The importance of people

More and more I have come to realise that you can have all the frameworks, policies, processes and business models that you like.

To a greater or lesser degree all will work, some better than others when attuned to the circumstances obtaining.

Yet none will have a hope in hell of succeeding if the people question is not taken into account.

What do I mean? Simply that to be successful an organisation must select, train and develop people at all levels who are in tune with the needs of the organisation. In that regard it is critical that boards and senior executives clearly set out straegy and expectations as to performance so that everyone can decise whether they can sign-up. This is especially the case when major organisational changes in strategy and direction are underway.

Being in tune does not being subservient, but understanding and engaging with the organisation, including being questioning. Organisations which do not accept that questioning is an essential part of proceedings today are unlikely to make progress.

People are the essential asset of organisations, many other things are critical, but it is people that make or break them. THat is why leadership at all levels is critical.

US $6.2 trillion = annual cost of IT failure

Michael Krigsman cites US$6.2 trillion, as the annual cost of IT failure. The estimate was sourced from Roger Sessions who blogged his estimate. Clearly the amount one comes up with in a calculation of this sort is greatly affected by the assumptions made. Yet given the fact that most agree that there is a high ‘failure’ rate to projects the presumption must be that we are looking at very large numbers of $ in terms of waste.

Anyway, admit it, the number got your attention.

Back in June I presented to the ISACA Wellington Chapter on Learning From ‘Failure ‘or ‘A Tale Of Three Projects’. The discussion was based on 3 projects I had personal experience and knowledge of and my comments were set against the back drop of the ISO 38500 standard on IT Governance.

Recently, I presented at the ISACA Wellington – Governance Day on the topic Key Issues in Success/Failure in the context of programmes/projects, on one slide I highlighted a number of common factors found in projects/programmes:-

Defining Factors in Project/Programme Success/Failure

I went on to map these against the 6 Principles set out in ISO 38500, which are:-

1.Responsibility

2.Strategy

3.Acquisition

4.Performance

5.Conformance

6.Human Behavior

Read more

ISACA Wellington – Project Success Event

We had a good day on Friday. Interesting presentations and lots of questions and discussion from the participants, which made the effort involved in organizing the programme and event well worth while.

A consistent theme which emerged was the importance of people in all aspects of programmes and projects. Further, was a strong sense that when looking at programmes and projects we should recognise first and foremost that they are about business and change, not techonology alone.

My thanks to the speakers and to the attendees for making the day so succesful.

Steve Brill on saving the media

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Yesterday I posted on Chris Anderson’s concept of Free. In addition on Friday I wrote  about the discussion re the impact of the internet on media now underway in NZ, as well as elsewhere.

Bob Cohn of The Atlantic introduces Brill and the video:-

My first real job in journalism was writing about labor unions and workplace issues. Brushing up, I read a book called The Teamsters that was then about six years old. It was an amazing history of power, greed, and crime at the most powerful union in the world, back when unions had real power. The author, a Yale Law school grad named Steve Brill, published the book when he was just 29. He went on to an impressive career as a media entrepreneur: founder of American Lawyer magazine, founder of Court TV, founder of Brill’s Content, columnist for Newsweek. Now he’s got a plan to make journalism pay, and it begins online. Hint: “The Atlantic is idiotic to give its stuff away for free.” (Note to my old boss and friend Chris Anderson: He’s not so enamored of the Free concept.)

Anderson replies in the thread linked to the reference above. He suggests that Brill and he are not that far apart.

Aspects of Brill’s argument appear to align somewhat with what Barry Colman of NBR is advocating. Yet I think Colman’s content is not as deep nor as rich as that of say the WSJ. That renders charging much more difficult.

Chris Anderson on Free:The Future of a Radical Price

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Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired, has very recently published a new book Free:The Future of a Radical Pricing Model.

An extract is published in Wired under the title Tech is Too Cheap to Meter: It’s Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity.

In the video Anderson who previously published the well regarded Longtail postulates a radical approach to pricing in which much that might once have been charged for is given away for free. It is worthy of note that he does not suggest that all content is Free. He puts forward the ‘Freeium’ concept.

In line with what he proposes Anderson has made available an Audiobook. In addition, readers in some locations may be able to access online version of the book. Interestingly given Anderson’s proposition the version is not available in some countries for ‘copyright ‘/distribution agreement reasons. Thus clearly some limitations to his model are immediately apparent.

The article, book and video are interesting as is the argument propounded.

I was going to post on this some days ago, but other thngs intervened.

My reasons for posting today are that I had time to finalize the post, but more importantly Anderson’s thesis has direct relevance to the issue I wrote about yesterday regarding – Media: but not as it was. There are some follow-ons to that post, but I think an awareness of what Anderson is suggesting will be helpful. There is a lot more information on Anderson’s blog.

As much as anything else Anderson is writing about the impact of disruptive technology and the impact that it is having on established concepts and long held beliefs as to what are appropriate business models.

I find it both fascinating and a privilege to see this played out, almost in real time, especially as in NZ we now appearing to be seeing some local manifestations of what is happening.

Media:but not as it was

Recently I have been commenting on changes underway in the media, especially with regard to the disruptive impact of the Internet upon traditional print media.

Posts such as ‘Dead Tree business models and Time, Newsweek decline -The Economist rises being the two most recent.

Now the issue seems to have erupted in NZ, especially in the NZ Blogosphere with the announcement by Barry Colman, publisher of National Business Review, that he intends placing 20% of NBR website content behind a pay barrier. For this he intends to charge a massive NZ$298 per annum.

Lance Wiggs has written an excellent analysis the whole is well worth reading, but in Colman’s announcement – rant as some have called it – Colman wrote the following

And to add to the madness it has been the aggregators that have profited the most from the supply of that free news copy.

Wiggs responded:-

This is an indication that the NBR leaders don’t really understand the current news internet business model. The aggregators, such as google news, are driving traffic to the NBR site, and without them the NBR would be even worse of than it is. By locking them out of the subscription area NBR will dramatically reduce their ability to make their compelling, orginal and timely content available to the world. The writers behind the wall will lose relevance, and the newspaper itself will diminish.

Colman is thus falling into the trap that others elsewhere have done.

In this regard I suspect the good people at NBR may not have read the excellent essay on the future of media by New York University digital media scholar Clay Shirky, entitled Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable. They should read as well a piece by Steven Johnson, a speech he gave, Old Growth Media and the Future of News.  These two pieces foresee a radical, indeed brutal shake up of the media landscape.

Andrew Keen writing in the UK Independent commented:-

Their media may have been different, but their shocking messages were the same: newspapers are history, the two visionaries agreed. The traditional business is no longer viable, Shirky and Johnson both announced; newspapers are being replaced by futuristic digital news networks that will barely resemble their archaic print ancestors.

It seems to me that NBR and others have yet to recognize this.

Now as to what takes the place of traditional media I do not know, nor I suspect does anyone else.

To a considerable extent I think that to date many in the  media in Australasia see the web as an adjunct and an alternative, rather than as the dynamic change mechanism that it is in reality. Indeed, some media really do not seem to ‘get’ the internet at all.

We live as the Chinese curse would have it ‘In interesting times’. Certainly as Bob Dylan wrote ‘the times they are a-changing’. This change will have major cultural impact as well as impact on the mechanism of information delivery.

As Andrew Keen additionally commented:-

As Shirky wrote, “this what real revolutions are like.” They are invariably bloody and chaotic events in which “the old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.” Non American journalists, publishers and editors should take note; like the unsentimental Clay Shirky and Steven Johnson, they must dare to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable.

Are our media owners doing this or are they merely reacting. Is their attitude similar to the peculiar comments expressed by Richard Posner recently over the need to restrict or stop hyperlinking.

Some NZ Blogosphere reaction to Colman’s comments can be found at Cactus Kate, Whaleoil, Kiwiblog, Anti-Dismal and Julie Starr amongst others, as well as Lance Wigg’s piece referenced above.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. We are in a time of change and one where the full disruptive effect of technological change has yet to impact and the extent of the changes is as yet not visible in all respects.

New business models

The other day when many were celebrating winning a skirmish in the S92A campaign, I came across this article from The Times:-

The days of paying for music over the internet — or illegally downloading free tracks — are numbered, according to artists, music companies and leading industry insiders.

The reason given for this is the rapidly growing popularity of Spotify, a music service that “streams” tracks to your computer. All the major record labels have signed up to allow users to access millions of tracks — from Michael Jackson to Lily Allen, U2 or Shostakovich — free of charge at the touch of a button.

Spotify’s catalogue is fast approaching the size of Apple’s iTunes, the world’s biggest online music service, leading many to question whether the dominance of the digital music market by iTunes is set to end.

Now no doubt to many  Spotify is old news, but this article serves to demonstrate even more that technology and business models are outstripping legislation.

Further it would tend to suggest that RIANZ and other copyright holders are seeking to defend a business model through S92A that is crumbling anyway.

This led to another thought. For a fee say, $200 per annum Iwould happily sign up if it meant I could listen to or watch videos whenever I want over the Web. If access was convenient I would not need to download and store if they were only a click away.

Such a model would of course seriously disintermediate many interests.

We live in a period of rapid change and constantly evolving business models.

Why should we allow the dinosaurs of the entertainment industry and outmoded business models to dictate to us how we access information of any kind.