I read an article this morning about a World Bank sponsored project in Rwanda that plans to lay 2300km of optic fibre as part of an ongoing process for Rwanda to position itself as a regional ICT hub. I had an immediate flashback to a conversation I had recently with a London cabbie.  I thoroughly enjoy talking to cab drivers. They have a million stories if you’re prepared to listen.

We established, early in our journey, that the driver was from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and during the course of the journey we discussed Africa and our hopes for her future (as fellow Africans always do). I learned that as a child he had been awarded a UN grant for further education in nearby Zambia and he and a friend from his small village spent a few years schooling near Lusaka, returning to their village in the east of the country once the money ran out.

During one of the many civil upheavals at home they lost touch when his schoolmate was abducted and forced into one of the many militia groups in the area. Several years passed and the cabbie arrived in the UK as a refugee student where he met and married a fellow student, also from the DRC, and they settled here to build a new life and family.

Fast-forward a few years to the point when he bought his children a computer and started tinkering with it in his spare time. He discovered Skype and suddenly he was online and able to keep in touch with and talk to other members of his émigré family in Canada, the US and Australia.

One day he was about to initiate a call when up popped a tentative message to talk to a Rwandan, who said he knew him. He blanked this unsolicited contact for a week or two - a learned response from the maelstrom of his early life. Becoming increasingly intrigued by the repeated requests, he relented and posed the enquirer a few searching questions. The answers stunned him and he discovered that he was talking with his boyhood friend. Seemingly, he had escaped the clutches of the child army and after being caught up in the horror of the Rwandan genocide, had feared to return home, and was now resident in Rwanda. As an early beneficiary of a Rwandan project to improve the ICT capabilities of the nation he too ‘discovered’ Skype and set about ‘connecting’ to the world. 


So, good old Skype, although I retained the distinct impression that this Londoner still couldn’t quite believe it was his buddy.

Now if only I/we could get ‘the business’ to see how potentially connected we all are today and to realise that simply ‘joining the dots’ will draw a rich map of opportunity. They need to begin understand that it isn’t about technology. But it is about what you do with it.

And if you’re at all familiar with Blake then this opening slice of his Auguries of Innocence may just spring to mind:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Look for the dots. It’s a marvellously connected world.

The US elections are over. Thanks heavens for that. It will be quite exciting to discover what else is happening in the world.

I’ve lived the primaries, the campaigning and now the Big Day seemingly for months. I’ve heard the Palin drone, I know all about Joe the Plumber, I even know the voter turnout in Dixville Notch. Surely I’m at least entitled to a Green Card now.

What really fascinated me, though, was the extent to which technology influenced the whole Obama campaign and the way the President-elect used everything at his disposal in terms of social networking, databases, text messaging, email and online tools to help raise campaign funds (to the final extent of $650m) from three million networked donors and then continually motivated them to underpin his campaign and deliver his victory. The combination of his outstanding personal brand and the imaginative use of technology were unstoppable.

What a lesson this should be to business leaders around the world as we enter the dark days of recession and global uncertainty. Stop looking for reasons not to use technology. Get creative. Grab what technology can do for you with both hands.

Far, far more importantly, see what your IT staff can do WITH you to enhance your business processes, brand and service offerings; remembering always that it takes ‘two to tango’ and that it’s a joint responsibility led from the top to make this happen.

I saw a marvellous quote from Joe Trippi in an MIT campaign summary of these elections. He said: ” Even if you have all the smartest bottom-up, tech-savvy people working for you, if the candidate and the top of the campaign want to run a top-down campaign, there is nothing you can do. It will sit there and nothing will happen. That's kind of what happened with the Clinton campaign."

It seems appropriate to close with the Obama rallying call ‘YES WE CAN!’ (where have I heard that phrase before?)

There may be a quasi-scientific explanation behind a key handicap to successful IT/business integration. I, along with many of my compatriots in the IT arena, are victims of an obsessive compulsion to respond to very ordinary and everyday business requests or conversations with a stream of jargon and technical patois. 

I’ve just done it again today during a review meeting, but hopefully recovered in time to get my point across in a useful way. In complete fairness every unit/division in a business has created a jargon of its own but we in IT do it best - call it flair if you will.

If the real disorder wasn’t so vivid and unpleasant for its victims, I’d be inclined to label this compulsion Techie-Tourette’s as the IT “phonic tic” is mostly quite involuntary and potentially disabling to relationships; both business and personal.

Why we have developed this compulsion is beyond my limited comprehension but suffice it to say there is a cure and it’s painless. Just a little willpower and a pause for thought before we segue into a Captain Haddock-like “blistering Cat 5e &@*!” and “sea gherkin SQL load balancing odd-toed ungulates” when faced with a simple request like improving database performance on the LAN is all it takes.

Have we learnt to “tic” like this as a purely learned response to the constraints imposed by the cost centre mentality of the accountants or is it to maintain the “black art” of IT with its secret and inclusive jargon.? Answers on a postcard, please.

And so… “Beware the Jabberwock”, my friends. Don’t let it come whiffling through your tulgey wood. Even if your borogoves are all mimsy and the finance director looks a little like a frumious Bandersnatch.

Earlier this year I read a series of posts covering articles from the MIT Sloan School of Management and The Wall Street Journal which dealt with the causes and consequences of failures to align business and IT. One blogger took the stance - a little speciously in my view - that if you had to talk about business alignment then alignment in your organisation was already a problem. Frankly, the only time I see a doctor about my health is when I have an issue with it.

But he and the other strands did raise a very powerful point and one that is particularly dear to my heart. It’s not about alignment, per se, the core issue is integration. IT is part of the business. A key and core part of any business today whether you are dealing with the pure utilitarian delivery of the base services – such as file, print, authentication, email and so on - or the innovative use of the technical infrastructure to make money.

If I remember correctly there were three main points raised that would drive integration between business and IT.

•    Build/train awareness and technology literacy in the business management of the company.
•    Give your IT leaders and incipient leaders a clear understanding of the business and its aims/strategy together with core education in business skills
•    Get yourself a CIO who has fundamental business skills and awareness but who also walks and talks “techie” with his staff and is respected for his ability

And I’d like to add a fourth.

•    Accept no excuses as to why this can’t or shouldn’t happen. Make it a key metric on performance reviews and for objective setting at the highest level.

And then folks, create a compensation structure for IT that matches that of the business in terms of potential earnings related to business activities that they engender, support and deliver. Money and rewards will soon align and integrate and have everybody dancing to the same tune.

Trust me - I'm a choreographer.

Have you got a “technical” alignment strategy up your tightly-buttoned sleeve? Is it a biggie? Is it going to float that business boat? Or will it hole your reputation below the water.

I’ve got a score or more of them – software-as-a-service, business process outsourcing, innovation, service-oriented architecture, transformation, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social networking, consumer technology, offshoring, outsourcing, ERP, CRM, personalisation, “nowcasting”, real-time, green IT, mobile workforce, convergence, engagement, telepresence and so on. They sound lovely. They just roll off the tongue; almost mellifluous and filled with hidden promise (I really must medicate more regularly).

I am bombarded daily with what I should be doing with them. I should be doing all of these things, apparently, right now, or I should even have done them last year. Gartner, Forrester, Harvard, Wharton all tell me so - as do a thousand salesmen. A thousand analysts and a thousand blogs can’t be wrong, surely?

So questions, questions, questions first; even before we discover the budget cupboard is bare. Does it align with the strategy the business has defined going forward - always providing there is one. Will it give you a return on investment? Will it make the business stronger? Can the business absorb and, more importantly, use the technology as a differentiator and add to the bottom line? Is there an appetite to change or a truly justified need to force change? Or is it just another technology fad destined to be a millstone of legacy around your corporate neck in 2010?

Answers on a postcard, please or - do what I just did and break out your favourite lucky number. I just pressed 27 on the Random Aligment Strategy Tool and it says: “A chief executive is not just for Christmas”. Forget everything I just said because I’m going to love my chief exec. Not a bad alignment strategy at all. Not only does he hold the purse strings and the business strategy but he also controls the pathway to the main board and is the embodiment of the values and success of my company. If I can get close to him, understand what makes him tick and align my technology to his vision, then we’ll be an absolutely lethal combination.

Now if I can just find a way to sneak past his PA...