I talked about the problems that occur when organizations address functional security risks (e.g., IT, HR, physical) in isolation. The organizations do not integrate these risks to find patterns of behavior indicative of potential threats. Furthermore, they spend a great deal of time and money working only one problem at a time. The Federal Government, for example, is responding to the recent surge in IT security breaches by increasing IT security spending 9% annually to total $13 billion by 2015.

Problem is:  IT security won’t protect a company from a deep insider with access.  Great hiring practices won’t prevent the penetration of a perimeter.

Big Sky advocates an integrated, risk-based approach to security, in which patterns of data are examined using sophisticated predictive analytical tools. A wealth of data about people, assets, and systems can be used to look for patterns that predict an undesirable event, even if those patterns don’t directly relate to the event.

Big Sky is currently working with technology companies to help the government address these issues.  In the coming weeks I will blog about our progress along the way.

A recent article from the Harvard Business Review warns that Good Data Won’t Guarantee Good Decisions.  It’s not enough to capture data; you need strategic decision analysis to put the data in context.

As organizations continue to gather more data and analyze it in compelling ways, we’re seeing powerful effects in some surprising examples.  Here are five articles on how big data is shaping the future of decision making:

• Your Favorite Restaurant’s Secret Ingredient:  Data, and Lots of It
• How Companies Learn Your Secrets
• Big data:  The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
• The Age of Big Data
• Big Data Meets the Smart Electrical Grid

My discussion with the individual began around the type of service offerings Big Sky provides to our customers.  Since at that time of our meeting I had been executing a lot of strategy work, I mentioned that helping organizations think about and develop their strategies was an area where we had a lot of experience.   I don’t remember his exact response, but it was something like, “Yes, but strategy is something you do one time and then it’s over.”  I’m rarely at a loss for words, but I have to admit, I had to pause for a moment after this response to think of the right way to address that perspective.

My response focused a lot of the implementation of the strategy following its actual development and the re-visitation of a strategy after some period of time.  As I think more now about what we discussed, I was struck by the confusion this individual had around strategy, its purpose and execution.  I’m not sure of the origin of this perspective, but from my experience, that perspective is shared by many senior leaders.  In general, I’ve seen four camps of thought regarding organizational strategy.  If anyone reading this knows of more, please feel free to share.

Camp 1 – “I Know What I’m Doing” – These leaders will never develop a strategy because they don’t believe it’s needed.  In their own minds, they have a firm grasp of what needs to be done (they are visionaries), so they do not feel the need to write it down.  To some degree, they may be right.  Unfortunately, organizations are composed of people.  And people need to be made aware of the strategic direction of the organization they serve.  “I Know What I’m Doing” leaders typically run organizations as a dictatorship (benevolent or otherwise).  They are typically successful for a while, or in some areas, before the organization starts to react negatively to the leadership style.

Camp 2 – “We Need a Strategy Because Our Leadership Says So” – This is the appeasement crowd.  They’ll develop a strategy because their leadership says they need one but have no intention of implementing it.  In some ways these leaders act like Camp 1, but they aren’t as successful because they lack vision.  These organizations tend to flounder right from the start and get caught up in daily firefights and reactionary behaviors.

Camp 3 – “We Should Probably Have a Strategy, Right?” – These are the folks who are unsure of exactly what needs to be done in an organization, but they’re on the right track.  It actually isn’t bad to be in this camp.  But, if you are, you need to get a hold of some good strategy consultants (I can put you in touch with a GREAT firm) to help you develop and implement your strategy.  This is the teachable crowd, and in some ways being teachable regarding organization strategy is the best place to be.

Camp 4 – “We Need a Comprehensive Strategy to Guide our Actions as an Organization” – These folks are those leaders and organizations who are totally bought-in to the value of developing and implementing an organizational strategy.  Not only will they develop and implement it, they will revisit their strategy periodically to ensure it’s still relevant and make adjustments as necessary.  These leaders not only have vision, but they know exactly what their organizations need to do to achieve it.

I’m sure you’ve run into leaders in each of these four camps, and I know I have.  It’s important to remember that organizations will always suffer without a strategy.  Always.  So, if you’re a leader, take some time to think about, develop and implement your organizational strategy.  And if you want, enlist the help of individuals outside of your organization.  Outsiders will challenge your thinking and force you to develop a more comprehensive and effective strategy.

The article has some suggestions for being intentional about having actual conversations, rather than just communicating.  In both a professional and personal sense, getting back to the basics of speaking and listening might actually be the most innovative thing you can do these days.

In consulting, we are hired to understand a challenge and figure out a solution.  This process does not occur inside of a vacuum and it is almost never as straightforward as reading an RFP and designing a plan.  It almost always requires many conversations with the client, the ability to read between the lines, and the persistence to continuously validate assumptions on both sides.  These are things that are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve with a text, or even through email.  The best way to ensure that our clients don’t feel like “no one is listening to them” is to be deliberate about staking out the time for conversation and then truly connecting.

Some key learnings from his experiences:

• Starting a Business: Good ideas often come from your own experiences; it is not always a brand new idea. It comes from a product that doesn’t quite work right or a service that is not up to par.
  • Example: Jonathan Abrams created Friendster which was replaced by Tom Anderson’s MySpace and was replaced by Facebook. You don’t always have to have the first idea, you have to be able to improve it. The key is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
  • Sell the Dream: When you pitch investors, pitch your dream/your vision. You have to believe it and you have to sell it. People don’t want to invest in a business plan, they want to invest in a dream.
  • Management Style: At large corporations the management style is often traditional relying on fear. There are very successful entrepreneurs who has used this technique in the past, people like Steve Jobs, who was really hard on his employees. This style will work; a more effective style is to put yourself at the bottom of the org chart.
    • Customer Relationship: the most important employees you have are customer facing, they bring in the revenue.
    •  CEO Job: Your job is to make sure that everyone else in the organization has what they need to do their job, and that includes hiring new people.
    • Hiring people: Most important job of senior management. This shapes the culture of the firm. Mike McQuary interviewed the first thousand people Mindspring ever hired. Find people with the right personality/attitude and you can train them on the technical skills.
    • Admit Mistakes: If you show your employees that you are willing to make mistakes, then they will be willing to make mistakes (and take risks) too.
    • Work Tone: You set the tone with your work ethic and you have to be willing to do everything or you can’t ask your employees to do anything. If you employees see you do this, they will be willing to do more. Don’t create unnecessary hierarchy. For example, having reserved parking spots sends a message to employees that some employees are better than others.
    • Communication: As the leader of the firm you have to be careful how you use your voice, you have to keep a steady, calm demeanor even in times of panic.
    • Accountability: Individuals need to have responsibility for a specific task, because if you assign a task to multiple people there is a lack of ownership inherent in sharing responsibility.

The April 19 event recognizes recipients of the school’s Distinguished Alumni, Distinguished Young Alumni and Distinguished Service awards. The school has presented the awards since 1985, and recipients join an esteemed group of industry leaders, accomplished individuals and pillars of society.

“These are the highest honors the Moore School bestows on any individual,” said Director of Alumni Relations Gabriele Clark. “The dinner represents the business leaders of South Carolina and beyond.”

Dillard received the school’s Distinguished Young Alumni Award in 2011. Additionally, Dillard serves on the Risk Analysis Steering Committee and the Sponsorship Committee of theMooreSchool’s annual leadership gala.

“It’s an honor to lead this prestigious event, and I look forward to working with some of the university’s most accomplished alumni,” Dillard said.

Dillard will co-chair the event with Craig Nix, executive vice president and chief financial officer of First Citizens Bank. Net proceeds from the dinner are used to underwrite scholarships for MooreSchoolstudents.

Based in Charlotte, N.C., Big Sky Associates is a management consulting firm that focuses on strategic decision analysis, process improvement and IT optimization. With offices in Charlotte, Washington and Atlanta, the firm specializes in creating thorough action plans to help organizations solve their most complex challenges.

In the quest for productivity, we must constantly balance multiple priorities, often partially engaged, yet engaged just enough that we can speak semi-intelligently about things of which we really have no depth or context.  Why?  Because our culture tells us successful productive people are “multi-taskers”, who are constantly engaged, constantly accessible and fast reactors.  You know, because we’re not slackers.  However, in my experience and observation, a life of continuously juggling too many things for extended periods of time is draining, inefficient and maddening.  Schwartz aptly affirms this and suggests “higher productivity and more innovative thinking is fueled by finite periods of absorbed focus and shorter periods of real renewal.”

Earlier this year, a friend and I took an extended weekend to visit some friends on the Alabama Gulf Coast and, for the first time in a long while, I truly rested.  I remembered what life was like as a little girl growing up in the country.  People savor smells of honeysuckle, magnolia and home cooking.  They enjoy uninterrupted conversation and the freedom to truly immerse oneself in a good book, allowing it to pour over them and awaken deep fundamental understanding of some new wonder.  People work hard, but they also work smart and do things well.  These are the things that not only make life fun but also allow our minds to renew, restore and be most productive.  It occurred to me that I used to savor things more and take life, and myself, a lot less seriously.  I was happier and more productive and, dare I say, smarter.

Upon my return to real life, in a city and occupation where it’s so easy to take oneself too seriously, I realized I needed to change my approach to work and this thing called life.  It was time to slow down, re-learn how to do one thing at a time, and remember what it’s like to do something well.  I realized that, while it’s a great temptation for me to instantly respond to an email or voicemail, it’s more prudent to complete the task at hand and respond later.  When working on something that I know will require uninterrupted focus, I’ve begun to turn off my phone and email, to ensure no distractions.  I’m amazed by the freedom and clarity of thought that simple action yields.  In the end, most (sane) clients don’t expect an instantaneous response and respect the time, discipline and focus taken to accomplish a larger task well.  Similarly, we don’t need to move so fast in our personal lives either.  Friends and family appreciate uninterrupted attention and intentional investment in those relationships, as well.  Over sixty years ago, Jim Elliot spoke one of my favorite quotes: “Wherever you are, be all there.”  Despite the challenges today’s culture presents, a moment-by-moment quest to be present and engaged increases our productivity, as well as our ability to savor life experiences and relationships.

Across many industries and government, I’ve narrowed down these objections to three biggies, and I call them the “Three C’s” of data objections:  Competence, Cost, and Culture.

The Competence objection is the misguided assumption that collecting data is just too hard.  We hear this one all the time, particularly from organizational leaders that just aren’t used to making decisions with data.

The Cost objection is focused on an expectation that data collection must always be time consuming and costly. Many of our clients assume that data collection and/or evidence collection is inherently reliant on many man-hours and expensive systems.

The Cultural objection is simply the belief that evidence isn’t necessary or useful to make decisions.  This is the typical refrain from companies or organizations that have had success in the absence or data, or believe that their intuition or “gut” is just as effective.  This is a pervasive belief not restricted to leaders, but to everyone in the organization, making adoption of data particularly difficult.

The bottom line, however, is that each of these is a red herring.  With all the talk of big data, leaders need to recognize that even small data can make each and every decision better.  Tom Davenport of Babson College posted just last week in Harvard Business Review’s blog:

“. . . you don’t need big data, or even big support from senior management, to foment your own revolution in organizational decision-making. With small data to be found
everywhere, there is no excuse not to improve your own judgment calls.”

There are a number of effective tactics I have seen organizations use to overcome these objections, and anyone can put them to work — regardless of his or her level in the organization.  The table below summarizes three tactics that you can use in your organization for each objection.