TECHNOLOGYBUSINESS ....................................................................................................................................................................
DISRUPT THE SILOS ! ( AND THE HIERARCHY …)
EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE ( AND SHOW A LITTLE TRUST )
TECHNOLOGYBUSINESS ....................................................................................................................................................................
3 . 4 .
DISRUPT THE SILOS ! ( AND THE HIERARCHY …)
EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE ( AND SHOW A LITTLE TRUST )
Silos develop for all sorts of reasons : a team can be physically located in a separate office or town , or they can be working in a function that doesn ’ t require much interaction with other parts of the business . Many ( most ) organisations also have hierarchical silos : people in different tiers of management spend little time interacting with each-other ; junior staff do not feel empowered to speak their mind to executives . It ’ s a great recipe for an idea vacuum with demotivated staff keeping their ideas to themselves .
Technology offers great opportunities to chip away at these walls and let the light in . Take “ enterprise social networks ”, which is corporate-speak for interacting with colleagues through the internet but not through email . Consumer social networks offer unprecedented access to leaders because they present a new channel of communication not bogged down by pre-existing social rules . Similar can be achieved in the workplace if you give your users the right tools and the freedom to explore them ( i . e . don ’ t allow internal comms to control the conversation ).
I overhead an interesting conversation the other day which had this conclusion :
“ I don ’ t get why she even needs a Mac , she ’ s not a developer !”
Exactly ! Why on earth would a company let its users have a say in the technology they get given ? IT knows best , so staff shall have a bricky black laptop and a phone with physical buttons .
Consider the price of a laptop when compared to a person ’ s salary . Let ’ s say a person earns £ 40k per year , which is £ 48k when you take pension , office space , benefits etc . into consideration . An £ 800 laptop ( which will depreciate over 3 years ) would be 0.5 % of the annual cost of the employee , compared to a 0.34 % for a cheaper £ 500 device . Is that cost differential really worth the hit on morale and staff retention from struggling with slow , buggy computers ? Consider the young talent you ’ re trying to bring in to generate new ideas : most of them have never seen install email clients and halfdecade-old operating systems ( happy 6th birthday Windows 7 !). Technology matters to people : bad technology is depressing .
User choice is a new concept in IT , but it ’ s important because it creates a partnership with the business and empowers users to make their own decisions about the technology they need ( or want ). There ’ s clearly a balance to be struck between an “ anything goes ” policy and offering flexibility : we recommend providing options in a catalogue of 3-5 devices . This quote from a real live user in a government tech transformation project goes some way to explaining why it ’ s important :
Good IT transformation does not automatically bring organisational change , but it ’ s a great enabler . And ignoring organisational change when refreshing your tech risks you wasting a lot of money and opportunity .
For more information , talk to Tom : tom . read @ northhighland . com
12 CIO Magazine Autumn 2015 Issue