Leaders In the Know

What's Next in IT: Software for Leaders Creating High Functioning Teams

We were invited to present at a program entitled, "What's Next in IT" sponsored by the  New Jersey Technology Council held last week in Princeton. The program was led off by Albert Schneider, an IT executive at IBM, Roger Salomon, SVP and General Manager of Data Systems Analysts, and Rick Pinto, who chairs the Venture, Technology and Entrepreneurial Services Practices of the law firm Stevens & Lee. Several company presentations followed.

My presentation was about the work we're doing here at Cognetics with a software as a service product we developed called In the Know! Software as a service (or SaaS) is software available over the Internet rather than installed on an individual computer. Typically it's hosted by a third party rather than purchased and installed on your company's server.

There are lots of benefits of SaaS. It doesn't require any special hardware or software or on a company having an IT department to maintain it. Upgrades and improvements are made much more easily and frequently and don't need to be installed. Typically, SaaS is offered on a subscription basis, which can help with budgeting and make software more affordable to smaller organizations.

In the Know! is What's Next in IT partly because it's a SaaS application. But the real reason is because it's designed to help leaders build high functioning teams working in a growing, virtual, dispersed or alliance environment - the world many of us work in today.

Our goal is to keep things as simple as possible rather than more complex. We often think of web technology as connecting many people (in fact, huge numbers of people.) But what about smaller teams? The teams of 5-15 people many of us work in every day. Often the SaaS pitch is about making big company solutions affordable for smaller companies. That makes sense when we're talking about supply chain management, but does it make sense for building successful teams?

In the Know! is all about people and how they work together. That's what we believe is Next in IT.

The reality is that most of us feel overwhelmed, over-committed and over-scheduled. You know the symptoms: too much email with information you can't find when you need it, too many meetings with too little to show for the time spent, 24X7 availability, and demands for everything to be more, better, faster (and, of course, at lower cost.)

We need a non-confrontational way for neatly dealing with human nature in organizational life: people who just don't like to raise issues, red flags or problems in front of their boss or peers; some don't know how to get answers from others, like their boss, who are just too busy or not around; some who always feel their priorities should be everyone else's; and others just don't want anyone else to know too much about what they're doing.

Leaders need to build great teams to be successful. This poses a tough problem for the leader: how do you take individuals, working by themselves or in groups, and turn them into effective, evolving teams?

Teams, on the other hand, want to keep the leader out of the nits and details of their work. Makes sense. It minimizes someone looking over your shoulder, or mucking things up. This poses an interesting dilemma for the team: how do you give out the right kind and amount of information that's a) important for others to know so they can be useful but not in the way, and b) not creating extra work for ourselves?

A lot has been written about what leaders and teams need to be successful. Most of it sounds obvious, but we all know how hard it is to pull off well. Imperfect communication, lack of clarity around decision making, difficulty of juggling competing resources and pressing priorities, and dealing with increasing complexity all get in the way.

There's a lot of exciting things happening in technology. We'd like to see more of them making things easier and more satisfying for people.

Wharton Wisdom on Developing Leadership Talent

There are many amazing things about teaching at the Wharton School. One of them is attending the Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, which was held this past week. The theme of this year's event was Developing Leadership Talent: How Organizations Prepare Their Present and Future Leadership. Masters of Ceremony Peter Cappelli and Michael Useem kept the day moving, no small feat with a line-up of nine of the most interesting speakers I've heard in a long time.

Having attended the conference for the past several years, this one is at the top of my "don't miss" list. Just as you're thinking there's no way you can sit through nine 50-minute talks, you can't help but get hooked: each is so different and passionate. Most of all, they're memorable.

Thomas Stewart, Editor and Managing Director of the Harvard Business Review, talked about the three tests every leader goes through - whether it's Indiana Jones, Jeff Bezos or you. He calls them the initation test (when they become a boss/CEO/leader for the first time), the crisis test (when they go through their first business or personal crisis) and the rejuvenation test (when they realize it's time to move on.) "Organization life is the only place where square pegs can actually fit into round holes."

Jennifer Deal, Research Scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership, gave what I call the research portion of the program. She presented data from her survey of 3,400 employees mostly working in large companies, representative of all generations. You can read more about it in her December 2006 book Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground. What can everyone everyone agree on? "An opportunity to learn is about as important as pay."

Steve Harrison, Chairman of Lee Hecht Harrison, talked about his experiences and observations and the need for companies to move from legal compliance to a model of integrity, which he talks about in his book, The Manager's Book of Decencies. A gem of a job title: "Director of First Impressions."

David Nadler, Senior Partner, Oliver Wyman, and Vice Chairman of Marsh & McLennan, explained how CEOs lead their organization through the metaphor of a three-act play. They get on the stage stepping into the CEO role. They got the role having succeeded in another company faced with the same challenges. So Act I begins as the CEO figures out what's needed to meet the current crisis. The transition to Act II begins once the shift takes hold, and the CEO may need to change style or tactics to fully implement the strategy. Finally, as Act III begins, the CEO plans for the next generation of leadership to take the company to the next stage as the CEO leaves the stage. Nadler's article, The CEO's Second Act, in which he talks about the causes of CEO success and failure, appeared in the January 2007 Harvard Business Review. 

Richard Greene, Consultant and Author of Words that Shook the World, talked about the ins and outs of giving great speaches.       

Kirbyjon Caldwell, Senior Pastor,Windsor Village United Methodist Church, was no doubt the inspirational speaker of the day. Wharton undergrad leaves Wall Street to become a Pastor in Texas? You know that's got to be a heck of a story. "So all of you who do 360 feedback in your companies: does the feedback from the lowest level employees in the organization affect the compensation of the highest level employees? If not, do you tell them that their input doesn't count? That's where the rubber meets the road."

Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was probably the biggest surprise of the day. Stamford Business School grad leaves big General Foods marketing job to become a poet? The connection between poetry, leadership and managing turnarounds - whether it's the Jello brand or a quasi-government organization? It's all about creativity.

Tim O'Toole, CEO of the London Underground, was the last speaker of the day. His talk about the strength of every employee involved in the 2005 bombings. Unlike 9/11, the fact that they used 19 different radio systems to communicate with safety and Underground personnel was not a significant factor that day. The secret sauce: station staff had gone through so many drills, they knew what to do and courageously did whatever needed to be done, any way it could be done.

Which brought us right back to the start of the day: The one thing 97% of the workforce wants is to learn on the job - regardless of their age or job.

I hope you'll check out Knowledge@Wharton for interviews, articles and podcasts about each of the speakers -- and consider attending next year.