Big Changes to Common Perceptions Can Happen

Most companies still see IT as a cost center, so they're looking at ways to cut IT spending when they should actually increase it. But that could change. I see a parallel with how people’s perceptions of government have changed. Six months ago people were still talking about the need for less government, not more. Now we believe government is a vital part of any solution to our problems and we are going to spend a lot more on government, not less. What happened?

Common perceptions about government and business have been turned upside down. Using techniques he learned as a community organizer, the new president of the United States is finding ways to include people in government and make them feel that government exists to serve them instead of the other way around. Are there some ideas here for creating a similar shift in people’s beliefs about IT?

Instead of talking about how complex IT is, instead of telling people why things can't be done, instead of telling people how long everything will take when they come to us for help, what would happen if we adopted a community organizing approach? How can we in IT more actively include people in discussions about possible solutions? How can we more actively include them in implementing these solutions?

What would happen if we presented simple (not complex) solutions that addressed people’s most pressing problems right away, and admitted we can’t solve all their problems (maybe not ever…)? But instead, we tell people we'll get started quickly and keep working with them and keep growing and adding new features to what we deliver as the world unfolds and their needs evolve. What would happen if we laid out the pros and cons of various solutions and discussed them in plain language without trying to pretend that any solution could ever be perfect? What if we even stopped our annoying habit of using techno-speak and baffling TLAs (three letter acronyms) that nobody understands?

We’ve got big challenges to deal with and people already know IT is critical to meeting those challenges, just as people also know government is critical to meeting those challenges. What seems to have happened with perceptions of government is that people were given meaningful ways to participate in the election campaign and the new president has given people reasons to trust that government will work for them instead of against them. In the last six months a lot of people changed their minds and now see government as a vehicle for collective action to provide for the common good.

Can we do the same with IT? What if people saw IT as a source of answers instead of a source of frustration? What if people saw investments in IT result in profits instead of excuses? What would have to happen for people to view IT as part of the solutions we need instead of part of the problems we face?

[Michael Hugos, principal at Center for Systems Innovaton [c4si], mentors teams in agile systems development and delivers seminars and briefings on strategies for business and IT agility. His newest book is Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.]