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Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning. – Warren Bennis
The internal staff of the IT organization are far more than the people whose paychecks you sign. These are the people who form the heart and soul of your IT ecosystem. If you are at all like most other IT organizations, you will have some truly outstanding people on your payroll. People whom you turn to time and time again and constantly keep you from going from the frying pan to the fire. You will also have a number of people who are the B and C performers. Pareto’s Principle applies to IT organizations as much as anywhere. Within the ecosystem, the internal IT staff, along with Shadow IT and any long term contractors, are the ones who provide the IT identity to the business units they support. They provide the brand, and set expectations of what will be provided in terms of quality of service the IT organization provides to the business. For this reason, they are perhaps the most critical part of the IT ecosystem.
Traditionally, an ecosystem would be viewed as a complex network with many to many connection across most points in the graph. While an IT ecosystem still has elements of this, there is more of a hub and spoke feel to it. The people that provide the face to the IT organization, primarily internal IT staff, form the hub of the ecosystem, with the other parts of the ecosystem attached via the spokes. If you need a great Perl programmer, it is likely that Joe knows exactly the right contractor. If you need to learn the downside of overseas outsourcing, Mary probably can direct you to the right consulting firm. These people are not only plugged in at one end with everything going on inside the company, but also plugged in to the ecosystem.
It is also important to realize that while we often speak of the internal IT staff in the collective, they are truly individuals. Individuals with their own set of complex relationships within the ecosystem. People with have long standing relationships with contractors, use consultants who get to know their business, subscribe and follow various research groups and otherwise build relationships which drive their professional success. Aggregating this set of relationships builds what can be called the collective consciousness of the IT organization. Depending on the breadth and depth of the relationships within the network, the collective consciousness can be quite impressive. As people are added or removed from this collective consciousness, by hiring, firing, acquisition or outsourcing, the collective consciousness and by its nature connectivity with the IT ecosystem will be altered. Usually in ways more profound than could be anticipated in the dollars and cents aspects which frequently drive the business decision(s).
As a word of advice, choose your heart and soul carefully. They will prop you up and drive you down faster than can be imagined – in large part through not only their own desires, but the connections they have in the ecosystem.
