Digital Transformation
The subject lines on the stream of press releases coming my way tell the story of current trends in industrial technology. Cybersecurity remains the one constant as new companies pop up like mushrooms in the spring, and we all fear the next big hack may be on us. The past few years have witnessed the progression of Industry 4.0, BlockChain, 5G, Digital Twin, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Metaverse. Today, every supplier is in the Digital Transformation parade.
Marc Benioff has said, "Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer, and I can see that in the minds of every CEO I talk to." Benioff sells customer relationship management software solutions. Duh.
Digital Transformation is the adoption of digital technology by an organization to digitize non-digital products, services, or operations, according to Wikipedia. The hoped-for benefits include that elusive state called innovation or customer experience, or efficiency.
I started on that digital path around 1977. My project began with inputting the Bills of Material for all of our products. Think boxes of punch cards. This base served cost accounting, finance, purchasing/inventory control, and engineering. I leased the IBM MRP II product. Took a deep dive into what is now called MES or MOM (depending upon your religion). IBM taught me the essentials of implementing digitalization. Everything they taught me then is true today. Get the people and processes right, then add computers.
Ten years later Eliyahu Goldratt told a story of bringing computers and operations management together in The Goal. Theory of Constraints remains valid even if we may have progressed (well, some of us).
Many companies have offered me tours of updated plants with their digital transformation journeys. This isn't magic. It's hard work--mostly getting everyone on board.
I hope you are well on your way. I further hope that your CEO didn't read an article and ask your boss to "get me one of those DX things" like in a Dilbert cartoon.
*****
Thought of the week from an old book:
Found in the The Inner Game of Tennis, "Your state of mind is at least as important as your physical fitness."
*****
Interesting links. And, yes, I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin.
Elon Musk Management Style
NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/technology/elon-musk-management-style.html
It may seem obvious, to most people outside Silicon Valley, that Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has been an unmitigated disaster.
In less than two months since taking over, Mr. Musk has fired more than half of Twitter’s staff, scared away many of its major advertisers, made (and unmade) a series of ill-advised changes to its verification program, angered regulators and politicians with erratic and offensive tweets, declared a short-lived war on Apple, greenlit a bizarre “Twitter Files” exposé, stopped paying rent on Twitter’s offices, and falsely accused the company’s former head of trust and safety of supporting pedophilia. His personal fortune has shrunk by billions of dollars, and he was booed at a Dave Chappelle show.
It’s not, by almost any measure, going well for him. And yet, one group is still firmly in Mr. Musk’s corner: Bosses.
Seth Godin--staring at decisions
https://seths.blog/2022/12/staring-at-decisions/
There are organizations that spend far more time discussing a new logo than analyzing where to place the new office. One is filled with emotion and no economic importance, the other is fuzzy, complicated and incredibly expensive.
Perhaps you’ve seen someone spend emotion and focus figuring out a tip to the penny, but impulsively use credit card debt to go on a fancy vacation.
Paul Graham -- the need to read
http://www.paulgraham.com/read.html
You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things.
People who just want information may find other ways to get it. But people who want to have ideas can't afford to.
Seth Godin--Slow Modems
https://seths.blog/2022/12/slow-modems/
If we cared enough, we could imagine a federated internet. One where the control and the power doesn’t lie with a single corporate titan with whims, with lock in and with spam, but with individuals showing up much more like we do in real life, owning our words and our data and our participation.
[PS I’m not currently allowed to tweet that this blog is automatically retweeted at Mastodon. And hosted here for the foreseeable future–Wordpress is celebrating 20 years of consistent performance this year. Federation and open source and owning your own words in a low-noise environment feels far more resilient than the alternative.]
Seth Godin--Little Screens and Productivity
https://seths.blog/2022/12/little-screens-and-productivity/
If you want reach and engagement, optimizing for small screens is usually the way to go. There are more mobile devices in the world than we can count, and large numbers of people spend their days consuming content from the palm of their hand.
But productivity? In just about every context I’m aware of, important work doesn’t come from large numbers of people looking for convenience, connection or a smile. It comes from committed individuals who are willing to sit and do the work.
As soon as you stop using a keyboard, you’re sending a signal about the focus you’re prepared to give to the work at hand.
Seth Godin--the reason search seems to get worse
https://seths.blog/2022/12/the-reasons-search-is-getting-worse/
Even with the powerful Ecosia engine, but especially with Google and Amazon, it’s getting rarer and rarer that a search feels as though it finds just the right site or product or information on the very first try. There are a few reasons for this:
Our expectations are higher. Even a good search doesn’t feel the way it used to. Amaze us a few times and we get hooked on being amazed. It’s tough to top the extraordinary results that we became used to. In the last two years, I’ve done 10,000+ searches on Ecosia, so it’s easy to get jaded.
The search engines are selling us out. They’ve discovered that selling ads to entities who lose at a given search is pretty profitable, so the non-organic results that are crowding out our searches are of course not as good as the ones we would have found for ‘free’.
The manufacturers of products and the creators of sites are getting better and better at gaming the search engines. Not just fake books on Amazon that pretend to be what you were after, but entire product lines and industries built with winning at search as their core competency. You see it in any media ecosystem where search is profitable. Organizations built on more, want more.
Lack of competition. Once a big organization wins at something, they shift their focus and work to profit from it, not improve it. Instead of fighting #3 and walking away from #2, the leaders at search are becoming complacent.
The subject lines on the stream of press releases coming my way tell the story of current trends in industrial technology. Cybersecurity remains the one constant as new companies pop up like mushrooms in the spring, and we all fear the next big hack may be on us. The past few years have witnessed the progression of Industry 4.0, BlockChain, 5G, Digital Twin, Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Metaverse. Today, every supplier is in the Digital Transformation parade.
Marc Benioff has said, "Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer, and I can see that in the minds of every CEO I talk to." Benioff sells customer relationship management software solutions. Duh.
Digital Transformation is the adoption of digital technology by an organization to digitize non-digital products, services, or operations, according to Wikipedia. The hoped-for benefits include that elusive state called innovation or customer experience, or efficiency.
I started on that digital path around 1977. My project began with inputting the Bills of Material for all of our products. Think boxes of punch cards. This base served cost accounting, finance, purchasing/inventory control, and engineering. I leased the IBM MRP II product. Took a deep dive into what is now called MES or MOM (depending upon your religion). IBM taught me the essentials of implementing digitalization. Everything they taught me then is true today. Get the people and processes right, then add computers.
Ten years later Eliyahu Goldratt told a story of bringing computers and operations management together in The Goal. Theory of Constraints remains valid even if we may have progressed (well, some of us).
Many companies have offered me tours of updated plants with their digital transformation journeys. This isn't magic. It's hard work--mostly getting everyone on board.
I hope you are well on your way. I further hope that your CEO didn't read an article and ask your boss to "get me one of those DX things" like in a Dilbert cartoon.
*****
Thought of the week from an old book:
Found in the The Inner Game of Tennis, "Your state of mind is at least as important as your physical fitness."
*****
Interesting links. And, yes, I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin.
Elon Musk Management Style
NYT https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/technology/elon-musk-management-style.html
It may seem obvious, to most people outside Silicon Valley, that Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter has been an unmitigated disaster.
In less than two months since taking over, Mr. Musk has fired more than half of Twitter’s staff, scared away many of its major advertisers, made (and unmade) a series of ill-advised changes to its verification program, angered regulators and politicians with erratic and offensive tweets, declared a short-lived war on Apple, greenlit a bizarre “Twitter Files” exposé, stopped paying rent on Twitter’s offices, and falsely accused the company’s former head of trust and safety of supporting pedophilia. His personal fortune has shrunk by billions of dollars, and he was booed at a Dave Chappelle show.
It’s not, by almost any measure, going well for him. And yet, one group is still firmly in Mr. Musk’s corner: Bosses.
Seth Godin--staring at decisions
https://seths.blog/2022/12/staring-at-decisions/
There are organizations that spend far more time discussing a new logo than analyzing where to place the new office. One is filled with emotion and no economic importance, the other is fuzzy, complicated and incredibly expensive.
Perhaps you’ve seen someone spend emotion and focus figuring out a tip to the penny, but impulsively use credit card debt to go on a fancy vacation.
Paul Graham -- the need to read
http://www.paulgraham.com/read.html
You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well. And I mean that last "well" in both senses. You have to be good at reading, and read good things.
People who just want information may find other ways to get it. But people who want to have ideas can't afford to.
Seth Godin--Slow Modems
https://seths.blog/2022/12/slow-modems/
If we cared enough, we could imagine a federated internet. One where the control and the power doesn’t lie with a single corporate titan with whims, with lock in and with spam, but with individuals showing up much more like we do in real life, owning our words and our data and our participation.
[PS I’m not currently allowed to tweet that this blog is automatically retweeted at Mastodon. And hosted here for the foreseeable future–Wordpress is celebrating 20 years of consistent performance this year. Federation and open source and owning your own words in a low-noise environment feels far more resilient than the alternative.]
Seth Godin--Little Screens and Productivity
https://seths.blog/2022/12/little-screens-and-productivity/
If you want reach and engagement, optimizing for small screens is usually the way to go. There are more mobile devices in the world than we can count, and large numbers of people spend their days consuming content from the palm of their hand.
But productivity? In just about every context I’m aware of, important work doesn’t come from large numbers of people looking for convenience, connection or a smile. It comes from committed individuals who are willing to sit and do the work.
As soon as you stop using a keyboard, you’re sending a signal about the focus you’re prepared to give to the work at hand.
Seth Godin--the reason search seems to get worse
https://seths.blog/2022/12/the-reasons-search-is-getting-worse/
Even with the powerful Ecosia engine, but especially with Google and Amazon, it’s getting rarer and rarer that a search feels as though it finds just the right site or product or information on the very first try. There are a few reasons for this:
Our expectations are higher. Even a good search doesn’t feel the way it used to. Amaze us a few times and we get hooked on being amazed. It’s tough to top the extraordinary results that we became used to. In the last two years, I’ve done 10,000+ searches on Ecosia, so it’s easy to get jaded.
The search engines are selling us out. They’ve discovered that selling ads to entities who lose at a given search is pretty profitable, so the non-organic results that are crowding out our searches are of course not as good as the ones we would have found for ‘free’.
The manufacturers of products and the creators of sites are getting better and better at gaming the search engines. Not just fake books on Amazon that pretend to be what you were after, but entire product lines and industries built with winning at search as their core competency. You see it in any media ecosystem where search is profitable. Organizations built on more, want more.
Lack of competition. Once a big organization wins at something, they shift their focus and work to profit from it, not improve it. Instead of fighting #3 and walking away from #2, the leaders at search are becoming complacent.
Gary