As I await the alpha waves I get flashbacks of timelines, a grey cat crossing my path, the leaves blowing across the ground, the sun fighting to get past the tree branches…..timelines, milestones in the cloud.

…what’s next? Cloudy.

One related positive sign I’ve witnessed during the recession is how forward-thinking businesses are sharing knowledge and assets in ways that would have been taboo at one time — in trusted, flexible, fluid mutualistic arrangements — everyone benefits (no one is ripped off) — orgs benefit, customers benefit, the world benefits. INNOVATION through COLLABORATION at a whole new level with people, partners, vendors, and sometimes competitors, is demonstrating we can do more than any of us could do alone — faster, quicker, better — by putting our differences to work.

Your energy and encouragement to rethink is refreshing and inspiring.
Thank you.

Best….
Debbe

Debbe Kennedy
founder, president and CEO
Global Dialogue Center and
Leadership Solutions Companies
@debbekennedy

How, for example, is cloud computing going to “enable businesses to compose their business process more rapidly than ever before in response to the contextual information discovered in…social networks?” I respectfully submit that “information..in social networks” is just that – information. The business context results from analyzing the information and “connecting the dots” with other information. Once this has been done, then business have to determine 1) what the courses of action are, 2) what’s the information associated with these courses of action, and 3) then making the decisions. Those decisions may or may not result in composition or changing of business processes.

Rosabeth Kanter says, “have you noticed the tectonic plates starting to shift? Values and social purpose are creeping back into the business strategy conversation. Big societal problems are the next innovation frontier, and the best companies are practicing what I call “leadership yoga” — flipping the organization upside down to have their eyes to the ground to see the grass roots, where the next opportunities are starting to grow.”

Check it out: http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2009/11/leadership-yoga-innovation-adv.html

I’m coming in by invitation of @sureddy on Twitter to share a few thoughts for consideration from perhaps a little different vantage point…

Below is a backdrop from which I offer a few observations that I strongly believe have proven to be critical to cultural/paradigm shift transformations:

Over the years, working across many corporate functions, including IT, dealing with cultural change and paradigm shifts, one conclusion I formed has remained true: Regardless of the particulars or function, dealing with cultural change in the context of a paradigm shift is pretty much the same.

Most of us, think our circumstances are so very unique. This is true, but the process of change on both fronts is universal. This doesn’t diminish the significance of the change itself and all its inherent issues that need to be resolved. Change is difficult. However, in my experience, engaged leaders and often very simple strategies work far more effectively than big grandiose campaigns and/or trendy methodologies that often make change seem complex and contrived.

The great news is this universal reality provides a wealth of time-tested KNOWLEDGE to drawn from that can be hand-picked, customized and adapted for specific circumstances and issues. It is often a deliberate step by step strategy that works best — part visible; part invisible behind the scenes. I assume many of you, if you reflect on what has worked for you, works, would agree.

So when I think and observe the ENTERPRISE COMPUTING transformation in progress, I see IT going through what most other functions are doing. Reinventing themselves for a whole new global marketplace reality. It is exciting for those who can see it and experience it and dream about it. It is suspect to those who “don’t yet get it.” I think the result will change the culture in some dramatic ways, including…
*** the way we think about competitors,
*** mutualistic collaborations some can’t imagine with old thinking,
*** a demand that everyone master the art of putting differences together,
tapping into new combinations people and technology that create
innovation far greater than any one could do on their own, and
*** the development of an open, adaptable working environment that is focused on discover of the next new idea.

OBSERVATIONS/IDEAS about CULTURAL/PARADIGM SHIFT TRANSFORMATIONS

• The FIRST CRITICAL steps are to effectively…1) establish THE NEED FOR CHANGE in every mind, 2)engage sponsors’/people’s COMMITMENT to be part of it in a big way; 3) create experiences that immerse people in the “the end in mind” — enough that they can see where they are now — and havea fingerprint on developing the path and outcome of where you are leading them.
• Most people go yah, yah, yah about #1, but few execute it with superior results achieved. We(and consultants ☺) tend to put everything through “the complexor” — big new words, complicated flow charts, graphs with statistics, surveys and analysis, processes that make most people doubt the change and themselves — all the same ol’ things we’ve all seen before. Then we wonder why senior leaders don’t get it; people aren’t engaged, and change doesn’t take root as we hoped. ACCEPTANCE of a cultural change/paradigm shift or any change is undoubtedly the most overlooked, under-valued, and/or ignored success factor in most strategies related to cultural/paradigm changes.
• SPECIFIC to ENTERPRISE IT…My observation (offered humbly) is like other organizations, IT tends to talk about its changes in language it understands. When others don’t get it, those people blame the messenger, the idea, timing et al… in other words, those who don’t “get it,” throw up all kinds of “gorilla dust” or create obstacles that most often create a detour or derail progress. Unfortunately, again like others in this situation, the problem is rarely diagnosed as a “failure to execute” #1 and #2 above, but it is. If people don’t get it, it is because it was not effectively introduced — meaning “you didn’t get the order”. It only takes a few cynics, victims, or bystanders — or threatened peers/senior leaders to cause this. Sometimes it comes from consultant-rich involvement that has a bunch of fanfare, but doesn’t really create the ongoing results and organizational engagement and ownership needed to fuel next steps and new levels of acceptance and investment at the organizational level to support success.

What do you see from your vantage point? Would welcome learning about alternate perspectives.

Best…
Debbe

@debbekennedy
founder, Global Dialogue Center/Leadership Solutions Cos.
author, Putting Our Differences to Work…

I think your points concerning process standardization and enterprise messaging services are where the real payoff will be. Many organizations find changing the culture and the people too difficult, so they buy software the forces the culture to the way the software app wants to do things. To the extent that a cloud delivered service instantiates a best-practice process (or at least a good enough process at the right price) you will find companies improving their business processes by dint of adopting cloud SaaS.

Integration of the supply chain has been rolling along, but there is still quite a way to go. Standard message bus and the protocols that ride over this bus will make supply chain integration that much better, and will bring the B2B integration only the “big boys” can afford to a much wider constituency.

As for the Twitter discussion on the speed of adoption – I think it is at least 7-10 years before most Fortune 500 corporations can say that they have at least one mission critical application running in the cloud. Even if an organization had an appetite to get 100% of its context apps into the cloud, it would be a minimum of 4 years to migrate environments because of the problem of stranded capital.

I think that in 15 years when I am right about to retire, most of what we consider IT today will be in the cloud with maybe only about 10-20% of on-premises equipment. It will be a complex and difficult environment to manage because while each individual component may be simple and commoditized, the overall system will be very complex. Making the aggregate of all the best in breed services deliver the promised value will be the challenge to get right before things will really take off.

UNIX and whatever Windows system admins will be just as scarce as mainframe system programmers are today (and mainframes will still be around) doing niche work. Only a few people will really understand system programming and the interaction between hardware and software by then. The platforms will not need that much tuning and the abstraction level will be so high – only a handful of truly specialized application environments will require the level of complexity and investment we take for granted today.

Anyway – great article – enjoyed reading it thoroughly.

~Randy