Chuck's Blog

The Challenge of Creating Executive Digital Literacy

The premise is simple yet powerful: our world is quickly becoming a digital one. 

Business models established in the physical world now need to be re-imagined and re-invented in the new digital one. 

And, depending on your particular situation, there's anything from a persistent unease that the world might be changing, all the way up to a set of high-priority strategic initiatives being purposefully driven by the board of directors.

Regardless of where your group might be in this continuum, there are some basics at hand. 

You'll need to understand what's going on, and why.  You'll need to figure out your digital business strategy.  You'll need strong leadership who can move an organization forward.  You'll need a platform to support the transformation, and some new roles.

But is all that enough?  Sadly, no.  It's not enough to do all of this in isolation; the broader leadership ranks have their parts to play, otherwise progress will be limited. 

But, if you think about it, we've seen this movie before.

The world is changing, again.  Every time there's a significant contextual change, we're always faced with the challenge of arming our business leaders with the new skills they'll need.  It's not just about bringing in the experts, it's about creating a new category of skills into the leadership ranks.

The world goes global; how do you teach globalization?  The world goes sustainable, how do you teach sustainability?   The world goes digital, how do you teach digital literacy?

The topic of establishing wide and deep digital literacy within the leadership ranks is now shaping up to be a major challenge -- not only for the customers I work with, but internally here at EMC.

And, while it might not be easy to close this gap, it's going to have to be done. 

The alternatives are far harder to contemplate.

Doing Business In A Digital World

I've spent the last few posts exploring digital business models, and everything that comes along with them.  It's easy to spot a digital business model: a company has fundamentally re-created their value proposition for a new world.

Now that my radar is on, I'm finding these everywhere.  And there are many, many stories to be told and learned from.

Today's story comes from Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), and how they successfully re-invented one of their core business processes (designing and manufacturing vehicles) using a digital business model. 

They were able to bring a very successful SUV to market (the Evoque) faster/better/cheaper by creating powerful simulations around 100% of their processes.

By making the leap to a digital, they were able to suddenly compete with the big boys.

The common pattern?  Don't simply automate physical processes using technology; re-invent them. 

And that's what JLR did.

The Digital Business Leader

A new customer pattern has been gradually revealing itself over the last year or so.

I'm meeting with an IT leadership team.  They want to do cloud, and analytics, and social, and mobile, and an app factory, and ... well, just about everything I've discussed around creating a digital business platform.  Sooner than later.

Hmmm.  The last time I met with these guys, almost none of that was on the agenda. 

So I ask "what's changed?"

After a bit of probing, the truth is frequently revealed.  They can point to one or two senior individuals brought in by the executive team to drive every one of those topics.  Sooner than later.

Enter the digital business leader.

Their titles, formal roles and reporting structure may vary, but their intent is crystal clear: lead the business transformation to a digital business model, and fast.

And I think we all will be encountering this particular agent of change more frequently in the future.

IT Transformation: The EMC Partner Opportunity

Having been here a long time, I've sort of come to accept that EMC can take a perceived weakness, and -- working like mad -- eventually turn it into a strength. 

Our relationship with partners -- resellers, integrators, service providers, etc. -- is no exception. 

While it's true there's always room for improvement, we've done an admirable job of building deep business relationships with hundreds of partners around the globe.

During this period of time, our focus has visibly shifted from "here's someone who can sell our stuff" to "here's someone we can partner with around a business opportunity". 

I get involved in these discussions frequently: I always take some time to understand our partner's current business model, and then share some of the things things we're investing in to create more opportunity for them to serve their customers even better.

An increasing number of our EMC partners now appear ready to take on a big opportunity we at EMC have been working for a while: IT transformation.

But, just as every IT organization isn't ready for an IT transformation, not every EMC partner is ready to go do this.

EMC And Big Data: An Overview

Like many of you, I set filters on various social platforms to track topics of interest -- like big data. 

About two months ago, I had to go around and turn them all of them off -- just too much pouring through the floodgates on the topic, overwhelming me.  There seem to be an awful lot of people out there trying to make sense of it all.

Sort of like the whole topic itself, if you think about it :)

As one of my projects, I tried to create a clear-eyed, non-marketing synopsis of what EMC was doing around the topic: how we saw the opportunity, the challenges and where we were investing as a company.

Much like a previous piece I shared (EMC And Cloud: An Overview), the result doesn't make for an thrilling narrative, but it does serve as a handy summary of just how many of the pieces we've brought together so far.

Like any overview, I will inevitably forget to discuss one aspect or another -- but there's still a surprising amount we've done on the topic.

A Reflection -- And Appreciation

I glanced at the calendar, and realized that it now had been six years (!) since I first was foolish enough to think I should be blogging. 

What was once a strange and uncomfortable adventure is now fully integrated to everything I do.

And -- if you're interested -- I thought I'd take a moment to share not only a few reflections about the experience, but my appreciation for each and every one of you who has helped me along the way.

How Intellectually Diverse Is Your Company?

No, I'm not referring to the politically-correct race/gender/age meaning of diversity -- although that's certainly important as well.

I'd like to take a bit of your time to discuss the importance -- and difficulty -- of establishing intellectual diversity: the power that comes from harnessing a wide range of opinions, perspectives, experiences and disciplines.

The natural tendency I've observed in any organizational culture is to be self-reinforcing over time.  Inevitably, certain lines of thought become amplified.  Others get filtered and attenuated.

As a result, the intellectual gene pool narrows and purifies until only a few choice DNA strains survive. 

All may be well for a while, until a new environmental context is presented, and then the results can be disasterous to all involved.

Is intellectual diversity important?  And -- as a leader -- what can you do to overcome the corporate equivalent of inbreeding?

EMC And Cloud: An Overview

Occasionally, new documents need to be written here at EMC, and -- once in a while -- I put up my hand in a naive attempt to help out. 

This time, the assignment was to create a clear-eyed, non-marketing description of what EMC was doing about this whole "cloud" thing. 

While the resulting document doesn't exactly make for scintillating bedtime reading, it does serve as a useful comprehensive reference -- at this point in time. 

Despite my efforts at completeness, I'm sure I've inevitably left out one thing or another.

And you might be surprised on just how much we're doing ...

The Tantalizing Prospect Of Open Data

EMC's deep involvement with the Human Face Of Big Data project has given me ample time to reflect on this new era we're about to enter as a society and a species. 

We can now measure the world with growing impunity. 

We can use those measurements to extract deep insights about ourselves and the world around us.

And we can act on those insights to improve our businesses, our society, our planet and the lives of each and every one of us.

Heady stuff, indeed.  A new "golden age" is potentially upon us.

But one has to ask -- what role could public policy play in all of this?  Accelerate the good, avoid the bad?

And the discussion quickly focuses on the notion of "open data" (#opendata on Twitter) -- a set of progressive policies and investments to make these valuable data sets more freely available.

Cisco and EMC: The Back Story

My youngest teenage daughter is starting to enjoy reading those celebrity tabloids: who's together now, who's breaking up, etc. 

Not exactly my thing, but - hey - it works for her.
 
Our tech industry is not immune from the same kind of speculation.  With both Cisco and EMC both playing prominent roles in the broader transformation of the IT industry, it seems that we're both in the rotation once again.
 
As part of my customer meetings, I'm now occasionally pinged by people who are curious as to my personal take on all of this.  Like anyone, I can speculate on the future, but the past is largely a matter of fact.
 
People tend to forget all the great stuff the two companies have done together in the past -- for our mutual customers. 

So I remind them.
 
And while no one can predict what the future might bring, the past is always worth considering ...