The I 'C' T of Tranquillity

These days, I often find going for a run first thing in the morning opens up my mind and allows me to gain a deeper perspective whilst assisting me to find solutions to any complex problems that I may be pondering.

This morning however, I used the time to mull over and formulate a few ideas for my next blog. As I hadn’t shaken the proverbial tree for a while, I thought it might be quite nice to create something a little disruptive based on some of my experiences and observations from the bridge over the last 30 years.

My motivation was to shine the torch of enlightenment on some of the gaps, opportunities, frustrations and direction of travel we, as an industry still need to traverse if we are to grow, differentiate and ultimately deliver value to our customers. I call this climbing the mountain.

... into the melting pot I wanted to throw some of the big ticket complexities I see

• A multi-generational workplace and challenging consumer mind-sets
• The rate & pace of technological change v's adoption curves
• A multi-skilled and capable workforce v's Alliances v's Partner eco-systems
• Digital transformation | People | Process | Tools
• Bi-Modal transformation | Convergence | Orchestration
• A fundamental lack of market Insight | Vision | Strategic intent to differentiate
• A lack of innovation leading to a lot of ‘Me2’ Services 

Prioritising such challenges in matrix organisations is sometimes a game of tug of war, influencing, bartering and straight talking with a number of hygiene factors and levers being moved simultaneously:

• Regional conflicts v’s Global Strategies v’s personal views
• Customer commitments v’s Standardised Offerings v’s Overselling
• Investment budgets v's Harmonisation v's R&D cut-backs v's off-shoring 
• Internal adoption of GTM Offerings v's Do what we say not what we do
• Security | Governance | lifecycle Management | standardisation | Adaptability
• Key Resources v's Suitability v's Availability v’s Conflicting programmes
• Marketing v’s Capabilities v's Implementation v's Customer satisfaction
• Build | End to end delivery | Operationalisation | Business as usual | End of Life

This tends to result in disconnects and isolated ‘myopic’ treatments being created in towers amongst teams of people seemingly diametrically opposed to teaming or creating end to end value.

At times it's necessary to rip up the playbook and recalibrate our inherent beliefs which, on occasions force ourselves to be internally competitive or mediocre in our methods.

For change to occur, we need to constantly push ourselves to achieve what we aspire too and in order to grow we must use our minds differently and approach challenges and innovation with an almost existential rigour. 

Why do I say this? Well the transformational journey which many seek encompasses a much broader landscape nowadays and if we are to be successful in delivering substantive change at scale we must first think differently and buck the trend - just because you've always done it this way doesn't mean it is right in today’s ‘informed’ workplace! 

Only then can we free our minds and build the 'right-sized' underlying foundational building blocks which are necessary to deliver the expected organisational and cross dimensional results we desire.

In my view, we need to better consider the users, the service landscape, and the way that we frame and approach the big picture if we are to deliver value and complex change in a more simplified manner. Only then will we achieve that Zen-like, enlightened state of utopia that so many are seeking but very few – unless digital native – are able to consistently deliver. 

… be at one with the world of ICT

The workplace of 2019 is full of rehashed buzzwords which define more of an aspiration to transform at pace rather than a blueprint of how to actually do it. Therefore, we need to get real. I would like to see more demonstrable action being taken, more failure leading to success, more ‘immediate’ proof of execution being achieved and to be frank, some urgency around delivering seamless and consistent outcomes for our clients.

I’ve mentioned numerous times before that we are seeing a blurring of the lines between consumer and enterprise systems. Generational-fusion with millennials spearheading the push for boundary-less boarders and mass simplification defining that everything is now delivered as a service ‘XaaS’ and this is fast becoming the predominant tour de force which is inexplicably sweeping our industry en masse. 

For years, I have passionately voiced the fact that most users are simply not interested in the complexities of how things are plumbed or for that matter how they interoperate any longer. They just want their technology to be obedient, to work on their terms and to make their lives easier to live. 

… the meccano sets have long since been put away!

Simply put, our new generation of users want technology to be seen and not heard whilst enabling them to be the Rock-stars of their own field of expertise and by so doing enable them to be more productive, proficient and pervasive! 

You see, they are more focussed on the value that can be derived from the services they consume and as such they expect their systems to be delivered as securely, consistently and simply as possible from anywhere in the world - and they expect this, every time they click on the application - remember every experience matters in this world of choice!

But there does still seem to be a gap between what users want and what some still assume or think they want. This gulf in knowledge needs to be bridged and fast as many are confused by the technological babble that is being used to describe complex service definitions leaving some asking where they should go for help in ensuring that their digital transformation is effective and seamlessly executed.

Perhaps independent advice is at hand. Some folks will talk expertly & coherently about the area in which they themselves wish to grow whilst the customers’ requirement and dimensional lenses which are applied are at times surreptitiously altered to accommodate their version of the storyline whilst seemingly reflecting, deflecting or aligning to a business challenge you may or may not have disclosed or even knew you had until they walked into the door.

I have to say I’ve heard some bold statements over the years both in and out of the boardroom - some of my favourites are that “we do it all, we are ‘the’ experts in the field, everything is possible, trust us!”

To that end, I have seen ‘commissioning’ engineers attending infrastructure planning meetings one day and the next week the same person comes in to talk about how anthropomorphic compute solutions could help. Don’t get me wrong, I like ambitious ‘T-shaped’ people and this scenario is not impossible to imagine but you do start to wonder when the following week they are rolled out again, but this time as the 5G design architect as well! 

It’s all about transparency for me. Try it out, ask any vendor to ‘show you’ how they have transformed their own enterprises along with proof points before their armies of consultants converge on your base-camp. You will soon unravel the “truth” of where they are on the Bluffer V’s Evidenced execution ladder of digital transformation.

It is still my experience that a lot of companies – despite their lofty ambitions to transform - are still in their infancy in this space and are as such myopically following the towered methodology framework for delivering change. As a result, they are simply not focusing on the end to end complete vision or defined roadmap strategy which will deliver consistent results. 

... I suspect most are not thinking ‘user first’ in their design thinking workshops

If we translate this statement and approach into the language of business which is being delivered to a client, it might perhaps leave a few gaps downstream for the customer to first of all uncover and then to rapidly attempt to ‘plug’ in a tactical and retro-fitted manner which often times results in poorly conceived and defined user experiences (UX, CX or DX) being generated across their organisations. Plan to succeed or plan to fail.

... So, who should they turn too?

Well, service providers are all fast expanding their eco-systems, partnering for success and academia is now being used to bridge some of the skills gaps and take up some of the enterprise slack. This is fantastic news for our industry with STEM advancements and government backed initiatives and investments empowering the next generation of scientific experts within our field of study to thrive. 

Fundamentally, most businesses are looking for secure yet open systems which provide their end users with a launch pad to grow from, they are not looking for a bag of proprietary component parts to be delivered and then operationally configured and managed by a single supplier with multiple backed off commercial agreements to navigate.

... multi-provider, orchestrated & agnostic systems running in harmonious symphony

I believe we need to sharpen our focus and be more prescriptive. We need to recognise that this whole era comes down to a paradigm of delivering service excellence to Users, their Applications and of course the Security and classification of their Data sets.

Bit of a sweeping statement, but as a profession, it still feels like we are falling short of where we as thought leaders need to be when discussing business outcomes with our customers. It all feels kinda tactical still. Not really positioned at their industries, a bit generic if you will.

Somewhat simplistically, if you think about most of the low hanging technological capabilities which are being proffered today by so many providers they are at their basal level merely infrastructure enablers to achieve the higher value services. A Trojan horse if you will.

The real value today for all organisations is in the data, the cognitive intelligence and the smart analytics which are needed to extract personal and contextual information and utilise this structured & unstructured data to deliver value and business outcomes. 

After all, if we don’t get the holy trinity right - users, apps and data -  and if you don’t have the right partnerships to deliver the basic services which are by design personalised, contextual, always available and delivered across any platform then who will want to consume the rest of your services at scale? 

This is such an exciting time to be part of this industry and I feel blessed to be able to drive, motivate and deliver service excellence through the knowledge and experience I've gained!

just a thought about the Sea of Tranquillity…

… ‘IF’ in 1969 we could place a man on the moon with all the tenacity, uncertainty, complex mathematics, IBM punch-cards and NASA ingenuity which was required back then, why is that we are still struggling so much with the articulation, integration and interoperability of a few enterprise subsystems?