Buying an IT System? - Are you paying attention?

“Naked Pictures of Anna Kournikova!”

If you weren’t paying attention before, I bet you are now. This is more than could be said for the EVP of Legal of a VERY large company I used to work at who forwarded an email with this header to the entire organisation.? Yes, he’d clicked on something he shouldn’t and as a result we all got it. Of course, nowadays all of us have training on how to avoid opening malicious emails and such gems (even if they manage to get through) are now, a rarity. Equally, the rights of individuals in most large organisations to send ’All Employee’ emails are generally restricted.?

Is this progress though I ask you?

Yes, obviously it is, however, there is a part of me that misses the delicious reaction we all used to have when we received such an email:

1 – That’s hilarious, and

2 – That’s awkward, and

3 – I wonder if there will be any repercussions?

We’ve all been there though in so much as our actions, and sometimes inactions, can have all sorts of unexpected consequences.? A friend of mine (high performer) once got an extremely generous bonus because he said absolutely nothing for 30 seconds in his end of year review when asked ‘Are you happy with your bonus’. Being a natural introvert, he got stuck in the cogs of his mind while composing a sensitive, structured and balanced reply including all the nuances of his personal and work life. His manager, misreading this silence completely and mistakenly believing his prize asset was about to down tools and depart DOUBLED his bonus, much to my friend’s incredulous bewilderment.

It's not the meek that shall inherit the Earth, it’s the introverts.

Now – If I get complaints from managers across the LinkedInverse that most of the performance reviews they hold in future are in shattering silence as a result of this anecdote...

…I’d not be surprised.

I would be surprised, though, if the savvy reader did not get through the rest of this piece and think they had accidently fallen for some clickbait as we drift into a rather dry and preachy section regarding the unintended consequences of doing NOTHING.

English is a nuanced and contradictory language.

‘He who hesitates is lost’ or ‘Look before you leap’.? Take your pick.

Just to ease the Delphic tension that could develop I’ve imagineered a definitions list to help set context:

Conscious Nothing - Inaction by indecision (e.g. there is sufficient quality information available but it’s ‘too difficult’).? I’ve often seen organisations use this line to cover this scenario: “We are a data driven organization”.? I bet you’ve heard that before.? I bet you further that you’ve seen this used as a flag of convenience for some quite spectacular can kicking on decisions.

Semi-Conscious Nothing – Inaction by indifference (e.g. there is sufficient quality information available but it’s ‘too trivial to have consequence’ or ‘Someone else will deal with that’). Think about the chaos caused in the background when managers go away on much needed vacation and don’t bother delegating their authority in systems.? No?? You’re reading this and you don’t understand the chaos caused?? Well congratulations – you’re so senior you’ve lost touch.?

And with that, we wave goodbye to the managers for the rest of this article.? Sad, because they might miss something they can later rely upon in court.? This comes later – more ploughing through the definitions for the moment. BTW – Semi-Conscious Nothing includes the sub-ordinate definition of ‘Cognitive Dissonance NOTHING’ where something can hold a dual state (It’s a bit like particle physics, but less easy to explain to the auditors).

Unconscious Nothing – Inaction by Ignorance (e.g. you are unaware that you have to make a decision, whether or not you have the information). Ever joined a company and found after a few months you’re feeling your collar because you didn’t do something you were supposed to even though you had absolutely no idea of its existence?? Yeh – me too.? “It was on the intranet” or “You were copied in on the email” or “Jim (your predecessor) used to do that” etc, etc.?

As a POI – this Unconscious Nothing can, in the hands of the unscrupulous, morph into Conscious Nothing; “How was I supposed to know that?” being loose code for “I don’t care/I’m actually incompetent”. And Yes – we’ve ALL worked with someone like that.

Whilst it’s tempting to knock off 5,000 words on each form of nothing just because I find the irony of someone (maybe YOU) reading this in work time being a form of Conscious Nothing and dragging it out over a series of episodes that would make the Mahābhārata look like a Reader’s Digest, I’ll not.

Instead let’s delve into the grey zone of Semi-Conscious Nothing. This is the opium den of organisations where we blissfully drift through in the woozy fug of corporate life in a trance, sleepwalking into decisions.

You may be thinking, “What is he talking about?? It’s pretty clear who’s been hitting the clay pipe from where I’m sitting”.? And you might be right (BTW - not about the pipe).? You MIGHT be part of an organization that diligently plans each stage of its decision process, analyses and considers the benefits and risks, understands its requirements, makes rapid but assured decisions and measures performance outcomes against pre-agreed criteria. And you may have empirical evidence that supports this.

But you may also be a part of an organization that claims it does, but knowingly doesn’t and refuses to acknowledge this, or do anything about it.? To you, no need to read on.? Your fate is sealed.

If you are a part of an organization that claims it does, however is unaware that it does not, or claims to do this in part and is trying to improve, read on.

Does this sound familiar?:

Senior Person ‘B’ (B) joins the company because Senior person ‘A’ (A) has left ‘under something of a cloud’.? B has the ‘ear of god’ and wields the power of one. Suddenly you find you are implementing a new system because B has deemed it to be.? You might even go through some cursory selection process.? Four years later B has left under something of a cloud and C has etc, etc, etc…

And how does this happen? Semi-Conscious Nothing.

I knew a guy at a large defense contractor that won the lottery, retired, then came back to work six months later as he missed it and was bored.? He was good at his job. The big difference, according to him, was that after his return he could look gun-barrel straight at anyone and tell them his opinion without fear of consequence.? He could be the canary in the mine without appearing to be curmudgeonly, contrarian or political.? That’s quite a place to be, wouldn’t you agree?

And we can all hold this line if we are brave enough or choose to, or are given, or give, the space for this to be.

If you’re a Procurement professional reading this prepare to suck some eggs.? For the rest of you, this is the reason Procurement is often referred to as; ‘The Department that won’t let you get the PC you want’.

Actually, before I go on (no, not that kind of ‘going on’ the one where you might reasonably believe I have ‘gone on’ long enough, the other kind) I’m actually OK with this description of Procurement.? If it was ‘The Department that won’t let you get the PC you need’, that would be an entirely different affair.? In any event, it could be worse.? A General Counsel of my acquaintance refers to Marketing as ‘The Colouring-In Department’.? Mmmm….And now you too are stuck with that.? I suspect, if there’s one thing you take away from this article it may well be that.

Anyway, here’s my recommendation:

When B joins the company and you find yourself being asked to paint the grass green (2014 World Cup reference) do not drift into Semi-Conscious Nothing, go back to basics. As someone who has actually purchased a space rocket, I can tell you the following is NOT rocket science:

·???????? What am I buying? – specification, use cases, success criteria, KPIs etc

·???????? How am I buying it? – commercial terms, payment plan, milestones etc

·???????? What happens if it goes wrong? – exit plan, conditions of termination, rescue and escalation etc

Yes – I realise that’s more or less saying – ‘consider everything’ so I’ll try to give you an often overlooked, or possibly better put, under considered, element;

In the example above your specification is going to end up looking like whatever B’s preferred new system’s is.? This does not mean it is what you need.? I makes it what you think you want.? If you want to determine what you need – Use Cases.? I’ll not pretend to be an expert on these (and some might be tempted to say ‘among other things I’m not an expert at’).? However, I have sufficient wisdom to know they are vital if you’re not going to be left with a pig-in-a-poke.? Find someone that is an expert, and get them to hold a mirror up to the organisation.

Further, do not mistake binary criteria with scalar criteria in assessing proposals.? You can assign a 1% weighting to terms and conditions and 90% to Price if you have marked your line in the sand on essentials in the Ts and Cs.? Identify your binary decisions and stick to then.? Know your Red Flags. When there’s a Red Flag on the beach you wouldn’t go swimming would you, so don’t build them into your contracts.

And the result of you doing SOMETHING? Well, its unlikely to be as public as the EVP of Legal’s were all those years ago when he pressed the ‘send button’.? They could, worst case, let your organization walk into the wrong decision, but awake and carrying a stick for once. Better that than asleep.

Anyway -that’s that bit done with.? A bit heavy handed I thought in parts, but we all got through it relatively unscathed. ?You can now sail into the sunlit uplands of another tale of unwitting corporate stardom which was the result (IMO) of some classic Semi-Conscious Nothing playing itself out to an inevitable end.? I was at another large organization that was facing, shall we say, some ‘difficulties’ on a project and had called a project all hands/stakeholders call.? There were about 250 people on it from across the company. At one point about 40 minutes in the new (Yes -someone had eventually been fired for a project that was 3 years late and massively over budget) EVP declared that:

“In future we shall lock down our design requirements, use cases and project governance in advance of commencement on any initiative”.

Wise, slightly bland but in the end, sensible words.? And, to his point, something which had clearly not been happening AT ALL previously.

It was at the point where one of the attendees on the call had just finished saying:

“Haw, haw, haw…only NOW do the morons in charge work this out” that he realised he was not on mute and his photo and name had popped up on everyone’s screen.

Ouch!

Maybe, after all, Conscious Nothing is the way to go…