Technology and Organizations

This week’s Bay Area CIO IT Executives Meetup Group focused on innovation at Intuit — the folks that bring us TurboTax, Quicken, and QuickBooks. Tad Milbourn, our presenter, is the lead on their Brainstorm project. Tad described the inception of Brainstorm as an internal innovation itself, the development of Brainstorm for supporting innovation at Intuit, and now how Brainstorm is becoming a product for the rest of us. (For more on Brainstorm, including screenshots, please also see Bill Ives’ post.)

Tad Milbourn

Tad and his colleagues were relatively new to Intuit and looking for a way to spend their “10% unstructured” time. They noted that Intuit had an innovation tool — but that it was built for executive reporting, not for innovators. They also noted that from 1998 to 2007, Intuit had an innovation rate of 4 per year. This didn’t sound like a good innovation environment to them.

The Brainstorm story is an example of systems savvy and ongoing TOP Management — and goes to show that you don’t have to have decades of experience to have savvy. They saw that the current tool wasn’t a fit to the innovators’ needs, nor Intuit’s values around tools, culture, and process. They had the motivation to give it a go. They managed the technology, organization, and people. (For an example of what could have happened if they didn’t practice TOP Management, see this post.) It was by tying these issues together that they built a solid platform and were able to engage innovators from around the world and across functional areas.

They were innovators building a tool for other innovators. They knew that such a tool would need to:

• Get insights from all over the company, not just within obvious silos
• Grow ideas
• Find and link together people with needed skills — and not just skills that formally showed up via title or job experience.
• Keep the energy alive through on-going conversations, notifications of edits and comments, the ability to follow a person, idea, or tag
• Get management attention when the time is right
• …and still work within standard operating procedures (you can submit ideas via email as well as through the web tool)

They also knew that every idea is different and that the idea’s “space” would need to be easily customizable. They built in modules that can be linked together like Legos (e.g., a to-do list, a calendar, a list of team members — similar to the self-design possible in a Google Site).

The new tool even meets the executive reporting needs better than did the old one. The data is more realistic in that it is more tightly tied to the reality of the innovation’s progress. Innovation leaders within each group can see a dashboard of activity, giving them real-time understanding of innovation progress.

Final result: Tad reports that ideation is up 1000%, participation in innovation is up 500%, and they are running a rate of 20+ innovations/year (versus 4). They now have two external clients using Brainstorm. At one client they gained 40% adoption in 6 weeks.

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TOP (Technology, Organization, People) management requires systems savvy -- the ability to grasp the capabilities of a technology and how that technology might be meshed with organizational practice.  People with systems savvy understand that technologies and practices are intertwined — and they know how to make adjustments to both the technology and the practice to effectively weave them together.  In some of my earlier posts I’ve mentioned people I believe have systems savvy.  Here and in future posts I’ll be be presenting how how systems savvy (capability) can be used to practice TOP management (action).

Yesterday, the WSJ included Don Clark’s Take Two Digital Pills and Call Me in the Morning.  Andrew Thompson, CEO Proteus Biomedical Inc., and the other executives described in this article must practice TOP management to lead their ventures successfully.  For example, Proteus is testing a miniature digestible chip (the chip can be attached to conventional medication for less than a penny per pill) that communicates with a skin-worn sensing device that communicates via cell/internet with doctors.  The information includes confirmation that the medication is being used as well as vital signs.  Thompson (see the YouTube video below) says they are working in the field of “intelligent medicine.”  Intelligent in that information is tied to the therapy.

These intelligent systems tie together technology (the chips and their communication systems), organization (Doctors engaged in remotely monitoring patients, insurance companies involved in the reimbursement for the system), and people (taking human error out of the reporting process).  The effective use of these systems may have broad impact:  Clark writes, “Dozens of large and small companies are turning to wireless technology to achieve what the Obama administration is seeking through legislation: a health-care system that keeps people healthier for less.”  One of Clark’s sources describes “annual savings from remote monitoring at $10.1 billion for U.S. sufferers of congestive heart failure, $6.1 billion for diabetes and $4.9 billion for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”

Andrew Thomson, William Chang, Randy Thurman, and Eric Topol (all mentioned in the article) practice TOP management in that they steer their ventures through a complex environment including:

• Safety & privacy — Subject to Federal regulation
• Costs & negotiations — Insurance reimbursement and doctors’ related willingness to perscribe
• Technology understanding — For example, cell phones used to be banned in many hospital settings, now they are used as portable information devices for doctors

A leader in this setting cannot only be a lobbyist, liaison, or technologist.  They must be able to see how adjustments in any one area can be effectively intertwined with adjustments in the others.  Proteus even has a promo video making some of these points as they describe intelligent medicine as “technology + communication + healthcare.”  I found interesting the variety of ways they are thinking about communication: Monitoring device to patients, family, doctor… as well as technology to technology: (e.g., hip implant to running shoes).

TOP management is important in all organizations.  The executives in these intelligent medicine ventures can serve as exemplars given their extreme needs to manage technology, organization, and people together.  Particular examples of how they or others do this would be of great interest.

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Yesterday was Reid-Hillview Airport Community Day. One of the activities was a tour of the Control Tower. Great experience. Thank you to Vincent and Spencer for taking the time to explain the process that keeps hundreds of flights going in and out safely. Thank you to the rest of the team for letting us observe you at work.

I was surprised by how physical the process is, versus my high tech expectations. Yes, they have access to radar and a huge portion of the work involves radio communication with the pilots going in and out of the airport. But they also make heavy use of those big windows and a unique physical tracking system.

They track planes by type, tail number, and request for inbound or outbound route — by writing the information on plastic “pucks” with a grease pencil, and then physically sorting that puck onto the taxi and runway slots. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, so I’m showing a similar process below using wooden blocks.

When I asked about the process, using the plastic pucks versus keeping track on a computer, I was told that sometimes “elegant is best.” Great point! The solution is elegant in that the physical blocks trigger sensemaking (in my words) more than a screen version might. They can push a puck slightly out of its track to highlight that more action is necessary. All the members of the team can immediately step in to provide relief given their common understanding of the system. Elegant, green (no need for power or paper), easily visible to all in the room — good for team visualization.

Beautiful approach to a complex problem. Sometimes systems savvy means using elegant, but less high tech systems. Comments appreciated describing other examples.

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Yesterday’s Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus reports, “Online Professors Pose as Students to Encourage Real Learning” (full version article). They provide examples of faculty posing with false identities in “online courses to kick-start discussions among students, keep them from dropping out, and spy on their communications.” While Peter Steiner’s 1993 New Yorker cartoon “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” triggered feelings of thoughtful reflection — these examples of false identity instead trigger embarrassment.

Yes, we know people have false identities on Facebook, but a non-disclosed false identity in a classroom setting is a breach of trust. The Leavey School of Business honor code (Santa Clara University — my institution) would not allow such behavior from students, and I expect the faculty handbook would give it a thumbs down as well. Highlights:

• Be honest
• Demonstrate self-respect and respect for others
• Demonstrate respect for the law and University policies, procedures, and standards

Why do I care? As a faculty member, I need my students to take my communication with them at face value. Our class management tools (Angel in my case) allow tracking of participation and all discussion boards are open to all in the class — including me. If I pose a question to generate comment, my name is attached and I generally set up the course site to not allow anonymous participation. Anonymity is honored when I do state that a quiz/poll will be anonymous. All faculty and class interaction will be affected if some faculty breach the faculty/student psychological contract by being deceptive.

There have been cases of using ringers/confederates in research on on-line collaboration (one example). These studies were vetted by the University’s Internal Review Board (peer committee tasked with monitoring the safe and ethical conduct of research) and the participants were fully debriefed in accordance with IRB guidelines. I am also not troubled by use of disclosed phantom students (from the Chronicle article: Joe Bag O’Donuts).

As I said in my last post, understanding the dimensions of privacy is part of developing our systems savvy. The use of false identity is a violation of privacy in that you are not being given true information on which to base the disclosures you decide to make. My expectation for class interaction is that I am dealing with the actual person unless notified otherwise. Note to my students: that’s our contract.

Business collaborators should be similarly clear with the identity contract. My understanding (I’m not a lawyer), is that your company owns the information transmitted on a company computer and/or over the company network and that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. That said, companies are also covered by complex sets of privacy laws covering state, federal, and international boundaries. Some companies have specific policies covering impersonation (Marathon Consulting’s) — and all should. Build your systems savvy — be aware, be informed.

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Rosabeth Moss Kanter shows her privacy systems savvy in her new post Don’t Read This, It’s Private to HarvardBusiness.org’s Voices section. (Thanks to Heledd Straker of Naked Generations for tweeting the link.) Prof. Kanter documents the reality of life and work in the Internet age: Many people know what you are doing and where you are. These are important issues for business and personal settings. In business we must manage privacy as regulated by law (e.g., HIPAA, FERPA). More personally, the issues of Internet privacy are becoming almost as important as the birds and the bees for many of my friend’s sit-down discussions with their kids.

Prof. Kanter notes:

Has the culture already changed so much that people don’t care about privacy any more? Has being on public display all the time made exhibitionism (teenage style) and self-directed exposure of personal information (social network website style) preferable to privacy?

I don’t think so, and I think personal privacy could become not just a problem but a business opportunity – a technology frontier. Clever innovators will find new ways to block access or screen contacts or make people invisible. Now that our pictures can be snapped by cell phones, someone will invent a way to beam the light back on that phone if you don’t want to be in a photo. Suddenly privacy could become as cool to the kids as lack of it is now. They will retreat behind their electronic invisibility shields to get out of fights or shun a blind date. They will use their pinkie ring scramblers to erase digital records of embarrassing photos on Facebook that they don’t want college admissions officers to see. And then they will understand why privacy is something to cherish and protect, even if everyone can know everything about anyone in the digital age.

In the U.S., we have a Federal holiday this Monday. How many of you are automatically updating your “friends” with your whereabouts? I’m looking for sailboat crew for Monday and could benefit from knowing who’s in town before sending an email. If I just broadcast asking for crew, I end up taking my friends’ time by their feeling obligated to tell me they are out of town, or apologizing for not replying promptly because they were out of town. Easier if I just contacted the subset of folks actually in the area.

But I don’t broadcast my whereabouts, so I can’t really expect my friends to broadcast theirs. I do use Loopt when I’m on the road, but only connected to two family members. I also use TripIt, though again, just with family members.

The number of travel related social tools like TripIt is growing. Rod of DigitalNomads provides a clear description of the value of TripIt and Dopplr for business and networking purposes. He focuses on the ideas of knowing who’s in what city.

Yesterday, Nick Wingfield gave us Sharing Where You Are When You Care to Share. His focus was on more micro location awareness and privacy as he reviewed another tool: Glympse.

There’s a tendency in the Twitter era for people to share copious details of their lives with online pals. One way to do that is through new mobile-phone services that let people share their physical locations using the tracking technology inside modern cellphones.

While these location-sharing services have some interesting possibilities, they also raise some disturbing implications for privacy — or maybe it just seems that way if, like me, you’re over 35 years old. Lately I’ve been testing a cellphone location-sharing service [Glymspe] that I found simple, useful and non-creepy enough that I can imagine people thirtysomething and older using it.

Nick’s perspective seems similar to Michael Calore’s Epicenter post Gmail’s New ‘Add Location’ Feature Is Too Honest. We need more and more expertise to maintain control of how our information is shared.

The good news for now is that Prof. Kanter is right, at least I still have a door to close and the need for privacy management should ultimately be addressed by the market. But if that’s the case, where do I get that pinkie ring scrambler she mentions?
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For more on location sharing, please also see Lew McCreary’s What was Privacy (cited in Prof. Kanter’s post) and my prior posts (under the Location category).

I continue in my quest to find peer-reviewed research on location awareness/privacy and modern technology. While “computer monitoring” was a hot topic in the 80s and early 90s, we seem to have given up our concern — at least as far as peer-reviewed research has yet to show (maybe these papers are in the publication pipeline and will break free soon).

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