Intertech had a record 2011.  Luckily, we hit or exceeded all of our goals except for one.  The goal was around creating custom cloud-based applications.  With all the hype around cloud computing, it left me asking “Why?”

We believe cloud computing is the future of IT.  From creating Microsoft’s course on Azure to national briefings on cloud computing, we’re working to be the best provider of cloud-based development services.  At first, I thought it was our client base.  Turns out, our clients are not alone in their movement to the cloud.

InformationWeek in a 2011 survey stated only 29% of respondents analyzed the impact of the cloud.  Further, Gartner, a leading research firm, predicts:

• Cloud computing will grow at 19 percent per annum thru 2015 (sounds like a lot)
• Cloud computing in 2015 will account for < 5% of worldwide IT spending (yet... seems surprisingly small)

So, given the above, why should companies care about the cloud? 

Here are a couple of reasons and examples… leading thought leaders like MIT scientist Andrew McAfee states the economics of building and running a technology infrastructure favors the cloud vs. on-premise computing.  The CIO for the U.S. called for moving a quarter – or $20 billion – of fed IT spending to the cloud.  That’s a heavy bet for the CIO of our country.  As a CEO, have you given much thought to the implications of the cloud?

• Do you think the cloud will displace you or your department?
• Because “cloud” is overused, almost like the word “leadership”, are you unsure what “cloud computing” means?
• Are you concerned about the benefits vs. risks?

If you answered yes to any of the above, my hope is one of my next posts will help.  In part, it’s information from the article, “What Every CEO Needs to Know about the Cloud” by Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business Review (HBR) November 2011.

2011 is a record year for Intertech.  Thanks for your tremendous support – we couldn’t have done it without you!
From our team to our infrastructure, we strive for a world-class customer experience.  Our new state-of-the-art facilities represent a multi-million dollar investment to create the best learning environment possible—for both our in-class and virtual students. 

                          (Check out a video of the construction of our new building.)

We will open the doors to our new facilities the first week of January at 1575 Thomas Center Drive Eagan, MN 55122. Just 2 exits south of our current location.

We’ll host an open house come spring! But if you want to check out our facilities before that, check out the 2012 Course List.

Happy holidays!
Intertech

Remember when everything was being renamed with a “.com” in the early 2000’s?  I bought the hype.  I made a decision to split our training and consulting offerings into separate brands.  Intertech would be the brand for training.  “go-e-biz.com” would be brand for consulting.  For go-e-biz, we were trying to communication we could help customers “go into e-business.”  I’ve made better decisions.

Our clients had questions like “Was go-e-biz.com made up of different people?  Were we only interested in clients selling over the internet? Were we jettisoning our training business” While the answer was “no” on all counts, I created confusion.

Years later, we reunited our offerings back under “Intertech.” While a branding mistake, there were upsides:

• Today, we also have different marketing plans.   We have different teams sell training and consulting.  Because they’re different products with very different sales cycles, the separate focus is good.
• The reunification, thanks to a great marketing consultant, made us, once and for all define a simple brand that says who we are… “Instructors Who Consult, Consultants Who Teach”
• As we reunited, we got lucky and were able to purchase Intertech.com (until this time, we had used variations for our domain like Intertech-Inc.com).  

For me, I learned to take time to take time when making a decision, ask questions, and think more strategically. 

Losing a client is rarely good.  Losing one who’s over half of sales is brutal.  It happened to us in a big way 15 years ago. 

Our main client was sold.  The new company put new people in charge.  Our new point of contact called an end-of-day Friday meeting.  She quickly, and abrasively, fired us on the spot.  As we pulled out of the parking lot, I realized we had a couple of choices – have a plan and get new business (quickly) or let people go.

We did some simple things.  Over the weekend, we made plan.  On Monday, we shared the plan.  As a team, we worked hard, had regular updates, and engaged in meaningful work.  It worked. 

No one was let go, we diversified, and we grew.

After it passed, we started, both formally and informally, identifying potential problems and our response, before they happened.  This allowed us to define solutions in the calm light of day versus the heat of battle.

Beyond lessons for the firm, I learned:

• Action cures fear.  If I’m busing working on something, it’s hard to focus on failure.
• "A fish rots from the head down.” This Italian saying means simply when stuff isn’t right, if I’m in charge, I should look in a mirror for who’s responsible.
• As a leader, I set the tone and tempo.  If I want to see others be anxious and panic, I should be anxious and panic (in disclosure, at the time of the major client leaving, I hounded our salesperson relentlessly... sorry Ryan).

Epilogue:  The client gets rid of the abrasive manager (and others).  Within about a year, we’re asked to return along with solid leaders of that firm who were also exiled.

Recently I was reminded of the bus analogy used by many business leaders which typically takes the form of, "Our business is a bus and we need to make sure that we have correct number of people in the correct seats to make the bus go down the road in a safely and efficiently".

This analogy is then applied by the department managers hoping to draw inspiration; "Our team is a bus..." If you're not familiar with this analogy a business leader will go onto describe how the bus driver is similar to the organizations top most leader, team leads or managers would be analogous to those sitting near the front of the bus, and a great majority of the remaining of remaining seats would be filled by those completing the assigned tasks.

So now that you have a mental vision of this bus and your organization filling the seats how inspired do you feel? Quite frankly the majority of your team, your organization, is passively looking out the windows watching the scenery pass, others are so disinterested they are sleeping or filling their boredom with horse play. While so very few are actively looking out the front of the bus, or seeking knowledge that will prepare them for tomorrow.

The striking similarities of the bus analogy to our organizations should be cause for immediate concern and implore us to reevaluate our approach. It is my contention that we need to change our analogy from one that invokes passiveness to one that strikes images of action and engagement. Our analogy should be of a Viking ship where participants are required to be engaged, active participants in the momentum of the ship and the success of our goals. Our commander should be heard and seen, the leaders will make sure the voyages goal is known to all, and everyone has immediate access to feed leadership needed information that can affect the voyages path.

The commander of our ship knows that the eyes of and ears of the shipmates will provide valuable information; that when combined with the experience and knowledge of leadership will navigate the ship to clear waters and bountiful lands. ~Attitude: Each person plays a role, a role that is important to the outcome of the organization~.

Like most organizations, we will experience difficulties, but our ship will traverse the rough waters, the vision of survival and perseverance will drive our souls. ~Commitment: to perform ~.

In order for the organization to conquer new lands, we must recognize the difficulties that have been faced and learn how to prevent similar challenges from impeding our goals. The crew must be willing to vocalize their difficulties, and the leadership must be willing to recognize errors in judgment. By establishing a culture that continually seeks to improve ourselves and our team we will ease the path of future voyages. ~Excellence: recognize what needs to be learned, improved, and what needs to be shed~.

So when you want to inspire your organization the analogy that you use can have a lasting impression, so rather than etching image of passiveness FORGE A VISION of Attitude, Commitment, and Excellence (A.C.E.).

~Jim

A Harvard business Review article this year, “Building Resilience” by Martin E. P. Seligman outlines the Army’s plan to not only reduce the number of people going thru Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but to increase the number who “grow” after PTSD.

Growth, not just recovery, is one of the goals.  Though the trauma of war and losing one’s company (like Jobs at Apple) are not in the same ballpark, it is interesting the Army is helping service members use difficult experiences as a catalyst.  Seligman writes, “Thirty years of research suggests that resilience can be measured and taught.”

Because resilience can be taught, the Army has created courses to help soldiers increase positive emotions, be aware of negative emotions not in proportion to a threat, and build people skills including—creating trust, dealing with conflict, and defining shared meaning. 

There’s even a course on “spiritual fitness” (where spiritual means belonging to something larger than yourself—not religion).   This course covers self-awareness, sense urgency, self-regulation and motivation.   As a leader, it’s helpful for me to think thru these qualities for myself and my organization.  As noted at the start of this post, it’s also an important reminder that adversity can be a catalyst.

Steve Jobs was extremely successful and unmatched in vision.  He started Apple at the age of 20.  Ten years later, he was fired from the very company he started.  Jobs stated it transformed him.  It made him better. 

Within two years of his departure, he starts NeXT Computer (later NeXT Software) and buys a division of Lucasfilm.  Similar to the iPad, he created an industry.  The division of Lucasfilm  became Pixar and created movies like Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and Up.  NeXT had its ups and downs but once again, Jobs had vision and success.

He started NeXT with $70M of proceeds from his sale Apple stock.  Years later, NeXT is sold back to Apple for over $400M.  With the sale, Jobs was back on track to the helm of Apple.  While NeXT is not a household name today, in 1985, a NeXT computer was the first server in the World Wide Web.

Vision, dedication, and belief can overcome failure.  This was indeed the case with Jobs.  A Harvard Business Review (HBR) had an issue related just to failure and this will be the focus of my next several blog posts.

Guideline #6– Don’t insist that a decision must be made

“Conventional management wisdom holds that a flawed decision is better than no decision,” writes HBR author Charalambos Vlachoutsicos.  He further states we shouldn’t “rush to impose one.”

For me, this is one of the toughest beliefs to avoid as a leader.  If you’re leading a firm, a team, or a startup, you got to where you where you are by, most likely, making decisions, standing up for what you believe in, and taking action. 

When does it make sense to debate or make a decision? 

I think there’s a simple rule.  If there are new points, new dialogs, or new debates around a decision, it’s a sign that more dialog is needed.  On the other hand, if you’re finding points are being restated louder or re-swizzled in different (but the same) words, as a leader we need to do one thing… make a decision.

Finally, for those whose input didn’t result in the decision they wanted, close the loop.  Make sure they understand why you made the call.

Guideline #5 – Don’t try to have all the answers

HBR author Charalambos Vlachoutsicos writes “Problem solving is central to the manager’s sense of self.” Further, “feelings of inadequacy can surface when a solution is elusive.” When a solution is elusive, a simple remedy is to involve others.

Involving others results in better solutions or confirmation you’re on the right track.  Obviously, having the right people involved is key.  For me, the right people:

• Are confident enough to speak their minds
• Put the interest of the firm ahead of their own agenda
• Are comfortable with intellectual conflict
• Can listen as well as they speak

The final part of having the right people, even more important than the points above, is having people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work.  In fact, when asked to name the main reason for the success of their companies, 75 percent of the CEOs leading Inc. magazine’s top 500 companies said “superior execution in a mundane business.”

Guideline #4 – Focus the Agenda

In the article by HBR author Charalambos Vlachoutsicos he addresses meetings and agendas.  Specifically, it’s about meaningful meetings.

At Intertech, we’ve established a meeting “rhythm” where once a day the leadership team huddles (checks in) with one another.  These meetings are:

• At the end of the day
• Short with a simple agenda:  Big updates and stuck items (problems)
• Limited to 15 minutes

For huddles, it’s important to let participants know its O.K. to pass if they don’t have significant, group-worthy updates.  I make it a point to say, “I don’t have anything group worthy” if that’s indeed the case.  Going thru every detail of the day, with information that doesn’t benefit the group, wastes time.  In addition, it feels like micro-management.  When we’re doing our huddle and have a larger issue, we put it in a parking lot for our workout meetings. 

Our workout meetings are:

• Held once a month
• Scheduled on a standing day and time
• Have an agenda built over the course of the month

The two meeting types and agendas allow us to stay on top of the business and have meetings that matter.