President's Column
Gartner's IT Symposium:
"IT Must Claw Its Way Back to Relevance"
Providing advice that might sound
all too familiar, IT advisor Gartner
kicked off its Symposium 2004- an event that reviews the
state of IT- with calls for software agility.
"Software must become much more fluid,
and it needs to adapt without constant redesign,"
said Jeff Comport, a Gartner analyst presenting at
the October 17-22 event in Orlando. Comport noted
that current applications tend to lock companies
into rigid business models. For example, one Gartner
client cited had invested $20 million in an 18-month
enterprise application implementation, only to find
that the business had changed by the time the system
went live.
The underlying message from Gartner at
the Symposium is that IT needs to claw its way back
to relevance. "Many of you are great managers of
technology infrastructure, but that's not the
future. You need to lead new initiatives that can
innovate the business, rather than simply keeping
the lights on." said Comport.
Well said. Even technology experts
understand that IT is not the silver bullet often
promised by software vendors. Our
message: first train your people with lean
thinking principles; then empower them to
eliminate waste from your processes. Lastly,
consider applying technology as appropriate.
-- Mark Edmondson
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Real Stories:
An Encounter with
Management Goal Obsession |
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In the movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai", the lead
character, Colonel Nicholson, is a prisoner of war in
Burma who leads his men to build a bridge for his
Japanese captors. Nicholson is an officer of high
integrity, dedicated to excellence, a great leader of
men -- and thus well trained to complete any goal
that he is given. So he builds a beautiful bridge. By
the film's end, he finds himself in the painful
position
of defending the bridge from attack by fellow officers
who want to destroy it to prevent Japanese trains
from using it. There's a chilling moment of
realization,
right before he detonates the bridge, when Nicholson
(played by Alec Guinness) utters the famous line,
"What have I done?"
This is goal obsession. He was so focused on his
goal -- building the bridge -- that he forgot the
larger mission of winning the war. It's the force at play when we
get so wrapped up in achieving our goal that, like
Colonel Nicholson, we do it at the expense of a larger
mission. It's one of those paradoxical traits that's
usually the source of our success, but taken too far
can become a cause of failure. You see this
when people become fixated on the wrong goals.
Given their history of success, they end up achieving
a result that does more damage than good to
themselves, their team, their company, and even
their family.
I recently encountered an example of goal obsession
during a visit with the senior management team of a
$300m manufacturer.
"How do you measure success?" I asked the VP of
Manufacturing...
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Q4 CEO Survey Results:
Continued Growth Expected;
Increased Hiring and Investment for 2005 |
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American CEOs see business
and the economy looking up, according the Q4 2004
TEC Confidence Index, which drew participation by a
record 2,308 CEOs. The Q4 Index rose to 111.8, up
from 110.4 in the prior quarter, demonstrating
confidence in continued expansion of the economy
during 2005.
"Firms plan on increasing their hiring and
investment plans to benefit from what they expect
will be a continued strong economic expansion during
2005," said Richard Curtin, Ph.D., director of
consumer surveys at the University of Michigan, and
consultant for the TEC Confidence Index. "Although
firms expect the expansion to proceed at a strong
pace of growth, they thought it would slow to a more
sustainable but still robust pace of growth during
2005."
Survey highlights:
- More than two-thirds of CEOs think economic
conditions are better than a year ago, while
seven percent feel conditions are worse than 12
months ago.
- 58 percent expect conditions to be better in
2005 than today, while 34 percent expect they
will be about the same as now.
- CEOs plan to increase their total number of
employees by the highest proportion in the
nearly two years that this survey has been
conducted, posting a quarterly gain of 3.7 percent.
- 83 percent expect their revenues to increase
during the next 12 months.
TEC ("The Executive Committee") is an international
community of over 10,000 chief executives, mostly
from companies with annual revenues between $5
million and $1 billion. The TEC Confidence Index is
the largest sample-size survey of chief executives
and presidents conducted in the U.S.
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From Stanford:
On-line Factory Tour Videos |
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If you're fascinated by touring manufacturing plants
like we are, then you've got to check out "How
Everyday Things are Made", a Website created by
the Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing at
Stanford University.
They have four hours of on-line videos showing everything from how they get the
chartreuse coating on a jelly bean to the assembly
airplanes, the forging of steel parts, and plastic
injection molding.
You'll enjoy plant tours covering over 40 different
products and manufacturing processes. Think of it
as your own private factory tour library.
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