Effective Dining September 28, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Etiquette, Interviews, Manners
6 comments
Early in my career, my company was hiring at a furious pace. We interviewed people all the time, and rotated the “lunch slot” among our team. When my turn came to handle the lunch interview, I had the opportunity to take a nice young woman out to the local Steak & Ale, where the vegetable of the day was green beans. We had a typical interview lunch, until the waiter came to clear the plates.
Her plate was empty, but when the waiter lifted it away he revealed a neat semicircle of green beans, carefully hidden under the edge of the plate. He and I both did a double-take, but she didn’t miss a beat. She kept talking, took her napkin from her lap, covered the beans, and acted like nothing had happened.
What drove this behavior? Had she heard it was bad form to not clean your plate at a lunch interview? More importantly, how had she carefully hidden all those beans during the lunch without me noticing? Certainly it was an impressive display of sleight of hand, if nothing else.
While I do not suggest hiding your vegetables during lunch, I do strongly recommend that people seeking gainful professional employment learn basic table manners. As I attend various business functions involving breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I am astounded at some of the bad behavior during meals. I recently encouraged everyone to master the art of small talk; now I am going to ask that we all learn how to manage meals that are not wrapped in paper.
I’m not asking that we achieve a Martha Stewart/Miss Manners level of dining sophistication. Rather, it would be good if we all know which way to pass things, how to deal with knives and forks, basic napkin management, and sharing baskets of bread.
Many people will scoff at this, insisting that the value of the meal is in the company, not in the precision of the passing. I’d generally agree, but your actions make an impression, like it or not. During introductory meals and interview situations, every little thing can matter. Your Mom was right: first impressions are lasting, especially when you are talking with your mouth full. Or, my personal peeve, placing your dirty napkin on the table while others are still eating. (Eww!)
For those who still insist that none of this should matter, I’d like to gently suggest that you may find greater success in a meal, well-managed, than you might imagine. Your fellow diners will appreciate your knowledge of the basic table rules that can make a meal that much more elegant and enjoyable. It can’t hurt to learn the basics of courses, plates, knives, forks, and who gets which bread plate. (Easy: hold up your hands and touch your index fingers to your thumbs. Your left hand has made a “b” and the right hand, a “d.” Your bread plate is to your left, and your drink is to your right.)
As for my lunch partner from long ago? I can only remember two things: the image of those beans, lying on the table, and that we did not hire her. Cause and effect? I’ll never tell. But, would you please pass the butter?
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What Can You Capture? September 25, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Random Musings.Tags: Best Of 2009, Information, Knowledge
17 comments
There is a lot of discussion these days on the topic of “knowledge capture.” Recognizing that there is a lot of intellectual capital locked in the heads of employees, companies seek tools that will make it easier to find, categorize, and ultimately share this information. This is particularly important in industries where an aging workforce is retiring and taking a lifetime of knowledge with them.
As wonderful as it sounds, I don’t think knowledge capture is possible. Certainly not in the sense that it can be published and managed like a vast database, to be perused by those not yet enlightened. We are trying to treat knowledge like data, and that’s just not possible.
We have no problem capturing data. Data is nothing more than facts, collected and indexed. We have data streaming at us all the time, and computers are great at grabbing and storing all that data. We also have great tools for searching all this data. Google is the pre-eminent example; given a vast database of facts regarding which web page contains certain terms, Google will quickly tell you which pages match your query.
Stepping up from data, we have information. Information is data, correlated. Thus, a collection of temperature readings across the country is simply data. Those readings, correlated to produce areas of equal temperature, become information that will expose patterns that the individual data elements cannot disclose.
We have many tools to turn data into information, loosely grouped into that class of applications known as “business intelligence.” Depending on the usefulness of the tools, the correlated information may prove valuable or useless. Google is notoriously hit-or-miss on this; searches for certain phrases can yield bizarre search results, because Google cannot extend a clean semantic model onto the queries it services. For example, this blog gets hit on a daily basis by searches on “Scarlett O’Hara” because I once wrote one post about her. I am pretty sure that those seeking Scarlett are not looking for IT management advice, yet Google keeps delivering that result.
Google keeps making that error because it lacks knowledge. Knowledge is the result of placing information into the hands of someone with relevant skills and experience. With knowledge, information becomes useful. In our temperature example, the information represented by the temperature gradients allows a trained meteorologist to figure out when it might rain. In the hands of a lay person, it is just an interesting picture.
You can argue that some knowledge can be captured; that’s why we have books. I’d agree, but define what was captured as “shallow knowledge:” the part of knowledge that is close to the information, that involves repeatable activities, easily described. I can read a book and learn calculus, but knowing how to apply the calculus to a problem is far deeper and more intuitive. That’s “deep knowledge:” the complex ideas that knowledge capture seeks to document and categorize.
Regrettably, deep knowledge is almost impossible to capture. Consider the knowledge required to drive a car. Could you write down everything you know about driving? Could you even say it all? Absolutely not. The core of driving, what makes you good at it, was learned by practice and observation, absorbing lessons that are unspoken.
So it is with all deep knowledge. Imagine trying to write down how to negotiate with a vendor: reading body language, verbal cues, etc. You can’t; you learn it by watching a skilled negotiator. Even the skilled negotiator may not be able to express what they do; they just “know.”
The ease of data capture and the improvements in deriving information imply that the next level, knowledge capture, is possible and even easy. I contend it is not; while some rote knowledge may be captured, really important knowledge is only learned over time through continuous exposure to a master, much like a traditional apprenticeship. Our fascination with tools misleads us into thinking that there is a tool for everything; I don’t know that there is a tool for true, deep knowledge capture. I think that the real answer is one I’ve promoted before: know who knows, and learn from them before they are gone.
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Bartholomew Cubbins, Redux September 21, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.Tags: Careers, CIO Roles
2 comments
The best part of blogging is what you learn from your readers. My recent post on the role of the CIO generated some outstanding comments extending that conversation in several directions. Given the thought put into the commentary, I thought I’d use a full post to reply rather than add to the comment stream. You may want to read the comments that prompted this post before reading further. It’s OK; I’ll wait.
Now we can go in several directions:
What is the role of the CIO?
Kumud raised the idea of a “classic” CIO that is concerned solely with technology, in contrast with a “contemporary” CIO that is a more engaged business leader. I understand the distinction but think that a successful CIO is both. I think a CIO is defined to be “the senior executive who manages an organization that delivers IT-based services in support of the business goals of the company.” I believe there is a direct parallel with the finance, HR, and legal groups in a company; one can simply replace “IT-based” with the appropriate discipline to create similar roles for these service groups.
As I’ve written before (and in contrast to Kumud) I think that the CIO serves the organization directly, not the customers outside of the organization. As such, the provided services are used by other organizations to perform their functions effectively. I also think the services fall into two broad categories: infrastructure and consulting.
Infrastructure is obvious. No matter what else they do, the CIO needs to keep the lights on. This used to be the be-all and end-all of our job; we’ve now gotten so good at it that we are moving on to the consultative role. CIOs know a lot about technology exploitation, business process optimization, and intra-departmental synergies. CIOs now struggle to get the visibility and opportunity to deliver these “softer” services to the company.
Abbie Lundberg points out that good CIOs are effective in delivering these softer services and should be used in that capacity as much as possible. I generally agree, but I think we differ in deciding how far a CIO can go in this role. I am strongly tied to a CIO being a consultant to the true internal business owner; I suspect Abbie would allow a CIO to cross that line.
What about personal and career growth?
Which brings us to the points raised by Susan Mazza and John Charnovich. How can a person grow and expand their skills if they are in the “box” of a technology-focused CIO?
I am drawing a distinction between the role of a CIO and the individual who fills that role. The role changes slowly over time, but generally stays unchanged with respect to the organization. The individual, on the other hand, grows and changes and hopefully contributes more and more to the organization. How do you rectify a growing individual in a static role?
I think that’s where the consultative part of the job comes in. CIOs that want to spread their wings and learn more about the business can spend more of their time working with the business (Kumud’s contemporary CIO) and less time keeping the lights on (his classic CIO). To support Susan, Abbie, and John’s points, the CIO grows and contributes in that consultative role as they gain personal skills and deliver greater value across the business.
Can a CIO take on additional roles?
A CIO that successfully expands their consultative skills will one day be presented with the opportunity to own a bigger piece of the business. As Kumud and John note, CIOs can (and should) be growing into bigger business roles, much like a CFO may some day become a CEO.
My original point is that a CIO should not wear multiple hats, much like a CFO typically does not also wear the CEO hat. Instead, the CIO will be faced with a decision: keep the CIO hat and stay in that role, or exchange it for a different hat and a different role. As Kumud notes, someone who takes on more and more hats is destined to fail; part of owning many hats is finding people to wear them for you. As you grow your role in the company, backfill the CIO position so that you can better focus on your broader responsibilities.
I think there is an additional hazard for CIOs wearing multiple hats: the threat of playing favorites. CIOs work hard to be objective in providing services to all parts of the company equally. If you provide the services and run a group that consumes them, at some point you will be accused of favoring yourself, which could make your life a bit difficult.
Can this compromise your credibility?
We often speak about CIOs becoming more business-focused, moving beyond our technology roles. We fret about being the “executive nerd,” about our pure business skills being overlooked when the company seeks candidates for new leadership opportunities. Some think that the opportunity to engage in areas outside of IT, even if driven by our technical knowledge, demonstrates that CIOs are moving into a more mainstream leadership role.
The opposite may be the case. Being asked to join a product development team because you have important technical skills is nothing more than a high-level version of being asked to run the projector at an executive meeting. If you continue to look for ways to grow beyond the role of the CIO that involve applying your technical skills to other parts of the business, you are still trading on your “classic CIO” foundation. The real measure of your success in moving beyond the role of CIO is when you get invited to expand your contributions in ways that have nothing to do with technology. That’s the real, pure, business role we all ultimately seek.
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Small Talk September 18, 2009
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Networking.Tags: Communication, Networking, Relationships, Small Talk
5 comments
I love “small world” stories. I love wandering into an event and discovering that someone in the room went to my elementary school, or likes the same movies, or knows someone I know. I like that “who’d have thought?” moment when two people make a connection that they would have never thought possible just moments before.
Much is made these days of networking and how to use it to our advantage in our personal and professional lives. While a lot of focus is on the social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, there is still a lot of value in face-to-face networking. It’s just that people seem to avoid it, and that lots of people seem to be bad at it. I think that’s a shame. With a little practice, everyone can get better at real networking.
The key is to master the art of small talk. Small talk, far from being as diminutive as its name suggests, is the real grease that makes networking flow. Through small talk, you can discover the serendipitous connections that will open the door to better, deeper network connections.
Good small talk is easy. A simple rule for starting a good “small” conversation is to avoid talking about the actual topic that has brought you together with other people. For example, if you are at an event addressing server virtualization, do not talk about any aspect of servers, virtualization, data centers, or even computing. This stuff is deadly dull even when you want to talk about it; the idea that you’re going to create a warm connection with someone over a meaningful conversation about virtual memory is ludicrous.
Instead, bring up topics that are likely to generate a connection with someone. Where do they live? Where are they from? Where did they go to school? Do they have kids? Hobbies? Seen any good movies? Back from vacation? Doing something interesting this weekend? Play golf? Like to run? There are dozens of simple questions that will get people talking about something that interests them. The idea is to learn about the other person, find some connections between you and them, and let those connections strengthen your shared knowledge and resulting relationship.
I’m often puzzled why people struggle with this kind of networking. I’ve seen so many people standing in awkward, uncomfortable silence at networking events, staring at their drinks and stuck for conversation. That’s foreign to me; anyone who knows me will tell you that I am never stuck for something to say.
Many people in IT are introverts (that’s what the “I” stands for) and have a hard time starting these kinds of conversations. They gravitate back to the safety of technology, which makes it hard to meet non-technical people. If you are one of these people, you may need to consciously focus on being better at this kind of engagement with people. That’s OK.
I once worked for someone who knew they were bad at this stuff and had to consciously prepare for events. When the event was over, they were exhausted by the effort. But they recognized the value of small talk and making connections, so they made the effort, improving over time.
Are you using small talk to build and enrich your network? Does it come easy, or do you have to work at it? Either way, small talk paves the way to big rewards in your network. So, seen any good movies lately?
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