Get in the Boat

by Pat Bodin

  One character in the book is named Brent Geller a great example of a traditional IT guy. He is incredibly competent, but breaks as many things as he fixes, because he is out of sync with the business. That is a great representation of where IT is today. What we need to do is get everyone in line toward continuous improvement in IT. Brent’s boss, Bill Palmer, emphasizes continuous improvement to his Parts Unlimited team. Over time, IT becomes a core competency. Instead of a roadblock, IT becomes an enabler.

  The Phoenix Project looks at decentralization through the lens of continuous improvement and DevOps. The book you’re reading now has a complementary focus. Get in the Boat really concerns the role of every technologist and how they can be relevant to their organization and ultimately find true meaning in their work. Right now, the business leaders in our companies don’t want technologists in the boat, because they believe they will create drag. This drag not only slows down the organization, but creates tension and friction between leadership and Technologists who actually do the work.

  Misconceptions

  Dramatic change in IT is widespread, but this high-rate of change is uneven. Some companies have limited change due to the nature of their business and, for them, IT shared service works okay. Others are in such volatile markets or are so susceptible to security threats that change is required and our reactions to those changes are often haphazard and not well thought out. Once your organization has worked through the strengths and weaknesses of your current IT system, you will most likely find that not all IT functions can or should be decentralized. Some shared services are vital. Security is a prime example of the need for shared services. Security must be universal or the company will face peril. In fact, many organizations are elevating the data security into the executive management team and into the board of directors, since what is at stake is often the company’s survival.

  For many companies today, data is currency. We use data to determine trends, seek new customers, and to comply with current government or industry regulations, and so much more. Customer data is needed by marketing, sales, product engineering, and additional functions; the whole organization needs access. Given the general need of the entire organization and the fiduciary responsibility to guard not only our own data, but our suppliers’ and our customers’ data, it is critical in most organizations that data be centralized. These are just a few examples of shared services that some have chosen to be centralized, but arbitrary centralization cannot be defaulted to any more simply because of efficiency. Too much is at stake.

  Technologists get caught up in two misconceptions that keep them from being the enablers of the business they ought to be: efficiency and quality.

  “Efficiency Is King”

  Efficiency is not king. Why? Because in this era of massive change, efficiency will not cause you to win in business. At the end of the year, your business will not survive because you were a little more efficient. The business will survive because it found a market with customers who are willing to pay. In the grand scheme of the organization, the rate of efficiency you bring to bear is so immaterial as to have almost no bearing. Especially when the lifespan of business survival is shrinking, your ability to save the business money over time is immaterial. You may be trying to save your company money over the next decade—but the company might not even be there in a decade.

  Consider Amazon. Amazon is a margin vampire that sucks the life out of every industry it can sink its fangs into. The life of a company is their ability to deliver the product or service that a customer will purchase; the total amount of the customers’ purchases is called Revenue or Turnover. Subtract revenue by the cost directly associated with producing that revenue and that’s called gross margin or operating income. Gross margin is the lifeblood of a company. Amazon has done an amazing job of reaching both business and consumers in ways that no one else has, but what’s really amazing is their ability to do that at such a low cost. Warren Buffett has called Jeff Bezos “The most amazing business person of our age!” What Buffett admires about Bezos is his ability to navigate a plethora of variables while constantly entering new markets and taking advantage of those markets using Amazon’s incredible business model.

  Amazon’s business model is now attacking businesses far and wide and their large competitors are fighting back in unexpected ways. Amazon acquired Whole Foods in August 2017 and companies like Kroger, Waitrose, Walmart, and others are shaking in their boots. Walmart is now strategically approaching their suppliers and warning them, “Don’t use Amazon Web Services (AWS). Switch to one of Amazon’s competitors.”2. The suppliers’ technologists think technology decisions should be based on efficiency, features and performance; they don’t understand why their bosses just outlawed AWS. No one told them they cannot use AWS lest Walmart blacklist them, they just woke up and found out that their largest customer is forbidding use of one of their largest IT suppliers and it does not compute. Therein lies the disconnect.

  This whole layer of abstraction based on business decisions seems completely foreign to a technologist who thinks everything is based on a technology decision. He says, “This is the best tool!” But in the wider view of business health, the best tool varies according to business needs and in our example, the suppliers’ relationship with Walmart outweighs AWS’s superiority to alternative tools. These complexities are traditionally above the technologist’s awareness level and technologists navigate them with difficulty.

  “Quality Of Technology Matters Most”

  Quality of technology has little bearing on business decisions. Until technologists understand the direction of the organization, their understanding of routers and switches and servers is nearly immaterial.

  Let’s now imagine that it’s 1950 and you need the news of what is happening in the world. What is required to meet that need? You can read the morning and afternoon paper, you can turn on the evening news, and a newsreel may even play before you watch Elizabeth Taylor in “Father of the Bride” at the theater. Fast forward more than sixty-five years later to our current time, almost no one reads newspapers anymore, the movies don’t play newsreels, and no one wants to wait for the evening news to find out what is transpiring in the world. Today, people get their news from websites, smartphone apps, social media, or they can tune in to a dedicated news channel on TV any time of the day. While the need for information is stable, the requirement changes.

  Technologists have continued to design and provide technology for requirements. They often do not realize that the requirements have changed. That’s not terrible, because the need is still present. But the challenge is to meet that need with different requirements in an ever-changing world. Technologists must understand the actual needs of their business and not the requirements, because the requirements will shift and today shifts take place in a matter of months or years, not decades. Technologists must be much more aligned to the core principles of their business and to what its functions need.

  Since technologists have been relegated to a different boat than business leaders for some time now, they easily fall into the misconception that technology itself matters. It’s as if the hammer woke up one day and thought, “The most important thing about me is the type of metal that forms me.” That’s not what matters most. What matters most is the nail. There is no need for a hammer without a nail and likewise there is no need for a technology solution without a business need. Technologists tend to think that tools have merit in and of themselves. In reality, they have no merit outside of the impact they can make on the business. When the means becomes an end in itself rather than a way to serve the company’s corporate ends, the rest of the business considers technologists to be irrelevant.

  Harvard professor Theodore Levitt says, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole.” People run to the store to buy a drill bit not because they enjoy the aesthetic beauty of its spiral, not because they know the exact angle that the spiral is cut or the exact degree of shar
pness on the edge, not because they enjoy owning steel, and not because they appreciate the history of the invention of the electric drill, but because of their need to get a quarter-inch hole in the wall. The hole is the need and the drill bit is the requirement. Knowing lots about drill bits and appreciating drill bits apart from the purpose of putting a hole in the wall is completely irrelevant.

  This is the situation that technologists are in today: They know a ton about drill bits but have forgotten about the hole. That is why the functional leaders relegate them to a different boat.

  The higher purpose: Enabling

  What do the business functions care about? Being enabled to get their job done. That is the higher purpose of IT. Technologists often do not realize their inherent power to be enablers. Enablers are those who stand alongside business leaders, perceive coming changes, and facilitate the business to reach its desired outcomes through technology.

  My friend and business associate Dave Yeary explains this idea well:

  Whether you are new to the IT world or a seasoned veteran and whether you seek to expand your scope or are happy with the level of responsibility you have, you need to understand the role of IT. Doing so will make you better at what you do and reduce unproductive stress as you navigate your career. Simply put, IT exists only to support a company’s quest to execute a successful strategy. Business leaders would not spend a dime on IT if they did not have to. Decades have proven that all companies leverage IT and successful companies leverage it to a great extent. So, if IT is extremely valuable, why do we need to do anything different? Lost opportunity is the answer.

  We all recognize Steve Jobs as a visionary. We recognize that he leveraged technology to execute his vision. Steve didn’t concern himself with the details of the technology; he just believed it could be done. But, how might things have changed if he didn’t have Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, in his life? Maybe he would have connected with a technologist and found a common language—or maybe not. The big question is “How many enlightened business minds have great ideas that are never executed because they don’t know how to interface with the technology world?” We may never know. What we do know is that an entire generation of young people is growing up with an assumption that technology can do anything. There always seems to be “an app for that.” I recently heard a father tell the story of how he was driving down the freeway with his young son, being buffeted badly by the wind. As a “mature” person, the father just battled the side forces and complained about the car. But his son, almost instinctively, spoke up and said “Dad, do you think there is an app that we can download to help the car deal with the wind?”

  The journey to connect the unconnected has just begun and it will be an amazing journey. What is clear to me is that many opportunities will be missed if the people in the strategic business world are not able to communicate with those in the technology world. What is also clear to me is that the burden lies with the technologists to take the initiative, as it is a daunting task for the classic business mind to delve into technology.3

  We technologists should think of ourselves as enablers. Once we are enablers of the business leaders, we will feel and be relevant. That feeling of relevance will bring a sense of achievement to our work. We will then be happier and more fulfilled human beings. Are you not entirely sure how to do this? Don’t worry—I have good news. Just keep reading and you’ll learn.

  Uncertainty and visibility

  How do you turn an uncertain future into a more certain one? Well, the future can never be known exhaustively, but you can gain some certainty through visibility. You don’t want to be trailing behind the main boat in another boat. Why? Because you experience all the negative aspects of the rapids yet never get credit for any of the positive. You are being dragged. The rapids will speed up, twist, and turn, but you will not have visibility to deal with these changes at the necessary speed. Until you get into the front boat, you will never enable the business to deal with this uncertain and disruptive environment. You cannot be aligned with the other leaders from the back.

  We are not in control of the rapids, but we can be in control of where we sit in the boat, and therefore what we can see in the water. By being closer to the rapids and sitting alongside the organization’s other leaders, technologists can grow in certainty of how to avoid being dumped into the water. The rapids will remain volatile, but your team will be prepared to navigate them with confidence. As you work together, you can react to upcoming obstacles with agility and effectiveness. The business really needs technologists to ride in the same boat as the other leaders. The IT leadership is essential to making good decisions—avoiding this rock and that whirlpool. It is imperative that they gain entrance to the main boat for the survival and growth of the company. How? That is what this book will teach you.

  Chapter 2.

  The Architecture of Your Business

  How do you choose which restaurant to go to for dinner?

  Robert Schaffner’s story:

  I’ve found that throughout the world, most everyone loves to go out to eat, enjoying one another’s company and a good meal. Only once in my career have I met someone who said he didn’t like to eat out. I asked him, “Well, what about if someone else is paying. Do you like eating out, then?” That changed his answer. What makes a good restaurant? What are the key criteria? Many will say it’s such factors as the environment, wine list, food quality, price, and location. When I was in Jakarta, someone told me that the determining factor for eating out was location, because getting from central Jakarta to south Jakarta could take hours. What’s interesting is that unless someone specifically has a taste for pizza from a wood burning oven or Pit BBQ, you could ask hundreds of people what the deciding factor is when choosing a restaurant and it would be exceedingly rare to hear back, “I look for the particular equipment they use in the kitchen.” Can the kitchen infrastructure make a difference in the quality of the food preparation? Of course, but very few people would ever ask about the equipment when making a restaurant choice, although the kitchen infrastructure may come up peripherally if they are avoiding food allergens or keeping kosher, for instance. Kitchen infrastructure can be important for the quality of the food, which impacts the customer experience. Despite its importance, the customer does not say, “Bring me straight to the kitchen. I want to check which oven you have and how sharp your knives are.” The kitchen infrastructure is essential but not interesting. The challenge in IT is similar. Technologists live in the “kitchen” behind the scenes. They are extremely important to the experience that customers working with their organizations have. But the technologist’s way of thinking is not at all like the customer’s way of thinking—the technologist speaks a language few understand.

  What if the staff at a restaurant tried to sell their kitchen’s dishes like IT people try to sell technology? Instead of saying “Enjoy our warm, delicious French onion soup,” they would say “We use the newest model gas range oven, delivering instant heat with infrared elements for the fastest temperature recovery.”

  If you saw that advertisement as a customer, where they are touting their equipment instead of their food, what would you think? Would that make you want to dine there? I think it’s safe to say that hearing about the technological details of the restaurant’s oven would not make most people more inclined to go to that restaurant. It might even scare them away. They want to eat somewhere that has delicious soup, after all!

  That is the reaction that IT gets when the technologists use language that no one understands, language which does not resonate with their customers. That is why our “restaurant” doesn’t have many guests. Business leaders hear the technologist’s presentation and think, “I have no clue what that means. I’d rather avoid this entirely.” We need to understand how our customers think and who our customers are if we are going to be successful.

  Three Tiers Of Business

  You can think about business architecture in three tiers. These
tiers refer to people that belong to different organizational roles according to their responsibilities.

  Tier one: Strategy

  Tier One is strategy. Strategists provide direction to the organization. They provide the vision, the culture, and the focus. Ultimately, they are responsible for the business model of the organization.

  (Fun fact: The word strategist comes from the ancient Greek word “strategos,” meaning “general,” as in a military leader.)

  Often, the IT world refers to strategists as “lines of business”. Strategists never refer to themselves that way, though, so the result is friction in communication. I’m not sure from whom or where in IT this practice originated, but it is very confusing. Recently, I was conducting a keynote presentation in south Florida when I asked a leader of a company what line of business he managed. I intentionally did it to show how our language can confuse others. He was a CPA like me and ran the financial and back office of a system integrator. After I asked him, he looked confused and struggled to say anything. I think his exact words were, “Hmm, I don’t know. Let me think about that.” I immediately asked him what function he managed and was responsible for and without hesitation he said, “Finance.” There was absolutely no friction with that phrasing. It is a matter of respect to call people by the role they play and by which they actually refer to themselves in the industry instead of a generic, overly inclusive term like “lines of business,” and it opens communication.