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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

I’m mad at Bob Metcalfe.

But first … IS Survivalist Roger Crawford points out one of Microsoft’s business practices that’s even more unfair than its antitrust shenanigans, namely, how it describes new products or product plans: “We are developing product X that does functions a, b and c and we expect these types of people to use it.”

Its competitors, who say things like, “We intend to leverage our strengths in the buzzword arena to provide our customers with the tools they need,” are handicapped, because it’s never quite clear what they’re planning to produce, nor for whom.

For fairness’s sake, the courts should prohibit Microsoft from clearly explaining its plans ever again. Based on what I’ve read so far about Microsoft.NET, it appears the Redmond contingent is already complying, because just what the heck are they mumbling about, anyway?

As soon as I read about Microsoft.NET, I thought, “This is Microsoft’s SAA!” I figured I’d write about it eventually. Metcalfe had the same insight, though, so there goes my claim to originality. Nuts.

If you don’t remember SAA, it stands for “Systems Application Architecture”. IBM, in the early days of its implosion, developed it to do for applications what its Systems Network Architecture (SNA) had done for networking: Provide a standard architecture IBM could control. SAA wasn’t a product. It was a framework within which IBM’s future products would, in theory, fit.

IBM’s core strategy was to control architecture. Even when companies bought non-IBM components, everything fit the IBM model for functional elements, specifications, and interfaces. The strategy worked because you could buy every component from IBM if you wanted to. SAA failed because the only thing IBM had was intentions.

Sound familiar?

Microsoft.NET is a non-starter. Ignore it. If, miraculously, it succeeds, you’ll pay little penalty for waiting. You have absolutely no reason to be an early adopter (and of what? There’s no product!), and lots of reasons to wait and see what happens.

But this column isn’t about Microsoft, nor IBM, nor, for that matter, about Metcalfe’s beating me to the punch. It’s about you and your IT organization.

Take a look at your mission statement, vision statement, strategic intent, program charter, or whatever defines what you’re trying to accomplish these days. While you’re at it, read some of your recent communications. Does it all look like Microsoft.NET, or does it mean something?

Meaningless visions like Microsoft.NET are punishments for the sins of our forefathers. American industry, paralyzed by a generation of bottom-line managers who couldn’t see past financial statements, awoke one day to the need for vision. Ever since, every self-styled leader in business has made sure to start at least one sentence per day by saying, “My vision for this is …”

Don’t do that. Let others decide whether you’re a visionary or not. Your job is to paint a compelling vision for the future. While it’s tempting to be an artist, painting blurry abstract swirls others can interpret as they choose, abstract artistry isn’t leadership. It isn’t vision. It’s Microsoft.NET.

Grand visions are wonderful things. But if nobody can figure out that you’re developing product X, with functions a, b and c, you aren’t a visionary.

You’re just daydreaming.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

If you enjoy science fiction and have never read Roger Zelazny, you owe yourself one of his novels. Zelazny was unequalled in portraying grand themes and larger-than-life characters. Usually powerful, often immortal, they act out their dramas as ordinary people in extraordinary roles.

Start with Lord of Light, an up-close and personal look at the Hindu pantheon. Nine Princes in Amber is very good, but skip the rest of the series (trust me on this). And by all means read his requiem, Donnerjack. Written with Jane Lindskold shortly before his death, it takes place in two universes — “Virtù,” which we might call cyberspace (or maybe not), and “Verité,” which is our actual reality, more or less.

In Donnerjack, Virtù is as real and important as Verité. Some pundits describe the Internet in similar terms.

Take, for example, Clay Shirky. Writing in Business 2.0, he says, “The Internet is the most important thing for humanity since the printing press.”

That’s quite an assertion, because since the printing press we’ve seen such advances as antibiotics, antiseptics, and anesthesia. These innovations changed infant mortality from an expectation to a tragedy, and disease from likely death to a minor inconvenience. Call me prosaic, but I rank them higher than the Internet. And that’s just medicine, and just the a’s. The full list of innovations more important than the Internet is pretty long.

Shirky’s take on the Internet has a lot in common with Zelazny’s description of Virtù: “The Net is not an addition, it is a revolution; the Net is not a new factor in an existing environment, it is itself the new environment.”

Well maybe someday. Right now it’s simply a medium for exchanging bits which assemble into communiqués of variable accuracy, authenticity, and quality.

I don’t mean to pick on Shirky, who is, I’m sure, a great guy with useful insights. His column is just the latest example of overblown hype about the Internet’s importance.

Let’s be clear about what the Internet is and is not. It is a new environment, not “the” new environment. Elevating its importance further elevates virtual reality above actual reality.

As the ad says, “This changes everything.” It’s true, or nearly so – the Internet has already influenced much of our experience (and jobs). In general, we can execute business transactions more efficiently through the Internet than through other channels. Elevating business efficiency to life-changing transformation is a pretty shallow world-view, though.

In terms of how we live our lives, the Internet’s influence is limited. We can send e-mails more quickly and conveniently, although less reliably, than paper mail; we can research subjects of interest more quickly and conveniently, although less reliably, than by going to the library; we can buy goods and services more quickly and conveniently, although less reliably, than through face-to-face channels.

Until someone invents a technique for making virtual reality as realistic as actual reality (for example, the Proctopod(tm) in Bruce Bethke’s hilarious Headcrash), Virtù will remain far less important than Veritè.

When that changes, the Internet will no longer be just another communications medium. We will have created a new universe, at which point it just might become what enthusiasts say it is today: The most important thing for humanity since the printing press.

Maybe even more important.

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