At the end of the day (or in the beginning, for that matter), the business of business is making money. And not just generating revenue, but generating enough revenue so that not only will EBITDA look good but also the owners of the business will be able to put some of that revenue in their pockets. It doesn't matter whether the organization is a public company, a privately held company, or employee owned. The ultimate success of that business is measured by the bottom line.
You can have all the altruistic or silly corporate goals, slogans, or mission statements you want, but success is measured in dollar signs (or euros or yen or whatever). Google smugly can tout its "Don't be evil" slogan, but if Google can't produce enough revenue from online and mobile advertising, it will go the way of all enterprises that value cleverness over intelligence. The business you work for is no different. You may have a public mission statement; however, the real mission statement is: "Make more money."
But guess what? Corporate information technology (CIT) is not a profit center–it doesn't generate any revenue. Business units generate money. CIT costs money.
Don't get me wrong. IT departments play an extremely vital role in any 21st century enterprise. Without information systems, most business would crumble. No one is going to dispute the functionality IT can provide the organization. No one is going to suggest getting rid of information systems. But the jury is out on whether individual corporate IT departments truly are empowering revenue-generating units to be the best they can be. Many corporate IT departments are trapped in a 50-year-old, centrally managed, top-down control of information in the organization. What worked in a mainframe/green-screen world no longer is relevant in organizations that will be replacing their baby-boomer knowledge workers with Generation Y employees.
Times Are A-Changin'
When baby boomers were in college, slide rules were the norm–until those tools were replaced by expensive and hard-to-use hand-held calculators. Cellular telephones had yet to be invented. In fact, long-distance calls often were prohibitively expensive. Computers were basement-size beasts fed with punch cards.
By comparison, check out some of these statistics for Generation Y college students: 97 percent own a computer; 95 percent own a cell phone; 76 percent use instant messaging; 34 percent use the Web as their primary source of news; 75 percent have a Facebook account. These kids have grown up immersed in digital technology; it is an extension of their life experience. While Generation X (born between 1965 and 1982) embraced technology, Gen Y (born between 1983 and 1997) has lived technology.
This latter generation will not find it acceptable to work for an organization with tightly controlled, centrally controlled, restrictive technology. To a Gen Y, technology means freedom–not restrictions. Remember the young woman who threw that hammer at the image of Big Brother on the screen in Apple's iconic 1984 television commercial introducing the Macintosh? Do you remember what Big Brother was saying at that moment? It was: "We shall prevail." The message is clear. Big Brother did not prevail. Big Brother IT is no longer relevant.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
The basic message is very simple. Information systems need to empower business units to do the things they need to do better to produce revenue. But the real message goes way beyond that simple statement. Corporate IT was transformed during the PC revolution when knowledge workers suddenly gained access to tools that truly did enable them to do their jobs better. The phenomenon was reborn with the Internet revolution, when knowledge workers gained access to new ways to search and locate knowledge.
But those two factors–personal computers and the Internet–most often were managed by creating rules and restrictions around them. Web access usually was restricted in the mistaken assumption that by controlling the tool, you can control the user. That is wrong thinking. If workers are going to misuse the Internet by visiting inappropriate sites or wasting time, they are not good workers anyway. Manage your employees, not their tools. The tools empowered knowledge workers, and top-down IT governance creates fences around that empowerment. Centralized control of information systems is not necessary and is not necessarily the best solution. Distributed management of information systems is a better model. Business units should be encouraged to be involved in generating administrative policies about the way information is managed in the organization.
Distribute
Distributing governance and management roles for information systems does not absolve information technology from ultimate responsibility for ensuring critical business systems are secure and operational. What it does do, though, is involve the business units in a trusted partner relationship with IT. A business unit is consuming services provided by IT and paying for those services. It may not be given a monthly invoice for IT services, but it is paying for them one way or another. It is only logical the business units have a decision-making role in what those technologies are and how they are managed. IT cannot be perceived as a roadblock to technology. Technology allows workers to be creative. Stifling that creativity through draconian IT policies is counterproductive.
Point Solutions
One of the traditional reasons given by CIT to maintain central control of information is the "Access problem." Microsoft Access puts basic database technology in the hands of knowledge workers. Knowledge workers use Access to provide solutions to specific departmental needs. The business units become dependent on those solutions, and eventually CIT is asked to support them. Not a good thing. CIT is called in to support a one-off solution it did not create. Point solutions are an ineffective way to handle information. Traditional top-down control forbids point solutions.
Maybe there is a better way to handle such things. Maybe CIT needs to allow point solutions when there is no better alternative. Example: The marketing department comes to IT with a problem and a solution. It needs an effective way to communicate with external staff to provide information and distribute collateral. It would like to use a blogging tool that meets its point needs. CIT is working on an external collaboration system, but that solution is probably 12 to 18 months in the future. Why not allow the use of marketing's solution with the tacit agreement from marketing it will transition to the corporate collaboration tools when they are available? If a business unit has a legitimate need for an information system CIT cannot provide, the business unit should be empowered to obtain that system.
One-off solutions such as the Access problem can be controlled by allowing and supporting point solutions where it makes sense to do so while prohibiting them where it doesn't. Those decisions are best made in collaboration with a business unit, with CIT acting as a trusted advisor.
It's All About People
The real issue here is people. The single biggest change in information systems in the past decade is social networking. The digital technologies embraced by Gen Y are here to stay, and if you want to recruit and retain younger workers, you better provide those tools in the workplace.
But the real reason we should do so is not to accommodate these digitally hip workers. The real reason is social networking tools are good. Instant messaging, online presence, personal blogs and Wikis, and personal Web sites are good ways to allow workers to collaborate and communicate more effectively. Dialing colleagues' phone extensions is a waste of time. I don't know whether they are busy or whether they even will answer. If I leave a voice mail, they need to listen to that and then decide how to respond. They probably will reverse the process and kick off another mindless game of corporate phone tag.
With a well-structured instant messaging and presence system, I can determine visually whether a colleague is available or not. I can exchange quickly whatever information I need to asynchronously. With IM, it is OK not to respond immediately. That is not a viable option in a phone conversation. Telephones make all other work effectively stop. Instant messaging is just another thing going on in the background. I can have many IM conversations going at once without being distracted from the task at hand.
Blogs and personal Web sites are fantastic ways to share information within the organization. Workers who have discovered a better way of accomplishing some task may post it on their blog. Allowing others in the enterprise to search blogs may be the mechanism for disseminating a best practice. Information workers instinctively find information by using a search engine. That is now an accepted and universal behavior.
When I see an error message in an application log, the first thing I do is copy the message and paste it into a Google search box. Wouldn't it be nice if the first place workers in your organization searched was the corporate intranet or knowledge network? Not only would it be nice but also more efficient. What better place to find knowledge about your workplace than in your workplace? And how do you enable that sharing of knowledge? By providing social network and collaboration workspaces where employees can freely post and exchange information.
Exceptions
Undoubtedly, there always will be specific types of information and certain applications that require strict control. No one wants everyone mucking about in the human resources system or the payroll system or some other back-office solutions. But that still leaves countless opportunities for systems that encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing.
The insurance and financial services business is highly regulated and must deal with countless compliance issues. If you are a publicly traded company, you need to deal with Sarbanes-Oxley and all the rules and closely managed systems that go with it. Let's not further handcuff our employees by applying even more restrictions on them through highly restrictive policies promulgated and enforced through CIT.
No, It's Still About the Money
Employees need to be cognitively and emotionally connected to their work. CIT should strive to provide an atmosphere that enables that connection. Workers and business units need to see information services as their partner in work and not as a necessary evil whose minefields they need to traverse in order to do their work.
No other segment of the business touches information workers as much, as often, or as pervasively as corporate IT. That means CIT has the greatest opportunity to provide a positive influence on the workplace. If CIT can provide a technology atmosphere that is efficient, engaging, and empowering, the business units then are equipped to do what they really need to do–make money. And that ultimately will make all of us happier corporate citizens.
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