PEG - Latest Comments

Re: The new strategic paradigm

Hayder M. Abood — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:51:25 -0000

Maybe you need to change "growth" in "Leads to renewal and growth" to "development"?

Re: The New Instability for AU$15 the the price of a coffee

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 02:04:25 -0000

There's an extract in Scrib, which you can see on the book's web site (http://thenewinstability.co...

Re: The New Instability for AU$15 the the price of a coffee

Venkataraman — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 21:27:00 -0000

Hey Peter, Have you uploaded any excerpts from the book? I would love to check the book out and review it in my blog?

Re: You don’t need a social media strategy

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:41:45 -0000

I think we're agreeing here. The role you're describing in your second point is really a solid communication strategist, rather than a social media expert. Just as a ‘Social Media Guru’ can be guilty of ignoring conventional media, an old school communication / marketing expert can be dogmatic in their approach and ignore the fact that while social media is the same (it is, after all, ‘just another communication tool’) it is also different.

There's will always be a need for the consulting services of a a smart, well informed communication strategist to help organisations sort out who to engage with their customers/audience. The trick is to find one that is not obsessed with the shiny new toy, and who also acknowledges that the new toy has a role to play.

Re: You don’t need a social media strategy

Venkataraman — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 03:19:42 -0000

Excellent Post Peter. I have to agree and disagree on few of your points. Disclosure: I'll try to be as objective on this as I can as my day job involves creating Social Media strategy.
Two points:
1) While I totally agree with your point that companies need communication strategy in which social media is a part of the mix, from what I ve seen, companies are unable to understand the difference between communication and broadcast. They look to social media more as a broadcast medium. Which is why they are often eager to outsource social media to an agency. They don't seem to understand the perils of outsourcing managing of relationships to some agency who has no clue over the vision of the firm. They think engagement means updating statuses in all these social networks. They are yet to figure out what does engagement really mean.
2) We often tend to think of social media as a tool as it is considered as another enterprise software tool. Companies who have taken social media very seriously understand that it is an infrastructure which offers space for communication to happen amongst diverse stake holders. The implications of this shift from tools to infrastructure is critical as it changes the way we measure the value of these investments. If we perceive social media as a tool, we can very well define the usage of tool based on our business objectives. The truth is that we can decide before hand how social media will be used by the organization. It is emergent. Companies can't simply cut-paste those ready-made objectives and use-cases offered so generously all over by social media gurus and plug them in their organization. Unless companies are ready to experiment with these initiatives with a keen eye to sense how it is being used and what really works, they cant succeed in these initiatives

As this space evolves, they might figure all this out by themselves. Until this happens, there is work cut out for social media strategist!

Re: You’re strategy is junk

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 07:34:55 -0000

As always, it's what you do and not the tools you use. If you want a different outcome then you – personally – need to do something different this time around. Simply adopting a new fangled tool is not enough. It might help, but if you don't change then you can't expect the result to be any different.

Re: What is the future of IT in business?

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:53:13 -0000

Glad you like the blog; I sometimes wonder if it's a bunch of ramblings, so it's good to here that people are finding it useful.

My current thoughts are for something face-to-face here in Melbourne, so whether or not that works for you depends on where you are. There are some thoughts on something online, but that's a bit further down the road, though I'll be posting updates here on the blog so it should be easy to keep an eye on.

Re: What is the future of IT in business?

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 04:49:09 -0000

It has been a while, hasn't it. I think that I'm with you, less interested in grand visions for future IT departments than I am in what pragmetic steps we can take today. Projects are a distraction, driven by the fact that many folk have hook their careers to the delivery of a stream of ever larger projects. I'm hoping that a strong problem focus, and the inclusion of stakeholders outside of the usual IT department, will go a long way to overcoming this.

Re: What is the future of IT in business?

Venkataraman — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 01:14:50 -0000

Hi..Been following your blog passively for a while. I have been closely working in the domain of Social Business for a while. I have always liked your objective assessment of the emerging technologies, something very rarely seen amidst evangelists and tech gurus. Would be eager to join the forum and participate in the discussions.

Re: What is the future of IT in business?

Dave Wright — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 21:13:18 -0000

first of all, hello, been 10 years since the ivory tower... my thoughts are not necessarily about what is to come --- that is tough to predict let alone leverage --- but how to escape the realities of IT today-- big backlogs, too many projects fighting for limited resources, conflicting strategies of business units, "my project is number 1, forget everything else..."... hard to move forward when the past is dragging you back... we need to know not just where to get to, but how to take the first steps...

Re: You’re strategy is junk

Johan J. — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:29:12 -0000

Hi Ric,
I wouldn't be too sure. Many thoughts and processes have been thought over the last years. Many of those are 'older' or more widely known than Design Thinking. Maybe they couldn't solve everything that Design Thinking possibly could. But unless you work for the top 1% companies in the world, you still have problems which can be solved 'the old way'.
So why haven't they been solved yet? The tools are available. I have to agree with the blog, these are just tools in the hands of the people, steered by a "greater good" like culture.

Business world believes too much in it's own advertisement. "You don't exercise enough?" "This product will fix this for you" => "problem solved!". The question should be "why haven't you exercised" and "what will you do about this today?"

BTW: A tool against a culture? Good luck with that! Unless the culture has already a built-in check "this is who we want to be" and Design Thinking will help you get there. If not, no tool in the world will be able to shape this. Only leadership :)

Re: You’re strategy is junk

terracerulean — Mon, 07 May 2012 00:26:59 -0000

I like the thinking here. I agree with the thinking here.

I found the choice of 'Design Thinking' as an exemplar of the next-big-thing a bit discomforting - because it is something I have been getting a bit excited about.

But on reflection I still agree. My interest in Design Thinking is specifically about whether it has the potential to break up very strongly established cultural norms (in the IT strategy and governance area in which I work) and foster new ways of thinking and working.

I think it might - but I accept it may or may not be a valid hypothesis.

I vividly recall being at an in-house town-hall meeting and looking around at my 500 plus colleagues. "What we can do in the next five years is most determined by what the people in this room are capable of conceiving and committing to."

And of course by whether they can work together.

Re: We saw the future, and there wasn’t an e-wallet to be found

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:35:21 -0000

I'm not privy to Paypal's reasoning behind backing out of NFC, but it does seem to be part of an overall shift of focus by them away from the till. You're only interested in NFC if you think PoS is the future of payments.

Re: We saw the future, and there wasn’t an e-wallet to be found

Walid Koleilat — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:58:14 -0000

Hi Peter:

Is this why Paypal dropped NFC?

Re: We saw the future, and there wasn’t an e-wallet to be found

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:48:35 -0000

My argument was against NFC based payments – with their transactional backends along with all the other infrastructure they require – not NFC (or RFID, if you prefer). NFC payments are touted as the killer app for NFC, which is doubtful.

Swapping NFC for barcodes is an orthogonal issue, though I expect a lot of little NFC enabled (but non-payment) apps to pop up once the NFC readers are out there.

Re: We saw the future, and there wasn’t an e-wallet to be found

Jordann Gross — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:17:28 -0000

The solution to the problem you state here could still be the same technology; NFC (or RFID).
Imagine the scenario when this technology gets mainstream (and thus becomes more and more affordable) and retailers replace barcodes with NFC/RFID tags. This means one could fill up his bags with products and at the cashier just scan the bags and wave his phone. Voila!
So in the end the technology still brings us what it is promosing; a seemless shopping experience. Focussing on just the payment part and saying that won't bring us much good, isn't the full story IMHO. :)
Even shop comparison will be faster by scanning the tags instead of using the camera.

Re: Is Salesforce.com already legacy IT?

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:26:10 -0000

Yep, most companies are neither good enough to be cheap, nor good enough to be valuable, and end up just muddling along in the middle. Unfortunately the middle of the market is dying.

Re: Is Salesforce.com already legacy IT?

Will Kriski, M.Sc. — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:57:19 -0000

As an IT contractor, it never fails to astound me that companies continue to do IT projects themselves when it's not their core business. They rarely have the competency and are often reinventing the wheel (same features as many other companies). It seems to be based on tradition but also control and security. Most clients also think they have custom requirements.

Re: Have we reached peak SI

Will Kriski, M.Sc. — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 09:00:24 -0000

Interesting big-picture thinking. I've always liked the idea of an outsourced external document exchange hub. I'm an integration contractor (webMethods) and always wondered why clients decide to have a large IT department and 'reinvent the wheel', especially since they don't usually have the expertise. Maybe it's because they like control or they think they have custom requirements that won't fit a generic SaaS solution. I don't see things changing that soon - but these skillsets would probably lead to us moving to these type of SaaS companies. Also BPM is just getting started in some companies (companies I've worked for are just starting to contemplate doing it) and they are having to upgrade to webMethods 8+.

Re: BPM over promised and under delivered

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:37:14 -0000

It's interesting how there's very few new ideas in the world, the real challenge is in finding ideas who's time has come. My favourite take is in Timothy Taylor's book "The Artificial Ape: How technology created humans, Palgrave Macmillan" where he talks about how different environments drive society to take on different shapes, and develop different approaches to technology. His book even triggered a blog post "The north-south divide"*.

And glad you liked the post!

PEG

Re: BPM over promised and under delivered

KDS — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 13:48:18 -0000

Peter,

This post is "spot on". The goal of Taylorism is to find the "one best way to do something" as if we could control the business environment in such a way that there would be enough uniformity across markets and from day to day, to ensure that what is best today would remain so tomorrow. Taylorism works for very simple tasks in a very controlled environment (like a factory).

http://social-biz.org/2011/...

It is interesting that the reaction against the reductionism in the workplace is not new. Margaret Wheatley wrote a wonderful book “Leadership and the New Science” more than 10 years ago, and said this:“Why would we stay locked in our belief that there is one right way to do something, or one correct interpretation to a situation, when the universe demands diversity and thrives on a plurality of meaning?”

She was working together with Fritjof Kapra who wrote about similar things in his book "The Web Of Life" published in 1996.

If you look at the way an ecosystem works, you find that there are many overlapping, and seemingly redundant ways to do essentially the same thing. While this may seem like waste to a reductionist, but the actual effect of this is that the ecosystem is remarkably resilient and stable in the face of changing conditions. Real-life organizations are the same way: there is overlapping functionality. Our job, however, is NOT to eliminate that, because the elimination would lead to fragility.

Good post, look forward to more in this same line.
-Keith Swenson
http://MasteringTheUnpredic...

Re: How should we measure out people?

Leland — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:07:55 -0000

I would just like to add, for any readers interested in following up with Peter's main points here, a great reading resource would be "Peopleware". It very strongly supports the position that was taken here .

Thanks for the article Peter. :)

Re: World of Warcraft in the workplace

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:24:08 -0000

From Eddie Short on Facebook:

It is of course a great concept, but more people are lured to Farmville and Mafia Wars etc. What does that tell us...

Re: Working in Hollywood

Peter Evans-Greenwood — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:35:25 -0000

Bug in the diagram which I'll fix when I get the moment. As the text says, I'm talking about aligning accountability.

Re: Working in Hollywood

david_IT — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 01:11:50 -0000

Unfortunately you can't outsource accountability as you depict in the external focus raci. The executive and board are still accountable. This is the difference between management and governance (Peterson 2003 Information strategies and tactics for information technology governance). Management can be outsourced but governance and accountability cannot. Parallels can be drawn with IT within organizations - it's just not good enough these days for the board and executives to not be accountable for the performance of IT - you just can't leave it to IT and hope for the best (AS 38500:2010 Corporate Governance of IT).