From Left to Right

This week I’ve been attending the Pink Elephant annual conference here in Las Vegas. As always they run a fun packed event, this year with over 2,000 delegates. The Keynote this morning was from Dan Pink (yes I know – how did they manage to get an inspirational speaker named Mr Pink?). Dan has authored a book entitled “A whole new mind” and even Tom Peter’s described this book as “a miracle”. Really some insightful thinking of how the 1st world is moving and the sort of thinking we need to have to succeed. Moving from the analytic process driven “left” side which recognises and processes repeatable liner tasks which can be automated or outsourced, to the more creative, empathetic, orchestrated thinking. Dan mentioned leaders like Michael Dell who now says they are in the Fashion industry as desktops and laptop become commodities we all have already (think of Apple’s new slim!). We are all heavy consumers with all we really need and more, yet we are driven to buy again and again based on design. Actually Dan showed the storage industry with its $22billion annual turnover, greater than the film industry, for storing the excess we all now have. Most of the audience has 2 or more cars they owned. Why do we change them when they deliver the task they were designed for, getting you from A to B quickly and with little effort in comfort. We change them for “ a better design” or more enhancements.  Even the our toothpaste is “designed”.

So to remain relevant and to survive in the current and next economic environment we need to be more “right” mind thinking, expanding the things we as humans do that are difficult to automate or outsource, like empathy for sales and services. Recognising facial expressions is more powerful to Sales today, then understanding the process of selling.

Hopefully some of this makes sense to you, it did to me, another reason why in ITIL it covers more of the Strategy and Design phases, elements are they difficult to automate and outsource, relationship management of suppliers and partners becomes more prominent too. It all makes sense and we need to be aware or we will be “optional”, in the words of Accenture’s CEO, “How do we become not optional?” this is the new survival technique. We in IT need to start thinking in this new way, becoming part of the business, as well as supporting it. We need that empathy with our customers, and to design more with the right brain, to ensure we are not optional.

Off on holiday now for 10days, hopefully when I return I’ll have to stories to relay.