[/caption]
None of us is smarter than all of us. — Ken Majer
I love watching “The West Wing.” Politics aside, it is a great demonstration of how the highest levels of organizations communicate information and make decisions. In one episode, the administration offered a bright, enthusiastic, and highly critical member of the opposing party a senior level job inside the administration. Shocked, she asked why she would be asked to work for those of which she had been so critical. The answer was simple, the President needs to have smart people to argue with.
IT organizations are no different. There are a variety of people, processes, technologies, stakeholders, and customers in play. Communicating and decision-making in environments such as these is difficult at best. Successful organizations have figured out how to effectively do this.
The greatest success factor here is what I call a “sandpaper culture”. This is best described as an environment where the primary way of conducting business is to present ideas and have them challenged, potentially by all, regardless of title or rank. Facts rule. There is no bad idea and no bad challenge to that idea.
The reason this works so well is simple. The inter-related nature of the “big stuff” in IT organizations demands multiple perspectives to make effective decisions. Add in the intricacies and nuanced inter-dependencies of the “little stuff” and it can be argued that it is a necessity to work within a model where strong communication with a free flow of opinion and insight is necessary to be the primary method of operation.
Sandpaper serves two purposes. First, like coarse sandpaper, it shapes ideas quickly. The “have you considered…”, “it will have a huge impact on…”, and “Joe in xxxx is already doing something similar…” types of friction are necessary to position the ideas and concepts for validation. The second purpose, like fine-grained sandpaper is to polish, remove the burrs and refine the idea. “we need to synchronize project dates with…”, “we need to free up Mary…”, and “the vendor will need to weigh in with…” will also need friction to work through these considerations.
Like in the fable which no one wished to bring the news of the emperor having no clothes, group think, intimidation of title, fear of confrontation, fear of being seen as having a bad idea, and “yes men” are all barriers to success. These eliminate the greatest asset an organization has – diversity of insight. As a friend of mine often says, “None of us is smarter than all of us.”
Be like sandpaper.
