Stories from a cluttered desk

Lessons from the Philosopher Chef

2012-01-18T01:50:00.001+01:00

Paring back to essentials is a liberating act. It focuses the mind and muscles. In times of crisis, complexity, and competing demands, it is often helpful to go back to things, the nuggets in our memory, that intuition that this just feels right, or it doesn't.

Chef Moreno of Il Caminetto, high in the hills above Varenna, Italy, teaches a cooking class that is more than creating great pasta.[1] He is also part historian of the local culture, part philosopher, and part humorist. It is no wonder how he has built the highest rating in Tripadvisor for a wide area in the lake region of Italy and beyond.[2]

While making the dough for tortellini, he first creates a circle of flour and hollow out the center to hold the eggs. He begins the mixing with his fingers only, moving from the center outward, taking in more and more of the flour.

“How can you tell if the dough is mixed well.” we ask?

“Close your eyes and touch the dough. Think of a beautiful woman, and touch the dough. You will know when it’s ready.”

This is the building of the visceral, the “muscle memory” that knows the texture without a measure or timer, or—God forbid—a dough machine. With Chef Moreno you are out in the wilderness of the Outback with only a swag and a book of matches.

He goes on to say, “Usually when you follow your instincts, the first thing you do is the right thing; with too much technology, you lose touch with that instinct.”

Someone asks, “How do you know when the dough is rolled thin enough?”

“When you can see the wood grain [of the table] through it, it’s thin enough.”

How do you measure that? “In a recipe, you must do interpretation. A recipe is a base, but without passion, it is nothing… [you must] show out who you are, what you are.”

Lest we think that he is not a perfectionist, he corrects someone who says the tortellini is perfect: “Not perfetto! Everything can be good, but it can be better.”

This kind of connection with the soul is a well-spring of creativity that leads us to make things, to share what is simple and basic and visceral is easy. Ask Chef Moreno.

A priest once told a story of an amputee, still flexing the toes of a lost limb. The muscle memory was so strong; it was present even in its absence. That’s the kind of visceral connection with our instincts to share that we need to develop in our organizations.

[1] See the restaurant and cooking web site, here: http://www.ilcaminettoonline.com/lezioni_e.html

[2] The Il Caminetto review is here: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187837-d1091635-Reviews-Ristorante_Il_Caminetto_Cookery_Lessons-Varenna_Lake_Como_Lombardy.html

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Why is the Digital Divide so important, and what can you do about it?

2011-11-28T08:22:00.000+01:00

Last week I had the honor of speaking at the Youth Action and Volunteering Development meeting on the day before the opening of the 18th biennial session of the IFRC General Assembly in Geneva. My topic was "Why is the Digital Divide so important, and what can you do about it?" Here is an expanded version of my brief remarks:

We are all aware of the digital divide in our world: those who have free access to information and the tools to make it useful for us, and those who do not. In a recent study, we found that this divide exists in our Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. We have an internal divide that makes it difficult for us "have equal status and share equal responsibilities" –from our very principle of universality that we so value.

Why is the digital divide so important? I think there are three reasons. First, information through the Internet is the great leveller; it allows all of us to learn and discover in the same school, so to speak. Second, we have seen how with the access to technologies, the last can become first, and the first can become last. This is the other side of levelling the field. But the third is perhaps the most important: it is about the opportunity to lead.

Why work on the digital divide? Because you have the opportunity to lead and to help others to lead, and be a part of this great conversation we call the Internet. This is perhaps the greatest volunteer work we can do in the digital age as digital citizens.

What can you do about it? How can you help bridge the digital divide? Rather than give you a specific assignment or recipe, I want to challenge you with five broad principles. Think of these as the three D's, an O and an M.

1) Dream big

2) Do the homework

3) Dare to remove obstacles

4) Seek and stand on Others' work

5) Mash-up pieces in new ways

First, dare to dream big. I have found that the successful efforts come from the many tries and the audacious attempts. Take for example the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition story. College students from over 200 countries compete each year. I’ve been a software design judge for three of the past four years. I view this as part of my giveback to the community of IT workers in nonprofits (and beyond). The Imagine Cup is about the IT workers of the future who focus on software that can have an impact on achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, the context for the competition.

These are big dreams. This year, 400,000 students registered for the competition; 3,000 made it to the country competitions, and 400 of the best went to New York to compete in the finals for 27 awards. These are the best of the best ideas.

In one week I saw more innovation than in years before. Why is that? These students have no business knowledge, no marketing experience, no money, and little time. But they also have no sense of limitation. And it is this last one that makes all the difference in world. They dare to dream about what technology can do. These are your peers. Your dreams can be every bit as big.

Second, do the homework. Think about how to make solutions sustainable, to cover their costs and deliver a valuable service to customers. Mohamed Yunus talks about services for the poor that are economically sustainable, and which produce social good as their profit^{^[1]}. This means thinking through the basic business case for your idea. Interestingly, only one team in the twenty I saw in New York at Imagine Cup this year did this homework.

Third, dare to remove obstacles. The story of the frogs illustrates this in an interesting way.

Story of the Frogs^{^[2]}

"Once upon a time there was a bunch of tiny frogs who decided to stage a climbing competition. The goal was to reach the top of a very high tower. A big crowd had gathered around the tower to see the race and cheer on the contestants.

The race began...

Honestly, No one in crowd really believed that the tiny frogs would reach the top of the tower. The crowd yelled statements such as:

"Oh, WAY too difficult!!!”

"'They will NEVER make it to the top.”

"Not a chance that they will succeed. The tower is too high!”

The tiny frogs began collapsing. One by one. Except for those, who in a fresh tempo, were climbing higher and higher.

The crowd continued to yell, “It is too difficult!!! No one will make it!”

More tiny frogs got tired and gave up. But ONE continued higher and higher and higher. This one wouldn’t give up!

At the end everyone else had given up climbing the tower. Except for the one tiny frog who, after a big effort, was the only one who reached the top! THEN all of the other tiny frogs naturally wanted to know how this one frog managed to do it?

A contestant asked the tiny frog how he had found the strength to succeed and reach the goal? It turned out that the winner was DEAF!"

The moral of the story? Turn a deaf ear to the “nay-sayers,” those who say it can’t be done, those who point to all the obstacles. Just do it.

Fourth, seek Others' work. This is just plain old good engineering. Find those who have solved some of the problems and stand on their shoulders. Don’t fall victim to the “not invented here” syndrome. Seek out the good work and build on it. Your mantra should be “no solos.”

Our new Technology Catalogue is built on this premise. We believe there is more to gain in discovering others’ technology successes in the Movement than in building our own. We have discovered over 850 applications the process. This requires what I call “headquarters humility.” It also means being open to “good enough” solutions.

Fifth, mash-up pieces in new ways. One of the top three contestants in Imagine Cup was the team from Jordan. They took a WII receiver and duck-taped it to a PC monitor. Then they took apart a TV remote control and mounted the diode on a baseball cap. Finally, they developed a program so the WII tracked the motions of the baseball cap and caused the cursor to move on the screen. With a pause, the cursor clicked and selected an item.

No big deal, right? Except the paraplegic women who had lost the use of her arms and legs told us in a video how she had gained her life back[3]. This system allowed her to create Facebook entries and keep in touch with friends, and dial cell phone numbers in her address book to communicate with family. She had her life back. That’s the power of software.

The interesting footnote is that they didn’t create anything new. They took existing pieces off-the-shelf and put them together in a new way. The creative may be in the combinations of the existing. That’s a powerful principle in technology.

So I challenge you today to think about how you can dare to dream big, do the homework to make it sustainable, dare to remove obstacles, seek and stand on others' work and mash-up pieces in new ways. If you lead by doing this, you just may change the world!

__________________________________

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

[1] Muhammad Yunus, “Social Business,” December 25, 2007, http://www.muhammadyunus.org/Social-Business/social-business/

[2]See http://mylifemantras.blogspot.com/2009/12/be-deaf-to-negativity-lovely.htm

[3] See the video of this woman’s testimony on YouTube, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGmmzXHheWE

A Tale of Two Dreams

2011-11-11T19:34:00.003+01:00

Here is a paraphrase of the remarks I made at the NetHope Tenth Anniversary celebration in Dublin, Ireland.[1]

I’d like to tell two stories.

The first is about my generation. Ten years ago, seven NGO IT leaders got together in San Jose. Some of my colleagues around the table tonight were there at the Cisco Campus and Dipak Basu’s dining room table in September 2001. We all faced a common problem about how to take technology out the last mile to where our organizations work in the field. We had a shared need. More importantly, we believed that technology could make a difference in the work our organizations were doing in the far reaches of our programs. We could see it working. We had connected the dots in our imaginations. And we dared to trust each other to do something about it together; because none of us was going to succeed going it alone. This was how NetHope got started.

Our dream was that we could bring technology to where it was most needed faster, better and cheaper if we did it together. And we believed that as a group we could be a stronger partner with the technology companies with whom we needed to work. Both of these goals have proven to more true than we ever imagined ten years ago. There are more than 200 professionals here tonight, and all of you are passionate about what we are doing to bring IT where it can do the most good in the world. But this would not have come to be if we did not dare to dream around that modest table in San Jose.

The second story is about a new generation, the college students who each year compete in the Imagine Cup Competition. I’ve been a software design judge for three of the past four years. I view this as part of my giveback to the community of IT workers in nonprofits (and beyond). The Imagine Cup is about the IT workers of the future who focus on software that can have an impact on the Millennium Development Goals, the context for the competition.

In one week I will see more innovation than in years before. Why is that? These students have no business knowledge, no marketing experience, no money, and little time. But they also have no sense of limitation. And it is this last one that makes all the difference in world. They dare to dream about what technology can do.

During the NetHope Summit this week, we took a tour of the Intel fabrication plant in Kildare. It was truly an awesome experience—a geek’s heaven, if you will. During the tour, our guide mentioned that at Intel they talk about the big numbers, and the small numbers. The enormous and incredibly expensive tools that create the inexpensive, tiniest circuits we know. I think this speaks to what we know: that big dreams with small groups can change the world.

So I have a great hope here tonight: that if we dare to dream big, like we did as a small group ten years ago, as a much larger, stronger community today, we will create the greatest use of technology for good in the next ten years. Thank you.

____________________

[1] The slide deck for my "NetHope Chairman's Report," NetHope Summit and Tenth Anniversary at Intel's Campus, Kildare, Ireland, November 10, 2011, is on my web page, here.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Scarcity

2011-10-06T17:11:00.000+02:00

Scarcity

At breakfast today we learned that Steve Jobs had died. The icon of business who built technology “for the rest of us” had passed. Our group of colleagues and Fellows at the Bellagio Center offered their thoughts about how his work had changed us: “persistent innovation,” a “knack for the user,” a “brilliant designer,” a “great comeback,” “only 56.”

I remember reading his address to the graduating class at Stanford in 2005[1]. His most quoted phrase, from the back of the last issue of The Whole Earth Catalog was “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Yet it was his third story about confronting death that was most poignant and personal. Having faced and beaten pancreatic cancer in 2004, he said “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Yesterday was my turn to give a presentation on what I was working on at Bellagio. During the question and answers that followed, something happened that I’ve learned to look for: out of the give-and-take came a way to reformulate something, to say it in a new way. What I said was that it’s somewhat ironic that there’s value in scarcity. It may be a reversal of what you’d expect. It may drive people to work together because they just don’t have the resources to go it alone.

I think Jobs was saying something similar, but perhaps in a more ultimate way: that life is the great scarce resource. And that is a positive; it makes the status quo smaller, and opens up the possibility that change can happen before it’s too late. Perhaps staying hungry may just be the way to dial up the creative juices and fulfill something. Thanks Steve.

[1] Full text is on the Stanford web site, here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

What am I learning today?

2011-08-14T20:46:00.001+02:00

I wrote to a friend today about life being about continuously learning. It's not always easy but it's never without its revelations. I believe in being a perpetual student and am ever amazed about the riches in approaching even something familiar with beginners mind. I was reminded of this watching a video by three world travelers from Australia.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Tom Peters tells the story about the father of his college girlfriend, excusing himself from the table to study. "I have homework to do," the accomplished surgeon said. Thinking he would soon graduate from the nights of homework, Tom was taken aback about the prospect of a lifetime of study.

We have an eLearning platform at the Red Cross and Red Crescent that is growing at a pace of over 2,000 registrants a quarter in more than 150 countries. And this is happening without any advertising. The hunger to learn is universal. And that is a hunger with which we all can live.

My adopted aunt is in her 80's and is always learning something new, whether a master gardening course or something new on the computer. She recently learned how to use Picasa to share photos. "You are my hero," I tell her. You are always open to learning and approach everything with a sense of wonder. I want to make all of my days like that.

Imagine beginning each of our days with a simple question, one of openness and possibility. It is a question that begins all other questions: What am I learning today?

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Finding the Bottom Line

2011-07-27T23:14:00.003+02:00

On the last night of the Imagine Cup[1] presentations, the judges gathered after each round to discuss what we saw, what was memorable, and what was missing. We all took notes during the student talks and demos, and we asked as many questions as we could. We wanted to be sure we understood the project details, why it would be successful, and what impact it would have. It was hard work, and very rewarding work.

Imagine Cup Winners, Lincoln Center, NY

An Idea in a Sentence

Between one of the early rounds, one of my fellow judges suggested asking the students if they could describe their core idea in one sentence. We agreed. During the Q&A for the next team, he posed the question, and got a long run-on sentence in reply. It was not memorable. Why is it so hard for the twitter generation to sum it up in a few words?

The Tag Line Game

During my consulting days, we developed and exercise to write a mission statement on a bumper sticker (the manual version of about half a tweet). During the exercise, we called out memorable tag lines for products and asked the team to reply with the company name. Here’s an updated version of the quiz for US readers to try; can you name the company?[2]

1) Think outside the bun.
2) Can you hear me now?
3) I'm lovin it!
4) Think.
5) Think Different!
6) Like a good neighbor...
7) 15 minutes can save you 15 percent ...
8) You’re in good hands with...

The interesting thing about this game is how quickly the group can name the company, and how fast the list grows with other memorable tag lines. Can you say the same for your organization’s mission statement?

The Elevator Pitch

I recently learned of the Elevator Pitch Competition that a number of universities run. If you search YouTube for that title, you’ll find a dozen entries. The one that caught my eye was the 2010 Utah State winner, Josh Light. In less than two minutes, he presents a clear and compelling business case, with the why, to whom, the how, and for how much. Brilliant!

What do you do…in seven words

A new LinkedIn group caught my eye the other day. It asks members “What you do in exactly seven words.” The answers are interesting:

“Helping senior executives to achieve more” (6 words),

“Develop strategy, realize benefits from outsourcing/off-shoring”

And the tongue-in-cheek stab at reductionism:

“Avoid summing myself up in seven words”

My friend and colleague James Mapes has an exercise where he asks his audience to list 15-20 qualities about themselves, and then cross off 5, then 5 more, until you are left with the one you value most. This is less about reductionism than it is about gaining the focus of what is most important among the good.

The Umbrella Word

A few years before, another friend asked me “what’s your word?”

“My word?”

“Yes, your word.”

She said, if you had to choose a word under which you could talk about who you are, what you do and are passionate about, what would that word be?

I’ve told this story to a few colleagues and it was clear that the question is a provoking one. Martha ran from the table saying “I need to go to the ladies room to think about it!” When she came back, she sat down calmly and said “words.” What I do is about “words,” finding out what people’s stories are. She is owns an executive recruiting firm.

I wrote about this umbrella word exercise under a pen-name in 2007. For me the word is connections, which you can read about in the article comments.

Strategy on a Page

IFRC is a writing culture. In addition to the leading work we do on the ground and mobilizing communities of volunteers around the world, we produce thoughtful papers on ideas, research, case studies and strategy. When I joined the organization, I sat down with my boss and outlined a series of “IT Think” papers to start the dialog about technology strategy. From that came a 30-page vision paper, and a 30 page strategic plan. But when it came to engaging the senior management team, what caught on was a one-page summary of Q&A’s about the strategy. It became my strategic flyer.

Tweet the Suggestion

Returning to the Imagine Cup, judges are asked to give the students written comments as part of the scoring. This is an opportunity to tell the students how you think their presentation could improve. This form of coaching is one of the most important things we do. Student teams have come up to me later in the competition and asked "what did we do wrong?" "What was it the held us back from the next round?" Some judges write paragraphs while others write a few lines. In the early rounds, the judging captain needs to extract a few lines to pass on to the teams moving on to the next round. It's a tough editing task in the early going. 18 teams move on to round two, and each have seen 4 judges. Do the math.

Software Design Judges, Imagine Cup 2011

Taking a cue from the web generation, our captain asked us to tweet him our best suggestion for each team. That helped. And it shows an important point that is memorable for students and judges alike: what's the most important thing you want your audience to remember? To act on? When you do this well, you both win.

[1] My 2011 Imagine Cup Blog entries start here: http://eghapp.blogspot

[2] The answers are,

1) Think outside the bun.... Taco Bell

2) Can you hear me now?.... Verizon

3) I'm lovin it!.... McDonald's

4) Think..... IBM

5) Think Different!.... Apple

6) Like a good neighbor.... State Farm

7) 15 minutes can save you 15 percent.... GEICO

8) You’re in good hands with... Allstate

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Imagine Cup - Day Four

2011-07-11T21:20:00.001+02:00

One of the things we are asked to do as judges is to pass on to the student teams some tips on how to improve their presentations. The number one item I noted in most of the reports was the need to provide the basics of a business model. Solving a problem with a cool application is not enough.

Here are three basic questions to answer:

1) How much does it cost to deliver your application? What are the upfront and one-time costs, and what are the recurring costs?
2) What is the size of your potential market? Is it a million individuals or four country governments?
3) What are your sources of revenue? Keep in mind that in the nonprofit sector, the users are often not the ones who are the payers.

If you can't answer these questions about your project, it will never move from the cool to the viable. In the for-profit world, profits may rule; but in the nonprofit world, we look for community and economic sustainability.

Group Photo on Ellis Island

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Imagine Cup - Day Three

2011-07-11T05:19:00.000+02:00

Foursquare CEO and entrepreneur, Dennis Crowley, told the students a few days ago that their great idea may not be at the right time yet. Ask any comedian and they will tell you that timing is everything. And I believe a comedian once said that all things come to he who waits... provided he works like crazy in the meantime.

One of the teams I judged today was back for the second year. They had a new idea,they learned from their experience, and they were wiser. They made the final round this time. We asked another team when they began their project--last September. The teams that made it to New York had worked long and hard, even while "waiting" for a second chance.

We narrowed the field in the software design category from 18 teams to 6 today--just 10% of the teams who made the finals in Imagine Cup this year. For those who like doing the math, we started with 350,000 applicants.[1]

As one of about 40 judges in software design, I saw only a hand-full of the teams that made it to the final round. But I saw far more good ideas. So to the teams that did not make the final cut, take a page from Steve Ballmer's keynote: be tenacious, ideas matter!
_________________________

[1] I've written about this competition as an incredible funnel of innovation and ideas. And I've seen first hand that there's also an opportunity for the teams to learn from each other.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Imagine Cup - Day Two

2011-07-10T15:40:00.001+02:00

Time-in

Bill Cosby tells an amusing story about dropping a favorite hat in a public bathroom, into the porcelain receptacle. He fished it out with his comb, washed it a half dozen times and hand-dried it until it was wearable again. He went to such great lengths because he had a lot of "time-in" on the hat, he had worn it through thick-and-thin. He didn't have much time-in on the comb, so he tossed that away.

Watching the students present their projects, I was taken by how much energy and preparation they made to create their applications and their presentations. It was evident how many had put the "time-in" to develop their idea into something that works, solves a problems and has an interesting story.

Malcolm Gladwell described the "rule of 10,000" in his study of successful "outliers," those who had achieved huge success. The legends of technology, like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Scott McNeeley and others, had put in 10,000 or more hours of work, learning and experimenting, before they started their companies. They had a lot of "time-in" on their ideas.

One of the teams I saw had an interesting variation on the "walkathon," tracking how far users walked and how much CO-2 they saved, via a phone app. When they reached a threshold, a sponsor would donate funds to the charity of their choice. Fund a cause and save the planet--a nice mash-up.

Thinking about this pedometer-on-a-phone, I recalled a colleague who set a target on his pocket pedometer to walk 10,000 steps a day. After years of walking, he is still fit and trim in his 60's. The thing about walking is that it's easy to get started, it takes a step at a time, and the goal is achievable if you put the time in. That sound like a reasonable approach for incubating an idea into a something that changes the world.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Imagine Cup - Keynotes

2011-07-09T17:52:00.005+02:00

Last night was the opening ceremony for the Imagine Cup competition. It was a night of memorable speeches, flags waving and arm-pumping cheers--a good foretaste of the main event next Wednesday night.

We heard keynotes and welcomes from Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO), Jon Perera (Microsoft General Manager of Academic Programs), Aurther Vanderveen (CEO, Office of Innovation, New York City Department of Education), Jeffrey D. Sachs (Professor at Columbia University), and Dennis Crowley (Foursquare Co-Founder and CEO).

Here are some paraphrases of their remarks. Can guess which one goes with which speaker?

Never have the problems been larger; never has the power of technology in our hands been greater.
The three most important things I learned are: ideas matter, find your passion, and be tenacious
There is this incredible joy of problem solving
Your homework assignment is nothing less than saving the planet
Going from success to failure to success to failure teaches you one thing: never give up
Your great idea may not be at the right time yet

Drop me a note if you get stuck on this quiz. (The transcripts are here.) I'm off to hear the first round of student presentations next. I'm excited and expecting great ideas!

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Imagine Cup - Day One

2011-07-09T05:06:00.000+02:00

Arriving in Time Square in New York City, one cannot help but have a sense of awe. Those new to the city stare up as if goldfish eyeing a rain of light on the pond above. Traveling the maze of escalators and elevators in the Marriott Marquis, I see the groups of students walking in t-shirt groups of their country's colors. I say hello to the team from Brazil, take a photo of the quartet from Serbia, admire the indigo of New Zealand.

There is something else in each of their eyes, even beyond the jet-lag and wonder; it is a look of expectation, the expectation that something great is going to happen and they will be a part of it. I am here to catch that as surely as a yawn travels through a gaggle of late night revelers. Something great is going to happen!

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Tech Talent 4 Good

2011-07-06T01:34:00.004+02:00

I recently attended the launch of the Microsoft and AIESEC Tech Talent 4 Good student intern programme at the Microsoft Executive Briefing center in Brussels. I had proposed a similar programme to Microsoft a year ago, and so was asked to speak to the initial class of students and participate in a "Day in the Life of an NGO" panel. Here is a brief outline of my remarks:

What are the qualities needed for working in an NGO?

Passion - you have to believe in the mission
Triage - not all the good can be done
Patience - on decisions; consensus is messy and takes time
Forgiveness - rather than permission
Openness - immerse yourselves in the conversations

Others mentioned listening skills, relationship skills and sense of humor

What were my career choices that brought me to the nonprofit word?

I'm on my 3rd of 5 careers (See Charles Handy on careers in the post-modern era)
Why? A shift from success to significance

What is strategic IT for nonprofits?

The Relevant IT Manifesto; technology more for:

a) delivering program scale than support

b) as the glue for communities

c) working together more than solo

d) the field than for HQ

The IT Strategy Pyramid: Get out (of lights-on tech), get in (to beneficiary tech), move up (to more mission-moving tech.)

Where has there been progress?

Wiring the Village – we have taken the connections out the countries where we work, now to the branches and project areas
Collaboration – we are working together on projects, and trusting centers of tech leadership
Emergency Response – we have taken ICT from rapid connecting of relief workers, to shared networks and connecting survivors

What is possible and exciting about the future?

Everyone is less than 2 degrees from being connected – world population of 6.9B, 5B cell phones with 20-30% as two phone users, means 4.4B mobile users
The mobile users in emerging and emergency relief countries are the new connectors – In Haiti 10% reach 100%
Consumer tech as more relevant than corporate tech for the vulnerable, and the organizations who work with them

My Advice for students?

Go to the far country, a hotbed of innovation – the IFRC App Inventory case: discovering 53 volunteer management applications in our national societies, not in HQ
Your experience is not the world’s experience – Why? Imagine Cup case: No sense of limitation
No rules, no limits: get it done – the case of Shawn Ahmed: free agent philanthropy

What are the relevant stories?

Naomi Fils-Aime in Haiti – “Life is very difficult: [cholera and hurricane] messages help me protect my family” – the IFRC SMS program
The starfish story revisited – think big, start small, but get started!

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

A Relevant IT Manifesto

2011-07-06T01:03:00.001+02:00

Here is a draft document that I hope invites some debate and discussion. It is clear to me that if we connect the dots, nonprofit IT cannot follow in the footsteps of corporate IT without crippling our organizations over the longer term. The experience at NetHope, an organization I helped found ten years ago, is that there is a better way: based on trust, sharing and collaboration.

Toward Relevant IT – A Manifesto[1]

We are uncovering better ways of applying technology to solve problems of emergency relief, development and conservation by working together at home and in the field. Through this work we have come to value:

· Working as one group more than as individual solo organizations;

· Technology as a means of moving missions[2] and delivering program scale more than delivering support services;

· Technology as core to connecting our communities, field workers and beneficiaries to the rest of the world more than simply an optional peripheral service;

· Developing for those who deliver programs in the Field more than those who work in headquarters;

· People and interactions more than processes and tools;

· Piloting and testing locally more than adopting what works for headquarters.

While there is value in all of the items on the above continua, we value those on the left hand side more. We believe these emphases allow us to have the greatest impact on our members’ missions and, in turn, on individuals, wildlife and the environment where our members operate.

* * * * *

Guiding Principles behind the Relevant IT Manifesto

We follow these principles:

1) Mission-Moving Projects. We believe that technology matters. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have impact on the work we do as international Non-Government Organizations (NGOs). Our effectiveness as NGOs depends on our ability to effectively use technology both to build capacity and provide new venues for the work that we do. Most importantly, we believe ICT can move missions, which is the most strategic application of ICT to which we can aspire.

2) Good Enough Applications. Small is beautiful, faster to change, and fit for purpose. In developing our systems, we seek to increase our technology agility and not get trapped by ubiquitous systems that increasingly NGO’s cannot afford to implement or upgrade.

3) Shared Services. Sharing resources stretches and enhances what we do as individual organizations. And what we do individually can be shared for the good of all. We support what a small group of members can do as well as what we do for the larger group. Each is an opportunity to learn and benefit our individual missions, while sharing the risk.

4) Lights-Out Infrastructure. To get into mission moving applications, we need to get out of basic IT operations. We need to shift the IT agenda from "lights-on" technology to “impact” technology. This means trusting others who are in the business of providing infrastructure to be our data centers.

5) Increased Experiments. Rapidly changing environments and economies demand innovation, new ways of doing things, and more experimentation. In times of stress, organisms vary like mad, with pilots, prototypes, and trials. We believe in partnering more, to “pilot” together and share the risks as well as the rewards of innovation.

6) We believe we learn by collaborating. While technology can facilitate collaboration, we believe in face-to-face conversation for building relationships. Insights come through the dialog. It also comes by doing projects together. To accomplish this we partner with leaders from governments, donors, business and education. By dialoging and debating with the best minds from inside and outside our organizations, and challenging each other with ICT and other innovations, we can develop new ways of working that benefit those most in need.

7) We are mindful of our audience. Using the IT Strategy Pyramid, we are aware of four orders of technology: Beneficiary, Program, Operational, and Infrastructure applications. The IT strategy is different at each level, and each has an audience with differing though related needs. They need to be a part of our IT team at each step of our work.

8) We believe in building for the Field. The field workers delivering our organizations’ programs are our primary clients. Our IT solutions must work in the most remote and challenging parts of the world. In this, field workers are our most important teachers and critics. We seek to deliver technology that improves program design, delivery and impact in the Field. Demonstrating measurable impact is the building block for what we do.

9) We have a strong bias for action. This is especially so for emergency response work, where speed is paramount. It is also true for the pilots we run and prototypes solutions we build; we learn from the doing. We believe that the secret to success is often “getting started.” Lessons learned help us become better prepared. We are therefore impatient to see early results and indications of what will work and what needs to be improved. And getting to what works is a primary measure of our progress.[3]

10) We value Trust above all else. Trust comes through open dialog and working together over time. This means trust in working with each other as members and NGOs and with our corporate partners, funders and vendors. It also means we value each other’s expertise and have the humility to seek and accept approaches and solutions outside our individual organizations. We trust the small group as well as the larger group to get their work done.

[1]For a comparison document, from which lessons have been drawn, seen the Agile Manifesto, here: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html . A sample Agile principle worth pondering: “Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.”

[2] Each NGO has an impact-based mission statement, such as IFRC’s “to improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity” and Oxfam’s “to fighting poverty and related injustice around the world. IT leaders at NGOs must constantly ask how technology is helping to achieve this mission.

[3] Nonprofits refer to this as program pilots that are repeatable and scalable (for greater reach and across multiple countries.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Crowdsourcing

2011-04-20T18:08:00.001+02:00

A colleague asked me recently about what I thought about crowdsourcing, was I for it or against it? Here are some thoughts on the question that developed from the dialog.

As I noted in my presentation at the recent DIHAD conference (see my last Blog entry), technology is a neutral tool; the intent and its use defines its ultimate good. Some points to consider about crowdsourcing:

Some Cons:
1) Paying for crowd-work is a modern form of piece-work, something unions mobilized against a century ago
2) In its global reach and nature, it can be a race to the bottom on wages
3) The crowd can be used for ill intent. See Jonathan Zittrain's work; he talks about a number of the risks of crowdsourcing (See for example, a recent International Herald Tribune article)

Some Pros:
1) As a volunteer program, putting questions to the crowd can be a rich, inclusive activity
2) Ideagoras can be a source of innovation by casting a wide net for solutions (see http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideagoras
3) A "discover and harvest" approach to Field IT is a positive form of crowdsourcing
4) Crowdsourcing can provide a means for "sunshine info," where everyone is a detector; and political, economic, and policing transparency is more likely.

I favor the volunteer, idea harvesting, sunshine side of crowdsourcing. I find the pay-for-micro-work side of crowdsourcing demeaning. And I worry about crowdsourcing in the hands of oppressive governments.
__________________________

Also see http://www.crowdsortium.org/2011/01/31/workforce-innovation-txteagle-microtasks/ for an interesting application of crowdsourcing.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Social Media

2011-04-02T18:20:00.003+02:00

I was at the DIHAD 2011 conference in Dubai this week. The theme of the conference was "New Technologies: How these impact humanitarian and development operations."[1] Here is an expanded version of talk I gave as part of a panel. A copy of the slide deck is on my web site at eghapp.com

Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Social Media

I have three take-aways for this paper, which I’d like to state up-front, so you know my intentions from the outset.

1) Technology capacity building for the vulnerable needs to be clear about audience and intention (and beware of unintended consequences)

2) The most important participants on the team are the beneficiaries, and the most relevant technologies are the ones that beneficiaries adopt

3) The prophets and the priests of technology can learn from each other (assuming both distance and proximity)

I propose these three points as my theses for which I invite your debate.

A 2x2 Lens

When I was in graduate school, I heard a lecture by a visiting professor on “Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Civil Religion.” He proposed a matrix with dimensions of style (priestly or prophetic ) versus transcendence (national-self or deity)[2]. He went on to suggest that a colleague was in the self-transcendent, prophetic cell, and the debate was off and running. The dialog between the prophetic and the priestly voices was not lost on me.

This was my first introduction to the 2-by-2 matrix lens for looking at complex issues, something our consulting colleagues remind us in each presentation; that no business school student can graduate without mastering. So being a student of business and humanitarian organizations, I propose applying this approach to the currently lively area of social media and humanitarian work.

To make sense of the landscape I propose a simple paradigm of intention versus audience with examples from recent events.

Figure 1 – Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Social Media

It is useful to ask who are the audience, who are the speakers, and what are their intentions?

In our desire to embrace technology we often forget that a tool is an extension of purpose; and that the same tool can be used to harm as to cultivate. Related to this is the reminder that the enthusiasm of individuals doesn’t always connect with the work of organizations, and the reverse is also true, especially when it involves a change in technology mindset. The guardians or “priests” of technology are often at odds with the “prophets.”

Good Intentions and Individuals

Let’s look at these one at a time. The on-line community that has formed around tools like Ushahidi (http://www.ushahidi.com/) has made it possible for the technology-skilled to help when a disaster occurs. The availability of cheap, easy to access tools makes possible a new category of volunteering. Whether in Haiti, where survivor information was aggregated and mapped, or Japan where responder and journalist information were the primary sources, it is the processing of data by volunteers that provides a new view of the post-disaster situations. And this information is being produced and interpreted faster than ever before. In Japan, by day 5, OpenStreetMap community had mapped nearly 3,000 data points[3]. These are good intentions by a crowd of individuals.

The Uncultured Project (http://uncultured.com/), founded and led by Shawn Ahmed, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, was inspired by a speech made by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs (author of “The End of Poverty”). His project shows the power of one individual when connected to the social media. Shawn is one of the top five viewed video-bloggers on YouTube talking about global poverty, with over 2.2M views.[4] He has appealed to his generation of YouTubers to help rebuild a school in Bangladesh whose roof was blown off by Cyclone Sidr[5]. Shawn tries to engage his audience on awareness of global poverty, and gives the poor a voice through social media.

Good Intentions and Organizations

Shifting the focus to organizations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent (RCRC) SMS project in Haiti is an interesting case. RCRC partnered with Trilogy Partners who own Voila, one of the largest cell phone providers in Haiti, to develop an innovative application that allows sending targeted SMS messages to beneficiaries in Port au Prince. The application uses a Google Maps mash-up to allow “drawing a circle” around an RCRC center and selected cell phone towers, and sending information relevant for that center and location. Some of the statistics are impressive:

6 million SMS sent during 7 days disaster preparedness campaign
385,000 messages received per day in PaP & Artibonite
1.1 million "early warning" SMS ahead of hurricane Tomas storm surges
2.1 million Cholera health SMS sent
800,000 calls in September to a toll-free *733 IVR info-base

Two points to highlight about this data: first, it is using actionable information: to come to a vaccination center, avoid a storm surge or call for information about what to do about cholera. Second, it places the beneficiary in the center of the communication with a connection means that they had already adopted: the inexpensive cell phone.

The future potential of this application is to look to beneficiaries to be a part of the assessment team on the front-end, and invite beneficiaries to rate and comment on the services we provide on the back-end. Imagine a client-centered approach to disaster management with the beneficiary at the center.

Bad Intentions and Individuals

Turning to the darker side, we can see examples of social media being used for ill-will rather than good-will. The students who embraced Facebook and other social networking sites are not immune. The defunct student trashing site JuicyCampus is the notable case in point[6]. However, even Facebook users have not been spared.

The Sports Illustrated story on C.J. Johnson, the American high school football star, provides some interesting reading[7]. It appears some over-zealous fans attempted influence his college choice by posing as another school and trashing his mother. His farewell post to Facebook is a reminder that the good intentions on a social network paragon can be quickly soured:

"This is my last Facebook post and I'm gonna leave facebook with this. Linda Johnson [his mom] has never worked as a house worker making 100,000 dollars a year and I will not be a Mississippi state bulldog and I'm not considering Mississippi state anymore bc you have constantly comment on my page send me crazy inboxes and has made my recruiting experience a living nightmare. Goodbye facebook.[8]"

Bad intentions and Organizations

When we turn to organizations, intentions gone bad can become even more sinister. Take for example the Texas Border Patrol site that invites citizens to watch web-cams and report suspicious activity[9]. That may seem like an amusing example of neighbors spying on neighbors. However, Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard University law professor, suggests that governments could use the same crowd-sourcing principles to identify protestors[10].

These examples are a reminder that technology is a useful tool, but the intentions of the users gives it its quality. In this sense, there is no such thing as “good” technology, no matter how popular.

The Problem of Unintended Consequences

Perhaps a footnote in this paradigm is the adage that even the best intentions can go astray. When a disaster occurs, people of compassion want to know what they can do to help. Some give money, some time and others lend their talents. The technology community is no exception. With the proliferation of free tools and a virtual community, it is possible for IT savvy people to help without leaving their desks.

As one would expect, a key message of the DIHAD 2011 conference is that we all believe in the potential of technology applied to disaster response. Yet there has been an explosion of technology and data over the past few years, from on-line volunteers to beneficiaries on mobile phones. Now we are hearing the message that we are drowning in data and need help sorting it out. It is as if the cry from those on the front lines is “don’t give us something we can’t use!” It has led some to question whether the information that is being so readily provided on crowd-sourced maps, burgeoning text messages, and ubiquitous email is actionable: can we discern the most important information and act on it?[11] In the world of growing information, we need to be able to separate the interesting from the useful. This may be a noble assignment for our crowd-sourcing colleagues to undertake.

The Need to Bridge the Prophet-Priest Divide

To return to the source of my title, it may be worth asking: in the world of technology, who are the priests and who are the prophets? History provides memorable examples of how the guardians of technology are often the last to see and adopt the change. The IBM PC in the early 1980’s is an excellent case in point. It was banned, resisted and then accepted as only a “dumb” terminal by CIOs who were quick to point out its meager power and lack of security. The cell phone is another example, failing to meet AT&T’s minimum quality for voice even after it had supplanted the landline phone as the dominant consumer communication technology. It just may be that if you ride horses all day, you tend to look at traveling as a bridle path.

In an interview in CIO Magazine, Clay Christensen points out the challenge:

“Cloud computing—any computing over the Internet—just isn't as good as enterprise computing. It's not as secure, not as fast, not as reliable as your internal network. But like all disruptions, it's getting bigger and better. As it does, it pulls applications, one by one, out of the corporate network into its world.”[12]

If the priests of technology are the CIOs, then this warning of disruptive innovations at our doorsteps is something the priests don’t want to hear.

The resistance is not limited to the domain of CIOs. In a wonderful summary of critiques, Anand Giridharadas writes of questioning that I doubt the prophets of new technology will want to hear:

“James Gleick is asking whether information has become the new crack. Evgeny Morozov and Malcolm Gladwell are asking whether it really is the case… that more Internet always means more freedom and openness. Nicholas Carr is asking whether we are losing our powers of reading and writing. Scientists around the world are asking what this new oxygen of constant connectedness does to our brains.”[13]

All of this applies to disaster relief and preparedness. We in the humanitarian community are ripe for disruption. I asked Clay Christensen during a roundtable a few years ago whether he knew of a case where an established company was able to embrace disruptive innovation within the organization. He thought for a minute and said “no.”[14] It may be that the best we can do is support and amplify the efforts outside our walls that are succeeding, and we would do well to send our new world technology pilots to the far country.

Can the prophets of technology hear such critiques as the CIOs must pay attention to the disruptions in our midst? If ever there was an invitation to more dialog, this is it.

Questions to Consider

So I invite you, the technology leaders in humanitarian organizations and the technology volunteers knocking at our doors to sit down at the same table with a healthy dose of beginners’ mind.

To start the discussion, here are eight questions about information technology in disasters posed by Paul Conneally, an IFRC colleague:[15]

Relevance: Is it actionable?
Verification and authentication: Is it true? Is it a hoax?
Duplication: Has this already been dealt with?
Access: Do the most vulnerable have the tools?
Privacy: Is confidentiality respected? What are the security risks?
Expectations: Are we creating unrealistic expectations?
Impact: Can we convert data into aid delivery?
Proximity: Do we understand the new proximity dynamics?

Even if we work out the answers to all our satisfaction, the success criteria will remain: what gets adopted in the field, by those on the front-lines in disaster relief, and by the first responders who they serve: the beneficiaries. We can have the best intentions in the world, but if it does not have impact in the most vulnerable places in the world, it will go for naught.

I leave you with two stories. This one is from a journalist in a refugee shelter in Northern Japan following the earthquake and tsunami that reminds us that we need to work together:

A barber “was giving free haircuts on Thursday with scissors and a razor borrowed from a friend in a nearby town. “We have to support each other,’ he said, ‘and this is what I know how to do.”[16]

The second is a photo I took in one of the poorest communities in Manila. A young girl wandered in from the street while I was taking photos in a day care center and wanted to be a part of the action.

It was not until I returned to the US and enlarged the photo that I noticed that she was holding a dozen bottle-caps in her left hand. These were her toys for the day. This was a poignant lesson for me on three counts:

Simple, basic toys are good enough
She brought her toys with her to the center
She had already adopted these toys as hers

Now change the word “toys” to “technologies”. Connections with people, where they are, with what they use, is the most important thing. We would do well to remember this when designing technology for disaster response and preparedness.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

[1] See http://www.dihad.org/ , last accessed 2 April 2011. I also gave an abbreviated version of this presentation at the Geneva Forum for Social Change, 2 April 2011, http://www.gfsc.ch/

[2] James A. Mathisen, "Twenty Years After Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?" Sociological Analysis, 1989, 50:2 129-146, Wheaton College, Illinois (citation on p. 133),

http://socrel.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/2/129.full.pdf accessed 24 Jan 2011.

[3]See http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/03/16/crisis-mapping-japans-earthquake-and-how-you-can-help/

“Members of the Japanese OpenStreetMap community launched an Ushahidi platform for Japan just hours after the devastating earthquake struck the country. Less than 24 hours later, Japanese students at The Fletcher School in Boston (where the Ushahidi-Haiti project was run last year) mobilized to support the Tokyo-based crisis mapping project. Today, almost 3,000 individual reports have been mapped on the platform.” --Patrick Meier, 16 Mar 11

Also see: http://www.sinsai.info/ushahidi/

[4] See Shawn Ahmed’s YouTube site, here: http://uncultured.com and his blog, here:

http://savetheworldblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/2606613587_44ea042f60.jpg

[5] See Shawn’s video on the Bangladesh projects, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Adp3F6udt0

[6] See http://juicycampus.blogspot.com/

[7] See http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/andy_staples/01/26/facebook-recruiting-johnson/index.html

[8] See: http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Top-recruit-quits-Facebook-following-living-nig?urn=highschool-313954

[9] See http://www.blueservo.net/vcw.php. Also see the article "Innovation: The sinister powers of crowdsourcing”, New Scientist, 22 December 2009 by MacGregor Campbell, http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18315-innovation-the-sinister-powers-of-crowdsourcing.html

[10] Also see coments about Zittrain’s warning in “Reality Crashes the Technocrats' Party,” By Anand Giridharadas, International Herald Tribune, March 26, 2011; http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=765939

[11] See Paul Currion’s thought-provoking article “If all You Have is a Hammer - How Useful is Humanitarian Crowdsourcing?”, Oct 20, 2010, http://www.mobileactive.org/how-useful-humanitarian-crowdsourcing

[12] “What CIOs Get Wrong About Emerging Technology”, interview with Clay Christensen, By Kim S. Nash, CIO magazine, December 15, 2009, http://www.cio.com/article/print/510968

[13] “Reality Crashes the Technocrats' Party,” by Anand Giridharadas, International Herald Tribune , March 26-27, 2011, http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=765939

[14] ILO Institute Conference, Boston MA, April 25, 2008

[15] Paul Conneally, “Digital Disasters: How new technologies are transforming humanitarian aid for the better”, a presentation at the LIFT 11 conference in Geneva, 03 Feb 2011, http://www.scribd.com/doc/48097510/Digital-Disasters

[16] “Quiet bravery, and hot tubs , for refugees”, by Michael Wines, International Herald Tribune , March 26-27, 2011, http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=766208

Crossing the Street

2011-03-27T12:36:00.002+02:00

During a recent presentation to our senior management team I was reminded of the power of stories. The topic was IT Strategy and our internal Digital Divide among our national societies. A recent study had determined about 40% of countries in the RCRC Movement were without adequate IT to fully participate as members of the Federation or within their countries. This required new ways of thinking if we were to address this problem in the near-term.

The story I told was about crossing a busy street in Cairo. When we think about strategy, a natural tendency is to think about being in front, ahead of the pack, encouraging others to follow. A friend who teaches part-time at a prestigious law school says you need to keep two steps ahead of the students, no more and no less. And it's this memory of the teachers and coaches in our life that sets our early benchmark for leading. But it may not be the image that serves us best.

Last summer I traveled to Cairo to be a judge in the Imagine Cup student competition. While we were there, we made plans to meet with a colleague who offered to show us his home country, the "real" Egypt he said. Farouk was one of our long-term Field Office Regional Tech's. He reported up through my US headquarters IT group.

As is the custom of his country, Farouk extended a hospitality that is rare in my part of the world. He took us on a tour of the old city in Cairo, we visited the Egyptian Museum, and we traveled to Alexandria. He made all the arrangements and would take no more than our thanks in return. It was humbling.

The traffic in Cairo is, by western standards, insane. There are few traffic lights in the city, and no one pays any attention to them. The painted lines on the street and highways are at best guidelines; if four cars can fit in three lanes, they do. One evening in Cairo we parked near the edge of the old city and walked to dinner. At the first main street, we experienced the drivers of Egypt, up close and personal. How were we ever going to cross this street? My New York instincts were to look for a gap in the traffic, and run for it. But there were no gaps.

Though I was the boss, Farouk took charge. "Hold my hand," he said, "follow my lead, and don't look!" It was a strange experience, a throw-back to early childhood, grabbing Dad's hand before crossing the street; depending on him to get us safely across. "Go now," he said, taking five steps forward and stopping, then five more. Cars were swerving around us like a river around some rocks. "Hold on," he admonished, "do what I say; now go." In a dance I did not understand, he guided us across the sea of chaos, to the other side.

When we caught our breath, and heart rates slowed down, I asked him how he got us across. In New York, we would have been killed. But these were Cairo rules. "When you step out," he said, "the drivers must take responsibility not to hit you." "...but you need to know when to step out," he added.

This story was a lesson I'll never forget, precisely because I needed to forget. I had to put aside my experience and preconceived notions of how to cross a busy street, and trust someone else to guide me through their country's rules. Letting others lead you and teach you is part of becoming a good leader. It is especially true of learning about other cultures--we will never get it as well as those who have it in their blood. This also applies to our areas of expertise. Sometimes we need to let others teach us.

Applying this story to our Digital Divide program, I encouraged our team to think about taking our lead from our national society countries. Some of them have already figured out how to solve the IT gap. We need to learn from them, harvesting the best ideas and taking these to scale. Letting others take the lead means learning to be a good follower

This is why a technology catalog is at the heart of our program. As we discover applications, services and deals that are working, we will add them to an on-line catalog from which our country leaders can choose. That's turning upside down the typical IT approach that wants to assess and build. It means taking someone elses hand, an openness to learn, and amplifying it for others to benefit.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Colliders, Postcards and BHAGs

2011-02-04T23:36:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I joined a group of CIOs on a field trip to CERN. Our mission was to see the world famous Large Hadron Collider that loops 27 kilometers through Switzerland and France. We were also here to learn about the technology that runs it. It was a trip through scientific imagination. The facts and figures were incomprehensible. Here are a few:

27 kilometers with 9,600 super-cooled magnets
120 tons of liquid helium coolant
Particles travel at 99.99999% the speed of light
40 billion particle-packets pass a given point every second
A pixel detector camera takes 40 million images per second
A half-Yotta byte (10^24) of data stored each year
Over 60,000 parallel processors

For a group that is not easily out-tech'ed, we were impressed.

CERN's Data Center

The highlight of the trip was traveling to the far side of the Collider, and descending 100 meters underground to see the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), one of the largest experiment centers is located.

The CMS 30-foot end disk

Yet when all the magnificent magnitudes were said and done, what stood out for me was what one of the scientists said.

We were standing in front of the CMS collider asking a dozen questions. The scientist answered them all with patience and good humor. "Why don't the particles travel 100% the speed of light?" "The additional energy would be enormous; remember E=MC^2." "What about the vial of anti-matter?" "Fiction!"

But when we turned to the question about the missing particle, the Higgs Boson, he got serious. "We've had a theoretical model for over 30 years. It's withstood mathematical scrutiny and every experiment run to date. But it's missing one element. With it, the model is proven; without it, we have to rethink the whole thing."

Thirty years! And then the hopeful and confident statement: "We believe we will find it in the the next two years". "That will tell us what the universe was like a nanosecond after the Big Bang."

"The anticipation must be palpable for everyone," I said.

"Yes, very!" he replied with a twinkle in his eyes; "We are very excited!"

The professors answer our questions

Later on the bus, I asked another professor about this audacious goal. "It sounds like the Apollo team 40 years ago, racing to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade." "Yes," he said, " "We all have that kind of shared vision, that shared goal."

It occurred to me just how powerful a singular, defining goal can be-- especially when it's shared in common by everyone in the organization. Jim Collins called it a BHAG: a "Big Hairy, Audacious Goal." The Heath brothers called it a "Destination Postcard." When people buy into the vision, almost everything else pales in comparison.

I asked about how the Collider teams dealt with conflicts, and difference of opinions. Two things: "we run an experiment; we build many small prototypes before taking it to a large experiment"; and "we appeal to the goal to move things forward; it's always there in the background, reminding us."

There's something else they do at CERN: they have two teams who are competing to find the missing particle. They each have separate designers, engineers, approaches, and separate teams of scientists. One chose the acronym we learned above: CMS; the other chose the primordial Greek Titan with the world on his shoulders: Atlas. Fitting.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

The Next Ten Years

2011-01-26T07:57:00.002+01:00

Looking out ten years is an eternity for technology. The pace of change and innovation has not abated even in the face of a tough economy. In fact agility and the ability to ride the waves of constant change is an imperative for CIOs in the nonprofit sector as it is in the corporate sector. This requires a healthy dose of humility, recognizing that we will often get it wrong. But that is not an excuse for maintaining the status quo. As I've described elsewhere, those who stand still get hit by the train. We must embrace change, we must learn from it, we must look forward to it. Change is not an option; change is a must.

NetHope is an amazing experiment that has worked beyond my dreams. This year we turn ten as the collaboration at the intersection of technology and humanitarian-conservation work. It is a time for reflection, of learning, and of anticipation for what we hope.

Looking Back

NetHope was founded on two compelling hypotheses: (1) that INGOs would be able to get communication technology out the last 100 kilometers to where it could do the most good better, faster and cheaper if we did it together rather than each of us reinventing the wheel; (2) we would be a better, more interesting partner to technology companies if we came as a group rather than continued with the one-off grant requests. Both have proven true beyond all initial expectations.

NetHope has branched out from its remote connectivity platform roots in two strategic directions: I4D application platforms that primarily benefit citizens, and shared services that primarily benefit members (see the strategy chart, below).

Looking Ahead

Looking out the next ten years, I envision three themes dominating NetHope’s evolution. Asking what success looks like for NetHope and its members, these themes would indicate the next levels of success.

One theme that is front and center is what I am calling the “Relevant IT” initiative. The three areas I see for Relevant IT are (a) mission-moving projects such as I4D, (b) “good enough” agile applications such as smaller, fit-for-purpose applications, and (c) “lights-out” infrastructure such as cloud computing and shared services. In short, this is about using technology more to move our member’s missions forward. I’d like to see NetHope lead the way in mission-moving technology and shared-technology services among nonprofits. I call this the "get into" and "get out of" objectives: for non profits to be effective for the next decade we need to shift the IT agenda to get out of “lights-on technology” and get into “impact technology.”

Second, we will be the organization that empowers others in emerging countries to gain the skills to support their own social-benefit technology. This is at the heart of the NetHope’s charitable purpose, to share technology knowledge locally so that the emerging entrepreneurs can enjoy the productivity gains we have seen in established economies, and the poor can benefit the poor. In the next decade, we must move from a provider of technology to an enabler of communities. This is as much about education (like the NetHope Academy) as it is about hardware and software. In some senses this will mean working ourselves out of some jobs: a noble and necessary goal of charitable organizations. It also means looking to the emerging countries in which we work for the technology innovations that will change the way we work at home and abroad.

Third, we will lead in becoming a new economic model for a self-sustaining organization in our sector. This means a shift from dependence on the generosity of our partners to more services that fuel our programs. This will be a significant challenge in balancing member-serving activities with member-services that come at a cost, and potentially compete with vendors. I believe there is much to learn from the 150-year history of cooperative organizations in agriculture, banking, and other sectors. The collective model can be applied to technology, both for NGOs and for local small businesses in emerging countries. I will be writing about this during my upcoming sabbatical at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center.

There are many other goals for growth, sustainability and impact of the work we do. These three themes may serve as guide-posts to where the changes-of-impact for which we embark over the next decade ensure that we reach a destination that all would conclude that we have again exceeded our expectations.

As I said ten years ago, I renew today: The secret of success is getting started. Let's go!

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

A Journey Through the Village

2010-12-23T14:56:00.000+01:00

Thinking about the "One Village' where all of us can enter into the conversations, from all sides of the digital divide, it's still a distant vision. At the turn of the year, we may be cognizant of the goal in the distance. And we press on to reach it even when the climbing is steep and the steps are labored. Yet the view ahead and behind offer many surprises and satisfactions. If we take the time to stop and see.

I was reminded of this during a recent trip to Taiwan. Wulai Village is a famed stop for visitors, located in the mountains south of Taipei. It is a twisty bus ride up the mountain from the last station on the red line train to Xindian. Here on a crowded main street, the journey begins.

Past the shops and across the river, the climb begins on a gentle paved path, called the Lover's Walk. It is an apt metaphor for the "honeymoon period" in a new job or project, when aspirations are high and the way is smooth. But there are precipitous drops and large rocks along the way.

At what seems to be the end of the path, there are steps to climb and a gondola ride to the top. A brief rest in the journey, waiting for the next leg.

Always gaining altitude, the air is crisper here.
And when what we thought was the summit, there are yet more stairs to climb!

Finally reaching our destination.

And a clear pond, teaming with life.

Looking back, we have come a long, long way.

And so the story: leg-after-leg of the journey, at times exhausting, but turning around, we see how far we've come.

So we who journey the strategic plans in pursuit of our lofty goals, are wise to stop and look back at the vistas. We have come far; we have accomplished much! As the poet said, "gather ye rosebuds while ye may."

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Decision Yardsticks

2010-11-16T07:28:00.001+01:00

Here is an article in a continuing series of "IT Think" papers I wrote for my IFRC audience, but which applies equally to many organizations.

* * * *

Developing a set of decision rules, I call "yardsticks," may help everyone in our organization make better decisions and assess the priority of each project and request in a way that a senior manager would.[1]

The goal of developing an organization's yardsticks is to enable managers and staff at all levels to (a) make decisions about projects and activities with a more senior management mind-set, and (b) to constructively question all projects and activities to assess whether they are aligned with the organization’s key bets, or strategic goals. When the goals and rules of the game clear, it is possible for teams to be empowered to accomplish objectives with a high sense of mission and ownership.

With a shared set of yardsticks we can assess each project and approve it, reject it, or send it back for additional work. By using this process of rationalizing the project list and clarifying the yardsticks, front-line managers gain a clear picture of the project development process, and a greater sense of ownership.

From high-level, I see some key principles to which we should aspire and on which our IT decisions should be based. I have divided these into two sections, first are general business decision-making principles and second are those which are more specific to technology decisions.

General Business Yardsticks

The Field (National Societies) is our #1 Customer. We need to continually ask: How does this project benefit fieldworkers? Our #2 customer is the Zones, and #3 is Geneva departments and workers.
Think personal, extra-mile service in all that we do for our customers.
Partner internally and externally (v1). That which is routine and commodity should be handled by other experts. We need to focus on the value-added functions. This is not outsourcing; it's partnering.
The digital divide is as much about learning skills as it is about making connections. If we build it, they won't come unless they own it from the outset and understand it. They is us.
The brand is a key driving force. For our web presence, our branding look-and-feel needs to be a shared driver for all sites. A user who Googles "Red Cross" or "Red Crescent" should have a sense wherever they land that this is the same organization. See how UPS (UPS.com) on the for-profit side and OXFAM (oxfam.org) for the non-profit example, have handled this. Customers don't understand federations.
Partner internally and externally (v2). We are one organization and partnering with each other will be critical to strengthening us and closing the digital divides. This means having one email system and one shared directory (think rich, user maintained address book for finding people anywhere in the National Societies and Secretariat based on shared interests-- the most fundamental building block of knowledge management, and the key driver for our future email system: the directory is the driver. [Think Identity Management and Active Directory])
Discover and harvest. (See my Blog posting on "Discover and Harvest" for my thoughts on this.) We need to look for best and better practices among the National Societies and take to scale and share that which we can. Don't build what we can harvest! This requires humility, openness and beginner’s mind.
Stop-gap, ad hoc solutions are fine as long as they have an expiration date, and we replace it with something more principled and supportable for the longer-term.
Decide questions of local versus central based on local capacity to build and run. We may need to stratify our National Society audience by capacity to develop, support and extend tech platforms like intranets, web sites and even email. Our answers may be different depending on local capacity.
Don’t boil the ocean. Solve the immediate problem and evolve to the ultimate one. Pilot first, then scale.
We are one Federation; our systems need to reflect, support and encourage this.

Technology Decision Yardsticks

The Internet is our network. We should be planning support and architecting solutions expecting connectivity and its reliability will continue to improve in the Field ("Don't bet against the network," and "play to where the puck is going to be." [think hockey])
We need to work in a sometimes-connected world. Somewhat in tension with the Internet is our network, but the interim reality. Applications need to work as seamlessly as possible when offline and then online. Outlook and Groove are examples of this architectural approach. Interim solutions need to be reasonable throw-aways once strong Internet connections are available.
We need to leverage out-of-the-box applications. I'm a SharePoint advocate, but I'm wary of a growing base of custom applications built on SharePoint. Think 3-5 years out with a growing base of these to support. Most National Societies will not have the skills (or time) to build SharePoint app's. We are not in the software business; our technology partners are. A corollary is that applications need to start simply, and extend as needed. We will likely need web sites in-a-box for the smaller National Society offices.
Build for the Cloud. Get out of commodity operations and support businesses. Let others run what they are best at and let us run where we add the greatest value.
We support what we share, at a minimum supporting the local or regional IT/application supporter.
The vendor always owns the code. Upgrades are the vendors problem. For custom code, that would be us; so we need to ensure the vendor owns the customization. [Also see Off-the-Shelf!]
Small is beautiful. Large applications and systems are harder to maintain, upgrade and enhance. It’s easier to deliver, maintain and replace small systems
Fit-for-Purpose applications over large enterprise systems. Related to small-is-beautiful, a more agile organization is build on systems that are quick and easy to change, and faster to deliver. Those applications that meet a specific need are more likely to succeed.
Don’t overestimate the need for connecting and integrating systems. Sometimes a manual transfer of data is sufficient. Often a simple export and import of data will do. One-way integration may be needed. Two-way integration should be avoided. The key questions are: how often does the data change, how much of the data changes, and how many users are impacted. A small scope demands a small solution.
Redundant data is not a problem. Storage is cheap. They key is being clear about who owns the data definition and maintains the originating database.

These principles are open to debate. There are more yardsticks to consider, and they will evolve as we learn. I believe truth arises from the dialog. Without push-back and debate, we are likely to get it wrong. Together we will get it right.

__________________________

[1] I wrote a similar article on Yardsticks during my sabbatical at Tuck/Dartmouth here.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Six Views on Innovation

2010-11-05T07:06:00.003+01:00

To kick-off NetHope’s 19th Summit at Santa Clara University, I talked about six views of innovation. It’s an appropriate topic as we met in Silicon Valley and had the honor of co-sponsoring the laureates for this year’s Tech Museum Awards. I am continually renewed by the innovations I see from students and social entrepreneurs who are applying technology to solve problems in the most challenged areas of the world. Hearing and seeing what each team has done is itself a creative surge for thinking about new ways, new approaches.

As I talk about each view of innovation, I will be wearing two hats: one as NetHope’s chairman and co-founder; and one as the Global CIO at IFRC. And I will be challenging you to shift your minds.

1. EMBRACING CHANGE

If we have learned anything over the past two years of recession, it is that change is hard. And yet change is all around us, especially in the nonprofit IT world. I believe if you connect the dots on the challenges NGO CIOs face, it is evident that we cannot follow in the footsteps of corporate IT changes during the past decade. We lack the funding and time to do it; and we need to work in places where even electricity is an option. I've written about these challenges in other places[1]. As projects get larger and maintenance costs grow on the one hand, IT budgets and staff are contracting on the other. We are on a collision course that requires new ways of thinking.

One of the mind-shifts that needs to happen is the data center mentality. We often take pride in our racks of servers and air-conditioned rooms. If we ask ourselves what would we create if we started with a clean slate, none of us would repeat what was built in the past. What does the NGO Data Center of the future look like? Lights-out! The datacenter for NGOs in the future should not exist. We need to get out of that business.

CIO’s need to do some soul-searching here and ask themselves if they want to be a part of the change or its victim. Ask yourself: “who will pull your chain? The market? Donors? Your boss… Or you?” The conclusion is obvious: change is not an option; change is a must.

2. TAKING RISKS

Thomas Alva Edison is one of the American heroes of innovation. A recent cover story in Time magazine featured the familiar story of how the light bulb was created. It took hundreds of attempts of trial and error. As the authors note “It would take years of experimenting with platinum, paper and bamboo before Edison found his way to a durable filament, carbonized cardboard.”[2]

Before this breakthrough, he was asked why he hadn’t gotten any results. Edison famously said, ““Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward...”

The point of Edison’s story is that failure is an important part of innovation. Fail fast, fail often is a hallmark of entrepreneurial companies. That means taking risks.

How can we take on the risks? I believe it was Bill Sharpe at Stanford who pointed out the relationship of risk and return when it comes to investments. Essentially the more risk you take on, the greater the return (when things are going up!)

One problem: at NGOs we are playing with donations not venture capital. How can we experiment and fail our way to success, when our stakeholders want and need our success. This requires a mind-shift about risks in IT.

To continue the investment metaphor, one of the ways to reduce the specific risk on any one bet is to diversify into a portfolio of many bets. This is why mutual funds work. What does a mutual fund have to do with NGOs or IT?

I believe we need a mutual fund of experiments. The NetHope I4D pilots can be seen as our innovation lab. We participate based on our membership; it’s not a variable cost and risk for us. What works, we can harvest. What doesn’t, we can ignore.

3. INNOVATION IS ABOUT HARVESTING

I've been a judge for the Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition for two of the past three years and have written about it in this Blog. The Imagine Cup can be seen as a funnel of taking a huge participation to a few winning ideas. In a recent year, the competition had 400,000 student applicants; 3,000 country competitors; 400 went to the finals 27 winners make the final cut in 9 categories.

The question this begs for us in and across our organizations is: How are you gathering the good ideas?

I've written about the “Discover and Harvest” approach and how we can apply it in our IT organizations (see my May 2010 Blog entry on the subject.) Discover and harvest is based on the work of Jerry Sternin, who I knew at Save the Children (for a longer discussion, see my Blog entry). What Jerry discovered was the value of discovering the positive exception, what he called “positive deviance.” He discovered and amplified what mothers did differently in a society where malnourished children were the norm.

Discover and harvest is the opposite of our traditional way of meeting IT needs. We usually take an “assess and build” approach: assess the situation, gather requirements, specify the project, build it, test it and deliver it. The problem with this approach is that it has a dismal history. A recent Standish Group report notes that only 32% of all IT projects succeed (delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions). 44% were challenged (late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions), and 24% failed outright (cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used.)[3]

The discover and harvest approach is about finding those applications and uses of technology in the far reaches of your organization that are already working. This approach has a number of benefits:

It’s already working somewhere; it leapfrogs over getting a new system to work. The pilot has already been run.
Some group has already adopted it; it doesn't need to be sold.
It's field-tested. Especially for international NGOs working in challenged rural settings, it works where technology is rare.

However, for discover and harvest to work, you need to believe in two things: (1) Headquarters Humility – that innovations will come from the far country; and (2) Good Enough Technology – that 80% solutions get the job done. This requires a change in our IT worldview.

4. INNOVATION IS ABOUT BEING STRATEGIC

I’ve talked about the IT Strategic Pyramid for nonprofits for a number of years. Our strategic imperative as CIOs is to move the IT agenda "up the pyramid" to applications that touch our beneficiaries (see below.) Our job is to get into the top (mission moving technology) and get out of the bottom (lights-on technology.)

An example of getting into the top is the IFRC SMS-Texting communications project in Haiti. The bottom line of this program: the beneficiary is at the center of communications

An example of getting out of the bottom of the pyramid is the IFRC BPOS/Office365 initiative, moving IFRC email to the Cloud. Why are we doing this? Consider this:

We are not in the data center business
We need to redeploy people, time and money up-the-pyramid
We need to have impact on 60+ National Societies who have little to no IT
We are a Microsoft-centric shop with many inter-application and platform dependencies
We need a more fluid path from premises to off-premises computing
Bottom line: We are about partnering with those whose business it is to do things that it is not our business to do

NetHope is moving in similar directions, branching out to I4D pilots to support development programs at the top of the pyramid, and sharing support services at the bottom of the pyramid. The common point is that we are both managing IT as a portfolio. We both have a related, diversified portfolio of projects and pilots that are focused on moving our mission forward.

5. GOING TO THE FAR COUNTRY

Clay Christensen has done important research at Harvard on disruptive innovation[4]. I asked him at a roundtable discussion, "can you think of any cases where an organization was able to embrace disruptive innovation in headquarters?" His answer? No.

Tom Peter’s, another management guru, talked about the Law of Proximity: Innovation is directly proportional to the distance from headquarters. He pointed to the case of the IBM PC, whose design and success was due in no small part to fact that the development team was in Boca Raton, about 2,000 miles for IBM’s Armonk NY headquarters.

When thinking about innovation, a question we should ask ourselves is: what’s our far country? For NGO’s the answer is clear; it’s the Field. We should constantly be scanning the remote areas of our organizations for applications of technology that are working in ways that would surprise us.

6. INNOVATION IS ABOUT COLLABORATING

Core to NetHope’s values is collaboration[5]. We believe we learn by collaborating and –to quote our paper on collaboration—"insights come by doing projects together. To accomplish this we partner with leaders from governments, donors, business and education.” “By dialoging and debating with the best minds from inside and outside our organizations, and challenging each other with ICT and other innovations, we can develop new ways of working that benefit those most in need[6].”

* * *

Six views of innovation: embracing change, taking risks, harvesting, being strategic, going to the far country and collaborating. Each requires a shift in our thinking from traditional to new ways of doing IT. If we are going to be relevant in our organizations and our sector, we need to challenge ourselves to change.[7]

_______________________________

[1] “The Good Enough Principle – What we can learn about technology from the pragmatic solutions of nonprofits,” an unpublished paper , Tuck/Dartmouth , June 15, 2008. Send me an email for a copy.

[2] Jill Jonnes, “Let There Be Light,” Time Magazine, Wednesday, Jun. 23, 2010.

[3] See the Standish Group April 23, 2009 press release.

[4] Clayton M. Christensen , The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Harvard, 1997

[5] The six NetHope Values and Guiding Principles are:

Technology (ICT) Matters (NGO Missions depend on effective technology & capacity building);
Benefiting all benefits one (Benefiting one also Benefits All);
Learn through collaboration (Learn by doing);
Build for the Field (IT solutions are deployed solutions);
Bias for action (The need for speed, especially for emergencies);
Trust above all else (Trust comes through open dialog and working together over time)

[6] NetHope Principles for Nonprofit Technology Collaboration (See my Relevant IT Manifesto).

[7] A copy of my slide deck for this year's NetHope summit is available on my web site.

"The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent positions, strategies or opinions of any of the organizations with which I am associated."

Principles for Collaboration

2010-11-01T16:24:00.000+01:00

This week marks the beginning of NetHope’s 10th year. It's hard to imagine that a small group of us met here in Silicon Valley in the fall of 2001 around the vision of together using technology to reach out the last 100 kilometers to the most challenging parts of the world in which we work. From that initial vision of a connected humanitarian village we have expanded to have 34 international members and ever greater impacts of applied technology to help move our missions forward. It would be an understatement to say we are the organization at the intersection of technology and humanitarian work.

From the beginning, the NetHope vision has been "to be a catalyst for collaboration in the International NGO community and enable the best use of technology for connecting in the developing parts of the world." These two "C's" of collaboration and connecting have been at the core of what we do. Initially this was about bringing connectivity to the places where our programs are delivered. It has grown to be ever-stronger partnerships where we are connecting people into the broader conversation of what technology can accomplish. Our partnerships have grown from the trust we have with each other to the wider circle of our corporate, foundation and government partners who we are proud to call colleagues in impact.

For each NetHope Summit I review our core values or principles, highlighting one that connects with the conference theme. I thought it may be interesting to pull these comments together into one document of principles that we reviewed during our Board meetings earlier this year. Here is the draft of that document, for which I invite your comments.

NetHope Principles for Nonprofit Technology Collaboration[1]

Working as one group more than as individual solo organizations;
Technology as a means of moving missions[2] and delivering program scale more than delivering support services;
Technology as core to connecting our communities, field workers and beneficiaries to the rest of the world more than simply an optional peripheral service;
Developing for those who deliver programs in the Field more than those who work in headquarters;
People and interactions more than processes and tools;
Piloting and testing locally more than adopting what works for headquarters.

While there is value in all of the items on the above continua, we value those on the left hand side more. We believe these emphases allow us to have the greatest impact on our members’ missions and, in turn, on individuals, wildlife and the environment where our members operate.

* * * * *

Guiding Principles behind NetHope’s IT Collaboration

We follow these principles:

We believe that technology matters. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have impact on the work we do as international Non-Government Organizations (NGOs).Our effectiveness as NGOs depends on our ability to effectively use technology both to build capacity and provide new venues for the work that we do. Most importantly, we believe ICT can move missions, which is the most strategic application of ICT to which we can aspire.
We believe benefiting all benefits one. Doing things together enhances what we do as individual organizations. And what we do individually can be shared for the good of all. We support what a small group of members can do as well as what we do for the larger group. Each is an opportunity to learn and benefit our individual missions, while sharing the risk.
We believe we learn by collaborating. While technology can facilitate collaboration, we believe in face-to-face conversation for building relationships. Insights come through the dialog. It also comes by doing projects together. To accomplish this we partner with leaders from governments, donors, business and education. By dialoging and debating with the best minds from inside and outside our organizations, and challenging each other with ICT and other innovations, we can develop new ways of working that benefit those most in need.
We believe in building for the Field. The field workers delivering our organizations’ programs are our primary clients. Our IT solutions must work in the most remote and challenging parts of the world. In this, field workers are our most important teachers and critics. We seek to deliver technology that improves program design, delivery and impact in the Field. Demonstrating measurable impact is the building block for what we do.
We have a strong bias for action. This is especially so for emergency response work, where speed is paramount. It is also true for the pilots we run and prototypes solutions we build; we learn from the doing. Lessons learned help us become better prepared. We are therefore impatient to see early results and indications of what will work and what needs to be improved. And getting to what works is a primary measure of our progress.[3]
We value Trust above all else. Trust comes through open dialog and working together over time. This means trust in working with each other as NGOs and with our corporate partners, funders and vendors. It also means we value each other’s expertise and have the humility to seek and accept approaches and solutions outside our individual organizations. We trust the small group as well as the larger group to get their work done.

[2]Each NGO has an impact-based mission statement, such as IFRC’s “to improve the lives of vulnerable people by mobilizing the power of humanity” and Oxfam’s “to fighting poverty and related injustice around the world.” IT leaders at NGOs must constantly ask how technology is helping to achieve this mission.

[3]Nonprofits refer to this as program pilots that are repeatable and scalable (for greater reach and across multiple countries.

Launch Day

2010-10-09T11:37:00.000+02:00

This week marked the end of my 100-day plan and the launch of our new IT Strategy. We started with an international food day[1], followed by announcing our new structure, and then a half-day of team building exercises offsite. It was a full and exciting week.

I'd like to take the next half-dozen or so Blog entries and talk about our strategy and how it has unfolded. I'll start with questions, and the importance of thinking through what you are trying to answer before you talk about your vision and what you are going to do. It was Rilke who taught me the value of learning to love the questions.[2]

Questions to Frame an IT Strategy

Strategy is about setting a destination and having a clear vision about what that destination looks like. One of the ways to frame a strategy is to think about the questions that we cannot answer today, or find difficult to answer, that our implemented strategy will make easier to answer. Here a dozen questions I've heard or thought about that in three years I envision IFRC using technology to answer[3]:

1. How can we double or triple our impact on the lives of vulnerable people in all regions of our work without doubling or tripling our staff or budget?

2. How can we deliver new programs in disaster relief, preparedness, and health for less cost and greater reach?

3. How can we remove steps and approvals from our business processes to speed the delivery and lower the costs of our internal and external services?

4. How can we report the impact of our programs more quickly, with better data, as well as more transparently to our stakeholders?

5. How can we reach people with the technology they have already adopted? (e.g., mobile phones)

6. How do we include the survivors of disaster as members of the team, participating in the assessment and delivery of relief services?

7. How can staff in all offices and other stakeholders readily find each other based on expertise and interests?

8. How can all our National Societies reach more of their donors for less cost to raise money? How can they leverage online fundraising applications and be able to raise funds via cell phones and the web?

9. In how many member-locations do we operate for each sector of program delivery and each area of fundraising? How many offices are there in the Federation? How many have improved their operations and use of technology?

10. How can National Societies afford current technology and learn how to use it? How can we level the playing field more for the “haves” and “have-nots” among our National Societies?

11. How can we collaborate more with other INGOs and other partners sharing basic commodity IT services like help desk and procurement?

12. How do we motivate the greater use of technology, with a converging set of standards to increase our ability to Move Forward Together?

These questions suggest technology goals that are achievable if we can imagine solutions together and commit to an exciting shared vision that inspires us to invest in new ways of working as a nonprofit.

Questions and Projects

Framing the questions is also a good way to start thinking about technology projects. As with strategy, challenge your business project sponsors to think about the questions that they cannot answer today, or find difficult to answer, that the application will make easier to answer. Coming up with the 10-20 questions to answer will help focus the project. It will also provide a more interesting and relevant acceptance test. If the new system can answer the questions, you’ve arrived.

Keep an open and inquisitive mind. It’s the most important thing we learn from our children.

[1] See my 2008 International Food Day entry for some thoughts on the importance of this event.
[2] Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.
[3] For a more complete list of questions, send me a note.

Encrustment

2010-09-03T01:11:00.000+02:00

Now there’s a word to start a conversation. “Encrustment.” It naturally brings about a cringe, as if we forgot to wash our hand before a meal. However, in the world of shellfish, it’s a natural course of events, and it suggests a way to think about how simple things grow complex, and beg for renewal.

One definition of “shell” is a “hard outer covering secreted by an animal for protection.”[1] Imagine the layers that get built up on a shell over time, all with the good intention of protection. With some shellfish, this process happens again and again until the shell doesn’t fit anymore, and it must be shed and the process started anew.

Don't Legislate Exceptions

A story may illustrate how encrustment happens in our organizations. In his book, Growing a Business, Paul Hawken writes:

"Mrs. Green buys your widget and six months later returns it and wants her money back.

[1] New policy: 'All goods must be returned within thirty days of purchase.'

Mr. Jones brings back your widget and says he bought it twenty days ago; he wants a refund. But you know that the discounter up the street just had a close-out sale on the item, and you suspect that Jones might have bought the widget cheaply there and now wants a full refund from you.

[2] New policy: 'All items must be returned within thirty days and accompanied by the original receipt from this store.'

John Doe brings back one of your widgets and it looks as if it fell out of his car, or something equally serious. The widget is useless.

[3] New policy: 'Damaged items will be exchanged only within thirty days of purchase, only if accompanied by original receipt from this store, and only if defect is a manufacturer's defect.'

Mrs. White orders a widget and asks you to ship it to her home upstate. Three weeks later it's returned to you in unrecognizable shape. The customer wants her money back but the trucker says she signed for it in "good condition" and he won't accept an insurance claim.

[4] New policy: 'This merchandise left our store in first-class condition and shall not be returned for any reason without proper authorization. We definitely are not responsible for any damage whatsoever incurred at any time to any of our products while merchandise is in transit. Any merchandise returned to us will be refused. You must file a claim for damage, cost of repairs, shipping charges or replacement parts.'"

"This last new policy is not a joke. That statement accompanied $17,000 worth of file cabinets delivered to our offices. It was on a sticker glued to the front of every file cabinet."[2]

Hawken provides an amusing case for how simple things get encrusted with layers of policies until the whole organization gets weighed down and sinks to the bottom of the process sea.

Bureaucracy

This week I attended a workshop on business processes. As in the Hawken story, I’ve been thinking about how well-meaning organizations become so encrusted with processes on top of processes that they begin to ossify and lose their vitality. In my part of the world, we call this “bureaucracy.” I’ve been playing with a definition of bureaucracy that may point the way to how we can begin to shed the shells and revitalize the organism. I’ll offer two definitions:

Bureaucracy:

Any more than the minimum steps and approvals needed to accomplish something and not bankrupt the organization or foreclose on its the mission and values.
Any process that no one can remember why it's needed and how it improves the mission and the lives of our customers

We would do well to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and ask “how easy are we to do business with?” (If you don’t work with customers, you serve someone who does… and they just may be your “customer!”) If the process doesn’t make it easier, then it’s time to shed some shells.

Who do you serve?

At the workshop, I gave a brief presentation in which I told the story of the London bus drivers.

It seems the city was hearing a growing number of complaints about the bus service from the city riders. So like all good organizations, they hired consultants to study the problem. The wise team began riding the bus lines and immediately noticed a problem: the buses were passing by stops where would be riders were waiting patiently. When they gathered the bus drivers together at the end of a day they asked them why? The answer from one bold chap: “If we stopped at every bloody stop, we’d never make the schedule!”

This is an amusing response that begs an important question: who is your customer? Is it the schedule… or the rider? Substitute the word “process” for “schedule” and you can begin to see the problem. Processes are not the customer. And when the processes get so thick that we shut out all the light to the simple things that customers want to do, it’s time to shed the shells and start anew.

If you are clear about who your customer is, start asking yourself how you can help them get what they want done in a way them makes them smile. And for those who work mostly with internal customers, keep in mind another Hawken gem: “service in, service out.”

[1] The Free Dictionary, http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Shell , accessed September, 2 2010.

[2] Paul Hawken, Growing a Business, Simon & Schuster; reprint edition (October 15, 1988), pp. 191-92, emphases and numbering added.

Next Chapter

2010-07-26T20:44:00.000+02:00

The last two months have been a page turner. I am delighted that a new chapter has begun with the opportunity to have a growing impact at the intersection of humanitarian work and technology. I began a new job on June 15th as the Global CIO at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC; see www.ifrc.org). And I just completed a move to Geneva, arguably one of the humanitarian centers on the planet.

So what have I been doing? I'm at the half-way mark in my "first 100-days plan," a sprint of immersion that is also known "drinking from the fire hose." My 100-day plan has four parts, with a strong emphasis on "beginners mind," listening and learning as the newcomer:

People: Meeting 1:1 with everyone on the IT team, both at headquarters and in the field. Hearing what's working well and what needs to change; what are people's vision for the team and themselves; and getting a handle on morale. I'm also getting a sense of "the bus," to use a Jim Collins metaphor: do we have the right people on the bus and are they in the right seats. I'm looking for strengths that everyone brings to the table and how we can build on those strengths. I'm also meeting 1:1 with senior managers and heads of departments, asking similar questions and hearing about their objectives and needs.
Strategy: Thinking through the new ten-year strategy and asking how the IT strategy can be best aligned with it so that we move the mission and 2020 strategic goals forward. The 1:1 meetings with IFRC leaders in Geneva and the Zones (our name for regions) is a critical part of this thought process. Testing out "strawman" strategies is a good way to develop the thinking. I find that the truth comes out of the debate, so I want to provoke the conversations and see what resonates.
Funding: Understanding the IT and IFRC business models. "Follow the money flow" is the objective. This includes the budgeting process. And each organization has it's own budget culture; learning this quickly is part of the orientation. This is taking a bit of parallel processing, as budget revisions for 2010-11 were needed before the strategy and assessment were done. There’s a bit of aligning needed here also: are our aspirations matched with our willingness to invest? For non-profits, as with most organizations, that’s a continual trade-off.
Projects: Ensure that IT project portfolio is strategy driven. This entails a top-down review of all our technology projects as well as our existing base of systems and applications. The key question is which of these are contributing, or will contribute, to the new strategy. The analogy I've used is that we need to turn the Queen Mary around in the Rhone River. That’s a significant challenge, and we need to ensure that the engines keep running while we do so; otherwise we drift in the wrong direction. And we need to remember as we keep things running that the goal is to turn the ship around.

That’s the plan. Stay tuned for how the IT strategy develops. These are exciting times!

Discover and Harvest

2010-05-25T15:32:00.000+02:00

I met Jerry Sternin at a conference at Save the Children five years ago. He was encouraging me to look into his work on “positive deviance[1].” My first thought was how could deviance be positive? Of course, he was referring the common bell-shaped curve and the 2% of the population on any given metric who lived out in the tail two or more standard deviations from the mean—statistical nirvana.

What Jerry found in his work in Vietnam, was the value of discovering the exceptions. When faced with rampant malnutrition and an impossible timeframe to have an impact, he was forced to look for families whose children were healthy and figure out what their mothers were doing differently. Simple variations in diet, adding rice-paddy shrimp and sweet-potato greens, resulted in healthier children. Having discovered these exceptions, he shone a spotlight on them, turning these mothers into evangelists and teachers. He reached 2.2M children over the first two years of the program.

Jerry discovered the power of what I call the “discover and harvest” approach to solving problems. Nothing could be further from the approach our organizations tend to take, especially in technology. The traditional approach is more an “assess and build” approach: assess the situation, gather requirements, specify the project, build it, test it and deliver it. The problem is that this approach has a dismal history. For example, 57% of ERP projects don't realize their ROI (Nucleus Research) and 66% IT projects fail (Standish Chaos DB). More often not, what we assess and build misses the mark.

Enter the “discover and harvest” approach. It’s all about finding those applications and uses of technology in the far reaches of your organization (and sometimes under your nose) that are already working. As Jerry would say “somewhere in your organization, groups of people are already doing things differently and better. To create lasting change, find these areas of positive deviance and fan the flames.[2]” Imagine finding a really useful application being used in one of your rural field offices.

Why don’t we see more of this in our approach to technology? It requires headquarters humility. The best answers, especially if it involves change, need to be from the inside out. “Maybe the problem is that you can't import change from the outside in. Instead, you have to find small, successful but "deviant" practices that are already working in the organization and amplify them.[3]” Perhaps the CIOs role is one of "Chief Amplifier." Find what’s working and can be taken to scale, and then shine the spotlight on it.

"Discover and harvest" has a number of benefits. First, it’s already working somewhere; it leapfrogs over getting a new system to work. The pilot has already been run. Second, some group has already adopted it; it doesn’t need to be sold. Third, it’s field-tested. Especially for international NGOs working in challenged rural settings, it works where technology is rare.

So how do we take a “discover and harvest” approach in our organizations? Run a contest for people to submit their applications and uses of technology. Then recognize and reward them (it doesn’t need to be a cash award.) Finally, put their name on the application. Most people take pride in what they do and want to be recognized for what they achieve.

Give it a shot. Let me know what you find.

[1] See the Fast Company article on Jerry’s work, “Positive Deviant,” by David Dorsey, November 30, 2000; here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/41/sternin.html . Compare the chapter on "Bright Spots" (easier-to-explain than positive deviance) in Chip and Dan Heath's, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Broadway, 2010.

[2] Richard Tanner Pascale & Jerry Sternin, “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents,” Harvard Business Review, May, 2005.

[3] “Positive Deviant,” Fast Company.

Michelangelo

2010-04-12T20:28:00.000+02:00

“If the astrologists who centered around the Porta Roma had cried out to him as he passed that he still had before him a third of his years… and some of his finest sculpture, painting and architecture ... he would have laughed, tiredly. But they would have been right[1].”

Last Saturday I was honored by a Lifetime Achievement Award from my colleagues at Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN.) After hearing Jane Meseck, a friend and colleague from Microsoft, speak about some of the things I had done, I was humbled and speechless. I remember saying “wow” and “thank you” and paraphrasing Mark Twain that the rumors of my lifetime have been a bit premature.

Then I remembered a story about one of my heroes, Michelangelo Buonarroti. He lived almost 90 years and is arguably the greatest artist of the Renaissance. Irving Stone wrote a wonderful book about his life called "The Agony and the Ecstasy." In it he told the story of Michelangelo returning to Rome, where he would live the rest of his life, in 1534 at the age of 58. If someone had told him that he had a third of his life yet to live and some of his finest art yet to create, he would not have believed them. But it would have been true.

What this story says to me is that whether we have gray hair yet or not, there is always more to do, always more we can contribute, and we should never give up on our visions of how the world can be a better place. And that we can impact the lives of those who will come after us.

I said some other things that day and told the story of the truck. [2] But I don't remember much else.It reminded me that there is a story for each occasion, each crossroad. What will yours be?

[1] Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy, New York: Signet, 1961, p 667.

[2] These stories and others are posted in my book in progress, "Letters to a Young Manager".

Social Media and Humanitarian Aid

2010-04-08T22:30:00.000+02:00

I had a chance to dialog with Shawn Ahmed of “The Uncultured Project” about social media and Haiti for an upcoming panel discussion we are doing at this week’s NTEN conference. We used SKYPE IM—no big deal, except I was at 35,000 feet enjoying Delta’s GoGo WiFi service and Shawn was in Toronto. Here’s some of what we talked about:

Ed: Hi Shawn. How are you preparing for the panel discussion on Saturday?

Shawn: Basically, I've been reading/brushing up on the links you sent me in prep for the panel

Ed: Great!

Shawn: My gut feeling is that, the angle I could bring is that social media + disaster relief is less about the technology available and more about the willingness to use it and embrace it.

Ed: What do you mean?

Shawn: For example, things like Ushahidi make it very easy for aid agencies to uncover where the needs are of beneficiaries in a disaster.

Ed: I agree, assuming the cell networks are running.

Ed: I told a colleague at Ushahidi that they were a radical listening to beneficiaries; that's the headline.

Shawn: Perhaps because of decades of policy and politics, there still isn't a real-time social media data sharing BETWEEN orgs.

Ed: Give me an example.

Shawn: When I was tagging along with a UK charity during Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh, they had the water purification equipment, but they didn’t have the jerry cans by which to give out the water.

Shawn: It's very conceivable that, had they publically shared this data, they could have found another org in the field that had a symmetrical problem: jerry cans but no clean water to give.

Ed: So one plus one makes a solution.

Ed: Talking about your field experiences will be important

Shawn: Yes. Similarly, when I was in the field, I was very open about the "lessons learned". For example, I was distributing blankets when our boat got stormed by locals because we didn’t have enough aid.

Shawn: I shared this data on my blog, but the charity I had gone with reprimanded me for this because they felt it made them look bad. Yet, thanks to sharing this data, there was at least one org that changed how it used boats in their initial visit into the field. Data sharing like this can improve efficiency and save lives

Ed: That’s one of the promises. But open sharing of data often brings the spot light to an organization’s business processes. If these are not button-down, then that’s a problem. I’m not surprised you got negative feedback. On the positive side, a market for information will allow the bright spots to shine.

Shawn: So org-to-org sharing in real-time is just as important as victim-to-org or beneficiary-to-org sharing

Ed: I agree; that’s one of the things we’re pursuing at NetHope.

Shawn: yeah, I see the org-to-org potential and power of NetHope.

Shawn: I fear most orgs may eventually embrace disaster victim-to-org social media, but not org-to-org sharing.

Shawn: Similarly, re: feedback loop, I believe there is a benefit beyond just for donors and those far away.

Ed: Such as…

Shawn: In Bangladesh, I noticed near *hostility* towards conventional media by the victims of Cyclone Sidr. Most were bemoaning that there were more cameras than aid.

Shawn: And this was compounded by the fact that many journalists were embedded with NGOs. So it wasn't uncommon to see an aid org driving an SUV - with no aid in it, just cameramen.

Ed: Ouch. If the people are not served, we are wasting our time.

Shawn: But about the feedback loop: my experience was VERY different during Cyclone Aila, where I was able to establish myself as a social media ambassador of sorts. So my camera was merely the eyes connecting them to a online community supporting, caring, and bringing aid through an NGO.

Shawn: This actually created a fondness and appreciation. In fact, a village elder approached me and my friend there with his profuse gratitude. The difference in Cyclone Sidr (being mistaken for media) and Cyclone Aila (being seen as an ambassador of sorts) was a difference of night and day.

Shawn: It meant a lot to the recipients as well --that they had a name that was being provided with their relief kits. So this just wasn't some org giving handouts...

Shawn: Granted, this doesn't replace the social-psychological needs of disaster relief victims. But, it creates a connection (when done well) that's perceived better than just hand outs (conventional disconnected aid) and lenses in the face (conventional media).

Ed: A key point: social media is personal!

Shawn: Yes!

Shawn: And most orgs don’t' get that. It's not another tool in the toolkit. It requires a rethinking and reframing that --sadly-- has not happened yet.

Ed: It's not digital radio

Shawn: Yes, exactly

Social media and humanitarian aid: we invite your participation in the conversation. Join us for our breakout session on Saturday at 3:30PM EST if you’d like to hear more. If you cannot attend, please post your questions and comments here.

NetHope Summit, Day Four - The Path Forward

2010-03-18T12:47:00.000+01:00

In my religious tradition, the liturgy ends with the statement: "The worship is ended. The service now begins." This is an appropriate metaphor for our NetHope Summit which ended on Thursday. We have had what can be seen as a grand celebration of information sharing, which is the basis of all collaborations. Our work as NetHope continues to grow and evolve in ways that merit anew our commitment to the group, and merit the partnerships with our supporters. We have broken bread, toasted with wine, and practiced singing from the same page. Now we return to our home countries and organizations where the real work begins.

I want to encourage each of you who attended, and those who have followed from afar, to think about your key take-aways: what you have learned and what things you will change and put into practice.

To jump-start your thinking about this, here is my list:

1) I met dozens of new people from the membership and from our supporters. Making these connections and continuing the conversations is an important way to carry the Summit forward. I'm inviting each of you write me with your questions and connect with me on LinkedIn.com [1].

2) I saw a number of presentations with conclusions, charts and links that I want to study more. I look forward to review these on TAG, NetHope’s SharePoint intranet.

3) I was reminded how hard change is, not only from Chip and Dan Heath’s new book [2] , which I’m reading, but also in the bewildered and pained faces –as well as the arms-crossed disbelief-- that I saw across the meeting rooms and in 1:1 conversations. I need to paint clearer pictures about what all the changes mean for IT workers. We all want to know WIIFM [3].

4) I heard a number of personal stories, especially about the personal impact that the field trips had. The Masai Mara group had moving accounts and photos that I hope you get to see on the NetHope Flickr page (see www.nethope.org for details.) I’ve been a collector of stories, which you can read on my book project page, Letters to a Young Manager.

5) Following advice from those more knowledgeable is often wise. I was warned about wearing sunscreen and not eating uncooked foods. Yet I’m an advocate of “do something” and “ready, fire, aim,” which sometimes means you get burned and set-back. This was a case where “eating your own dog food” may mean literally choking on your words. To round out the clichés: caveat emptor! But nonetheless, move forward. If you catch the paradox here, welcome to reality.

During the Shared Services session on Thursday morning, Rui Lopes told an interesting story about the “NetHope plane.[4]” With apologies to Rui if I’ve not done it justice, here’s a paraphrase of the story:

“There was a person who wanted to go on a plane ride (Ed), so he acquired a plane. However, he didn't want to go on the ride by himself, so he tried to get some other riders, so that the ride would be more cost effective and so that he would have more fun, with companions. The plane was called NetHope, and the initial navigators were two guys named Ed and Dipak. Soon passengers (members) were added and the journey moved on. The plane was going to have several destinations (connectivity, ER, I4D, Shared Services, etc.). As the airline grew, a number of other employees were acquired to handle related activities (Joe, Jack, Frank, Barry, etc.) And we needed the expert services of some senior pilots (ADP: Jessica, Dan and Tom).”

What I heard in this story is that it takes a growing collaboration to move a growing organization and our collective missions forward. That's a fitting summary for where we are and the path forward. As I stated in my keynote to the BPO Conference in Nairobi on Friday: We cannot go it alone!

[1] See my profile and send me an invitation at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/edward-granger-happ/0/77b/234

[2] Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Broadway, 2010

[3] WIIFM = What’s In It For Me. In other words, what’s the personal value statement for me.

[4] I heard this story second hand as I was out ill Thursday morning (see take-away #5).Thanks to Barry Sanders for filling me in.

NetHope Summit, Day Three - Build for the Field

2010-03-17T18:56:00.001+01:00

Today was arguably the most important day of our conference. It was the day to visit programs in the Field. I was in the group that visited the Greenbelt Conservation Reforestation Project in the Gatamaiyo Forest Nature Reserve‎.

As I mentioned in my Monday keynote, we believe in building for the Field. We have been unpacking the meaning of this statement in the NetHope Collaboration Manifesto, which the Board of Directors has been reviewing. The latest draft states "The field workers delivering our organizations’ programs are our primary clients. Our IT solutions must work in the most remote and challenging parts of the world. In this, field workers are our most important teachers and critics. We seek to deliver technology that improves program design, delivery and impact in the Field."

One of the most important strategic questions we can ask as IT leaders is, who is our most important client? If you think about where our agency programs are delivered and connect the dots, it's obvious that our #1 client is the fieldworker. So seeing the technology that the Greenbelt workers are using to register trees they are planting was instructive in two ways. first, it showed how a combination of instruments could be used in a remote location to track progress; and second it underscored the need for simplicity.

The process for verifying the planting of a tree appeared to exceed the actual planting by about 10 to 1. I was told that this is a combination of World Bank and UN requirements. It seems to me the the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) time should not exceed the program delivery time. While the technology helped ease the data collection, the business process seemed antiquated. I could not help but think of Michael Hammer's edict about business process re-engineering: "don't pave the the cow path."

Nevertheless, it was appropriate for our group to get our hands dirty (literally) and plant a dozen trees. The photo above is the "NetHope" tree I planted in Kenya. It was fitting to leave a living marker that contributes to the ecosystem in an emerging country. We can do no better with IT in our organizations.

NetHope Summit, Day Two - On the Same Page

2010-03-16T19:46:00.000+01:00

I'd like to talk about two comments that were bookends to day two of the Summit in Nairobi.

This morning, Weibe Boer, Associate Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, challenged us with two things:

1) To encourage our other back office departments (HR , Finance, Legal) about the what, why, how and benefits of collaboration;

2) To have a double impact as NGO IT leaders: first, on program delivery in the Field, and second, creating economic impact on emerging countries by where we choose to put our IT services.

The role we increasingly play as NetHope is advocating within our own organizations on the value of technology and the impact it can have on our work. Charlie MacCormack, Save the Children's CEO, spoke about this in a white paper on the NetHope web site. Charlie concluded that over the past 13 years "the same headquarters staff is supporting over two times the number of people who are working with children in the field. That type of productivity gain would not be possible without technology."

Our Board panel said similar things about increased technology investments in the midst of the recession. It's one of the few capacity building levers we can pull in our downsized organizations. Doing that together has proven even more impactful, realizing more than a 300% return on our NetHope investment. This is a collaboration that works, which other departments would do well to emulate.

Our Shared Services initiative is about building capacity, not necessarily by off-shoring IT services, as many of our corporate colleagues have done, but growing services to meet increased Field application demand. NGOs are behind the corporate IT services curve, and therefore usually do not realize the savings by moving functions to lower cost alternatives. If we have a small services staff, with only 8-hour by 5-day support, we are hard pressed to find the 30% plus savings that other organizations do. However, if we share services, we can grow support to 24 by 7 without increasing support costs.

One of the reasons we are in Kenya, is we believe that this increased capacity can be better delivered by an emerging country, especially one in which we deliver our program services. That these decisions can help the local economy is a "give-back" opportunity for us.

This evening, I had the honor of introducing Catherine Ngahu, Chairperson of the Kenya ICT Board, our host at this year's Summit. When I learned that she was very interested in the social side of technology, I could think of no better way to introduce her to NetHope than with the story of the Fallen Tree. I said that we are that village who sang from the same page and moved the obstacle out of the way forward-- no matter whether the challenge of insufficient staff, budget or equipment, when we all pull together and trust each other, we can move mountains.

Catherine then told a story about the importance of context that we would do well to heed in our technology work. It was about an ad campaign NGOs ran a few decades ago to encourage the poor in Africa to have smaller families. The marketing approach was to show a family with four healthy children in front of a nice home, contrasted with a family with eight children in front of a meager shelter. However, the poor kept having more children. When they finally asked them why, they said the ad told them that poor families have more children! This was a perfect way to end the day: ask and listen before you build. We can be on the same page with our audience as well.

NetHope Summit, Day One – The Big Rocks

2010-03-15T20:31:00.000+01:00

We kicked off our NetHope Summit in Nairobi Kenya today. All 29 members were represented; with our sponsors and guests, we have 90 attending. It is very gratifying to see the simple vision of collaboration I wrote about nine years ago having become the force for shared technology in nonprofit organizations.

We heard welcoming remarks from Bill Brindley, NetHope CEO and Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board. It was over a year ago in Geneva that Paul and I talked about Kenya hosting a NetHope Summit. Hearing his welcome brought home more than the importance of the work we do as NGOs in the emerging world. Paul talked about how the shared services concepts he saw beginning in NetHope were being applied throughout the Kenya government organizations today. Now we can learn from their success.

This is one of the messages I touched on in my Summit address this afternoon: we need to have the humility to learn from the far reaches of our organizations, and the people we assist, how technology can be applied to benefit all. As IT leaders in NGOs we need to be clear that our beneficiaries and our fieldworkers are our top customers.

To make the point of the fieldworker as our #1 customer, I told Steven Covey's story about the rocks [1]

To paraphrase the parable:

A teacher placed a large jar on the table in front of the classroom and proceeded to fill it with large rocks.
"Is it full," he asked the class.
All the students said "yes!"
He then took a carton of gravel and added it to the jar.
"Is it full," he repeated.
Becoming more wary, half the class said yes.
He then took a carton of sand and added it to the jar.
"Is it full now?"
None of the students raised their hand.
The teacher added a pitcher of water.
"Now?"
"Yes."
"So what’s the moral of this story," he queried?
"That there’s always room for more," some asked [2]?
"No," he said;
“The point of the experiment is that if you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never fit them in."

So I challenged the NetHope group: as you go out and visit field programs this week, and meet people who work here in Kenya and East Africa, ask yourself one question: What are the big rocks?
___________

[1]Stephen Covey story: First Things First, Simon & Schuster, 1999, pp. 88-89

[2]That may be our “normal” answer in nonprofit organizations; everything can fit under the umbrella of the good!

A Strategic Look into 2011

2010-03-07T14:18:00.000+01:00

I received a letter recently from a NetHope member CIO asking for some advice for a meeting with his senior management strategy team. With his permission, I’ve turned this into a letter of questions and answers, below.

Every so often it’s useful to pause and take the helicopter of our imagination up a few stories and look at the broader landscape. Here is one such view, for which I invite your comments.

+ + + + + + +

Dear T,

First, welcome to the NetHope team. I am delighted that you have joined our collective of NGO ICT leaders.

I’m happy to give you some thoughts in response to your 2011 ICT outlook. You have listed four areas worthy of forecasting.

Q: In our next “Senior Management Team Meeting” one important agenda point will be to give a strategic outlook on the year 2011. Which trends do we expect, which challenges and opportunities?

Let me start by quoting an American author and humorist who wrote over a century ago, before the age of technology: “The art of prophecy is very difficult-- especially with respect to the future"! Two thoughts follow from this:

1. Forecasting future IT trends is risky business; history shows that we usually get it wrong. So while strategy is about making bets on future destinations, your “b plan” is as important as your “a-plan.”

2. In times of crises and uncertainty (think recession), smart organizations vary like mad. Ask yourself every few months: what is my portfolio of pilots and experiments for testing ideas? Learn from this: throw away what doesn’t work: take to scale what succeeds.

Q: “Cloud Computing”/virtualization of services & applications as well as Web 2.0 are further increasing the “digital gap”, but not only between North and South but also between the “Generation Facebook” and the “Generation 40+”. Does our management still understand the world in which people between 15 and 30 are living? Do we use all technologies which we could use to help children, organize ourselves efficiently and raise funds?

For Cloud-computing and the “digital gap,” I see an additional divide growing between newer NGOs (e.g., Kiva.org) and established NGOs. The reason for this is that established ways of delivering ICT is hard for organizations to change, especially when IT resources are so limited. It’s easier for a newer, younger or smaller NGOs to adopt cloud computing than it is for older, larger NGOs. Here are three strategies for bridging this divide:

1. Create a small group and send them away, preferably to another country, to build on and adopt the newer technologies from scratch. Take your brightest under 30, Gen-Y tech-savvy IT and business people and have them work away from headquarters, the further the better.

2. Partner with a newer web 2.0-savvy NGOs and learn from them by having them deliver services for donors and beneficiaries on your behalf.

3. Bet on established technology companies who offer a fluid set of options for premises-based and cloud-based computing so you can evolve to the Cloud while older technologies coexist in your organization (think Microsoft BPOS, for example.)

Additional food for thought: I’d expand to those in developing countries Gary Hamel’s advice that CIOs hang out with under-25 year-olds to learn about new uses and ways of working with technology. For example, watch how beneficiaries use mobile phones to move information and get work done, not just talk. When given the opportunity, the poor may be our brightest innovators and entrepreneurs. Will we be humble enough to learn from them?

Q: IT literacy is getting increasingly a precondition to get a proper job. Do we offer children enough training in this area (using PC and Internet)?

On IT Literacy, I’m a big supporter of workforce development and readiness programs that teach computer skills. Three points to consider:

1. In Bolivia, adolescents trained in hardware/software 101 are now helping their teachers use and maintain the schools’ computers. Don’t underestimate the ability of children to train younger children (and sometimes the reverse happens, as in the hole-in-the-wall computer project in India’s slums – see http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/ ).

2. Look at the technology award programs for students like Microsoft’s Imagine Cup and Intel’s Science Talent Search program. Both attract students from around the globe and develop more innovations in six months than I’ve seen in years. It’s one of the primary reasons I volunteer as a judge in these events. Partner with technology companies who run these contests and send them your unfunded IT projects to work on!

3. Take this to the next step and start a competition in your organization to uncover hidden technology talents in other departments and in the field offices. Make it fun; have an award ceremony that’s a big deal, even if no cash is involved. Then look to harvest the innovative applications for others to use, and take them to scale in your ICT offerings.

Q: Collaboration between NGOs in the area of technology will help to decrease the problem of underfunded IT. To what extent can we imagine standardization across NGOs (not only within our organization)?

Collaboration is indeed an important trend for extending the creative, advocacy and learning power of your organization. In NetHope, we can attest that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. When you look at your IT budget, plan on these additional factors:

1. NGO Discounts: The purchasing power of a collective of organizations is substantial. See the NetHope Deals and Discounts doc on the TAG site for specific NetHope member benefits

2. Technology Gifts in Kind: These often come from NetHope partners, like Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and Dell, but increasingly come from in-country or regional branches of these global organizations, each of whom has their own philanthropy budget.

3. Volunteers: In addition to the ideas above, seek IT-skilled volunteers from local corporations, secondary schools and universities. Nonprofits have not done a good job of marshaling IT volunteers. That’s an area that’s ripe for developing.

Finally, I’d argue that the most important trend for nonprofits over the next three years is to

1. Get out of the infrastructure business, and

2. Reinvest more in the mission-moving technologies

I developed these thoughts in my NetHope Annual Meeting presentation, which is on my web site, under “2009” papers, here: http://www.hpmd.com/hpmd/EGHprofile.nsf/links/50A6 . You can also find related discussions on my blog at http://eghapp.blogspot.com/ .

+ + + + + + +

In answer to your follow-up questions, here are some further thoughts:

Q: Is education and quality management what you mean with the top of the pyramid or do you see additional possibilities?

The top two levels of the NGO IT pyramid are the most strategic. They are focused on the child (in the case of your organization) and on the fieldworker who works with children. At each level of the pyramid, ask “who is the person who touches the technology?” That’s the audience for your strategic objectives at each level. (At level 3. there are two audiences: the organization’s business unit leaders, and the donors. At level 4 it’s primarily the employees of the organization (usually headquarter focused) and the applications that depend on the IT infrastructure platforms.)

Q: Regarding education: do you know any good program that goes beyond learning how to use a computer, how to use the Internet? (Target group: kids in Africa and Asia.) How can we use mobile phones for these programs?

For children, three programs areas come to mind where technology is the delivery means:

1. Education programs: as a means to (1) learn new content (e.g. on-line text books), (2) supplement a shortage of teachers (a key issue in Tanzania) with eLearning, and (3) workforce readiness (for example, learning technology skills for IT service jobs—see the Fundatec program in Brazil on the Microsoft grants page, here: http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/our-actions/in-the-community/grant-recipients.aspx .)

2. Health information: examples (a) disseminating HIV-AIDS info to adolescent mobile phones (STC has a program in the Republic of Georgia; there are others in Africa), (b) health clinic registration programs using PDAs (for example, an extension of STC’s work in Bangladesh; David Isaak (mailto: disaak@savechildren.org) a consultant I worked with at STC can help.)

3. Microcredit and banking: examples: (a) providing micro loans to mother-daughter entrepreneur teams (I saw the potential for this in Minya, Egypt during a field visit last year.) and (b) student savings accounts via mobile phones (I believe Vodafone, via Africacom, is working on this in Kenya and elsewhere.)

I hope this helps stimulate ideas; there are many opportunities to introduce mission-moving technologies at our organizations. As an IT leader, I'd argue that's our most relevant job.

Best regards,
Ed

Connections

2010-02-02T03:02:00.000+01:00

I was listening on the latest Haiti emergency response team call for NetHope members today. As the group went around the virtual table providing their input, I heard a number say they were grateful for the connections we were able to provide. We have a dozen member locations wired in the Port-au-Prince area since the quake on the 12th. They were also grateful for having Joe, and the Cisco and Inveneo teams there to help solve the myriad of problems that inevitably crop up providing technology links. A number of people said they did not have IT people on the ground in Haiti. Our team became their arms and legs.

In my last entry, I mentioned the power of people connections at work in technology connections. Collaborating means sharing the people as much as the solutions. Maybe more so. I've often referred to this as the "virtual village. In a village, everyone knows each other. When a barn needs building, the carpenters, painters and masons show up and lend a hand. This is what our village in Haiti is doing with the ICT building blocks. We help each other, so together we can help those who need us most.

Partnering in Haiti

2010-01-27T06:35:00.000+01:00

The adage “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is fundamental to an organization responding in Haiti, no matter how narrow the mission. There are 21 NetHope member NGOs responding in Haiti, with over 3,500 workers on the ground. Each is doing what it does best, whether search-and-rescue, providing clean water, or distributing mosquito nets. NetHope adds shared communications to coordinate their work. Corporate partners, in-turn, add expertise, equipment and rapid funds to move it forward.

Here are some highlights from Friday’s status reports of people on-the ground:

Inveneo [a corporate partner] installed three Member offices today.
The network is presently operating at: CHF (2 sites), Save the Children (2 sites), Catholic Relief Services, CARE, Concern, [and soon at] Oxfam, with broadband connections to the Internet fully restored.
ITC Global [another corporate partner] bumped the satellite capacity up to 2.5 megabits
Kah conducted a VSAT site survey at CHF2 and STC today. There is a 2.4 meter VSAT already installed at STC. It is not operational but ITC Global is planning to commission it. This will permit the system we were going to install at CHF2 to go somewhere else or be available as a back up.
An additional 2 meg capacity is committed for the NetHope relief network courtesy of Multilink [another corporate partner], who were told good things about the work we are doing by our friends at Cisco TACOPS [a long-term NetHope corporate partner]. We will work with Multilink, Cisco and Inveneo to plan for adding this to existing capacity.

Notice the connections among the responders and corporate partners. Couple this with the rapid contributions from Microsoft and Blackbaud and you can see the power of people connections at work in technology connections. One of our funders put it succinctly: “we know you, we trust you; we partner with people who know how to respond.” That’s an added value of relationships, based on trust and a history of working together.

One of the lessons we learned from the 2004 Tsunami response in Southeast Asia is the need to make decisions quickly, and in ways that are different from the typical ways of decision-making. That’s true for those doing relief work as well as those supporting this work. Following the Tsunami response, an NGO marketing director recalled, “We didn’t have time to have all the meetings, all the reviews, and all the approvals. We had to make on-the-spot-decisions. The interesting thing”, she continued, “is that nothing fell apart.” Extraordinary times require extraordinary approaches.

One of the founding principles of NetHope is “benefiting all benefits one.” Doing things together, like setting up VSAT communications in Haiti, helps each member do its work. That means that some members often do more, but that’s part of the commitment to doing things together to benefit all. The work in Haiti demands no less.

Haiti, The First Week

2010-01-22T18:51:00.000+01:00

I stopped by my alma mater, Save the Children, yesterday. A banner was hanging from the front of the building announcing

Haiti

relief efforts and a web address; on the door was a sign saying walk-in donations were welcome[1].

A week after a 7.3 earthquake struck Haiti, we are seeing a massive response from governments, nonprofits and others. All the major relief agencies, including the UN, have near-daily briefings and situation reports. The cry for information is as strong as the cry for help. The two are inseparably linked. Donors want to know how they can help, what’s being done, and where there is hope. Headquarter workers needs to know from those on the ground how many are hurt, missing, displaced and dead.

In the early stages of disaster response, there is a bit of chaos. First, is assuring that workers in-country and their families are safe and counted. Next are the rapid needs assessments for food, water, shelter and medical supplies. Sat-phones are most often the earliest form of communications, if they are charged and accessible. Resources are readily shared; we’ve worked together before.

This time I’m working with NetHope, an organization I helped found. NetHope is a collective made up of IT leaders from 28 international nonprofits who understand the need to collaborate to bring information and communications technologies out the last 100 kilometers to the most challenged areas in which we work. We’re focused on collaborating among our members to provide essential connections that enable information to flow, which in turn supports the critical mission of ensuring supplies and people go to where they’re needed most.

Many of the non-government organizations (NGOs) in Haiti are smaller than the UN with far fewer IT resources. To be effective in IT in troubled areas of the world, we’ve found again and again that we need to collaborate and share so that every NGO has access to core data and voice communications. Consistent, reliable communication is one of the cornerstones of relief efforts, ensuring that aid reaches the people who need it most.

Today one of our NetHope engineers is working with a member, CHF International, who occupies high ground ideal for a satellite link. Here’s a bit from his first report:

We arrived at CHF compound today just before dark. Kah located a clear line of site to AMC4 and IS14 [Satellites] on a “safe” part of the roof (both come back to ITC’s Miami teleport.)

The panels of the dish have to be pulled up on rope lines from outside; too big to go up the stairs. CHF has that covered and will help us tomorrow. Power and cabling does not look to be a problem.

Information about what members offices need to be connected would be good to gather soon so we may have sites to survey when Inveneo gets here. The CHF office is on high ground which is promising for that part of what we are trying to do.

We should also add up the incremental power requirements for everything we plan to locate at CHF.

BTW we just now got informed that the US military is imposing a 9 pm curfew

These high-bandwidth satellites will provide the second wave of information connections. Sharing technology among member NGOs is core to what NetHope provides – acting as the data and communications trunk that feeds the major branches of the NGO community. This is all about working together to make the connections—in every sense of the word—that allow the aid to flow.

[1] For details, see http://www.savethechildren.org/

New Leaf

2010-01-15T13:54:00.000+01:00

In Wiring the Global Village, the connections are ultimately about people and not technology

There comes a time when you realize that you have achieved your goals and it is time to move on to the next chapter in your story. I am at that juncture and need to turn the page. I therefore elected to take an early retirement from Save the Children.

Here are some of the remarks I made at my final staff meeting at Save that I'd like to share with the rest of you. These are words of encouragement and challenge, not only for IT at Save, but technology people at all nonprofit organizations.

It’s been a memorable decade at Save, and there is much for the IT teams to be proud of. Here are the top-10 numbers I count as standout achievements:

241 Intel Classmates being used in Bolivia and Bangladesh schools
225 PDA’s in service in the Bangladesh Food Security and M&E programs
3.7 – the Internal Client Satisfaction Index for IT among our field offices
5 Alliance members on the path to share a common financial management system
186 Field Offices wired for doing business across the Internet
6 Systems Building enterprise projects funded for meeting business unit needs
29 video conference rooms in operation across the Alliance
2 Legacy AS400 midrange computers retired
First of 28 NetHope members in the most successful international NGO collaboration to-date
0.6% – the voluntary turnover rate in IT for the past 5 years (until the recent restructuring)

However, these numbers don’t tell the whole story. As Charlie [our CEO] put it so well, we have been the team that has brought technology into the 21^st century at Save.

Part of this has been about vision, and part has been about hard day-to-day change. Some have suggested that I’ve often been five steps ahead of everyone else. That’s short of chess masters who claim to see a dozen moves ahead, so there’s always room for improvement. Though it’s often been a lot of change to handle, I’ve always felt that if you stand still, you get hit by the train.

Let me tell you a story to illustrate the point:

Imagine a bullfrog sitting on an old train rail. It is a strong frog. It is a fast frog. It is a wise and noble frog. One could even say it’s a prince of a frog!

In the far distance, from the south, is a faint whistle.

"It is nothing," thinks the frog. "I can stay put."

Ever so slowly the whistle grows louder. "Ah, the sun is warm," sighs the frog, "It is nothing."

Louder still gets the whistle. "There is time," says the frog, "the wind whistles too."

Then the whistle becomes a roar.

"I feel a rumble," the frog says out loud, "perhaps I should pay attention."

He turns too late and is flattened by a roaring bullet train, barreling to the north.

"But wait," you say, "It is a wise frog!"

“Rewind the story.”

“The frog would jump in time, wouldn’t it?”

"OK," I say, "the frog jumps to neighboring rail, a familiar stretch of iron."

And he's hit by a different train, an old freight train, barreling to the south.

Right now, in our IT departments in nonprofit organizations, we are the frog. The whistle that grows steadily louder, the northbound train, is the call to move north, to be a more mission-moving force in our organizations. The freight train lumbering south, is the recession, hard times, and the retrenchment to familiar, lights-on operations.

Now imagine you are the frog. What do you do? In many ways, we have been a team that’s moved forward. And this is our call anew today.

So what am I doing for the next chapter? There’s a “burning platform” that needs attending. We need to move the IT agenda up the pyramid, as you’ve heard me say a hundred times or so. As most NetHope members have experienced the budget cuts of the past year, it’s hard to keep the lights on, let alone make the changes needed for leveraging technology for delivering our programs in the field. How to better do that is my next mission. You can expect to hear some great things coming out of NetHope and elsewhere as a result.

Lastly and most importantly is my sincere thank you to all who put in the long hours and dealt with the complex and thorny problems that technology often presents. We could not have achieved our goals without the team work. For that I will be forever grateful.

Resolutions

2009-12-31T21:48:00.000+01:00

Last week a journalist asked for my comments about New Year’s resolutions for CIOs. “Could you give me a few ideas,” she wrote. I sent her three, which I’ll unpack for your holiday reading pleasure.

Resolution #1: Ponder Paul Samuelson’s: “Good questions outrank easy answers.”[1] We would do well spending time with the right questions in the coming year. One I recommend wrestling with: how are you shaking up the business, inspiring your peers to imagine in new ways, and empowering your customers (or beneficiaries)? This may prove the better question than asking how we can better align with our business peers—a good question to ask anew, but a rear-view mirror, to borrow a Tom Peters’ phrase. Times of crisis are an invitation to experiment, harvest what works before the turnaround, and have the humility to recognize the answers that come from places we least expect.[2]

Resolution #2: Do not allow a retreat to lights-on computing take the IT agenda from moving missions. In nonprofits we've seen IT budgets and staff slashed to operations-only cost levels. That means little to no IT time and budget will be spent on technology that impacts field workers and beneficiaries. That’s cutting the wrong things. We end up spending a greater percentage of the technology budget pie on commodity items like email and desktop computing. We need to get out of the infrastructure business and redeploy more resources to get into the mission-moving business[3].

Resolution #3: Employees increasingly want to help save the world; help make the connections to do so. Over the past five years we've seen an explosion of interest in colleges, business schools and the new generation of employees, in business for social good. It’s a fundamental shift from good corporate citizenship, and the desire to give back, to an expectation that our businesses can make a difference in the big global issues like poverty. This isn't about rich versus poor, as a “we versus them;” this is about us –to paraphrase John Green[4] That means more partnering among corporations, nonprofits and people in emerging countries. It’s a question—to come full circle—about what are we doing together?
_______________________

[1] Echoing Rilke’s “Learn to love the questions,” economist Paul Samuelson died at his home at Belmont, Massachusetts on December 13. He was 94. As a fellow collector of quotes aptly said, “… Samuelson was brilliant, insightful, and witty. He kept thinking about the economy, and writing articles, up until two weeks ago. He will be missed.” (See G. Armour Van Horn’s collection at http://www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=5345 )
[2] As Jim Collins notes, when there is rapid change and uncertainty, smart organizations vary like mad. See Jim Collins, Built to Last, Harper Collins, 1995, pp. 146-47. I want to know what's the portfolio of experiments the CIO is sponsoring? No experiments; no innovation. So to apply the Tom Peters’ phrase above, business alignment has been overrated in that it’s looking back on the organization that is rather than on what it can be.
[3] For nonprofits, this means more radical partnering in 2010, sharing services, and trusting others to do the basics. We need to standardize and share business processes and applications; invest the savings in applications that deliver programs, and innovate with those app’s that beneficiaries can use directly. Something to add to our agenda in 2010: in addition to things that run the operation, and build the business, we need a portfolio of prototypes from which we can harvest. To put more pointedly: build versus run is not enough for IT. We need, build, run, and experiment to innovate, which means more pilots and prototypes, even from outside our organization
[4] See John Green’s video response to Shawn Ahmed and the “Uncultured Project,” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4dFv8sauZE
“[Nonprofit advertisements are] making you think that the poor are in some ways fundamentally different from us; that they’re like a ‘them.” So in our minds it becomes this formulation: we should help them. But it’s not a ‘them’ problem; it’s an ‘us’ problem. We need to help us.”