Enterprise IT: The Dragon in the Dungeon

Like many technologists of my generation, my childhood involved a large dose of Dungeons & Dragons alongside hours of programming a home computer. 

In my case, the home computer was initially a ZX Spectrum (thanks Sir Clive Sinclair!) and my preferred role in D&D was that of Paladin.

My first encounter with a dragon whilst playing D&D was a truly magical experience; the dungeon-master was an experienced player several years ahead of me at my school (Latymer), and his great narrative skills together with my overactive imagination made for a moment that I will never forget.

The majestic, all-knowing, omnipotent Golden Dragon filled my fellow adventurers and I with a combination of awe and fascination, and the idea that this powerful creature could be either a vital boon or a fatal hindrance to us led to many panicked conversations about how best to tame this beast — or at least survive the encounter.

Over 30 years later, it occurs to me that Enterprise Technology is very much like a dragon for most organisations; an incredibly powerful thing that is either seen as a danger and locked away deep in the dungeons where it is fed and watered while viewed with suspicion, or as a critical advantage used by the kingdom to its benefit.

I’ve spent half of my career working in technology companies (IBM and Apple) and the other half helping organisations to harness the power of technology, and it is my hypothesis that the Digital Age in which we live means that those organisations who embrace their dragon and use technology to conquer territories and play a decisive role in key battles will prevail, whilst those who keep it hidden in the dungeon and view it as a dangerous and expensive legacy will ultimately fail.

Taming Dragons

On meeting a dragon in D&D, one had to quickly assess whether or not there was an immediate threat.

A young, agile dragon with a positive attitude towards humans was always a good thing, and taming such a creature could unlock incredible rewards and provide a great advantage in subsequent adventures.

The ability to travel quickly across the map, to unleash awesome power and a chance to get access to the dragon’s powerful magic was the reward for those who took the time to understand it, to respect and ultimately nurture it.

Fantasy books are filled with tales of kings and queens who rode their dragon to victory, using a combination of its physical power and wisdom to vanquish enemies, and I believe that the modern equivalent of this is an organisation that sees technology as a source of competitive advantage and seeks ways to use it to create new products, enter new markets and to disrupt its present industry — Uber being the classic example for transportation, and Apple for how it used iTunes and the iPod to transform the music industry.

The Extended Family

Later in those same fantasy books, the now tired king or queen sits in their castle consumed by the politics of running the empire that they have created, longing for the days of conquest when their kingdom grew through the battles they once thought.

Wisely, they maintained a good relationship with their dragon and the mutual respect that developed between them has allowed the dragon to co-exist happily within the kingdom, although it consumes a huge amount of food and is considered scary by much of the population and so often lives in relative isolation supported by a steady supply of food and the occasional misinformed dragon-slayer, who makes a tasty occasional treat. 

The dragon defends the kingdom when necessary, but battles are few and far between now and so it spends most its time eating, dreaming and protecting the kingdom’s treasure from others, waiting for the call to action from the castle…

In this metaphor, organisations that are mature and stable have their technology pretty much under control and have given it the freedom to develop and adapt to a changing world, whilst ensuring that it has the appropriate level of investment to be fit for purpose. 

Here, Enterprise Technology is treated as a vital component of the organisation’s operations, and whilst it may not be used for driving innovation or competitive advantage, it gets the level of executive focus and attention needed to ensure that the operations run smoothly. 

The technology leader, whether they are called a CIO, CTO, CDO or something else has a seat at the top table and help to ensure that technology is fully aligned to the needs of the organisation; they are truly part of the Ruler’s Council.

The Uneasy Alliance

The third scenario is a dangerous one, but far too prevalent today.

The wild, unruly and powerful dragon has fallen from favour, and after some spectacular battles that had the ruler’s full attention, has become an expensive and onerous burden that brings immense displeasure and is nothing more than a distraction to the preoccupied king or queen.

Unable to control it, and suspicious of its intentions, the ruler has banished the dragon to the dungeon where it sits in the dark, poorly fed and getting little exercise, unable to spread its wings, to adapt or to play a true role in the kingdom, other than as an old legend used to scare children into good behaviour.

The dragon has become bitter and twisted; its former majesty lost through lack of exercise, malnourishment and loss of respect. Resentment grows and the limited interactions between the courtiers and the dragon are fiery endeavours that lead to an even worse relationship.

The dragon doesn’t deliver any current value, but everyone knows that it is needed and doesn’t know how to get rid of it anyway, and so the uncomfortable and awkward marriage grinds on.

The once close relationship between the dragon and the ruler has now been delegated to someone else, often a relatively powerless courtier who doesn’t have a regular audience in the throne room, which leads to even more distance. Whatever their grand title, this person doesn’t have a seat at the top table, and suffers from not being a true decision-maker.

Sometimes, a foreign dragon-tamer will be hired to try to better manage the dragon, and this has some benefits because the dragon-tamer has deep experience of managing lots of dragons in different kingdoms. This perhaps brings a more predictable number of cattle to be fed to the dragon a daily basis, and no need for dragon business on the agenda of the ruler’s council, but the dragon-tamer will never have quite the same relationship with the dragon that the ruler once had and the dragon will never again fight for the kingdom with fire in its belly.

Today's Reality

This approach will be familiar to many; it is the unfortunate reality for technology in many organisations today.

Seen as an expensive, troublesome legacy, a combination of chronic underinvestment and a lack of executive focus has left the enterprise technology in a terrible state. Whilst there will be a number of loyal and devoted IT specialists doing their best, their lack of experience with technology outside their organisation and a lack of support from the CEO means that technology, far from being seen as a source of competitive advantage and innovation, it is seen as a horrible legacy of former leaders and something to be tolerated and contained.

The executive team doesn’t understand technology; has little experience of what good looks like, allowing other organisations with better, faster technology to disrupt them and the industry.

The IT leader (often called the IT Director or Head of IT) is not a genuine part of the inner circle and often reports into Finance or Facilities and therefore risks being disconnected from the rest of the business and not included in key decision-making or strategy.

Even if IT was at the top table, typically, introducing new features or capabilities (or fighting new battles) will be too slow and too expensive to support the organisation, and at some point the organisation's leadership will often give up and aim to make the management of the IT someone else’s problem in the hope that this will magically improve the situation.

Business process outsourcing, followed by Strategic Outsourcing is often the preferred route, providing predictable costs and lower operational risks, but significantly reducing the ability of the organisation to innovate, to create new products or to change. Existing capabilities are locked-in, ossified and codified, even where they are not necessarily the right capabilities.

Do you recognise any of this? Probably.

Throughout my career, I have worked with and for many, many different organisations around the world, and the technology function has always fundamentally existed in one of these three states.

So with so many clever people and so much money going into Enterprise Technology, why does it often go so wrong?

Every situation is different, and no one person can credibly claim to know the answer, but here are some possible solutions based on the situations that I have seen over the last 20 years…

Better Technologists

I believe that one of the core skills that I have as a technology leader is the ability to translate between technology and the rest of the organisation. 

Being able to articulate challenges in a way that commercial and strategic parts of the organisation can understand whilst at the same time bringing to life the business objectives and purpose for the technology team is critically important, but it doesn’t always happen.

Time and time again I have seen civil war between commercial and technology teams, and all too often ‘IT’ is considered separate and isolated, and refers to the ‘business’ in derogatory and almost alien terms.

No organisation can survive or thrive without mutual respect between each of the different teams, all of which provide important services, and all of which together constitute ‘the business’ - there is no place for discussions about ‘Business vs. IT’ in 2017!

This will be controversial, but I think that most of the blame lies with my profession, and that technologists are primarily at fault for three reasons:

Not Soft Enough

Soft skills like communication and presentation are not prioritised and technologists are often poor at understanding and communicating with the rest of the organisation, retrenching into a ‘them and us’ approach.

This also impacts career development, with many companies failing to adequately develop and train their employees, further undermining their ability to deliver for their organisations.

Not Professional Enough

A lack of professionalisation in the technology profession is a concern. 

Whereas you can be pretty certain what training and skills someone has when you hire them as a qualified accountant or a doctor, things get a little fuzzy in the world of technology.

A lack of nontechnical certifications and opaque professional memberships make it hard for non-technology professionals to identify who is really qualified to do the job.

Many technology leaders have never written a line of code in their lives, have never built a computer and have never operated a system, but they are still entrusted with the enterprise technology for organisations, sometimes with budgets of billions of pounds.

The fact that many IT leaders come from a project or programme management background is one of the key issues affecting our profession.

We need professional technologists who combine real technology training with knowledge of industry best practice and frameworks like SfIA to root out the cowboys; true technologists should be developing solutions, not just managing budgets.

We need the CIO/CTO to have a credible qualification in the same way that the CFO must.

To be a technologist must mean something tangible.

No More Crazy Tech Titles

No one would dream of calling themselves the CFO of an organisation unless they reported to the CEO and had enterprise-wide responsibility for all financial decisions, but technologists come with all manner of highfalutin titles regardless of their reporting line, including, but not limited to:

• Chief Architect
• Chief Data Officer
• Chief Digital Officer
• Chief Information Officer
• Chief Information Security Officer
• Chief Technical Officer
• Chief Technology Officer
• Chief Transformation Officer

In most cases, these individuals do not sit in the C-suite, are not part of the executive leadership of their organisation and are therefore not really a ‘chief’.

By adopting increasingly grandiose titles without actually having executive responsibility, technologist undermine their credibility and that of the profession, and isolate themselves further from the rest of the organisation.

However, there should be a technology leader in the C-suite, because organisations need leaders who have a deep understanding of technology and who are fully accountable for its delivery, but someone in a less senior position pretending to be that is kidding themselves and everyone else.

It also reflects that isolation of technology within organisations:

“We’ll call ourselves whatever we like regardless of what other parts of the organisation do.”

Time for Solutions - My 7-point plan

On reflection, much of this may sound negative, but that’s not my intention. 

On the contrary, it has never been more exciting or more important to be a technologist, and the opportunity for us to shape the organisations that we are part of to help them prepare for the digital age, but we have to prepare ourselves first:

1. There must be a genuine technology leader in the C-suite who is empowered to make technology decisions on behalf of the organisation, and who is full accountable for the successful implementation and operations of the technology.
2. Technologists must professionalise and ensure that they are appropriately assessing, developing and validating the skills that they have. This will benefit them, by ensuring that our profession embraces continuous learning and development, but will also give non-technologists a better understanding of the skills that a particular technologist has.
3. Soft skills must become part of every technologists’ repertoire; a junior software engineer cannot be expected to be the world’s best presenter, but they should be able to communicate clearly and work collaboratively with others.
4. Technology Leaders must reinvent themselves as business partners and the providers of the solutions and services that will drive their companies, and embrace agility and change. Saying ‘no’ to every change requested and attaching a huge budget and equally long timeline to every request does a disservice to all. We should be shoulder-to-shoulder with our non-technology colleagues.
5. Executive Teams must be educated about the power of technology to transform their organisations, and embrace their dragon - understanding the connection between investment and commitment and the powerful return on investment that it could bring. Where organisations have no strategy for how technology can help the business, failure looms.
6. Organisations should move away from a capital-heavy approach to technology to instead focus on financing it on an expense-basis; IT used to be similar to building plant and machinery with projects taking years to complete, and code remaining relatively stable for several years, but today’s digital technology is fluid, fast-moving, disposable and expected to deliver an ROI in the year that it is implemented.
7. Technology professionals must ditch a project-approach for core technology development in favour of a true product-driven approach. New applications and digital features are products and will develop and evolve over time and must be thought of as products with a life cycle. Instead of building a castle, organisations should think of their technology that exists in their applications and products as beautiful, living plants in an enchanted forest that can grow into strong, ever-changing digital organisms when carefully nurtured - organisms that may change their cells from one year to the next, but which fundamentally deliver to the same core objectives and requirements.

Conclusion

Having spent the last two months consulting with organisations around the world and meeting with many CEOs to discuss the challenges that they face in their digital transformations, I believe passionately that this seven-point plan represents a useful starting point for leadership teams that are not sure where to start.

Think of them as points on a map… points on a map that leads to treasure — treasure that may be protected by a happy, friendly golden dragon with love in its heart, or a gnarly old beast of a dragon ready to consume them in fire.

In my forthcoming book, "Working with Dinosaurs", I explore some of these ideas in detail and share some of the research that has led me to these conclusions.

One thing is certain — the treasure exists, and if an organisation allows the dragon in the dungeon to keep them from it, it’s only a matter of time until some more adventurous treasure-hunter takes it.

Marcus East is a London-based technologist with experience gained on three continents with some of the world’s best-known brands, including IBM, Apple and Comic Relief. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute for IT (FBCS) and has a Master’s from the University of Cambridge.