JimCarroll

“He prowled the stage like a preacher”

October 10, 2007 by JimCarroll

An interesting article in InformationWeek, covering my Sunday night keynote for the Society for Information Managementa annual conference in Memphis.

First time I ever had to follow Elvis on stage : and maybe that’s what had me fired up!

Noted InformationWeek: “Carroll, the author of “What I Learned from Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward Thinking Innovation,” seemed to embrace the atmosphere of secular spiritualism. He prowled the stage like a preacher, exhorting the assembled crowd to take the message of hyper cultural and economic change fueled by information technology back to their companies and use it to force a closer examination of the role of their own technology efforts in new business models, management structure, and collaboration.”

You can read the full article, In the High Velocity Economy, IT is the Engine, here.

The disappearance of change management?

October 3, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’m off today to Montreal, to keynote the 2007 International Financial Leaders Forum. This is a gathering of several hundred senior financial leaders from throughout the private and government sector.

One of my key messages in my opening keynote today is that as CFO’s and CEO’s, they must ensure that they are putting in place a culture of agility and flexibility, such that their staff are able to deal with rapid change that comes with the high-velocity economy.

Enter the new boarding pass bar code, as seen on the right: I’m using this Blackberry enabled boarding pass on my flight to Montreal. This is an initiative set-up by Air Canada — you check in online with your mobile device. You are then sent a text message/SMS that contains a 2-dimensional barcode. At the airport, ostensibly, it will be wanded at security, at the gate, and I’ll be on the plane. (The bar code shown will have expired by the time you read this.)

The reaction of my 14 year old when he saw it? “It will never work dad! I don’t have good feelings about this.”

His reaction, he explained, comes from his belief that the security people won’t know what to do with it; that I will get some cranky gate agent who wasn’t aware of the new technology; that simply, from what he has learned while travelling with us, is that this simply represents too much change, too fast.

I promised to text him along the way with any updates!

He does have a valid point though : today, we live in a world in which change management is a big issue. I’ve run (and continue to do) workshops or keynotes where I am addressing issues of how to cope with change. It’s a big issue that I cover off in my new Ready, Set, Done: How to Innnovate When Faster is the New Fast book.

Yet a big question looming on my mind these days is this: what happens when the need for change management goes away? Twenty years out, we will have a generation in charge which has embraced technological change from their birth. They are attracted to new ideas, innovation, and new ways of thinking, like bugs drawn to a light. Their world will continue to involve a flood of new technologies, new ways of working, constantly shifting work structures, rapid micro-careers, and all kinds of other things that involve what we would consider to be rapid change.

What happens when change management disappears, and change occurs even faster than it happens today?

The airline involved in today’s flight is quite focused on innovation. The big issue to watch is whether they are keeping the change-process up-to-date with their innovation process. Or whether the issue of change-management is starting to disappear and go away….

Nov 5 update

the security people knew about it, but
the first gate agent freaked out, muttered about management and new technology, and printed me a paper boarding pass
the flight attendant didn’t like it, and wanted the paper pass
returning, it took 3 minutes for them to get the security line guy who had the bar code wand
the gate agent flatly refused to accept it. She complained, complained…

Just about what I expected!

Quality, skills and the high-velocity economy

September 25, 2007 by JimCarroll

Back in May, I keynoted the World Congress on Quality / American Society for Quality, a fairly massive conference with about 3,000 attendees.

I focused, as I often do, on the need for rapid action in the high-velocity economy. At that time, just a few months ago, we had just seen the recall of various pet food products as a result of production quality issues at the Chinese manufacturer.

I noted — and these words are verbatim from the tape – “What do we do with quality in terms of velocity?” I went on to note that with we might soon see the issue of quality and China merge together … to such a degree that companies might have to scramble to deal with quality issues that were completely unexpected just a few months ago.

Fast forward, and we’ve got toy manufacturers testifying to Congress about quality concerns as a result of offshore production.

It used to be that when it came to quality, you’d plan –> execute — > evaluate —> innovate. But now, with high-velocity change, sudden new issues can appear, and you’ve simply got to execute before you plan.

What’s the point? In my new book, Ready, Set, Done, I argue that talent and project agility — that is, the ability to rapidly refocus your organization and team to deal with the rapid emergence of new issues — will be a key cornerstone for future success.

This week, I’ll be doing a keynote for Tenrox, a company that specializes in software that helps an organization with resource management and optimization: in other words, deploying the right skills at the right time for the right purpose. Exactly what I talk about in the new book.

The CEO, Rudolf Melik, has written a book, The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and Projects in a Flat World. I contributed the foreword for the book, focusing on the theme of skills agility. It’s an important issue that you need to be thinking about, particularly given the new urgency for planning on the fly.

With all due respect to Web 2.0, what’s really important at a strategic level?

September 19, 2007 by JimCarroll

In the last few weeks, I’ve had several high-level sessions with the CEO and management team of a major construction company, as well as with the senior management team and customers of an organization in the packaging/consumer products industries.

Top of mind for these folks isn’t their Facebook strategy, nor are they focused on thinking about what to do with Web 2.0. They’ve got businesses to run, critical issues that need to be tackled, and strategies to be implemented.

There’s a lot of really cool Web 2.0 stuff going on, and yet from a pure strategic level, I’m coming to realize that there’s a lot of hype with the bathwater. It’s like it’s 1999 all over again!

Here’s what these folks are thinking about:

an accelerated innovation cycle: how can they ensure that they get to market at the pace demanded in the high velocity economy?
rapid ingestion of new technologies / methodologies: there’s a constant flood of new stuff they must deal with, particularly as customers, suppliers, and business partners come to expect an ever-more sophisticated information relationship.
faster time to market: how can they ensure their logistics capabilties, as well as the insight of their sales force, is finely tuned for dealing with shorter product lifecycles?
rapid re-focusing of resources for opportunity or threat: consider the China issue and quality: there are lots of organizations now scrambling to redeploy staff and resources due to the sudden new focus and challenge that has emerged
implementing narrow, niche oriented activities to avoid commoditization: how can they step up the value chain in order to avoid the dreaded “compete on price” trap?
….a mindset to deal with “high velocity change”: how can they lead their people into a culture that simply, “acts fast”

These are a lot of the themes covered in the upcoming release of Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast. We should be going to print within a few weeks.

Groundhogs, innovation, and the end of summer

September 4, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’m back at work, although when you work at home, you never truly leave it.

There were two keynotes during the summer, the Destination Marketing Association International, and the National Association of College Stores, as well as a private management get together with a major commercial/industrial construction company. The plan was to take the summer slow, recharge, and gear up for what looks like a busy fall.

One of the highlights of the summer involved the war with the groundhog who decided to take up space in our yard. I clearly lost — he’s back again today. I’ve tried everything, and even ended up writing an article for one of my regular columns about my efforts.

Aside from that, great feedback was had from the events I spoke at this summer : the NACS folks had this to say: “You were right about being highly energetic! You definitely did a great job in pepping the crowd up at Innovate 2007 in Tampa. The buzz in the hallway after your presentation was outstanding! Just thinking about the word “innovate” can be overwhelming. You did an excellent job in explaining the simple steps they need to take to incorporate innovation into their stores.”

The new book is in final edit; we should be going to print within the month.

Ready, Set, Done: Jim Carroll’s latest book

July 11, 2007 by JimCarroll

We’ve got a cover, and have the first draft of my newest book in for design/edit.

Titled Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast takes a look at

the factors that place us in a high-velocity economy
the core innovative capabilties that we must put in place to turn rapid change into opportunity
the key issue of how skills access and talent access will be critical to future success
concrete ideas for becoming a more innovative, agile organization.

We’re targetting late fall for release.

JimCarroll

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.