Reality is messy. I have been traveling around the U.S. and Europe talking with clients about the impact of consumer-grade technologies and Internet-based capabilities on their work. Many IT managers are embarrassed at how out of control some of their users are. They're afraid their peers in other companies will find out that they don't really control everything going on inside their enterprise. They think they're being unprofessional by not applying all the controls and enforcing all the policies that "the rest of the world" applies. At the same time, they are unwilling to stop users from having their way — at least within reason.

Others worry that they are failing to meet the needs of users, because they — the IT professionals — cannot stay on top of all that's emerging (and often quickly submerging) on the Internet and with consumer-grade technologies. Users look wistfully at what could be, while IT professionals continue to do their "day job," ensuring that what was supposed to be, eventually gets done.

IT professionals are creating policies they never enforce, and then engaging in a practice of "don't ask, don't tell." Some lock down everything for fear of stagnation and lack of support from the most senior business executives who, for example, refuse to carry two laptops on the road — one for business and one for personal use. Lockdown isn't the only thing going on. Most IT organizations that are doing outstanding work implementing and evolving critical enterprise-class systems know full well that the ability of users to be creative, to innovate, to team and to lead suffers under the slow rate of progress that can generally be driven from central IT citadels.

The first step in tackling these problems is to openly admit them. They are all problems. They stem, I believe, from our own instinct to take on more responsibility while shedding none. They also stem from denial. We seek to do it all and do it best, when we would be better off focusing on what we can do really well and let the marketplace take over in provisioning many classes of users, applications and devices.

Is it time to rethink the role of IT professionals? Tell me about it.

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You are RIGHT!

I think that, in the last years, we went in the wrong direction insisting and incrementing our effort in detailed control / procedures / certifications (!!!!!) ...

We have to accept that we are not guilty couse we are not able to drive our business in the way we want. Otherwise we loose time in enforcing low level / too detailed form of controls while the other parts of the system explodes.

We can't fight against 'change'.

Few basics (but WELL DONE) controls + few very well enforced rules + A LOT OF COMMUNICATIONS. That's, in my opinion, how we can survive with high demanding / high complex systems.

PierG
http://pierg.wordpress.com

This is an ongoing issue that has not really changed since the days of the 'glass house'. Why is IT so reticent to evolve? This seems to be a central question.

One reason has to do with a natural tendency to want to 'own' things. In my own experience as a CIO, I had this desire to 'control' my corporate IT world, at a time when the MacIntosh was being suggested as a replacement for the then lackluster Windows desktops becoming prevalent in my organization. I fought the intrusion, not because the technology was better or worse, but because I knew ultimately my group would have to support connections to it and that would in turn stress an already overburdened organization.

I could have shed some responsibility, but in doing so I would have removed capabilities from my corporate sponsors; a career-limiting move from my perspective at the time.

Ultimately all IT organizations have to re-address their priorities, and in the doing of this reassess the portfolio they maintain. This natural 'pruining' process causes the organization to remain lean enough to take on new challenges and move in new directions. Until this becomes common in IT management, the natural cycle of change will be viewed as an evil rather than opportunity.

I think it's a reality that the consumer technologies of choice are entering the workplace. We as IT professionals are just going to have to deal with it.

Tom Peters a few years back wrote a piece for Fast Company magazine entitled "Brand You". Essentially the piece articulated the mindset that a professional should consider themselves as a separate organization that rents his/her time to an organization. They give the organization their time and expertise and in return the organization provides high quality experience to add to your resume.

It seems that these days we employ a lot of one-man shop professional service firms. These "firms" have their own interpretation of IT standards and the necessary tools. HR departments are screaming for IT to help them attact and retain young bright minds. Being able to work the way they want to - with the tools they want to is just one of those retention things.

Let the employee have flexibility in certain aspects of their IT footprint. They will have to provide and support that on their own. Structure your service catalogue with standard offerings that they choose to adopt or out - with clear indications that the SLA and support on choosing to opt out of an offering will have impact on their ability to engage support.

If they choose to run a Mac in a Windows environment and have difficulty dealing with email or calendaring, the business manager that they work for will feel that pain long before IT does. The business manager will then put the pressure on that "firm" to get with the program.

When it comes to the use of Business applications that they have been hired to interact with, they'll need to use the tools that we've set. Ultimately that'll come down to virtualized resources.

Agree we need to change, not sure we're totally out of control, but if it helps get it on the agenda, might be a good thing.

Why do we insist on looking at IT to both design and make the car (IT systems), and then maintain them as well?
In most other industries those that set the trends and follow them closely (e.g. car design labs) are not responsible for the production lines, although often closely aligned. What they are never responsible for is the maintenance of the machines themselves, so why do we do that in IT?

Can't we get the message over that, for the same reasons other industries have split responsibilities, so should IT - don't look at the same people to innovate & cost-cut. Life isn't like that, so why should IT be?

I think there are small pockets of us, IT Professionals with some enlightenment, that are trying to posit change within the enterprise. I suspect the vast majority of my peers lack an understanding of how to go about changing IT Culture. Language is the key to effecting change. To that end, read some of the avant garde blogs on what the change should look like from people like Doc Searls, Kathy Sierra, and Scoble. Also read, Notes on Language and Leadership (conversations between Paul Pangaro and Michael Geoghegan).