Paradigm Shift International hosts at this web site a
forum and information resource for people exploring Agility, Change Management, Knowledge Management,
and Enterprise Response Ability . |
Few of us have time to drop in all over the
neighborhood just to see if there's any news we need to know. Similarly, keeping up with
new web-site postings can be time consuming, as well as time wasting if too many checks
reveal no change.
Monthly this site typically adds:
IF you are on the Free Update List . . .
We will notify you of new postings by email with a take-you-there hyperlink when this update
occurs.
To join . . .
Send an email message to
specifying your name, affiliation, and email address, and a request to join. We will send
you a confirmation. If you are registering others, we will send them a confirmation that
you have done so. To unsubscribe, email to the same address specifying your name,
affiliation, and email address, with a request to be dropped. |
Posted April, 2005
 Enterprise
Agility - In Search of Graceful Integration Migration.
The lack of integrated IT applications is well known as a
source of unnecessary business cost, a road-block to best-practice upgrade,
and a cause of business inefficiency and customer dissatisfaction; yet too few are willing to attack the integration problem. "We don't know how
to deal with it," is the commonly heard candid reason. Remove the
frustration, and what is being said is that safe, affordable migration paths
are elusive. It doesn't have to be that way.- Our
guest speaker, once again, is William L. Livingston - with Part 3 of "Governance of Self-Regulating
Organizations -
Comment Letter on
Draft
SEC Guidelines
- Part 3 of
3."
Livingston takes up the subject of transparency this time, arguing
that it eliminates the subjectivity of rule interpretation and, when
done effectively, puts the responsibility for shareholder damage on the
shareholder. His comments are relevant to the crafting of any
policy, procedure, or regulation that expects to be useful in the uncertain
future it intends to affect - whether done by a regulatory body or an
organization wishing to influence internal behavior. Here is a glimpse at
agile procedure crafting. Livingston is author of
Friends in High Places,
New Plague,
and
Have Fun At Work. He is a Professional
Engineer with more than 100 patents to his name, and has extensive
background in the Energy and Utility sector.
- Book
review in May issue of
Automotive Design and Production: "One of the more important
books that you'll ever have the opportunity to put to good use in your
professional (and even recreational) life is this slim (96-page) but
dense text by thinker and consultant Rick Dove. Dove has a depth of
understanding of organizational issues, particularly as they pertain to
the implementation of technology, that is unparalleled among those who
tend to hold forth on such matters. While Dove's previous book,
Response Ability: The Language, Structure and Culture of the Agile
Enterprise, dealt primarily with agility, an operational and
organizational approach that he was instrumental in defining in his work
with the Agile Forum at Leigh University in the early ‘90s, in
Value Propositioning Dove
thoughtfully examines how decisions are made in organizations. He
synthesizes, condenses, and deploys the concepts of a number of people
who have thought about and essayed the ways of learning and thinking and
puts what are otherwise academic issues into the non ivy-covered world.
"Say you want to have a new program approved. You must create a value
proposition for why that would be important to someone else. That
someone is what Dove calls the "Decision Maker." And he maintains,
"Nothing happens until a problem is perceived by a Decision Maker." The
problem that your program can resolve may exist, but unless the Decision
Maker is convinced of the reality of that situation, until the Decision
Maker perceives it, then the likelihood that there will be any change is
nil. Moreover, once there is a perception of a problem, then the
"satisficing" behavior defined by Herbert Simon comes into play: people
aren't apt to go too far outside their current concepts, notions or
ideas when presented with alternatives. Dove writes: "Satisficing
behavior tends to limit search activity initially to a small number of
candidates," and chances are those candidates are not thoroughly
unfamiliar, for, as he puts it in an example, "when an existing product
becomes inadequate for the market, a company will tend to look purposely
for projects that promise a superior featured version rather than
something completely different that would obsolete the product concept."
In other words, "New and Improved" is just fine; "Something Completely
Different" is anathema to most Decision Makers. But getting them to
where they need to be isn't impossible—if you fully perceive their
position.
"An understanding of how Decision Makers think and how they can be
best influenced greatly enhances your ability to get things done. And
this is what Dove's book can help you do.—Gary Vasilash,
Editor-in-Chief, Automotive Design & Production.
|
Posted March, 2005
- "Enterprise
Agility - SOX and Enterprise Information Integration" -
For the auditor, enterprise-wide data transparency is the holy grail -
ideally facilitated by what I'll call an Auditor's Portal - with
point-and-click exploration, automated cross-database consistency checks,
exhaustive sampling options, and integral analytics and report generation.
Better yet, a capability to verify period cut-off accuracy, to compare
current period detail-data with prior periods, and to sound the alarm in
advance of a material event. With such a portal, audit accuracy would be
less dependent on expertise and experience, attestation risk would be
reduced, and much better results would take much less time. Auditors in
wonderland - where SOX attestation is not an issue, and all the auditors are
above average.
- Our
guest speaker, again, is William L. Livingston - with Part 2 of "Governance of Self-Regulating
Organizations -
Comment Letter on
Draft
SEC Guidelines
- Part 2 of
3."
Livingston's very cogent comments are relevant to the crafting of any
policy, procedure, or regulation that expects to be useful in the uncertain
future it intends to affect - whether done by a regulatory body or an
organization wishing to influence internal behavior. Here is a glimpse at
agile procedure crafting. Livingston is author of
Friends in High Places,
New Plague,
and
Have Fun At Work. He is a Professional
Engineer with more than 100 patents to his name, and has extensive
background in the Energy and Utility sector.
- New
book review: "As offerings become more experiential, decisions become
more subjective. Perception is reality. So make your reality every
decision maker's perception by reading
Value Propositioning. Reach your
customers with what they need to know to choose wisely. Learn from the
master, Rick Dove, in this easily digested and practical book. He brings
research, often from Nobel-prize winners, his own thoughts, and concept
mapping into pragmatic, bite-sized chapters that show you how to create
value propositions for your customers in meaningful, winning ways."
B. Joseph Pine II, Co-author: The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre &
Every Business a Stage.
|
Posted February, 2005
- "Enterprise
Agility - Managing Risk with
Agility"
Public Service Company
of New Mexico (PNM), a medium sized electric and gas utility, provides
an excellent case study of agility in response able business
processes. This case study focuses on the application of
agility-enabling principles, and the benefits these principles generate.
These same principles can be applied to the design of any enterprise
strategy, business process, or system design. The value of the case
study is its demonstration of how agility in anything is achieved, and
should be viewed with an eye for generalization to other processes that
need response-ability.
The purpose of
agility is to reduce both risk and vulnerability in a dynamic and
uncertain environment. The principal risk is response sufficiency. The
principal vulnerability is response predictability.
- Our
guest speaker, again, is William L. Livingston - this time with Part 1
of "Governance of Self-Regulating
Organizations -
Comment Letter on
Draft
SEC Guidelines
- Part 1 of
3."
Livingston's very cogent comments are relevant to the crafting of any
policy, procedure, or regulation that expects to be useful in the uncertain
future it intends to affect - whether done by a regulatory body or an
organization wishing to influence internal behavior. Here is a glimpse at
agile procedure crafting. Part 2 will be published next month. Livingston is author of
Friends in High Places,
New Plague,
and
Have Fun At Work. He is a Professional
Engineer with more than 100 patents to his name, and has extensive
background in the Energy and Utility sector.
|
Posted January, 2005
- Our
guest speaker is William L. Livingston - offering cogent comments to the
OECD with:
"Commentary on Draft OECD Guidelines on
the Corporate Governance of State-Owned Enterprises. He
s author of Friends in High Places,
New Plague, and Have Fun At Work; with a book in process
tentatively called Amicus Rex, about the engineering/law
relationship. He is a Professional Engineer with more than 100
patents to his name, and has extensive background in
the Energy and Utility sector.
- "Enterprise
Agility - Modeling Response Proficiency"
Response of any kind consumes resources, costs money,
takes time and incurs risk. Generally there isn't a choice of responding
or not—so the issue comes down to response proficiency. Can response be
made a non-issue, a standard operating procedure, an
affordable, predictable experience—rather than a risky, chaotic event?
Response
proficiency modeling provides a visible decision base. It displays areas
of sufficiency, areas for improvement, and areas for urgent attention.
It provides a knowledge base for strategy and priority, and evidence of
good governance.
|
Posted December, 2004
- "Enterprise
Agility - Language, Culture & Requirements Analysis" A
culture of change proficiency is an enabling element of response ability, one of the three cornerstones of enterprise
agility. Change proficiency is a competency that is facilitated or impeded
by an organization's culture. It is
practiced, refined, talked about, debated, valued, and taught; and seeps
into the culture through this frequent exercise of language. A
metric framework for defining and measuring proficiency is discussed
first, then a framework for analyzing change in specific domains. These domains form an analysis framework for
understanding current needs and values, setting improvement and strategic
priorities, characterizing solution requirements, and evaluating solutions.
|
Posted November, 2004
- "Enterprise
Agility - Is
Risk Management" The value proposition for
enterprise agility is rooted firmly in risk management—the
purpose of agility is to maintain both reactive and proactive response
options in the face of uncertainty. We explore the value proposition in
terms of enterprise risk management
(ERM)—with
an important twist. Current ERM extends standard risk management
strategies to a larger set of business risks, notably those of operations
and project decisions—but
generally focused on risk analysis as it affects available choices. Half
the story. The other half of risk management
is to proactively increase the choice options with lower risk
alternatives. Precisely the purpose of agility.
|
Posted
October, 2004
- "Enterprise
Agility - What Is It and What Fuels it?" Enterprise
agility has three core enabling elements: 1) accurate timely awareness
that a change should be made, enabled by focused knowledge management
processes, 2) effective value-propositioning skills to prioritize
among competing changes and competing response-alternatives to those
changes, and 3) a facilitated ability to change business processes and to
customize operational responses in real time, which we call response
ability. Here, we overview the total set of
requirements, and explore one of them in more depth: knowledge management
for visibility and awareness, with a focus on the energy and utility
sector.
Being agile enough to respond is of little value if events that require
response are sensed and understood too late.
-
"Enterprise
Agility - What Is It?" Agility
deals with reality, and reality is defined very specifically and
individually for each industrial sector and for each organization within
those sectors. Reality establishes limits, both constraining and enabling.
Reality issues include the business environment, governing regulatory
bodies, the organizational culture and behaviors of employees and
management, current skill sets and human resources, in-place assets,
financial resources, customer base, existing services and products,
location-based disaster potential, exposure as a security target, physical
asset distribution, supply sources and prices, partners and alliances,
risk policies, and in-place legacy information systems. Some of these are,
in theory, under internal control, and some are external and beyond
control. Being agile doesn't mean being in control. It means having a
controlled response ability to deal effectively with things that
are beyond control—whether internal or external, whether opportunity or
necessity. Response ability is
obtained through culture and structure—explored
in this discussion.
-
UtiliPoint
International Partners With Rick Dove
to Explore Utility Agility
For
Immediate Release
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.—September 29, 2004— UtiliPoint
International, Inc. (UtiliPoint), the utility and energy industry thought
leader, and Rick Dove, founder of Paradigm Shift International and
renowned expert on enterprise agility, today announced that the two firms
are partnering to examine and research the concept and values of agility
in the utility industry. Rick co-led the founding work at Lehigh
University that identified agility as a critical business necessity. He
subsequently led the industry initiatives that defined agile strategic and
operating principles, and wrote the definitive book on how to determine
agility needs, build agile business processes, and create agile
enterprises: Response Ability - The Language, Structure, and Culture of
the Agile Enterprise (Wiley 2001).
“Utilities have historically been a conservative industry and have
recently focused on performing basic core strengths by eliminating
diversification efforts to a certain extent,” said Jon T. Brock, chief
operating officer of UtiliPoint International. “However, with that in
mind, we are seeing utilities begin a management shift where regulatory,
governance, information technology, and commodity pricing issues are
forcing the industry to be more agile. The utility that 'does nothing'
will eventually be left behind as the utilities that can see market
conditions changing and make required adjustments early will begin to lead
the utility and energy industry.”
“The concept is not new to other industries,” said Rick Dove.
“Manufacturing is an example of an industry that has successfully
implemented many of the agile enterprise concepts with astonishing
results. We plan to test the concept of agility in the utility and energy
markets, and determine where it can provide the most benefit to executives
facing major technological, operational, regulatory, marketing, and
cultural change.”
UtiliPoint research efforts have already identified areas where agility
is being tested within the utility industry with successful results. The
partnership with UtiliPoint and Paradigm Shift will examine those areas
and identify others where the agile concepts may be successfully deployed
to effect positive change.
The two firms expect to identify other significant projects in the area
of utility agility to work on together in the future. Additionally,
UtiliPoint and Paradigm Shift will partner for industry seminars and
presentation opportunities.
To learn more about agility in the enterprise, contact either Jon
T. Brock at 505.244.7607 or Rick
Dove at 505.586.1536.
About UtiliPoint International, Inc.
UtiliPoint International is a leader in providing
consulting services to the utility industry, and has a 71-year history and
over 50 utility clients worldwide. UtiliPoint International's staff is
comprised of leading energy experts with diverse backgrounds in utility
generation, transmission & distribution, retail markets, mergers and
acquisitions, emerging technologies, investment capital, information
technology, outsourcing, renewable energy, regulatory affairs, and
international issues. UtiliPoint can be found at www.utilipoint.com.
Contact Information: Jon T. Brock, UtiliPoint International,
Inc, 505.244.7607 |
Posted September,
2004
- Last month we sent a new
book off to the publishers: Value
Propositioning - Perception and Misperception in Decision Making.
Expected publication by Iceni Books is Jan 2005. An Agile Enterprise
requires an ability to make effective and timely decisions as well as the
ability to implement them. Our prior book was on the implementation
capability. This book exposes the psychological realities of decision
making behavior and the nature of compatible value propositioning skills.
It is the first book in a planned three-book series. The second book will
address skill development among Decision Champions. The third will address
skill development among Decision Makers. We will begin posting essays on
this material in early 2005.
- We
have been developing rationale, operating concepts, and knowledge
frameworks for an Agile Security
Forum, building upon our experiences with the Agility Forum of the
nineties. If things go as planned, an industry-participative Pathfinder
Initiative will begin in Q1 2005 - with the intent of exploring the
reality-based nature of security policy, procedure, and practice in
organizations and developing a fitness function for rational strategies
that address these realities: The impetus is the recognition that seven
aspects of learn-ti-live-with-it reality are generally ignored: human
behavior, organizational behavior, technology pace, systems complexity,
globalization, agile business practices, and the agility of the attack
community. General knowledge developed under this program will appear here
in the monthly essays that will resume in early
2005.
|
Book Reviews
- Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-And-Respond
Organizations, Stephan H. Haeckel, Harvard Business
School Press, 1999. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand enterprise
agility. I'm highly biased in my recommendation -- though I've yet to meet Steve
personally, reading his book was like reading my own beliefs on agile enterprise. Low key
but powerful in its message and conclusions, he states his case and gets quickly to the
point. Heakel is sensitive to the realities of large complex organizations operating under
uncertainty, and walks a solid path where others have told half a story or appealed to
metaphor and idealistic theory. Chapter three offers valuable insights on the roles of
trust, empowerment, and emergence in corporate strategy, and a powerful conclusion that
the future of strategy is not at all like we've known it in the past, but rather "a
design for an adaptive structure." Rick Dove, November 1999.
- The Technology Machine: How Manufacturing Will Work in the
Year 2020, Patricia Moody and Richard Morley, The Free
Press, 1999. Irreverent and thought provoking, an easy and entertaining read, like sitting
around the table with the authors and hearing stream of consciousness off the top of the
head. An ideal travel companion or thought stimulator when bite-sized capsules of
knowledge, experience, and informed conjecture are wanted. If you haven't met Dick Morley,
this is your opportunity to hear one of the original and prolific deep thinkers skin some
sacred cows and share personal philosophy, poignant anecdotes, accumulated wisdom, and
dangerous ideas. Rick Dove, October 1999.
- The Agile Virtual Enterprise: Cases, Metrics, Tools, Ted Goranson, Quorum Books, 1999. Bravo! This highly insightful,
highly thoughtful book is the first to offer useful advice on creating the agile
enterprise. Goranson pulls no punches when he puts misconceptions about enterprise
agility, lean manufacturing, virtual operating practices, relationship contracts and
trust, and activity based costing and management firmly in their place. Focused on the
virtual enterprise as an interaction of resources and competencies, Goranson offers models
and metrics for thriving in a business environment of unexpected change. Chock full of
lucid, high impact stories, this is a must-read for anyone involved with organizational
architecture, supply chain strategy, cooperative ventures of any kind, and especially
defense industry procurement issues. Based on solid research and analysis of successful
agile virtual enterprises, this is at once an easy read, a deep exposure, and a worthy
reference. Rick Dove, September 1999.
- The Future and Its Enemies,
Virginia Postrel, Free Press, 1998. Full of useful insights about people who find change
difficult to deal with, those who like change as long as they control it, and those who
find change to be the joy in life. She puts the "technocrat" into a tight
fitting box that may cause you to look around and re-evaluate who you work with and who
you'll vote for. She gives us an insightful discussion on the nature of tacit knowledge
that should boost your respect for collaborative networks and decrease your expectations
from so-called on-line knowledge repositories. She didn't set out to do that but the
conclusion is inescapable if you're wrestling with these concepts as I am. Her discussion
of rules and the nature of rules that create generative, innovative, and adaptable
environments is the most lucid and comprehensive I've heard yet - and very thought
provoking. In the end, she believes that the USA might be on the "verge" of
losing a very good thing, this melting pot and fertile field of creativity and innovation
she so aptly describes as the freedom to experiment - and in the describing she brings the
boarder of chaos and order to life. Though it is non-fiction, it isn't a duty-calls
business book - it's a fast-paced and delightful read. Rick Dove, April 1999.
|
Paradigm Shift
with questions or comments about this web site.