Enterprise Initiatives

In response to some feedback from my favorite critic James McGovern, I will discuss the impacts of leadership on corporate behavior. But first I want to clarify for James the intent of the article that he critiqued called Blogs- the innovation escape hatch. In this article I discussed how social networking allows people to speak more freely and be more innovative then they can be in a corporate environment. I was not discussing social networking in terms of a corporate technology or tool. I was just reflecting on how great it is to see people like James express their views without having to be politically correct all of the time. Oh, and one last thing. James, I don't work for CIO.com. They asked me to participate in their blogging community (for free). So anything I write is my opinion and does not reflect the opinions or beliefs of CIO.com. Enough of that.

Leadership drives corporate behavior. Many people confuse management with leadership. I have seen many people in leadership positions over the years perform entirely tactical duties and not put forth and execute anything strategic. Managers are tactical and are responsible for getting work done. Leaders are transformational and focus on people and culture. There are two basic approaches to leadership that produce two entirely different outcomes, production-oriented leadership and employee-oriented leadership. The production-oriented leader is one who focuses mainly on the technical or task aspects of the job. This type of leadership focuses almost entirely on the bottom line. Organizations with this type of leadership tend to have the following characteristics:

• Sweatshop mentality
• Strong reliance on outsourcing
  
• Frequent layoffs
• Low morale throughout the workforce

Production-oriented leadership can be very successful in terms of financial numbers, but it is usually at the expense of people. In cultures like this, introducing intangible technologies like social networking is a challenge. Without a cut and dry ROI, most initiatives don't stand a chance. Social networking is a transformational technology that can create huge increases in productivity, improved communication, employee morale, and innovation. But production-oriented leaders will be challenged to see the benefits and embrace the change.

Employee-oriented leadership emphasizes interpersonal relations and focuses on employee needs. When these leaders say that "our most important assets are our people", they actually mean it. They understand that higher morale leads to higher productivity which results in improved financial results. Organizations with this type of leadership tend to have the following characteristics:

• Thrive in innovation and creativity
• High productivity
  
• High morale
  
• Low turnover
  

Technologies like social networking can thrive in cultures with employee-oriented leadership. Social networking's strength is the power of groups. When people can collaborate freely on an idea, the idea gets continually refined and improved with the collective intelligence of many. If a corporate culture encourages this type of behavior, the sky is the limit on the gains in productivity and innovation. Social networking doesn't just happen within the corporate walls. Corporations can create powerful social networks that branch out to their customers and partners as well. Would we still need to do those painful annual customer and employee surveys if we had a social network in place? Social networking gives you real time unfiltered feedback that you don't need to hunt for. This is information at your fingertips that you can act on immediately.

Here is a great video from YouTube for those unfamiliar with social networking.

My good friend James McGovern asks, "I wonder if Mike Kavis understands why SOA shouldn't be sold" to the business and references the article Most enterprise SOA deployments fail to deliver ROI. This article makes some good points about the total cost of ownership (TCO) which includes extensive training and expensive tools like registries and repositories. The article continues with this quote:

The survey found that companies using SOA did experience an improvement in developer productivity by an average of 28 percent; however, the productivity savings do not warrant broad SOA deployment.

A little further down in the article, a very important point is made.

Despite these obstacles, Nucleus Research’s survey found that SOA is assisting companies in the areas of business process improvement and portals, followed by master data management and partner integration.

I think this sentence is where many of us EA bloggers start to disagree on whether you should sell SOA to the business or if an ROI is even achievable. In a previous article I described my view on selling SOA to the business. In my case, I was not trying to implement SOA by itself. Instead, SOA was being implemented in conjunction with BPM and Master Data Management (MDM). If I was only trying to implement SOA, I would have to agree with James's stance. But since SOA is part of a larger project, which includes business process reengineering, and the funds are coming from the business, I had to sell SOA to the business.

For James's sake, no I did not Power Point them to death or talk about web services and JMS queues. Instead I explained SOA in business terms and as a major contributor to the overall ROI. In an earlier post James states that if the business trusts IT then IT shouldn't have to sell SOA to the business. Once we convinced the business that SOA was the key to maximizing their BPMS investment, they trusted us to go figure out what tools we needed. Not once did we have to sell the concept of the ESB, MDM, repositories, training, etc.

Back to the ROI. The ROI will be achieved through huge operational efficiencies that lead to increased sales, improved customer support, better quality, and improved speed to market. One could argue that the ROI is a result of the process reengineering and not SOA. I am fine with that argument although SOA does allow us to leverage our legacy systems without causing major disruptions to our business and current projects.

So hopefully we can put an end to the "Selling SOA" discussions and move on to implementing SOA. As far as SOA and the ROI goes, SOA by itself is a cost of doing business. SOA in conjunction with BPM can pay for itself if done right.

James McGovern put out a call for more EA blogs a few weeks back. I'll take that one step further and call for more EA collaboration. There are a lot of different opinions about how to approach SOA, process, and many other topics. James has some strong opinions and calls out his peers when he disagrees with them. I love constructive criticism and I sure get it from James. The problem I have is that he doesn't post my comments and allow a discussion to take place. That is not collaboration, that is being closed minded.

I have been having many healthy debates on how or if to sell SOA to the business with fellow EA bloggers Nick Malik, Jack van Hoof, and Alastair Bathgate. I think it benefits the readers to see all of the different solutions to a problem. James just flat out says that I am wrong, end of story. So here is my challenge to James McGovern. Let's collaborate and post your readers' comments so we can see everyone's point of view. Let's have more collaboration. If we want more EAs to blog, let's provide a platform for them to share ideas and give and receive constructive feedback.