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Joe Aoun, an Ann Arbor attorney, led an unsuccessful challenge to a Blue Cross rate hike for 189,000 individual customers.
About the Blues
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan was created by a 1939 state law to offer companies and consumers a way to pay doctor and hospital bills. It started with a $10,000 loan from the Michigan State Medical Society and operated in space provided by the state's hospital association. It had 175,000 members within a year of opening.
Blue Cross is the state's insurer of last resort â meaning it must accept all applicants, though it can require people with pre-existing health problems to wait six months for coverage for those conditions.
The insurer, like other health plans, signs contracts with hospitals and doctors offices to provide care at negotiated rates.
Blue Cross has grown to 4.1 million members, nearly half of all people in the state who buy insurance. But its more than $3-billion surplus and purchases the company and its subsidiaries have made for other insurance companies have raised scrutiny of its business practices.
Allegations at a glance
In their lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox allege that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan:
• Forced 70 Michigan hospitals to agree to give the best deals on prices to the Blues and charge other insurers more. That drove up costs to the other companies and their customers and drove out competition.
• Made the biggest hospitals take the worst deals.They not only had to give Blue Cross the prices it sought but the company also required the hospitals to charge other insurance companies 39% more than what Blue Cross paid.
• Told 45 smaller hospitals it would slash reimbursement payments by 16% if they did not agree to give them the best deal.
Other challenges
Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has been actively involved challenging rate hikes and acquisitions of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan for several years. They include:
A pending challenge by Cox, initiated by the Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation to a rate hike request filed by the Blues to increase monthly premiums an average of 15% for people 19 to 64 who purchased insurance on their own. Status: A hearing will be held at a yet-unscheduled date this fall.
An investigation that stopped the proposed purchase by Blue Care Network, a Blue Cross subsidiary, of Physicians Health Plan of Mid-Michigan, a health insurance plan serving nine mid-state counties. Status: The U.S. Justice Department joined Cox in investigating the purchase, which led to a separate investigation of the Blues' purchasing contracts with Michigan hospitals.
Millions of Michigan consumers have paid higher health insurance premiums over the last three years because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan forced at least 70 hospitals statewide to charge its competitors more, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by the U.S. Justice Department and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox.
The antitrust lawsuit alleges that Blue Cross -- the state's largest insurer -- used its muscle and size to negotiate deep discounts for itself.
• PDF: Blue Cross Blue Shield statement on lawsuit
• PDF: Cox's statement on lawsuit against Blue Cross Blue Shield
The hospitals include Beaumont Hospitals, St. John Providence Health System and Botsford Hospital. The lawsuit alleges that the practice drove up prices for competitors such as Health Alliance Plan, one of the state's biggest health maintenance organizations, and at-large private insurers such as Aetna and Humana.
In some cases, Blue Cross paid hospitals more than what was proposed to close the deal, the Justice Department alleges. If it prevails, other insurers and their customers might get better deals on hospital prices.
In a statement, Blue Cross spokesman Andrew Hetzel said the insurer's negotiated discounts keep costs reasonable for its members. He said the lawsuit was "without merit."
The Justice Department has won five similar cases since 1994 in Ohio, Rhode Island, Oregon, Washington, D.C., and Arizona.
Suit against Blue Cross could have significant repercussions
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan was so eager to crush the competition that it sometimes paid even more than it proposed if a hospital agreed to charge other insurance companies much higher prices, state and federal attorneys charged Monday in a lawsuit filed in Detroit's federal court.
Beaumont Hospitals, a three-hospital system based in Royal Oak, for example, charged Blue Cross competitors at least 25% more than it charged the Blues. The same happened at all of the Detroit-area hospitals in the St. John Providence Health System and more than 65 others around the state.
Michigan insurance industry leaders say the lawsuit could have a major impact on hospital service pricing.
The lawsuit "clearly identifies an issue that appears to have been impeding other carriers to compete," said Rick Murdock, executive director of the Michigan Association of Health Plans, which represents several dozen health plans in the state. "The association always has stood for creating affordable health care policies and a level playing field."
The U.S. Justice Department and Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox allege Blue Cross has been wielding its influence with more than half of the state's hospitals since 2007, when it started offering most-favored nation clauses, which gives preferential treatment to certain hospitals. They are seeking an injunction.
Blues spokesman Andrew Hetzel said the deals date back years to when the company was created by the state's Legislature to help companies and consumers pay for costly hospital and doctor bills. "The Blues delivers billions in savings to its customers" as a result, Hetzel said.
He said the lawsuit would "deny millions of Michigan residents the lowest cost possible when they visit the hospital."
Blue Cross, with 4.1 million customers, is the state's largest insurance company. It provides coverage for nearly half of all of the people in the state with insurance, either through work or self purchases. The company has $3 billion in reserves, which is within the range allowed by state law and within industry standards.
Critics say Blue Cross has not passed enough of its discounts on to its customers, choosing instead to add to its reserve fund, contribute to political campaigns or give big paychecks to its top executives. At the same time, they have sought rate hikes, critics say.
"All they do is claim poverty," said Larry Barnett, 55, of Southfield, who pays $340 a month for what he calls a bare-bones Blues policy. Barnett has called and written the state's insurance commissioner repeatedly since 2007 complaining about rate hikes. He said his policy has been increased 25% in nearly five years. He wishes more of the discounts were passed to customers, he said.
Joe Aoun, an Ann Arbor attorney who led an unsuccessful challenge in 2007 to a Blue Cross rate hike for 189,000 individual customers, said the rate hikes the Blues have sought for more than three years for both its Medigap and individual plans shows that the negotiated deals don't help control costs.
"The Blues cannot hide behind the argument that this type of clause helps control costs," Aoun said. "If that were the case, premiums would not be increasing by double digits and the Blues would not be sitting on $3 billion in surplus."
Blue Cross argues that because it is the only insurer in the state that must accept all applicants, it is stuck with finding ways to provide care for some of the sicker people in Michigan. Rate hikes it has sought follow years of keeping premiums low and big increases in medical care, the company said.
Nearly 70 Michigan hospitals cooperated in the investigation. But when reached for comment, Beaumont Hospitals, Sparrow Hospital in Lansing and St. John Providence Health System in Warren all declined comment, saying only they provided some information to state and federal investigators.
Health Alliance Plan, a major Detroit-area competitor of the Blues, referred calls to the Michigan Association of Health Plans, which represents health maintenance organizations like HAP in the state.
If the suit prevails, hospitals will have to look at how they shift costs to pay for care, an issue that's coming with federal health reforms that aim to create a public, accountable system to track prices, Murdock said. "It could have major repercussions."


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Posts from December 2011
Our Christmas Show
by Paige Blog
posted Dec 22 2011 2:28PM
Here are some highlights from this mornings show. Strip dreidel with Zack Brown, Fatboy, Matt, Jeff, and Nine. Nine lost! P1 Zenny sent us these beautiful wreaths. The little angels are showing some holiday spirit.
Snooping Makes You Fat
by Paige Blog
posted Dec 12 2011 2:18PM
Here's a study that I thought you might like. If you like going through your significant other's phone and email, quit it. It can make you fat. A study found that people who spy on loved ones tend to gain weight because of stress. It's because snooping makes you worry about your relationship. It's stressful because people who snoop worry about covering their tracks. These people are worried about their relationship. Their mind is in a constant state of heightened arousal. Stress can lead to emotional over eating. It can also trigger the production of cortisol, which is the hormone that can increase your appetite. It's hard enough to stay away for the cake and cookies during the Holiday Season.
Psychologists advise that if you have the urge to check up on someone, you should ask yourself what you are worried about. If you don't stalk your mate's Face book page and cell phone, then you won't stuff your face.
12 Days of Axemas
by Paige Blog
posted Dec 8 2011 7:19AM
Here are some of the guitars I gave away last year. I am excited about going up to Hendersonville on Friday at the Octopus Garden 4:30 to 6:30 to give away a Buck Cherry Signed Guitar. You can get all of the details of the 12 Days of Axemas
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Tis The Season
by Paige Blog
posted Dec 4 2011 9:50PM
During headlines this past week here are a few of my favorite holiday stories.
The first story was about Mall Santa's who are trying to lower kid's expectation because of the lousy economy. The Santa's Claus School in Michigan is providing tainting to teach prospective Santa's to quickly size up a family's financial status. That way, they can lower expectations for the kids that sit on their lap...because their parents may not be able to afford what they ask for. They are taught to say "Santa's cutting back too." They are also trained to handling tough request like, Can you help get my Daddy a job?
How hard is it for retailers during a lousy economy? Check out the latest figures from The National Association of Shoplifting Prevention. I was shocked to find out that one out of every eleven people who walks into a store shoplifts something. Shoplifting is up 6% compared to last year. So, think of the crowds at Christmas time. This year retailers are set to lose $119 Billion this year to shoplifting. That's 1.45% of the total sales.
Here is the breakdown:
Only 3% of shoplifters are professionals.
70% of althea shoplifters didn't go to the store planning to steal merchandise, but decided takes something.
75% of shoplifters are adults, and most of them have jobs. 35% of shoplifters have help from a corrupt employee.
Did you hear about Leatrice Ann Eng? ("Grinch") She is a teacher from New York, who angered a lot of parents when she reportedly told a classroom of second-graders that Santa Claus doesn't exist. She is a teacher at Nanuet's Elementary School. On Tuesday, Leatrice was teaching a geography lesson , when her 7 year old students said they knew about the North Pole because that is where Santa lives. She responded by telling the children that Santa did not exist and presents were bought by their parents. She has since apologized to the parents.
This is my favorite picture from last year. Merry Twisted Christmas.
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text: We're featuring families over at coNectar! As an incentive for the time spent filling out the interview questions, we're giving every family a chance to win a stroller up to $250! The focus isn't the giveaway, but celebrating families. Families with children of all ages are welcomed to submit. I do hope to feature your family, soon! A winning family will be chosen on December 15th!


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2000 Ford Escort • 75,000 miles
And I have to refill the coolant quite alot. I have had to refil the coolant 4 times in the past week. I cant find a leak so I dont know where it is going. Also I have some excess smoke and water comming out. Coolant for the radiator runs out after a couple of days. Heaters stop workiing when run dry. Smoke and water is comming out the exuast. Sometimes the car is quite shakey when first started. Temperature quage goes to red when water is all gone and can go all over the place somtimes. And when driving along with my foot gently on the accellerator it jerks a little bit.
April 26, 2012.
April 26, 2012.
You have done internal damage from constant overheating. The head gasket is bad and possibly the head may be cracked. I would not drive it till you get it looked at and fixed.
Apr 26, 2012.
Apr 26, 2012.
My car has 157k on it and the coolant light came on today flashing i looked at the resivoir and it was empty filled it up and then later on that day it was empty again i looked at the ...
1 answer • 1996 Saturn SC2 • 157,000 miles
Dear SIR. Now I have some question to ask you. 1 How can i change (step)water coolant? 2 How much 1 lite oil per kilometre? 3 How can i maintain moonroof? Thanks so much
1 answer • 2006 Honda Accord • 40,000 miles
1992 Ford Tempo mileage: 65,000. My daughter has a 1992 Ford Tempo that she has been driving for about 4 years. She is very conscientious in regularly changing oil, and routinely having...
1 answer • 1992 Ford Tempo • 65,000 miles
This is about "Red" antifreeze, it's harmful attributes to engine gaskets and corrosion to all parts of the cooling and heating systems. I noticed that comments have been made on ...
1 answer • 2000 Chevrolet S-10 • 71,000 miles


text:
Entries in 'fifa' (38)
FIFA rules New Year and Christmas charts
The FIFA 14 comeback is complete, as EA's football title is Christmas and New Year No.1.
Next-gen FIFA 'is the best we have ever made'
Electronic Arts says FIFA 2014 on Xbox One and PS4 is the best football game it has ever made.
FIFA 14 street date broken in Slovenia
While Britons patiently wait until tonight's midnight launches for EA Sports' hotly anticipated blockbuster, some Europeans have already got their hands on it.
VideoGamer firm launches new sports games site
Sportra, a website dedicated to sports video games, is now live.
Tesco opening 750 stores at midnight for FIFA 14 launch
Supermarket behemoth Tesco has detailed its promotional plans for the launch of FIFA 14.
Gareth Bale remains FIFA 14 cover star
Winger Gareth Bale will remain the cover star of FIFA 14, despite his £85.3m transfer from Tottenham to Real Madrid.
EA wants to gauge interest in possible women's football inclusion in future FIFA titles
You think that women's football should be a feature of future FIFA titles? Then let EA know.
MCV's first - and free - Gamescom show daily is online now
The very first MCV Gamescom daily magazine is available now.
FIFA 14 demo gets solid release date
FIFA fans will be able to try out this year's iteration of the UK's best-selling video games franchise in just a few weeks.
FIFA goes free-to-play on mobile and PC
This year's mobile version of FIFA will be free-to-play, EA has announced.
Rejection, tragedy and billions of dollars - The story of FIFA
"EA didn't give a shit about FIFA."
EA: Current-gen sports games pre-orders are "soft" owing to nearing next-gen
Publisher EA has predicted a slight dip in annual sales of its key sports IPs thanks to the upcoming transition to next-gen consoles.
Gareth Bale scores FIFA 14 cover 'honour'
Spurs winger and PFA player of the year Gareth Bale will join Barcelona's Lionel Messi on the front of fIFA 14.


text:
Eldwood Robert Rowley
Position: LB
Height: 6-2 Weight: 235 lbs.
Born: September 16, 1941 in Somerset, PA
High School: Fort Hill
College: Virginia (school history)
Weighted Career AV (100-95-...): 5 (9170th overall since 1950)
Sponsor this page for $5 and help Pro-Football-Reference.com provide this service. Your message will replace this ad.
1963 Game Log: Regular Season · Playoffs · vs.


text:
PrivaZer cleans your PC in-depth and removes unwanted traces of your activities at home or at work. You can see what can be recovered of your past activities and securely clean traces to get a PC PrivaZer cleans your PC and your external devices. PrivaZer is a smart cleaning tool that helps you master your security and freedom, free up disk space and keep your PC fit and secure.
Reviewing 2.34.1 (Jul 24, 2015)
now it killed quick access in windows 10 had to restore from a backup
Reviewing 2.27.0 (Feb 17, 2015)
It's far,far more than a reg cleaner, it cleans traces from browsers, free space MTF & more, a good companion to CCleaner & worth getting the donors version.
Reviewing 2.27.0 (Feb 16, 2015)
very nice freeware, gets into all the nooks and crannies and a good companion program for the likes of ccleaner
Reviewing 2.26.1 (Feb 4, 2015)
I do not see an option for Classic Menu in the ini!
PrivaZer does more harm than good!
it is just another reg cleaner
Reviewing 2.26.1 (Feb 4, 2015)
I presume because you choose to delete it in the options.
No comments yet


text:
1997 Chevrolet Truck • 117 miles
It's a 350 vortec I replaced injector spider and doin the same thing idles high and when I first start the truck it starts right up when I shut it off and try to restart it it just cranks until I hold the throttle wide open. It's like it glides it self or sum thin any suggestions
April 3, 2013.
April 3, 2013.
Ohm check ECT also check terminal and wiring can leak coolant into wire. Ohms should be high cold and drop pff as warmed. If ohms stay high say 9K or higher then ECM gets cold engine signal and will rich fuel mix causing p[roblem
Apr 3, 2013.
Apr 3, 2013.
My car has 157k on it and the coolant light came on today flashing i looked at the resivoir and it was empty filled it up and then later on that day it was empty again i looked at the ...
1 answer • 1996 Saturn SC2 • 157,000 miles
Dear SIR. Now I have some question to ask you. 1 How can i change (step)water coolant? 2 How much 1 lite oil per kilometre? 3 How can i maintain moonroof? Thanks so much
1 answer • 2006 Honda Accord • 40,000 miles
1992 Ford Tempo mileage: 65,000. My daughter has a 1992 Ford Tempo that she has been driving for about 4 years. She is very conscientious in regularly changing oil, and routinely having...
1 answer • 1992 Ford Tempo • 65,000 miles
This is about "Red" antifreeze, it's harmful attributes to engine gaskets and corrosion to all parts of the cooling and heating systems. I noticed that comments have been made on ...
1 answer • 2000 Chevrolet S-10 • 71,000 miles


text:
David Linthicum pointed out this gem from IBM's Bobby Wolfe that admits, openly, that you cannot buy a product and then, magically, get a SOA out of it. Hooray! Microsoft has been trying to tell people for years that SOA is not a product, it is a way of building.
The fact that this message is coming from Bobby Wolfe, co-author of the landmark book Enterprise Integration Patterns, is indicative. Common sense is much more refreshing than marketing noise.
Wolfe goes on to explain what you get when you buy a product without thinking about SOA:
"The problem is this: An ESB by itself produces no business value. An ESB is a means to an end, not the end itself. An ESB is like the electrical wiring or plumbing of an SOA. Plumbing does not produce value; sinks with water coming out of their faucets do. Wiring does not produce value; lights, especially lights connected to switches, are valuable. A road is not valuable except that it enables you to get from one point to another. An ESB without an SOA is like a road from someplace nobody is located going to other places nobody wants to be. People might eventually want to go to those places, but in the meantime, the road is all cost and no benefit."
"The problem is this: An ESB by itself produces no business value. An ESB is a means to an end, not the end itself. An ESB is like the electrical wiring or plumbing of an SOA. Plumbing does not produce value; sinks with water coming out of their faucets do. Wiring does not produce value; lights, especially lights connected to switches, are valuable. A road is not valuable except that it enables you to get from one point to another. An ESB without an SOA is like a road from someplace nobody is located going to other places nobody wants to be. People might eventually want to go to those places, but in the meantime, the road is all cost and no benefit."
Bobby Wolfe calls this style "ESB-Oriented Architecture," a term that David Linthicum warns is "not an Architecture." To quote David Linthicum:
"The truth seems to finally be coming out…you can't buy a SOA. Indeed, SOA is something you do, and an ESB is not an architecture, it's a mere instance of technology."
"The truth seems to finally be coming out…you can't buy a SOA. Indeed, SOA is something you do, and an ESB is not an architecture, it's a mere instance of technology."
I agree with David Linthicum on this. There is no such animal as ESB-Oriented Architecture. So while I'm pointing out the strengths of this article, let's all agree not to create a new term from this one. If I see a powerpoint with the acronym EOA on it, I'm leaving the room!
SOA never was something you could buy. You have to change the way you write software to build an Enterprise SOA.
Building an Enterprise SOA is a very different task from building a single application with a nice web services layer... that you can do without rocking the world, and a lot of folks have done it, but that's not what I'm alluding to. I'm convinced that the real payoff comes from building for the Enterprise, and that means understanding your shared, or canonical, data model. That means understanding your business objects and events.
Enterprise SOA requires management frameworks to rationalize your portfolio, and process changes to fund your projects in a way that encourages the creation of specific services, a well-run Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) for insuring that governance occurs and that quality is high, and a functioning Enterprise Architecture team that allows you to bring the information together, and evangelize it's use.
Buying an ESB and hoping for a SOA is like going to Home Depot and buying a truckload full of random building supplies, dumping them on an empty lot, and hoping someone will build a house from it.
You can buy bits of technology, but if you approach this problem with technology first, you will fail. Bobby Wolfe agrees.
The mindset is often: "We don't know what else we need, so for now we will just build an ESB." But is this really any different than the approach of "You start coding, I'll go find out what they want"?
The mindset is often: "We don't know what else we need, so for now we will just build an ESB." But is this really any different than the approach of "You start coding, I'll go find out what they want"?
Leadership is a funny thing. You cannot lead someone to where they are not ready to go. You have to lead them to where they are able to go next.
Blanchard calls this "Situational Leadership." It is up to a leader to be able to evaluate where someone is, figure out the steps to get them to a point of excellence, and then help them to take the first step.
For example, let's say I want my son to be an accomplished swimmer. I can say "Dive in and give my a lap with a breast stroke and a lap with a backstroke". I can say it... but if he can't swim for 10 feet in a row, and his breast stroke is more of a flailing thrash, then my request will not produce the desired result. I will have taught him nothing. He will be frustrated and resentful. Nothing positive will occur.
On the other hand, if I ask him to show me where he's at, and I explain that the next step is to work on his breast stroke, and we are going to take it slow... then both of us feel a lot better and he makes one more step towards becoming an accomplished swimmer.
Why the analogy? Because the same thing works for teams and departments and organizations.
If you have a team of mainframe CICS developers, good ones, throwing them into a SOA implementation may be a stretch. Or maybe not. CICS is really a message-based mechanism, and if that team is used to developing their systems from a message-oriented approach, then you are simply teaching technology, not entirely new concepts.
You have to ask them to show you where they are at. You have to evaluate, ask questions, find out what they do well. You have to perform that 'skills gap analysis' before you can begin to take a person, a team, an organization down the road. And then, you can't ask for the full lap with the breaststroke if that is not what the are able to do.
Lead from the place where your follower is standing. You cannot successfully lead from anywhere else.
This is not a technology problem. This is a human problem. But in Enterprise Architecture, it is tempting to assume that every technology can be considered, because, of course, "it's just software and we know software." That's bizarre. It's like saying "everyone can do anything." To make it worse, if we ask the developers, they will say that bizarre assumption is true, even when it is not. That really throws the notion of personal accountability out the window, but it is typical of software people.
Let's say you need to create a roadmap. The domain is something small... let's say property management. ("Small" in that, for most enterprises, there are not a laundry list of integration points). Let's say you, as the architect, have led a process to pick a good commercial package. You find a nice application. (We will call it "Propman"). It has the features your business wants. It has a secure, reliable, scalable architecture. It even has web services. That's good because your financial system also has a web service interface. No one uses it yet, but Xavier, one of your team members, keeps telling you that he's dying to try "doing SOA work."
Do you propose a roadmap that shows data integration from the "Propman" app to the financial system using web services?
Maybe. As long as you have evaluated Xavier and you are absolutely certain that he is up to the challenge. Odds are, he's not. It is more likely that he's read about SOA in a magazine and he's eager to try... or he wants to improve his resume and bolt for the door. Your roadmap is incomplete because the technology is possible, but the people are not ready.
Architectural roadmaps have to take things into account that extend far beyond technology. They have to take into account things like corporate culture, technical readiness, local availability of talent, financial implications, deadline implications, strategic directions, company policies and, yes, company politics. These things will affect your choices. They must. You have to lead the organization from where it's at, not where you wish it was at.
A close advisor told me the other day, "be aware of your radar... keep it turned on." Look for all angles that may influence the potential success of your domain roadmap.
If you look only at the technology, you may miss the fact that the team is not ready to use it.
And that is one way (of many) that projects end up under water.
Alan Inglis has posted a second time about the need for an Enterprise Architect to be oriented more towards breadth than depth. I agree but I feel the squeeze.
Enterprise architecture is there to bridge business and IT concerns. Therefore, they need to be talking to business representatives and business leaders to build trust, listen to strategy, offer insight and ideas, and clarify requirements. They need to be talking to IT architects and leaders to build rapport, deliver actionable plans, influence, and sometimes, enforce.
As you become more immersed in the EA role, you begin to lose your technical depth. I haven't coded significantly in two years now. There are technologies that I understand but have not coded. That is good (to a point) and bad (to a point).
If our industry were more mature or if the rate of change was more moderate, I would not need to code to keep up. But it isn't. Our industry is changing daily, and there is no widely available model to allow an architect to understand a new technology quickly without experiencing it directly. There is no standard parts mechanism that drives people there, and therefore, no economic incentive for vendors to publish their products with model elements that would allow an architect to make direct comparisons in any kind of depth. Marketecture rules.
And therefore, the Enterprise Architect is limited. We can never get far from the level of technical depth required to deliver decisive insight, yet that heavy burden of constant learning prevents us from being able to reach up to a higher level of business effectiveness. The fact that we are a hybrid means that we can neither job terribly well.
And that, I think, is long term, the biggest reason why we are not often enough seen as valuable. Both sides (Business and IT) can produce someone who knows their side better and deeper than the EA. In a cooperative environment, it won't matter. But in many IT shops, there's not enough cooperation to butter one side of a piece of toast.
There is a way out, but it is long term. We need to get a consistent taxonomy of systems and features, make it available, have the vendor community contribute to the definition of it, and then provide incentive for them to map their own commercial systems to it. Then architects can make the comparisons they need to make without needing a direct and deep engagement with every new technology.
That's the transition to interchangable parts. That won't be easy.
It is often said that if you are in a group of explorers hacking through a thick jungle, the manager is worried about cutting a straight and efficient path, while the leader is climbing the trees to make sure that you are goin in the right direction. Fact is, you need both.
When I describe architecture, sometimes I need to lead. Sometimes it is about insuring that the direction is the right one. I need to make sure that we are keeping the correct things visible as the goal, and staying focused on the elements that will get us there, while staying tuned to the "snares" that would prevent progress.
Other times, I need to manage. I need to write the document, create the diagram, lead the team meeting, enter rows in the schedule. It's day to day, block and tackle stuff. It's taking my turn at point. It is not creative, but it is necessary.
This distinction applies whether you have direct reports, or you are in a position of influence (as I am these days). The rules really aren't different, even though the balance of motivations are.
The toughest part, really, is knowing when to lead and when to manage.
I have no real 'formula'. I will say this: normally your team will tell you. The key is to listen.
Your team will tell you if they feel blocked, or confused, or if they have flipped the bozo bit on someone. They will tell you if they need help... if you know how to listen.
Listening is an art. It means not only hearing status reports (or excuses), but digging deeper to understand priority conflicts or to detect gaps in tools, abilities, or confidence. It means knowing when to express support and when to offer alternatives. It requires patience, insistence, and, as often as not, silence. Listening means going beyond the "what" to get to the "why," and then to push to the "why not?"
I spent a few years as a manager. I'm no grand expert. I will say this: to decide whether you need to lead or to manage, the key is to listen.
This is my third post on Feedback loops and EA.
At the Gartner EA Summit in the spring, I was chatting with some folks at lunch, and the question came up: what's the biggest criticism of EA in your organization... and the answer was nearly unanimous: "your models are great, but we can't really use them when building systems." In other words, EA is not actionable.
I've been thinking about this one a lot. As I build out the Integration area, I'm trying to avoid the stain of "non-actionable EA" by directly engaging with the project teams. But direct engagement isn't enough. There has to be a feedback loop.
Traditionally, EA teams will go off and create a set of models that describe how the world should look. There may be some strategy in there, as well as some wishful thinking. When the project teams get going, we hand them our work and say: here's your shiny solution! They thank the EA politely and then get around to building an app that doesn't take the EA models into account at all.
The IT teams get no value out of EA.
This engagement model has to change. The IT teams have to have skin in the game. The good men and women building our systems need to feel ownership of the EA models. They need to feel like those models represent their interests, and carry their career forward. They need to be incented and rewarded through the connection with EA models.
Today, in many organizations, including my own, this rarely happens.
I can see the need for a number of feedback loops:
1) Models. The first loop needs to take models into account. When the EA team comes in with a model and the IT team ignores it, it was not valuable. If the IT team comes in with a model and the EA team ignores it, same thing. Both behaviors must change. But if both sides keep pointing fingers saying "that guy has to change first" then we are no better than schoolkids fighting in a playground. Someone has to be the first to own up. I believe it should be the EA team that starts by accepting feedback from the IT teams. That starts with models. We need to take our models, compare them to the models of the IT teams, and where they differ, we need to work with the IT teams to figure out what needs to change... in the EA model. This includes data models, reference architectures, and taxonomies.
What parts of their design really are "enterprise?" I doubt anyone asked most IT teams that question, and they get to try to answer. With a few rounds, we can create a good answer, and I'll bet that the part we agree on, will be the most stable part of the design. The IT team will buy in.
2) Participation. The second loop is one in which we measure the relevance of our communication processes by looking at how each team participates with the other teams. Who comes to one another's meetings? What ideas are shared? What decisions are made? In order to develop a feedback loop, folks have to actually speak with one another. They need to participate in the success of one anothers' projects. This participation builds trust and connects the most important, and the most difficult, type of integration: between people. This kind of peer-to-peer feedback crosses in many directions. not just EA <--> Solution Arch, but also Solution Arch <--> Solution Arch.
3) Incentives. Once a year, in our organization, every employee comes before their manager for a performance review. The process is fairly involved, and there is a lot at stake. In Microsoft, stock awards and cash bonuses ride on the results of your performance review, and employees will work very hard to make sure that their review looks as good as possible. If part of that review process includes being rewarded for participation, involvement, and consumption of models from other teams, then the behavior will occur more frequently. Of course, and organization can tie itself into knots if EVERYONE is supposed to reach out to someone else before getting anything done. Striking that kind of balance is difficult, but not impossible. Regardless of difficulty on the management side, getting incentives in place to encourage the right amount of cross-team collaboration will go a long way towards creating the kind of interdependency that is necessary to make Enterprise Architecture actionable.
At the end of the day, Enterprise Architecture is not a team or a set of models. It is a system of interacting variables, people, incentives, and relationships. We all have to believe that the goal is worth pursuing, and our management has to support us in pursuing it.
With feedback, EA can become actionable. Without it, I cannot see it happening. EA is a culture shift. Until folks make the shift, EA folks are going to struggle with the bars of the ivory tower where their organization locks them away.
I blogged a few days back about agility in EA: Deliver Early, Deliver Often, Take Feedback, Iterate.
I've said often that this concept is just as applicable in business as it is in technology.
Enterprise Architecture is supposed to be the bridge between business and technology. Let's think about the concept of a bridge for a minute: we take changes on one side and translate them into changes on another.
Can that work both ways? Most of the time, the descriptions are one way: we take changes in business and translate them to technology, but I believe that we lose value if we Don't take changes in technology and translate them to the business.
That's an easy thing to say, because there are two definitions of 'technology.' If we talk in generalities (technology trends, new capabilities, new threats, new opportunities), then taking technology to the business is the job of IT and the CIO anyway. That is very important, but not what I'm getting at.
There are innovations that occur deep in the bowels of IT that stay there. They never come back to be visited, or understood, or reused, or leveraged, in the business. That is because the business, in general, has no way to get that feedback.
An example would be good.
For a while at Microsoft, I worked with the Legal IT division. Their charter: provide tools to the lawyers and paralegals in the corporate law department. They had tools for discovery and document management and workflow... but no tools for clause management.
Clause management allows attorneys to compose legal documents from pre-written 'template' clauses. With a clause management tool, you create a workflow that creates these clauses, and you can update them in all downstream document templates by updating them in the clause management tool. No more situations where a contract is signed using 'old' clauses when 'new' ones should be used.
Clause management is something that attorneys want, but never get around to paying for.
That said, as I moved into Enterprise Architecture and started looking at tools used by other parts of the Microsoft business, I found three clause management tools. Not one of them was written by the legal IT team. Most of the attorneys had no access to them. They were used by the business teams to keep track of the clauses that the attorneys had approved so that a new contract could be created quickly.
In Enterprise Architecture, we want to be able to tell the Legal department that a team, in the company, wants to build a clause management tool. Not only can they vet the requirements, but we can make sure that the resulting tool would be useful to the attorneys for many other businesses. In other words, actually connect the tools to the users who should be using them, not just the ones who are paying for them.
And this is one place where Enterprise Architecture can help. By mapping the features of a new system to a consistent framework that we call 'Solution Domains,' the Enterprise Architecture team is able to draw attention to the fact that a new project (or an existing app) meets needs in many areas. We can see overlaps before they happen, and overlaps that already exist. We can get the right constituents into the room and make sure that the correct voices are heard.
This is a form of 'feedback' in the same agile sense. Our customer is the enterprise. It is an odd organism... completely capable of performing excellent work in one area, that another area is oblivious to. When the enterprise asks, Enterprise Architecture needs to be there to bring people together, get the innovations surfaced, and develop tools that everyone can use.