Link: Google exec says IT 'crisis' preventing business innovation.
The idea of creative destruction is one thing when applied to a business idea - but quite something else when applied to your career - especially while you are still pursuing it! And that is one of the reasons management is so slow to catch up with new business paradigms often enabled - or even mandated - by technology changes in IT. Only the new, young entrants in the profession are willing to try radical new approaches (to systems design, to management schemes, to control models): they have little to lose at that early stage. But senior management has built up everything - from reputation to compensation - based on an understanding and a path that was emerging when they were young, but is now seen as stable.
And this may explain why change in fast-moving fields like IT seems to take such frustratingly long times to pick up on innovation. The system - for all its stated desire for innovation - is actually fortified against the most fundamental changes. Or - at least - change that affects me. Change that affects you - well, I can live with that. But change to my plans is a whole other matter.
The linked article describes a talk by Google's Dave Girouard, and helps point out why we need to look for more flexibility and willingness to adapt. He is concerned that the complexity built into IT systems is now preventing efficient innovation. Part of the complexity is borne of the pace of change: A really nifty advance in one area may require a temporary bridge to other components of the system - until they can catch up. Unfortunately some of those bridges, patches and fixes become so integrated into the operation that they no longer behave as a temporary fix - they are now part of the system.
Girouard's point is that - at some point - a CIO and other senior management need to stand back and look at the totality of what major change - beneficial change - could achieve by making some drastic eliminations of complex systems - where much simpler and cheaper alternatives exist. In the end, he says “A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities]."
To shore up the concept, he points out that many large companies at one time had a VP of Electricity. But that function was absorbed into a larger concern about overall facilities. Certain IT functions may be in that category - they may need to fade away - replaced by outsourcing or technology - to make way to spend the time and energy finding more profitable ways to generate new products and solve problems.
By happenstance, another piece appeared the other day - called "Who killed the Webmaster" - pointing out that the management of Web presence has evolved to something considerably different than merely the staff who prepared and maintained Web pages, as it emerged in the late '90's.
Between technology changes - especially the capabilities of so-called Web 2.0 (scripting, AJAX and the like) - and economic changes forcing Web considerations into other departments in the corporate hierarchy, the role of the Web master has grown well beyond the individual with hands-on control over the medium.
IT careers are on the bleeding edge of progress because the careers are evolving almost as quickly as the technology itself - in spite of the gray-heads who are trying to keep things stable until they can retire. Other professions are changing rapidly as well - from engineering to medicine, from accounting to art - everyone is absorbing new tools and new goals enabled by those tools, into their career considerations. But the IT professional is on the front line - which is what makes it exciting and - to some extent - dangerous. That front line exposure is also what makes it rewarding in every sense of the word.
As we encourage new talent and young people to consider IT and computer science related paths to their new professions - we need to keep it honest - and make sure that everyone appreciates that IT is a whole-body full-immersion experience. You can't phone it in - and you can't very long tinker along the edges. IT is the career for the future - and the challenge is what makes it fun!
(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)
