Richard Veryard

From Coincidensity to Consilience

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In my post From Convenience to Consilience – “Technology Alone Is Not Enough”  (October 2011), I praised Steve Jobs for his role in the design of the Pixar campus, whose physical layout was intended to bring different specialists together in serendipitous interactions.

Thanks to @jhagel and @CoCreatr, I have just read a blogpost by @StoweBoyd commenting on a related project at Google to build a new Googleplex. Because this is Google, this is a bottom-up data-driven project: it is based on a predicted metric of coincidensity, which is sometimes defined as the likelihood of serendipity.

With the right technology (for example, electronic monitoring of the corridors and/or tagging of employees), a corporation like Google can easily monitor and control “casual collisions of the work force”.

But as Ilkka Kakko (@Serendipitor) points out, such measures of coincidensity cannot be equated with true serendipity. I wonder whether Google will be able to correlate casual meetings with enhanced knowledge and understanding, and measure the consequent quantity and quality of innovation? And then reconfigure the campus to improve the results? Hm.

However, the principle of designing physical spaces for human activity rather than for visual elegance is a good one, as is the notion of evidence-based design. Form following function.

Stowe Boyd, Building From The Inside Out (February 2013)

Paul Goldberger, Exclusive Preview: Google’s New Built-from-Scratch Googleplex (Vanity Fair, February 2013)

Ilkka Kakko, Are we reducing the magic of serendipity to the logic of coincidence? (April 2013)

Corporate Grind

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#QTWTAIN @lucykellaway asks if those workers who stay for years with the same companies (are) unambitious and mediocre, or does the corporate grind make them so?Her article addresses the perception that people seemed to get dimmer the higher they went …

Corporate Grind

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#QTWTAIN @lucykellaway asks if those workers who stay for years with the same companies (are) unambitious and mediocre, or does the corporate grind make them so?Her article addresses the perception that people seemed to get dimmer the higher they went …

Working for the Machine

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#orgintelligence The recent appointment of an algorithm to a Board of Directors raises the spectre of science fiction becoming fact. Although many commentators regarded the appointment as a publicity stunt, there has always been an undercurrent of fear about machine intelligence. Even the BBC (following Betteridge’s Law of Headlines) succumbed to the alarmist headline Could a big data-crunching machine be your boss one day?

There are several useful ways that an algorithm might contribute to the collective intelligence of a Board of Directors. One is to provide an automated judgement on some topic, which can be put into the pot together with a number of human judgements. This is what seems to be planned by the company Deep Knowledge Ventures, whose Board of Directors is faced with a series of important investment decisions. Although each decision is unique, there are some basic similarities in the decision process that may be amenable to automation and machine learning.

Another possible contribution is to evaluate other board members. According to the BBC article, IBM Watson could be programmed to analyse the contributions made by each board member for usefulness and accuracy. There are several ways such a feedback loop could enhance the collective intelligence of the Board.

  • Retrain individuals to improve their contributions in specific contexts.
  • Identify and eliminate individuals whose contribution is weak.
  • Identify and eliminate individuals whose contribution is similar to other members. In other words, promote greater diversity.
  • Enable trial membership of individuals from a wider range of backgrounds, to see whether they can make a valuable contribution.

Organizational Intelligence is about an effective combination of human/social intelligence and machine intelligence. Remember this when people try to develop an either-us-or-them narrative.

#QTWTAIN

Jamie Bartlett, Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk? (Spectator 6 June 2014)

Adrian Chen, Can an Algorithm Solve Twitter’s Credibility Problem? (New Yorker 5 May 2014)

John Rentoul, Will Artificial Intelligence put my job at risk? (Independent 6 June 2014)

Richard Veryard, Does Cameron’s Dashboard App Improve the OrgIntelligence of Government? (23 January 2013)

Matthew Wall, Could a big data-crunching machine be your boss one day? (BBC News 9 October 2014)

Other Sources

Algorithm appointed board director (BBC News 16 May 2014)

On the CMO-CIO disconnect

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A study from Accenture exposes a disconnect between the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), with only one in 10 of the executives surveyed being satisfied with the current level of collaboration between CMOs and CIOs.

Key findings of the study, based on a survey of 400 senior marketing and 250 information technology (IT) executives in 10 countries, include:

  • CMOs believe IT doesn’t make the marketing function a priority.
  • More than thirty percent of CMOs believe IT keeps marketing out of the loop and does not make time and technical resources available.
  • Thirty six percent of CMOs say IT deliverables fall short of expectations.
  • Forty six percent of CIOs say marketing does not provide an adequate level of business requirements.
  • Despite CIOs appearing more open to engaging with CMOs, only 45 percent of CIOs say that supporting marketing is near or at the top of their list of priorities.

Accenture argues that this disconnect threatens the ability of companies to deliver effective customer experiences, and suggests some ways for CIOs and CMOs to work more effectively together.

The report contains some interesting hints of cognitive differences between the two functions. Take for example the concept of “requirement”. On the one hand, marketing wants IT to respond faster and more flexibly to “market requirements“. Whereas IT complains that marketing doesn’t provide adequate and stable definition of “business requirements”. This indicates a clash between two conflicting notions of what counts as a legitimate requirement, and the Accenture report doesn’t explicitly suggest a resolution of this conflict.

There are also interesting differences in the implied value system. The marketing function tends to place higher value on hard-to-quantify business benefits such as “customer insight”, whereas the IT function tends to place higher value on hygiene factors such as privacy and security. In both cases, these priorities may be influenced by the way budgets and targets are allocated to each function by the organization as a whole, and the ways in which different kinds of investment and operational expenditure can be legitimately cost-justified. Let us imagine that in a particular organization, the CIO can only justify investing in a new Customer Insight system if she can show that this system will produce measurable improvements in business outcomes. Whereas the CMO can only justify devoting any resources to customer privacy if she can show that security breaches would have a measurable effect on customer satisfaction or corporate reputation. (This may be relatively easy in some sectors, much harder in other sectors.)

There are some prevailing stereotypes of marketing and IT, which would suggest they are on different planets: one function being precise and highly numerate, the other being imprecise and unreliable.  In reality, they are much closer together, and should be able to collaborate closely, if only they can manage to speak the same language.

Source: The CMO-CIO Disconnect, Computer Weekly, August 2013.

On the CMO-CIO disconnect

by

A study from Accenture exposes a disconnect between the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), with only one in 10 of the executives surveyed being satisfied with the current level of collaboration between CMOs and CIOs.

Key findings of the study, based on a survey of 400 senior marketing and 250 information technology (IT) executives in 10 countries, include:

  • CMOs believe IT doesn’t make the marketing function a priority.
  • More than thirty percent of CMOs believe IT keeps marketing out of the loop and does not make time and technical resources available.
  • Thirty six percent of CMOs say IT deliverables fall short of expectations.
  • Forty six percent of CIOs say marketing does not provide an adequate level of business requirements.
  • Despite CIOs appearing more open to engaging with CMOs, only 45 percent of CIOs say that supporting marketing is near or at the top of their list of priorities.

Accenture argues that this disconnect threatens the ability of companies to deliver effective customer experiences, and suggests some ways for CIOs and CMOs to work more effectively together.

The report contains some interesting hints of cognitive differences between the two functions. Take for example the concept of “requirement”. On the one hand, marketing wants IT to respond faster and more flexibly to “market requirements“. Whereas IT complains that marketing doesn’t provide adequate and stable definition of “business requirements”. This indicates a clash between two conflicting notions of what counts as a legitimate requirement, and the Accenture report doesn’t explicitly suggest a resolution of this conflict.

There are also interesting differences in the implied value system. The marketing function tends to place higher value on hard-to-quantify business benefits such as “customer insight”, whereas the IT function tends to place higher value on hygiene factors such as privacy and security. In both cases, these priorities may be influenced by the way budgets and targets are allocated to each function by the organization as a whole, and the ways in which different kinds of investment and operational expenditure can be legitimately cost-justified. Let us imagine that in a particular organization, the CIO can only justify investing in a new Customer Insight system if she can show that this system will produce measurable improvements in business outcomes. Whereas the CMO can only justify devoting any resources to customer privacy if she can show that security breaches would have a measurable effect on customer satisfaction or corporate reputation. (This may be relatively easy in some sectors, much harder in other sectors.)

There are some prevailing stereotypes of marketing and IT, which would suggest they are on different planets: one function being precise and highly numerate, the other being imprecise and unreliable.  In reality, they are much closer together, and should be able to collaborate closely, if only they can manage to speak the same language.

Source: The CMO-CIO Disconnect, Computer Weekly, August 2013.

EA/ST Meeting Report October 2014

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Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture and Systems Thinking

Unfortunately, I missed this month’s EA/ST group meeting on Tuesday 21st October. But the presentations by @KlausØstergaard, @kvistgaard, @PhilipHellyer and @tetradian are now available.

  • Klaus Østergaard, Value in Utilizing Systemic Thinking in the Field of Enterprise Architecture and Vice Versa (DropBox link)

EA/ST Meeting Report October 2014

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Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture and Systems Thinking

Unfortunately, I missed this month’s EA/ST group meeting on Tuesday 21st October. But the presentations by @KlausØstergaard, @kvistgaard, @PhilipHellyer and @tetradian are now available.

  • Klaus Østergaard, Value in Utilizing Systemic Thinking in the Field of Enterprise Architecture and Vice Versa (DropBox link)

Autumn Events 2014

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Open Group Conference – Empowering your BusinessI was originally billed to speak at the Open Group conference in London later this month. Unfortunately, I shall be in Japan that week. My place will be taken by Daren Ward, Partner at Glue Reply, who wil…

Autumn Events 2014

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Open Group Conference – Empowering your BusinessI was originally billed to speak at the Open Group conference in London later this month. Unfortunately, I shall be in Japan that week. My place will be taken by Daren Ward, Partner at Glue Reply, who wil…

Defensive denial

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… often follows what Freud called “kettle logic“.

“The problem doesn’t exist, and anyway it isn’t a problem for us, and anyway we’re already dealing with it.”

Imagine we ask a manager whether her organization experiences any of the Symptoms of Organizational Stupidity. Suppose she denies it, or says it doesn’t matter. Guess what – defensive denial is one of the symptoms on the list.

In 2008, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes expressed some bewilderment at his competitor’s success.

“I’ve been frankly confused by this fascination that everybody has with Netflix. … Netflix doesn’t really have or do anything that we can’t or don’t already do ourselves.” 

Denial is a key phase in the hype curve for new ideas (especially but not exclusively technological ones). A concept is rejected as meaningless, dangerous and/or unnecessary, while simultaneously being bundled together with earlier concepts.

“That concept doesn’t make sense, and even if it did it wouldn’t be technologically feasible, and anyway we already have a perfectly good word for it and lots of people are already doing it so we don’t need a new word.”

Brian Klapper, When Corporations Cannot Adapt (aka Fear the Kid in the Black t-shirt) (January 2013)

Related Posts: The Dynamics of Hype (Feb 2013)