Strategic Thinking for Leaders

Strategic Thinking for Leaders

NTEN Online Technology Conference

September 16, 2009

Edward Granger-HappCIO, Save the Children US & UK

Chairman, NetHope

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Four Take-aways

• IT Strategy at an NGO is about capacity building and moving the agenda up the strategy pyramid to mission-moving applications

• NGOs cannot follow in the footsteps of corporations; we need to stand on their shoulders

• Look to the future in the Field and the schools

• Ask good questions

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Cracking the Walnut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPhRA2qywgU

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What jumps out about strategy in this story?

• Start with a vision and a need – they need to dialog

• Look outside for more ideas– nothing happened in the ant farm

• Have a specific destination– out of town, where the real obstacles are

• Vary like mad to get the one that works– if times are bad, vary more, not less

• Don't get surprised by surprises – find another nut

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What’s the single most important strategic question?

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What’s my destination?

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A Word about Destinations

"Would you mind telling me, please which way I ought to go from here?""That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat."I don't much care where--" said Alice."Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat." --so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation."Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

--Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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Save the ChildrenIT Vision and Strategy

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My Vision is Simple and Ambitious

Making us all part of one virtual village.

• Why? We can imagine a village, a village is connected, needs are personally known & met

• Strategy is about setting a destination & having a clear vision about what that destination looks like

• A story about Fraser…

Double the number of children we reach with quality programs.

Increase Alliance collaboration to build our global movement for children

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Technology is a Key to Building CapacityMore Effective Impact

At Greater Scale

Effective, Efficient, Scalable Programs

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Pro

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ses

Sta

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Funding Support

Systems Impact

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STC IT Strategy – Moving the Agenda Up the Pyramid

Incre

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

Donor & HQ

Facing

Child & Field Facing

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The Strategy Changes at Each LevelIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

Pilot & Build

Connect & Deliver

Buy, Co-op & COTS

Drive out costs, In-source, Shared Services

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And the Good Enough Boundary is HighIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Competitive

or Leading

Pilot & Build

Connect & Deliver

Buy, Co-op & COTS

Drive out costs, In-source, Shared Services

Innovative, value-addedTechnology

“Good Enough”CommodityTechnology

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Where do we look for ideas, trends?

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Where to look for innovation and ideas?In

cre

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ista

nce f

rom

HQ

Children, Students

Field Workers, Partners

Corporations

HQ

Inverting the pyramid

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Who is Your Leading Indicator?

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Current University Students

• I asked Dartmouth Graduate students:– So what do you use to communicate more,

IM or Texting?

• Answer: Neither• Neither?• We do everything in Facebook

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“If you’re a CIO, you need to spend a lot of time out on the fringes of the Web because that’s where the innovation’s taking place. You need to spend a lot of time with people under 25 years old.” –Gary Hamel

Who are you spending time with?

202020

Nonprofits get by with a fifth (or less) of corp. IT costs

Average IT Spend per Seat

$-$1,000$2,000$3,000$4,000$5,000$6,000$7,000$8,000$9,000

$10,000$11,000$12,000$13,000$14,000

Small NGO Large NGO - NetHopeMembers

Corporate - No. America

5x

4x

18x

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IF• 57% of ERP projects don't realize their

ROI (Nucleus Research)

• 66% IT projects fail (Standish Chaos DB) • NGOs spend a 20th what corporations

do (Tuck survey)

• And we are spending donors’ dollarsTHEN • We must find a better way...

Non Profit IT Departments Can’t Play the Odds

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SharedSpecialization

Partnering“How can we work with corporations?”

Basic Info Sharing“What are my peers doing?”

We need to collaborate or perishIn

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evels

of

Tru

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Joint Projects“What can we build together?”

“Who has expertise I can trust?

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For the rest of the world, this is the Internet

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Learn to love the questions

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Strategic Questions

• What’s your destination?• What’s not your destination?• What are your bets?• What have you learned from history?• What are the options?• Where do you look?• What if you’re wrong?

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A Strategic Plan Needs to Address…

• The Goal: what does success look like?• The Why: what’s the key driver? • The Urgency: what’s the burning

platform?• The Benefits: what’s in it for the

stakeholders?• The Obstacles: what’s standing in our

way?• Support: what do we need to make it

happen?

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Some Poke-in-the-Eye Questions

1. Why are we still running our own email? – Ron Markezich forecast

2. Why are we running our own help desks? 3. Why do we need a server, period? –Chris

Thomas4. Why haven't we changed our program

delivery significantly in past 30 years? 5. Why do Imagine Cup students develop more

field-based IT innovation in 9 months than nonprofits in 5 years?

6. Why is Cisco able to cut travel 50% and increase customer contacts 20-30% and we can't approach that with our Field?

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Four Take-aways

• IT Strategy at an NGO is about capacity building and moving the agenda up the strategy pyramid to mission-moving applications

• NGOs cannot follow in the footsteps of corporations; we need to stand on their shoulders

• Look to the future in the Field and the schools

• Ask good questions

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What if we’re wrong?

Strategy is about making bets!

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A final piece of advice #1 (User Revolutions)

• Users of technology find ways to get what they need– Case of the Wall Street analysts and the Apple II

• Centralized and controlling technology policies usually invite revolt among the users. – Seeing this again with influx of consumer

applications like SKYPE, Blogger and Facebook in the workplace.

• IT managers would do well to heed Lyndon Johnson’s advice: – “better to have them inside the tent pissing out

than outside pissing in.”

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Before you make your bets: – when there is rapid change and

uncertainty, smart organizations vary like mad.

– Run pilots, experiments and test ideas. Throw away what doesn’t work. Take to scale that which succeeds.

A final piece of advice #2

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Further Reading

• Blogs: http://eghapp.blogspot.com/

http://granger-happ.blogspot.com/ (Dartmouth Fellowship)

• Web site: http://www.fairfieldreview.org/hpmd/EGHprofile.nsf

• Email: ehapp@savechildren.org

• Twitter: @ehapp • And of course:

Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission, chap. 11.

Questions?

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Appendix

• Additional detail slides

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An introduction• I’m Ed Granger-Happ

ehapp@savechildren.org

• Some things on my resume:– I spent 13 years on Wall Street & 10 running

my own management consulting business --both in IT

– I’ve been at Save the Children 9 years– Save the Children is my third career

• Some things not on my resume:– I was born on Mother’s Day– I have two step-sons, David (18) and Scott (15)– I like to exercise my right brain with creative

writing (see www.fairfieldreview.org)

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What’s going on in this story?

• The obvious: You gotta have goals and opportunity• All the process, planning and measurements don't

get you to your results; playing the game does • First tries usually don't work; but there are

opportunities for adjustment (The value of pilots, and ant-like industriousness)

• The try-try-again team approach produces learning; it may also produce results. (Don't forget one for the other.)

• Setting your sights higher sometimes produces something closer to the outcome intended

• Even in success, there are usually unintended consequences; life, like worms, is what happens when you're making other plans.

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In the beginning, there was the vision

Imagine this:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Bumper sticker version:

All the information for all the people, now

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Six strategic questions ED/CEOs should ask

1.How can we ensure Convergence rather than Divergence?

2.How do we balance innovation and foundation building? process and work-flow applications, and reserve some

3.What’s the technology future and what’s the past?

4.How do we meet near-term business needs while building for the long term?

5.How do we invest enough and not too much? 6.From where will disruptive innovations come

for nonprofits come?

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Six questions for Nonprofit CIOs

1. What new programs (that directly serve beneficiaries) have you helped engender that would not have been possible without the new use of technology?

2. What have you done to help close the "productivity gap" in the way your nonprofit delivers programs and operates as an organization?

3. How have you helped bridge the divide that will be caused by disruptive innovations in the nonprofit space?

4. For relief organizations: How have you helped disaster response be 50% faster with 50% greater impact?

5. How have you helped your organization attract and retain knowledge workers (and IT professionals) in the face of crisis of the baby boom generation retirement wave?

6. What are you doing to move commodity functions out of your organization and contribute time, dollars and support to the truly value-added functions of your agency?

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Who Are Our Customers?

IT Dept.

HQ Depts

ProgramDesigner

Donors,Grantors

FieldWorker

Child

Corporations

Organization

Field

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FY09 Objectives Support the StrategyIn

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FOUNDATIONAL“Keeping the Lights On”

OPERATIONAL“Helping the Organization Run”

PROGRAM“Improving Program

Delivery”

CHILD“Differentiating”

Efficient

Competitive

or Leading

FinanceMgmt (FMS)

Overseas WAN“FO Wiring”

ICT4DNetHope

Beneficiary Pilots

Imagine Cup

Video Conferencing

“VOX”

Unified US-UK IT

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What does success look like?In five years, I envision SC using technology in the following ways:1. Greater use of technology to directly impact the lives of children. New

programs in health, education, & protection delivered & monitored via technology.

2. All SC offices seamlessly connected. Stakeholders can readily find each other based on expertise & interests, move easily from one office to next & feel part of one organization. Solutions for low bandwidth locations identified & delivered.

3. Critical management information (financials, program status, key metrics like children reached) is available for all countries on a near-real time basis.

4. SC is leveraging technology to be the first & most responsive organization in emergencies (e.g., RFID-based solutions, real-time information & tracking.)

5. Greater connectedness between donors & SC, sponsors & children using web 2.0 technology (e.g. social networking) to strengthen & increase relationships.

6. A low cost technology infrastructure that is shared & scales across the Alliance for large & small members, complex & basic field offices.

7. A greater use of consumer applications (e.g. SKYPE, Flickr, LinkedIn, Google calendar, etc.) by our employees for conducting their daily work.

8. Greater collaboration with INGOs & other partners sharing basic commodity IT services like help desk & procurement.

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What are Top Tech Questions to Ask?

1. How will global broadband impact how we do business?

2. What will the unbundling of the application value chain mean?

3. How will consumer applications and cell phones change the tool set?

4. What will the immediacy & democratization of information mean?

5. From where will disruptive innovations come for nonprofits?

6. What if we’re wrong?

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Some Poke-in-the-Eye Questions1. Why are we still running our own email? – Ron Markezich

forecast2. Why are we running our own help desks? 3. Why are we running commodity IT instead of mission-

moving IT? 4. Why are we following in steps of corporations instead of

leap-frogging them? 5. “Shadow IT” should be encouraged, supported,

recognized –Chris Thomas6. Why do we need a server, period? –Chris Thomas7. Why haven't we changed our program delivery

significantly in past 30 years? 8. Why do Imagine Cup students develop more field-based

IT innovation in 9 months than nonprofits in 5 years? 9. Why is Cisco able to cut travel 50% and increase

customer contacts 20-30% and we can't approach that with our Field?

10.Why is it that “every day, somewhere in the world, something is being reinvented in our organization poorly”?

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Advice from a Hockey Legend

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” --Wayne Gretzky