Jackie Danicki

Adriana has a report from the corporate front that is well worth a read, as much as doing so may make your gut wrench. It really is frustrating to think about all the opportunity-dodging going on inside businesses. On the positive side, she also has some great suggestions “for those who find themselves in a situation where the organisation is their worst enemy”. Here’s the one that really stands out to me:

Make sure the ‘alternative ways’ are not grabbed by the system’s people and turned into their version of inflexible and ossified processes.

This type of two-steps-back action usually comes from the IT department. (”We understand that this may be the set of programs that works for you, but how about we force you to use the set of overpriced ’solutions’ we already paid for which will never do the job?” Hint: Despite putting this to you in the form of a question, they’re not asking you, they’re telling you.) Talk about destroying motivation.

I remember having lunch with the Guardian’s Neil McIntosh a couple of years ago, and we talked about how someone should start a business which purely exists to help employees go around their corporate IT departments so they could just Get Things Done. As far as I can see, the need for such a service has not eroded one bit. In the meantime, better to be willing to ask forgiveness than to ask permission - a lesson from Euan Semple that I wish I had heeded earlier than I did. Otherwise, it goes like this:

1. “We really need to do X. The benefits are clear and it won’t cost us anything. Shall we?”

2. Permission denied, or granted but prioritized to bottom of list. (At this point, you suspect that had a big chunk of budget been involved, it may have actually been at the top of the list.)

3. 6 - 8 months later, out of frustration and the need for X, you stop caring if your boss kicks back and finally implement it.

4. Wildly positive praise for X comes from all directions, along with expressed wishes from your boss and everyone else that it had been in place months ago. For a corporate second, you’re the hero, but a slightly regretful one.

5. If you’re really unlucky, your boss takes credit for X.

In a knowledge economy there are no such things as conscripts - there are only volunteers. The trouble is we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.

-Peter Drucker, via Euan

Filed under: Life