JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of BT Design, gave an excellent speech last night on the "The Future of Corporate Information" at the Computer Weekly 500 Club. JP is a superb, original thinker and has a tremendous wealth of up-to-date knowledge.
I cannot fault JP's analysis of the problem space. Trends such as consumerisation and Web 2.0 technologies are revolutionising IT, in ways that traditional IT functions are not keeping pace with. We are culturally behind, and, worse, holding back the introduction of forward-looking methods of working. Young people can see this and will be less attracted to work in our old fashioned IT environments.
At the same time there is a growing shortage of computer science graduates. Human beings can't be scaled up in the same way that technology can. We are heading for "talent wars" as companies fight to attract scarce young graduates, with a growing realisation that future organisations will be more a collection of capabilities and relationships, than a set of business processes and services.
On hearing that, many CIOs will no doubt take a hard look at their conservative middle manager and sharpen their axes. But it need not be that way. Talent wars are a zero sum game. It's wrong to assume that young people are the only ones who can grasp the new skills. The failure to modernise the IT workforce lies with CIOs not their staff.
Human beings of any age are not much different. They take their cues from their roles, their peers and the environment. Change the context and they will act differently. And it's better to have an experienced workforce that gets it, rather than a younger one that doesn't have the experience to understand know why we needed some of those old-fashioned controls.