Hasta La Gadget!

We all know and love the goofy plastic potato known as Mr. Potato Head. But did you know that the toy originally involved sticking plastic facial features with spiky ends into a real potato?

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It was one of the final questions of the NSA’s open Q&A today, and one that’s weighed heavily on the minds of American citizens since the Prism scandal last year: “Are our fears of being discreetly spied on merited?” They aren’t, according to NSA…

(Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)

Thanksgiving morning, and if you’re lucky enough not to be in the kitchen wrestling a turkey, then maybe you’re reclined in front of the TV and watching the floats glide down 6th Avenue.

Thanksgiving is one of the most uniquely American holidays. The day is heartwarming and kind. It’s a day when we eat and drink and watch old favorite movies and cheer in front of afternoon football. It’s a day when we come together as friends and families to celebrate, and to enjoy happy traditions.

One of those traditions however, is the Thanksgiving toast, and for the family member assigned the “honor” of making it, composing that toast can seem more than a little stressful.

Fear not. Whilst watching the Macy’s Parade, you witnessed a floating formula for the perfect Thanksgiving toast.

First, there needs to be a giant Snoopy — that’s something traditional. Then there needs to be a nod to whatever the latest hot children’s character is — that’s something contemporary. And above all, the whole thing needs to be wrapped around in a general feeling of childlike sentimentality — and that’s something heartwarming.

Something traditional. Something contemporary. And something heart-warming — the three essentials for your Thanksgiving toast.

First Off – The Traditional
This is the easy bit — it’s the most formulaic. There are three things you need to do.

Thank the Guests
Express gratitude for the family and friends coming together to celebrate the holiday.

Mention Those No Longer with Us
It’s a rare family where there won’t be someone who has departed this world — Grandpa or Granda, Mom or Dad, or Great-Aunt Ethel. It might seem counter-intuitive to mention the dead when you’re aiming for happy, but Thanksgiving lunch is a meal where the recently deceased are present. Those who would once have been at the table but are with you no longer, will be in everyone’s hearts. They need a mention, and the living need to hear those names. Left unmentioned, and they will become a dark spectre in the corner throughout your toast.

Thank the Chef
Move from the dead, straight back into the living. There’s going to be someone vaguely panting, with red-chafed hands and hair awry. Someone who has spent the whole morning stressing in the kitchen. Focus attention on this person, and look them firmly in the eye as you thank them for their labors.

Next – The Contemporary
This bit is slightly trickier. What are you giving thanks for? Everybody present will, hopefully, have something this year that they are proud of, or feel that they would like to mention. This is the moment for audience participation. In our family, we go around the table and everybody says a few words about what they, personally, have been grateful for this year.

Involve the Audience
Don’t however, just drop this question onto your unsuspecting audience. An awkward silence will be guaranteed to follow. You need to give them warning, so use words such as:

There have been so many wonderful things this year. Let’s have everybody share just a few words about what they’re thankful for this Thanksgiving.

As you say this, look to the person sitting beside you, and then cast your glance down the side of the table along which the statements are going to flow. Let the group know what they are meant to do. It’s also a good idea to have pre-informed that first person in the chain about what’s going to happen. That way they are ready to respond. As they are speaking, others will, in turn, be planning what they might like to say.

Finally – The Heartwarming
Two simple techniques create heart-warming:

Slow and Smiling
When we become tense, as so many of us do when speaking in public, we gabble. Gabbling creates tension, and tension is the direct opposite of heartwarming. You need to slow your rate of speech just a little, and the best way to do that is to smile. If you’re smiling, then it becomes a physical impossibility to gabble. You’ll look like you’re enjoying the moment, and if the folks around the table believe that you are relaxed, then they’ll be relaxed too.

Lots of “us”. Lots of “we”. Lots of “our”.
It’s scary how often we use “I” and “my” when we’re speaking. Natural speech is more possessive than inclusive, and at Thanksgiving, it all needs to be about inclusive.

As far as you can — aim for pronouns that bring everyone together. Use “we” and “us” and “our”, whilst actively avoiding “I” and “my” and “you”.

This one small but important skill will inject more natural warmth into your speech than the finest and most soaring rhetoric.

Finally, three standard rules that apply — not just to this speech, but to any speech: Plan what you’re going to say. Practice what you’re going to say. And keep it short! Less than 20 seconds, and it’s a little too short, but more than four minutes, and it needs some editing.

Remember those balloons in the Macy’s Parade. They’re light, and bright, and colourful. That’s what makes the parade such a much-loved tradition, and the same will be true for your Thanksgiving toast!

Peter Paskale is a communications coach and analyst who writes The Presenters’ Blog at speak2all.wordpress.com

Epic punt-blocker, eight-year NFL veteran, ALS activist: Steve Gleason is both a symbol of recovery for Hurricane-ravaged New Orleans—his blocked punt that sealed a Saints victory over the Falcons in the team’s first game in the Superdome after Katrina has been enshrined in bronze outside the stadium—and an icon of strength for those fighting a devastating disease. For the first time, the former special teams ace, who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2011, discusses openly the link between football and ALS and how he’d prefer his son, Rivers, not to play football until more safeguards are in place. Gleason now speaks with eye-tracking software; when asked how he felt about doing a long Q & A, he responded: “I am totally overwhelmed, which is right where I like to be. Bring it!”

Some pundits argue that companies will soon be able to get rid of their CIOs and even their entire IT departments. But even with the rise of powerful IT services on the cloud, this notion is folly. In fact a whole new model of IT management is emerging. Let me explain.

Twenty years ago the IT Function headed by the CIO was in the business of developing applications for the business. User departments made requests and then got in the queue — that was sometimes years long. IT managers also worked on developing infrastructure.

The IT Function has been under duress for many years. Prior to the introduction of the personal computer, the IT department controlled all technology use. With the PC and then later the early days of the web, many business departments, such as marketing, R&D, and supply chain management, increasingly went outside of IT to procure and meet their technology needs. This trend has accelerated with the rise of mobile apps and the availability of services on the cloud. This has caused some analysts, including industry behemoth Gartner Group to conclude that the days of the CIO are over.

The business units have a point. Every business is becoming a digital business and it’s positive that managers everywhere in the enterprise are interested in IT and taking responsibility for it. They are tired of a multi-year backlog of application development, especially when they can fund publicly available services that meet many of their needs, often for a few dollars a month on the cloud. Further the new paradigm in technology threatens many companies’ legacy infrastructure and IT know-how. Tony Scott, former CIO at both Microsoft and Disney and now the CIO at IT services company VMware in Silicon Valley, views this trend as a good thing overall. “In the old days you had to go to a travel agent because they were the only people who understood the industry. Today you can do that yourself using a rich selection of services,” he says. “Today the same things are possible with the consumerization of IT. Everyone in the enterprise can do their own shopping for IT services.”

But Scott and many other CIOs I work with note that there is also a problem with all this enthusiasm and self-organizing activity throughout the organization. IT challenges are enterprise challenges. Companies need to have an integrated, enterprise architecture to have a single version of the truth and to harness the power of big data. They need to have security standards and systems to protect them from bad actors. They need back up capabilities to ensure business continuity. They need an enterprise strategy for collaboration tools and systems to cut across business silos. They need to have elite IT talent to deal with the many complexities of becoming a digital business.

There is a solution to this dilemma. A new model of the IT function is emerging, and one that makes the CIO more important than ever. Call it the IT Services Supermarket. Here’s how it works: The CIO anticipates business needs and provisions a rich supply of services, from standards for mobile devices to architecture compliant applications and cloud services — all in the “shelves” of a supermarket. The business customer goes to the supermarket — a self-service portal or catalogue and pulls up the available IT. They choose the services, and the level of service required and combines them to meet their technology needs.

Scott is implementing this concept at VMware. “Just like there is an amazon store or an eBay store where people can get what they need, companies can set up a store where their internal customers can select the best and most appropriate services,” he said. “This is really the future — the digitization of IT services. Curated the right way, the supermarket will create the same kinds of feedback loops we see in the consumer space today. There is a rich feedback loop that comes from the consumption of these services, that makes them continually improve,” he said.

Because these services are running in the cloud, they are delivered in a location-agnostic manner. Where the application is running no longer matters whether its running in the (private, public, or hybrid cloud) on a virtualized machine on virtualized storage, over a virtualized network. Decisions like that are determined by cost and regulatory decisions. The Supermarket has costs associated with various technologies and service-level agreements that for response time and other variables. Given the large economy of scale achieved by centralized purchasing, the costs are lower, affected by the needs for response time, governance, security, redundancy isolation, and other operational drivers. The fixed costs will end up being shared across a broader base, lowering them making them variable. Given the advances in technology, services orientation and the cloud, there can be more focus on how to assemble capability like Lego blocks rather than custom building the from scratch.

Says Bob Tapscott, who has been working with me to develop this concept (yes, that’s my brother Bob, former CIO): “With this vision the CIO becomes a true business partner is working on anticipating the future as opposed to satisfying the dated requirements of the past.”

But the CIO needs to change. The CIO’s role must evolve for the progressive enlightened enterprise to something else — perhaps Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Integration Officer or, like a supermarket manager, a Chief Inventory Officer. Says Hunter Muller, who, as the founder of HMG Strategies, has built a community of CIOs in 30 cities, “The new CIO must be connected to the C-suite as a peer to drive market facing, revenue generating initiatives.” Muller emphasizes the new corporate culture for the digital enterprise where the CIO must be aligned with corporate culture and market needs. “If there is culture or role incongruence, CIOs need to work with the C-Suite to redefine the position and role potential.”

In this new model the CIO needs to lead through influence and persuasion rather than authority. This is only achievable through being a business Janus — looking forward and back, with a telescope and microscope, and being both a visionary and a detailed oriented executor of platforms, and solutions for the IT supermarket.

This piece is based on The Digital Economy, 20th Anniversary Edition by Don Tapscott, released October 2014. This piece originally appeared on LinkedIn.

Don Tapscott is the author of 15 books and rated by Thinkers50 as one of the top five living business thinkers in the world. He also plays keyboards in the band Men in Suits. On Twitter @dtapscott