An observation about (the) business

When you’re at some party or gathering, people might tell you what they do for a living. You might introduce yourself saying, oh, I work in IT, we make software, for WidgetCo. If that doesn’t outright kill the conversation (or makes people think you fix wifi reception), you might find yourself explaining your role in the project, and how you align IT and business.

Here’s the thing though. When we work in our projects, we might refer to our colleagues (the internal stake-holders/end-users) as “the business”. E.g., "what does the business think about this feature?"

But how often do you hear the following exchange? “Wat do you do?” “Oh you, know, I’m at WidgetCo, in the business?”

The excellent animated series Bojack Horseman features a character called Vincent Adultman, who is the spitting image of, well, two-three kids stacked on each other wearing a trench coat.

When asked about his interests, he says he likes business. And when pressed on his activities today, he might say "I went to stock market today. I did a business”.

This week’s Tuesday Takeaway is quite simple. Let’s stop talking about “the business”.

Working for financial institutions, I had to take the “banker’s oath”, so I guess I’m a banker now, too! More broadly though, not every “business” is the same, just like creating business software is not the same as network engineering or any of the myriad of specializations in IT.