Don’t suffer with in-house technology management if that’s is not your business!
Instead, focus on helping users to succeed. Shift resources to prioritize their effectiveness. Move from a high-tech staff to problem-solving tech collaboration.
The best IT departments remove user obstacles and streamlinine workflows. Outsource the rest — IT infrastructure, security management, remote device management, etc. Good tech requires experts. You wouldn’t hire an in house medical doctor.
Nor should you expect a small company CIO to do both hard core tech security and outstanding user support. Instead hire a managed services provider to take care of the network, security, end user support, etc. Then focus on what really matters: leveraging technology to improve operations, revenue, and employee satisfaction.
Three high-value results will follow:
- Systems and information security; robust, reliable, managed, and monitored infrastructure (usually virtual); and effective end user support
- Workflow improvements and increased employee satisfaction, leading to
- Improved return on IT investment
Non-tech companies rarely benefit from in-house infrastructure management. It’s impossible to keep up with the industry unless that’s your focus — thus managed service providers have become critical success factors.
If this describes you, then you’re paying through the nose for crappy IT infrastructure and ineffective user support.
Here are five principles of stakeholder-focused IT — five operational priorities that stand up to most ethical tests. Make your IT systems:
- Easy — continuously improve the user experience, remove impediments and confusion
- Available — access to information where and when it’s needed, secure without security obstacles
- Reliable — the systems are always available and predictable
- Secure — constantly vigilant security controls and 24/7 proactive mo
- Cost-effective
Technology… how does yours help you and your colleagues? How does it hinder? And where are you spending your money?
Great piece. I think that one of the questions I would ask is whether the IT seems to be serving the business or whether the business is serving the IT. I say this with the understanding that IT is difficult. It forces people to change the way that they work. This is something that requires change management and training. But, too often it seems that IT departments view the change management process as how the users need to change to maximize the way that they use the IT, rather than asking the question of what type of change does this IT platform require and is there a reasonable return on the investment when one considers the cost of those changes. Will the whole — the required change by the user and the functionality of the IT platform — result in a net positive return on investment. Is there a chance that the technology will be indistinguishable from magic?
Yes, exactly right — it feels like magic when people collaborate using really great tools! You describe is a good process for IT to develop and implement new systems to meet constantly changing user and strategic needs — making the work feasible, and perhaps more enjoyable for user-stakeholders.
I keep looping around to the idea that the motivation behind a systems development profoundly impacts how it behaves once operating. Extractive systems have a different set of consequences from those seeking to provide value. It seems like the latter is better for society, and the former is inevitable… like Disney – the “Magic Kingdom” reaching into your pocket and emptying your wallet. AI knows what you want, and how to charge a premium for it. As opposed to charging a reasonable price for high-quality vegetables and durable work gear.
All the computing power we can muster serving instead to maximize profits for a few, at the expense of meeting human needs. Charge the absolute hishest prices, especially when buyers have no choice, like in food deserts.
Extractive strategy A#1: get the most out of people who have no choice. I just had an image of gas stations adjusting prices every 5 minutes based on local traffic flow. You can imagine the pitch meeting: “We can increase profits by 2.5% with micro-price adjustments!” Go us! Casinos and hedge funds get rich: the house always wins.
I think that you make a great point. The ethical issues of an extractive mentality seems to becoming a core principle of modern capitalism (I am not sure that it is necessarily central to capitalism as a mechanism for the distribution of goods in a society). Computers seem to merely add scale to the extractive objectives of ethically compromised individuals and their organizations?
Yes, exactly!
David: I certainly get the gist of your 5 principles of stakeholder-focussed IT – they are very appropriate. However, I’ve been thinking about your 5 principles and their interrelationships, as well as expansion of their meaning/importance depending on context. Our company has been involved with the development of electronic voting systems for the last 24 years. From the perspective of both election administrators and voters, security and privacy are generally most important, including confidence that votes are not lost or manipulated and counting is accurate and verifiable. To help achieve these qualities security vulnerabilities are minimised by constructing and deploying a ‘closed system’ – only accessible within physically security-controlled environments – a ‘control room’ for administrators and several official ‘polling places’ for (registered) voters. Of course, to achieve their respective aims to setup and conduct one or more elections and to vote, both administrators and voters require ease of accessibility and use. Interfaces are simple and created to only provide the absolutely necessary functionality with clear guidance from the system itself. The voting interface allows for easy connection of ear-phones and/or ballot zooming for the vision impaired who can then easily navigate the ballot (typically containing 25-35 candidates) and listen to an accurate audio description. This system is completely isolated from the internet and availability is (of necessity) very limited but very reliable. I provide this relatively detailed description in order to indicate that firstly your 5 principles (and their priorities) are very ‘context-dependent’. BTW the system is very cost-effective from both the views of the Election Authority and the voters. The previous, paper ballot system (only) required more (human) effort to setup and (particularly) much more effort to count (by humans) – to a reasonable level of accuracy. Counting of paper votes typically took 2-3 weeks – and more if there were submissions to do a recount. These days election results are known (accurately) within a few hours of election closure. In addition, the software source code is (limited) open source – allowing for interested parties to scrutinise and comment. I hope my input will act as a reasonable example that addresses you 5 principles!
Thanks for adding your thoughts, and great to hear from you, Clive! It’s been a minute since I worked with you on SoDIS, and it seems like both of us have continued to put stakeholder needs as a high priority in our respective projects — your successful, long-term combo of security, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness reflects that strategy.
Yes, agreed, the priorities among the 5 shift according to context and need — in service to reliable elections, in this case.
Is there a way you would (or do) publicly articulate your stakeholder strategy or company values?