Death by a thousand cuts
Pick up any issue of the CIO magazine, or glance at any IT Strategy related blog postings and you'll hear the constant refrains - "Must have better Business/IT alignment", "Must make sure that IT objectives are in line with business strategy", "Must make sure that IT and business work together as a team" and so on. All good stuff, for sure. And very noble. But it's one thing to announce business/IT alignment at the CxO level, and another to make sure it gets translated to action at the ground level.
Take an average company. Chances are that the users of technology - customer service advisors, production managers, marketing personnel etc. - hate IT. Yes, hate. And not just the abstract concept of hating IT (e.g. hating Microsoft for Outlook), but hating IT people. Why is this so? Is it because IT personnel are in general social misfits and like dealing with machines instead of humans? Is it because IT people can't explain concepts simply? Is it because IT people regard business folk as dumb and incapable of understanding technology? While I think there may be an element of truth in each of these gross generalizations, I think the core of the problem has to do with control and trust. Users of technology resent the control that the IT people have over their professional lives and resent IT's lack of trust. And with good reason.
Take security for example. I got a nasty call today from a information security officer at a client. He informed me that my having instant messenger, iTunes (a music player) and Freemind (a mind mapping tool) on my corporate laptop was a threat to corporate security.
Now before the security zealots severely chide me for failing to follow appropriate policies, let me explain. I fully understand and agree with the need for security policies and the need to protect against the threat of corporate espionage. But there's a balance between given freedom to explore and a fascist crackdown on independent thought. Why with instant messenger I may be able to get a quick answer before a meeting; why with iTunes I may even be productive at work as I create a presentation; why with FreeMind I may be able to organize my thoughts and plan better. Clearly threatening to the very edifice of the corporation.
It's exactly this kind of big brother behavior that kills initiative and make corporate citizens into drones. And makes people start to hate IT. This has to stop. Let's face it - IT shops are seldom the founts of innovative ideas. Was instant messenger created by a strategic IT committee looking into improving employee communications? Were wikis created by the IT department looking for a way to empower business folks into sharing knowledge? Was blogging software created by a team of IT professionals dedicated to facilitate equality in expression?
More often than not, it's the business folk who are pushing the envelope by bringing technologies in house to make their lives easier. We have to encourage this. Not to foster anarchy or a deliberate flouting of rules - but to allow knowledge workers to dream, think and create. Monitor the activities of employees, don't control. Trust your fellow business employee, don't patronize.
