Author: JP

I probably never grew up. I love comedies, even slapstick. I can watch humorous stuff till the cows come home.

And I detest horror. I must have been 20 when I walked out of Damien Omen II and I’ve never been back. Not once. I am not interested in paying money for such an experience.

And yet. I found myself spellbound watching this massacre. And felt that God was in His Heaven and all was well with the world when I watched this response. Yup, some see evolution when they see such videos. I see a divine Creator.

…..and still somehow it’s cloud illusions I recall….
…..I really don’t know clouds at all….

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Now playing: Joni Mitchell – Both Sides Now
via FoxyTunes

One of my favourite songs from one of my favourite musicians. I could listen to Joni reading a telephone directory. I would probably pay for it. In fact, if hers was the voice I heard when waiting in one of those interminable call queues, I’d probably be less stressed. I wonder…..

But enough of that. Talk like that will bring on clouds of frustration.

Let me talk about clouds of a different sort: the ones we use to visualise collections and populations and frequency and popularity. You’re bound to have seen them, they’ve been used for a variety of things ranging from tags to search terms to authors.

So far, I’ve seen clouds used for relatively discrete lists, both manual as well as automatic. Where they’ve been automatic, they’ve tended to scrape the contents of a particular data item within a database, such as “author’s name” in a book collection.

Sam Lawrence of Jive Software originally alerted me to IBM’s excellent manyeyes a little while ago, following on from something I’d tweeted re visualisation tools. And so I went there and took a look, and liked what I saw. More recently, as I was following up on something at that site, I was a little taken aback to find myself looking at this:

Whoops. Not what I was expecting, but interesting. And then today I was alerted to the fact that he’d just written this story; all I can say is that Sam’s a brave man. He’s not the first to call me names, and “thought leader” is pretty good as names go….but…. to boil me down to 10 words? In two words, im-possible, to quote a different Sam :-). Take a look at the results, they’re interesting. Chris Brogan also comments on Sam’s post.

And it got me thinking. Wouldn’t it be useful to display the stocks being traded as a cloud rather than just as a ticker feed? Volume would be depicted by the size of the “word”, in this case the name or symbol of the stock. You could use colour and font and style to add further meaning, while still retaining the cloud concept.

What intrigues me further is the more general application of what Sam (thanks, Sam! And say hi to Dawn.) showed us using manyeyes. Applications that get us involved in serious knowledge management; applications like showing the frequency of words in corporate e-mail on a given day, compared against similar word clouds for IM and blog and wiki in the same enterprise. All for the same day. Applications like showing how the frequency of words used in Powerpoint changed over time, to see if the “message” of change was being embedded in corporate-speak. [I shall resist the temptation to say that fourteen times, or however many times it takes….]

When things become digital, many things become possible. When markets become digital, many more things become possible, as my erstwhile colleague Sean keeps reminding me. Sean, who was probably born not that far from where Roberta Joan Anderson was born, albeit a few years later.

Talking about Joni Mitchell, I just love this project of hers: “The Annotated Joni Mitchell” Glossary Project
Just look at what she has to say: “Who cares what I mean? What does it mean to you?” It means a lot to me, especially when she comes up with words like…..

Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes true
I’ve looked at love that way…..

You may have noticed that I like quoting what Howard Schneiderman said, many years ago,  while he was at Monsanto, reproduced below. (I’ve referred to the quote thrice before, over the years):

When you turn down a request for funding an R&D project, you are right 90% of the time. That’s a far higher rate of decision accuracy than you get anywhere else, so you do it.

And that’s fine. Except for the 10% of the time you’re wrong. When you’re wrong, you lose the company.

I was reminded of the quotation while reading Sean Park’s recent post on Boardroom IT, itself triggered by an article in FT Digital Business by Ade McCormack.

McCormack asserts that technology management is a board issue, and cites three reasons why IT management “fails to stem from the boardroom”:

• the “tech-free” careers of many of today’s business leaders
• the feeling, in many IT departments, that “users” should not interfere in IT decisions
• the power of the “vendor” in undermining the relationship between board and function

He then goes on to recommend five steps to “move technology management into the boardroom”:

• Investing in boardroom development to ensure that the board grasp the strategic importance of IT
• Ensuring that the “IT function” has strong management
• Demonstrating that top technologists are valued
• Insisting that best practice is normal
• Considering outsourcing, but giving the function first refusal

Sean, while endorsing what Ade has to say, goes further. He indicates that he only invests in companies where the board demonstrates its understanding of the strategic importance of IT.

There are some important points being made here, and I’d like to add my sideways-on view:

1. It’s about access. I am less concerned about whether the CIO is on the board or not, what matters is that the CIO has access to the boardroom. Easy access. And one way of measuring access is the number of times that IT topics make the board’s agenda. I regularly hear about companies with CIOs on the board which would not meet Sean’s criteria. Putting a CIO on the board is a bit like joining a gym. Value is only obtained when you exercise.

2. It’s not about measurement, it’s about outcomes. Boards need to know where the company is going, and the role that technology must play in getting the company there. Too often boards abdicate that responsibility and seek to govern via ratios. That’s a bit like managing a war by looking at the body counts on either side. If IT is a construction industry it should be run like one, with fixed prices and penalties for change or delay. If IT is an investment business it should be run like one, with clear expected returns and the willingness to divest when required. If IT is a sales and marketing business, then IT estimates and forecasts would be expected to have the same level of confidence as sales forecasts, tightening over time. The trouble is, the word “project” covers all these types: construction, investment, sales/marketing, with different behaviours and expectations. This issue is made worse by the current “battle of professions”, particularly between finance and IT.

3.  This time it’s personal. Enterprise 1.0 was an easy ride for most boards in this respect: the understanding of the strategic value of IT was consistent across the boards of different companies: consistently low, that is. And as a result, the failure to derive value from IT was common and consistent. Now, with Enterprise 2.0, the rules have changed. As Andrew McAfee has noted a number of times, what Enterprise 2.0 does is to accelerate a company’s capacity to differentiate, so the gap between winners and losers has increased sharply more recently. IMO one of the reasons for this acceleration is the entry of Generation M into the workplace. Today is about acceleration, tomorrow, as more of that generation gains employment, we’re going to see ballistic growth in that difference.

Too often we argue about the strategic value of IT, and allow that argument to descend into measurement farce. As we continue to move into a digital age, understanding the strategic value of IT is now “table stakes”.

What matters is understanding what’s at stake. It’s called the company.