The Myth and Romance of Los Angeles – Available at Last

Posted on by

What is ostensibly the best documentary on the City of Los Angeles (and a 95/90 Tomatometer) has at long last, been scheduled to be released on DVD. If you had not heard of the film, there is this, and little else according to IMDB,

In this documentary, Thom Andersen examines in detail the ways the city has been depicted, both when it is meant to be anonymous and when itself is the focus. Along the way, he illustrates his concerns of how the real city and its people are misrepresented and distorted through the prism of popular film culture. Furthermore, he also chronicles the real stories of the city’s modern history behind the notorious accounts of the great conspiracies that ravaged his city that reveal a more open and yet darker past than the casual viewer would suspect.

In addition to being an excellent descriptive paragraph, that’s the kind of stuff myth is made of.

But what is really driving the cult status is the film’s elusive nature as noted in a post today:

Los Angeles Plays Itself is a story of how L.A. has been portrayed on screen, its thesis unfolding through hundreds of iconic film clips. But the biggest reason that Thom Andersen’s legendary documentary has reached a near-cult status is that, due to copyright issues, the film has never been properly released in theaters or on DVD. Until now.

In a remarkable statement, the post goes on to punctuate just how interesting this film is, “it’s probably the most important media study ever conducted on the city—maybe any city!—and no one has been able to see it.” It’s remarkable that business and legal wranglings could eclipse something like this, for a decade.

 

Improvement, Interdependence, Innovation

Posted on by
A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships – Stephen Covey

 

I have always believed in continuous improvement, even before I knew of the technical origins of the concept. Appropriate stress in the form of a stretch for the improvement of the mind, reaching for goals and working hard is what keeps us going. And it makes life and work interesting, because our work is an extension of ourselves.  Do I really want to reach a point where I’ve gone about as far as I can go in terms of learning, working and improving? Frederic Wheelock quotes Roman satirist Juvenal as suggesting “the highest good in life is, mens sana in corpora sand – “a healthy mind in a healthy body.” ASICS company, maker of my favorite running shoe (used while struggling through a few marathons) adopted this phrase which comprises an acronym, and uses this as a guiding principal in its mission, translating to “concept…ideas…and innovation…to create the best product.”  I personally want to be continuous taking a healthy stretch, reaching for a challenge, and will this always find its context in moving beyond ourselves and where we are in our present state. More Wheelock’s can be found here, see ASICS mission here.

 

The Future of Problem Solving

Posted on by

In our time, there is a new requisite skill set: being a futurist. A futurist was once only an avocation among the best of thinkers, and somewhat of a novelty and a subset of sociological and economic studies. It is very interesting to read authors like Alvin Toffler or Peter Drucker (along with a number of others) and observe how they saw things sometimes dimly, but often very clearly that were seemingly hidden to others. But it has been decades now since the advent of the information age and the decline of the industrial era. What this has created is an environment where it is no longer an option but to take charge of one’s future, in terms of actively, deliberately and even aggressively engaging in activity that is inherently future in its benefits. To a certain degree, success means understanding the future is simply not an option.

Problem solving has always been a core skill of leadership, but increasingly, this skill as a requirement has migrated to the average employee. To make this even more complex, the motif we hear regarding the next generation of leaders is the ability to solve problems that do not yet exist. Just to name a few, an article from futuristspeaker.com from several years ago cites:

Alternative Currency Bankers – According to Javelin Strategies, 20% of all online trades are already being done with alternative currencies. The stage is being set for next-gen alt-currency banks.

Waste Data Managers – To insure data integrity in today’s fast evolving information storage industry, multiple redundancies have been built into the system. Achieving more streamline data storage in the future will require de-duplication specialists who can rid our data centers of needless copies and frivolous clutter.

Privacy Managers – If you think you have lost most of your privacy already, we’ve only scratched the surface. We are all terminally human, and as such, we do not always make good decisions. Striking the perfect privacy-transparency balance will require far more than amateur insights. It will require a privacy professional.

Government Agency Dismantlers

See the full post from 2011 here. Some of these ideas might have seemed absurd a few years ago, but have already come began to be put into practice. Years ago Alvin Toffler warned,

Perhaps the greatest cost of wave conflict in America will be paid by the millions of children currently compulsorily enrolled in schools that are attempting to prepare them – and not very successfully at that – for jobs that won’t exist. Call that stealing the future.

The takeaway? Try something new as an antidote to paralysis or as Toffler also warned,“if you don’t develop a strategy of your own, you become a part of someone else’s.”

Training Versus Preparation

Posted on by

In the last post, Inspiring Progress From Current Resources to Future Aspirations, the address I had heard was based on the story of a new executive’s struggle after his rise to the top spot with an all too familiar story. He described what many face as they ascend the ranks of an organization: that what they did previously, even very successfully, did little to prepare them for the challenges of their new position. Note, this was not due to a lack of technical knowledge. Leaders who have been very successful in their previous roles clearly possess the full range of skill set that helped fuel that success. The problem is that ascending the ranks requires a different skill set that may, or even likely builds on that previous technical knowledge but no longer engages in that activity as there is simply not enough time at the higher level.

The point was made that many people in business today are thrown into leadership positions with very little training. I’m not sure this is as common as it used to be and have a slightly different take. Consider the context of our present time. There are an estimated excess of 14,000 new business titles are published annually – many of which are available on audio and, or summary form. What are we to make of such a volume of information? Is is possible to actually say something radically and essentially new? At a minimum, we are repeating many topics over and over. Another example is the popularity of leadership and management as a blog influencer categories. There is an astonishing flow of information from these very popular topics as seen here, or the Google Ngram Viewer below charting the last century:

Combine this with seemingly unlimited online educational and certification outlets and it would appear that training opportunities are at an all time high. So with all the availability of preparatory material, what is the problem? What I would say is that many are thrown into leadership, not without an attempt at training (probably just the opposite), but with very little actual preparation. I think all of the above stated options (with the possible exception of extreme excess number of books published) represent wonderful opportunities and a golden age of sorts that we are living in in terms of what we can do with the availability of information. But the training must come alongside actual preparation.

As an anecdote to the current employment market, we frequently read or hear that there are open positions (especially at higher or more technical levels) that cannot be filled. How is this possible? One reason for this is likely due to the reduction of much of the middle in most organizations in the last two decades. Is it any wonder there has been so little preparation in terms of succession planning? This is especially true in leadership. This trend is not only unlikely to change, but will probably continue its current direction for many years to come. So where does this leave someone who is trying to move forward but feels stuck? It leaves them in the same place we were warned of decades ago at the advent of the information worker. The difference is, we are for years now, in full swing of the information-service delivery workplace, but we simply have not adjusted well to a post-industrial job market. The situation is not hopeless, but help at an institutional level is not on the way, and that is a very significant distinction to a job market in decades past. You have to take intentional steps to move forward, if you are going to move forward. I have some ideas, as do many others, but that is for a subsequent post.

Inspiring Progress From Current Resources to Future Aspirations

Posted on by

This post is my exposition of a keynote address at a conference for finance professionals I attended earlier this year. The context was interesting because the audience was made up of municipal finance leaders, many of whom have spent much of their careers in the context of local government. The speaker is a very successful corporate entrepreneur and leader whose keynote was aimed at addressing the challenges of bringing about the best within an organization during times of great change, limited resources and all subsequent challenges. The challenge was, how do we reach our aspirations? From one professional to another, here are what I considered to be some excellent points along with my thoughts:

What Matters Now in the Era of Post-Revolution – We have experienced the industrial, information, and now the vocational revolution (so to speak). This creates a radical and essentially different set of challenges that are particular to today’s leader. Some things (such as human nature) have not changed, but among those that have are fragility in the financial markets, globalism, technology, sociology and now most particularly, the rapidity of change. Change management has always been a struggle, but what has intensified is the speed at which things occur. We have to be mindful of this, ahead of the curve and ready to respond.

We Need CREATIVITY to Solve Problems – Every leader must provide a certain level of inspiration to bring about this creativity. My takeaway: every person (position) needs to be inspired. This is OUR job as leaders. Some years ago I was watching an interview regarding getting accepted into a business related doctoral program at Stanford. I was surprised to hear that one of the things they look for in a candidate is creativity. But this makes perfect sense and it is no different in the daily grind of business. Creativity in financial or business operations does not mean a lack of compliance with laws, guidelines or other controls. But it does mean viewing operations considerably different, then applying innovation, sometimes within the scope of the same resources already available.

All Roads Lead to Change Management – We NEED disruptive innovation, this is where progress is made. This is a required flexibility that does not have a shelf life; it is ongoing and continuous. Speed, efficiencies and breaking down orthodoxies – these are the requisite skill sets. Failed organizations fail by change outstripping their strengths (which then becomes their liabilities).

Think Lean – Distributed leadership means ownership and FORWARD contributions by every employee, not simply a dictate by the hierarchy. We want employees to think, not just do! Those in leadership need to accept ideas, respectful input and feedback. Organizations will move forward with a creative, rule-breaking mindset, not the construction of hierarchies, which is how our systems worked in the past.

Pursue Greatness, Whatever Your Interests – Encourage your team to pursue personal greatness in terms of learning, interests and what motivates THEM. This motivates greatness as an organization. We need to believe the extraordinary is possible. The trick is understanding how a support function (such as operations in a finance department) may not directly experience radical innovation (versus incremental service innovation since accounting rules must be obeyed, for example), but how we may contribute. Leadership is about defining our organizational culture for this type of greatness and the ability to be adaptive. The obvious hesitancy is that an employee will pursue education and training, then apply it somewhere else. Are we sure about this? It may inspire creativity, problem solving and innovation. We can only know for sure if we try it out.

Thoughts on Relevance, Change Management and Effective Leadership

Posted on by

In the industry where I work, a recurring theme is the application of change management, and how frequently it appears more difficult to make a best decision, versus being hamstrung by paralysis and resistance to moving forward. It might be tempting at times to think resolution is simply not possible. In other words, that things can’t change or will occur so slowly it won’t matter. But I don’t believe this, and I refuse to give in to this kind of cynicism that is right out of the Peter Principle. It is possible to be fresh, relevant, effective, adaptive to change and full of life at nearly any age, or stage of career, if the mental and physical health are present to do so. I am writing this as someone who is not a young person and I am more convinced of it than ever. Deficiencies or strengths in these areas are really matter of one’s determination to stay engaged and current (for whatever purpose or specialization) through continuous learning, then apply the mental energy to implement such things. Resistance to change can also be equally present in the young. We tend to miss this observation because frequently, age often compounds the problem of resistance to change, so we automatically conclude that one presupposes the other. But this too is simply not the case. A person can be narrow minded and adverse to innovation, technology, improvement and change at any age. This is a critical point of understanding for leaders since it is people who make up the team, and they are the leverage to accomplish anything.

In The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan, the authors discuss the importance of  the “vision of building tactical capacity in a team” – that is, the ability to span between vision and execution, and the need for building loyalty, trust, and commitment. Tactical capacity is a tremendous discussion in itself, but I will limit the quote to a short, but excellent imperative for leadership,

[Tactical] capacity — this flexibility, energy, and skill — comes first from leadership. Your goal as a leader is to build it in each and every team member. This kind of leadership is far from intuitive. And the lack of it, in the end, is a fatal stumbling block for many leaders of new ventures. The entire process needs to be driven by an awareness of the kind of leadership that ensures success in the challenging circumstances of a transition.

This is great advice for accelerating a transition, but is is also guiding principle for ongoing process innovation of any kind. This will sometimes involve hiring and fully utilizing managers who are more skilled at given aspects of leadership and/or various areas of expertise than they are. Focusing on transformation and inspiration, and not being afraid of these skill sets, even if the senior manager does not fully understand them is key to personal and organizational success. Frequently though, there is a fear of competence, or what is simply a stylistic difference, which is rooted in human nature. The motivation could be jealousy, fear of being upstaged or even replaced. But the opposite should actually be true. If a senior leader has enough vision to identify the right talent, managing and implementing such people should only strengthen their position of leadership and produce the very best results for the organization. That is an expression of effective leadership.

Fearing the Wrong Things

Posted on by
A few weeks ago, I found myself in a situation that in the past might have been very disturbing to me. For one reason or another, my schedule did not allow a long run I was planning that weekend and the only time I had to begin was nearing dark, due to the time change and the time of year. As I made my way up a fairly deserted highway in the dark, from time to time I came face to face with what near silence in the wine country means. There was extra darkness due to overcast, and stillness with almost no breeze at all. Then it occurred to me that inactivity is sometimes the most unnerving to us.
 
I got to thinking about this out there in the darkness and a few examples sprung to mind. I thought about how if a person in a live broadcast simply froze in front of a camera, it would make everyone watching veryuncomfortable, in spite of the fact that there was no real problem, other than a few awkward moments of dead air. Likewise, things like an empty house (assuming a house like ours where there is rarely silence), the rare occasion of an empty store, or empty streets on a holiday have the ability to make us feel weird, even though these temporary occasions are really nothing out of the ordinary.
 
Then I thought of a takeaway. While we are busy fearing things that are likely to pose no threat at all, sometimes we don’t fear things that we ought, specifically, inactivity of sorts. What I mean is that the very nature of this life, the life cycle of business and organizations of all types is the inevitibility of change. I wonder if decades of relative stability thanks to the golden age of the American middle class as well as the industrial era actually made us less adaptive to change, generally speaking as a culture. Whether this is true or not might be an interesting question, but it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if we, our skill sets, perspectives, adaptability and anything else about us that relates to change is suspended in inactivity while the world around us races forward, we ought to be alarmed.

Innovation and Finance – Making the Connection Part 2

Posted on by

In the first post on this topic I cited a recent article in Strategic Finance titled, Innovation is for CFOs, Too, and I’ll use that article to highlight what I believe to be some very relevant points to the operational aspects of financial reporting. The article begins with the comment that financial reporting is grounded in a 500 year-old system, and that is remarkable. It actually gives pause to the effectiveness of such a system. After all, how many of us could codify a system that would remain a functional model for centuries? I don’t know if introductory accounting texts still include this history but I was fascinated with it when I first read it twenty years ago. But the trade-off for a system that works well in times of stability is its inverse relationship to innovation and forward movement. This is a well-known topic of strategic planning. That is, a highly systematized organizational model that follows a highly structured hierarchy worked well in a marketplace where change was gradual, incremental and even somewhat predictable at times. But in a global market with an avalanche of information available to many, the model simply does not facilitate the rapid response that is needed in a post-industrial era. So while many of the processes involved in financial reporting have been accelerated and automated as a result of technology, this is really is only part of the solution. The goal, as outlined as a major premise of the article is for senior finance executives to “drive improved results by making significant innovations in the finance function.” The challenge for leadership is that most financial staff do not think in these terms. This is likely due to the detail oriented nature of the average functional operational area within finance. So how can details translate into value?

Although geared toward a for-profit model, the authors cite principles than are applicable to any organization, with their first suggestion under the broad heading of change to the business model. That seems simple enough, and it is with the right mindset. It is suggested that leadership should consider what is being currently offered to customers, yet emphasize those things that are “critical in the value they currently offer customers and consider how they can enhance that value by offering it in a different or a better manner.” This may take the form of expanding product or service offerings, or as is the case with  many successful models, reducing them in order to deliver exceptional performance. I recently spoke with a software provider who was recounting the history of their success as a firm, and what I was struck by was how many things they decided against pursuing, in order to produce an exceptional core business that is unique to their industry. Another interesting modification is to the target customer. Specificity in customer base has been a topic for decades, but from the perspective of innovation, this may be a moving or changing target. This is frequently seen in the re-branding of products that historically appeal to one gender over another, but are then flipped with little more than a change in emphasis. But integral to the previous two are changes in technology. Breakthrough or significant changes in technology can offer the benefit of an immediate pop that can be leveraged, but many other times, existing technology available to an organization can be used by simply changing the approach, mindset and culture of an organization. I have experienced this firsthand with the conversion to paperless reporting using technology that was already in place.

But most significantly for financial leadership are changes that are often the least noticeable to those outside the organization, “enabling technologies, such as information technologies, can be very important because such changes help ensure better decision making and financial management.” I have frequently cited the tension between time that is chewed up looking for the right data, rather than its ready access resulting in thinking and influence for the organization and its strategy. I think this is the most significant contribution of technology and innovation for financial managers as their roles interface with the operational leaders. This changes the financial reporting functions from an inherently backward looking exercise, to energy that is spent engaging in the ongoing process of innovation.

Reference:

Davila, T., Epstein, M. & Shelton, R. (2013). Innovation is for CFOs, Too. Strategic Finance. http://www.imanet.org/PDFs/Public/SF/2013_07/07_2013_davila.pdf

Innovation and Finance – Making the Connection

Posted on by

A number of white papers on the topics of service and operational innovation have caught my attention, and I wrote an overview of one recently here. While many of the ideas regarding innovation are similar, the number of perspectives and expanded applications to operational innovation is impressive. As a proposed subspecies of organizational innovation, operational innovation has particular application for accounting and finance. And as such, it seems natural that information technology functions (up to a certain sized organization) commonly fall within the scope of the chief financial officer within the organizational structure. Why does this matter? Because what begins with a mindset toward innovation often requires the necessary bandwidth made available through technology.

In other words, technology in and of itself is NOT the answer. I cannot count the number of times I have seen an expensive system that was purchased in the absence of an organizational mindset that embraces and encourages innovation, and the inevitable happens: it lies dormant or is abandoned altogether. This is a particular shame because not only are resources wasted in the process, but it reinforces the mindset of those who are looking for an example of failure in order to resist change, as if change were being implemented for the sake of itself, rather than a desperately needed implementation that will move an organization forward. So the process begins with a mindset that permeates an organization, encouraging a culture of continuous learning. Although this is a simple and straightforward concept, it is far more complicated to create within an organization (of any type) than to plan.

But once this mindset is in place, or even moving in that direction through leadership or a core group of people, the possibilities for process innovation as it relates to service delivery are tremendous. In an article in Strategic Finance titled, Innovation is for CFOs, Too, the authors Davila, Epstein and Shelton suggest an integral connection to financial operations, organizational innovation and technology,

The accounting and finance functions are an important place to start. Although accounting has changed incrementally over time, we’re grounded in a model that was developed 500 years ago, and we still use that same basic model. That’s okay. The development of information technologies has changed the way we process transactions—and the speed—but the basic model hasn’t changed. Yet approaches to financing organizations and managing cash have changed dramatically over the years. Maybe most important, the role of the CFO has been totally expanded in the last decade or two. Although regulations in accounting and finance constrain some innovation in the corporate finance function, there’s still so much that can be done.

Further discussion of the “much [more] that can be done” will be in a subsequent post discussing this article, which can be downloaded from IMA here.

Possibilities at the Local Level: Coding a Better Government (TED)

Posted on by

This TED Talk delivered by Jennifer Pahlka, the founder and Executive Director of Code for America, was inspiring for a number of reasons. It was far more about collective solutions than about technology and shiny mobile apps skinned with our local government branding. The concept of collective solutions was applied to public connections and discussions that provide a platform (not necessarily in the sense of technology) to engage and provide everyday solutions at little or often no cost, simply by the availability of this platform, framework and mindset.

A powerful theme within this discussion is the idea of change management in ways that may have been previously unheard of. Consider the comment that, “politics are not changing, government is changing.” Could this possibly be better illustrated by the current Federal gridlock, contrasted with the possibilities at the local levels of government, with real solutions being provided not simply by technology, but innovative thinking and ideas that leverage available technology in very simple, solution-oriented ways. An example of how this is accomplished is the public nature of requests for information. If a question or concern is available for a number of people to see and engage in, the possibility for a solution is multiplied many times over. Imagine this idea expanding from one local government to another, sharing informational or other resources at reduced, little or sometimes no cost at all.

I thought the “application” section was remarkable, where ideas were put forward for actually engaging in the hierarchy that is inherent in any governmental system. Rather than sitting back as a distant critic of all forms of bureaucracy, it is possible to be a part of real and essential change within that mechanism. Thus changing the term bureaucracy from an inherent negative to one that exists for specific purposes, and that can be improved thanks to the advent of the social era, technology and sociological shifts that have come about from an entire generation that has grown up on the Internet.

Institutional Innovation: White Paper Overview

Posted on by

For more than two decades now we have been trying to adjust, sometimes unsuccessfully to a changed market place that in many respects does not reflect its predecessor, The Industrial Era. Some have labeled our present time the Social Era, which is a sociological outworking of a surge forward in the information age, a service based economy and global business. The dilemma for many organizations is that what worked in the past era is failing to get traction mainly due to an inability to adapt and respond in a timely manner and this results in negative effects on earnings, cost containment and an inability to innovate. This holds true in the sectors of non-profit, for profit, governments and virtually any other organizational type. Authors John Hagel and John Brown with Deloitte Center for the Edge have written a white paper, Institutional Innovation, Creating Smarter Organizations to Scale Learning that addresses a contrast between these two epochs of economic history with a focus on the historic benefits of “scalable efficiency” (benefits of economies of scale) and a new and requisite organizational characteristic, “scalable learning.”

A compelling hook at the very beginning of the paper describes the organizational structure that seeks to govern scalable efficiency: command and control. To the average person who has read any degree of managerial trends in the last decade (or two), the very term, command and control bristles against almost anything considered effective in our present time. When I say effective, I don’t mean can it exist or can you get away with it. What I mean is, does such a structure really translate into organizational value and draw out the best in people, or does it cause people to become professionals at observing the boss, and avoiding them accordingly? The upside of this structure is that it puts systems in place (assuming managerial competence) that create predictability, which worked out well when social, political and economic trends changed more slowly. The problem is, this is no longer the case. The compelling resolution that the authors suggest is “a new rationale of ‘scalable learning’.” The result, they argue (with examples), is that smarter organizations actually benefit from radical and essential change, rather than be harmed by it. The key to this is “increased learning and adaptability” that will result in coveted product and process innovations through the advent of “creation spaces,” which is not a new concept, but may be better suited than ever for addressing the future challenges of organizations of all types. Get your copy of this excellent paper here, or if you would like a quick reference copy with highlights and a note or two, drop me an email.

Reference:

Hagel, J. III & Brown, J. Institutional innovation: Creating smarter organizations to scale learning. http://dupress.com/articles/institutional-innovation/