I recently had a conversation with a group of IT leaders. We were talking about what good looks like, and I posed a simple question: “How do you know if you’re succeeding?” The room went quiet. I could see the wheels turning in their heads. They started talking about keeping the lights on, meeting deadlines, and managing budgets. All important […]
Today we are obsessed with productivity and it’s close cousin efficiency. Being a productivity expert is a booming business, indeed, some of my best friends are productivity experts. Every business I have ever worked with is obsessed with improving efficiency and productivity, doing more in the same or less time. I’m not immune from the pursuit of efficiency and have […]
I have done quite a bit of reading and thinking about remote work over the last few weeks. I approached my reading and thinking through questions that I wanted answered. Some of these are my own questions, but many arose from conversations with others including the Thriving Through Digital Group. If I had to summarise my number one take out […]
In the year 2000 agile was fairly universally agreed to mean being “able to move quickly and easily”. Then in February 2001 a group of 17 software developers got together and penned the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. On the surface of it the four values and twelve principles contained in the manifesto make good sense. What’s more a number […]
Another year gone, where does the time go? As the year draws to an end I find myself reflecting on the good, the bad and the ugly of the past 12 months and as I do so I reckon there are 6 key trends or issues that have set the context for 2021 and most likely will set the context […]
Traditionally technology has been used to automate and streamline business processes. This started with mainframe based solutions that automated payroll or certain accounting functions, spreadsheets that enhanced and improved analytical capabilities or MRP and ERP solutions that sought to automate end to end supply chain processes and in some cases attempted to create an integrated whole. What these solutions have […]
The trend is clear, more and more IT services are being delivered through as a service (XaaS) style offering. In a XaaS model all of the technical work is done by the XaaS provider rather than the corporate IT team. In addition most of the user support is being done by SMEs embedded within the business. These roles also often […]
The concept of a first team was developed by Patrick Lencioni and discussed in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. The idea is fairly simple, all executives (except perhaps the CEO) belong to two teams, the executive team that they are a member of and the functional team that they lead. The first team concept suggests that your […]
I think a lot about change. Being excellent at change is critical to our ability to deliver value from IT investments and in a broader sense, it’s critical to an organisation’s ability to transition from a traditional organisation to a digital organisation. Everybody knows this and organisations spend millions managing change. There are thousands of books and articles written by […]
In many organisations the lack of digital skills is seen as an issue of staff capability when in reality the lack of digital skills is often a leadership issue. Most of my conversations with executives about digital skills, or perhaps more precisely the lack of digital skills, go something like this (note this is deliberately over simplified and just a […]
*This article captured the key points of the Lean coffee discussion held on 21 May 2020. How do we accelerate to new business models while having to restructure? The issue: how do we accelerate our understanding of new business models while we are having to deal with the challenging operational concerns brought on by Covid-19. This was an imposed, […]
No one wants Covid-19 and there is very little in the way of a Covid silver lining but it just might be the best thing that’s happened to digital transformation in a long time! These are strange and unusual times as half the world is now in lock-down as we fight Covid-19. It has also been an extremely busy time […]
These are busy and somewhat scary times with COVID19 sweeping the planet and many organisations are trying to work out how they will operate going forward. For most organisations, perhaps all, part of this puzzle is planning for many of their team to work from home. This may be several weeks or it could be for an extended period of […]
Most of my work is based upon a very simple belief that the only reason organisations invest in technology is because they believe it will add value to their organisation and that it is our job as IT professionals to deliver this value on behalf of our organisations. The most value we can add as IT professionals is to use […]
This was the question that the Thriving Through Digital group considered in a recent discussion. It was an interesting and wide ranging discussion touching on issues such as the role of experience in a changing environment, silo thinking from leaders that make organisational change difficult, an inability to change or worse, active protection of the past, which have provided incumbent […]
This blog is a short summary of our April’s The ITP Digital Leaders Lab breakfast, a monthly leadership conversation about delivering value from your technology investments. The format of the discussion is a short presentation by a guest speaker followed by a lean coffee style discussion where we learn from each other and gives you plenty of opportunity to raise and engage […]
Nearly 10 years ago I wrote a blog looking at the impact of cloud computing on traditional businesses. At the time the IT, media and analysts were proclaiming cloud as the way of the future and were extolling CIOs to transition to the cloud now or risk being left behind. The headliner at that time was AWS for cloud infrastructure […]
This series of blogs is investigating the issues that traditional organisations, face in their journey to becoming digital organisations (in this context a traditional organisation is an organisation that was born and matured before digital was “a thing”). One of the major issues that leaders of traditional businesses face is the need to operate their dominant legacy traditional business alongside […]
While there is ongoing debate about whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first when it comes to creating and sustaining change there is no debate. New routines precede new outcomes. As regular readers of my blog will likely know about 5 years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (if you’re interested you can read […]
This blog formalizes the insights, ideas and opinions voiced at the Thriving Through Digital lean beer conversation held in Auckland on 12 September 2018. The specific topic that we discussed at this session was “ How to start your digital transition.” You can find more information / join the group conversation here. In developing this blog I have considered the […]
This blog formalises the insights, ideas and opinions voiced at our lean beer conversations held in August in Christchurch and Auckland. The specific topic that we discussed at this session was “Execution Strategies”. The actual notes of these conversations can be found here. Digital transformation is the organisation change initiative of our time. Depending on the survey you read anywhere […]
After many discussions about “digital” with the CIO and members of their IT leadership team it was time to take the digital conversation to the next level. Today the CIO and I were meeting with the CEO to begin to discuss the need for the organisation to develop a “digital strategy”1 for the organisation. After the initial introductions and […]
This blog formalises the insights, ideas and opinions voiced at our lean beer conversations held in July in Tauranga and Auckland. The specific topic that we discussed at this session was “what is digital and what is a digital organisation?”. The actual notes of these conversations can be found in this post to the “Thriving Through Digital” LinkedIn Group. […]
One of the most persistent findings in the literature on the organisational value of IT is that it is not the technology per se that adds value but technology’s ability to enable strategy and build distinctive capabilities that adds value to organisations. One of my favourite examples of this is Uber (because everyone needs an Uber case study). When I look at the […]
This blog formalises the insights, ideas and opinions voiced at the Thriving Through Digital lean beer conversation held in Auckland on 6 June 2018. The specific topic that we discussed at this session was “what is success [for digital], how do you justify the investment and how do you measure impact?” You can find more information / join the group […]
If you follow my posts you most likely know that I have recently published my first book (you can get your copy from my website – https://owenmccall.com/). Personally, I found the process of writing a book to be difficult and challenging and I am glad that is is over. I am so glad that it’s over that I have decided to write another […]
I have had lots of conversations lately with CIOs and Senior IT leaders about moving to agile. There was a CIO who has invested heavily in training and support for their team, but is experiencing push back on agile practices from the executive who still expect business cases and predefined scope and benefits. A long term industry colleague who is […]
Amazon is coming to Australia and New Zealand, probably! The latest reports are suggesting that they will likely be up and running by the end of 2018. Having worked in retail, I have been observing ongoing conversation about the likely impact that Amazon’s opening on our part of the world will have. There have been many stated pluses and minuses […]
Just before the turn of the Century I spent nearly 2 years living and working in Japan. As a result I got an up close personal experience on how different the Japanese business practices are to the western practices I was more familiar with. One of the Japanese business practices that impacted me most was the Japanese practice of nemawashi. Most Japanese […]
I have been thinking a lot lately about how to deliver effective change. The beginning of a new year is often seen as a good time to think about what we have achieved, what we haven’t and what we would like to change and improve, but that’s not the only reason. Effective change is a persistent issue in innovation programmes and critical to […]
Innovation is one of those words whose time has come. It seems that every organisation in the world wants to be more innovative and more often than not technology is right in the middle of the innovation discussion. For an idea that is so widely desired I reckon there is a remarkable lack of agreement on what innovation actually means. This was brought […]
Over the past few months I have heard myself say the words “I’m not an agile-ist but ….” an awful lot. I then continue to talk about some of the principles that I believe underpin our ability to deliver value through technology. These principles include: Focusing on delivering small quick projects because all the evidence suggests we can deliver small […]
One of the things that I love about the technology industry is that it is full of smart capable people. IT professionals that I have the privilege to work with all have tremendous knowledge and expertise, which has been built over years and in some cases decades of study and practical application. As a result of this training and expertise […]
“Thanks to Moore’s Law the S-Curves in technology are frighteningly short.” The S-Curve, or more correctly the Sigmoid curve is a mathematical model that gets its name from its shape that approximates a stylised S. The model has been used by many people as a way of depicting the natural life cycle of just about everything. The curve has three […]
I have recently had the privilege of talking to a large number of non IT executives who have responsibility for their organisation’s technology. While all of these people are very capable, talented executives none of them have specialised in the management and use of technology. At some level (while they won’t necessarily admit it) most of these executives are a […]
Just after new year I caught up with a friend and colleague for lunch (I’ll call her Nikki). We had worked together very closely previously for a joint client but we hadn’t seen each other for quite some time. Our conversation was wide ranging and free flowing and eventually turned to concerns related to work. Nikki was having a tough […]
I believe that for technologists to be truly effective they need to not only have great technology skills, but they also need to be influential. Indeed, I believe that influencing is so important that we need to view it as a technologist’s second expertise. That’s all very well, but how influential do you need to be and how do you […]
“We’ve invested heavily in defining and implementing good processes, practices and methods, the problem is we can’t get the people to consistently follow the process. Why is this?” I hear this lament from Service Desk Managers and ITIL SMEs about the service desk and support staff, I hear it from PMOs about Sponsors, Business Owners and Project Managers and I […]
Over the past six months or so I have had the privilege of judging several industry awards programmes including the CIO 100 in New Zealand, the CIO 50 in Australia and the NZ Hi-Tech awards. I judge awards for several reasons. It’s a good way to give back, you learn a lot about what others in the industry are thinking […]
For those who know my Warehouse (TWL) IT story you’ll know that things were a bit bleak in the early days. I had joined TWL from Deloitte with the expectation that as a CIO my role would be to lead a team that would use IT to provide competitive advantage and create value. However, what I found when I arrived […]
I recently wrote a blog where I outlined an epiphany I had around the need for an IT team to be operationally excellent (the original blog can be found here). In essence the insight was that high performing organisations have high performing IT teams and that a key characteristic of being a high performing IT team is operational excellence. That […]
For all of you who are regular readers of my blogs you will know that I am fairly obsessed with the notion of IT Value. This obsession stems from a belief that IT has huge potential to make our lives and organisations substantially better and that it is our job, as an industry, to ensure that this value is delivered. […]
Innovation is a hot topic around the globe at the moment and given the tight connection between technology and innovation today it is something I am intensely interested in. So it was with great interest that I read the following article and the full report from a few weeks back. First things first, congratulations to Chris Paykel and James Hurman […]
A few years ago I was contacted by a local doctoral student. They were looking into success rates and best practices for ERP implementations. What he as looking for was local case study input into his thesis. Whenever I get these requests I try and help as much as I can, It’s a good thing to do in terms of […]
A few weeks ago I got a call from a client “Owen, we presented our digital strategy to the board yesterday. It went well but the board wants us to go quicker and are prepared to invest in that. Can we talk?” “Of course we can talk” I replied, “but before we dive into it, what exactly does the board […]
Many IT organisations are strong on wanting a mandate. This is what IT does and this is what users can and cannot do. The expectation is that if we can simply clarify and enforce the rules then shadow IT will go away and we will solve all, or at least a few, of the world’s problems. The problem is mandates […]
I was meeting with a client a few months back. This particular client was having some ongoing issues with the performance of their help desk. Specifically, tickets were not getting closed in a timely fashion and as a result IT’s customer (i.e. users of IT services) were getting some what exasperated (to be polite). The question on the table was […]
I don’t know about you, but I have a series of moments which are burnt on my mind and I can recall them easily and always will. Whether it is the birth of my children, the 1995 World Cup, which I watched with friends in Ngaio, or the turn of the millennium with family at Waikoikoi. Another of these times […]
I consider myself to be a strategist. I love the process of determining a goal/vision, diagnosing the current situation, understanding the gaps and working out a plan or an approach to bringing the goal to reality. The best part of my job is working with teams through this process, supporting their problem solving and facilitating a joint understanding of the […]
I reckon that for most large incumbent organisations (that is those born in an analogue age) going digital is a bit like embarking on a significant house renovation and extension. But first let me take you back to the beginning of 2004. My wife and I decided to buy an old villa in Auckland. We were new to Auckland and […]
Speed is one of the imperatives of our time. Every organisation I work with wants to be able to do things faster whether it’s speed to gain an advantage or the not so positive, but equally important, speed to close down a competitor’s advantage. Everyone wants to go faster. The need for speed is not a new phenomenon. For as […]
In my job you don’t go to many days without hearing someone talking about the gap between IT and “the business”. It may be from someone in IT, who is struggling to be heard and understood by their colleagues. It may be from an executive, who is trying to “go digital” and is finding it difficult to get the support […]
I recently wrote a blog on the importance of starting our thinking about technology based innovation from the perspective of purpose or as Simon Sinek urges start with why. To me the power of purpose as a starting point for thinking about technology is twofold. Firstly, purpose tends to be everlasting. How you fulfill on your purpose may change over time, […]
In the third most popular TED Talk of all time Simon Sinek urges leaders to start with why. Sinek’s message was fairly simple. Great communicators communicate very differently to most people. Whereas most people communicate from the outside in, by describing what they do, great communicators communicate from the inside out by describing why they do what they do. That […]
I noticed that Gartner released its latest hype cycle for emerging technologies last week (see this Forbes article for a summary). I love the Gartner hype cycles and I loathe the Gartner hype cycles all at the same time because to me they represent the best and worst in the IT industry all in the one graph. I love them […]
Technology is changing the way companies do business but the sad reality is that in many organisations the IT team, the supposed technology experts are barely participating in these changes let alone leading them. On the surface of it this makes no sense at all and many IT professionals are confused if not downright angry about it. They have a […]
I have been thinking a lot about projects and project management lately. Why? Because effective project delivery is critical to delivering value from IT and as an industry we don’t do a great job of delivering our projects. We are all aware of the statistics. Most commentators report that 50% of our projects fail and to make matters worse the […]
It has become very trendy to trumpet the importance of failure. Many authors, and commentators are encouraging us to fail. The rationale? The only way to make progress, to change things, to innovate is to do something, most likely to do something new. When you try something new there is a chance that it won’t work out the way you […]
There we were halfway through the workshop with the IT leadership team and our attention shifted to the team’s project delivery performance. The insight from the executive was very clear. They saw the IT team as the department of no! It didn’t matter how good an idea it was IT would find a way to make sure it didn’t get done. […]
I have spent a large part of my career leading / managing teams. I have had my moments of success and my moments of failure as a leader. I look back at some of the things I have done in the name of leadership and cringe at my crassness and stupidity. In a recent blog on persistent problems I noted […]