Boardroom Despatches: Process – no substitute for creativity

Rene Carayol is increasingly concerned with the calibre of person getting on the bottom wrung of IT and the type of individual increasingly taking over at the top. Is throwing away the manual the answer?

In the field of technology we have become process junkies. In fact I believe critical qualities – most notably creativity and innovation – have been supplanted by process. Let me explain – and explain why this is a bad thing.

For years IT has been obsessed with standardisation and consistency. Consider the move towards open standards (certainly not a totally bad trend). Consider the average project management framework. This means there are several key positions within the average IT department that demand wading through pages and pages of crap. I’m talking specs, feasibility studies, you name it.

When I sense most of us know painting-by-numbers process is no sub for creativity, innovation and the rest, why are we so process mad? The answer lies with people. Or more precisely lack of people. Or more precisely still, lack of good people.

When this industry hasn’t been able to get the talent, we’ve put in process. We reach for the Dummy's Guide to networks, to desktop support, to migrations, to… You get the idea.

In short, nearly all organisations have become obsessed by standards, consistency and repeatable tasks. But technology is supposed to be about innovation. When it is strictly ‘me-too’, frequently off-the-shelf, we have a problem.

It wouldn’t be that way if we had attracted the talented individuals over the past 20 years. In Europe, let’s face it, those in technology are hardly the sex gods they should be. The US, while not hugely different, could again teach us a thing or two.

There was a time when technology attracted the sparky graduates. Now they seem to have gone back to finance, accounting, marketing, advertising. Who’s doing the technology courses in higher education now? Those not doing the other courses. It’s a state of affairs that leads to abject failure.

My biggest bugbear is benchmarking. When I enter an organisation and I hear about extensive benchmarking alarm bells go off.

There is only one measurement of success in business: the profit and loss account. Obsessed with code and function point analysis? Forget it pal. How often I have witnessed that and found an end product or service worse than the previous year’s.

Still the geeks are the ones (almost exclusively) taking the computer science degrees. They learn how to write a program. Well how is that going to work in a world where that is being increasingly outsourced to India or somewhere else?

So I look to the outside. I look outside of the UK for much of the grunt work. I look outside the technology industry in the UK for much of today and tomorrow’s leadership. The best talent is now coming from areas such as finance, marketing and law. These are the CIOs and IT directors of the 21st century.

I spoke at a recent conference where one extremely well-known CIO spoke about transforming the IT of a FTSE 100 company. It was painful beyond belief. It was so slow, so undynamic.

When I got up to address the attendees, I once again found myself coming back to three of my favourite CIOs. I have banged on about them before but let me summarise their key strengths.

The first stresses his role is “on the bridge, not in the engine room” and if anything, he is an ambassador.

The second talks about “dodging the drudgery” (hallelujah!) and taking one step towards his vision everyday.

The third has a simple goal he never loses sight of: to tap the maximum strategic potential of IT in the business.

Right here, on this page, those are just words. However, seeing these men transform their organisations is something else.

I cannot stress enough that they are leaders, not managers – and process isn’t one of their top priorities.