Did you realize that there are at least partners who should be running your business? Did you also know that if one of these partners is not included that it could affect your business? Let me introduce you to the three partners: (1) You, (2) Your business, and (3) Your strategy plan.

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Now that you have met all three, let me share with you the importance of having all three doing their part. Let’s start with Strategy. According to Webster.com, the definition of the word “strategy” is “a careful plan or method”. This can be applied to the partnership as the key components that helps give your business direction and processes. Just as in chess when you have to always have a strategy in mind to win, the same is true for managing a business.

The next member of the partnership we will look at is your Business which is a necessity since it would be the cornerstone for the whole partnership. The last member is not the least at all but is the glue that keeps everything together and flowing smoothly which is You. Your purpose in this partnership is to provide the brains, the brawn, and the backing to make sure that all members of the partnership fit together perfectly.

To help you understand the importance of Strategy, I have included an interview video that was developed by Harvard Business School to help you understand the “The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy” which is the brainchild of Michael E. Porter, Professor, Harvard University.

I read with some pain, but also a chuckle or two, CFO on-line’s sloppy spreadsheet practices article. I like to be organized, send files with naming conventions (source, date, and revision numbers), and like to assist the user of my excel files by using borders, bolded titles, and generally making them readable and printable. Amazingly, according to the article, most students and employees seem to simply send very poor looking documents that at first are unprintable. It’s simply work-creating laziness!

This creates an amazing amount of waste especially if you send your files to two or more people who have to fix your mess.

So here are four things everybody should do to help the world handle your spreadsheets:

1. Title your columns

2. Bold and italicize where necessary to make them easier to read

3. Wrap text (in comment fields in particular)

4. Make them printable

Apparently you will be one of the few who do these simple things and will probably be loved for it. Who knows, it could lead to a promotion.

Do you have any pet peaves related to spreadsheets? Share them! Are you a lazy spreadsheet user? REPENT!

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Very interesting issue popped up the other day as I was speaking with a food manufacturer. They are very high quality and taste is everything. They therefore cringe when talk of continual improvement comes along because they do NOT want to mess with the process of food preparation even though they are a manufacturer and not a restaurant. Efficiency, as it relates to continual improvement, can lead to what they call recipe “drift”. In other words, many companies have started small with taste and quality of their food as the key differentiator, only to inexplicably lose that taste edge as they became “efficient” in their manufacturing. This is a great example because everyone understands what happens when your mom’s great recipe is passed onto the next generation the first time.

This got me thinking about other manufacturing processes, of very high quality, that might be subject to inexplicable “drift”. Over-engineering is generally a problem of not listening to the customer. The other thought is to concentrate on waste and NOT efficiency. Waste seems to be a more palatable target for the firm that is hesitant to embrace the efficiency side of continual improvement. The other approach might be to simply separate what you apply continual improvement approaches to. In the case of a food manufacturer maybe packaging, distribution and planning processes could be targets for waste reduction. Always remembering what your customer must have to continue to do business with you reigns supreme.

Do you have a high quality manufacturing process that could be subject to “drift”? Does focusing on waste and not on efficiency help combat “drift”? Is it possible to introduce continual improvement into an organization in one area and not another?

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Becky at www.myorgnanizedbiz.com recently wrote about the value of calendaring your “biz” and your life. One thing that stuck out was her proposal to try a two week experiment that could change your life:

Becky: Try this for the next two weeks: each day, figure out the five most important things that you need to accomplish that day. Then schedule time for them on your calendar. Schedule it around meetings and e-mail and errands. Actually block out time where you concentrate on that task.

And when that time comes, work on the task. If you only have a 1/2 hour, then see how much you can get done in a 1/2 hour. Don’t answer e-mail. Don’t pick up the phone. Just stick to your calendar.

Didn’t get your task done in the allotted time? That’s okay. Did you make progress? That’s the important part.

My response to her post was to link this thinking to project management best practices, preparation, and actually doing more by doing less:

PM411: Becky- really like the “capacity planning” emphasis. Many are great at calendaring but end up going from one activity to the next being unprepared. I find that lack of preparation means a lot of what I call “stops, starts and redos” which waste a lot of time. We almost need to do less in a better way to cut down the bad multi-tasking- this is what I love to write about at http://www.projectmanagement411.com, i.e., the ways good project management practices enable efficient prioritization of projects and alignment with strategies- whether it be on a personal or business level.

How about you? Do you have examples of doing more by doing less? The Theory of Constraints (Goldratt) deals with issues like suboptimization, slowing down certain activities to actually get more done because of the alignment with rates of other processes- do you see an application for this in your office? Your Plant? Your personal life?

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What good is analyzing trends? Well, first of all you can determine whether you agree with them. Then decide if they will impact you. If so, you need to figure out how to deal with them. The last few posts have done this type of analysis from an “every company” point of view, and here are the results:

First a summary of the STRATEGY and MANAGEMENT trends from CIO Insight’s list of Top IT Trends in 2008 in as brief a format as I dare:

Economic slowdown, customer e-service demands, m-commerce opportunities, technology enabled process improvement, change in world markets and resources, changes in CIO’s role and IT management, IT grad/resource shortages, new innovation sources, and focus on data management.

Refer to these previous posts, and/or the CIO Insight list , if you need more details:

STRATEGY Sum Up, detail posts 1 and 2

MANAGEMENT Sum Up, detail posts 1 and 2

Then my summary of the prescriptive, cautionary remarks related to the trends:

Make sure projects fit with strategies first, before ROI and staff analysis,

Don’t underestimate size, complexity, and on-going nature, of customer-facing projects related to E-Service and M-Commerce,

Use a PMO to research business process innovation outside the company, industry and country.

Pay attention to changes in “growing market” living standards and IT maturity when partnering, acquiring, and resource offshoring/outsourcing.

Focus first on centralizing non-IT executive control and awareness of ALL (IT and non-IT) projects, then possibly on expanding the CIO’s role.

Harness current data and systems for innovative decision-making through Master Data Management.

I’ve attempted to deal with these significant trends in a general way resulting in a response to the trends. Hopefully, you see the value of this process in relation to generating company-specific prescriptive measures.

How do you analyze trends? What sources and processes do you use? Did my trend analysis process inspire you to take a look at trends and how they are impacting you? Is this part of your strategy development process? How does trend analysis impact your project priorities?

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My sum up to CIO Insight’s Top IT Trends in 2008 related to MANAGEMENT reveals a need to focus on centralizing non-IT executive control vs. expanding the CIO role, and cleaning up and innovatively using data already out there for decision-making.

The CIO Insight MANAGEMENT trends of 1. No downturn for CIO role, 2. CIO role becoming more demanding, 3. IT metamorphosis continuing, 4. IT grad shortage changing the face of IT, 5. IT outsiders providing inspiration, and 6. Master Data Management expanding, caused these reactions in my two posts related to MANAGEMENT:

• Focus on centralizing non-IT executive control and awareness of IT and non-IT projects, NOT on expanding the CIO’s role.
• Conduct research for innovations outside the company, industry and country.
• Harness current data and systems for innovative decision-making through Master Data Management.

How do you feel about the MANAGEMENT trends and my reactions to them? Do you think the CIO role should be expanded? Why or why isn’t such expansion necessary?

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Continuing with MANAGEMENT trends in IT from CIO Insight’s Top IT Trends for 2008 , we now deal with graduate shortages, sources of innovation, and one of the most interesting and impactful trends toward Master Data Management:

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CIO Insight: IT grad shortage changes the face of IT- CIOs expect fewer young people to enter the IT profession and say half of those that graduate with IT and computer science degrees aren’t well prepared.

PM411: I’m not as tuned in to this “shortage” of talent. Should companies expect IT graduates to be prepared properly? I’m jaded by my MBA experience years ago where there was a huge lag in including technology innovations in the curriculum. Is this getting better? Are fewer younger people entering IT? Chime in.

CIO Insight: IT outsiders provide inspiration- innovative IT organizations look to consumers, youth and leading users for new ideas.

PM411: “New” is often found in other companies, industries and countries. Better to have a great research arm looking for these innovations as they occur and efficiently evaluate and apply them to your company.

CIO Insight: Master Data Management expands- data integration remains a top priority, with data quality one of its most enduring obstacles.

PM411: Data quality is probably the most important management challenge. The emphasis should be on how to harness the data and systems that are already out there to innovate the decision-making processes of a company.

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Are colleges providing computer science degrees that are useful? How important is data quality as a challenge?

My MANAGEMENT trend sum up of CIO Insight’s trends follows in my next post.

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CIO Insight’s Top IT Trends for 2008 were particularly interesting in the STRATEGY and MANAGEMENT areas. My last three posts dealt with STRATEGY. Now I’ll react to the MANAGEMENT trends . First up are the trends related to the role of the CIO and the metamorphosis of IT:

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CIO Insight: No downturn for CIO role- the CIO role will become more important and the IT function will grow more centralized.

PM411: This “prediction” has been talked about for 20 years- the problem is not solved by CIO role expansion, but by executive governance boards taking the responsibility for which projects should be done, supported by a PMO-like organization that considers ALL projects, both IT and non-IT.

CIO Insight: CIO role becomes more demanding- CIOs have to excel at strategy and operations, particularly in building high-performance IT organizations.

PM411: This again is a bit misguided especially as it relates to strategy and operations. Centralization and expertise must increase among different NON-IT parts of the organization related to project priorities and control, and THEIR understanding of IT.

CIO Insight: IT metamorphosis continues- IT organizations keep undergoing major changes but they aren’t all changing in the same way.

PM411: Changes happens constantly in different ways to different organizations and different people? What else is new?

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I expect my view of the CIO role to be in the minority. Asking the CIO to be the CEO is ridiculous- rather, project management centralization that includes support for innovation and strategy needs to occur. Without this type of thinking, the “IT metamorphosis” will create a monster.

What do you think? I want to be challenged especially by those of you who are actively managing IT, operations, strategy, innovation, and project management functions- you often know better how these trends can play out.

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My sum up to CIO Insight’s Top IT Trends in 2008 related to STRATEGY reveals a need to focus on how projects are managed and controlled and how PMOs contribute to innovation.

The CIO Insight STRATEGY trends of 1. companies slipping into slow-down mode, 2. IT focusing on E-Service, 3. …and preparing for M-Commerce, 4. process improvement driving IT adoption and 5. the world getting flatter, caused these strong reactions in my two posts related to STRATEGY:

• Make sure projects fit with strategies,

• Don’t underestimate customer-facing projects,

• Use a PMO to research business process innovation, and

• Pay attention to changes in “growing market” living standards and IT maturity.

How do you feel about the STRATEGY trends and my reactions to them? Does this give you a framework for your IT projects?

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Continuing with my reaction to the STRATEGY trends from CIO Insight’s Top IT Trends for 2008 :

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CIO Insight: “Process improvement will drive IT adoption- CIOs see process modeling and management applications as the most important development five to 10 years from now.”

PM411: YES! Business process modeling will technology-enable the innovation process. Still need strong research of innovation going on outside the company, the industry, and your country, to feed modeling efforts.

CIO Insight: “The world gets flatter- strong foreign economies and technical workforces present opportunities for growth, savings and technology.”

PM411: This will be interesting to watch as the living standards increase causing higher technical workforce costs. Also, maturity of IT in different world markets varies wildly. See my recent posts on how India’s living standards are changing and China’s IT maturity.

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The idea of research of business process innovation outside industries and countries is still a relatively new concept. With developing world market’s living standards and IT maturity changing I expect that the newer world markets will be the ripest areas for innovation to be copied by US companies.

What do you think? Is “copy” a bad word?

CIO Insight STRATEGY trends sum up in my next post.

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