I mentioned in the post the other day about 5 Actions a CIO Needs Take Action On, that while I was at HP Discover they did a quick, related video recording:

It was one of those “one take” exercises that always gets the adrenalin flowing, so hopefully you’ll find it insightful as well…

HP labs’ April Mitchell has been working in the Enterprise Social Collaboration space for years. Here is a view into her current work:

Every large or geographically diverse organization has problems understanding who knows what. Her project, Compass can tie people together based on their behavior and the context of their work rather than having to dig around and find the content on their own.

Projects like this show how organizations can consume the abundance of technology available today, and redefine the definition of value.

1)   Understand the business strategy

What are the organizations hot buttons and why are they there. To do this, you’ll need to reach out (if you don’t meet with people you can’t understand them). Once you’re there you need to actually pay attention. It is amazing what people will tell you when you actually listen to what they mean not just what they say. Look for conflict. Where there is conflict, there is an opportunity to innovate.

2)   Have a vision

Don’t just respond to the situations of the day. Set direction – yet be flexible. There are always situations that defy the rules. Look for anomalies, because unique is where the value is. Everything that is not unique, but normal -- strive to automate. It takes out variability and allows the people to focus on maximizing value from those unique situations.

3)   Understand architecture

There are many dimensions to architecture that can be easily assumed or overlooked. It is not just the technical side of architecture, but the business structures they need to support that need to be understood. For example security, whether it is cloud, BYOD or analytics. The security implications and pressures can be quite different so an architectural approach needs to be flexible. The same can be said about the data issues – especially when thinking about BYOD and similar approaches.

Closely related to the planning side of architecture is the portfolio of services used by the enterprise. The existing environment is a constraint on both the flexibility and spending to address the future. Make sure every system/service has an owner. Why be constrained by something that no one cares about any more. These things can build up overtime – like weeds. It’s good to thin them out on a regular basis, and that is where the governance side of architecture comes into play.

4)   Understand your options

CIO’s today have more options than they may realize. We live in a world of abundant IT capabilities and possibilities. There are new tools available like:

• Mobility
• Analytics
• Social techniques
• Service based approaches (XaaS) and outsourcing of whole business processes.

Just because you’ve never done it before doesn’t mean that now is not the time.

5)   With all this information be sure you make a plan

Once you have the plan, be sure to communicate it to the business and your teams. This will empower them to support the effort as well as reduce confusion and inertia. In order to be a leader, you must have followers and communications is key.

The CIO can help move the organization forward and increase value to whole new levels but only if they move away from the status quo. I recorded a video of these points and if I get my hands on it (and its good) I'll place it on the blog.

One of the great opportunities at a conference like HP Discover is being able to talk with other bloggers about the issues they feel strongly about.

I am sitting in the blogger lounge and just finished a very animated discussion about BYOD and where the demand is coming from. One of the bloggers (@NEELIXX) firmly believed that the whole BYOD approach was user driven, while the other blogger and I viewed BYOD as an ideal way for organizations to offload work that has become a commodity and focus that spend and effort to provide a more secure and flexible environment- essentially the IT organization needs to seduce the users into thinking the supported way is the best way.

We got into a big discussion that can be summarized as: yes, you can just throw the data open and call it BYOD, and that might work for a while but that is definitely not the "right" way. Knowing the needs of the business is always the place to start.

Some people viewed that BYOD and the cloud were inseparable. I had the opportunity to talk with a small delegation from China that asked if the additional security concerns related to cloud, compounded by the security issues related to BYOD would overwhelm most CIOs. Of course it could – especially if they try to block it, rather than hopping on board and helping steer the course.

Depending on the situation there are many options available. Organizations need to do some structured pilots to understand the choices and use them as appropriate. This is another situation where it’s not a question of “if” but more “when”.