Darryl Carlton's blog

the simple life

in recent blogs on the CIO website authors Michael Hugos and Laurie Orlov both raised the spector of simplicity as an essential driver of systems design. But this is hardly a new idea !

Albert Einstein held simplicity up in many of his quotations as being the fundamental nature of … well … nature, and that it should be applied to scientific endeavour “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.

But perhaps my favourite quotation on simplicity comes from E.F. Schumaker, author of “Small is Beautiful” who said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction”. Which is essentially what Orlov was suggesting in his piece on Enterprise Architecture.

The Architecture needs to be simple, clear and easily communicated. I am frequently concerned that architecture lose sight of the need to deliver something which can be used by mere mortals. Which reminds me of a saying I heard once:

“one should never use a model like a drunk uses a lamp-post …. for support instead of illumination”

innovation occurs elsewhere

in a Time magazine article entitled “Edison of the Internet”, the SUN Microsystems programming guru Bill Joy stated his oft quoted maxim that “innovation occurs elsewhere” - in a climate where businesses are increasingly run for the benefit of short-term stock market results this has never been more true.

It seems that we are facing an increasing and more pervasive emphasis on short-term results than ever before. There is a form of management, American Capitalism, which places an overwhelming emphasis on returns to shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders. Staff and customers are sacrificed in order to drive down costs, with the goal of increasing the EBIT.

Witness the products recalls for children’s toys painted in  cheap Chinese factories with toxic chemicals. Or the ongoing safety issues with Australia’s national carrier QANTAS since they outsourced maintenance to a third world country. It seems impossible these days to buy quality goods in a supermarket where generic brands, produced to a price not a standard dominate.

And why? …. because generics offer the supermarket chain margins which are more than twice those of named products. This “retailing revolution” has little to do with meeting customers expectations, it is about improving the bottom line to raise the share-price. So lets give customers an inferior product …. they won’t notice! So with businesses being driven by the mantra of cost reduction, and with manufacturing and servicing being outsourced to the lowest cost location possible, and with the end (increasing the share price) justifying the means (indiscriminate outsourcing) where does innovation occur ?

who is coming up with new product and service ideas ?

who is investing in the future ?

Well ….. it is not the big companies. To a staggering extent they are driven by the twin goals of cost reduction and risk avoidance. Cost reduction and risk avoidance are anathema to innovation.

So ….. where does innovation occur ?

Who is taking on the risk of creation ?

Where is the driving force of entrepreneurship, the very essence of our future ?

By and large it is in very small companies …. the big companies no longer have R&D facilities (they weren’t cost effective) .. the big companies no longer take on risky projects, and the big service providers know that the message that will get them the new business is not innovation it is risk and cost reduction.

So big companies hire big service providers to both reduce risk and to shift accountability in case of catastrophic failure. Neither of which engenders innovation and risk taking. Small companies are doing the new and innovative stuff, and the big companies are constantly trying to reduce the costs of delivering yesterday’s technology. But the cost of doing new innovative projects is becoming so prohibitive it is becoming out of the reach of those small firms upon whom we depend for our future.

The solution to this is for the big firms to be more focussed on long-term viability rather than short term profits. Instead of trying to impress the stock market, they should be trying to impress their customers.

change is hard

we have all been bombarded by platitudes and metaphors about Change our entire working lives - change is hard, the only constant in business is change, ad nauseam almost.

From Machiavelli to every consultant in town today we are told that you have to bring people along on the journey of change. If I had one dollar for every time I had been told to “bring everyone along”, to make sure that I “get buy-in”, I wouldn’t need to be working for a living !

And this got me thinking recently as I struggled to “bring everyone along” on yet another mission critical project.

I have struggled, and the projects which we are working on are really fundamental to the survival of the business ….. yet the philosophy that it is the responsibility of the proponents of change to obtain the buy-in and support of those that are either uncomfortable or opposed to change creates an environment and culture which is incredibly counter-productive.

Charles Darwin described his statement of “Survival of the Fittest” as - the ability to adapt to a changing environment. Corporate Fitness is a mantra we hear often these days. And with Darwin’s definition readily at hand it should be clear that the responsibility to keep up with the changing demands of a vibrant business lies with those that are the opponents for no better reason than they aren’t comfortable.

We need to establish new rules - change is going to happen …… get with the program !

is incompetence the new evil

Edmund Burke was an 18th Century Irish political philosopher credited with the saying “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.

I was drawn to this quotation late last night after a particularly harrowing day at the office, and I started contemplating the obvious corollary to this “all that is necessary for the triumph of incompetence is for good people to say nothing.

“One of my favourite television shows (apparently along with most of Australia) is Gordon Ramsay’s “kitchen nightmares” - I enjoy cooking and I love business, and watching him come in and slash away at incompetence and stupidity fills me with both awe and envy.

Like Tom Peters he has elevated himself to a level where he doesn’t need to put up with the crap any more. The rest of us are still mired in the politics of mediocrity and incompetence.

How much would I love to be able to come into to a clearly dysfunctional business and cut a swathe through it with the simple formula of high quality, fresh ingredients prepared carefully in a clean and well functioning kitchen.

I really don’t think that any business is that much different to what Ramsay finds in his kitchen nightmares. The lessons which Tom Peters proclaims, and has done for decades now are simple and easily understood. Yet most businesses still seem to struggle with even the basics and are drawn to the overly complex.

My guess is that complexity hides incompetence with a mask of activity (bullshit baffles brains).

what are your stories of Office Nightmares ?

it's written in the stars

I had coffee last week with a very old friend who was one of the very early members of what is now a successful and very well regarded services company. The stories about one of the original founders are both bizarre and disturbing. And my first reaction upon hearing about how people were dismissed because they had the “wrong” star sign, and the unprofessional manner in which takeovers and public listings were carried out was to cry into my cafe latte - how could this business have become so successful when they exhibited and demonstrated every appalling management behaviour known to man.

Seriously, some of the things these guys did would rival Dilbert’s pointy-haired-boss.

So I asked my friend …. why had he put up with all of this “crap” for such a long time ? His answer was very intriguing.Despite the obvious flaws which have become almost legends in the industry, what the founders of this firm did was to set a clear direction for the team, and give them the support and freedom necessary to be independently successful. They created an environment where committed and competent professionals could succeed despite obvious failings in the bureaucracy. This was an interesting point for me - businesses where the leadership is obviously toxic and dysfunctional are relatively easy to spot. But what is often hard to understand is how these companies manage to survive despite these failings.

It becomes a balance sheet … do the good things outweigh the bad ?

In the case of my friends firm, the opportunity to excel, to succeed (or fail), to be empowered with responsibility and accountability was enough to overcome massive personality issues of the founder. You don’t need to be perfect … we are all flawed …. but at the end of the day providing people with respect, authority and accountability seems to be a pretty good formula.

To me, the root cause of many ills can be traced back to the loss of purpose or meaning in what we are doing.  Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning” made a huge impact on me, and  I can see elements of his lessons appearing in the most mundane of situations.

If we can ensure that the work which we ask our teams to undertake has value, that value is clear and unambiguous, and that their individual contribution to the creation of that value is respected and rewarded then despite many other problems our businesses will prosper. 

mission impossible

The Australian newspaper carried a story this week about the progress which Telstra has been making on its Project Transformation. And the story is not a pretty one (according to Michael Sainsbury). So the question comes up, yet again, why is it so hard to get IT right ?

It seems that we keep on hearing about projects which fail, from leading Telco’s to extremely large Government projects (Customs, MyKi and Rosetta for example). Yet the industry is generally improving its ability to deliver on time and on budget. Ten years ago 85% of projects failed to complete, or failed to deliver the functionality promised. Today that number is down to 50%.

Half of all IT projects are still either not being completed, or are not delivering real benefit to the business - but that is a massive improvement on what was being achieved ten years ago.

If every second house or high-rise which was built failed, or every second car was a lemon we would not really stand for it. IT seems to be the only industry which equates completion with success and accepts abject failure as commonplace.

To a very large degree the main cause of this continuing high level of failure is the immense complexity which is being built into systems today. Could the MyKi system have been delivered on time and budget if the Transport Czars had been prepared to change their business model. But not only change it, but to dramatically simplify it. The same could be said of Telstra. With an industry changing so much, with a definite trajectory towards “all you can eat” business models, it is hard to imagine why the systems need to be so complex as to be almost impossible to build.

Albert Einstein echoed Sir Isaac Newton’s dictum that “nature is pleased with simplicity”. Einstein’s assistant (Nathan Rosen) has reported that “he would aim for simplicity and beauty, and beauty for him was, after all, essentially simplicity.” (ref: Walter Isaacson “Einstein”, 2007).

Personally, I think we are making things way too complicated, and programmers simply are not capable of creating and maintaining systems to manage the degree of unneccasary complexity which has been created in some businesses today. This complexity is beyond the abilities of systems, but more importantly is beyond the understanding of customers.

Simple end-to-end business processes, focussed on satisfying customer requests are what is needed …. nothing more, nothing less !

an overnight success

the old adage of “it took ten years to become an overnight success” was ringing true this week for me as I attended a conference in Washington DC. And what was even more impressive about these guys is that they have created a globally significant IT company from Russia. No oligarchy at play here - these guys packed up their bags and did an internet startup in Singapore back in the nineties (that’s where we first met) and they have stuck with it through what must have been an agonising ride.

I recall that in 1999 SWsoft sponsored an ASP conference in Singapore, and through the internet crash of 2001 they survived not really achieving any significant growth until about 2003. They kept investing in their technology and kept pushing, never giving up. Since 2003 they have doubled their business every single year and today they own 65% of the market for the software which powers web hosting companies.

That is one hell of leadership story !

Now known globally as Parallels these guys have ticked all the boxes of corporate leadership, creating a BHAG (big hairy audacious goal), remaining pathologically committed to their market and constantly improving their technology.

Watch these guys, they could very well be one of the most significant exports from the new Russia.

Do Words Make a Difference ?

Having had my mid-life crisis long ago, purchasing the requisite Harley-Davidson (it was very cool), to me S&S has always referred to fantastic go-fast accessories for big twins. Microsoft is promoting S+S as their version of Software as a Service, and their resident guru Gianpaolo is in the middle of a debate with industry columnist Phil Wainewright having a dialogue about who has drunk the most kool-aid. Gianpaolo argues that “it is MUCH better for users to interact with software locally than on the remote side of the cloud”. The acronym used here (S+S) evokes a very specific image and makes a very specific suggestion as to what Gianpaolo (and by extension Microsoft) actually think about Software as a Service.

Apparently S+S means “Software PLUS Service” … which expressed in an acronym (S+S) may seem innocent enough and perhaps may not even seem to be very different to SaaS. Software as a Service is not some new label to express the traditional business model of “selling” (and I use this term very loosely) packaged software and adding professional services. The notion behind SaaS is to consider software in a fundamentally different way.Software is no longer product which can be purchased. Software is something which can be consumed as a service. It is a very big and difficult step for vendors to take because they need to forgo large upfront revenues and replace these slowly with a growing stream of annuity revenue (only if they create a great solution of course).

SaaS means that customers will purchase a service and not buy a packaged solution. What does this specifically mean, it means that instead of buying a packaged ERP solution they will subscribe to an accounting service paying for this service on some model of usage or consumption. The best known version of this today is of course Marc Benioffs’ salesforce.com which sports the tagline of “no software”. This notion of “no software” is a very important distinction that is critical in understanding the difference between S+S and SaaS - it is much more than just a label, and large software companies will struggle to understand the impact until they let go of the old notions of software as a product and service as something that is sold along-side.