Two Cheers for IT

In a new post, my colleague JohnKirk gives IT departments a well-deserved dressing down. I actually agree with everything he says, but it isn’t quite the whole story.

I have no love for IT. During the many years I worked for BusinessWeek, I had a number of epic battles with IT, an operation that I became convinced was dedicated to making sure that I could not do my job. Yet I have also learned a great deal about the constraints that corporate IT departments operate under.

Two key words are missing from John’s piece: “security” and “compliance.” IT managers are responsible for the security of systems and networks and the protection of data stored on them. They are also responsible for making sure that systems meet a large number of regulatory requirements, ranging from protecting the integrity of financial data to email retention policies.

It is unfortunate, but part of the human nature that John talks about, that these requirements have a tendency to make IT managers excessively rigid. If they have something they think is working (they are sometimes wrong about this, but that’s another story) they become extremely reluctant to change it, even if there are better alternatives. Their risk aversion also makes them averse to the introduction of new  technologies.

There’s a simple explanation for IT’s focus on things that are measurable. The metrics they insist on are the metrics by which they and their departments are judged. When it’s time for the annual budget or performance review, “My costs went up 10% but I have really happy users” doesn’t cut it. Even technology changes that improve productivity of line operations are unlikely to do IT  much good because the benefit ends up on someone else’s P&L.

A great example of this was when computer makers first started paying attention to energy consumption. It was fairly easy to sell power-saving servers to IT,but very hard to get companies to pay anything for power savings on the desktop. The reason: IT paid the electricity bill for the data center, but line operations paid for desktop power. It was only when corporations made energy savings and objective in itself that power-thrifty desktops became attractive.

In other words, IT managers sometimes make lousy decisions because they are given lousy incentives. And that’s a problem above the pay grade of even the CIO.

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Steve Wildstrom

Steve Wildstrom is veteran technology reporter, writer, and analyst based in the Washington, D.C. area. He created and wrote BusinessWeek’s Technology & You column for 15 years. Since leaving BusinessWeek in the fall of 2009, he has written his own blog, Wildstrom on Tech and has contributed to corporate blogs, including those of Cisco and AMD and also consults for major technology companies.

One thought on “Two Cheers for IT”

  1. “In other words, IT managers sometimes make lousy decisions because they are given lousy incentives”

    Totally agree. I tried to make it clear that it was the incentives – not the people – that were at fault.

    “Two key words are missing from John’s piece: “security” and “compliance.”

    Yeah, I meant to go into that, This is a key point. IT thinks their job is to keep the system from falling apart. That’s why I put in the quote about corporate systems being like cathedrals – you build them and then you pray – that the employees don’t do anything stupid to tear them down.

    “There’s a simple explanation for IT’s focus on things that are measurable. The metrics they insist on are the metrics by which they and their departments are judged.

    Agree and doubly agree. What I’m asking IT to do is unnatural, against human nature, virtually impossible. But if one wants to achieve the extraordinary then one has to stop doing the ordinary.

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