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Leadership in IT - At Least According to The WSJ
typewriterFor a long time now I have described myself as a translator. What 25 years or more ? So I was interested to read this article in the WSJ today, because it seems that either the WSJ had repurposed the article from 25 years ago - OR - we have learned nothing.
Not sure which is the worse.
Just one slice :
…. when IT and business executives have a clearer understanding of the needs of both sides, how they work and the challenges they face. That means business leaders and IT executives talking _with_each other about their operations and about how IT can help the company fulfill its goals, instead of talking past each other about how one side or the other is preventing that from happening.
And that’s just the start.
I get annoyed that we don’t learn lessons over history as we continually make the same mistakes. But when we can even work out how to talk to each other - when the same argument has been rife for a quarter of a century. Well that is bad - and sad
[BTW - the rest of the WSJ supplement is just as horrifying - check out a couple of extra links below].
Replace ‘tablet’ for PC in this article and put yourself back 20 years.
Seriously - management is looking at this problem the wrong way ?
Etc etc
BTW - on the tablet stuff - said it forever - say it again, it is not just the WSJ - Apple (for example) always fail to tell the TCO story when selling their hardware - and as a result - when the story gets repeated - like here - the TCO story STILL doesn’t get told. Even in this article they touch on TCO - but it centers around hardware replacement costs - they could have covered off:
- Downtime through machines not working
- Downtime while setting machine up
- Cost of software to even get started - after initial hardware outlay
- Incremental cost of additional software to make the hardware do what you want
- Pleasure to work with the machine versus - ‘oh no - I need to do some more’
But they didn’t - because - it appears - not even the WSJ understands !
Anyway - sure this won’t be the last commentary on this topic.