All Posts by Bob Lewis

|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Among the more annoying symptoms of aging is being annoyed by areas of social decline those of us entering geezerhood readily recognize because of the perspective our advancing age gives us.

For example, as if climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and generative AI aren’t bad enough …

In my youth we had the Gabor sisters, “famous for being famous” as the saying goes. Except, perhaps, Eva Gabor, who, in addition to being famous for being famous, became famous for playing Lisa Douglas on Green Acres.

If you’re too young to remember the Gabors, think Kardashians but with a modicum of class. I used to think that with the Kardashians we’d hit bottom. But we haven’t, because we now have “social media influencers.”

Back when the Gabor sisters reigned, they defined “fashionable” among a certain set of acolytes for whom “I want to be like her!” was their rallying cry.

At least they had class, so there was something worth emulating.

That’s in contrast to the Kardashians, who exemplify Rodney Dangerfield’s famous line in Back to School, “Call me some time when you have no class!”

But credit where it’s due: At least the Kardashians are famous and good at achieving it, so there’s some justification for emulating them among those who wish they were famous, too.

Okay, it’s a stretch, but go with it.

But social media influencers?

Supposedly, to become a social media influencer you first have to create content followers pay attention to. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I publish content every week that you pay attention to. (You do or you wouldn’t have reached the preceding sentence.)

Does this make me a social media influencer? As I consider the existence of “social media influencer” as a career to be a sign of social decline, the possibility worries me.

But I think I’m okay. A hallmark of social media influencers is that they want to be social media influencers. That’s their ambition and career goal. The sole value many of these folks deliver is little more than what celebrity endorsers deliver.

Which isn’t much, because of how many celebrity endorsers have no connection to the product they endorse – if you’re a NASCAR fan, do you decide which cola to drink because of which cola’s patch your favorite NASCAR driver wears?

Back in 1996 when I started writing the “IS Survival Guide” for InfoWorld, here’s how I explained what I was going to provide: “Suggestions and ideas that come from years of real management and executive experience managing technology; conversations with other managers and executives; discussions and debates with consultants, writers and academics; and just plain reading and thinking.

A lot comes from real-world experience of what works well. A lot more comes from real-world experience of what didn’t work so well.

The point, that is, was and is to provide useful perspectives that weren’t just like what every other industry pundit had to say on a subject.

Bob’s last word: That, I think, is what I find annoying about social-media-influencer as a profession: Fame is its point, not its byproduct, which means we, as a society, have decided to reward people whose sole claim to fame is that they’re adept at getting noticed.

Sure, I’d have liked to have “gone viral” (the 1990’s social-media-influencer equivalent) but that needed to be a consequence, not my purpose.

Bob’s sales pitch: No, I’m not asking you to help me become a social media influencer. But as I start to wind down Keep the Joint Running, you have an open invitation to peruse the archives and download copies of anything you find useful. The usual attribution courtesies apply.

This week on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “7 IT consultant tricks CIOs should never fall for.” It’s about how many consultants fix what’s broken by breaking what’s fixed, plus 6 other common consulting misdeeds.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

Effective IT leaders pay attention to four core organizational effectiveness “levers”: Business integration, process maturity, technical architecture, and human performance.

Ranked in order of importance, human performance comes first. Next comes human performance. Human performance comes after that, followed by human performance.

As evidence: Outstanding employees can overcome poor business/IT integration, while even the best-integrated IT organization won’t withstand poorly performing employees.

Top-notch employees can also overcome badly designed and implemented processes. The reverse is not true: No matter how good your process designs and management are, inept employees will cause them to fail.

The best technical architecture can, perhaps, limit the damage incompetent employees can wreak, but even that weak outcome is optimistic; meanwhile, “code gods” can overcome technical architecture that’s a complete mess.

No matter what your goals, strategies, hopes and vision, are, when it comes to getting the results you’re responsible for nothing comes close to the importance of how well the humans you’ve recruited, encouraged, coached, retained, and promoted perform.

As a leader and manager, it’s up to you to create an environment that fosters strong performance. Fostering it entails:

Leadership: In this context, leadership includes such techniques as listening (and especially organizational listening), followership, persuasion, and facilitation. Never fear – it also includes setting direction, but in this IT effectiveness model that’s covered under the IT/Business Integration banner.

Staffing and skills management: You need the right people, with the right skills. This entails effective recruiting, and treating employees as well after you’ve recruited them as you do while recruiting them. It also calls for training and education so staff bring the skills you need to the work they do.

Oh, and, by the way, “recruiting” really means “sourcing” – if you need a particular skill in the short term, but expect that need to go away, bringing contractors on board should be part of staffing as well.

Compensation and rewards: Designing compensation so it encourages strong performance and not perniciously embedded dysfunction isn’t easy. Here’s a link to get you started: “Poor Joe,” 10/22/2007.” To put a bow on it, constantly remind yourself of the role money plays in business communication. It isn’t an incentive, or a reward. It’s the company’s loudest voice, explaining what the company values most far more effectively than the best speechifying and executive charisma have to offer.

Organizational structure: The org chart, but not only the org chart. Beyond this are such elements as corporate infrastructure, key performance indicators and other corporate metrics, and accounting systems and what they inhibit or encourage.

Team dynamics: It’s rare for any employee to work in isolation. More often, employees work in teams, which is to say interdependence is the norm. Which is also to say business processes and practices are vulnerable to distrust among the team members who have to make them work.

Culture: We keep coming back to culture, and for good reason. Culture is how we do things around here, making some courses of action implicitly approved and others intrinsically unacceptable. Culture defines the social landscapes within which employees operate.

Beyond this, culture defines affinities and group memberships. In that guise, culture defines which teams are automatically trustworthy and which ones to view with suspicion no matter what they do.

Bob’s last word: The logic in favor of viewing human performance as the most important factor in driving organizational success is compelling. As stated earlier, it’s that great employees can overcome everything else, while poor ones can make failure unavoidable.

There’s been a lot of discussion as to whether generative AI can replace human beings, much of it little more than whistling in the dark. Example: “Artificial intelligence cannot replace human talent and creativity, it can only mimic the human brain.”

Putting on my Captain Obvious hat, if generative AI can mimic the human brain then by definition if can replace what human brains can do.

The better news is something discussed less often – whether generative AI can mimic human initiative. Eventually it will; I’m hoping I won’t be around to see it when it does.

Bob’s sales pitch: Speaking of not being around when it does, it’s time. Looking at the level of correspondence, comments, and declining subscriptions, I’m declaring 2023 to be my victory lap. So if there’s a topic you’d like me to cover in KJR, let me know via the Contact form.

This week on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “7 IT consultant tricks CIOs should never fall for.” It’s about how many consultants fix what’s broken by breaking what’s fixed, plus 6 other common consulting misdeeds.

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