Knowing Where You Are: The Two Types of Organizations in Today’s Weave

Two Types of Organizations – Where Are You?

For this article, let’s define “business” as “the doing of the doing” – whatever it is your organization does for delivery to the outside world.  You may be a private enterprise, a non/not-for-profit, a government agency, a school, and so forth.

In today’s business environment, from the Weave perspective, there are two types of organizations.  Simply put: those that understand how to manage business-technology endeavors, and those that do not.

In order for the IT leader to effectively manage – to maximize that department’s support to business – the organization as a whole must be able to effectively manage IT.  It’s a partnership – but a partnership that Business manages.

A frequent complaint from IT leaders (and quite a few business leaders) translates as “my organization doesn’t understand technology.”  The follow-on from Business is that systems are cumbersome, don’t deliver as expected, and that IT help is frequently ineffective.  A parallel IT follow-on is that senior executives, directors and managers don’t understand IT, and many simply care not to.  Within these circumstances, Business and IT fail to set an example, which means that staff fails to understand, or seek how to effectively use, the technology at their disposal.  The result is that many organizations don’t understand technology’s true role in the organization, and our modern responsibility within that.

On one end of the extreme is the organization that thinks of IT as a sort of glorified computer  repair.  Plans and success for optimal alignment between business and technology suffer here, but so too does the day-to-day.  In other words, people at all levels of the organization first and foremost think of IT as a place to call when their PC acts up. Theirs is a rather benign, naïve view of the technology lever – and therefore they don’t grab that lever and use it to maximum effect.  The organization does not reap the best return on its technical supports and investments. In this realm too are those that resent technology – they have an adversarial relationship with it and the people who support it.  At best is a view that technology is a necessary evil of sorts – there is a diminished and delayed engagement on the planning and execution of solutions, as this engagement is viewed as a difficult, unrewarding, endeavor. 

Yet, powerful enablements within various software applications – core, mission-critical apps – go unexplored.  Training only goes so far:  Folks must maximize use of systems through Help functions and basic exploration, as apps packages have many features that are well within Acceptable Use policies, user-security standings, and within users’ capabilities for use.

At the other extreme is the organization that “gets it” – IT occupies a place at the organization’s planning table – there’s not a relevant business decision made without IT’s knowledge, and it’s recommendation.  People respect technology’s interwoven contribution, and they value the professionals who work within this important core endeavor.  In these environments, people poke, explore, suggest and expand systems’ capabilities.  They are more likely to self-motivate in expanding their knowledge, and in contributing to the forward momentum of their organization’s Business-Technology Weave.

Most organizations fall somewhere in the middle. No matter where your organization falls, there is always room for improvement –  …the first important key is to know where you are.  You cannot get where you’re trying to go if you do not know where you’re starting from.  Tell me how to get to Chicago.  Tell me.  You must first ask me, “From where are you departing?”

In the next day or so, we will explore a simple checklist for determining where your organization IS, (in terms of culture, business-technology acumen, protocols for planning, etc.) in order to effectively plan the subsequent “destinations” of projects and deliveries.  We’ll examine various positionings for implementation of new products, new training, new security measures – in accommodating, and leading, the demands a changing world makes.

Knowing where you are – where you truly are – helps you to maneuver, and helps your organization as a whole in piloting its way forward to the ultimate destination:  Success.

On this day (May 23):  1922 – “Daylight Saving Time” was debated in the first debate ever to be heard on radio, in Washington, DC.