Category: General

Excellence By Design

Background

As I began this journey and subsequently to assemble topics about which to write, I noticed that there were both an overwhelming set of ideas coming (a good problem to have) and a very unclear relationship in the concepts that were running quite rapidly through my mind (not a good thing).

Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that the ideas all centered around the various dimensions of leading a technology organization at different levels of specificity.  To that end, I thought I should set the stage a bit, in the interest of making things more cohesive in what I may write from here.

 

On the Pursuit of Excellence

At an overall level, what better place to start than a simple premise: Excellence is a choice.

Shooting for excellence is a commitment that requires a lot on a practical level, starting with courageous leadership, because it is a perpetually moving target, requires adaptability, tenacity, and a willingness to accept change as a way of life.  Excellence isn’t accidental, it is a matter of organizational will and the passion to pursue aspirations beyond what, at times, may feel “realistic” or “practical”.  It requires a belief in what is possible and is defined along multiple dimensions, which we’ll explore briefly here, namely:

  • Relentless Innovation
  • Operating with Agility
  • Framework-Driven Design -and-
  • Delivering at Speed

Relentless Innovation

Starting with vision, some questions to consider in the context of an overall strategy:

  • Is it clear and understood across the organization, along with its intended outcome (e.g., what success looks like)?
  • Is it one that connects to individuals in the organization, their roles and ongoing contributions, or are those disconnected concepts (i.e., is it something that individuals take to heart)?
  • Can it evolve as circumstances change while maintaining a degree of fundamental integrity (e.g., will it stand the test of time or need to be continually redefined)?
  • Is it actionable? Can tangible steps be taken to drive progress towards its ultimate goals?
  • Is it “deliberate”/intended/proactive or was it defined in a reactive context (e.g., in response to a competitor’s actions)?
  • Are day-to-day decisions made with the strategy in mind?

Overall, the point is to have a thoughtful, proactive strategy, that is actionable, connected to ongoing decisions, and embraced by the broader organization.

Where this becomes more interesting is in how we think of strategy in relation to change, which is where the next concept comes into play.  Relentless innovation is the notion that anything we are doing today may be irrelevant tomorrow, and therefore we should continuously improve and reinvent our capabilities to ones that create the most long-term value. This is much easier said than done, because it requires a lot of organizational humility and a willingness to tear down existing structures and rebuild new ones in their place.  That forces a degree of risk tolerance, because there is safety in the established practices and solutions of today, especially if they’ve created value.  On the other hand, success can be very detrimental insofar as complacency can become part of the organizational mindset and change slows down to an environment that is essentially an iteration of the present.

 

Operating with Agility

Looking at IT Operations, a number of questions come to mind that may be the subject of future articles:

  • Is there a mindset of being cost-efficient (driving the highest value/cost ratio)?
  • Is there a culture of continuous improvement and innovation in place?
  • Is there a strategy for incorporating and optimizing the relationship of project and product teams (to the extent that a full product orientation isn’t feasible)?
  • Is there a sourcing strategy in place that is deliberate, governed, optimized (whether insourced, outsourced, or some combination thereof)?
  • Are portfolio management processes effective and aligned to business strategy?
  • Is there a highly transparent, but extremely lightweight operating infrastructure in place to facilitate engagement and value creation?
  • To what degree is talent rotation and development part of the culture? Are people stuck in the same organization or silo for long periods of time, or are high potential leaders moved between teams to facilitate a higher degree of knowledge sharing, development, and improvement?

Having worked in IT Ops, the largest issue I’ve seen in a number of companies is an overly significant focus on process and infrastructure by comparison with transparency and enablement.  This is a tricky balance to strike, but arguably, I’d much rather have a less “mature” operating environment (IT for IT) that produces directionally correct information and drives engagement than a heavy, cumbersome process that becomes a distraction from producing business outcomes.  A simple litmus test on the latter type of environment being in place is whether, in discussion, teams talk about the process and tools versus the outcomes, decisions, and impact.

 

Framework-Driven Design

Shifting focus to technology, I believe the opportunity is to think differently about the overall solution architecture of future ecosystems.  Much has been written and discussed relative to modern or cloud native applications, data-centric design, DevSecOps, domain-driven design, and so on.

What fundamentally bothers me about solution design approaches is that, when focusing on one dimension (e.g., data centricity), other dimensions of the more holistic view of modern application design is left out, and then it becomes a challenge to delivery teams to integrate one or more of these concepts in practice without a way to synthesize them into one cohesive approach.  This is where framework-centric design can be an interesting approach to consider.

In my definition, framework-centric design is focused on architecting a connected ecosystem and operating environment intended to promote resiliency, interoperability, and application-agnostic integration such that individual solution components can be upgraded or replaced over time at a rapid pace without disrupting the capability of the ecosystem as a whole.

I will explore this topic further in a future article, but the base premise is to design an overall solution that performs complex tasks given multiple components integrated in standardized ways, leveraging modern, cloud native technologies, with integrated data that feeds embedded analytics capabilities as part of the operation of the ecosystem.

The framework itself, therefore, becomes a platform and the individual components are treated as replaceable parts that enable a best-of-breed mentality as new capabilities emerge that become advantageous to integrate with the framework over time.

 

Delivering at Speed

From a delivery standpoint, as tempting as it is to write about iterative development (or Agile in particular) as a cure all, the reality is that more organizations suffer from a lack of discipline than a lack of methodology. 

The unfortunate myth that needs to be explored and unwound is that executing with discipline means value will be delayed when, in fact, the exact opposite is true.  It is a generalization, but the faster a build team moves (to the extent that process or rigor is abandoned), the immediate impact is usually a level of technical debt that will create drag, either in the initial or subsequent delivery efforts.

Quality doesn’t happen by accident.  It is something that needs to be planned and built into a work product from the kickoff of a delivery effort, regardless of the methodology or operating model employed.

I will likely write more on this topic given the number of opportunities that exist, but it’s sufficient to say that you can’t achieve excellence when you don’t execute as flawlessly as possible… and discipline is needed to accomplish that.

 

Wrapping Up

Overall, the goal was to provide a quick summary of the various dimensions that I believe are important to consider in leading an organization.  No doubt, there may be questions or omissions (intentional or unintended) as this was a first blush at how I think about it. 

What about people and culture?  Well… that’s part of operating effectively… as an example.

Hopefully this was a good starting point and provided some food for thought.  Feedback, questions, and reactions are always welcome.

Looking forward to continuing this journey.

-CJG 10/28/2021

Where to Begin…

Seven organizations… nearly thirty years of challenges and learning… what a journey it has been.

In mid-2016, I had an idea to start a blog, “The First 25…”, which I envisioned as a set of reflections to commemorate the first twenty-five years of my professional life.

I began creating an outline, starting from my first work in Windows 3.1 tax software development at Price Waterhouse in 1992, jotting down concepts, anecdotes, and learnings that I had accumulated.  I intended for it to be both a means to share my experiences as well as a mechanism to facilitate introspection and growth.  I started writing the first set of articles, ran out of time, lost interest, and put the concept on the shelf for five years… until I recently felt like maybe it was time to revisit the idea.

It’s an odd truth that we learn to value experience only once we actually have it… and how relative that all becomes over the passage of time.  In my early days as a developer, I remember looking at job postings in the newspaper, seeing ads for candidates with “15 years of experience” and thinking that you both had to be a dinosaur and some form of fully enlightened professional by the time you reached that point in your career.  Fifteen years is a REALLY long time, after all, right?  That had to be all you’d need to learn everything there was to learn and have it down to the point you were almost on autopilot with anything the business world could throw at you.  In retrospect, perhaps that logic makes a degree of sense when you are 21 years old and 15 years represents almost 75% of your lifetime…

In any case, looking back, there have been many lessons and experiences that helped me become the person I am today.  From the fear and inexperience of my first days managing projects, to the many late nights pounding away at a keyboard, trying to get that next piece of code working… the setbacks, the struggles, and quite often the painful mistakes that taught me the value of “how not to” do things.

My hope is to use this blog to share some of those experiences, thoughts on leadership, strategy, technology, and other topics as and when they arise…

A career is really nothing more than a collection of experiences and what we ultimately do with them to become better leaders and professionals… Hopefully the ideas will be worth reading, feedback is welcome and appreciated.  I’m still on the journey, seeking that enlightenment I thought I’d have when I got to “15 years”… albeit today, I know I’ll never get there and just want to keep learning and improving to have as much of a positive impact as I can on the teams with whom I work and the organization(s) to which I belong.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and/or anything else that may follow.  All the best in your professional endeavors…

-CJG 08/11/2021