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And now for one of those current events columns you like so much — you know, the ones that use “lessons for IT” as a pretext for spouting off (the last for awhile, too — I promise!):

Topic #1: Global Warming. If you’re interested in the politicization of global warming, read “The Truth About Denial,” (Sharon Begley, Newsweek, August 13, 2007). It reveals how, over more than twenty years, companies in the energy industry created and disseminated disinformation on the subject — funding think-tanks, phony grassroots organizations, and pay-for-publication schemes that turned fringe scientists into freelance writers rather than researchers.

If the distinction isn’t clear: Research grants require scientists to investigate a topic, not to reach a predetermined conclusion.

Lesson for IT: Yes, there is a lesson for IT — a real one. An ExxonMobile-funded think-tank offered scientists a paltry $10,000 to write global-warming-denial papers earlier this year. Much more than $10K changes hands when technology vendors subscribe to services from the various IT research firms. Connect the dots.

Topic #2: Funding infrastructure maintenance. Earlier columns on the subject led quite a few readers to suggest there is plenty of money. The problem, they said, is setting the right priorities.

Subtopic A — Priorities: Those complaining about bad priorities were right on the money, as it were. According to “Funding for bridges served with side of pork,” (Kevin Diaz, StarTribune, September 13, 2007) pork exceeded kosher spending in the Senate’s transportation appropriations bill by a factor of 1.5 to 1. “Pork served with side of funding for bridges,” would have been a more suitable headline.

Lesson for IT: Businesses spend on pork, too. Even barely profitable businesses frequently “invest” in pet projects (earmarks, if you will) whose only value is scratching the itch of an influential executive. If you work in a company that funds lots of earmarks, lobbying for your share is a required skill. Playing this game is bad enough. Losing is worse.

Subtopic B — Is there enough money? The recent Senate appropriations bill allocated $2.5 billion. That’s roughly a quarter of what will be needed annually for the next 20 years, according to the best estimates I’ve read.

This year’s projected federal deficit is $200 billion, not including the government’s considerable off-book spending. It’s the smallest since 2001. Unless you think there is enough waste to eliminate this deficit we need a serious redefinition of “enough.”

Lesson for IT: Business leaders often make the same argument to IT — “your budget is enough if you just set better priorities.”

It isn’t only government that’s often governed by wishful thinking coupled with rationalization. I recently heard an off-the-record account of a company that turned down IT’s request for funding to protect it against data loss. After a bunch of highly sensitive data went missing, guess what the CIO heard? Hint: It wasn’t, “I guess we should have funded your request.”

Subtopic C — Asymmetric investment: The cost of overbuilding a bridge is the cost. The cost of under-building a bridge is, as Bill Beery explained in a perceptive letter, the cost of replacing the bridge.

On the other hand, as was pointed out in this space in “Cottonwood now or hardwood too late?” (Keep the Joint Running, April 28, 2003), sometimes a cheap solution is the right answer, as it gets you to business benefit faster. The logic: Get the benefit enough sooner and it more than pays for the cost of rebuilding a better system later on.

Lesson for IT: You can’t strike the right balance between investment in infrastructure and investment in immediate business functionality by applying a simplistic rule. Too little infrastructure means business functionality becomes unnecessarily expensive, unwieldy and fragile. Too much infrastructure and the business becomes slow, stodgy, and top-heavy.

Topic #3: Second-guessing can be more important than guessing: Sometimes, forecasting matters less than accurately forecasting the forecast. Commodities traders, for example, don’t need to forecast the weather. They need to forecast what the weather bureau will forecast, as former meteorologist and commodities-trading-company employee Steve Kauffman points out. That’s because the weather bureau’s forecasts drive commodities prices, so accurate forecasts of those forecasts turn into highly profitable trades.

Lesson for IT: CIOs who are good at forecasting the forecast will know whether to spend early or spend late. If you expect a bad year, spend early so they can’t take your budget away from you. If, on the other hand, you expect a good year, spend early, because you can ask for more budget later on.

Oh, wait …

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Depending on the business expert I’m listening to and the day of the week, I know three truths:

1. Good employees who work together as a team outperform great employees who don’t.

2. Good employees with great processes outperform great employees with bad processes.

3. If an employee is irreplaceable you should immediately fire that employee.

From first-hand observation I know that when it comes to Information Technology organizations:

  • Great employees can and do overcome bad processes.
  • Great employees can and do overcome lousy managers.
  • Great employees can and do pull along mediocre teams.
  • Making one or two great hires is the most critical step in turning around an underperforming organization.
  • Well-designed processes can be pretty useful, too.

Which is to say, if you want an organization that works, you’ll get more leverage from hiring great employees than from any other single effort you can undertake.

Great employees can overcome organizational deficiencies to deliver useful results. They can’t, by themselves deliver a great organization. That takes a lot more.

The question of what makes a great organization tick is rife with superficial thinking. The usual approach is what you might call the “Tom Peters Fallacy”:

  1. Find a great organization.
  2. Identify a trait in that organization you like.
  3. Decide that this trait is what makes that organization great.
  4. Declare that this trait is the panacea for all other organizations.

As far as I can determine, there is no one characteristic that by itself can make an organization great.

Well, okay — there is one: excellent leadership. That only works because I define “excellent leadership” as “Doing everything required to build a great organization,” thereby begging the question.

So … what is required to make an organization great, as opposed to simply functioning?

Leadership: A great organization does start with strong leadership, in a non-question-begging way. If there’s no direction — no focus, no goals, no plan, no definition of excellence, no clearly stated expectations for employees to live up to; no alignment of purpose and standards — the employees will keep things going, but not much more than that.

Great employees: Not every employee has to be a superstar, although all must be competent. Great organizations do need enough top-notch performers to demonstrate that high standards are achievable, not theoretical.

Focus on achievement: The definition of “great employee” has been diluted through too many managers reading about “emotional intelligence.” Employees who are focused on getting along will concentrate on how irritating their colleagues are. Employees who are focused on achievement will value their colleagues’ contributions and ignore their eccentricities.

Teamwork: Just as the definition of “great employee” can’t ignore the importance of serious technical ability, it also can’t ignore the importance of working and playing well with others, and of providing leadership in the trenches.

Willingness to innovate: This is IT we’re talking about. Information technology. The field where if you can buy it, it is obsolete by definition. IT organizations and everyone who works in them must be willing to try new technologies, processes and practices … and even more important must be driven to constantly find improvements to the ones already in production … or they stagnate.

Willingness to not innovate: “State of the art” means “doesn’t work right yet.” Most of the time, the work required of IT is best achieved by extending what you have, not by chasing whatever is being hyped in this year’s press releases, aided and abetted by publications hungry for advertising revenue.

Evidence-based decision-making: Great organizations make decisions through the use of evidence and logic, not wishful thinking and listening to one’s intestines.

You’ll note the usual buzzwords are notably absent. Governance, ITIL, CMM and all the other processes and practices (I used to call them Processes and processes) that are supposed to lead to inexorable success don’t, in fact, lead to excellence.

Excellent IT organizations do have them. Even more important, they are kept in their proper place — as useful tools that help employees be as effective as possible.

The best woodworkers have band saws, coping saws, lathes and routers in their workshops, and not just hammers and chisels, but their tools aren’t what make them the best.

Great IT organizations are the same. They practice good governance; follow consistent application maintenance, enhancement, design and testing methodologies; adhere to clearly defined change control procedures; and otherwise avoid making things up as they go along.

Their processes and practices are important. They are, however, merely the signs of a great IT organization.

They are not its cause.

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