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In thinking about this topic, it occurred to me that the core issue for me is really the visual representation of influence mapping and the transition from unstructured information to a more structured form. Initial ideas are rarely structured. They are organic, like the way we think. However, structured information, like lists, makes the implementation of those ideas much easier to execute. We use MindManager 8 from Mindjet for our mind mapping tool and to provide the transition to a more structured form for the information. You can check out their website for more information on that tool. You can also look here for more information on mind mapping in general. To make my point I have created an example containing three maps. Each map can represent a project, group activity or a methodology (a collection of methodologies is the case for us).

The solid black lines represent normal hierarchical relationships. The dotted lines represent connections of influence. For example, Topic B3 and Topic C3 both influence Topic A2. In our example, the bolder red dotted line represents more direct influence and the smaller blue dotted line represents less influence. You have to set your own standards, like bolder lines representing more influence or one color representing more influence than another. For StrAIT Advisors, our methodology needed to be influenced by other methodologies. A screen clipping is shown below to illustrate how that actually worked for us. 
 

In our case, the dotted blue lines represent the influence of one methodology on our SLR methodology. Some steps were consolidated while others were not influenced at all. After any fine tuning needed for an individual client, the map is exported to Microsoft Project for project execution. In your case, the influences could represent the relationships between projects being handled by your Project Management Office (PMO). Influences between projects are much easier to show on this type of diagram than on a project plan composed of both projects and subprojects. They are much easier to change as well. In a project plan, the connections between tasks are actual dependencies, not connections of influence. Influence is too subjective and vague of a relationship for a project plan.

The need to capture unstructured ideas in team brainstorming meetings or just a casual meeting between collaborators is a vital part of the genesis of change. The conversion of those unstructured ideas into actionable projects is the next vital step. The use of mind maps periodically during the course of any project can be very useful, even if the ideas captured are just stored for the future. You can update them when ideas for improvement occur to the project team.

My core point for this post is that ideas start as unstructured things but must eventually evolve to structured things. Knowing how that process will happen is a key to being successful and adaptable. Identify your tools of choice before your project begins and make sure your leadership has buy-in into your approach. It will help in building credibility and communicating during the course of your project.

I hope this post has been valuable.  Talk to you again later…

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Update: 9/15/09

Just in:  Hard data on the use of social media by executives.  Get the study here.  You can also download the document on our Files page.

My thanks to Suzanne Adnams.  Her profile is here.  See her blog here.  She has been the most helpful contributor to my research.

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I recently posted the same question to a number of LinkedIn Groups as I have already posted here in my own blog. See “Using Social Media to Communicate with Executives“. There have been few responses to my question. However, I have received a few responses. I also received feedback during networking events that I found useful. I just responded to a recent reply and wanted to share it here. It has helped me to clarify my strategy and may be useful for you as well.

Recently, I was at an American Marketing Association luncheon were I talked with a young lady with firsthand experience. Her firm studies and advises clients on the topic. Based on what she and others have told me I now have a working model to use in my business. I segment my marketplace into two distinct groups. The first group is manufacturing and manufacturing related service companies (my primary market). The other group is composed of service companies not directly connected to manufacturing, like marketing, sales, technology services, etc (my secondary market). For the primary group LinkedIn is the most used tool, Facebook is occasionally used and Twitter isn’t a player. Even LinkedIn is used only in a fairly passive way. My secondary market is somewhat more active in social networking because there is a higher percentage of younger leadership.

Consequently, my strategy is simple. For me social networking tools can be somewhat useful as marketing tools but not as communication tools during engagements. In an era where senior executives have email enabled phones, plain old email is still the best choice for project related communications. Social media will be reserved for marketing related activities. I am already using collaborative technologies for engagements so there is nothing to change in that area.

Actually, this strategy is a confirmation of what I already believed. I just wanted to gather enough information to be more objective than just my “gut”. However, if I get a landslide of responses tomorrow to the contrary I do reserve the right to rethink my strategy. Given the level of responses so far I don’t anticipate any landslides.

For context the forum response is shown below:

“Mike – you raise a very interesting question, and I suspect from the lack of responses to date that there aren’t any clear answers to your dilemma, and that others may be posing the same question for the same reasons. I don’t have a clear answer to your question, but I do have some observations.

Fundamentally, there may be a disconnect between the role and function or ‘social’ technologies versus the type of service that it enables. To me, the disconnect is aptly illustrated by the confusing use of the terms ‘social media’ and ‘social networking’ – which I believe to be two different, but related concepts.
We can see the challenge through attempts that many companies have had to introduce collaboration software (eg. Sharepoint) into their environments – even though everyone thinks its a good idea, getting everyone to use it is another matter! If organizations have this level of difficulty getting participation within a relatively controlled workgroup (ie. employees), I don’t think there’s much chance of achieving compliance with a group of independent, external clients.

If you want to use this type of communication within your business, you may want to pursue ‘social media’, which in my definition is focused on promoting, marketing and branding your business/services to constituents. As these technologies mature, and become more pervasive in their use within business, then gradually there will be more uptake at a senior level. For now, though, the ‘closed’ two-way communication that would be appropriate for executive clients relating to specific work does not fit into the ‘open’, one-way communications that is typical of social networking and social media interactions.”

Your question would fall into what I would define as the ‘social networking’ category. If I may paraphrase: How can you use new forms of communications provided by social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. as part of your communications strategy and plan with executive sponsors? The answer, as simplistic as it sounds, is that these channels are simply extensions of any normal communications plan, and need to be considered in the same light. If the constituency with whom you are dealing uses these services, then there may be an opportunity to integrate those into your communications, but that’s a big IF. For the most part, most business-focused activity will take place via professional-level services such as LinkedIn, with Twitter or Facebook perceived as primarily personal/recreational services. None of these, however, are designed for the type of business communications that you are considering. Although it would be possible to create a FB page or a LinkedIn group specific to a given project, and limit access to that information to only approved members, it is much more challenging to get executives to change their habits to use it.

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I am trying to identify ways of communicating with executives using social networking tools. As a member of the same age group and general demographic, I have a feel for the answer, but I need to keep an open mind. My basic question is “Can we use social media as a viable way to communicate with executive sponsors of our projects?” I have attended a number of webinars on the topic and have been reading what I can find but nothing addresses this question specifically. I have put forth the effort to become more familiar with these technologies. I view myself as informed and motivated in their use but not an expert. I suspect that most C-level executives and their staffs have neither the time nor inclination to do the same. I suspect that it will vary by industry but have no data to support a conclusion. All of the data I have is not specific to executives. As I think out the details of this issue I can take multiple positions but don’t feel confident in deciding which one is right.

As you can tell, I suspect much but actually know little. Thus, I am asking for any data or opinions on the subject anyone can provide. Please post any comment you think could be useful to this post. Thanks for any help you can provide.

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MOF alignment diagram

IT infrastructure, applications and data storage have become inseparable from the implementation of business process for any modern business, regardless of size.  Any company that wishes to improve their business processes must work with whoever supports their IT infrastructure very closely.  As a result, there has been an increasing emphasis in the IT world to be more responsive to their customers.  Several “frameworks” have emerged in recent years to help IT organizations do just that.  A framework is a set of policies and business practices that forms the basis for the business processes of the IT organization.  These standard frameworks can then be extended or modified to suit the needs of each specific company.  Collectively these frameworks are referred to as the field of IT service management, or ITSM.

 While our SLR^SM methodology is not an IT framework it needs to accommodate the client’s IT organization and any ITSM framework or business practices it is using.  To accomplish several ITSM frameworks were reviewed as to how they would interact with our methodology.  They were COBIT 4.1, Val IT, ISO 20000, ITIL version 3 and the Microsoft Operations Framework version 4.  We will be writing a white paper providing a comparison of these frameworks from a pragmatic, mid-size manufacturer’s perspective sometime in the future.  For this post we will limit our perspective how the SLR^SM methodology should map to them.

Cobit alignment diagram

 The most obvious touch point is the alignment of IT and business requirements.  That alignment is core to all of the frameworks.  We have included several examples of diagrams shown in documents provided as part of each framework.  In each framework, business alignment and collaboration are emphasized repeatedly as foundational elements.  This illustrates that the IT world has become much more sensitive to their customers in recent years.  That wasn’t always the case.  For years, IT organizations isolated themselves from their customers.  While CIOs and senior IT management were certainly sensitive to their business counterparts, the IT organizations as a whole did not have a culture which focused everyone on their customers.  I remember first hand a number of resignations which occurred after I asked some developers to spend more time with their customers and understand their business issues (not StrAIT Advisors and a long time ago).  Some of these islands of isolation still exist.  Unfortunately, that will probably be true for some time to come.

 So how does the SLR^SM methodology address this alignment issue?  The keys are in the team formation and the phase reviews.  First, the team must be formed to include both manufacturing and IT staff.  The simulator and collaborative tools used to execute the project force a structured approach to identifying and quantifying opportunities for business process waste reduction.  The phase review process forces that team to articulate details about the identified opportunities and how to address them to the senior management sponsors of the project.

ITIL alignment diagram

 As the SLR^SM methodology winds down and the “torch” is passed to the client’s continuous improvement team (which should be most of the same people) that alignment is also continued.   As a result, the alignment of IT to the client’s core business issues becomes a greater, ongoing part of the company’s culture.  It’s important to remember that the client’s continuous improvement process includes both business groups and IT groups, each using the appropriate business processes.  For example, the business operations group may find that a Six Sigma DMAIC methodology is best suited for them and the IT groups may find that business process built around ITIL works best for them.  Both of those approaches require communication and collaboration with the other.

 The relationship and collaboration between IT and the client’s core business groups is a key requirement for any project to be successful regardless of what project methodology is used.  It’s our intent to encourage and enable that aspect of our client’s culture.

 I hope that you found this post useful.  Until next time…

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Revised 8-4-09

I want to post some comments on how I see the use of the Internet to collaborate on and with sensitive information.  First, I am sensitive to the “cloud”, i.e., the use of web-based applications and data storage.  I use it to provide our website hosting, SharePoint portal and our WordPress blog, including reference files.  I have accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  I have tried an assortment of tools for blogging (and I need to delete most of those sites) before settling on WordPress.  I am looked into Ning and others.  I have accounts with Google Docs and Office Live Workspace.  And while some of these spaces could be useful I decided to do something different for StrAIT Advisor collaboration needs.

Let’s review StrAIT Advisor’s needs.  Our engagements will be fast and when completed, there can be no lasting footprint in the client’s infrastructure.  Our engagements typically consist of one of us working with a small team of the client’s people.  We will discuss and collaborate on the client’s business processes and value stream (for more information about value streams click here).  In both of those scenarios, we will be exchanging messages, documents and drawings that may clearly identify the client’s competitive strengths and weaknesses.  The client will assume that none of that information could be accessed inappropriately.  Given that I have run IT organizations and been accountable for a company’s cyber security in the past, I am extremely focused on security and best practices.  To minimize our client’s risk, we will primarily use the web as the infrastructure for pipes.  That means we use appropriate security tools to enable sensitive information to be transported over the web in peer to peer connections but not be stored there unless in an archive located in very secure storage where we know that we can “hug the data”.  That is an old IT expression indicating that the user knows positively where their data is located physically and is comfortable with its security. 

Accommodating team members with busy travel schedules is another need.  Those people need to work in airports even if there is no wireless connection and work at 30,000 feet in the air and traveling at several hundred miles per hour.  It will be years before the global transportation industry provides connectivity everywhere.  Until then, a peer to peer approach solves this problem.  Since most laptops have hard drives that vastly exceed the business needs of most people, the extra storage requirements needed typically don’t represent a major issue.

I have included a simple diagram from our overview presentation to emphasize my point.  In that diagram the black arrows indicate the peer to peer connections using the “cloud” and the red arrows and database symbol indicate the archive storage.  For the peer to peer collaboration we prefer to use Microsoft Groove.  Groove can trace it family tree back to Lotus Notes which came out in the late 1980’s.  We are satisfied that the security built in to Groove is sufficient to meet the security needs of our engagements.  The archived storage can be supplied by the client’s own infrastructure or our SharePoint server.  We will try to accommodate our client’s wishes if there are different architectural preferences as long as the same security needs are met and we can reuse our components and don’t have to build a customized solution.  Every engagement is different.

I hope this post clarifies why we made the decisions we made.  Please let us know what you think.  Thanks for your time.  We will talk again soon…

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