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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

Are you tired of the phrase “perfect storm”?

Me too. But tired or not, one is hitting IT right now. Several interconnected trends are affecting the business world in ways that will … and should … radically redefine IT’s role. Among them:

Cloud 3.0

Cloud 1.0 was playing with cheap or free stuff, notably but not limited to Amazon Web Services. Because Cloud 1.0 services were cheap or free, the IT pundit class concluded Cloud computing was going to be dramatically more economical than owned infrastructure.

Cloud 2.0 consists of (present tense because it’s going strong) important but standalone systems. Salesforce is an example. While Salesforce is integratable, most Salesforce implementations were and are standalone “islands of automation” to use a quaint phrase from a bygone era. Cloud 2.0 wasn’t/isn’t cheap or free.

Cloud 3.0 is serious enterprise-class computing that makes use of Cloud services and architecture. By serious, I mean it has the same characteristics as projects IT is accustomed to dealing with. Cloud 3.0 provides systems that are integrated into the rest of the applications and information portfolio; they make use of the enterprise directory service for identity management; and they’re subjected to the same rigorous software quality assurance and change control protocols as systems that run on owned infrastructure.

IT could ignore Cloud 1.0 and Cloud 2.0. Cloud 3.0? IT will be neck-deep in Cloud 3.0 projects whether it takes the lead or is dragged into them, kicking and screaming.

Shadow IT

Shadow IT isn’t so much a second, separate trend as it is the flip side of the Cloud coin.

Gartner has famously predicted that by 2017, marketing departments will have bigger IT budgets than IT departments and marketing isn’t the only department outside IT that buys information technology independently. Sales is an obvious example, routinely signing contracts with Salesforce.com without asking IT’s permission first (see Cloud 2.0, above).

Here’s what’s rarely mentioned: Companies have invested large amounts of time, effort, and political capital developing IT governance processes. Depending who you ask and after how much beer, this is either because companies want to gain maximum business advantage from their investments in information technology, or because business executives don’t trust IT do anything other than play with the latest and greatest shiny ball unless the rest of the business supervises it closely.

So here’s the question: Given that Marketing doesn’t, in most companies, have a strong reputation for tight cost discipline, does anyone really think CEOs are going to give Marketing, or any other department for that matter, a free rein when it comes to its non-IT IT spending?

Me neither.

The digital enterprise

Okay, okay. Yes, this is one of those so-visionary-it-might-be hallucination buzzphrases. Except that, shorn of its buzzphrasey trendiness there’s a lot of current reality behind it. In particular, there’s the rise of smart products that don’t keep their smarts to themselves — products that constantly collect data and communicate it to what I sure hope we soon stop calling “big data” repositories through what I hope even more we stop calling “the Internet of things.”

From IT’s perspective, this is a big, big deal, because …

Back in the day, most companies that sold technology products kept internal IT and product-development IT separate. Merge them and either the company would soon consist of nothing but cobbler’s children as product development sucked all of the priority out of internal support projects, or products would become second-rate as internal priorities had the opposite impact.

That worked when product IT and internal IT had no technological point of contact.

But smart products that send data to internal databases for use in customer support and marketing analytics are seriously smudging the line separating internal and external IT.

Politically, CIOs might win biggest by sitting this dance out, watching product development, marketing, and customer service duke it out in the silo wars, then riding in as the white knight that can pull it all together. After all, most business executives value solutions much more than they value prevention.

Another reason to wait on the sidelines: The most obvious organizational solution for all this — a dramatic expansion of central IT — would look like empire building should you propose it.

But waiting on the sidelines is the opposite of leadership.

Fortunately, there’s a better solution. Unfortunately, we’re out of space for this week.

So stay tuned.

* * *

Six years ago I published one of the most important columns I ever wrote — “The portal,” describing a better way to think about personal computers, although if I wrote it today I’d add tablets and smartphones.

And eighteen years ago, in InfoWorld’s “IS Survival Guide,” I took my first shot at the difference between productivity and effectiveness.

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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

“My boss micromanages me. What can I do about it?”

It’s a common complaint. If you’re algebraically inclined:

“My boss does x(i) and I don’t like it. What can I do?” where x is the set of all managerial behaviors, and x(i) is a specific member of the set.

It really doesn’t matter very much what x(i) stands for. The same short answer usually works, just as it does for the negative form, “My boss doesn’t do x(i) and I don’t like it. What can I do?”

The answer, for x(i=1 to infinity) is, find a different boss, and if you can’t, learn to live with the one you have.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. If your boss is creating a threatening or harassing environment, or your co-workers are creating one and your boss refuses to do anything about it, document everything and contact HR. If that doesn’t work, contact a lawyer. And, at the same time, find a better boss. But don’t just learn to live with the one you have. There are some things up with which you must not put.

But a boss who micromanages? Or is demeaning? Or overly critical? Or never gives you a compliment or thank-you?

Find a boss whose style is more compatible. Or, learn to live with it. Or, I guess, hope your boss gets promoted, demoted, fired, transferred, or hired away… and, learn to live with the situation until that happens.

In the case of micromanagement, I do have one additional suggestion to try first: Determine whether your boss is a micromanager, or is micromanaging you. There’s a big difference.

If a boss is a micromanager, that’s a personal style. It’s about the manager. A manager who is micromanaging an employee — just that one employee, that is, or maybe just two or three — doesn’t trust that employee to get the job done otherwise. That’s about the employee, and what it’s going to take to be a better one.

If that’s what’s going on in your work world, ask. Don’t use the word “micromanage” when you do, either. Ask, “I’ve noticed you’re supervising me more closely them most of the other employees. I’m guessing I need to do something differently. What is it?”

That’s if it’s just you, or just you and one or two others. Otherwise, find a different boss, or learn to live with the one you have.

Why is this? Why wouldn’t your boss want to know how to be more motivating, get more out of employees, be better liked, or what-have you?

Why? Because whatever it is about your boss you find disagreeable is part of your boss’s formula for success, that’s why. It’s part of what he or she has done throughout his or her career to become your boss.

It’s worked. If what you want to suggest would have worked, you’d be the boss instead, or at least that’s how the world looks when viewed through your boss’s corneas.

Think you’re going to change that through the magic of an epiphany-inducing conversation?

Think again.

Actually, when the complaint is micromanagement, what you’d be asking of your boss is even tougher. To understand why, go back to the two golden rules of delegation:

  • If you know how to do a job better than your employees, only delegate it if you’re willing to accept the risk of failure.
  • If your employees know how to do it better than you do, always delegate it unless you’re willing to accept the risk of failure.

Micromanagers feel, rightly or wrongly, they have the superior skills, so when they have to delegate … and every responsibility listed in a job description constitutes delegation just as much as a special assignment … it’s going to be grudging and closely watched by any manager who’s uncomfortable with the idea of deliberately risking failure.

It’s like the advice columnists say in the context of interpersonal relationships.

If your goal is to get the other person to change, the best thing for you to do is to find a different goal.

Assuming, that is, you want something useful to happen. If your goal is to have something to complain about, on the other hand, by all means go ahead and have a heartfelt conversation with your boss.

* * *

Eighteen years ago, in KJR’s predecessor, InfoWorld’s “IS Survival Guide,” I published my first piece on bad metrics, but far from the last.

And if I hadn’t published the column about corporate xenophobia and what to do about it fifteen years ago, I could publish it next week and it would be just as current. Check it out.

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