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February 21, 2007
The Children of the Shoemaker...
... walk barefoot, as the saying goes.
I regularly have interviews with the press on a variety of topics. I always try to emphasize the human angle. Yesterday I had an interview full of surprises, that doesnt happen a lot. We had a lot of fun during the interview going over all kinds of examples, and then she asked So, Frank, what does BI do for you as a person?. That was a confrontational question!
I had to admit that I am trying to loose weight for a couple of months now, but am not very successful. A best practice would be to have a baseline, where you stand on the scales and see how much you weight. Then you set a target and you start to work towards that. Standing on the scales every other day would be your feedback how well you are doing. Thats BI! Unfortunately, I havent had to courage to stand on the scales yet...
So much for being a BI expert...
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 2:41 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2007
The two "wows" of yesterday
Yesterday we had a meeting of the Hyperion Alliance for Performance Leadership (APL) in the Prescott House of MIT in Boston, a beautiful location. The APL is Hyperions think tank where Hyperion customers interact with each other, world-renowned academics such as professor Tom Malone, and Hyperions internal faculty.
Yesterdays topic was metrics that matter, and there were two thoughts I wanted to share with you.
- Based on a discussion about the eBay business model: Which metrics would you design if the salary of employees would be 80% variable, instead of 20%. And how much more effective would we be if those metrics would be implemented in todays environment with our current compensation systems. Think about it. The metrics that matter that much, because your income depends on it, really.
- In a discussion on how hard it is to measure the culture of an organization in a merger or acquisition process, other than it smells like our culture, the discussion all of a sudden turned around: you should look at the metrics that the organization has in place, to get a feel for the culture. What is measured, obviously matters to the company. What you measure, gets done.
Two straightforward, but deep insights. Wow.
For more, you can always look on the Hyperion Executive Perspectives web-page where from time to time findings will be published.
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
February 8, 2007
Dealing with Dilemmas, Part III
In Dealing with Dilemmas Part I, Dealing with Dilemmas Part II and Kobayashi Maru, I did reflect on dilemmas to some extent. I summary, most people find dilemmas awkward and tend to ignore them, or feel they have to choose between two evils. However, there are many ways how to deal with dilemmas in a much more constructive sense. For additional information, also see Hyperions website on CIO dilemmas.
A recent example comes from the field of politics, forming the new Dutch government. It goes too far to go through the finer subtleties of the Dutch political system, but the negotations between the various parties who try to form a majority government are done by a mediator appointed by the Queen. Dr. Wijffels, who runs the negotiations has been using a special methodology that is often used in mediation between parties, such as business partners with a dispute or couples with relationship issues, and now obviously political parties that need to form a new government. The technique has various names, one of which is intersubjective dialogue.
The idea is based on the dilemma of various parties to at the same time want to work together, as well as need to achieve their particular agenda. Actually it is a double dilemma, because the other dilemma is the often contradiction positions of both parties that need to come together.
The general idea is, that under the supervision of the mediator, both parties -- having opposite opinions -- switch roles. If party A feels X and party B feels Y, party A should defend position Y as vigorously as party B defends X. The effect is obvious, to be able in a debate to defend a position, one needs to create an empathy for it. Creating an empathy changes the mental context you have around the position you take, it becomes broader. Both opposite positions synthesize in the mind. And the mediator oversees that both parties perform that synthesis equally. As a result, the two synthesized positions most likely match much better than the original opposite positions. The dilemma has been solved, both get a multi-sides result that is more balanced and realistic than the single-sided starting position.
Sounds difficult? I dont think so. Try it. Pick a topic, any topic you have a strong opinion about. This can be a business topic such as your corporate strategy, a personal topic as how to spend your vacation, a social topic such as abortion or an economical topic such as government spending. Find someone else who has the opposite opinion. No, not the wrong opinion, the opposite opinion. Switch roles and debate vigorously. Then review the points you both make, and how they make sense as well. With a common understanding, you now have the right mindset to truly synthesize (how to achieve both at the same time), taking both positions equally serious.
Its just a way for people to understand each other better. And isnt that the most important thing?
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 3:31 AM | Comments (0)
