Sagalicious

I’ve been thinking a bit more about the congruence (or lack of) between IT and the business. In particular within organisations where IT is a shared support function, in-house, catering for all things IT.

It’s fine to theorise and talk in generalities regarding the principles of ensuring that IT is aligned with the strategic direction of the business, but at the end of the day a strategy is as good or as poor as the execution of it.

So the real key is looking at the grass roots. Right down in the guts of it, at the frontline where the rubber really hits the road. On the frontline is where ultimately execution plays out, and the one area that is generally not considered with equal planning vigour and thought as compared to higher levels where strategies are formulated, defined and planned to be executed.

It seems that ideas are usually confined to a small set of senior management who in theory have an in-depth insight into the direction of an organisation and as such decide on actions that put form and shape to these ideas, which ultimately produce tangible outcomes that serve the purpose of the organisation.

This is great and it’s probably how it should be (another post to debate this one), but it just doesn’t seem complete. What is missing from this? I’m glad I asked. What’s missing is the input from the grass roots level. The guys at the frontline who are immersed in the technologies, the trends, the possibilities! The guys that have an in depth understanding of the technology tool sets and the potentials that can be created with these tools.

There are massive changes going on at the moment in the development tools made available both in the openshare and proprietary software market. Tools that allow the generation of very smart software applications that do just about anything, blending web, desktop, server, mobile, voice, data and everything else imaginable. An even more interesting aspect is the ever increasing blending of web2.0 elements and more traditional back office elements, via awesome rich user interface capabilities. There are learning curves with these tools and technologies, but the guys on the frontline know them, learn them, and adopt them.

Frontline guys know who these tools can be used to produce rich, interactive and relevant applications that not only enhance a business user’s productivity and experience, but also may redefine job processes all together.

SO my question in this post is how do you source the wealth of knowledge at the grassroots level? How do you get ideas generated from the frontline out from under the hidden IT rocks, and make them part of your overall IT strategy and consequently the organisational strategy?

I agree that successful IT and business congruence is a two-way street. Business has needs which strategy is defined against. At the same time IT has a responsibility for innovation within the boundaries of the organisation’s business focus and HAS TO get the innovative ideas on the table no matter how left field they might be. So how do you do it? How do you do it in a way that’s productive, sustainable, relevant and executable?

One idea I have (and I’m about to experiment with it at work) is to mandate 10% of my teams time to “innovation” activities. Clear boundaries need to be outlined, but not overdone stifling the creativity; enough to make sure the output is relevant to our business. These ideas can then be posted on-line on our intranet (in a think-place area) where each person can debate the pros and cons of the idea, as well as offer their views to better shape an embryonic idea. From these pool of ideas some gems HAVE TO be generated. Tying this work to their KPI’s to incent my team will mean they “need” to do it, but not at the risk of making it a chore vs something they love doing and being part of.

This is a simple idea that I’m still nutting out but I’m really interested on what you think.

Sagart!