Creative Reaction

A recent study by Gartner Research finds that only 20% of IT money is helping businesses grow or gain a competitive advantage. They call the other 80% “dead money” since all it does is keep things running; in other words, it’s an expense.

Personally, I think their methodology is wrong, since there’s no attempt to measure the value of the systems in place, which may *already* be leveraging IT for success. It is possible that these systems already bring value to a business in terms of efficiency and service marketing.

The study, however, brings up some great points:

• IT managers must understand businesses.

• IT should take the lead, providing a strategy for a business.

• IT must demonstrate the value it brings to an organization.

The takeaway:
Everything IT Departments/IT Managers do must add value to a business, first in terms of a dependable infrastructure, then in terms of simplifying business (efficiency), and finally, in terms of providing a competitive advantage. (For creative businesses, this usually means better creative, faster.) Otherwise, you have something worse than “dead money”; you have dead weight, *dragging the business down*.

If you don’t know much about Seth Godin, (and shame on you if you don’t!) here’s a 60 second summary. Five common cliches (done wrong)

Seth Godin has a great post on The two things that kill marketing creativity. No point in summarizing - it’s short and to the point. Just read it and come back.

And, now some choices. How can we shape our workplaces to dispel fear? How can we foster imagination? Are we causing others to be afraid? Are we encouraging imagination or squashing it? We owe it to ourselves, our companies, and our employees to ask these questions on a regular basis. Jot them down somewhere.

This Fast Company article asks, “…what happens when rivals become so numerous, when markets become so unpredictable, when technologies move so quickly, that no individual leader, no matter how inspired, can possibly think of everything?”

Then answers itself, “ …it becomes necessary to invent a new model of innovation… a world in which ‘nobody is as smart as everybody.’”

Translation:
No matter how brilliant a company’s leader is, he or she can’t be the sole source of ideas. In the age of the Internet, ideas are plentiful and cheap.

Again quoting, “the companies that are most likely to dominate their business are the ones most adept at harnessing the collective intelligence of everyone with whom they do business.”

Especially, I might add, their own employees.

You are standing over an “idea reserve”, not far below the soil. What are you doing to tap it?

In a short, worthwhile article, Fast Company explains how nearly-bankrupt Puma retooled itself.

Instead of waging an uphill battle against Reebok, Nike, and Adidas, Puma flipped it’s priorities, emphasizing style over performance to become the fourth-largest athletic apparel company in the world.

After some drastic business changes to become more efficient, the CEO of Puma did something unbusinesslike - putting an “unrestrained 21-year-old skateboarder named Antonio Bertone in charge of a new division called “sport lifestyle” to incubate experimental fashion projects”. There were plenty of skeptics, yet the risk paid big dividends, ultimately saving the company.

The risk of failure is small compared to the risk of irrelevency. How are we encouraging our staff and co-workers to take chances and risk “failing”. Do we encourage them for making a best effort? We should - we learn far more from our failures than our successes.

An article* in the Atlanta Journal Constitution profiles a business fed up with the disadvantages of e-mail.

The Chief Executive “informally polled his senior management team and found e-mail was overtaking their lives”…

He “couldn’t put a complete stop to e-mail. After all, it’s how business gets done these days. But he could rein it in. He declared Fridays ‘No e-mail’ day. With the exception of outside e-mails from customers, (his employees) cannot use e-mail on Friday.”

“Need an answer to a question or an OK on a project or advice? Get on the phone. Better yet, get out of your seat.”

E-Mail can, indeed, be a black hole sucking up all time let near it, yet it remains an important tool. Some of the problems are over-dependence on it and a lack of productivity skills to manage it. (To be covered soon in this blog.)

For now, encourage yourselves/staff/coworkers to pause; then think, “is there a better way to communicate this?” “Should I call, or use Voice Mail, or use iChat, or simply walk over to the person’s desk or office?” It may take something drastic like quitting your e-mail application for a day to force yourselves to do this. Give it a try. Tell us how it felt and what good became of your brave decision!

*The article, which once required site membership, has suffered an even worse fate and can now no longer be found.