Saturday, December 09, 2006

Are you Enabler or Disabler

I consult small and medium sized companies regarding IT, organisational and process management topics. When I enter the clients premises for the first time, I search for signs of IT empowerment or disablement respectively.

Signs of Enablers

IT as enabler allows employees to work faster, smarter and more efficiently. IT architecture usually is open, access restrictions mostly secure the perimeter, hardly ever access rights are set up within data structures. They allow their users to experiment with new application in test bed situations. They commonly question their users for new ideas on how to make life easier. And they suggest improvements on their own.

This does not mean that users are allowed to install new and/or rogue software freely. But generally the corporate culture allows employees to identify themselfs with the company and its respective success.

Signs of Disablers

Sometimes I hear people talk about who they could not get access to a document they previously wrote themselfs and then stored them on a file share. They have a three level authorisation process for updated web pages (absurdly they are only visible on the intranet). Marketing uses a special graphics application (like Photoshop) and sends proofs to the sales department. However, Sales do not have ... you guessed it ... Photoshop.

When the PC in Marketing is replaced due to hardware failure, guess what. Photoshop is missing in the installed suite.

Here, IT is definitely a disabler.

Usually I recommend firing the responsible IT manager and getting some user to do the job.

I have not come across a client to follow my suggestions. Top managers usually find excuses why they keep IT managers that cause huge amounts of monetary losses to the company.

Maybe top management is not as innocent after all.