IT Ain’t Heavy, It’s My Technology

Excellent theme--hope it wakes some C Suite denizens up!

Insightful as always and I can draw a line from this article back to your previous article, where you describe the situation as a result of IT and the business pulling in opposite directions. Every business will suffer technical debt as a result of growth, but how this is handled and managed is typically cultural, not in the people per se but in the organisation. The symptoms of disparity that you highlight essentially come down to a model of management by component rather than management by service and this is a common failing across many IT departments which is reflected in the way that they manage their costs. This, in turn, is brought about by failing to work together with the business and take an holistic view on what is happening. So yes, the external eyes are a great addition to supporting the strategic direction. I would be interested to see how many IT operations would welcome this view and work with it and how many would pull up the drawbridge? Extending this to your scenario, how many are tending the tree to keep the balance and how many are out in the branches focusing on saving a leaf? There is an old anecdote about some animals in a cage and each time they go over a line drawn on the floor to get some food, they get hurt. So they learn to stop going over the line and only take what is fed them on their side of the line. Rotating the animals and the original animals will stop the new animals from hurting themselves, this continues until none of the original animals are left. Now, none of the animals will go over the line and the person who trained the first group has long since gone. So this continue with the big pile of food over the line but none will dare go near it, but no animal knows why, That is just the way thing are round here. That is organisational culture! People become the culture and culture becomes the person, even though that originator will have moved on some time ago. Enter the challenger. The challenger asks why do we do this and is not too surprised to be told that no-one knows, it is just the way of things. So the challenger can start putting this too the test and showing there can be another way. But the challenger also knows that handling this with kid gloves is key. The challenger needs support and engagement and for this to be successful, be holistic in their approach. Do not side step the resistor, but do what it takes to make them a supporter. Use your supporters to help spread the word and they no longer become the lone voice. But this also take hard work, there is no magic pill, if you have 10 people you need 10 strategies, be they direct or indirect approaches. I say strategy because it is also unlikely to be successful on the first attempt, so you need to keep at it and find what works for each of your targets. It is a form of dogma that we all carry with us, it becomes part of the toolkit and we aim to communicate this to others, showing that there can be other better ways. Not always without pain, but the end goal is what makes it worth it. True that some individuals are better at it than others, but that is the nature of things with no 2 people being alike. As any musician will tell you, they did not become accomplished by picking up an instrument, they became accomplished through lots of practice, making mistakes, learning from them and improving in what works. And so to the challenge of establishing the much needed advisory capacity. Depending upon the remit and the business situation, I identified 3 scenarios that might see the need; 1 – (Reactive) a business starts failing and has the insight to look beyond its borders and recognises that it needs help to fix things. 2 – (Active) a business wants to benchmark itself against the competition and identify how it can differentiate itself, gaining a competitive advantage. 3 – (Pro-Active) a business recognises that to get ahead and stay there it must constantly evolve. 3 different levels of maturity and all will need to start from where they are today, but because of the question being asked, each will be looking for different outcomes which can be measured in the Operational, Tactical and Strategic measures that are put in place as a result. What is the starting point? It is a business that wants to change.

Great article Clark. I look forward to reading step two in the near future.

Clark, this is an absolute perfect analogy.... And we should not forget that there is another element that can destroy this old experienced tree if there is a risk with wind and drought. The famous lumberjack comes with its enormous saw and cut it...and it should sound familiar to some people in the very recent past. The fit for purpose and the partnership of technology and business is key to the success and will provide a long life to this tree. And as you say, attendance of IT leadership at the board is key.

executive sponsorship is critical to innovation.?