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The View From Here: Forbes, IBM Get it Right–But Don’t Go Deep Enough

January 27, 2009

There is a lot of interesting content in the two-part interview with of Steve Mills, the senior vice president and group executive for the IBM, that Forbes ran on January 19 and 26.

Mills stresses that companies need an information agenda. He then runs through the benefits of having one and the dangers of not. The points he makes is that business has gotten far more complex, that there is a blizzard of stored content and that companies that don’t figure out how to immediately find what they need are in trouble.

These are all good points, of course. So what is wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong is that this is a senior executive of one of the most important and tech-centric companies in the United States is telling an editor from one of the top business magazines that wearing seat belts saves lives, that smoking is dangerous and that it is a good idea to wear a coat in February in Buffalo.

There always is a disconnect between the perceptions of people who do something 24×7 and those who parachute in for a few minutes and move onto something else. I don’t know much about brakes. But every time my mechanic tells me that I need new ones, he doesn’t feel the need to explain to me that they are the part of the car designed to stop its motion. I’m a generalist and he’s a specialist, but we are on the same page.

But a lot of what is in the interview is — or should be — second nature to C-level executives. I think that Mills and the editor who did the interview misjudged. There is a lot of interesting information in the interview, but the basic theme – “This is a problem that you need to pay attention to” – is a bit patronizing. High- and mid-level executives have been wrestling with data issues for decades.

It is no longer necessary to make the case that organizations must modernize their business intelligence and data analytics. CEOs and CFOs get that, at the conceptual level. They know that the amount of data an organization collects is increasing by orders of magnitude, and that those that don’t meet the challenge head-on are in trouble.

Posted by Carl · Filed Under Business Intelligence 

Comments

One Response to “The View From Here: Forbes, IBM Get it Right–But Don’t Go Deep Enough”

  1. James Parnitzke on January 27th, 2009 10:46 am

    Agreed. The “dumbing down” of thought leadership at these levels, is, well astonishing - and far too common. Please spare us the “duckies and goats” vision of the world and start demonstrating the insight and vision that you were retained for - oh, I almost forgot, this would mean solving for real challenges and less about building personal brand - too risky I guess for a senior executive. Better to play it safe and remind us the sky is blue, “,,, wearing seat belts saves lives, that smoking is dangerous and that it is a good idea to wear a coat in February in Buffalo”. Well done, thanks for saying out loud what many of us must have been thinking when reading this interview.

    -jdp

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