by Kevin Jackson & Dez Blanchfield
Early in the discussion, Max shared an
anecdote about how his Grandmother’s personalized retelling of a Jean-Jacques Rousseau's tale circa mid-1700’s, about a group of hunters who elected to collaborate while
tracking a large stag, rather than operate
independently, influenced him throughout his career. He also recounted how he enjoyed
a similarly defining experience working with Michael H. Jordon when the venerable leader was Chairman and
CEO of EDS.
Throughout the conversation three endearing
characteristics stood out about Max Michaels as a thought leader and innovator
- they were:
- The extent to which he values good business judgment
- Successes he has earned through unorthodox thinking
- The critical converging of the IT and networking world
His unorthodox way of thinking was very
effectively put into practice while at
McKinsey, when in 1996 he led a three-person team, one among some 300 teams worldwide,
to win a company-wide competition to generate new client-ready knowledge ideas
called the McKinsey Worldwide Practice Olympics. Ranked #1 among 300+ McKinsey
teams by showing how to
apply the Black-Scholes option trading model to any strategic situation. The critical financial insight behind the
Black-Scholes model is that it “eliminates risk” by showing how to buy and sell
an underlying asset in just the right way. At McKinsey, Mr. Michaels showed how
the identification of the right issues leads
to correct strategic actions.
The insight displayed by this win is
that the business world is not directly
comparable to the financial world. When you invest
by buying stock in the financial world, you may have
little direct input into what happens to make the stock goes up or down. The
business world is entirely different in that when you invest in a new product, strategy or marketing plan, the investor has a continuing opportunity to
change the outcome, based on customer perception and preferences change. Throughout
the conversation in this episode of the Pioneers of Possible podcast series, this
approach to driving successful outcomes turns out to be key to Max Michaels’
leadership style at IBM Network Services, and the genius behind the “Always-on Initiative,” designed to help enterprises support the
always-on nature of day-to-day business. The network is the enabling capability for “Always-on”
and serves as a foundational element to the convergence between information
technology (IT) world and telecommunications (telecom).
Before this trend took hold, companies
ran IT and telecom networks separately and with separate leadership teams. With
the intuition gained earlier, Mr. Michaels is now helping IBM customers move away
from focusing on IT outcomes and move towards a converged business outcome. This approach, in turn, changes business
models in ways which makes it possible for organizations
to better leverage the convergence of IT and telecom, both within and external
to their organizations.
According to Max, the average person in
the US is interacting with the network for 16 hours a day. Businesses, therefore, need to deliver their products and
services to these individuals through the network. Modern business models rely on the network to
facilitate seamless connectivity and the convergence of cloud, the new model
for delivering IT, and telecom. Networks enable the cloud, and in the
next phase of the evolution of digital business and digital transformation,
where the cloud, in turn, becomes the network. IBM as a cloud company is
leading the way.
This very paradigm is in effect the
same core driver behind the transformative effect the cognitive capabilities of
IBM
Watson has when
incorporated into the network and the cloud, an effect as positively disruptive
as a driver of change on how we all experience the world around us, both in
business and in life. Through the lens of network service, this overarching principal also
heightens the importance of network and cloud convergence. The explosion of
data the world has experienced over the recent decade has increased the demand
for everything to be software-defined, so that compute, storage and networks can all
combine into a single entity which provides value to the end user. Network virtualization and software-defined infrastructure are
dramatically and fundamentally changing the entire enterprise managed services
world and that, in essence, is the definition of the IBM Service Platform with
Watson delivers.
Please enjoy this episode of the podcast series. We look forward to your feedback and comments
through social media as we continue our journey to introduce you to leading IBM
innovators and thought leaders.
This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit ITBizAdvisor.
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