Coaching for Learning Teams

Learning teams must be introduced to the various methods for teaming. For resource allocation, nature of work in projects as well as the diversity of people must be taken into account. Work may be process oriented or specialist oriented. Work may be innovative or competitive in spirit. People in the team may be from various cultures and locations on the globe. People may also  belong to different generations working toward a common goal in the projects they work on.

Consider a project to improve or upgrade the business HR system with outdated technologies. This is a project that can be accomplished by adopting established analytical thinking methods, information gathering techniques as well as proposal writing guidelines. Teams may consist of specialists from the business side and technologies side familiar with Human Resources functions systems. A project manager or leader who understands the process to get the product functionality right is the added asset for a team. The project can progress with structured methodologies in spite of being a unique project for the specific business.

The Netflix competition of 2008 to improve the movie recommendations system to customers is a very different project  launched by the business. The project is characterized by several new approaches to meet the objectives. It is a crowd sourced, predictive analytics based, global contest project in action. Following the course of actions of the company and the teams to face the grand challenge is a lesson in teaming. The basic requirement for teams working on this project was to think effortlessly outside the box with no prior knowledge of the subject matter.  The teams demonstrated competition and cooperation to collaborate depending on the need of the hour. People from various nations united and managed to merge and blend among themselves to achieve this common goal at different stages of the project. There was meta learning to ensemble models to achieve the goal and win the prize. The approaches are not limited to a predictive analytics competition, several mergers and acquisitions that happen in the business world have valuable lessons to offer in teaming.

Connecting with a diverse group of people including different generations at the work place virtually or face to face is a challenge. Resolving conflicts to lead and being led is not easy. With high achieving and performing teams, there is an added challenge of the paradox of self versus the team's achievement. Shifting perspectives from the truths that worked before will require changes as the teams transition thru stages of their own lives as well as those of others.  Several insights and perceptions on how people think about others and themselves need to be cleared by education and learning.

Training effective teams to prepare for higher education settings as well as the workplace need to consider the multi dimensional factors that come into play for teaming. Teaming can be an effective tool by itself to handle life and work challenges, assimilating best practices in a short term when several people with varied interests come together to get work done.

Topics on emerging technologies and social networking

Michael Cusumano's Staying Power  helped me immensely to understand SaaS, Cloud computing impact on software pricing.  As an aside,  Cusumano has written several books, the one I started with was the Business of Software. I used to tell stories of how the mind set of people from their upbringing in various nations led to their contributions to software industry in various capacities to my students. I gathered these stories from Cusumano's work on the business of software. Think Japan, France, Germany, USA, and now the east (for example India) and the rest and how they are contributing to this industry in various capacities based on their cultures and background...And from there we would pick up stories on outsourcing...

 

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to get to know the authors and subject areas. Watching YouTube videos on their introductions on the books, Ted talks are becoming part of everyone's activities to catch up on knowledge. They are taking their due place in learning everywhere...  

 

The power of platforms is due to its eco system (external) to be able to generate complementary products and services as a network effect. For example, how a best selling product can turn out into an industry platform consider Apple as an example.

We focus on cases such as Salesforce, Netflix, Amazon, Google and Facebook for discussions.  Each one of them has a distinct flavor and interests different groups of students.

Salesforce as a CRM product and the most innovative company of the world (Forbes), Netflix interests every one as a movie rental company and so on.

 

What I try to do is to analyze  the business model patterns here although I don't confuse them with the terms. But my questions center around the patterns.

For example, long tail pattern (selling less for more, offering a large number of products, but each sells less frequently...) - Netflix, Facebook are examples here.

For Multi sided platforms, consider Google. Different groups of customers interact on Google's platform to create value. How it makes money with advertising is an exercise here. Think advertisers, web surfers and content owners here.

 

Free itself is a business model pattern. Think Open source, Skype, google, Flickr...

 

A good resource (with its beautiful design and plenty of drawings) is Business Model generation by Alexander Osterwalder. He seems to be a researcher with quite a few articles I need to catch up on. The book is simple and attractive to read. Check it out in Amazon...  

 

 

Software pricing changes, product costs  and bundling due to SaaS and cloud computing is another area we discuss. I will be including my review of some of the Cusumano's articles for reading.

 

Social networking is discussed in the school/ university context. Students are asked to choose a couple of them and debate how they and the school can make use of these tools.

 

SEI at CMU (Software engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon) report on emerging technologies terminology is introduced to students. SEI at CMU are the pioneers for software engineering for the world. I encourage students to follow their contributions with extensive reports on matters of Software and methodologies. With more students coming from all walks of life, it is difficult to get them interested in topics such as these.

Topics on Systems development life cycle

For topics on systems development life cycle,  the focus continues to be on the consumer/ customer and the business manager.

 

For this, first we focus on system failures, several causes are analyzed and expectations are set. We also talk about how trends in software systems influence the methodologies for development and delivery. Overall, life cycle structure is still the same. How Service oriented architecture influences software development stages is a topic taken up depending on the audience interest.

Next, we move on to understanding how business needs and applications translate to systems applications and how information systems planning is done. The need for frameworks and methodologies due to the intangible nature of systems development is highlighted here.

 

As for SDLC, emphasis is on the incremental, iterative development of information systems with feedback cycles.

Open source, outsourcing are introduced as topics for choices to experimenting and building software. A little on enterprise challenges to manage these is also touched upon.

As people, my audience no longer ask "why outsourcing, affect on jobs". They accept this as part of global delivery model for software systems.

We discuss topics like partnership issues, knowledge transfer barriers, decisions for outsourcing.. here.   

As for Open source, we discuss the motivations of people to participate in open source activities, the challenges for the enterprise and how established vendors participate in this.

 

I emphasize Systems thinking and analysis as the tools for informed decision making. It is interesting how feasibility study for the audience who work with small apps and applications is just a thought process and doesn't require much time and study compared to a defense systems project.

 

Project management principles are introduced highlighting the triple constraints (scope, quality and time). Influence of bias and heuristics on decision making is discussed. How project management itself underwent changes to take the route towards controlling and monitoring.

Topics on business and managerial uses of information

The business uses of information is how the ERP, CRM story evolved over the decade. This is where I try to highlight how products evolve to suit business needs. I stress on SAP product evolution and Salesforce here. Some students are exposed to these products at work...

 

For managerial uses of information, I stress decision making in a data driven culture here. It is business intelligence and analytics re-visited but with more emphasis on decision making, impact of bias and heuristics, obstacles for teams to overcome to get their message across. The connections of business intelligence, analytics, big data are discussed understanding the evolving data products.  

 

As for presenting data in the business context, I highlight data visualization, growing only because of the several tools and technologies to allow presenting data in a meaningful way stressing the importance of story.

 

I must mention the influence of the Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink in understanding how the world is getting "reorganized and rebuilt" and the mindset that helps for professionals and leaders paving way of the future. In fact, there are several in the list, Abundance by Peter Diamandis, Eric Schmidt's "The new digital age".

These books are powerful works with insights into how the future would be...I use examples from these to get the message across on what type of projects are key to growth.

Different countries and people view mobile devices, information and systems and are impacted by their growth very differently. Products must pay attention to the context to win all.

Topics on Wireless and mobile world

 

The most visible transformation of the developing world as well as advanced world with mobile/ wireless is the topic I emphasize when I facilitate on these topics. Context and stories differ widely for the two sides of the world with the wireless and mobile devices.

Scott Snyder's wireless world is a book that gives takes the story of wireless predicting future with scenarios from business, personal lives in all parts of the world and communities. He also dwells on a 101 level of wireless technologies for basics.

My experience with the Indian context (and mind set) helps me immensely to see how lives are transformed at the grass root level. My regular travels allow me to interact and chit chat with all these people.. how they manage their lives with the impact of technologies. C K Prahalad's Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid comes to life here.

 

Important points covered are that mobile devices are not just phones or small devices - they are all about portable computing leading to "connectivity, augmented reality, and sophisticated sensors" (Ted Shelton).

 

Ted Shelton's Business models for the social mobile cloud chapter three is useful reading on this aspect. I touch upon the above concepts with examples for the class.

 

Here, the UN site for information technologies http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/default.aspx is so useful for glimpses into the statistics of internet and mobile adoption worldwide, projects happening world wide to make a difference in the lives of many. Truly, mobile and wireless technologies aim for oneness and it is "ideal globalization" with ubiquitous computing.

From the ideals, I move on with the challenges for the enterprise with mobile devices - BYOD (bring your own device) as well as in the social context. We touch upon cyber crime with mobility a growing concern...We as people, have decided to give up privacy for convenience in the name of adopting mobile so fast...Still, it is a much needed development.

Again the convergence of mobile, social and cloud is briefly mentioned as the trend that is evolving and valuable to the enterprise.

Preparation for topics on Data management and collaborative tools in work environment

The focus of week two is data management and use of collaborative tools in the work environment.

 

Data management from a technology perspective seems much easier to understand compared to the world of data coming to life in the real world.

 

Two books helped me immensely when I tried to understand why data management groups got re-titled as information management groups and how database technologies were evolving at  major database technology vendors until Y2K,  

 

First was Alan Simon's work - Strategic Database technology: management for the year 2K that was so valuable for gaining clarity.  The online GC algorithm for achieving availability, the partitioning of datasets algorithms for achieving scalability, schema evolution, were all explained in a simple fashion with diagrams in this book. I could view the information management group organized right out of this book for the most part. 

 

The second was the Price water house technology forecasts for the year 2K - talked more about data warehousing and several other data applications - all dominant and equally important as the database technologies themselves. The data applications industry was a very mature industry by 2K.  

There was a period when combinations of object oriented systems with the traditional systems was also in vogue (ORDMS) and were believed to be the next big thing for databases.

In summary, database systems and their applications have become matured and dominant industries by Y2K and even before. MySQL (open source) came in providing relief to many as a free offering.  

 

Soon, web data management, web database management took on but it seemed that everything about data is about back end processing. Multi tier applications started showing the traits of database engines with applications also behaving like robust engines with the necessary ingredients (data storage and retrieval logic, process logic and presentation logic) including security layer. This is the essence of the enterprise applications layout. I won't use the word enterprise application architecture here - that is a bigger term for including the entire infrastructure layout along with the application engines on the top layers. 

 

Who could imagine that the front end of the enterprise takes on with data - capturing data at the source (mobile, social data) and data accessible anywhere and everywhere (cloud). Facebook and Twitter were products of the mid y2K decade. Understanding behaviors and patterns of browsing and buying habits of consumers and customers - all outside the organization. Their noise is the source of data deluge.

 

Fast forward to mid Y2K's - the dormant business intelligence took shape to analytics (social, mobile, big data) and now the era of big data and cloud and the convergence of all these leading to new platforms.

 

I started paying attention to the applications industries reading books on business intelligence, analytics and now Big data (SQL and noSQL, structured or not structured data diferences). Until now my focus has been to view them from the customer and management perspective to some extent. Big data and cloud convergence will be interesting - this will require the platform thinking. Social and mobile created the data noise, the data issue have to be resolved by big data solutions and data management taking more of a scientific perspective.

 

More on the staying power of platforms and the business of software in a separate post.

 

Competing with analytics: The new science of winning by Thomas Davenport released around 2006 - 2007 time frame I think. Then followed another titled Analytics at work, Smarter decisions, better results. These books showed insights into data driven companies such as Amazon, Netflix (which were seemingly simple e businesses to start with). The type of questions that are asked in a data driven culture are presented very well in these books. HBR's articles in the Oct 2012 issue on big data cover most of these topics in a nutshell.

 

For my notes, I relied heavily on these two books and brought some flavor to data products starting with recommendation systems.

 

For references on line, I suggest the following:

 

Additional Readings: 

End of theory, the data deluge makes scientific theory obsolete

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_theory

Reshaping the workforce with new analytics

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology-forecast/2012/issue1/download.jhtml

 Transforming collaboration with social tools

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology-forecast/2011/issue3/index.jhtml

Preparing for topics on benefits of information systems

 Information Technology management and Benefits management delivering value from IS/ IT investments by John Ward and the  IT research agenda article helped me understand the foundations for IT focus during the early 2K's. John Ward was particularly helpful for understanding application portfolio and how business applications translate to IS/ IT applications. I learnt how technologies can be monitored and managed in a business in these books.

 

The first 3-4 years of the last decade  was a messy period for IT. The business alignment with IT was lacking, spending approaches were not controlled and articles like Nicholas Carr's "IT does n't matter" created confusion than clarity. IT storms were much earlier than the economy storms in the US.  

In the early Y2Ks, I read Tom Peters' Reimagine - Today I see everything talked in that book in practice. I also read books by Don Tapscott - I continue to read his works. Check out his work at www.dontapscott.com.

 

Tapscott discusses paradigm shifts in the world of technologies and businesses.

The first one I read was "Paradigm Shift" by Tapscott. It helped me understand and teach how the programmer jobs/ roles were changing and how IT can transform businesses (that was when IT jobs were being lost at a rapid pace in this country and outsourcing at a large scale was new).

I also read about spending approaches to understand some of the big mistakes made by businesses during the '90s. The book is titled "Technology paradise lost".

 

I keep bringing organizational culture and leadership as themes that influence technology decisions. I convey the message that a manager's role is a very responsible role via the class activities. In a networked organization, every worker must think like one and act like a leader. So, we focus on the work they do, the role they play at their work. Most of the students I teach are pursuing some sort of a business degree.

 

For competitive advantage, cost leadership, differentiation, innovation, operational effectiveness, customer orientation are talked about in theory.

Porter's five force model is the basic framework for competitive advantage.

 

What caught my attention in the Transient advantage article are the following lines:

 "Indeed, one of the most influential strategy frameworks, Michael Porter's five forces model, assumes that you are mainly comparing your company to others in a similar industry. In today's environment, where industry lines are quickly blurring, this can blindside you".

 

Now a days, the focus of advanced countries is innovation, while the focus of developing countries is on the rest.

 

Innovation must happen with small experiments, continuously in organizations in all areas leading to decisions  - big and small. I encourage my students to experiment in their own work space, try to find better ways to do things at work questioning old approaches. I tell them that it is their era - everything about work is changing for the workforce.  

 

These are the reasons I chose the transient advantage article to set the stage on the theme for the workshops.  Any advantage has a timeline. And it is getting short. 

 

More on the way information systems were viewed before and up to the early Y2K's - mid 2Ks and current and emerging trends next.

Sample Articles on virtual organization, IT Research agenda and Competitive Advantage

Reading for workshop I:
 

Khan, M., & Azmi, F. (2005). Reinventing Business Organisations: The Information Culture Framework. Singapore Management Review, 27(2), 37-62.

I chose the Information culture framework in virtual organization article for an understanding of what it means to work in teams in a virtual organization. It also builds the background necessary to understand the impact of globalization, real time, instantaneous expectations, interactions a click away, knowledge, and information channels spread far and wide. The world is witnessing the collapse of archaic systems of organizations giving way to new methods and approaches to build modern organizations.  

 

March, S., Hevner, A., & Ram, S. (2000). Research Commentary An Agenda for Information Technology Research in Heterogeneous and Distributed Environments. Information Systems Research, 11(4), 327.

The IT research agenda summarizes the areas being addressed by Information Technologies since early Y2K. It is a useful article to understand the need for standards in distributed environments. Discussion on the distributed systems architectural components, requirements of quality and service, information processing capabilities are the highlights of this article. The article is more than a decade old, it can be used to understand better the capabilities of distributed organizations.

 

McGrath, R. (2013). Transient Advantage. Harvard Business Review, 91(6), 62-70.

 

Transient advantage is a reflection on business strategies for competitive advantage in uncertain and turbulent times. There are strong businesses which continue to build unshakable foundations while others get rapidly exposed to the times. The article addresses questions on assessing strategies suitable to firms.

Preparation for the Information systems applications course

I share three articles for required reading. The articles may vary, but the theme is the following.

An article on the required thinking for preparing to be a learner in the business information systems world. An article on leadership is suggested in order to convey the importance of leadership for decision making. An article on the type of business the learners require to understand more about.

For example, here is a sample of the articles I chose for one of my classes.

Davis, S., & Botkin, J. (1994). The Coming of Knowledge-Based Business. Harvard Business Review, 72(5), 165-170.

Atwater, J., Kannan, V. R., & Stephens, A. A. (2008). Cultivating Systemic Thinking in the Next
generation of Business Leaders. Academy Of Management Learning & Education, 7(1), 9-25.
doi:10.5465/AMLE.2008.31413859

Van Buren, M. E., & Safferstone, T. (2009). THE Quick Wins Paradox. Harvard Business Review, 87(1), 54-61.

Search and learn activity :
Key words: information systems, business ethics
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

The key words can be used in the MIT open courses available online or at any digital library to understand more about the topics.

A few information technology related or digital information related regulation and Acts are introduced. These will also give insights on the ethics in the business information systems field.

Text Book:
Rainer, R. K. & Cegielski, C. G. (2011). Introduction to information systems: Supporting and transforming business (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.



 

Story of a class I teach

 

The target audience for the classes I teach are students from all walks of life (mostly business and IT) who are 5 - 6 years experienced, mostly working, transitioning towards their next step with education. There are some who are quite seasoned professionals, some others are from the military/ navy/ local government and bank employees (whose organizations are quite large) - all taking the next step to progress with education. They are techno savvy consumers I must say!

 

I bring a diff flavor to the classes I teach promoting activities that make students think of their organizations, job roles, collaboration and decision making at their work places, and how technologies influence every part of their personal and work lives. I tell them to assess their organizations and their job roles boldly. If the organization itself is failing, there is not much technologies can do. There is much that can be accomplished in an organization that values technologies as well as by an individual entrepreneur. These are the view points about the context I bring to the classroom. 

 

I take this as an opportunity for influencing their thinking on how both businesses and the IT departments themselves are changing, forming a different world, and how people already have a very prominent virtual identity. In the 50 to 60 years of computing industry, influences of technology vendors and consultants on business decisions is another view point I bring to them. So it is also a history class to some extent.

 

I focus mostly on the business side for the consumer and SMB professionals.

 

We exchange views on the happenings on a larger scale mostly taking their news and their view into consideration.

 

 

Escape Velocity and Benefits Management

I find that Geoffrey Moore's Escape Velocity and John Ward's Benefits management provide the links to IS/ IT portfolio management in the context of business. These two books are a good reference for teaching topics such as Strategic context for IS/ IT applications and portfolio management.

The book titles convey the authors intent and context.

In physics, escape velocity is connected to kinetic energy related to moving bodies. It is the energy needed for a body to escape the gravitational field of earth or any frame of reference. The frame of reference for Geoffrey Moore's Escape velocity is the pull of the past portfolios for businesses to move forward. Moore discusses the position of the business in terms of category power, company power, market power, offer power and execution power (table of contents of his book). How to re engineer the portfolio management is the major topic discussed in the chapter on category power. He cites several examples to highlight the need for constant vigilance over portfolios and provides methods that make a difference for the business.

Business needs and applications translate to IS/ IT investments and technology applications for the business.
John Ward discusses this topic on understanding the strategic context of IS/ IT applications. He categorizes the applications by strategic importance, their potential to take the company forward and those that are getting to be obsolete. Based on that the discussion is led to the why, what and how of investments.

Exercises on the portfolio management can be more complete when these two approaches are combined.

Question arises: how does this knowledge help an IS professional, whether independent or working for an organization?

It helps understand the organizational priorities when an employee puts himself as the leader of the organization. It helps provide clues to understand the position of the person and the type of work he is involved with through the lens of the organization. It helps predict what next for career growth in that company. The answers may not be straightforward, but the guidance that an understanding of portfolio management provides is immense throughout one's career. 

Forecasts on Emerging Technologies

Curriculum for technology courses at schools routinely include discussions about forecasts on emerging technologies towards the end of course. I find that instructors tend to use the material to grow interest and to advice their students on what is in store. This is done both in the beginning and towards the end of course.

In order to grow interest on evaluating emerging technologies for students, several approaches can be tried.
One of the methods could be a discussion or debate on which forecasts worked and which did not and why. During the discussion, switching from present to past and going back to future on chosen technologies makes the story of technologies interesting. Several  "what if" scenarios can be added to the discussion. The exercise helps evaluating and differentiating influencing technologies for business and technology professionals.  It also helps understand the factors that lead to failure and success with technologies. As part of this, research methods can also be introduced to students. In short, stories of technologies can be interesting and intriguing to the audience with genuine efforts of the facilitator/ instructor.

I enjoyed reading the  article, Emerging technologies what's ahead for 2001 - 2030 by William Halal, Michael Kull and Ann Leffman. I read it as one of the articles in part 8 of the book titled Globalization and the challenges of a new century. My interest was intrigued at the accuracy of the forecasts when I read the paragraphs in the section on "The 2001-2010 decade" in this article originally written around 1997.

The following predictions were made about 15 years ago. Most of them are facts today.

Entertainment (streaming videos, Nintendo Wii, Netflix), knowledge sources for education (e-books, online libraries), news papers (Craigslist), commerce (amazon.com) and travel (priceline.com, expedia.com) are the foremost industries that are influenced and transformed by digital technologies visibly. Virtual reality, connectivity with multimedia, group collaboration have become part of people's home and work lives today. WebMD has grown to be the primary source of self care. These are just a few of the predictions then.

My next question was on the variety of research methods the authors might have used to predict with such accuracy.  For this, I followed Prof. William Halal's faculty page  that led me to his research project at
http://www.techcast.org/overview.aspx

There is much to learn at this site starting with the overview on research methods used to arrive at predictions and forecasts for technologies. This site is useful for managers, instructors who tend to do their own research for forecasting about emerging technologies. Personal level research is error prone due to lack of extensive research methodologies and expert consultation.

A must read article for the year can be found at http://www.techcast.org/featuredarticledetails.aspx?id=321

Goals of education

Education needs to lead  us to ask the right questions and make effective decisions. Institutions of learning play a major role in building the necessary cognitive skills to prepare an individual for various stages of the business of life. 

Reflective decision making should be taught and in built in our education so everyone can believe in themselves. It is about preparation for living the professional life gracefully in the current working world, whatever role we play. Authenticity and flexibility are to be part of the process to enable to take actions.

Practicing critical thinking, collaboration, communicating and acting on issues that matter, problem solving, clarity of thought, word and deed are necessary to bring out the leader in everyone. These skills are to be stressed repeatedly everywhere - whether it is societies, corporations or politics. 

Thankfully, the twenty first century world wide education leaders recognize these skills as necessary for the rapid paced world. The social media is a vehicle to propagate these to enable exponential growth in the process and practice.

An agenda for the goals of education to enable transforming students and transitioning professionals to reach their true potential is a topic I look forward to work on.  

I will expand on these areas through my studies and experiences in my future posts. 

References:

Schlesinger, Leonard A. & Kiefer, Charles F. & Brown, Paul B.. ( © 2012).

Just start: take action, embrace uncertainty, create the future.

Educating the Next Wave of Entrepreneurs – Unlocking Entrepreneurial Capabilities to Meet the Global

Challenges of the 21st Century

See http://www3.weforum.org/docs/IP/AM11/EE_Full Report_Final.pdf

Educating the Next Wave of Entrepreneurs – Unlocking Entrepreneurial Capabilities to Meet the Global

Challenges of the 21st Century – Executive Summary

See http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GEI_EducatingNextEntrepreneurs_ExecutiveSummary_2009.pdf

Managers in a Sense and Respond Business

A knowledge based business grows its potential by sensing and responding to the feedback of its customers, employees and other stakeholders. The OODA  loop that was originally meant for military strategy explains how a knowledge based business/ system grows to become smarter. This is due to the feedback mechanism inherent in the decision making and acting on the feedback process (Reference: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/the-feedback-economy.html). The quality of information enables growth of information systems from basic reporting to insights that allow prediction, optimization and simulation (Reference: Chapter 1, What it means to put analytics to work, Analytics at work by Thomas Davenport).

The concept of sensing and responding applying to businesses is seen as a capability to iterate in the sense-interpret-act-decide-act cycle. The competencies  required of a manager  in a sense and respond  environment are articulated in Post Industrial Manager. The discussion is on the "emergence of an adaptive managerial framework" along with coverage of the principles of  the "sense-and-respond prescription for organizational design". This includes "methods and tools derived from systems theory, along with adaptive design principles such as modularity. The result is a role and accountability design that serves as a structure for action and becomes the central strategy document of the organization" [Reference: Post Industrial Manager.].

The managerial framework mentioned above is adaptive - paying attention to context and coordination for governance, a system of modular roles and accountabilities  for structure, follows strategic design for action and is customer-centric. The essence of the sense and respond approach is that leaders not postpone or pass on the changes needed for a new paradigm - instead address the pressing, current issues with new approaches and new ways of handling. This lets the incremental changes take place in new, innovative ways so that the need for a whole new generation of managers is not a matter of urgency!

Technology use, changing managerial methods, adapting incrementally to changes as and when the urgency is sensed are keys to achieving the transformation of process and organizational design. This in essence is responding to feedback in a knowledge based business.

Survey of Visualization Tools

Focus of chapter three in Nathan Yau's Visualize this is "Choosing Tools to Visualize data".

There are several options to choose tools from. As for categories of tools, Nathan divides them as out of the box, click and drag, those that require programming, some others more specific for graphics.

The chapter is a survey of the various categories of tools. Trade offs with each of the categories and tools are discussed - that is the highlight of the chapter. It is better the reader knows ahead on the learning curve, what the features are about. Instead of searching Google randomly for tools, techniques and trade offs, it is a relief to find all in one place in a chapter like this. Resources to get to these tools is also provided in at a glance side notes.
Basics that lay the foundations of the features of the tools are quite simple.
Bar charts are about displaying the frequency of values for a specific column. A pie charts shows proportional relationships. Mapping is about overlap and overlay of data with geographical data. Heat maps are special case where the relative data intensity is overlaid on a Map.

Useful Mapping API resources include Google Maps API, Yahoo Maps Web services and such.
Excel, R, Tableau, Adobe Illustrator, Flash/ ActionScript, Processing, SAS are some of the tools discussed
The list is lengthy. Spending time to understand the strength and long term growth of the features is useful knowledge for the learner.

For the learner,
Working with Excel to familiarize with the standard chart types,
then work with Google spreadsheets and Google Gadgets to take advantage of the web based, more advanced applications of charts. Programming would be an option if there is large scale data handling, general/ specific processing  involved. Both commercial and open source software are available.

Working with examples

First, on Yau's Visualize This. The chapter on Handling data is about gathering and formatting data.
Gathering data from various sources whether provided by others or finding on our own can be time consuming. Yau provides numerous sources for data preparing the reader with expectations about data sources.
Data is everywhere, however, it requires scraping and the concept is explained well with the get-weather-data.py (Python) example.
The reader is guided through downloading Python and BeautifulSoup. Plenty of documentation on the purpose of the example from pages 31 - 39.
What is not emphasized is the knowledge required about DOS, editor for Python and the environment to set up and run the program get-weather-data.py to get to the desired result. Although the knowledge desired is at a surface level, experience with the environment is required to handle the minor annoyances at the example level. Thankfully, the numerous resources on the web let us pull through with some guts and patience.

The importance of formatting and how programming helps mine through large scale data is the lesson learned.

Yau discusses  the differentiators of Google spreadsheets at http://docs.google.com/ in Choosing tools to visualize data chapter. There are gadgets that can be inserted to get to desired charts.
The attention to detail on the data formatting needs to get to the desired chart/ graph is really thorough and flawless for help with examples. While trying to insert a gadget, the learner is guided with what kind of data and formatting is needed in the spreadsheet to fit the type of chart desired.  Certainly Google docs cannot be passed as yet another "saga" with examples.
On the visualization tools with Google to explore further, there is plenty to check on going thru the More tab.
For example, Sketchup and Fusion Tables have to be checked out for understanding better what they stand for.



     

Preparing for a new topic

Preparing for a new topic in the area of Information systems requires one to take multiple routes and routines to gain reasonable, introductory level of proficiency. Take the case of data visualization.

First, understanding the purpose and then on to programming to develop skills for proficiency.
There are several tools, plenty of documentation, books and on going resources of materials, courses on the topic.
How does one pick books (for self study) and keep the focus?

Two books on the purpose (to present data - statistical and analytical effectively to target audience):
Visualize this by Nathan Yau, Visualizing Data O'Reilly publication

Two books for the tools:
Beginning Python Visualization: Crafting visual tranformation scripts
The art of R programming: A Tour of Statistical software design

These books may not turn out to be the ultimate learning tools. Changing these to find out better resources is part of the process of learning.

For on going learning and keeping up with trends, membership to an active forum would be necessary. For example, FlowingData offers yearly membership for access to tutorials, forums, ongoing developments in the field. Blogs on the subject are another area - O'reilly has Visualization of the week - ongoing series to keep one abreast and inspired on the field. That is a beginning.

The exercise requires grasping as well as acting on the knowledge sources to gain proficiency.

The plan does not stop here. Plans should be to prepare for complex and big things. Think small and simple for what you can achieve for the day!

Cultivating a body of knowledge is about acquiring knowledge, one project at a time, attending to details every day. While working towards the weekly goals, achieve the capability to solve larger problems in the area of work taken up.

Choosing a topic, understanding your audience in the field of study, required business (purpose) and technical (helpful) skills, being associated with relevant associations and organizations, attending events and organizations for getting exposed to trends and expertise in the field - all these are aids and tools to keep up!

A knowledge based business

There are six elements of knowledge based businesses according to the authors Stan Davis and Jim Botkins of the HBR article titled "The coming of knowledge based business" published in '94.
The six elements with relevance to today's businesses and products are presented below.
- The more you use knowledge based offerings, the smarter they get (Apple products - iPod, iPad, iPhone)
- the more you use knowledge based offerings, the smarter you get (students today use iPad to check in to their class, take notes, Facebook to exchange notes, mobile apps to wake up and go about their morning chores..)
- Knowledge based products and services adjust to changing circumstances (location aware and personalized mobile apps, GPS).
-  Knowledge based businesses can customize their offerings (Amazon recommendations)
- Knowledge based products and services have relatively short life cycle (?)
- Knowledge based businesses enable customers to act on real time (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other  social network products used on intranets and internet). 

Teaching IS for the generation Y or Z

Thanks to the consumerization of IT - most students I teach use at least 3-4 devices and are eager to express their methods at work. It is an educating experience to observe how integrated IT is with their personal and work lives...

My students appreciate the mega trends in the industry - mostly relevant to the SMB mindset. The shift in enterprise computing towards the cloud and mobile apps is clear in the classroom with products of Intuit, SalesForce, wireless technologies making a difference in their work lives. The students I came across are not so eager for lessons on Microsoft products. They seem to be familiar/ or use the web as a knowledge source for working with the Microsoft products. On data management, it is seen as part of data science, recommendation systems (such as Amazon) and social network technologies (Facebook) back end data management seems to make more sense to the generation Y.

In spite of their awareness and overwhelming usage of modern technologies, they seem to be weak in writing a technical proposal. Is it because they are so busy using the various systems in hand and are not concerned  as much on how to build them? I am not sure. Systems thinking and understanding feasibility study in the classroom are a bit of a challenge as the benefits of learning following a methodology sounds old fashioned to students.

The paradigm shifts in the entertainment industry is so relevant to this generation - every student I come across seems to enjoy Apple products and through their devices and daily routines, understand the concepts of cloud! Google dictates their search and reading habits. Social networking is yet another topic - everyone is concerned about privacy and security issues, but are willing to share their information for the convenience mobility and networking offer.

I try to understand the net generation better with activities related to their thinking. They understand the multi sided business patterns of platforms such as Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook (Gang of Four) - mostly because of how the businesses are so integrated with their personal lives. Although diverse, most students are doing multiple jobs, eager to earn a degree so they can do better at work.