Update from Tokyo - October 3rd 2009

Dear All:

Where do I begin?

Well, first we want to let everyone know that with God’s help, WE ARE OK!.

We are finally back home in Tokyo and although we are not out of the woods yet, slowly but surely things are beginning to get better.

For all of you that might be a bit confused, here is a quick recap:

Let’s just say that in the last few weeks the Haas Family has been tested to their limit.

First, my precious Wife suffered from a series of serious strokes accompanied by a heart attack in the last trimester of her pregnancy. This forced our Daughter to be born prematurely and she had a huge struggle with her life, same as her Mom. Thanks God they are both tough fighters. The “health storm” seems to be over, and they are now taking small steps into full recovery, against very negative odds.

Second, we were “victims” of the natural disaster that affected the Philippines, since we were staying in Manila since early August. I cannot begin to describe the devastation and desolation that I witnessed. Lots of beloved friends and family were lost and the scars are going to take some time to heal.

Leaving behind all pain and suffering, we took advantage of my Daughter and Wife’s improvement and decided to fly back home where my Family will continue their medical treatment, hoping for the best.

I have no words to thank EVERYONE for their encouragement. Thanks for the emails, blog replies, phone calls. Thanks for the gifts and the “unlimited flower supply” sent to the Hospitals. Now I can plainly understand what having friends is all about. Real friends. I’m astonished by the quality of people that surrounds us. For all I know, God will return your favors as blessings.

The next few weeks will continue to be critical for everyone. Please bear with us. I’ll try to get online as much as I can and follow up with all of you individually.

Again, THANK YOU for being there for us. I will never forget your actions.

May God bless you all.

The Haas Family

Thank you!

Everyone-

I want to thank each and every one of you for the overwhelming support and the 100s of emails that both my adored Wife and I have received in the last few days. She is taking little steps into full recovery and our baby is healthy and strong.

Please keep us on your prayers at all times and once again THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts for your kind thoughts.

As a friend recently pointed out to me: MIRACLES DO HAPPEN

Who is hiring in this economy?

I am. No, it’s not hard to believe and I promise I have not gone mad. During these difficult times that are affecting local and global economies in general, we I.T. leaders are repeatedly asked to do more with less (I know we always did, but now it’s become brutal). By succumbing to this new-fangled pressure, most of my CIO roller deck has decided to halt the hiring process ipso-facto. Not me. I see opportunity in chaos. I recognize that talent search has become a one-way street. But, what are the good news about hiring during a recession? …There's an awful lot of talent looking for a “home”. And I mean that literally. Most of my recent hires are showing far-fetched levels of loyalty and startling performances from the get-go. They are grabbing onto their day-to-day life jackets as if the Titanic was sinking again and they were on board. These days, there is no time for a prolonged learning curve, and I have to confess I’m actually enjoying this new wave of talent very much. Someone asked me recently how I felt about in-recession-hired individuals. I feel awesome!!!. My take on this is that these newly-hired resources consider themselves so fortunate that are giving me not only their very best, but way beyond that. The simple thought of underperforming makes them uneasy. They need very little coaching and their attitudes are way more creative than those of my “old timers” (don’t worry, I still love you all!). Let’s talk about what I like to call the “Recession Crash Model”. We all have to consider that layoffs in this recession are mostly permanent, not temporary. That is one of the big differences between previously experienced collapses. In addition, workforce survivors are on average working less hours per week than before. That means I.T. leaders (and others as well), pressured by belligerent bottom lines, are giving more hours to existing employees instead of hiring additional help. That’s a big no-no. We all know that overworked resources, in the short-run, might produce a slight ghost increase in profitable line-items but this situation changes dramatically in long-terms scenarios. Don’t get me started about the sweeping economic effect that we will impose on our future generations if we continue in that direction. The solution?...It’s pretty straightforward. Let’s take advantage of this situation (in a good way of course) and maintain symmetry on the work-force. Hire! Hire! Hire!. QUALITY vs. MASS HIRING. That’s the new jingle we need to promote and encourage. I tell my troops every day that I’m enjoying, for the first time in my life, being fully involved in the jam-packed hiring process of a new employee. On that note, please support and assist your H.R. and recruiting forces as much as you can. I recently had a chance to speak with some of our international recruiters during a private rendezvous in New York. They looked overworked, tired and directionless. They all agree that even though they are seeing more high-quality applicants, the incumbents’ new resume guerilla tactics (and associated extreme anxiety) makes the simple task of browsing through new submissions a frightening experience, and it is enough for them to think about a career change (ironic, I know). After speaking to that cluster of zombie-like recruiters and taking the gun away from some of them (yes…it was that bad) without more ado I adjusted the job descriptions of my VPs, Directors and Managers to reflect more exposure to new-hiring in general. It’s working very well. There is nothing like being part of someone’s career from the very beginning. A superb and rewarding experience. OK, let’s go back to the positives. Another good element is that right now, high-quality talent costs less. Most candidates' salary expectations are a great deal lower. I remember the days when I’d look at a Résumé and immediately said to myself: “Too bad, we can’t afford this person”. Not anymore. I'm even seeing overqualified candidates applying for internships and entry-level jobs. Don’t hesitate to ask for a realistic compensation picture right away (legal issues aside, of course). Remember that CTO you always wanted to hire?...he/she is now cost-effective. What about that trainer you had in the back of your mind but you could only hire on a temp basis?...hire him/her full time!... We have a bounty in front of us, and in my humble opinion it is now or never. Now, my advice for the other side of the coin (our brilliant candidates) is: DO NOT GIVE UP!...NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK!...A little secret: 75% of my current executive openings are NOT being advertised. Come out of your shell and initiate new bold job search strategies that will differentiate you from the rest in this global pandemonium. Web 2.0 was created in part for this purpose!...

Here are a couple of good sources:

Mark Cummuta’s Blog
Jobangels
emurse
Liz Lynch's Blog

As always, I wish you all the best of luck in your career quests. Remember what Milton Berle said: "If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."

DTPI Diamond's CIO Dashboard Tracking CIOs Who Tweet

Excellent tool from Chris Curran, on his quest to find CIOs in the Twitterverse

CIO Dashboard

Blog

SHOULD I.T. CONTROL EVERYTHING?

I recently came across the latest Nostradamus-like, shocking forecast from Citrix CEO Mark Templeton @ computing.co.uk. It talks about choice, and how I.T. leaders should start to open their minds into allowing end-users to select their own applications, services, etc. In Mark’s own words: "IT wants to control everything, but to hold down costs you need to get rid of that and only control what you need to". If I would’ve been present on this dialogue, I imagine myself pointing a gigantic interrogation light at him and asking “IS THE WORLD READY FOR THIS REBELLION? ”. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for striking a balance between I.T. –rest of the world by providing a rational choice model, BUT allowing end-users to make vital I.T. decisions “on-demand” is far away from my immediate agenda (try again in 20 years). I stop for a second to really think about the connotation of all this. If I was the CEO of a 1.5 billion/revenue company and my value-proposition was providing those choices to consumers, I would be asking for the same radical shift in I.T. culture, because at the end of the day, my Company would be the only beneficiary. Then I started visualizing the aftermath. My brain went in overload and needed to reboot twice. The main questions that came to me: Who controls the authoritative switch?...Who gearshifts the grey area between what’s self-service/on-demand and what’s central authority?...Will I need to create a special board or internal group to dictate the rules of engagement and to cost-effectively handle this differentiation?...most likely YES…but then…where would the savings (if any) go to?. The last reflection was the face of our Risk Management Chief while I was pitching this initiative. Not a pretty picture. Going back to the interview, the part that did it for me was the correlation story about Banks not forcing their customer to use certain web browsers, devices, etc…and why we corporate I.T. try to lock those choices for our users. As a former CIO with a large international bank, I was tempted in writing a private email to Mr. Templeton. The subject line would read something like “Are you kidding me????”…I went again in brain-safe-mode and imagined a welcome screen for my end-users like this: “HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?. IF YOU WANT TO CONNECT USING CITIRX TECHNOLOGIES, PRESS 1” – “FOR MICROSOFT ALTERNATIVES, PRESS 2 – IF YOU WANT US TO CREATE A NEW APPLICATION FOR YOU BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE THE PINK FLOWERS ON YOUR SCREENSAVER PRESS 3” – or better yet, a disclaimer that reads “DUE TO I.T. PROJECT RELOCATION, YOU ARE NOW ALLOWED TO USE ANY BROWSER YOU WANT, WITH OR WITHOUT PATCH OR UPGRADES AND WITH NO OTHER SECURITY MEASURES, BUT IF THE COMPANY GETS IN TROUBLE THEN…YOU ARE FIRED!”. Folks, I’m not trying to be silly, but my two cents on this far-reaching call for a huge change in I.T. culture is that , in the short run, it might offer some benefits on load-balancing internal vs. external issues/projects, but if not properly managed, it could be a complete disaster. A suggestion would be to star using small low-risk tryout projects with technologies that do not directly affect mission-critical systems and processes (and to make sure that associated governance costs stay the same). Remember, life is all about balance. Reinventing the wheel is good, but only if it’s faster, more reliable, and it doesn’t run you over. Let me emphasize that I truly respect Mark and his Company and he knows I’m a big supporter, but please, next time that an industry leader wants to change my I.T. world, let me know in advance so I can have my cardiologist on stand-by.

Slow Internet Mumbo-Jumbo

As I had previously posted, I have to thank both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett (may God bless their souls) for opening my eyes once again about Internet topography, backbones et.al. In the last 24 hours global networks have experienced severe bottlenecks, overflows, latency and saturation in levels that I have not seen in a long time. Breaking News=Slow Connectivity. Yeah right. Basic questions come to mind, such as…is it the architecture itself?...or the people managing it on a day-to-day basis?...I’m frustrated by the amount of resources (and the $$$ associated with it) that ISP’s and similar spend every day on this issue(s). We are getting too used to terminology such as “Black Holes” (go Hubble!), “DNS war”, “Cyber-bullying” or “Maxed-out bandwidth” (I heard that one today like 100+ times)…so…what is the solution?...no, please don’t tell me again “let’s add more routers”…and do not pitch me the “one-hop source” design. We have to look at all 7 layers and promote a factual Internet Governance approach. One with real engineering minds, no politicians allowed. And please let’s do it before the daisy-chain-effect brings us to a place where we need to start all over again (if we travel back in time, I reserve the right not to use the name ARPANET). That, or let’s finally outlaw breaking-news casts…

Internet traffic report


Real-time web monitor

On real-life Global ERP projects...

On real-life Global ERP projects...

ERP packages have altered the way Companies go about overall I.T. processes and procedures. For us global conglomerates, instead of using standalone tactics, we are slowly but surely moving into internationally-sourced packages that reflect best practices at a worldwide level. The encapsulation epoch is over. Because of the new (and rich) choices, we are able (or at least try to) tailor packages and modules in ways we never did before. Here is the catch: the mammoth growth rate in global ERP adoption has slowed down considerably. It looks clear to me that some of us I.T. leaders are not fully conscious about the benefits/results equation. We need new perspectives, new collaborations, new alliances that will bring us to the next level. In my humble experience, a fresh pair of eyes is the key to success in these kind of macro-projects. I’ve decided to share an excellent white-paper that my good friend from Cyprus, John McGrann just published. I am pretty impressed. I believe King Cinyras and Pygmalion would be very proud of him!.

As always, I appreciate all input.

References:

How to drive ERP systems to success