I need to ask you for a bit of indulgence. For the next minute or so, I want you to forget your job is to manage IT for an insurance carrier.

Instead, imagine yourself being in charge of a factory. It's a large factory. Every day it produces tens of thousands of different types of widgets. It is a nicely automated place. Several sophisticated assembly lines spew out various products. Hundreds of people feed the machinery with an assortment of parts, control the flow, and check the output.

Sounds all right? Well, there is a twist. While you can sort-of hear the hum of your machines, you cannot see anything. It is an invisible operation. Your workers see their respective bits and pieces, they know which buttons to push and which parts to feed and where, but as soon as you step away from an individual workstation, it all disappears. Nothing is visible. No one can take a picture. There are no drawings.

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