RFID Vulneribility

Here’s a great webcast demonstrating the vulneribility of RFID tags in passports and enhanced drivers licenses:

Sustainable Improvement

I took a break from my three to four day a week work out to give my body a break.  I blinked and the next thing I know a month has gone by.  I’m not blogging weekly.  I’m not working out.  One thing is leading to another and its got me thinking about sustainability (’cause I’m not).  So what is the one thing that if you stopped doing it would take your business intelligence program from a competitive advantage to a legacy process affectionately known as the pig?  You’re probably expecting something sage which I find strange. If you’ve been reading my blog all along you should know by now that I’m going to talk about some things and then leave you hanging until at least next week.  So, where was I at?  Oh, one thing leading to another and the executives who used to cheer your business intelligence efforts are throwing rocks.  Yep…it can happen.

Noodling threw it lead me to consider the process of building BI capabilities.  Typically building these capabilities looks something like this, a) initiate project, b) deliver project, and c) go on to next project.  I’ve echoed this process once or twice before and I probably sound like a broken record squeaking about creating a cycle of understanding, developing and sustaining and growing BI capabilities.  That’s the mantra you have to repeat when driving any change.  It boils down to projects enabling new capabilities that in turn results in business execution which drives top and bottom line performance so effectively that it becomes part of the business process.  Four things – projects, enabling, execution and process that are necessary to make any capability sustainable.  So how good are you at these four things?

If you’re anything like me for years you’ve lived in the projects and enabling space.  After the appropriate check marks have been put on all the boxes in your gantt chart comes the victory dance.  But why the party?  At the end of the day its not delivering something that drives the results, but instead what happens next.  In a marriage the big party comes after standing at the altar.  These days half of marriages end up in divorce.  Interestingly enough that’s the same stat for BI initiatives, half don’t make it.  Makes you think, huh?  Seems like what happens after the party could be significant for you, the company you work for and the folks who depend on it for their lively-hood, especially if you’re like me working in the space where data is used for competitive advantage.

So if you were to grade yourself (and your team) in the four areas of 1) project execution, 2) enabling business use of new capabilities, 3) business execution derived from the new capability and 4) building this into the fabric of the business so that it is a permanent part your corporate culture (cheez I’m a wordy cuss tonight) what would they be?  Pretty simple question.  Pretty important if you want to stay married, or gainfully employed.  How good are you at the work that happens before and after the big party?

Til next week!  (Told you I’d keep you hanging…)

The Like Cycle II (Be the farmer…)

I left off last week asking you to drink some Kool-aid.  Its the best most refreshing sugar packed fluid ever(!) and I called it the like-cycle.  Establishing and sustaining the like cycle is hard work.  It’s about succeeding locally so you can succeed strategically.  It requires that a team be delivered a set of reports (or analytical interfaces if you’re sensitive about being a report gopher) that has immediate value.  It requires that the reports leverage tools that allow the recipients to extend the reports.  It requires that there be a process that allows the skills necessary for this work be available to the team.  It requires that there is a means for the team to have support to immediately add some object or data to the mix that gets them to the next thing.  It requires that a system exist to share new information and analytical capabilities.  It requires that you do each of these things over and over.  Its a lot like farming.  Till, plant, nurture, harvest and repeat.  To develop, sustain and grow a world class BI practice – be the farmer.

OK you’ve got the John-Deere hat, flannel shirt, cover-alls and a team who is embracing the decision support tech you delivered.  The process becomes repeatable, but NOT perfectly.  (Think of this the way you imagine farmers talk about the weather.)  Teams will have gaps – analytical, technical and business.  There’s the time constraint.  Have you ever talked to anyone who has enough time in the day?  Yet, you’ll get the second team (possibly after one or two hairs exit your scalp and several others turn silver).  You’ll establish the process of the like cycle – reports, tools, training, support, sustainability and growth.  People will talk about how the tools are making them successful.  Then comes more work to make two teams a community which is more work.  At the same time you need to be bringing more teams into the cult…I mean community.  At this point you’ve never been closer to the chewy center.  You’re on the road to having the local application of business intelligence start to support competitive advantage.

I breezed through creating the community pretty quickly.  Its not quick nor easy, but I think in the few minutes I have left its important to focus on what having an established business intelligence community does for an organization.  Its harvest time.  This community is naturally cross functional which creates a James Surowiecki-an “Wisdom of the Crowds” environment where ideas are shared, improved and come together in unexpected and beneficial ways.  (If this sounds like more Kool-aid educate yourself on collective intelligence!)  It creates a framework that provides a structured means to improve your communities analytical maturity.  Think of this in terms of introducing concepts and tools around dashboards, visualization, simulation, modeling and mining to folks who are already being successful with the foundational reporting and statistics delivered by a decision support system.  These things together create a fact-based culture that can be aligned and focused to support strategic objectives (which is an entirely separate blog).  Good things!

Now at this point there may be few cynical technology folks out there thinking, “plague of locusts” or possibly “rain of toads”, as they imagine hundreds of businesses users hitting their systems with an ad-hoc query tool.  This isn’t a biblical disaster.  It does create new support issues and requires appropriate process and staffing.  At the same time, it isn’t Nirvana.  There will still be a bottleneck.  However, the amount of analytical work that can be done (the capacity of the system) will improve.  More will be possible with less direct information technology support.  Its a pretty neat outcome if you can just get business users to like it!

Once more I’m out of time.  More on something next week!

The Coolest Thing I’ve Ever Seen

I’m serious.  There’s a group in Michigan who’s working to fix literacy.  Check out the Michigan NCRC Advocates site which to the naked eye appears deceivingly simple.  If you’re not willing to make the one-click journey then here’s a video from there site that explains what they are up to,

There’s a lot of folks out there who are doing great work in this area, but this one really get’s me jazzed since you can see it…feel it working.  Even better (from my admittedly geeky point of view) is that it is operating at the intersection of innovation, collaboration, business intelligence and organizational effectiveness.  The site is being maintained and extended by (markedly) non-technical folks, its gaining impressive hit rates which may in part be due to the ease of access to information and its having visible results which you can see from the key metrics they have established and are publishing.

Think about the impact this elegant uncomplicated effort is having.  People, families are being moved from food stamps to fiscal stability.  From a purely economic perspective this is neat.  From a social perspective this is phenomenal.

The Michigan NCRC Advocates are cool.  The Michigan NCRC Advocates rock!  Go see the Michigan NCRC Advocates (site)!

 …and then tell me what you think…