In a conversation with Kirtimaya Varma the Editor-in-Chief of EDN Asia, he mentioned that he was on his way to publishing his second book , a humorous book on the flourishing IT business. In this context he mentioned "solving your solution"(I believe it is the title of his new book ).
This got me thinking about our lives today. How often are we "solving solutions". i.e trying to solve a problem that either does not exist, or is grossly misunderstood. "help" of this nature most likely worsens the situation of the people/organizations that are the "target" of this help.
In business we see a number of examples of "help" turning into a nightmare. I have seen organizations spend millions of dollars on tools that are supposed to help make the organization more efficient, but instead lead to confusion. The worst case is when the organization changes it's "measures of success" to make the new system look good as opposed to make the organization better.
At a professional level we consciously or subconsciously are always trying to increase our value to an organization. So what happens is that as one builds an organization, often the number one goal changes from a business goal to that of self preservation and then self enhancement.
A great real life example at a local technology company in Singapore:
The company grew to a size of about 80 people in a matter of 3 years and they needed to track leave balance and other HR needs. So what starts out as a small team to help track employee leave balance for a company then in 2 years took the shape of a HR IT infrastructure organization that suddenly needs a budget and people etc. Now the company has 500 employees, of which there are 25 IT professionals in HR who are continuously building and improving a HR application for the company. This same company has another 18 IT engineers supporting the company, has 22 database programmers and 15 analysts, and 14 people on the web team, all providing support to the companies engineering, sales and marketing teams, and is headed by the person who originally was tasked to find an application to track employee leave balance. In December of 2006 the engineering team was told that they would be "helped" to run their team better because now they can track on the web the leave balances, the salaries , and another 10 things that I can't remember.
In January 2007, the engineering VP, and co founder who is a close friend of mine asked for help for some web features that the engineering team needed for testing their new product and for supporting the release of their new platform. The reply he got was that the business decided that his request was not a priority, and that his request would not be attended to until august 2008. He later found that the "business decision" was not made by people that that designed the products or brought revenue to the company but was made by the the team of the person who 3 years earlier set up the HR IT team. He also found that the things on the list above his request were evaluation of web configuration tool to standardize product data sheet representation on the web (the sales and marketing team did not ask for this), tuning the HR database to allow tracking of leave balance to the hour as opposed to half day periods (none of the managers had asked for this) , automating the mail room distribution , etc... To cut a long story short, in May of last year, the CEO dismantled the infrastructure team, out sourced the work to a company that specializes in implementation of business systems and web development.
Now the business decisions are made simple and transparently because only the "core" functions to the company have the ability to prioritize business needs.
There should be no hesitation in a business to tell a group what position they play. On a soccer team if everybody is a striker then the team loses.
In world affairs too there are many examples of "solving Solutions". Many of the recent wars and regime changes have done little to help any of the people that were supposed to benefit. And in the current banking crises let us see what all the government and central bank "help" does. Does it "help" the economy or does it help the people who caused the problem. Time will tell....
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Chandran. This is a great reminder on how important it is to remain focused on the core. I see how easy it is for administrative, support groups to deviate from the core and take a life of their own on redundant projects.
This was definitely interesting and would just like to add that it very much applies to personal life also.
How often a well meaning individual inadvertently sets of a storm in relationship by looking at a situation from one’s own point of view only – turning the “help” into a nightmare.
Am sure your musings will be richer if you do not restrict them to work related observations only.
It is great to read this kind of stories. Very well written!
Your analogy with the current fianancial crisis made me think. This is my consideration: Basically you wonder if the central banks/feds are saving the banks or the real economy. Well, I have the same doubt, even if I would not point the finger to the HR IT manager neither to the banks CEOs.
Where the actual responsability is? Was in your example the CEO fault that let the HR IT team to grow beyond the original goals (a pretty big mistake in terms of company resources, focus, mission, etc.) or was the HR IT team leader who occupied a room left empty by a weak CEO/management? Per your analogy, was the Fed/Congress that left unguarded a large portion of the public savings/finance world (Collaterals and hedge funds) or are the Hedge Funds and the "creative fianance" gurus that occupied a not regulated field?
Probably there is not a clear binary answer. The point I completely agree upon is: "There should be no hesitation in a business to tell a group what position they play".
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