Competing in Time
by Peter G. W. Keen

[note: The following are excerpts from COMPETING IN TIME by
Peter G.W. Keen (Ballinger, Cambridge, MA, 1986) and are
reprinted here with permission.]

In a wide range of industries, it is already clear that the
corporate telecommunications infrastructure is a business asset
whose quality and availability will have more than peripheral
impact on any Fortune 500 company's economic health in the late
1980s. This means that many firms who did not recognize this
by the early 1980s will have to move fast to avoid being
preempted.

In the late 1970s it generally made more sense to follow than
to lead. The costs and problems involved in introducing new
systems were too often higher than the likely payoffs from
pioneering in new business territory. The risks are now in the
other direction and at the very least firms need to ask what is
the communications base they need for defensive necessity, if
not for competitive opportunity.

Change the organization; change the nature of work
==================================================

Telecommunications is intrinsically linked to organizational
change. As with almost every aspect of computer-related
technologies, the organizational issues are likely to be far
more difficult to tackel than the technical ones. The scale
and pace of change are apparent in the ratio of workstations to
people in large firms. In 1984 it was about 1 for every 20
workers in the United States. It was closer to 1 to 3 in
leading companies in information-intensive industries like
banking and insurance and information-intensive functions in
manufacturing firms, such as finance and customer service.
Most of them have reached a 1 to 2 or even a 1 to 1 ratio.

This represents an immense change in the nature of work.

It is impossible to cost-justify business innovation. Of
course costs are an essential concern, but they have to ve
viewed in the context of the economics of doing business over
the middle to long term and not in terms of direct cost savings
and accounting mechanisms for allocating expenditures to user
budgets.

Postpone the decision and lose
==============================

Using the rough rule of thumb that it takes 18 months to
implement any significant project involving telecommunications,
three to five years to imitate someone else's business
innovation that relies on communications, and five to seven to
build the communications, processing, data infrastructure from
scratch, this means it may soon be too late to affect 1990.

Sincerity is no substitute for technique. The best
organizations are sincerely doing their best to broaden their
planning base. But sincerity just isn't enough. Technique
comes from:

* systematic cross-fertilization between the information
technology unit and the wider organization.

* using consultants and academics to bring in new knowledge
and avoid personal obsolescence, to provide an integrating
perspective, and to help educate and advise senior
managers.

* hiring, growing, and retaining good talent.

Pay attention and follow through
================================

Advancing beyond limited pilots and localized applications is a
problem in office technology. It is very easy in a pilot
system to get immediate benefits, which if extrapolated to
cover the whole organization would add up to a considerable
improvement in effectiveness and efficiency. The figures are
valid but they are not realized in fullscale implementation.
The problem is rarely the technology. It is more usually
"behavioral," which really means inappropriate design and
implementation, lack of attention to human issues, lack of felt
need. The system may seem like a solution for which there is
no real problem if there is no clear business message and
policy from the top. The introduction of new office technology
has been marked by organizational tinkering. Firms cannot
tinker their way into major organizational change and
consequent competitive advantage, unfortunately.

Top management
==============

In every single step, there has to be top management commitment
and involvement. The issue is not one of time but attention;
in most instances senior managers have to provide direction,
unblock constraints, send signals, and approve or supply
resources. They can then get out of the way and let others get
on with the more lengthy process of planning and implementation.

They do not have to spend much time. They do have to pay
attention.

They also need to make sure that their business message is
communicated and understood. That needs education. Almost a
prerequisite for pushing commitment down through the
organizaiton and mobilizing the interest and ability of people
at all levels is strategic education. This is not the same as
training.

Education must make the abstractions of the technology concrete
and meaningful. To lead change (unlike training which follows
it), education has to be pervasive and sustained so that people
have the vocabulary, the understanding of the business message,
and the insight into the planning process to be meaningfully
"involved" and "committed." It has to have clear behavioral
objectives. The issue is not what people at different levels
of the organization - including top management - need to know,
but what they must do.

Build a shared vision
=====================

Shift the focus and terms of debate for telecommunications from
technology to business, and from cost to benefit.

Provide a forum for sharing views and building momentum and
consensus and bring business people directly into what has up
to now been a technical debate.

Send the message across, down, and up the organization.

Develop technically literate managers
=====================================

The problem is not simply one of the limited supply of bright,
educated, motivated people, nor the salary. Over time, the
market will alleviate if not eliminate the shortage. A far
greater problem is that while a firm can go out into the market
and bid up the price for first-rate technical talent,
organizational experience has to be built not bought.
Telecommunications for business strategy involves building the
human equivalient of a wine collection. The intellectual crop
of 1986 may be the best since 1888. But the wine has to mature
for years.

On the whole, telecommunications and information systems
organizations have been defined more in terms of tasks than
roles: projects, specialist skills, technical niches, and
responsibility for specific applications. The key themes in
organizing information systems have related to building systems
and running operations.

The new roles relate far more to marketing, communicating,
supporting, and planning.

Accept the adventure
====================

There is an old Confucian curse: "May you live in interesting
times." Telecommunications ushers in an intensely interesting
time for all large firms. Telecommunications is a whole new
arena where business imagination combined with understanding of
just a few aspects of what the technology can do opens up
entirely new ways of thinking about customers, markets,
productivity, coordination, service, competition, products, and
organization.

Telecommunications is about competition, innovation, risk, and
uncertainty. That is an opportunity that all senior managers
should welcome.

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author's note: Peter G.W. Keen is executive director of the
International Center for Information Technologies, 2000 M
Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036 (202-659-1314) and Premier
House, 10 Greycoat Place, London SW1P1SB, UK (01-222-8866).