p>

The principle describes the effect of people who join an organisation (as a cucumber in the analogy) full of enthusiasm, only to find over time they become just another pickle in the same jar.

I’m sure you have all heard the phrase “that’s how it’s always been done!” – the people saying that are sadly pickled.  How then, when we introduce a new technology like SharePoint, do we expect to change the way people work?  When you have a Jar full of pickles!

As consultants in this regards we have an advantage,  we join your company and look to effect change, we can see where things are difficult and where there can be improvement. If changing the culture of an organisation was easy and just installing SharePoint meant the company would overnight become more social, more connected and collaborative, we wouldn’t have a lot to do.

How do you avoid becoming pickled, how can you fight the brine?

1 – 21Shift Model

Like you we need help fighting the brine, for this we developed the 21Shift model to keep things focused when they seem to be getting squishy.

2 – Serious Games

Bring fun and excitement into the company, use serious games to help people innovate and see what is really important.

3 – Don’t get distracted by the technology

Yes you need the technology to work, but let the geeks deal with it you have more important things to consider.  Stay out of the technology and focus on changing the way people work all day every day.

4 – Act like a newbie – be the cucumber

Don’t be afraid to ask “Why?”  Act like a beginner, ask the stupid and obvious questions, wonder at the possibilities.

5 – Be part to the community

Become a part of the SharePoint community (in the UK – SUGUK ), see what others are doing, open yourself up to learning from others.  Make it part of your job to attend conferences and user groups. Get out of the Jar regulary to see whats really happening.

Start today and avoid becoming pickled.

This post was inspired by the gapingvoid Jar and the pickled principle post by Eric Laramée

Recommended full screen – as it’s a slient movie you may want to read the words

The challenge with folders is that they only reflect one persons idea of how things should be organised…. Red, Green or Blue anyone?

If you’ve

• struggled to get business engaged in what SharePoint means to them
• felt down at the idea of another meeting talking through a big requirements
  document
• want to try something different, fun and innovative

Take a look at the slide deck below, then get in touch with 21apps who can
help train you in the ways of Innovation Games® or come and run the
games for you.

“..it was the most enlightening two days training i’ve ever been on..”

“A refreshingly holistic view of governance and IA that strongly links project success to understanding, and strategy rather than technology. Easily one of the best courses I’ve been to and has left me wanting more!”

“A first class world tour of how to fix the pain from thousands of failed projects”

You can find out more about the course content here: http://www.spgovia.com/

You have two venues to choose from this October:

• Netherlands, Utrecht – SharePoint 2010 Governance and Information Architecture Master Class (Utrecht, Netherlands)
• United Kingdom, London – SharePoint 2010 Governance & Information Architecture Master Class (London, UK)

Early bird places have nearly all gone so register ASAP!

This post is a review of the findings from the excellent  Harvey Nash’s CIO Survey 2011 and in particular an analysis of where SharePoint (and 21apps broader thinking) fit with what CIO’s are thinking currently.

Should SharePoint Register on CIO’s ‘Give a Crap-o-Meter’?

Should the 21apps approach to SharePoint Projects Register on CIO’s ‘Give a Crap-o-Meter’?

What do you think?

The Executive Summary quotes:

Almost three-quarters believe that if they don’t innovate and embrace new technology their company will loose market share

So there is a clear recognition that change is needed in order to survive and thrive in the current and predicted future economic climates.

The executive summary also states:

CEOs are looking to their CIO and the technology team to deliver both internal and externally focused technology innovation to help their organisation out manoeuvre the competition and win the future.

So where’s the alignment, whats the opportunity, what are our CIO’s stressing about that we can facilitate a resolution to? Let’s un-pick Harvey Nash’s CIO Survey 2011 and see…

Executive Summary
We will skip the commentary and analysis around CIO’s pay – There’s nothing that SharePoint or 21apps can do to influence pay-deals or whether the CIO sit’s on operation/exec board, well not yet anyway. Although thinking about it a switched-on CIO that adopts some of our approaches like goal alignment, Innovation Games(c) etc may warrant such things…

The report states that CIO’s priorities, their day-to-day to-do list, includes items such as:

• Controlling Costs – Although still a high priority, it’s less of a ‘red light’ concern for most CIO’s, a clear indication that IT spending (or at least the appetite) is on the up, so we can expect a continued surge of SharePoint projects being initiated, but…
• Maximising Efficiencies -Its still a key part of the CIO’s focus, so we expect an increased focus on business justification, business cases and goal alignment between technology [SharePoint] and the organisational strategy and vision. This is one key area where 21apps differentiates from our competitors as we are predominantly focussed on supporting organisations in this area and our 21shift model is a great example of this alignment work
• Security -Interestingly this area of concern and focus for most CIO’s was more aligned with the internal risks (13% feel at risk from internal breaches versus 7% feeling at risk of external threat) and equates to an increased focus on Information Governance (See our Governance 3.0 blog post and the SamePage Alliance Governance & IA Master Class)
• Driving Revenue Growth -For CIO’s over a third of respondents see this as a priority, translating to an increase in focus of where technology (such as SharePoint and Office 365) can play it’s part in being aligned to organisational goals and facilitating increases in market share, profit and new product development.
• Enabling Business Change -Just under half of CIO’s saw that technology platforms were an integral part of facilitating or accelerating business change, bearing significant weight to the 21apps view that technology has to be aligned to business goals and deliver measurable business value. Remember in previous posts and presentations we’ve clearly stated that “SharePoint projects are People projects”!

“…ensuring that sufficient technology capacity and flexibility exist to enable the organisation to pursue growth.”

[Bonus] Here’s a thought, how cool would it be for an organisation to have this ‘CIO to-do-list’ captured and shared on SharePoint on the CIO’s profile page perhaps. Surely that’s a positive move towards organisational transparency and business user engagement?

There’s an interesting skew between innovation and utility across different sectors the report deduces. However it is clear that there is a clear and present focus on both whatever sector you are in. What the report does state, and this applies to both technology platforms such as SharePoint and Office 365 and related techniques, such as facilitation, agile and Innovation Games, is that there is:

“…the opportunity to adopt disruptive technologies and an increasing dependence on partners operating in a multi-source environment (who can drive innovation activity) present many opportunities for all CIOs to experiment with innovation tools”

What does this mean, clearly it’s a call to action for more organisations to drive business value and strategic advantage with niche, innovative organisations like 21apps and our partners!

Perception of IT
This section begins by stating a goal of the CEO:

“Most CEOs are looking to help drive business success through timely information provision and innovation”

OK well to me that sounds like something a CIO could really “get out of bed” for and deliver using SharePoint or Office 365 perhaps as the key facilitating platform in the achievement of that goal?

A really interesting perspective derived from the reports findings is that CIOs are more conservative about IT than CEO’s! In fact the report goes onto say:

“They know IT has high business importance but are less convinced of its ability to create new value, perhaps held back by (amongst other things) their focus on delivering legacy services to customers internal to their organisation”

OK that’s going to be a challenging hurdle to get over!

It feels as though these CIOs are failing (or struggling) to align the technology to their business goals, perhaps there are stakeholder challenges, a lack of understanding around how technology can support and align to the business goals? Either way it seems a fresh approach is required, perhaps they should consider more emphasis on goal alignment techniques, facilitation workshops or Innovation Games in order to progress IT from a utility focus to innovation and real measurable business outcomes?

This also reminds me somewhat of the Marshall Model of Organisation Evolution it seems like these CIOs are clearly in the ‘Analytic zone’ and are struggling to see how they can evolve their organisation into a more Synergistic company. Perhaps something that organisations like 21apps, with a fresh vision on technology projects and the way people ‘do work’ need to be engaged to drive these organisations through their ‘pain barrier’?

Global Results
Unsurprisingly there is significant discussion and comment in the report around the economic climate. Budgets on the most part have not seen any significant growth over the last few years, however there does seem to be a shift in mind-set from the CIO community.

What is appearing is two clearly very different CIO mind-sets:

“One group is being given budget and resources to pursue growth, directly engaged with the business and customers”

“..a second tier seems to have maintained a recession mentality, focused on cost saving and internal efficiency drives”

Despite the two divergent mind-sets, it is also clear that CIOs are being asked to do more with less, but that’s not that surprising I’m sure. In my opinion it’s those organisations led by CIOs in the first group that will prosper and be positioned to take most advantage of a recovering financial situation.

The top 1o issues that CIOs are looking for Technology to address makes interesting reading, some points I’d like to highlight are:

• 67% of CIOs are expecting Cost Savings
• 63% of CIOs are looking to improve business processes
• 44% of CIOs are looking at enabling business change
• 29% of CIOs are looking at Better engagement with customers/prospects

I was personally disappointed that a higher proportion of CIOs weren’t looking to technology to take the business forward, rather they were looking for less innovative, day-by-day benefits. This perhaps is highlighted further in this statement from the report:

“When asked if “IT helps shape business goals” only a slight majority (52 per cent) agreed…”

This strike me as being a severe deficiency and one that goal alignment, closer business engagement and looking at technology projects through the business lens (as per the 21apps approach) would help lift these figures and benefit the organisation all round.

There are some fascinating insights into the top skills demands for 2011 and beyond within the report. 6 out of the 12 skills areas listed are ‘business facing’ which is great news for organisations like 21apps who are focussed on delivering these nice, in-demand business aligned technology skills (go on get us engaged today, we can make a difference!). I’ll just highlight the key skills that really stood out for me in this report, you have a think about your technology projects, especially in the SharePoint world and see if this applies, is this where your organisations skill set is lacking?

• #1 Business Analysis (35%)
• #3 Project Management (30%)
• #5 Change Management (22%)
• #6 Business Relationship Management (21%)

Globally, there is also a high proportion of CIOs looking at flexible labour rather than relying totally on in-house capabilities, 42% of CIOs expect their reliance on external skills to increase in the immediate future.

Innovation was a regularly used buzz word in the report, with a definite increase in CIOs focus on activities in the innovation space.

“over two-thirds of global CIOs (67 per cent) foresee great potential in technology innovation capacity”

One key area that is gaining interest is in using innovation to enhance the transparency for a new age of regulation and austerity and over half of global CIOs (56 per cent) now innovate with an external, market orientated, focus. This must mean a fantastic opportunity for initiatives such as Innovation Games(c)?

In the adoption of innovation activities, what was quite surprising to me was that top of the list was areas such as “Private Cloud Services” and “Mobile” , but “Social Networking” and “Public Cloud Services” were at the bottom of the league table, with most CIOs having a watching brief on these areas but not a great deal of active engagement or delivery. Significantly for the world of Office 365, ”Public Cloud Services” had even been discounted by almost one in five global CIOs (17 per cent)… That’s some mountain of adoption to climb!

Harvey Nash Report Conclusions
The key takeaways highlighted by the authors of the report are summarised as follows:

• When the CIOs speak, people listen
• Operational duties remain the prime focus
• Innovation versus utility is still a hot topic with diverse opinions
• Sourcing of skills is changing (See Hybrid Organisation research by Microsoft)

Finally, back to the original question. Now what do you think:

Should SharePoint Register on CIO’s ‘Give a Crap-o-Meter’?

Should the 21apps approach to SharePoint Projects Register on CIO’s ‘Give a Crap-o-Meter’?

Let us know what your experience, views and comments are!

This retreat, organised by Paul Beck, is looking at two areas LINQ to SharePoint and InfoPath.

The other brilliant thing about SharePoint Retreats is they are completely free to attend community events – this does mean that the places even on a Saturday get filled very quickly.

For more information on the event and to register visit the Eventbright listing.

Happy SPRetreating

Don’t delay get signed up now.. http://spretreatlondon11.eventbrite.com/

The feedback from the course was fantastic:

“This course has been the most insightful two days of my SharePoint career”

“Easily one of the best courses I’ve been to and has left me wanting more!”

“Had a great couple of days at #SPIAUK loving IBIS”

“The content covered was about the things technically focussed peeps miss..”

and we are looking foreward to running it again, in fact it is going to take place in only a few weeks time Monday 21st and Tuesday 22nd February 2011.

There are still a few spaces left and if you user the – I missed the announcement, am I “Too Late” discount code you get a massive 15% discount.

The Master Class

Most people understand that deploying SharePoint is much more than getting it installed. Despite this, current SharePoint governance documentation abounds in service delivery aspects. However, just because your system is rock solid, stable, well documented and governed through good process, there is absolutely no guarantee of success. Similarly, if Information Architecture for SharePoint was as easy as putting together lists, libraries and metadata the right way, then why doesn’t Microsoft publish the obvious best practices?

In fact, the secret to a successful SharePoint project is an area that the governance documentation barely touches.
This master class pinpoints the critical success factors for SharePoint governance and Information Architecture and rectifies this blind spot. Based upon content provided by Paul Culmsee (Seven Sigma) which takes an ironic and subversive take on how SharePoint governance really works within organisations, while presenting a model and the tools necessary to get it right.

Drawing on inspiration from many diverse sources, disciplines and case studies, Paul Culmsee has distilled in this Master Class the “what” and “how” of governance down to a simple and accessible, yet rigorous and comprehensive set of tools and methods, that organisations large and small can utilise to achieve the level of commitment required to see SharePoint become successful.

In this Master Class we aim to articulate :

• Present SharePoint governance and Information Architecture in a new light – focus on the “blind spots” where the current published material is inadequate
• Cover lessons learned from Paul’s non IT work as a facilitator and sensemaker in complex large scale projects
• Examine the latest trends in the information landscape for industry and government and review studies that inform governance and Information Architecture efforts

• Present an alternative approach to business-as-usual SharePoint governance planning that focuses on real collaboration
• Provide quality information that is rigorous yet accessible, entertaining and interesting

Master class outcomes:

• Understand the SharePoint governance lens beyond an IT service delivery focus
• Develop your ‘wicked problem’ radar and apply appropriate governance practices, tools and techniques accordingly
• Learn how to align SharePoint projects to broad organisational goals, avoid chasing platitudes and ensure that the problem being solved is the right problem
• Learn how to account for cognitive bias and utilise tools and techniques that help stakeholders align to a common vision

• Understand the relationship between governance and assurance, why both are needed and how they affect innovation and user engagement
• Understand the underlying, often hidden forces of organisational chaos that underpins projects like SharePoint
• Understand the key challenges and opportunities that SharePoint presents for Information Architecture
• Learn how to document your information architecture
• Practical knowledge: Add lots more tools to your governance and IA toolkit!