Why Not?

Nations and empires

Managers at all levels in all types of organisations are often accused of "empire building", the acquisition of new staff, responsibilities, resources and budget, when sometimes they are actually engaged in nation building. While the latter is essentially positive, the former is not.

The prima facie actions involved are more or less the same; the difference lies in the motivation. Empire building is associated with the attitudes that drive the equally negative "them and us" of 70s style management and old-style unions; it is about a zero-sum game where people are striving to get more from the organisation than others, and to take from others within the organisation without the appropriate primary motivation i.e. the good of the organisation.

Empire building is for the builder, the person or persons in charge - it is defensive, about ego-stroking or just being plain power-hungry. Other than by the builder themselves and their allies, the empire is generally seen and experienced as unpleasant, both in the short and, importantly, in the long term. Empires are built for the now and the next day, not the next month, year or decade; the builder might want the empire for the long-term, but the building is done for its own sake. In the long-term empires are usually negative for all involved as they tend not to be sustainable; they get too big to survive.

Nation building is for those who come after you; it is about the future, bringing together elements to make something sustainable in the long and very long term; recognising where natural boundaries lie, not growing unless there is a genuine benefit in growing; and when the nation grows, growing with the support of those involved, with alliances, trade and exploration. The objective is to make something stable and resilient, something that you can pass on with confidence that it can continue, and can continue as something positive.

It is often difficult to differentiate between an empire and a nation from the outside looking in, or even from the inside; this seems to be true regardless of the political system in which the empire/nation building takes place, democracy through to dictatorship. But in systems where there is an identifiable and more or less fixed ruling class, whether it is a kingdom, dictatorship or oligarchy, there tends to be a presumption of the negative, of a less than savoury motive behind the actions of that ruling class; this is particularly true when there is a group in the system which is opposed to the system type or to those currently in charge.

So organisational managers have a challenge on their hands. On one side we have the actuality that most teams/departments are in effect an oligarchy (actually I hope in practice a meritocracy, but that is another discussion...) and have trade unions in opposition to the organisation, ready to criticise whether or not there is something worthy of criticism. Within such a negative power atmosphere it is not surprising that most nation building, growth and change for the sake of the organisation, is perceived and opposed as empire building, and resisted as such, passively or actively. At best the negative voices detract from what might have been a collectively positive development, at worst they can create such a negative environment that the development fails, or even ends up bringing to the fore a very negative and dictatorial management style.

For sure, many department managers do engage in empire building; trying to get a bigger budget, control over new areas, a higher staff count; and in the final analysis doing this purely for the sake of having them. But at least as many, if not more, start off as decent capable people, and the changes they engender are all done with the best of motives. Sometimes, sadly, the continuous and unreasoned opposition to their well-intentioned efforts changes these people for the worse, forcing them to becoming dictatorial, encouraging them to develop negative views of human nature, to cease to be open to input; in all making the opposition self-fulfilling.

So, why not do something different? Why not be positive, engage with change? Why not start with the assumption that people are basically well-intentioned? Why not go with the assumption what is being built is a nation, not an empire? And that when people ask questions they are not being negative, just trying to understand and engage? Wouldn't that be nicer?

Maybe, just maybe, starting positively will lead to positive outcomes. Maybe even a nationan organisation fairer for all...

Posted at 03:38PM Jun 04, 2010 by Chris Puttick in Management  | 

What we can learn from monkeys (part 1)

There are arguably many things we can learn from monkeys and in many senses. I'm not going to go anywhere near things like dietary content and biochemical realities; I'm more interested in what we can learn in terms of behaviour, individual and group and the degree to which they are interdependent, and what monkeys can teach us about real world maths. So welcome to part one: monkeys, policies and traditions...

A friend of mine from university dropped by yesterday and we got to talking about common practices vs best practices and how faced with too many choices and a degree of uncertainty (i.e. choosing from competing and rapidly developing technologies) people tend to stick as close as possible to the way it is now or seek justification for choices based on the what most other people have chosen up to now. This gave me the chance to air my new favourite saying:

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right" Thomas Paine.

He countered by reminding me about the parallel between monkeys and many company policies and practices; programmed as opposed to reasoned behaviour. The parable of the cage full of monkeys and the bananas...

Take a large cage full of monkeys. Lower into the cage a large and attractive bunch of bananas. The instant any monkey touches a banana let loose thunder and lightening, fire hoses of ice cold water over all the monkeys in the cage, etc.. Pretty soon, the monkeys in the cage will stop trying to reach the bunch of bananas and content themselves with other sources of nutrition provided. Now substitute a new monkey into the cage. If this monkey tries to reach for the bunch of bananas the other monkeys, not wanting all the bangs, flashes and cold water, will stop them by force until the new monkey learns not to try and get the bananas. Then substitute another new monkey into the cage and the same thing will happen, with even the predecessor new monkey helping to prevent banana grabbing. Then another. And another.

Eventually you will have substituted all of the monkeys in the cage. None of them will try to get the bananas and any new monkeys will be violently prevented from getting the bananas. And none of them will know why...

Posted at 09:14AM Sep 22, 2008 by Chris Puttick in Management  | 

Adding real charitable value through ICT

A lot has been written in recent years regarding the importance of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) staff understanding the business in which they work and therefore being able to add real value to the business through their selection and application of technology. Companies the world around have taken heed of this, particularly after noting the positive results generated for the trailblazers, and have explored ways of getting their ICT staff aligned with the organisation (instead of treating them as outsiders). Many specialist sectors tend to be a little behind in these trends, and it recently became apparent to me that possibly this message had not got through to the charitable sector, at least not in the UK or in a way that makes sense to me.

So for the benefit of charities and their ICT staff, here's my take on the how and the why.

First a brief history. Traditionally IT support (note not ICT then, as phones were commonly under operations or buildings and email was strictly for geeks) was a very specialised task, maintaining complex and fragile technology for the benefit of another, better embedded (although similarly misunderstood), group of specialists: the finance team. As computing technology became more mainstream the function naturally continued to report to finance, with whom, it turned out, they had little in common. Other than similarly esoteric sets of knowledge and language and an ability to strike fear into those who work in other functions...

As a result of reporting to a senior function that no real interest in IT challenges and opportunities, IT staff became quite isolated. The situation was then exacerbated by the rapid move to pervasive computing, leaving many non-IT people a little confused and resentful of technology and those geeky types who understood it; this was magnified by said geeky types' need to associate with large, noisy yet sensitive machinery: cue The IT Crowd.

The end result was an entire generation of IT staff who didn't (appear) to "understand the business" because the rest of the company basically ignored them. Or outsourced them. And then email and the web rose in importance as a way for organisations to communicate both internally and externally, then along came VOIP (telephony over the computer network). IT became ICT. The corporate communication solution is scary stuff to put in the hands of people you don't actually communicate with...

So to some thoughts on resolving the situation. First, all non-ICT staff note: actually, despite appearances, techie types are not just bright, they're mostly pretty sociable. Indeed the quietest ones (your perception) probably know and interact with more people from more countries, races and religions than you. It's just they don't know what these people look like, sound like, their real names, etc. because they communicate using technology such as online chat. And spend so much time communicating using online chat (commonly IRC, which considerably predates AIM, MSN and GChat) and email (around in its current form since the 1980s) that they have sometimes failed to develop face to face communication skills to the same degree. Nonetheless they communicate, and richly. Think on this: who do you think invented emoticons (smilies)? As in who saw the need to add emotional (social) content to text communication? Teenagers 5 years ago when they got mobile phones and AIM? No, geeks, a quarter of a century ago .

So act one is bringing ICT staff inside. Stop treating them as something that services "the business" and realise they are or should be an intrinsic part of the business. Realise that given the world is now heavily, for good or bad, dependent on technology and that your organisation stands to gain a lot from clever use of the same technology. Then realise that the people who are absolutely and utterly, without question, best placed to identify and implement new technologies that will be of benefit to the organisation are the ICT staff.

This means having representation of ICT at the most senior levels of the organisation. Not someone that ICT staff report to but does not have sufficient time in their day to actually appreciate or understand ICT, but someone whose job it is to think strategically about information and communication and how technology could support and improve their processing and use for the organisation. Someone who when talking to you does not have to worry about whether your laptop is working, just as the FD shouldn't have to worry about whether or not your pencil is sharp.

On to how ICT staff in charities can add real value... It can take some time for the best of us to identify technologies that will help in a given sector, let alone an individual organisation, but with charities there is a neat starting point - almost all charities depend on a single aspect of culture: the willingness of people to give, to volunteer; to spend some of their own time doing things for the benefit of others. Regardless of what else a charity does, educate, feed, heal, house, clothe, etc., it is essential to their success that the general populace has the desire and interest in giving freely, whether of time, skills, cash or a mix of the three. Anything that promotes this behaviour in our culture encourages charity and therefore allows charities to thrive.

This is the same positive aspect of cultures and individuals that allows open source software to thrive; people give of their time, their skills and/or their cash for the benefit of the greater good. So there is one simple thing that ICT staff in charities can do to add real charitable value; switch their charities to using open source.

Switch the charity to open source not because a given technical solution available at that instant of assessment and acquisition is "the best". Not because the use of open source allows you to ensure the chosen solution becomes the best (once in use and the success criteria far better understood). Not even because the same technical people interested in open source are more likely to be interested in working in the charitable sector even if that means lower pay. Nor for the other long term cost savings offered by open source. Think, for a moment, about the tendency of charities to be helping the under-privileged in the global society and how an open source solution, having no cost of purchase, is likely to permit adoption by those very same under-privileged people and how the charity's use of it will help to improve the software for all other users; let that influence the decision.

But in the final analysis, switch to open source because it promotes a charitable outlook in the greater society. The ultimate way to add value to your charity through technology. Technically not simple, but philosophically so, and ancient philosophies at that. Cultivate the desire to give charity; giving begats giving; do unto others as you would be done by.

To promote your charity, act charitably in your choice of ICT...

Posted at 02:08PM Nov 19, 2007 by Chris Puttick in Management  |  Comments[0]

Research and develop, play and learn

We play to learn; this never more so than when dealing with a fast changing and fast growing set of opportunities to play (learn) such as information technology. Without play IT systems only progress at great expense, if at all. If we can immediately and clearly see a particular or specific use for a product or customisation, that's great, but often it's just a product that may or may not have any use, but until we play with it and see what we can make it do, we just can't be sure.

Going open source greatly facilitates play and makes a final solution considerably more sustainable and scaleable than going proprietary, hence my general interest in solutions from the open source arena. I'm certain that proprietary solutions with any degree of flexibility are at least as complex to customise to a given need, even if "out of the box" they are occasionally easier to get going.

Play is at its most productive slightly undirected, so the criteria for evaluating new technologies is simple. For any prospective new technology, ask this: do you think we might find a use for it? If yes, then play away, collaborating when necessary, with people in or out of the organisation. If no, stop! There's always something else to play with.

This is generally true with IT play. When you conclude a particular solution is worthless, abandon it and move on; when you find something that's cool, spread it around, and in either case talk to people about it (especially me!), as communication is another key learning method. On occasion I like to throw something at somebody; but whoever it is should feel free to throw it right back if they already have plenty to do. When someone has nothing to play with, they can ask me for suggestions, there's plenty out there. Or ask others if there's anything you can help "play" with; collaboration and participation are other excellent ways to learn. On really rare occasions I might just tell someone to put a particular toy down; on the other hand I am more likely to provide reinforcements so they can focus full-time on something particularly exciting.

If support is needed when working on something, people should speak up (communicate!). If it's a problem related to server side technologies, office productivity tools or just plain weird, you never know, I might be of actual use , or know someone who can help. This side of IT work is ongoing and in my experience (eventually...) highly productive. Think of playing and learning as just another way to describe R&D, where the final output is about giving OA a competitive edge, whether by reducing our costs, improving the effectiveness of data collection or making us appear better and shinier than the competition.

Research and develop, play and learn, that's what IT has to be about...

Posted at 09:00AM Jul 12, 2007 by Chris Puttick in Management  |