they are just a computer company. He wonders why Martin Luther King led the civil rights movement in the United States in the 60s – many people were involved, but we focus on Dr. King – why is that? And he tells us the story of the Wright Brothers taking flight.

The core of his idea is what he calls The Golden Circle. Every single organisation in existence knows what they do. Most of those organisations know how they do it. Very few know or express why they do what they do, and that’s Simon’s key point – so many companies have forgotten their why. It’s not about profit, and it shouldn’t be about shareholder value. Even the great Jack Welch, CEO of GE, said “on the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world”. Actually when people start companies it is based around a cause or a belief or an idea about doing things better. Simon’s first example is Apple, and he highlights the difference between those technology companies that just make products against Apple’s “why” which they had at the start and then lost, and then found again when Steve Jobs returned to the company. For everything they do they believe in challenging the status quo, and that drives them to make beautifully designed products that are easy to use and desirable. If you ever heard Steve Jobs speak, it was always about why, with much less emphasis on the what and the how. Simon suggests it’s too easy to start from the outside of the circle and work in. If you want to inspire people you start from the inside and work out.

He goes on to suggest that the golden circle mirrors the structure of the brain, with logic and language controlled by the neo cortex, but the limbic brain controls feelings of trust and loyalty – that’s where we make our gut decisions (which we then rationalise with the neo cortex part of the brain).

He uses TiVo as an example of a great product which failed because the marketing and positioning never properly explained its “why”, and then moves on to the story explaining why the Wright Brothers were the first to take flight. His final example goes back to the Civil Rights movement in the US and Martin Luther King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. It was delivered to 250,000 supporters – there were no formal invites, no websites to tell people where to go and when – it was word of mouth and the power of Dr. King’s message that brought the huge audience. Importantly, Simon Sinek quips:

“by the way, he gave the I Have a Dream speech, not the I Have a Plan speech!”

Simon tells us there are leaders and there are those who lead. Leadership is not about power and authority – those who lead inspire us. Simon’s message can help you do the same. Watch the TED talk and then go to his website for useful (free) resources. You could also read the book.

If you want to understand more of our Agile Elpehant thinking, check the rest of our blog material and take a look at the Enterprise Digital Summit London in October. We’d love to hear your comments or suggestions or to see you in London next month.

November 2, 2014 By David Terrar

A new strapline for Agile Elephant – innovation | digital transformation | value creation | (r)evolution

Businesses need to be constantly evolving. We believe in continuous improvement. We believe that it doesn’t matter what type of business you are, your business model is under threat. In today’s digital business environment change is a constant and you have to deal with it. It’s Darwin’s theory of evolution for business – only the fittest, or most fit for purpose survive. Recently people have taken one of our Agile Elephant business cards or come to the web site and said “yes, but what do you really do?” So we’ve had a rethink and we’ve just changed our company strapline – for the header of our website and for what’s on our business cards, so that it encapsulates what we do in 4 things:

innovation | digital transformation | value creation | (r)evolution

First we’re about innovation. Innovation is applying new ideas, new devices, new processes – finding better solutions. We believe commercial creativity is vital. We believe fostering new ideas should be part of part of a company’s daily DNA.

What we do as a business is digital transformation. Take a look at our explanation of the Digital Enterprise Wave. A smarter, nimbler competitor is angling to use new digital and social tools to take your market, your customers. We can help analyse where you are in the digital landscape, help you take stock, decide where to start, where digital tools can really help and then take you on a journey to become digitally competent. But that’s not enough – then we help you put the necessary leadership in place to master the digital topic and make it work for you effectively.

Going digital can only be effective if it leads to value creation. You need an approach which increases your revenue, improves profitability, helps you keep more of your customers, gets products to market quicker or reduces your operational costs – it has to be about doing what you do better and about adding to the bottom line. Take a look at these survey results from Capemini Consulting and MIT Sloan Management from their report “How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry“. They split the surveyed organisations, all larger that $500m turnover, in to 4 categories, with the most digitally savvy being called the “Digirati” or digital masters. Companies in that most advanced category generate 9% more revenue, create 26% more profit and have 12% higher market valuation than the rest. Becoming a digital master works.

In taking you on this journey we believe in evolution not revolution. We believe many consultants and practitioners talking about “digital” and “social” focus too much on a grass roots revolution to change the culture in organisations. To dismantle hiearchical structures and recast the way of working for the new world. We don’t think that sort of revolution is productive. We believe any structure of organisation can become a digital master with the right core competence and the right leadership. Even huge companies like IBM can empower their employees and change, and using social tools helps them do it. We believe the Elephant can dance, but we don’t need to break it to make the changes.

innovation | digital transformation | value creation | (r)evolution

To find out more consider coming to our conference next month – The Enterprise 2.0 Summit London, or contact us to start talking sense about digital.

February 17, 2014 By David Terrar

Agile Elephant at Enterprise 2.0 Summit Report

My first post introduced the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, the social business topic in general and speakers at the event at ESCP Europe. This is my conference report. I’ll start by setting the scene with my impressions, then pick out highlights, draw some conclusions and finally link to the other Agile Elephant posts about the Summit.

IMPRESSIONS

From where we were in 2006 at the Office 2.0 show or in 2007 at Open Knowledge’s first Enterprise 2.0 Forum in Varese, I could be depressed that we aren’t further forward with enterprise 2.0 and social business. However, that’s more to do with the fact that we are in the middle of a change in business behavior that may take 10-30 years.
I’m incredibly optimistic about what is happening now. That’s why we just made a leap of faith and started Agile Elephant as a new social business consultancy a few weeks ago. The mood at the conference confirmed our feeling that this topic is poised to cross the chasm and go mainstream.
Enterprise 2.0/Social Business is a complex topic. The elephant in the enterprise room. There is a definite divide in thinking between two camps. Those of us at the summit who want to get top down executive commitment and a focus on hard business numbers and real ROI, versus those that focus on the culture change required to move to a more sharing, open business combined with the structural change required to move companies to more networked rather than hierarchical organisational structures. Both of these are important. Both of these require new or different leadership thinking.
Most of us attending the conference are somewhere at the leading edge of this topic. As a movement, we need to get organised to spread the word and break through to the average business person in the average company so they understand the benefits of social business.

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

Dan Pontefract of Telus opened the conference eloquently explaining his company’s journey in to social business. Key things he said or described:

It’s not the tool it’s the behaviour
It’s about collaborative behaviour aided and abetted by social tools
A woman adding a 6 minute video to the community of her 10 coaching tips, it got 1000 hits and 62 comments, and she answered every one individually
He used a metaphor of Canada geese flying in a scheme, a V formation, rotating the leadership – our orgs need to be like that
There is potential energy in everyone, how do you convert that in to kinetic energy?

Jon Mell of IBM called out to me from the stage remembering Varese 2007 making the point we’ve been at this a long time. Some key things he said

Think of the best manager and the worst manager you’ve had, and that their good/bad behaviours aren’t easily found on their CV
That means when you’re hiring someone, how they might fit your culture can’t be see on a CV
He explained how Caterpiller have seen that where employees are highly engaged, there are 3 times less accidents and that translates straight to the bottom line
He talked about AMC – they focus on popcorn sales as a key metric – what makes great popcorn sellers, and good managers of popcorn sellers, how do we hire and attract them, share the learning – getting it right translated in to a 1.2% increase in profit per customer

The best case study at the summit was Joachim Heinz explaining Social Business @ Bosch. He explained how they have 300,000 associates, create more than 16 patents a day, have been taking Bosch to 2.0 and now have 60,000 people on boarded to their social platform. 80% of their communities are open – you have to apply for a private group. It’s called Bosch Connect – you can “go there, make a wiki and you’re done in 30 minutes”. They have created 13 different use cases and he explained they are:

Shifting core processes in to social
Using social to enable leadership
Providing senior managers with Enterprise 2.0 mentoring using digital natives, but they are discovering that ideas are going both ways, it’s not a monologue
And that the wake up call for Bosch management was the fact that Tesla could design a new car in 2 years, whereas BMW/Mercedes take 6 years – that’s digital disruption!

Emanuele Quinterelli of Ernst & Young, who I first met when he invited me to speak at that E2.0 Forum in Varese in 2007, set the scene for our panel discussion on Strategic Enablement. He presented the results of their survey of 300 Italian firms where 54% of them have between 10% and 30% adoption of social business. He presented the 6 key findings:

Top down commitment – if top executives are on board, nobody in middle management can sabotage the shift to social business – a very tough but crucial message
Strategy – a well structured roll out strategy is key, hybrid works, but top down is 2 times more successful in achieving adoption
The people factor – laggards tended to have no-one in charge of collaboration, leadership of collaboration works
Money where it matters – the leaders had budget balanced between strategy, tech and change management, and 50% more than others
Measurement is important to steer and sell it – half of laggards have no measurement at all, 91% of leaders have measurement in place, top performers use business metrics 3 times more
Social business is here already – leaders are engaging employees to engage customers, internally and externally – 23% of the top performers are planning end to end social business projects in the next 2 years

Martin Risgaard Rasmussen explained the Grundfos story, but also that he is in the process of leaving to join Yammer. Grundfos has been around since 1945, has 18,000 people and is the World’s biggest pump manufacturer – take a look at your central heating system next time you open the airing cupboard. They have deployed a program of culture change they call Global Working Culture run by HR. They are moving to social business to get more out of the work they already do. It’s all explained in a brilliant hard copy white paper called “Social Business Cooking at Grundfos”, there is more at socialbusinessjourney.com, and I’ll post a link to a PDF when I find one. Some of the things Martin said:

Participation inequality, the 1-9-90 rule is real
You need at least 1 designated community manager otherwise it won’t work
He emphasised the importance of a clear purpose and finding use cases
He explained how they integrate social into their business process
They focus on culture
He talked Simon Sinek’s Start with why (and we love that!)
He explained how they looked at Chatter, Yammer, and Socialcast, but chose Yammer

Joachim Niemeyer of centrestage talked about leading the transformation required. He talked about needing the active support of top management, the need for a clearly defined target audience, about capability, having a clear vision, defined business objectives and a well developed roadmap. He highlighted the importance of use cases with high potential business value and a toolbox for systematic change. He was another one who emphasised integration in to business process.

I missed Claire Flanagan of Jive talking about proven social business adoption strategies, but her slides have some great messages

I missed great presentations by Rachel Happe and Jane McConnell too.

On day 2, Lee Bryant of Postshift said a lot I could agree with, and some things I might argue with. He doesn’t agree that social business should be about process. He worries that some of us are adopting an approach that is all about a market for consulting services and software, that’s aligned to the way companies are used to buying. He worries that the approach is not about new business models or new types of organisation. He talked about killing the org chart with social tools. Some of the things he said:

We’ve move beyond Taylorism – productivity has gone quantum
He talked about the effectiveness of small co-ordinated, agile teams
Knowledge sharing beats cascaded best practice
He worried that so many companies have too many generic managers – they don’t have skills, they’re just politicians
Communities and networks are the fabric of the organisation (right on!)
He quoted our friend Dave Gray‘s The Connected Company – popular working needs an underpinning service, as well as about fractal structured organisations
He went through a selection of companies that have adopted a completely different, often decentralised organisation and leadership approach – including Morning Star, Valve, Kyocera and one of my favourites WL Gore
He talked Holacracy, Sociocracy, and the Kotter dual operation system
He talked agile work group of 5-8, then Pod groups of 12, then group of pods totalling 140 (see Alan’s recent post on Dunbar numbers – there are more than one!)
He mentioned how you need an influencer, a keeper of stories – like Marc Benioff who is brilliant at that
He referenced the fantastic changes that the UK’s Cabinet Office have done reorganising government IT functions
He said he wasn’t arguing for flat structures or the end of leadership, but for for the end of managers
He also said it doesn’t matter what we call this topic with a slide full of socbiz and 2.0 hashtags (see thesis 9 of our Manifesto)

BernardMarie Chiquet of iGi Partners extended the discussion further in to Holacracy. He suggested we have to go to the motherboard of the organisation structure (I like that!). He talked about a move to “purpose driven” not “for profit or not for profit”. He argued that order doesn’t require bosses. He talked of needing a constitution for the organisation, like the king handing over power to a new form democracy enshrined in the constitution. He talked about organising the work, not the people. He wanted to break down the purpose in to functions and the functions in to roles – that being the basic brick, element where work needed to be done. He suggested:

There are 3 dimensions – purpose, accountabilities, domains
You need a governance process – but that might be a 2 hours meeting every 2 weeks
It takes a village to raise an organisation with organisation, people and a purpose

At a about this point Jon Husband tweeted “The Holacracy tension a notion that comes from Robert Fritz’s concept of Structural tension, from OD world of the early to mid-90’s #e20s“. Jon clearly thinks that holacracy is 90s OD and other thinking re-presented for this new century. He joined the panel discussion, which was really entertaining. They talked more about the org chart being roles and not people. They talked about the time span of decision making and how far out you can look for strategic decision making. We now we live in a World where a few tweets can put your business in deep trouble – difficult to be strategic with change happening in near real time. Jon talked Transactional Analysis, the book “I’m OK, Your OK” and how the goal is to move from parent-child to adult-adult negotiations. He believes the next stage of social business is a deep movement, that is a 20-30 year process, but he characterised the stage we are at in the journey by the pilot coming on the intercom and saying:

“Buckle up your seatbelts, there’s turbulence ahead!”

Back in the main hall, Celine Schillinger of Sanofi-Pasteur told the inspirational story of her journey in to social business and being a change agent. She talked vision, openness, information and cultures. She explained how things changed for her when she sent an email to her CEO back in 2011 around the issue of gender diversity. That went viral, and triggered her creating a community on their internal social platform that has grown beyond 2,500 members in 50 countries, with concrete measures to achieve gender balance that changed her company. She went on to explain how Sanofi are using the same type of community approach to fight Dengue Fever, but lifting it beyond a company initiative to a global fight against the enemy/disease.

Dion Hinchcliffe of Dachis Group closed the formal presentations with a final keynote. He suggested we should let the network do the work. He asked if we can apply social business frameworks in most industry sectors, across different geographies, and even differing corporate cultures? Will they work, will they lower the risk, get faster results, get better results? He talked about T-mobile cutting customer defections in half. He talked of advocate programs becoming a major new element of organisation structure. He wondered who should own the social business topic? He explained that a framework is a pre-built approach with holes cut out for the details of your business. He used Rachel Happe’s Community Model as an example. He suggested that:

It’s easier to add social rather than change the fundamentals of the existing systems
Business models need to be updated
The move to Social Business is inevitable, and a good thing
We should take care as it is easy to be far too technology centric

CONCLUSIONS

So, it was a great conference full of good content, strong case studies and inspirational speakers (with only one low point). My key takeaways from the Summit:

There is a shift happening. We may be in the middle of a 20-30 year change but as a community we can feel the rate of change accelerating and Social Business is set to cross the chasm and go mainstream.
For Social Business projects to improve their chances of success we need top level executive commitment – a message that was repeated in many of the sessions.
The way to get that commitment is to talk hard business numbers and real return on investment, picking up on the case study stories from Bosch, Grundfos, Caterpiller, T-Mobile and others mentioned at the show.
The culture change required to move to a more sharing, open business model combined with the structural change required to move companies to more networked rather than hierarchical organisational structures is crucially important too.
The frameworks, techniques and behaviours around community building are still vital to this topic.
We’ve been talking social business around CRM for a while. The talk has shifted to leadership and employee engagement, bringing social business firmly inside the organisation.
The enterprise 2.0/social business community needs to take the message to the wider business community. We need to talk less jargon and more business benefits. We need a clear message in an easily digestible format. Social business works and produces real business benefits – let’s get on with it!

Deloitte on driving social business transformation

The Social Business Flow as seen by Deloitte

Article by Deloitte on driving Social Business transformation:

Social media technologies strip away the hierarchy and bureaucracy long associated with industrialization, replacing them with an open forum of ideas and problem-solving. When applied strategically to business processes, these tools can draw out the best ideas and efforts from employees spanning all functions of the enterprise. In fact, anecdotal evidence and research findings reveal that implementing appropriate social technologies and processes has helped some companies boost overall enterprise productivity and increase revenue.

We always like it when people agree with us 🙂

The article is also interesting in that it covers some of the hard work required:

While valuable connections and discoveries may appear to happen serendipitously across social media, realizing the potential of social re-engineering doesn’t happen by accident. It takes place over time, with purposeful effort.

Well worth a read, some good diagrams as well, the flow diagram (see above) is interesting – not the same as ours, but not dissimilar.

January 22, 2014 By David Terrar

Jostling the hierarchy and the wirearchy

As we’ve been setting up the Agile Elephant, and pulling together our manifesto for social business, we have been having a dialogue about a company’s hierarchy versus the wirearchy – the networked connections that happen inside and outside any company, crossing departmental boundaries, crossing company borders, and completely ignoring the organisation chart on the wall. Wirearchy is a concept coined by our Canadian friend and social business thought leader Jon Husband. It reflects the connected world that we now live in, and it highlights the changes that social technologies are enabling in the way we work. Jon’s working definition of wirearchy is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”. That definition and those key words resonate with us.

A few months back Jon introduced me to Brad Palmer, not for any specific reason, but just because he thought we were like minded and should be connected. The wirearchy in action. Brad’s another Canadian, and founder of Jostle. Fast forward to this week and Brad was briefing the Agile Elephant team on what his social intranet platform can do. We’re interested in building up our knowledge of social business tools, and our first look made wirearchy jump in to our minds. Jostle has the most visual approach to showing the structures and networks that evolve in organizations that we’ve seen. Most collaboration products allow employees in the company to build up their profile so that you can understand key information, their skills and expertise and some of their work history. The good products will show you who works for whom. But we haven’t seen a product that shows the company’s org chart AND cross functional team structures as visually as Jostle, but it goes further than that.

The company organization chart always come in for a lot of stick – soon after it’s up on the wall, the noticeboard or a Word document on the Intranet it’s out of date, not completely accurate, and in any case it doesn’t show the real organisation. What would happen if the chart was alive? If the organisation chart was a living social network? That’s what Jostle’s People Engagement® platform gives you. Always up to date and showing the individual’s information with search and functionality to make it easy for others to connect to them based on skills and knowledge. It shows the formal connections of the company hierarchy, but allows people to create ad hoc work groups. They could be project teams, special interest groups, even social groups across and within an organisation. Combined with Jostle’s library functions it offers the possibility for the Intranet to become a repository of learned knowledge, to help connect all that “unstructured” data sitting in Emails and ERP and Excel. People can link easily and quickly across departments, the world and, most importantly, the business silos that grow up in even the smallest company, but are a real challenge to medium sized and larger enterprises. Brad’s explanation showed us how the product would massively reduce the internal time taken in an organisation to find people, find information, and find answers.
A focus on employee engagement, as Jostle has done, has direct business benefits with good outcomes for both employees and customers. Look at this material on the Harvard Business Review blog. Their findings show highly engaged organizations have double the rate of success of lower engaged organizations. John Baldoni reports that:

“high-turnover organizations report 25% lower turnover, and low-turnover organizations report 65% lower turnover. Engagement also improves quality of work and health. For example, higher scoring business units report 48% fewer safety incidents; 41% fewer patient safety incidents; and 41% fewer quality incidents (defects).”

These kinds of social business platforms improve the efficiency of knowledge flow and decision making in any business. In an information business, this would have a major impact on business effectiveness – increasing efficiency as the transaction costs are lowered. We believe there are great opportunities for companies to use Jostle and we’ll be exploring what it can do in the coming weeks and months.

Clarity, Cloud, and Culture Change at IBM