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June 16, 2006
I.T. Been Berry Berry Good To Me, Part Two
Our colleague Howard Hastings writes in:
Fundamentally, I agree with your concluding statements: that statistics from "the analysts" based on relatively small survey samples using questions of a naturally subjective nature are NOT very useful - unless accompanied by the explanations (read: deep and broad thinking) behind those questions and the final premise.
HOWEVER, I believe that the CIO Magazine article highlighting the Forrester numbers largely misses the key point - "IT Decision Makers" are NOT well positioned to properly and successfully influence the business (i.e. innovation).
Why? For those of us who "stumbled" into IT from business backgrounds it isn't that difficult to understand - IT people too often can't/won't adjust their own mindset and delivery to effectively communicate and/or work with business people. Essentially, "logical thinkers" generally don't see the need to empathize with the "targets" of their ideas … the notion that "experts" should be required to understand the motivations and perceptions of mere "users" is, in itself, irrational.
Anyone familiar with "personality typing" (Myers/Briggs, Keirsey, et al) will easily recognize this behavior and the inherent challenges it represents.
That said, I would strongly question the validity of successful innovation driven by "IT Decision Makers" being awarded a score of .200!
I suspect that most, if not all, of the innovation success came as a result of IT being TOLD that they needed to achieve a particular objective. Anyone who has been involved long enough in IT at senior levels who can be reasonably rational with themselves will admit that technology itself addresses AT MOST 30% of the overall solutions to business problems. The rest comes from people, processes, knowledge/content, etc. -- H.G.H.
Which reminds me of what I left out last time... the best examples of IT effectively driving innovation are examples where the use of IT was the actual basis of the innovation. But this still leaves two other issues to deal with. One of them is that the innovation might have been a highly successful output of IT, but the business built on the innovation might still be pretty poor business. The other is that there is a difference between innovative technology and innovative use of technology -- the point being that just saying "I.T." doesn't tell you much about what is actually happening. For more on this difference, search Archestra for the discussions on (a.) operations and competency; and on (b.) invention versus innovation.
Posted by Malcolm Ryder at June 16, 2006 1:06 AM