James Gray

Our Story - How a Day Changes Your Life Forever

It was July 31, 1991 and as I got on a plane from San Francisco to Dallas I had no idea that this would be the day that changed my life forever. This would be the story that I told everyone or no one at all. Victory or defeat at the most personal level.  Luckily this became "our story" and I share this with you and the life lessons from that day.  

Early in July 1991 I accepted a job with Chevron in San Francisco after a 14 month consulting assignment at Chevron in Baton Rouge, LA.  It was the telephone call that would change my life when Dave, a Chevron colleague, asked me to come back to Baton Rouge given some problems that the plant was experiencing with an automation system we had recently commissioned.  It was flight #462 that landed at DFW in the early afternoon of July 31st 1991.  As I waited in the crowded gate area for the trip to BTR, I found myself standing next to a beautiful young woman. She was stunning and dressed up in typical Southern style.  As we stood there a man approached and asked us a question about someone who may have gone into the women's bathroom.  We looked at each other and made a short comment to the gentleman.  We engaged in short conversation while in the gate area and I was mesmerized by her smile and beautiful blue eyes.  As I looked at her, I said to myself “how old do you think she is" ?  She did look young and I thought about how commonplace it was for 15 or 16 year old girls in Baton Rouge to look at least 21.  

On the flight #909 to Baton Rouge I walked down to her row and talked for a little while as well.  We arrived in small Baton Rouge airport and I proceeded to the Hertz counter to get my car.  It appeared that her Mom was here to pick her up as they waited by the baggage claim area.  I needed to kill a little time waiting for the bags to arrive so I used the phone to check my messages.  While on the phone our eyes met across the baggage claim area as she waved to me.  What do I do now I thought?  Do I go over there with her mom? So here it goes. I walk over to the baggage claim area and we started talking again.  This young woman mentioned that she was here for the week to visit her family. I am thinking she is here, I am here what about getting together?  The thought did cross my mind but I could feel her mom in close proximity behind me as she and others listened to our conversation.  In the end I did not have the heart to go down in flames in front of the audience.  So after my luggage had arrived, we shared goodbyes and I proceeded to leave the airport terminal. As the sliding glass doors opened the hot humid air hit me as well as a sensation that I regretted leaving her.  As I proceeded to drive to my hotel I was kicking myself for not asking her for her number or if she wanted to get together during the week.  This feeling would propel me to explore my ultimate creativity.

As I arrived at the hotel that night I remember thinking that I need to see her again.  I could not stop thinking about her.  The following evening after work I decided to kick start my mission. I did have one piece of information that would prove to be invaluable.  During our chat in Dallas I was observant to read "Catherine Morvant" printed on her ticket. I had never heard of the name “Morvant” so how common could it be?  Just call information and I am home free.  As the operator answered and asked for the last name I stated “Morvant”.  This is going to be great I thought.  The operator stated, “first name”?  I said, “well how many Morvant’s are there in Lafayette?   She said “about 60”.  That plan came crashing down in hurry.  Time for plan B which would turn out to be one of my greatest feats of all time. 

As I sat at the desk in my room, I looked over and saw the Delta system timetable book.   What I did know was her name, and that she was staying a week which I calculated out to be one day after I was to depart back to San Francisco. I called Delta reservations and asked if they could confirm that Catherine Morvant was on a particular flight.  They declined to provide this information.  So I used my trusty timetable and looked at all of the flights going through DFW with connections to Denver and San Francisco.  I figured she wanted to maximize her time at home so I picked the last flight of the day. It was just a guess.  I called Delta reservations back and requested assistance to change my flight.  I asked the ticket agent to change my flight to the following day and the last flight of the day.  The Delta agent asked “is there anything else I can do for you?”  I replied, “Yes, there is I have a friend on that flight and I was wondering if you could sit us together”.  At this point, I had no idea she was really on this flight but just gave it a try.  I gave the Delta agent her name and she replied “oh yes, I see her”.  I had just hit the jackpot.  The Delta agent stated “You are sitting in first class and she is sitting in coach do you want to upgrade her”?  I declined as I did not want to go overboard here and scare this woman who I didn't really know if she was at least 18 years old or anything else about her.

As the week ends the final day arrives.  I could barely contain my laughter as I sat behind a Wall Street Journal waiting for her to exit the escalator in the gate area.  There she was.  She was with her mom again as they entered one of the small shops in the 6 gate airport.  What am I going to say to this woman?  Finally she and her mom exit the shop and they are walking directly toward me.  I put my paper down and she looks at me with astonishment as exclaims, “what are you doing here”.  I asked her and her mom to sit down and talk.  As the flight begins to board, I head on as she says her goodbyes to her mother.  We arrive in DFW and this time I am not going to lose the opportunity to exchange information.  We walked through the terminal together towards our connecting flights and I gave her my contact information.   

At this point I did not know really anything about her.  We conversed by phone over the next few months and then one day I decided to call her to wish her a happy birthday.  A guy answers the phone.  Stake through the heart.  The call is short and it appears this great story is about to end here. 

A few months passed and in early February 1992 I  headed off to live in Perth, Australia on assignment with Chevron. I often thought about her and assumed that she found someone else.  One afternoon I was relaxing in the large green lawn areas of downtown Perth next to the river and opened the package of personal mail that I would receive every week.  It was a card and beautiful picture of this long lost girl.  Wow this story is not over.  Coincidently I had also sent her a postcard from Perth that she would never get. 

My assignment ended in late April as I traveled back to the US for a commitment I made to support work that needed to be done during a plant shutdown in Baton Rouge.  I was in my San Francisco office for a few days when the phone rang.  It was her.  I was surprised to hear from her and we caught up on life over the past six months.  Ironically in the previous weeks she had returned to live in Lafayette.  I said "you are not going to believe this but I am heading down to Baton Rouge in a few days, let's get together".  It was a date for two strangers that met about 9 months earlier.

I traveled to Baton Rouge and date night arrived.  She was nervous but it was a great night. A few days later I was invited for dinner with her family.  The family would now meet that mystery guy from the airport. I still remember that evening where I would share dinner with my future in-laws.  We dated one night for putt-putt golf with my matchmaker friend Dave prior to my two week stay ending.  I agreed to travel back down to Louisiana for the long July 4th holiday.   

Mary Catherine moved to Slidell, LA for a nanny job a few weeks later.  I would now be staying with a woman who I had a few dates with.  We spent the July 4th holiday in New Orleans and attended a family party.  After a few days I knew this was the one.  I traveled back to San Francisco and we spoke often for a few weeks.  We even spoke about marriage. Yes over the phone. I returned to New Orleans in early August and that evening we greeted by exchanging our commitment to each other.  I gave Mary Catherine a roll of cherry lifesavers and she gave me a roll of butter rum.  Just like the commercial where a little boy asks a girl to marry him using a lifesaver for the ring. We still have these lifesavers today.  I had just made the biggest decision in my life to marry a woman I had spent less than two weeks with.  This was not typical for someone who was schooled to analyze and dissect all of the views before making a decision.  A few weeks later I returned to New Orleans and over lunch in the French Quarter I asked her father for permission to marry his daughter.  What a great day.

Exactly two years later on the day we met, July 31, 1993, we married in Lafayette, LA.  I love telling this story and the life lessons from this experience:

1. Never say "I wonder what would have happened if...." - I have always been one to go for it as I never wanted to be in a position questioning myself later in life of what may have been.  Take a chance, at least you will know the outcome and never second guess yourself.
2. Follow your gut and your heart - There will be many occasions where you will not have all of the answers or even time to analyze the situation.  Trust your gut and let your heart lead you to achieve new heights.
3. Reward is not possible without taking risk - while this is obvious, sometimes it's easier said than done.  Take a chance and sometimes you will get a reward you did not quite expect.
4. Be aware of the environment around you - I always tell my kids to be aware of your surroundings. It was something as basic as seeing and remembering a name on an airplane ticket that changed my life. 
5. Don't act on assumptions - When I called Mary Catherine in October 1991 for her birthday, I had assumed that she was living with a guy and had just moved on.  Little did I know this was not the case. Don't always assume you know everything and act upon assumptions that may be devastating.
6. Ask the right questions to get the answers you need - I knew the airline would not tell me if Mary Catherine was on a specific flight so I asked the right questions to eventually get the answers I needed. Be smart and sometimes you will get all the answers you need without actually ever asking the direct question!
7. Be brave enough to be vulnerable - It turned out that I was not brave enough to ask someone out for fear of going down in flames in front of a number of people.  Sometimes being vulnerable let's others truly know who you are and what you want. Take a chance.
8. Work the system - My family knows this is one of my favorite statements: "you need to work the system!"  The system to me is just life and the need to be resourceful to make things happen and overcome challenges you experience in all aspects of your life.  Overcome what others can't.
9. Tell your story to inspire others - We all have life stories that are special and can act as special motivators for others.  Tell your story.
10. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it - This is my personal motto as it inspires a sense of creativity and aspiration in everything I do. The only thing that limits the future is our mind and will.

As we look into the distance after 17 years of marriage the future could not be any brighter for us and our five kids. I know that some of the best days of our life are still ahead.  Sometimes even though we try to plan every aspect of our life there can be a day that can truly change it forever. For us that day was July 31, 1991 and July 31, 1993.

Destiny is not a silver bullet for success as it takes commitment to work through life's challenges and enrich your marriage every day.  

We are all in - forever.  Happy 17th Anniversary sweetheart. 

30 Years Ago Today - A "No-Hitter"

Thirty years ago today - July 21, 1980 - it was an event of my teenage years that I will never forget. The evening that 14 teammates made me great as I pitched a no-hitter.

The "no-hitter" ball from that evening rests in my home office as a reminder of how much fun I had playing ball as a teenager, the feeling of victory, and what is possible when you compete for success.  I remember the game as if it was yesterday.  My teammates played great defense for seven innings giving me the chance to accomplish a pitcher's dream.  It was the top of the 7th with 2 outs.  My final pitch was hit into short left field and Matt DeLuke's speed and skill as our shortstop made an over the shoulder catch to save the no-hitter and end the game. We all went crazy and I remember being hoisted on the shoulders of my teammates. It was an amazing feeling.

All of my teammates signed the ball that evening and the next day I clipped the box score from the newspaper and added it to my scrapbook that I still have today.  It's a lot of fun looking through a scrap book and the memories that come as you as think back to that point in time in your life. 

As I reflect on that evening 30 years later, it reminds me of a few principles that are important to my life today:

• As a leader, it's your team that is capable of achieving great outcomes. While I may have been in the zone that evening and leading the charge, I would not had achieved that level of success without my teammates. They we all there for me that evening and throughout the season as I won the pitcher of year and the batting title that season. We played and won as a team that evening and that is what is required to reach high levels of performance that are not possible with individual efforts.
• As an individual, we can all make others great.  Our shortstop's heroic catch for the last out of the game made me great that evening.  When was the last time you made someone else great? 
• My coaches, Ron Witherspoon and Earl O'Brey, helped me develop as a pitcher and player for the 3 seasons I played on that team. We all need coaches who are their to support our development and push us to achieve great things. 

Thanks to my 1980 teammates for the memories from that evening: Matt Cater, Matt DeLuke, Brian Fisk,Barry Rapavy, Jim Hart, Tim Nelson, Robert O'Brey, Mike Reutter, Keith Robertson, Darren Cooper, Steve Lloyd Tom McNamara, Robert Zych and Jeff Mortka. 

The ball that sits in my home office will always take me back to that night and the thrill of victory.  Thanks for the memories.

How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking

We all do it everyday. The constant multitasking to keep up with our fast paced world and the information overload. The Harvard Business Review article How (and Why) to Stop Multitasking outlines the ramifications of multitasking and why taking a break from that will bring better results.

I think about the meetings I attend with everybody with a laptop open.  Is anybody really listening? Could we do this meeting in half the time if everybody was focused and not multitasking?  There is nothing more annoying and disrespectful when someone is facilitating a meeting when everybody is multitasking.  I also think about my multitasking at home.  How many times does my wife need to remind me that she already told me something and that I must not have been listening.

I think I am going to try and kick the multitasking habit and see how my life changes.

The Destruction of Babel

Each weekend my family and I take out time to renew our faith and today's homily was one that resonated on a personal and professional level.   The homily included the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) and how men who spoke the same language began speaking in their native tongues and could not understand each other.  The homily reinforced how the breakdown in communication destroys many things including relationships, marriages, families and what could be possible. The destruction of babel is devastating in many ways when we cannot truly hear what others are saying. 

As I reflected on the passage I could not help to think about a challenging project that involves many stakeholders who resemble those whom gathered in the Tower of Babel.  Although we all speak English, we may not be listening to each other and understanding the language from the various perspectives that each of us represent. This morning's celebration continued on with a passage from the Acts 2 : "At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language".  It's ironic that we all want the same result by making an impact on our company, although our "languages" and perspectives are clouding our judgment.  The pressure of time and lack of communication is driving destruction.  Ineffective communications are driving emotions and straining work relationships as making an impact becomes an even more distant reality. 

Collaborating through challenging projects requires at a minimum trust, faith, and great communication. Take time to understand if your language and communication style is driving positive impact in your life whether at work or home. Are others hearing you and are you hearing them?  

As I anticipate the week in front of me, I am reminded by Genesis 11:6:

"If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them"

IT as a Premier BI Solutions Provider

The TDWI Wayne’s World post on “Evolving Your BI Team from a Data Provider to a Solutions Provider” provided a nice summary on some of the reasons why IT serves as just a data provider and how to evolve into a solutions provider. This topic is near and dear to my heart so I thought I would share some additional insights as a practitioner delivering BI solutions inside Microsoft.

In my view, IT must serve the business as a trusted advisor by delivering end-to-end information-enabled solutions while also providing a secure, scalable, and reliable BI platform for the business to innovate in areas where IT cannot or should not expect to serve.  It is unrealistic that IT can cost effectively serve all of the needs given my practical experience so you need a strong collaborative partnership with the business to serve the growing thirst for strategic information and analytics.  This includes leadership and credibility to deliver enterprise solutions but to also enable them to deliver their own solutions using IT’s platform.

My vision for enabling the business to deliver solutions is not about the business replicating data and developing applications in isolation from IT.  Success in my opinion is IT delivering valuable end-to-end solutions and a certified integrated data platform that can be used by the business to also deliver solutions where and when needed.  This is a collaborative model leveraging both the strengths of IT and the business.

While I do believe it's essential for IT to deliver end-to-end solutions for long-term viability, I do view providing the business with a certified data platform as a "solution" as they would generally prefer not to be in the data integration business.  While this could be considered IT acting as a data provider, my experience tells me that IT is solving a huge problem by standardizing and integrating data into compelling offering that can quickly support decision support and analytics across the entire organization. Think about the huge opportunity cost when the business is spending their valuable time on hard core IT and not analyzing and understanding your customers, partners, market competition, and internal operations.   The extreme cases of IT or the business doing it all is not realistic and there is a optimal position somewhere in between where IT focuses on the complex enterprise-level opportunities while enabling the business to innovate on the fringe.

Microsoft’s business intelligence environment is diverse including both IT solutions and business solutions. Maturing the information strategy is journey and there is no silver bullet so this requires strong leadership and phased approach.  

Data Provider

IT can act as a data provider in two scenarios:  

1. Enabling direct data access to transactional systems
2. Serving integrated data in the form of marts and cubes

We have both of these scenarios in Microsoft today.  Let’s face it, in many companies the business built the shadow solutions they have today because they likely had a need that was not being served by IT at a specific point in time. In certain cases the business has built solutions by integrating data served by low level interfaces and bypassing IT completely (scenario #1).  While this approach can address the immediate business need, the result is higher lifecycle costs due to data replication, needed changes to support corporate taxonomies and upstream data sources. 

Strategies to Transform IT into a Premier Solutions Provider

Here are ten strategies for evolving IT from a data provider to a premier solutions provider:

1. Strong IT Leadership – transforming an organization, it's offering and results requires strong leadership. Evolving to a true solutions provider will require trusting relationships with business executives that understand and value IT’s offering. Transformations do not happen overnight so leadership is required to sustain the journey and deliver on IT’s promises over time.
2. Mature a solutions-focused organization – establish a trusted advisor organization within IT that is responsible for managing the business relationship, business architecture, understanding and anticipating needs of the user community, delivering solutions that enable complex end-to-end business scenarios, and leading change management. It’s also critical that the solutions organization understands the data and ensures data quality. These change agents must clearly define the business value of the solution and then measure and communicate the benefits after the solution is deployed.  Our organization inside Microsoft IT is called “Solutions Delivery” which reinforces our mission: "Earn Trusted Partnership status by consistently delivering high value innovative business solutions".  This team represents IT on behalf of the engineering and operations teams that deliver and support the applications.
3. Differentiate and market IT’s solution - similar to any other product offering there needs to be something compelling that truly differentiates IT's solution.  Evaluate what IT is offering and understand what is driving the business to invest in their own solutions.  Position capabilities that can be best delivered by IT and not easily replicated by the business including data quality and report certification, enterprise-wide integration and analytics that enable a broad business view (multi-business solutions), embedding integrated data into IT applications, and a holistic information management solution set. Track and communicate the business value derived from IT's solution as part of the continued marketing communications process to drive brand recognition.
4. Manage and predictably deliver on solution roadmaps - with a IT solutions organization in place, develop and manage solution roadmaps that include the business capabilities, features, and solutions that will be delivered on over the 1-3 year time frame. The roadmaps should support "priority" business capabilities where there is a high strategic importance but low performance.  Establish credibility with the business by delivering on-time, on-schedule, and on-budget.  That is the ticket to the game to advancing to higher value business solutions.  The business is not going to give up their solutions until they have confidence that IT can predictably deliver the goods.
5. Embed integrated data and analytics into business process applications – at the end of the day business value is only realized when users take action from insight. IT is uniquely positioned to deliver key information and analytical models into the applications that run the business and serving end users.  Delivering on this promise requires strong collaboration inside of IT between the data warehousing/BI specialists and those organizations that own the transactional applications.
6. Enable the enterprise perspective with multi-business solutions - most business BI solutions are targeted at specific problems or business capabilities within a business of a large organization.  The most strategic insight can only be realized when there is an enterprise IT data platform in place that integrates data across a broad set of transactional systems that run the company. IT should focus on delivering the enterprise scope data platform and delivering BI solutions that serve multiple businesses as this will be difficult for a business group to replicate.  A few years ago Microsoft started the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) journey to mature it's internal and external insight as well as consolidate the application portfolio to reduce costs and quickly adapt to changing business models.
7. Understand user needs - compelling IT solutions can only be delivered by understanding the pain points and needs of the employees executing business processes.  Proactively engage and research the needs of both the corporate and field user base. Understand the roles that you are serving and what solutions they need for their job.  This will help proactively focus IT on what "markets" to attack.
8. Pro-actively reduce data access - easy access to transactional data, feeds, and integrated data perpetuates the growth of shadow applications around the company. Periodically assess the reasons why non-IT applications are integrating transactional data and aggressively reduce access by providing alternatives such as IT's BI solutions and integrated data platform. 
9. Engage the “Developer Network” - successfully executing a hybrid strategy where IT delivers solutions as well as the business can be accelerated when you can harness the power of the distributed network of "developers" across the organization.  The business is going to deliver solutions with our without IT so my view is that IT's strategy should be to build a platform that can used by both IT and stakeholders in the business. Formalize this collaborative and social network that is geographically distributed to quickly surface best practices, data issues, and deliver on BI needs quickly. Members of the "developer network" would be formally approved and get access to sanctioned integrated data and IT services. I envision a robust social network where "information" is the lifeblood of the conversation and user needs are served quickly and cost-effectively by the "developer network" (both IT and approved business developers).
10. Empower the business on IT infrastructure – IT will never have all of the data required by the business so it’s essential that IT provide a collaborative solution that enables the business to manage data on IT’s infrastructure and mitigate the need for the business to replicate data in their environment. There will also be scenarios where the business will need to have quick bridging solutions so providing capabilities to enable agility and access to IT’s certified data set will reinforce IT’s vision as a customer-focused organization. Recently, we have enabled a set of capabilities on our Enterprise Data Warehouse infrastructure that enables the business to co-locate and manage their business data on IT servers.  We believe this will reduce data replication outside of IT, reduce shadow applications, improve insight into user needs and enable the business to deliver niche solutions.

Run your IT shop as a business and act as a change agent by delivering valuable end-to-end solutions across the organization!

The Mojo Moment - Feel It, Understand It, and Capitalize on It!

The "Mojo Moment" - that euphoria when your energy level, enthusiasm, confidence and impact skyrockets.  Have you felt it lately? Would you even know what this rush means?  Over the last few weeks I felt this strong emotional rush and after reflecting on these moments it became clear to me how my career plan provided the essential ingredients for creating the Mojo in the first place.

My first rush hit when a colleague remarked that he found my Career Planning Lifecycle posts insightful and planned to share them with some of his colleagues.  I then began talking about how I created the framework and how important it was to me as a manager for members of my team to have great career plans. I could feel my energy level rise and I would have continued the conversation for hours if it were not for an planned meeting. We agreed to have a follow up conversation.

Another rush hit when I was “selling” an IT investment to a group of stakeholders responsible for allocating funds.  Again, I felt the energy from competing and trying to persuade a group of people why the investment was important to the company. I was in the zone and I could feel it. After the meeting one my colleagues remarked that "I had the Mojo". I did not think too much about that comment at the time.  Prior to the second meeting the same colleague said “James make sure you bring your Mojo again".  During the second session I felt the same euphoria and it felt great.  I was more conscious of "measuring" my Mojo this time and what brought me this thrill.

Coincidentally a few days earlier I had purchased a few books from Amazon including Marshall Goldsmith's new book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It.  So I decided to open up the box and see what Goldsmith had to say about this Mojo thing. 

Marshall Goldsmith describes Mojo as:

"a moment when we do something that's purposeful, powerful and positive, and the rest of the world recognizes it".

"Mojo is that positive spirit toward what we are doing right now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside". 

As I reflected on his operational definition and the insights from the book I saw the connection that helped create the Mojo moment in the first place. It was the fact that I am in the right job that provides the required happiness and meaning in my life and value to others.  Marshall Goldsmith states that your identity is the first of four vital ingredients to having great Mojo. I could not agree with him more. Knowing who you are and what you stand for is the first step in my career planning process and is the basis for aligning your career plan for maximum happiness. Let me show you some examples of how to define your identity as the first building block to establishing Mojo.

 In the article “Career Planning Process – Step 1 Know Yourself”, I outlined a number of attributes that you can use to describe yourself and define what brings happiness and meaning to your life.  Great career plans are designed with this in mind.  Defining a life mission, critical success factors and the identifies you embody is the first step to building your personal profile and Mojo. My life mission is described in the center of circle with each of the critical success factors that must be fulfilled to deliver on the mission.  Each of my identities are described outside the circle that bring clarity to who I am.  I feel the most Mojo in my life when my critical success factors are in balance and this enables me to bring the maximum energy to my daily work.  I experienced relatively lower Mojo earlier in my career when I held a role with extensive travel that impacted my health and relationships with my family.  At that time I did not have a detailed career plan in place and now that I look back it was obvious why my Mojo was lower then and why now it's sky high.

 
I then define my professional identity using a set of attributes that I gathered from various assessments and personal reflection.  The attributes on the left describe who I am and the attributes on the right describe the "defined" identity that I am positioning and selling in the market. Marshall Goldman describes this as the "Created Identity" in his book.  This positioning is critical because it sets the foundation for the job you select and the behavior you are looking to model.

 

I package this all up in what I call a Personal Profile. It's "you on a page".  This artifact is powerful tool to help you select a career role that maximizes your personal attributes while also providing you with the needed happiness and meaning to feel fulfilled.  This ensures "fit" between what you need out of a job and what the job needs.

 
Your ability to feel that positive spirit each day and impact the world around you is partly a function by how well you have defined who you are, what is important in your life and acted upon this to drive change in your life.  Remember you are the only one who can describe what success is and feels like. Don't leave it up to your stakeholders to define who you are or your manager to assume he or she knows the type of role and day-to-day responsibilities that will maximize your Mojo.

I have the privilege to career coach colleagues as a part of my job and I am intrigued by cases where colleagues are not feeling the career Mojo.  In many cases people have a hard time to quickly describe their life mission, what is important and what in their life is currently out of balance and causing their career depression. In some cases they need to change and in other cases they have been in the same job for too long and need a change in their environment.  I would say in all cases they need a better career plan!

If you are not feeling the Mojo on a regular basis in your personal life or career then I recommend you take a timeout and read Marshall Goldsmith's book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It. I would then recommend you create your own version of a life mission, critical success factors and identities.  You are then in a position to define your professional identity and the first of four key ingredients to creating Mojo and a great career plan by following the Target, Roadmap, Develop and Sell steps.

Feel it, understand it, and capitalize on it!

IT's Role in Delivering BI for the Masses

As a IT practitioner delivering enterprise information and analytical solutions inside of Microsoft, I am very impressed by our business intelligence product strategy including the upcoming releases of SQL Server 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010 and Excel 2010.  The opportunity to put BI capabilities in the hands of information workers could not be greater as recently outlined in the InformationWeek article Global CIO: Microsoft Pushes BI For The Masses: 500 Million Prospects -- InformationWeek.

I see the role of IT as both an infrastructure provider as described in the article but also a trusted advisor that serves as a change agent to derive the value of the BI investment across the organization. A powerful self-service BI strategy is not for IT just to provide data to the masses.  The upcoming Microsoft releases set the foundation for a powerful self-service BI strategy when IT assumes the following responsibilities in partnership with the business:

• Act as trusted advisor – IT must have a deep understanding of the business to deliver solutions that are required today and anticipate future needs.  
• Understand personas and self-service scenarios – IT must conduct user centered research to validate the roles, information needs and scenarios that establish the set of data and capabilities that must be delivered.
• Drive an enterprise perspective – IT must drive and facilitate an enterprise perspective to data modeling and integration.  This will ensure IT can deliver on both line of business and enterprise scenarios.
• Enable a collaborative network- the power of information and analytics is when you have a highly connected set of end-users that can share content, insight, and best practices across the organization. IT should enable this community to collaborate using SharePoint 2010 as a foundation and harness the power of the hearts and minds of these change agents across the company.
• Ensure data quality – the delivery of timely, high quality data is required for business users to have confidence using the information for decision making and insight.  IT must integrate data quality processes into the self-service strategy and pro-actively communicate the data quality status and issues to the user base.
• Integrate BI capabilities into business process enabled applications – IT can drive high-levels of adoption by integrating self-service analytical solutions into the familiar applications relied on by users everyday.
• Manage critical, highly standardized BI content -  every organization will have reports and analytical solutions that require formal control and distribution.  IT should focus their expertise on delivering this highly standardized enterprise content and enable self-service for ad-hoc, highly flexible and custom solutions.
• Master data management services – putting the management of business rules and data in the hands of business users is an important element of self service.  IT should integrate the use of SQL Server Master Data Services (MDS) into the solutions and enable the agile business to govern this data.
• Services to co-locate IT and business data– IT systems will likely never include all of the data required for information and analytical solutions.  We have started to roll-out a set of capabilities in our EDW platform that enables the business to master and manage business-owned data (e.g. models) on IT servers. This approach reduces data replication and shadow applications, as well as enabling self-service for business users to augment the data and BI solutions.
• Change Management– self-service can thrive when information workers and highly skilled analysts are operating with the sanctioned, single version of the truth data set. IT must facilitate the change processes that migrate users from the shadow solutions under their desk to the secure enterprise solution. PowerPivot for SharePoint provides a great set of capabilities for users to collaborate using enterprise data assets and IT to monitor and manage the infrastructure.

Why Business Executives Should Care about a High-Level Data Model

The Information Management post Why Business Executives Should Care about a High-Level Data Model provides a good reminder why business stakeholder involvement is critical to an information strategy. Strong business engagement from the executive level and down is required to ensure the data represents the business and this shared representation is consistent across the organization.  Data models are clearly the foundational prerequisite to transforming towards an analytical culture. A key point from an execution view is the trap that companies fall into by taking a "project" or "line of business" approach to their information strategy and data modeling. The result is siloed solutions that do not enable powerful analytics across the entire organization.

At Microsoft we have begun a multi-year journey to holistically model data that enables key decision-making processes across the sales and marketing organization.  Our approach to the data modeling process is collaborative including key members from the business, business architects, information architects, solution managers and program managers. Although a "project" may be driving the data model for specific subject areas, these projects are steps in the roadmap to building out our Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW).  Microsoft's EDW standardizes and integrates data to eliminate legacy siloed solutions managed by both IT and the business. The business outcomes include reduced costs, sales and marketing productivity, and improvements in customer and partner satisfaction.

Our progress over the last few months has reinforced how powerful business engagement is to standardizing data model definitions across multiple sales and marketing operating models that in the past have operated independently. Strong business and IT leadership is a catalyst for this collaborative approach to our data modeling process and the journey to integrating the organization silos that exist today.

Career Planning Lifecycle

A few of my friends and colleagues have inspired me to document career planning techniques I have used over the years.  I will plan to share examples over the next few weeks as I too update my 2010 career plan.  My hope is that the lifecycle and sample artifacts will enhance your career planning activities.

Step 1 – Know Yourself.  Knowing who you are including personal values, interests, motivators, and brand attributes is the first step to defining your career plan.  A successful career plan is one that is in concert with the other parts of your life so understanding who you are and what makes you tick is critical. The deliverable from this step is a Personal Brand Profile.

Step 2 - Target Market. Career planning is very similar to strategic analysis and product management where you need to understand the target market to position your product or service successfully.  The deliverable from this step is a market assessment and a clear target for your offering.

Step 3 – Roadmap Yourself. Similar to a product lifecycle, the market will change through time and the roadmap will define the steps we take to advance our capability and value we deliver.  The deliverable from this step is a roadmap of roles that includes the experiences to be gained, competencies developed and the relationships required to be successful in the role.

Step 4 – Develop Yourself. Refining and adding capabilities will support the advancement toward achieving your short-term and long-term career aspirations.  Understanding feedback and expectations from stakeholders is also an important input into your development plan.  The deliverable from this step is a list of personal development activities including on the job training, formal education, and learning from others.

Step 5 – Sell Yourself. We all need stakeholders who can help us achieve our dreams and career aspirations.  Positioning and selling your product each day is an essential part of career planning.  The deliverable from this step is marketing plan to communicate and sell your services.

While these five steps are very basic I rarely see people practice these with the required rigor to guide a targeted career plan.  I know from experience that a guided career plan that is aligned with your life's most important treasures can give you the energy to make the most of every day. 

Time for a Conversation

The hustle and bustle of a typical work day generally leaves little time to sit down and connect with colleagues outside of normal work.  This past week I met with two colleagues who are working on career transitions and I shared my thoughts on their approach and techniques I have used in the past.  Even though I was extremely busy I always have time for friends and colleagues who need help.  Make time for a conversation and you will be amazed on what you learn and the impact you can have helping others be successful.