A recurring question in many environments follows along this line: 

“If we no longer have servers, does IT need to maintain server management and administration skills?”

Organizations are virtualizing all manner of things – making some IT persons in specific environments and roles increasingly nervous.  If you’re a server administrator, a technician for any specific piece of infrastructure, a programmer for an inside app that’s going to the Cloud, etc. – look out.

You’re seen primarily as an asset by IT governance… business.  Sure, you’re “user-friendly,” supportive, well-liked… but – you’d better retool yourself and demonstrate ongoing value in some new realm, or look for a job elsewhere.  Obviously, any IT professional has to support something, while progressing it, bettering it, and furthering its ongoing value to business.  If something moves to the Cloud, or otherwise becomes virtualized, you’re going to be at a loose end – but not for long in the present organization.

A BTW tenet is that change is a continuum.  Immerse yourself in assessments of change; read periodicals online and off; visit companies that are at the forefront of change, such as professional project management companies.  Create friends and professional contacts at these sorts of orgs.  Always be learning, both formally and informally.

As long as you’re taking stock of other organizations, keep something in mind:  IT is pervasive – it has, after all, gathered virtually every human being around you and deemed them “users,” while simultaneously boosting their time spent using technology to nearly 100% of their workplace occupancy – all within an explosion of products, enablements, and services.  See what other savvy organizations are doing, and how things are working for them.  Evaluate their systems and services for possible furthering in your organization.  Ensure your value – your business value.

Don’t wait for the organization to push you through awareness and training; get going yourself.  You must remain a viable asset to the organization; in supporting it today and tomorrow; and you must change along with, preferably ahead of, all of the other change that is swirling around you… around all of us.

NP:  Coltrane Plays the Blues, John Coltrane, Atlantic, original LP.

Three Plan Types

IT’s general support to the Business-Technology Weave can be effectively planned and managed through three major plan types.  These are the high-level, across-the-board support plans – which acknowledge and mark the upcoming projects. 

We’ll refer to these IT-Business support plans as the Five-Year Plan, the One-Year Plan, and the Individual Action Plan.  You may wish to label these plans differently in your organization; you may need to look further into the future with a ten-year plan – or more.  But here we’ll use these generic names for ease.  Let’s take a brief look at each plan type, how it relates to the other plan types, and how together they help maintain your directed change, and adjustment to outside, impacting, change. 

The Five-Year Plan

The Five-Year Plan begins with the upcoming (next) calendar year, and extends through each of the upcoming five years.  The upcoming first year becomes the organization’s detailed One-Year Plan, upon the turn of that new year.  Therefore, the first year of the Five-Year Plan should contain everything you intend to do in the upcoming year.  Since the One-Year Plan is the near-term focus for what needs doing, it should be as detailed as necessary – it is executable in that it has been vetted and sanctioned, is budgeted, has been announced, and all preparatory steps have been taken for each element of the plan.  It matches the organization’s business expectations, needs, and overall business plan for the year.  Also, the One-Year Plan spawns all of the detailed project plans and individual action plans as necessary for the organization’s various managed projects and changes.  The organization’s overall project management benefits from the coordinated tracking on the Five and One-Year plans; supports, dependencies and competition for resources can be adjusted in maintaining optimal results.

The Plan’s Progression:  Years Two, Three, Four and Five are progressively less detailed, respectively, as you consider periods of time that are further out from “now.”  Looking out to Year Five, we can see that in a year’s time, its detail and plan moves into the Year Four slot; the former Year Four is now Year Three, and so on.  At each turn-of-year, a new Year Five is added to the back of the plan.  As each year of the Five-Year Plan marches toward you, it is massaged into better focus; adjusted according to changing business priorities or objectives; availability of resources; advancing technology; changing environment; and new methods and practices.  There is an ongoing maintenance for the organization’s alignment of business and technology.  Eventually, our original Year Five clicks forward, having evolved and focused according to needs, until it moves into position as the One-Year Plan.  In this manner, we find that a properly maintained Five-Year Plan can efficiently generate a comprehensive, executable, sanctioned, and aligned One Year Plan.  This means that an organization’s staff is fully informed and qualified to tackle the forthcoming changes, and changes align with business needs in fulfilling expectations accurately, comprehensively, and efficiently.  

At any given time, we can expect that Year-Two doesn’t have quite the focus or detail as Year-One – however, most major initiatives are known and a fair amount of detail is present.  The more distant years will have large bullet items without a lot of detail, because technology and business factors change, sometimes radically, over a period of years.  Your Years-Four and Five may even contain rather whimsical “wish-list” type of items, just to keep them on the radar.  Your organization may have potential mergers or acquisitions under consideration, which will require different technology and business practices – these considerations can call for placeholders on the plan, ensuring some exploratory discussion and gathering of pertinent information.  These efforts establish and define a ‘where we are,’ also project a ‘where we’re going,’ and ensure the start of a bona-fide, progressive, route for future actualization. 

The Plan’s Direction and Flexibility:  Planned items can go one of two ways:  Some things become certified as bona-fide objectives, and additional detail is accumulated and added to the plan.  Just as importantly, other things may be dropped due to a change in business priorities.  Likewise, other things may pop on as completely new items.  The flexibility of the plan means that you may “bump back” certain items over the course of a couple months, or even years – maintaining them as placeholders – perhaps until a return-on-investment threshold is reached.  Other things may “heat up” and slide forward. 

At the same time, the Five-Year Plan cannot simply be a receptacle for every crazy brainstorm or trendy practice that comes along.  It must represent a managed plan that adheres to the true needs of the organization, as best as you can determine them at any given time. 

The Five-Year Plan (or any long range plan) also does something else that’s very important:  it should not only expose dependencies, but should also show vulnerabilities and strengths.  For example, if your plan is to implement a new content management system in the course of the next few years, you may need to consider an upgrade to your hardware platform and infrastructure.  Your plan may have to accommodate new fileservers and workstations, for example.  You’ll have a significant training and support burden.  Once that decision is made, it may be evident that another project that was waiting for these upgrades can now move forward.  The preparation and timing for implementation of many things will coordinate nicely through the plan. 

Remember:  As the first year of the Five-Year Plan becomes the current year, that part becomes the new year’s One-Year Plan.  The Five-Year Plan adds a year at the end of its range, is populated as necessary over the course of time, and all years are updated and tuned accordingly.  A properly maintained Five-Year Plan not only means that you know where you are, and where you’re going, but also means that you’ll always have your One-Year Plan ready at the beginning of each year.  In fact, you’ll have one-year plans under development for each of the next five years.  That is managing change as a continuum.  Also keep in mind that you can project further if you feel you need to.  Just remember to match your time and effort to the likelihood that a particular plan objective will actually be undertaken.

Coming:  The One Year Plan, and the Individual Action Plan.

October 31^st:On this day in 1956 Brooklyn, NY ended streetcar service.

I was speaking about plans and projects with someone the other day.  As far as challenges go –  next to people – change and the associated planning is the most difficult element of The Weave.

Change is a continuum.  For the organization, something is continuously changing that affects it:  Change is happening within, and it is happening in the surrounding environment.  All change must be weighed and assessed for impact, and there must be a ready posture for doing this.  Too many organizations think of change as something mounted in a burst; “now we can rest.”  This is why so many organizations seem to take action at the back edge of the envelope:  change for them is constituted as an addressal of problems under pressure-filled and even desperate circumstances. 

When change is mounted under pressure, there is usually a failure to fully survey where you are.  It may seem obvious, but in planning a destination (that is, a project’s destination), with appropriate directions, you must know your point of origin:  the organization’s true station and status.   You must survey business process, your technical enablements, and your people.   If you don’t know where you are, the route to destination is a broken one – reaching the destination is painful, inefficient, and sometimes not even achieved.

The smart organization doesn’t disengage from change – nothing around the org stands still if it does.  Therefore, the management of change isn’t just some reaction to what is happening internally, or some engagement that is “forced” by outside change.  You must present a position of readiness, so that you have the “muscle” in place to exercise change.  You must be able to forecast, develop, and schedule.  This requirement for readiness presents itself to the individual, to groups, and to the organization in equal measure, as we’ll see. 

Today, we need to realize and acknowledge that even change changes.  How does change change?  Consider:  While we’re busy implementing a documented, sanctioned change, some of our assumptions, support products, fiscal supports, regulatory requirements, business practices, etc., haven’t done us the courtesy of standing still.  Further, various projects and their change can compete for common resources; they can shift in schedule and crash into one another; they can have interlocking dependencies and impacts that must be carefully coordinated.  Any time you make a course correction, an accommodation, an expansion in scope, etc., you are making a change to change. 

Circumstances such as these, and the quality of planning in your organization, yields one of two things:

1)     A house of cards, or

2)     A solid structure of mutually reinforcing initiatives and projects. 

Because things are shifting and evolving around us all the time, we need plans that have enough structure to guide us effectively, but that are not so rigid as to “straightjacket” us.  We don’t want to be implementing so-so or broken solutions today that looked great yesterday.  We don’t want the organization to be thrashing as it attempts to mount major changes without regard to prudent sequence, or that are even in direct competition with each other.

High Level Plans in Support to Detailed Plans

From a high level view, we need to plan support to the Business-Technology Weave.  High-level plans should identify, guide, assist, and facilitate that which you wish to accomplish.  They provide the general documentation and a calendar position for a collective of projects and initiatives, the sum total of which represent the organization’s forward thrust, and each of which have their own detailed, operational plans as separate documentation. 

Aligning an organization’s detailed plans, projects, and initiatives is similar to tuning a car:  you want all of your cylinders firing in proper sequence and timing.  When properly tuned, your car not only has maximum power in ‘getting to where you’re going,’ it is making the best possible use of resources (in the form of highest gas mileage, and with minimal wear to the engine).  Your organization’s individual operational plans are like cylinders – each contributing to the organization’s forward movement relative to time and circumstances.  You must ensure that each of these plans “fires” in proper sequence, so as to assist the next plan – or at the very least not impinge upon its “firing.”  You must get the collective of projects and initiatives making a concerted best-use of resources.

At the same time, any higher-level plan must have some flexibility in order to make allowance for an adjustment in schedule or direction.  Yet, they can’t be so ill defined as to provide no structure at all.  And, we have to preserve order:  an order in change, and the order of the organization.  How do we effectively manage this trick?

IT’s Onus

If you’ve followed The Weave over time, you know that we’ve discussed the importance of communication between Business and IT.  And we know that it’s wise today for Business to make known its planning and direction for early participation and contribution by the organization’s technical investment.  Certainly Business must facilitate IT’s understanding of required support to business initiatives, evolving technology needs, and changing environmental factors (such as security, expansion, new regulatory requirement, etc.).  But realize that whether this happens effectively or not, IT still exists for, and at the pleasure of, Business.  The onus is on IT to support, align with, and enhance Business’ plans for business.  IT must dig where and as necessary.

There is plenty of chance to do that, so recognize your opportunities:  There will be the obvious occasion for plans’ creation and adjustment within specific, formal, plan meetings – but also formally and informally in the course of budget meetings, staff meetings, board meetings, etc.  The exercise of snapping them into focus happens largely in the BIT forum (The Business Implementation Team), and in specific IT plan meetings:  but anywhere that there’s a discussion of futures planning contributes to the overall opportunity to assess change, and to effect the “gel” of a plan. 

Further, in a changing world, there is the onus on IT to “hear” and garner everything, as a weigh on a scale of possible change requirements.

Coming:  Part II – Three Plan Types.

NP:  Bessie Smith, on original 78rpm.

…imagination, responsiveness, agility, and adaptability. 

Today, organizations face tremendous challenge in any given present moment:  They have critical business systems, critical content, information stored and information shared, assets and infrastructures, and even blended resources (organization-owned resources, and sanctioned “outside” enablements such as social networking sites and online research, for example).

When we add change as a necessary, sometimes even forced, element the challenge in corralling and managing the enterprise seems exponential. 

Staying ahead of requirements so as to imagine, anticipate, qualify and lead  change and solutions is ideal.  Alternatively, when something a bit forced comes along, either due to a lack of foresight or perhaps by virtue of new regulatory requirements, it’s important for the organization to respond quickly and with agility – in identifying what’s necessary to serve and solve, and in implementing that on behalf of business.

All of this requires a ready willingness and embrace on both business’ and IT’s part:  staff and leaders must be aware, receptive, and open.  Change can be, and should be, exciting.  When change is embraced as an ongoing requirement, leaders and staff drive change at the appropriate timings – as opposed to reacting to situations and conditions that drive the organization to change.  You should control change, not the other way around.

Business and IT leaders must instill an organizational culture where information is quickly shared – and here again, the IT leader needs to be involved in key business meetings and planning, so as to be aware, adaptable and responsive.  Too often, business decisions are made absent IT – and decisions in this technical vacuum are at odds with the best way to proceed in view of technical supports.  Often decisions can be weighted so as to be transparent to business when choosing a slightly altered solution or path – but with far more favorability to IT’s support and to the overall level of effort and budget.  Obviously, IT must be present in order to make a favorable influence when that’s called for.

The successful organization incorporates IT leadership as a strategic partner.  Just by virtue of IT’s change management bona fides, business can ensure change happens appropriately, through

 …imagination, responsiveness, agility, and adaptability. 

 September 1^st:  On this day in 1661, the first yacht race was held, England’s King Charles vs. his brother, James.

Today’s business is changing faster than ever.  Enablement for efficiency comes in the form of technology’s support to several areas.  Consider ready communication – group efforts comprising necessary expertise can be assembled for chats or videoconferencing and ready collaboration, with necessary swaps and share of data, or physical prototypes in the case of rapid shipments – all enabled by technology.  New products are debuted constantly, and their speed-to-market is enhanced by technology; this technology aids development, production and delivery.  In fact, it also speeds advertising, and thus spurs demand.  It’s virtually logarithmic, or exponential.  It’s difficult to exaggerate the effects of the Business-Technology Weave.

There is a quickening business-technology environment.  Every aspect of business, technology, and the Weave seems to accelerate, by decade and even by year.  In fact, change is a continuum.  For the organization, something is continuously changing that affects it.  In fact, change is challenging: change is happening within, and it is happening in the surrounding environment.  All change must be weighed and assessed for impact, and there must be a ready posture for doing this.  Too many organizations think of change as something mounted in a burst; “now we can rest.”  This is why so many organizations seem to take action at the back edge of the envelope, if you will: change for them is constituted as an addressal of problems under pressure-filled and even desperate circumstances.  When change is mounted under pressure, there is usually a failure to fully survey where you are, therefore the route to destination is a broken one – reaching the destination is painful, inefficient, and sometimes not even achieved.  Projects can be torn apart or even thrown out and remounted.

The smart organization doesn’t disengage from change – nothing around them stands still if they do.  Therefore, the management of change isn’t just some reaction to what is happening internally, or some engagement that is “forced” by outside change.  You must present a position of readiness, so that you have the “muscle” in place to exercise change.  You must also be casting about in terms of vision – looking for breaking developments and even imagining new developments that can aid the organization.  You must be able to forecast, develop, and schedule.  This requirement for readiness presents itself to the individual, to groups, and to the organization in equal measure, as we’ll see. 

Further, we need to realize and acknowledge that even change changes.  How does change change?  Consider:  While we’re busy implementing a documented, sanctioned change, some of our assumptions, support products, regulatory requirements, business practices, etc., haven’t done us the courtesy of standing still.  Further, various projects and their change can compete for common resources; they can shift in schedule and crash into one another; they can have interlocking dependencies and impacts that must be carefully coordinated.  Any time you make a course correction, an accommodation, an expansion in scope, etc., you are making a change to change.  Circumstances such as these, and the quality of planning in your organization, either yields a house of cards or a solid structure of mutually reinforcing initiatives and projects. 

Because things are shifting and evolving around us all the time, we need plans that have enough structure to guide us effectively, but that are not so rigid as to “straightjacket” us.  We don’t want to be implementing so-so or broken solutions today that looked great yesterday.  We don’t want the organization to be thrashing as it attempts to mount major changes without regard to prudent sequence, or that are even in direct competition with each other.

Consider what the “quickening business-technology environment” means to you.  Consider what it means to your organization.  Debut the concept in an appropriate meeting within your organization and gauge the reaction: 

See if others have a true grasp on managing the future in view of new change dynamics and velocities.

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.

Machiavelli

Change happens. 

It would seem pretty obvious that change is a routine part of life.  However, you wouldn’t know this by observing some people.  To them, change is an outrageous imposition:  a bolt of lightening out of the blue.  To them, when a “rare” occurrence of major change does come down the pike, it should be something that poses no special challenge, no obstacle to be overcome, and somehow those effecting the change should make it transparent to them.

Change is challenging – there’s no getting around that.  Under the best of circumstances it will involve everyone’s best game – therefore, it is important to get everyone possible on board in support of the agenda for the change.  For those who are determined to drag their feet, or even undermine the agenda (and there will always be those), you must be prepared to neutralize their impact.  Certainly there are ways to work on negative people to bring them aboard or to at least gain a measure of cooperation from them.  But recognize that the larger the change, and the larger the organization, the more the likelihood that you’ll have a measure of people that will simply forestall change.  Be certain to get sanction and support for any workarounds you employ for these people, and document any stalls to protect yourself and the project. 

Change must always support business, enhance business, and keep business current and moving.  Change cannot, and does not have to, impede business – either situationally, or through delivery of unanticipated harm – such as poor fit solutions, hobbled systems, etc.  Remember too that outside change (change external to your organization) demands internal change.  As change is coming anyway, you must get on a footing to welcome it by being ready for it – and, barring unforeseeable circumstances, by leading and directing it. 

Also, we must gain an important clarity.  Today’s organization should keep foremost in mind that most IT-managed change (save for hard technical projects) has true origination outside of IT.  Everything germinates through the conduct of business.  A department may need a new module added to the organization’s core business application to accommodate new business, practices, or regulations.  You may begin or expand an e-Commerce initiative.  Perhaps your organization needs a new e-mail system that supports more capacity, better security, and easier user administration.  Even seemingly “technically-driven” episodes can have a “business” motivation.  For example, a vendor may have a new release of software that requires immediate implementation for security purposes.  In this case IT notifies Business of this upcoming implementation, and negotiates schedule and necessary support.  We could view this as IT-driven change.  But even here, we’re really speaking about a “business” genesis; we’re accommodating the “business” of the world’s demands to our own business security posture.  In other words, we’re never really implementing software or dispensing change at some IT whim, or pure IT instigation. 

A Basic View to Understanding Change

In gaining a basic understanding of change, look at simple change that has direct impact on Business, and the way business is conducted.  Leave consideration aside for the moment for the pure IT initiatives, as these should be transparent to business:  updates to backup routines, network infrastructure, operating systems, the changing of Internet service providers, etc.  These sorts of “computer room,” or backend, things certainly enhance business in important ways.  But the real trick in handling change is  when changes affect large groups of users in your organization.  That is, “front-end” change – stuff that hits the desktop and creates a challenge for Business.  Change that influences people’s day.

Also, be sure to qualify change as being appropriately “sanctioned” – approved in accordance with all other requirements.  Change, being the challenge that it is, is often seen as some titular mount:  Rather, change is wrapped inside ongoing business.  At the first sign or plan of a necessary change – be it major upgrades to core business platforms, or more mundane things such as rollout of new PCs, upgrades to peripheral shelf software, etc. – IT and Business must always review the organizational calendar for obvious times that don’t offer themselves as good periods to support a particular change.  It would not be good to implement a new e-mail system during the run up to the annual conference, for example.  Talk to executive schedulers and key department heads; there is a wealth of information to be considered, formal and informal, regarding general schedules and burdens to the organization.  Know the organization’s general calendar. 

Also explore those demands that may not yet be documented – we’re back to knowing “where you are.”  Then, through the BIT team, further survey departments and discuss their internal calendars regarding their major activities.  When determining where best to place change, be sure that you view requirements through the people prism.  After all, the priority and goal is to serve business – not to impact business.  People need, and are entitled to, a period of adjustment even regarding relatively small initiatives that affect them.  They will need to adjust and size their attitude – managers will need time to inform their staff. 

Sometimes certain business schedules can make allowances to accommodate implementations.  As well, IT will often have to adjust because of some unforeseen cycle of business.  It’s a give-and-take.  Also remember that departments aren’t “silos” operating independently of all other departments (although occasionally they may try to operate that way).  Elements of change will need to be negotiated between many departments, and there must be appropriate lead-time to allow for this.

For the IT leader, most change can be negotiated and driven from your participation with the BIT team.  Whether change originates through a debut within the team, or needs are identified elsewhere and subsequently brought to the team, the BIT team should be where most of the sizing gets done.  That is: negotiations, agreements, sponsorships, schedules, ownerships, identification of metrics, standards of delivery, etc. 

Change happens with or without your control.  If you don’t direct and control change – it will direct and control you.

A frequent complaint, or lament, in various versions that comes to me from both business and IT people is:  My organization doesn’t handle change well; my organization doesn’t like change; my organization won’t change; my boss fears change; etc.

We can smooth the sale for any specific, necessary, change by defining and selling the benefits of effective change – paired with the risk of inertia.  Just as importantly, we expose the rising risk and rising cost of ineffective change management – that is, so-called change management that becomes complacent – in an overall world environment of accelerating change. 

We can say that change should be an easy “sell” because, if you think about it, you’re going to “buy” some kind of change whether you plan to or not.  Change is a default setting – you can’t uncheck a box and remain static in any endeavor.  You’re going to acquire change no matter what position you’re in, and you’ll either change as a reaction to other changes, or you’ll lead your necessary changes.  As the world at large is going to force you to “buy” changes, you want to buy (to identify, lead, and emplace) the best changes – you don’t want any difficult (reactive) buys.  You must get into a position to leverage that default change dynamic to your advantage.  And so Change Management is a discipline – and that discipline is exercised on an ongoing basis, if only to stay abreast of what is upcoming, and making sure to implement necessary changes at favorable times to the organization based on such things as business cycles, travel, new products and methods, other changes, and so on. 

It is important to understand the environment that carries change to its successful destination.  We can have the best BIT team (business implementation team) in the world, identifying all necessary and correct change – but what happens if even prudent, appropriately sized, change is improperly managed?  What if we attempt to change too fast?  What if some elements of the organization aren’t ready?  What if BIT misses some important ‘where we are’ factors? 

We need a close interaction of Technology and Business within our Weave to ensure a basic understanding from both directions in defining, tracking and managing change.   Further, this interaction goes beyond management and BIT.  This involves the whole of the organization and its associations:  staff; vendors and contractors; frequently clients and customers…  Too often, change is planned and discussed in the crucible of some rarified group who view change as a secret, to then be announced and dropped like a bomb.  The group often views change as scary to the organization, and therefore tends to be draconian in planning, communicating and rolling out change.  The higher-ups in the organization sometimes figure that change is a difficult sell (believing that most people fear and do not like change), and therefore the bulk of the organization is predisposed to not buying change.  This isn’t necessarily so, and change can be an easy sell.   

In order to make change an easy sell, we must have a basic understanding of change in simplest terms, and from anyone’s perspective…

Next -  Change:  The Basics

For an effective partnership, we need to create a sales ready environment into which appropriate people can direct those energies, and vet these ideas. When we talk about identifying, planning, and selling change here, we’re really talking about achieving a shared vision and consensus – a belief – between Business and Technology for achievement of best change. Best change means that we deliver something suitably sized, based on proper expectations, in the most effective manner possible. We need an effective teaming: one that minimizes the opportunity for mistakes; wrong impressions; erroneous expectations; wasted time, money, and energy; and delivery of wrong, or diminished, things. An enterprise that structures itself for efficiency and delivery of success through effective communication, mutual understanding, and collaboration. The kind of collaboration that is positive so as to move business forward. Let’s repeat that: to move business forward.

Moving Business Forward

Whatever your organization’s mission, product, service, desired accomplishments (its business), all effort should be directed to that regard. Any suspect activity can be illuminated by the simple question: “Does this move business forward?” (Or, thought of another way, “Does this have business value?” There can be many versions to this question, but they all essentially expose an answer that must meet the qualifier of advancing business’ interests). Any answer short of ‘yes’ is unacceptable. This qualified engagement helps to eliminate wasteful politics, dismantle the “silos” of departments, and diminish posturing on the part of individuals.  Just to be clear, we’re talking here about exposing inhibitors to good faith partnering in conducting sound business. Anything that moves business forward is not necessarily appropriate – your organization’s ethics and good legal standing are assumed to be in place.

(Not Just) Another Team

So, to help us remain within a proactive, forward thinking, and positive posture, we’re going to lay the groundwork for a qualified partnership between IT and Business. In short, we’re going to create a team.

We’re not just creating another team – we’re going to create a special team in crafting and maintaining the Weave: the team. This team will have as its prime goal the “perfect storm” weave of People, Policy and Process when crafting, steering, and delivering success for your business-technology investment. We’re going to need some rules for the team. We’re going to define the structure and means for interaction by members within the team. And, we’ll show how best to communicate the team’s concerns, conclusions, and recommendations to other management – for sanction, sponsorship, and delegated action in achieving results.

It’s amazing how many organizations make ill-informed decisions. Whether they leave out major business players that have a stake in the decision, or build a business solution independent of the most reliable and effective “technical mesh” to business, this poor decision making process is costly: in terms of budget, morale, productivity and, increasingly, security. Exacerbating the problem is a common reliance on poor, even ad hoc, communications to the organization itself regarding important central, core, business changes.

It’s also confounding that IT frequently finds itself on the coattails of the decision-making process, often being the recipient of an approved “solution” with orders to “make it happen.” Once IT is in the game, IT is frequently the unhappy participant who discovers all the other unsurveyed entities that have a shared interest in the change, and who now have major, legitimate, and sometimes competing concerns. None of this is good. All of this is avoidable.

In order to collaborate effectively, IT and Business must first communicate. In order to communicate effectively, there needs to be an identified group of qualified “communicators” – people who will help to identify, plan, and support change in a knowledgeable fashion. Do not waste time by putting unqualified persons on this team, such as those who do not appreciate policy and business objectives; who may not understand process; or those who do not utilize technology well (or who even may have an adversarial relationship with technology). Do not waste time replicating some other dysfunctional team, or teams, in your organization.

The participants must come from those parts of the organization that effectively manage business and manage IT. Individuals from both areas must understand the means by which business is conducted – these are the middle and upper middle managers, and as necessary those visionaries and planners who are identifying emerging business and practices. That is, those privy to the organization’s direction: they who can bring timely notification to the group of new business directions, emerging requirements, and technical developments – with the sanction of the necessary governance and senior executive management. This group will become that special team, and we’ll call this team the Business Implementation Team (BiT). You can call it what you wish, of course, but here we’ll refer to it as BiT.

The Business Implementation Team (BIT)

The creation and successful launch of the BiT team will require your ability to sell the concept to your supervision: your boss, his or her boss, and any other necessary approval authorities, and subsequently, you must sell the concept to the other managers  and directors in the organization. If your organization already has some sort of regularized or formal meeting between IT and Business that is successful, you are largely set, and can glean from this discussion those things that will enhance your team. If, however, you don’t have something like BiT, or if you have a somewhat dysfunctional or poorly defined version of BiT, then you’ll want to launch a newly defined team and meeting to fill the void in the case of the former, or to emplace an effective table in the case of the latter.

The BiT team provides a forum for interaction by IT and Business. The participants, schedule, and agenda flexes according to many things: business cycles, budget cycles, periods and locations of heavy implementation, periods of relative inactivity. Ideas can be debuted and discussed in the BiT forum: new, upcoming business postures can be exposed for discussion and planning; a business-delegate can impart desires from a governance committee; IT’s supervision can sit in when desired or necessary, exposing the organization’s leaders to new technology planning and impact, or announcing major, upcoming changes that require Business’ involvement. This is where business leaders can effectively expose department needs and solicit ideas. As necessary, other staff members with specific job functions and specialized job knowledge can participate when necessary. Solutions partners, in the form of vendors or contractors, should be invited to participate.

For example, during major software implementations, the BiT team would comprise those department heads affected by the new software. During budget planning, the BiT team would want to pull in all major department heads to discuss common needs. Changes to the web or e-Commerce would involve the relevant people. In these examples, all proposed needs should be identified – vetting them can ordinarily transpire in BiT. However, there will be times where sensitive vetting takes place later between the IT leader and her supervision, and in-turn the necessary senior-most Business individuals.

Depending on the organization, the BiT team may meet quarterly, it could be monthly, sometimes weekly, and it will meet off-schedule sometimes. The schedule and participants will be determined by the needs. Generally, it should be IT’s lead to make these determinations, as the BiT team should be seen as an IT-hosted and lead endeavor in service to business. The agenda should be assembled by IT, with input from Business. However, at times and as necessary, anyone on the team can suggest a meeting and agenda.

Selling BIT

Hopefully IT can see the need and utility for the BiT team – but if one doesn’t exist in your organization, it’s likely because Business has not understood the need for one. How to sell it to Business? A sponsor – a believer – needs to debut the idea with its direct reporting authority first. A Business and an IT person can pair and best sell BiT to an immediate authority, who will in-turn sell it to the highest possible authority for sanction at the very top. You can print this blog item and hand it to someone with a request to read.

Perhaps the biggest selling point to BiT is that it is, in addition to other things, a mindset. The BiT team will be about moving business forward. BiT will be proactive, prudent, positive and empowered. A successful sell, launch and exercise of a BiT team in your organization will not only make the managing of business better, it will change your organization’s culture. We can predict this because we are going to do something with the BIT team that is unusual for many organizations. We are going to make it effective, efficient, and accountable – collectively, the team will account, and the individuals on the team will account.

We are going to ask for and engage everyone’s best game. We’re going to create a point of pride – and we’re going to stamp this team with excellence. People are going to be proud of what this team produces, and people are going to hold their membership on this team in high regard. This is largely why, if you have a similar but less effective team in place now, you must sweep it away with BiT. BiT will have a discipline in attitude, subtle yet strong, that will sway the most negative players into a zone of increased positivity. Why? Because they will be required to engage that way when they participate on this team. That requirement will be delivered and backed by a power greater than the IT leader or any laterally situated Business leaders – that’s for certain:

As we stated, the sale of the BiT concept must be made at the highest possible level, and you must receive sanction there. Once you make that sale, you will leverage your sale and explanation of the BiT team to the other players by having it’s debut and related importance communicated by that power. We are going to have the team’s culture defined and sanctioned by the level of power in your organization that can require adherence to a set of principles, and dedication to good faith efforts. Thus, we create a zone within your organization’s culture. It may be an island at first, or it may fit your organization’s current culture reasonable well, but regardless its influence will be felt – and in more ways than one.

Change: An Easy “Sell” – a Difficult Buy?

We can smooth the sale for BiT by defining and selling the benefits of effective change management – just as importantly, we expose the rising risk and rising cost of ineffective change management - in an overall world environment of accelerating change.

We can call change an easy “sell” because, if you think about it, you’re going to “buy” some kind of change whether you plan to or not. Change is a default” setting – you can’t uncheck that box and remain static – in any endeavor. You’re going to acquire change no matter what position you’re in, and you’ll either change as a reaction to other changes, or you’ll lead your necessary changes. Since the world at large is going to “force” you to “buy” changes, you want to buy (to identify, lead, and emplace) the best changes – you don’t want any difficult buys. You must get into a position to leverage that default change dynamic to your advantage.

It is important to understand the environment that carries change to its successful destination. We can have the best BiT team in the world, identifying all necessary and correct change – but what happens if even prudent, appropriately sized, change is improperly managed? What if we attempt to change too fast? What if some elements of the organization aren’t ready?

We need a close interaction of Technology and Business within our Weave to ensure a basic understanding from both directions in defining, tracking and managing change. Ultimately, BiT involves the whole of the organization through its influence.