03.12.09
Isolation Breeds Ignorance and Ignorance Breeds Duct Tape
We are all familiar with the concept of a country doctor that can do all of the normal things expected of a General Practitioner. They can fix broken bones, give out antibiotics, and deliver babies. But, when something less common occurs such as heart or back problems, you look for a specialist. Specialists generally stay up-to-date in their field so as to offer their patients the best possible care.
IT has a parallel structure. The general practitioners are like the solution architects. They must be adequately competent across all of the technologies needed to implement an application. They are not expected to be experts in everything. The specialists are those that have the responsibility for specific areas of the infrastructure. They are expected to be experts.
Organizations that do not nurture their specialist’s opportunities to learn and grow within their specialty will fall behind. The medical field is constantly changing with new medicines and procedures that specialists must follow and understand. The IT industry, which appears to have an even faster change of pace, consequently presents an even greater challenge to specialists to stay aware of current opportunities.
The state of the specialists within an organization can be measured. How many local industry-sharing organizations does the business encourage its specialists to join? How many industry conferences are attended by the specialists? For those attended, is there a presentation with the management to determine new insights of value?
If the measurements show that IT does not participate in the local community or the industry, then ignorance will grow. We joke about people with automobiles with eight-track tape players, but if it is all you know, why change?
In the isolated environment, the successful approaches of the past will continue to be applied even when there are better, more appropriate approaches. The older and usually more expensive approaches will become institutionalized. They will become part of the culture and be described by IT as “the way we do it here.”
In isolation, the vendors used by IT will only be allowed to speak when asked specific questions. They will not be viewed as partners that can bring their considerable experience to the table. Often this can result in misusing the vendor’s products or not getting the full value of the products.
As a result, it will take heroes with duct tape to hold the IT operation together. Management will reward the heroes and reinforce the uniqueness of the organization over the wisdom of the IT industry. The ignorance may be bliss, but duct tape is expensive.
