IT departments are surprisingly negative about the
companies they work for, according to along-running
Booz Allen Hamilton studythat investigates
companies'"organisational
DNA".
The term "organisational DNA" was coined as a metaphor for the
collection of traits that characterise different organisations. The
concept originated from a desire to distil years of experience
about the factors that differentiate successful companies from
their competitors.
Over the past five years, Booz Allen has been collecting data
from employees in a range of industries and functions using the
Org DNA Profiler, an online
tool that has been used to survey individuals about the companies
they work for.
It evaluates companies in terms of decision rights, information,
motivators and structure, and uses these assessments to diagnose
the company's health. The survey has already had 50,000 responses
globally - about 10% of these respondents work in IT functions
within their companies.
IT workers are most negative
When the results from the Org DNA survey are grouped by
corporate division, it is clear that the IT respondents have a
particularly bleak view.
The profiler classifies companies into archetypes that indicate
"strong" or "weak" execution capabilities. Nearly 66% of IT staff
responded in a way that resulted in their companies being labelled
"weak", a more negative view than every other division
surveyed.
Most IT respondents highlighted shortcomings in decision making
structures. They were of the opinion that their companies were
unable to translate important strategic and operational decisions
into action quickly. The majority felt that managers do not get
involved in operational decisions, and therefore do not get their
hands dirty.
Furthermore, they declared that decisions are second-guessed
once made, and few staff thought it was clear who was responsible
for which decisions or actions.
IT staff similarly complained about the availability of
information. Only about 30% believed that employees had sufficient
information to understand the bottom-line impact of their
choices.
Most felt that line managers do not have the metrics needed to
measure key drivers of the business. The view of employee
motivation is also cynical, with IT staff more likely to attribute
motivation to re-muneration alone than their counterparts elsewhere
in the business.
Why so pessimistic?
There are a number of possible explanations for the extreme
views expressed by IT respondents. The most forgiving reason could
be that IT departments suffer more in a negative environment.
As they respond to demands from other corporate functions, they
may be relatively powerless to change the root causes of poor
organisational performance. At the same time, they are subjected to
pressure from unhappy internal customers.
Another explanation could be that IT organisations are poorly
managed compared to other corporate functions. Both the performance
and the morale of the IT organisation suffer as a result.
Yet another reason could be that the type of people who choose
to work in IT will always be focused on the availability and use of
information, the clarity of decision making structures and the
means of getting the job done.
Turning the spotlight on IT
In order to gain a deeper insight into the effectiveness of IT
organisations, we have created a
new
variation of the Org DNA profiler that is exclusively focused on
IT. The survey is aimed at CIOs, IT executives and non-IT
business executives who liaise with IT departments.
Using the online profiler is anonymous, quick and easy. It
provides instant feedback by classifying IT organisations and
proposing levers to improve performance.
The data gathered will highlight what the key factors are in an
IT department's organisational DNA, differentiating the successful
from the unsuccessful. The survey will facilitate comparison of IT
functions across industries and geographies, and will also make it
possible to contrast IT's self-perception with the way others see
the function.
By isolating the underlying success factors in IT organisations
and locating the origins of IT negativity, this survey aims to
reveal the "source code" of the IT organisation. The results of
this survey will be published later this year.