Insights by Bruno Aziza

2009-10-29T04:48:00.001-07:00

Interviewed Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division on Business Intelligence - more @ http://tinyurl.com/yk5cut3

2009-10-29T04:11:00.001-07:00

Featured in CRN magazine: "2009 is the breakthrough year for business intelligence" @ http://tinyurl.com/yh89sdo

2009-10-27T22:15:00.001-07:00

Just finished presenting @ Australia's Performance Monitoring & Accountability event. Great examples for 'the culture of performance' here!

2009-10-26T04:26:00.001-07:00

Are you the victim of "decisional set-up"? Join the conversation @ http://tinyurl.com/yk7l5u4 and become a fan @ http://tinyurl.com/ykcwkap

Are you the victim of "decisional set-up"?

2009-10-24T21:14:00.001-07:00

In a recent Harvard Executive course I took, our decision making class instructor said - "it's not the information you HAVE that clouds your decision making, it's the information you DO NOT have".

What a brilliant way to summarize the problems that many organizations face when making decisions. By this, I don't just mean that they lack the data to support their decision making, I mean, they often forget to ask for the data they don't have.

We've discovered that some of the poorest decisions occur because of "decisional set-up". I'm sure many of the readers of this post don't find themselves victim to this but let me try to describe the process:
1. The team has identified an issue and suspects they know the origins of a problem.
2. They research the answers, but find themselves looking in places that comfort their beliefs (intentionally or not).
3. They present it back to Management.

Sound familiar?

What happens next sets apart best performing teams from the rest. Winning teams deconstruct the premises of the argument, ask to look in areas where others hadn't looked before. They don't restrict their thinking to the data and analysis that's available to them. They work from the problem backwards, disregarding the limits of what's measureable and what isn't.

Some organizations, such as the VHA, as we highlight in Drive Business Performance, go as far as creating new roles and new processes to measure the "un-mesureable".

Have you seen this happen at your organization or else-where? What was it like? How did you handle the problem?

Join the conversation @ http://tinyurl.com/yk7l5u4

Best,
Bruno

Become a fan @ http://tinyurl.com/ykcwkap
Follow @ http://ping.fm/sULhQ

2009-10-24T18:37:00.001-07:00

In Australia now, after 5 days in Seattle, back from a trip through Europe, Florida & Boston..and giving up trying to get used to timezones!

2009-10-10T15:39:00.001-07:00

Is there a corrolation between # of tweets and # of followers - Join the conversation @ http://tinyurl.com/yl3clca

2009-10-01T22:13:00.001-07:00

Interviewed Bob Muglia, President of MSFT's Server and Tools business, on technology and innovation - more @ http://tinyurl.com/y85b8m9

2009-09-28T02:22:00.001-07:00

SAP expected to announce on 9/29 a partnership with LinkedIn to expand its social media offering. More @ http://tinyurl.com/yegw3yt

2009-09-24T23:00:00.001-07:00

Twitter's Value Is Set at $1 Billion. More @ http://tinyurl.com/ybrauhw

2009-09-17T00:26:00.001-07:00

"Augmented reality" in the field of decision making? Your opinion on the Culture of Performance group @ http://tinyurl.com/o89vep

Augmented reality...how about just reality?

2009-09-17T00:23:00.001-07:00

"Augmented reality or "AR" is getting a lot of press these days. While the Economist Technology Quarterly features it in a positive light, FastCompany provides a dubitative opinion of the opportunity. If you are not familiar with AR, it refers to technology that overlays information on top of real-life experiences in order to enhance them (watch this Nokia Research below video for more context).

While the visionary videos and articles are interesting, research suggests that people are not equipped to handle the information that is already available to them. This year, Accenture published a report that shows that executives make decisions based on gut feel 40% of the time.

According to the research, employees and managers alike are having a hard time finding 'good' data to support their decisions, or when data is available, technology to use and share it prevents them from taking full advantage of it.

In your opinion - what needs to happen so we can get "augmented reality" in the field of decision making?

Join the discussion on the Culture of Performance LinkedIn group @ http://tinyurl.com/o89vep

References:
FastCompany article and Nokia's video @ http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/nokias-sad-augmented-reality?1252911284
Economist article @ http://www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299602
CIO magazine quoting Accenture's research @ http://advice.cio.com/thomas_wailgum/to_hell_with_business_intelligence_40_percent_of_execs_trust_gut

2009-09-16T11:01:00.001-07:00

Join and connect through our newly created "Culture of Performance" linkedin discussion group @ http://tinyurl.com/o89vep

2009-09-16T10:58:00.001-07:00

Drive Business Performance featured as a Information Management magazine research @ http://tinyurl.com/pq2n6t

2009-09-15T12:19:00.001-07:00

Interesting article on BusinessWeek social networking experiment. Costs $16M, generates 600k..interesting..more @ http://tinyurl.com/lve9kg

2009-09-03T21:07:00.001-07:00

Do you have too much data, too little of the right one or both? Join the conversation @ http://ping.fm/4H2Vk

Does your organization have too much data, too little of the right one or both?

2009-09-03T21:01:00.001-07:00

Great WSJ article on the issue of information management and decision making. Although the article is specific to the scientific community, the same issues exist in the business world (see article @ http://tinyurl.com/nscpq9)

My favorite quotes are:
○ "Our ability to collect data now outstrips our ability to maintain it for the long run"
○ "The problem is to actually capture the way scientists interact with the data," Dr. Szalay says. "Today's graduate students are starting to use instant messaging in their scientific work. We have to figure out how to capture these"

Sound familiar? As the research in our book, Drive Business Performance, has shown - the #1 issue organizations face is NOT shortage of data but they:
○ Have too much data that is poorly organized (leading to more exploration and fewer decisions).
○ Have too little of the right data (leading to wrong conclusions).
○ Lack a system - or sometimes even the willingness - to capture the data they really need (leading to "impaired decisional vision").

In our book we offer ways to handle these issues starting by graduating through the "Increase Visibility" stage.
○ More on the model @ http://tinyurl.com/nvy5la
○ More on the self-assessment @ http://tinyurl.com/lpms9z

How do you identify to this issue? Would you say your organization has too much data, too little of the right one..or both?

Join the conversation @ http://ping.fm/ZTFaU

2009-09-03T20:51:00.001-07:00

Press on our book, Drive Business Performance @http://tinyurl.com/m4aa2b ! Join the conversation @ http://ping.fm/kuosV

2009-09-02T00:54:00.001-07:00

Is your green kpi in fact RED? check out my entry on KPI management and join the discussion @ http://ping.fm/dGoPT

2009-09-01T20:16:00.001-07:00

Happy for my brother-in-law who got quoted in the WSJ this month for his perspectives on antibribery law @ http://ping.fm/0ZM9Q

2009-08-31T08:31:00.001-07:00

Back in the office - 3,927 unread emails for 2 weeks of OOF. Yikes...it's good to be back!

2009-08-11T21:56:00.001-07:00

Off the grid for a few weeks...sporadic access to the internet...talk to ya all in a few!

2009-08-10T06:47:00.001-07:00

Just posted thoughts on KPI management @ http://ping.fm/QYFro Let me know what you think!

Is Green the new Red?

2009-08-10T06:35:00.001-07:00

In a recent conversation on KPI management, I came up with, what I hope, could be a catchy soundbite: “is your green the new red?”

The idea behind the sound bite is that, while many organizations focus on the red KPIs on their scorecards, they rarely question the ‘greenness’ of their green indicators. After all, it is normal to want to focus on reds and assume that, if something is green, we shouldn’t worry about it.

The only problem with this logic is that it gives too much credit to what a KPI really is. The more important aspect of KPI management, I believe, comes from understanding the factors that lead to its color. I’d argue that if one can’t explain why their KPI is green, it might as well be red. An unexplained green KPI can either be a fluke or a problem waiting to happen.

There is more complexity to this issue of course, but organizations that think about KPIs this way, make an effort to reduce the number of KPIs they monitor and focus their activities on explaining the ‘why’ of KPIs rather than reacting to their colors.

What do you think?

Bruno (follow me @ http://ping.fm/wAJdG)

2009-08-09T21:01:00.001-07:00

Just computed my travel info for the last 28 days. 26,000 miles, 51hrs....that's 2k more miles than going round the earth...ouch...