[caption id="attachment_726" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Path to the Future"][/caption]
If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse. – Alvin Toffler
As organizations grow the technology needs of an organization change – and sometimes change quickly and profoundly.
Early stage companies have very specific needs and limited funds to work with. Procure and support laptops and a few servers, accounting software to install and manage, put together a few Access database systems, Excel spreadsheets, a website, email, and possibly telephone support. You can probably list another ten or twenty things which pertain to the technology of early stage companies. The point is that almost all the activities are tactical and delivered in a very hands-on manner.
It is relatively easy for “IT” to support all business functions. What cannot be addressed directly by hands-on IT can be contracted quite easily.
As the organization grows, each business function grows. In some cases the growth is not an incremental increase but a change in both scope and scale. Sales moves from the low hanging fruit of working existing relationships to a sales force with a marketing function. The bookkeeping function turns into an accounting department and perhaps a finance arm to it. Manufacturing grows from several craftsmen to a function centered on supply chain and possibly outsourced overseas.
Suddenly the degree of support which is demanded of IT no longer resembles the early stage company. While the argument that specific support tasks are still hands-on, the volume and diversity of tasks require much greater support. The IT function which was once manageable by a small close-knit group of people taking care of demands on them in a rapid fashion, has morphed into one which requires many more people with a complex and diverse set of skills. The focus moves from the problem to be addressed, to end to end integrated thinking with a decision impact horizon which extends further into the future.
It is also unfortunate but often the case that IT is typically not supported, either financially or with headcount, to keep up the collective growth rate of the growing business functions. The people who have grown IT from the company’s inception are typically highly driven and will continue to take on more and more work. Usually this means little or no time to do anything but go from crisis to crisis, demand to demand, problem to problem.
Somewhere in the growth process the demands the business places on IT require reconsideration of the management of IT. The same person who serves as an outstanding hands-on IT leader typically has a different skill set than what the organization requires to move to the next stage. Supply and demand management, operational focus, vendor management, development platforms and methodology, financial and operational models, governance processes all need to move to the forefront. Ironically the skills which make the hands-on IT leader so valuable during the early stage, coupled with the increasingly high demands on their time prevent them from addressing the higher order functions and processes. It may not be for lack of competency or capability as much as a lack of capacity. This situation typically persists until the organization and IT realize that there is a mutually high level of pain in the function and a new IT leader is sought. When this point arrives, and it always will, recognition that IT needs and management of these needs has changed must drive the new leader selection.
Growth is good, but it does have implications. Properly addressing these implications will facilitate greater growth and by association greater opportunity for all.
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