Like partners in a faltering love affair, CIOs should
look to themselves, not their colleagues on the board, to improve
relations between IT and the business.
Their frustration at less than optimum relations is
understandable. Members of the IT team often have the most detailed
knowledge of the end-to-end processes that drive their
organisations they are de facto experts at managing process change
and they are ace at innovation. Why then, does the rest of the
business not embrace them and make them feel loved?
The reasons are as complex as the individuals involved, because
relationships, in both the personal and the business context, are a
blend of strategic alliance and emotions. And that is where the
problem lies - emotions can get messy and alliances are often
poorly understood.
Emotional element
The importance of skills for building alliances and managing the
emotional element of relationships has only recently dawned on the
IT community, and its academic supply chain has been caught on the
back foot.
Computing courses, focused almost exclusively on technology and
its applications, have been turning out graduates who understand
how to change a sales processing system into a CRM system, but not
how to change users' attitudes to new ways of working.
The employers themselves have also been partly to blame. Read
the IT job ads and see how few specify skills beyond a particular
programming or hardware environment. Some do mention communication
skills, but empathy? The ability to feel someone else's pain? Not
on your life.
The truth is, these basic relationship needs make the average
techie a bit squeamish. Computing is based on logic, which enables
systems people to bring a certain elegance to their solutions.
Users, however, are not always logical in their demands or their
approach to computer operation, to the annoyance of many a systems
designer. But it is time to recognise that it is neither possible
nor logical to change the end-user.
User behaviour
What needs to change is the IT professional's expectations of
user behaviour and motivation. I have heard a helpdesk agent shout
at an end-user who failed to notice the file name extension on a
vital document that had become lost.
The user was a key member of the firm's legal team, who was
under pressure to negotiate a time-critical corporate merger, yet
the support agent was blaming her for the frustration her lack of
systems knowledge was causing him.
Back to alliances and relationships - were both individuals
working towards the same corporate objectives? Had anyone clearly
thought through the most efficient way of working together?
Information technologies have enabled corporations to focus on
producing results, yet business gurus, senior executives and
financiers have all begun to realise that results can only be
achieved through people. It's time the IT community also embraced
this truth.
Shirley Redpath is principal at consultancy
Management Arts
Do you agree with Shirley Redpath? If you have an opinion about
this or any article in Computer Weekly, e-mail
computer.weekly@rbi.c.uk
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