Why innovate? What I learned from a wise CTO in Dallas.

[dturchin]

Why lead? Why innovate? Why catalyze while others react? Here's what I learned last week in Dallas…

I had the pleasure of presenting our roadmap to 150 new friends at our loud, proud, Texas-sized Dallas user group. Thank you American Airlines for hosting. As is usually the case, I shared a little and learned a lot.

The crescendo of the trip was a meeting with one of our most enthusiastic, experienced customers. It started with a discussion about their plans for Software Asset Management and a custom ServiceNow app they're developing to manage disaster recovery plans. Then we got to the good stuff. They showed me the winning submission from an internal hack-a-thon they recently hosted. It inspired me to share their story with the rest of our community.

Semi-related anecdote… Janet, their CTO, agreed to let ServiceNow submissions compete alongside entries developed on incumbent platforms: SharePoint and .NET. The ServiceNow teams met all the requirements in two hours that the other teams couldn't meet in 12. Then as if to gloat the winning ServiceNow team of three extended their app to integrate with the national weather service, Google Maps, and CAD-based facility blueprints. That took another hour. Let's just say once dropped jaws were peeled off the pavement many .NET developers had queued up outside HR to…well, acquire new skills.

I asked Janet why she was sponsoring hack-a-thons and developing custom apps when most of her peers are consumed by KTLO (keep the lights on) activities. Where does she find time for innovation? She told me that's not how she views the charter of IT. Her charter is to create compelling user experiences with technology. Innovate first. Inspire. Motivate. Empower. KTLO isn't an IT task on a Gantt chart. In a culture of collaboration, everyone heads for the breaker box when the lights flicker. And everyone takes responsibility for maintaining and enhancing technology infrastructure.

Case in point as explained by Janet's VP of Operations: disaster recovery isn't an IT project. It isn't a facilities or a risk management or a security project. It's a business project championed by cross-org sponsors with the goal of maintaining service quality and increasing competitiveness. In an industry with brutal margins where customer loyalty is measured by pennies and millisecond page loads, ensuring uptime in a hurricane translates into tens of millions of dollars in profit gained or lost per minute.

From Dallas to San Jose I thought about what Janet taught me. I learned more in an hour with her than I did in whole semesters from Drucker or Collins or Deming. So Janet, thanks. Everyone else, that hack-a-thon spec is on the way. I love Dallas but I'm determined to make sure Janet's wisdom doesn't stay there.