If Healthcare Were Software April 6, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in cloud, Consulting, Random Thoughts, Technology.Tags: Health care, Obamacare, Open Source, Supreme Court
1 comment so far
The Supreme Court hearings on the Patient Protection and Affordability Act (Obamacare) last week fascinated me. It is one of the few news stories in recent memory that requires you to think rather than just react. In following the topic, I have tied to compare and look for patterns in other areas of my life to help me understand these complex issues. Maintaining boundaries of the Federal government and the limitation of its powers does not really have a good analog though but I go with what I know best. What if healthcare were like enterprise software? (more…)
Chief Why Officer April 5, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in Consulting, Content Management.3 comments
When I was a teenager I visited my father’s office once and learned the most important business lesson of my life. He had retired from the army and was working for the city as an operations supervisor. When you sat in the chair across from him you could see taped to the wall behind him a piece of paper on the 1970′s era wood paneling. It looked as if he had cut it out of a magazine like a ransom note.
It contained a single word. “Why”
On Leadership and Denial March 7, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in Consulting.Tags: Failure, Jack Welch, John Maxwell, Leadership, Management
1 comment so far
I had an interesting coversation last night and the topic of leadership came up. Several years ago I was trying to improve my own performance and dived into the plethora of leadership literature out there. John Maxwell, Jack Welch and others have written many great things on the topic but recent chats among friends have crystallized some of the ideas for me.
Three Jobs of Leadership
There are three things that a leader has to do.
- Define the Present – Call it situational awareness or just being awake, this is the ability to look around and see conditions as they are.
- Determine the Destination - Vision. This is being able to see things not as they are but how they could be and communicate that to others with passion and confidence for how it will be better
- Direct the Path - Knowing what is on the other side of the mountain is one thing. Deciding to go around, over or through it is another. I have little use for pure visionaries though. All strategy and no tactics. To begin the journey you must pick a direction but then you must move.
Broken Leaders
“We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.” – Francois De La Rochefoucauld
Sometimes leaders break. Overcome by failures of conditions or character and they fall into one of two patterns.
- They can’t see the future for the present – Overwhelmed by the obstacles around them they settle into the role of manager – simply responding to events and not moving forward
- They can’t see the present for the future – Unwilling to face challenges and problems directly they refuse to acknowledge them and pretend to progress or worse yet believe they have arrived before they have ever left the starting point
Both are forms of denial that poison an organization’s effectiveness. It is hard but every leader must balance the yin and yang of vision and reality or risk falling into the worst state of all. A loss of credibility and hallucination of success. (Rule #13)
Listen to Your Own Plumbers January 11, 2012
Posted by Lee Dallas in cloud, Consulting, Content Management, Technology.Tags: Business, Business and Economy, Information Technology
1 comment so far
Ron Miller’s piece on Changing the IT Plumber’s Image yesterday was excellent. Most businesses do not see the business value their own IT organizations can and SHOULD be providing. Instead of being seen as the experts who can expand the business through new technology, IT is just somebody you call when your virtual toilet backs up. The analogy of the IT as a plumber has one flaw though. Usually when a plumber leaves things are better than when he got there. (more…)
When Was Your Last Technology “Refresher” August 30, 2011
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Consulting, Content Management, Technology.add a comment
An assumption that one can make from our blog title is that I’m a big guy. And one big assumption I made is that I learned everything we need to about exercise when I got out of high school. No I’m not talking about how the latest elliptical machine works but the most basics of human exercise, running. As I would try out a new diet program, I would get to a point where I needed to add exercise into the mix. That would then lead me to walking and then ultimately running. And after a few times of trying to run I’d usually hit ”the wall” at 5 minutes. Ultimately I’d give up. Where’s that “Runner’s High”? But this time around I did something weird, I re-learned how to run.
I found a “new program” for running, called Couch to 5k. And now after my third weekly run of week six, I ran for 25 minutes straight. Only three weeks before I thought I was going to die trying to run for 3 minutes. Now I’m running longer than I ran in high school.
Technology evolves much faster than the human body. Too often many of us get into a rut thinking we know everything about our chosen technology. But maybe we need to remember the words of Socrates.
Straight Talk in User Groups March 17, 2010
Posted by Lee Dallas in Consulting, Content Management, Documentum, EMC, SharePoint.2 comments
It’s that time of year again and everyone is deciding which conferences to attend. I enjoy speaking at user groups propably more than any other venue. I always make a point afterward to read the feedback to see if there is anything to improve upon. About a year ago I was priviledged to speak at all of the fall EMC Content Management and Archiving groups on the East coast (NE Boston and NYC, Mid-Atlantic in Philly and SE in Atlanta). I had a blast. From that particular series there was one review out of the stack was particularly negative.
I have come to terms with the fact that as lovable as I am not everyone will like me. Sometimes there is a personality or history issue that is impossible to overcome no matter how hard you try. Despite the positive responses I always dig into the negative becasue when receiving criticism I have learned to be objective first and ask the question ”are they right?” (more…)
Sharing Super Powers September 15, 2009
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Consulting, Content Management.2 comments
A bright light was finally illuminated on some odd questions and conversations I had been hearing lately. These questions were about how administrators and super users could have super privileges and not have the ability to do everything at the same time. Sort of like giving Lois Lane kryptonite to make sure that she can get Clark Kent to take out the garbage. Today I heard the story of Terry Childs.
Calling out the ECM Posers August 19, 2009
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Consulting, Content Management.6 comments
I am officially sick and tired of posers. Posers think that just because they saw someone implement an ECM system once or, scarier still, have seen a demo that they too are now experts. There are to many trained resources out there to work with posers.
Hopefully it will never happen to you, but let’s say you needed brain surgery. Would you let your family practitioner try it or would you find a brain surgeon? And ECM isn’t even brain surgery.
EMC Embraces CEVA Strategy with CSC FirstDoc July 30, 2009
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Consulting, Content Management, Documentum, ECM, EMC.Tags: ceva, compliance, csc, Documentum, eDiscovery, firstdoc, regulatory
1 comment so far
A huge announcement was made today by EMC and CSC (Computer Sciences Corp) around the controlled and regulatory document space. EMC is focusing on platform functionality for controlled documents while CSC will provide “the last mile” functionality to the end user. This is a big shift for EMC who often competed with CSC FirstDoc (formerly First Consulting Group) on end user functionality. In the ECM space this if the first significant market validation of a CEVA (Content Enabled Vertical Application).
Consultant or Contractor? August 14, 2008
Posted by Marko Sillanpää in Consulting, Content Management.add a comment
I read a great post by Pie on “A Career or A Job … Redux”. In it he talks about how roles as both a contractor and a consultant are a career. He makes some great points at an individual level, but I’d like to point out that just because you work for a “consulting company” doesn’t mean you’re not a contractor. I see the symbiotic relationship that exists in a consulting company as the big difference but I’m afraid that this is slowly going away.
