Transforming IT Culture E-Book

Frank Wander

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Wiley CIO
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 392

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Practical, proven guidance for transforming the culture of any IT department As more and more jobs are outsourced, and the economy continues to struggle, people are looking for an alternative to the greed-driven, selfish leadership that has resulted in corporations where the workers are treated as interchangeable parts. This book shows how the human factors can be used to unlock higher returns on human capital such that workers are no longer interchangeable parts, but assets that are cared about and grown. Refreshingly innovative, Transforming IT Culture shows how neuroscientific and psychological research can be applied in the IT workplace to unleash a vast pool of untapped potential. * Written by an expert on IT culture transformation * Considers the widespread "cultural blindness" in business today, and how it can be addressed * Draws on the author's repeated success transforming IT divisions across major corporations by applying the human factors * Explains why social intelligence, human factors, and collaboration are the source of harmony, shared learning, mutual respect, and value creation Employees want positive change in business, something to stop the downward spiral we are on, both financially and emotionally. Transforming IT Culture shows how the essential ingredient to any high performing IT department is a culture where employees are valued and managed to their strengths. Using the Information Technology profession as a lens through which we can understand knowledge worker productivity and how to seriously improve it, this important new book reveals why Collaborative Social Systems are essential to every organization.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Passing of an Era

A New Era Brings a New Focus

A Quick Book Tour

Note

Chapter 1: A Shining Light: The Blind Spot Revealed

A Race to the Bottom

Human Understanding Enters the Workplace

We Have Been Taught Not to See or Feel

Unlocking Human Potential

Dawn of a New Productivity Model

Working Social

The Social System Is the Factory

Notes

Chapter 2: Corporate America’s IT Organization: Failure Is All Too Common

Still Broken after All These Years . . .

Unfortunately, the Truth Is Worse

If We Would Just Embrace and Trust Our People . . .

Offshore Outsourcing: A Deeper Look

Notes

Chapter 3: Workers as Machines: A Social Pathology

He’s a Good Hand

The Machine Age: Still Felt Today

Birth of Corporate Easter Islands

Our Human Resource Practices Remain Primitive

Selectively Continue the Past; Fully Embrace the Future

Notes

Chapter 4: The Unseen Art and Emotion of IT: The Acme Inc. Philharmonic Orchestra: Knowledge as Notes, Leaders as Conductors, Programmers as Composers

A Product of Mind and Emotion

Limitations of Language and Our Resultant Inability to Communicate

Social Cohesion and Conceptual Unity

And the Instruments Keep Changing

The Encore. A Callback. Bravo!

Note

Chapter 5: Case Study: An Unproductive State of Mind: Toxic Leadership and Its Aftermath

Toxic to Competitive Advantage

Conclusion

Note

Chapter 6: What Are We Waiting For? Applied Science at Work

Hawthorne Studies

Pygmalion in the Classroom

Empathy, Caring, and Compassion

Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Mood Is Contagious

Limbic System

Maslow: Humanism in the Workplace

Working Memory

Mirror Neurons

Other Thoughts

Notes

Chapter 7: Empathy and Compassion: The Socially Cohesive and Resilient Organization

The Toxic Handler: Empathy and Compassion in Action

Dysfunctional Organizations Have Less Time for Compassion

Empathy and Compassion: A Research Perspective

Notes

Chapter 8: Designing a Collaborative Social System: Working Social: How the Right Culture Unlocks Productivity

Designing Collaborative Social Systems

Why a Collaborative Social System Matters

Notes

Chapter 9: The Social Compact: Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Living the Values

Shaping IT: One Interaction at a Time

Courtesy Is Contagious

Giving versus Getting

Citizenship Performance

Notes

Chapter 10: The Servant Leader: Prosocial and Authentic

Opening Night

Using Social Intelligence and Caring to Lead from Below

Conducting Styles

Servant Leadership in IT: Giving Credit While Silently Helping Drive Group Success

Academic Views

Moving the Group from “I Get It” to “I See It”

Notes

Chapter 11: Social and Emotional Intelligence: The Organizational Canvas Meets the Social Paintbrush

Personal and Social Competence

Sogence in Action

Understanding Expression: A Social Skill from Our Past

Good Vibrations: The Right Social Sentiment Energizes a Performance

Notes

Chapter 12: Designing an Innovative Culture

Talent and Mood

The Human Factors

Build a Culture of Creativity

Chapter 13: Workforce Planning: Maximizing the Productivity of Your Talent—Today and Tomorrow

Workforce Planning Gap

Goals and Process

Context Diagram

Outsourcing and Offshoring

Notes

Chapter 14: How to Successfully Transform Your Organization: Putting It All Together

High-Level Outline

Best Practices in Detail

Conclusion

About The Author

Index

WILEY CIO SERIES

Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons is the oldest independent publishing company in the United States. With offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, Wiley is globally committed to developing and marketing print and electronic products and services for our customers’ professional and personal knowledge and understanding.

The Wiley CIO series provides information, tools, and insights to IT executives and managers. The products in this series cover a wide range of topics that supply strategic and implementation guidance on the latest technology trends, leadership, and emerging best practices.

Titles in the Wiley CIO series include:

The Agile Architecture Revolution: How Cloud Computing, REST-Based SOA, and Mobile Computing Are Changing Enterprise IT by Jason Bloomberg

Big Data, Big Analytics: Emerging Business Intelligence and Analytic Trends for Today’s Businesses by Michele Chambers, Ambiga Dhiraj, and Michael Minelli

The Chief Information Officer’s Body of Knowledge: People, Process, and Technology by Dean Lane

CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology by Joe Stenzel, Randy Betancourt, Gary Cokins, Alyssa Farrell, Bill Flemming, Michael H. Hugos, Jonathan Hujsak, and Karl D. Schubert

The CIO Playbook: Strategies and Best Practices for IT Leaders to Deliver Value by Nicholas R. Colisto

Enterprise IT Strategy, + Website: An Executive Guide for Generating Optimal ROI from Critical IT Investments by Gregory J. Fell

Executive’s Guide to Virtual Worlds: How Avatars Are Transforming Your Business and Your Brand by Lonnie Benson

Innovating for Growth and Value: How CIOs Lead Continuous Transformation in the Modern Enterprise by Hunter Muller

IT Leadership Manual: Roadmap to Becoming a Trusted Business Partner by Alan R. Guibord

Managing Electronic Records: Methods, Best Practices, and Technologies by Robert F. Smallwood

On Top of the Cloud: How CIOs Leverage New Technologies to Drive Change and Build Value Across the Enterprise by Hunter Muller

Straight to the Top: CIO Leadership in a Mobile, Social, and Cloud-based (Second Edition) by Gregory S. Smith

Strategic IT: Best Practices for IT Managers and Executives by Arthur M. Langer

Strategic IT Management: Transforming Business in Turbulent Times by Robert J. Benson

Transforming IT Culture: How to Use Social Intelligence, Human Factors and Collaboration to Create an IT Department That Outperforms by Frank Wander

Unleashing the Power of IT: Bringing People, Business, and Technology Together by Dan Roberts

The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America’s Future by Gary Beach

Cover image: © draco77/iStockphoto

Cover design: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 by Frank Wander. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Wander, Frank, 1957–

Transforming it culture : how to use social intelligence, human factors, and collaboration to create an IT department that outperforms / Frank Wander.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-43653-0 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-57308-2 (ebk);

ISBN 978-1-118-57310-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-57549-9 (ebk)

1. Information technology—Management. 2. Electronic data processing departments—Management. I. Title.

HD30.2.W3477 2013

004.068—dc23

2012045107

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

—William James

Dedicated to the Corporate Weaver: To those great and selfless leaders who unfashionably rely on sensitivity and outflowing concern to bond with their people; who peer deeply inside them with perceptive social intelligence (sogence); who understand that the social environment is their loom and their professionals are threads of experience; who weave these threads, one to another, forming a closely connected tapestry of mind and emotion, highly productive and deeply collaborative. Done skillfully, the result is pure harmony—information and productivity flow across the fibers. This is human social fabric, the material of modern productivity—the postindustrial equivalent of an assembly line. In this factory, what matters most are not the cost and quantity of thread but the quality—and whether each thread can be tightly woven into the section of the tapestry where it is needed.

This book uses the information technology (IT) profession as a lens through which we can see the importance of understanding the human factors of productivity and how to use them to unlock IT organizational effectiveness; this is how you make IT failure a rare exception, greatly increasing the success of projects, individuals, and teams; this is how you create an IT department that outperforms and companies that outcompete. Our workers are more than mere “human resources,” a dehumanizing description of talent that just reinforces the notion that professionals are interchangeable parts. They aren’t—and they never were! The next productivity revolution will be launched by applying human understanding to unlock the full potential of our people. At long last, we will move beyond our industrial-era management practices and rely on trust, caring, and unselfishness to liberate the productivity of our knowledge workers.

The companies that leverage human understanding to embrace their people will own the future. The need is yesterday; the time is now.

FOREWORD

Frank Wander’s book, Transforming IT Culture, is being published at a time when the role of the chief information officer (CIO) and information technology (IT) departments are being reevaluated by chief executive officers. Wander rightfully warns IT management that they have become too dependent on process-based solutions and need to rely more on the “human factors” to improve IT results. Indeed, we have become a society that believes that business problems can be solved through integrated processes, yet everything we have learned from research at Columbia University suggests that it is the human side—those “soft skills”—that are the real difference makers for success.

At Columbia, we have a master’s degree program in IT executive management that has relationships with over 125 of the most successful CIOs in the industry. These CIOs mentor and coach our students in hopes that they can help them become tomorrow’s IT leaders. Our program focuses more on the soft skills portion—those very things that Frank Wander emphasizes in his book: being caring, social, unlocking the potential of staff, transforming ideas into realities, establishing social networks inside your organization, to name just a few of his strategies. Wander has been a mentor in our program at Columbia and has been instrumental in helping us deliver an important message to our students: Reliance on process only will not be enough for the successful CIO of the future.

My research has rendered remarkable consistency in the ways senior CIOs defined their successes.1 Not surprisingly, these CIO attributes, as I call them, comprise mostly of the human factors highlighted in Wander’s book. Unfortunately, these soft skills are usually not the focus of many up-and-coming IT managers.

My new book with Wiley due to be published in early 2013, Strategic IT: Best Practices for IT Managers and Executives, coauthored with my colleague Lyle Yorks, divides these CIO human factor skills into two categories: personal attributes and organizational philosophy.2

Yorks and I define the term personal attributes as 11 individual traits that appear to be keys for IT leadership. Furthermore, we relate 12 organization philosophy issues that CIOs feel are critical to the way the IT organization should operate with the business.

The results of our research are clear. Most of what brings IT success relates more to the issues articulated in Transforming IT Culture, that is, social intelligence, human factors, and collaboration. While so many CIOs agree with this approach, few have been able to do it successfully. We still see many CIOs with a “short shelf life” in their position—only 39 months. Yet we also see that there are CIOs that have crossed that milestone and are bringing real value to their firms. Certainly, Frank Wander’s book represents what this new breed of business CIOs need to do to change the ways IT is integrated into the business world.

Dr. Arthur M. Langer

Academic Director, Executive Masters of Science in Technology Management, Columbia University,

Faculties: Graduate School of Business, Graduate School of Education, School of Continuing Education

Notes

1. A. M. Langer, Information Technology and Organizational Learning: Managing Behavioral Change Through Technology and Education (New York: CRC Press, 2011).

2. A.M. Langer and L. Yorks, Strategic IT: Best Practices for IT Managers and Executives (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, forthcoming).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is a significant undertaking, one even bigger than I imagined when I decided to finish Transforming IT Culture, given that I had started this manuscript way back in 2004. Along the way, I have had encouragement from many folks who worked for me, all of whom thought a book on the human factors of productivity was more necessary than ever. I am thankful to all of them for their support.

As I look back over this journey, many, many people come to mind. Speaking with others has enriched my knowledge and led me to great books and information sources, and their probing questions sharpened my understanding. That said, a few folks need to be specifically mentioned.

Dan Roberts, president of Ouellette & Associates Consulting, Inc., has been a great help, encouraging me to finish my book and referring me to my acquisitions editor at John Wiley & Sons. He will always stand out as someone truly genuine, who is also thoughtfully focused on the human side of IT.

Dr. Arthur Langer of Columbia University, who wrote the Foreword to this book, stands out as an individual who is making a difference in so many people’s lives. Aside from being a brilliant educator, he has been both a friend and mentor. Through his nonprofit, Workforce Opportunity Services, Art provides scholarships to bright, disadvantaged kids who are in danger of being left behind; he helps them get a degree in computer science and a career in IT by placing them in corporations hungry for entry-level professionals. Art understands talent and the importance of growing it. He is truly leading the way and is a great example of the power of caring.

I would also like to thank the many professionals at Wiley who provided great support, structure, and guidance as we worked together on this book. Wiley is an excellent company that has been wonderful to collaborate with, and I would never have been able to produce a book of this quality without the help and guidance of its staff. I am proud to be a member of the Wiley family.

Most important, I would like to thank my wife, Laura, and my three sons, Alex, Chris, and Kevin, who have put up with me sitting at a computer for long hours as I researched, wrote, and reviewed each chapter. They have been a great help, reviewing content, suggesting improvements, and remaining tireless cheerleaders. I am very proud of each of them and will surely engage them in my next book.

Introduction

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

—Abraham Maslow

Welcome to a future where professionals count and leaders have the tools and knowledge to unlock the full potential of their talent; where companies are as concerned about their human infrastructure as they are about their networks, storage, and computers; where human understanding is seen as highly productive, and human-centric practices have replaced the selfish, cold, industrial methods that now dominate traditional corporate America. That day now dawns. The pendulum of caring is starting to swing back, and its movement will produce winners and losers. How will things turn out for you?

This book will give you an awareness of the human factors of productivity, enabling you to unlock hidden pockets of personal and group effectiveness, thereby ensuring you are positioned for long-term success. Your outcome does not have to be in doubt. This is a meaningful read, and the first steps in your journey toward a higher level of performance. Enjoy it.

So, how do I know the pendulum is moving? Some things in life are just accidental. As an information technology (IT) leader, I was always very good at strategy, process, and technology, but I also cared deeply about my people and fought to create high-performing cultures where each of them really did count; they repaid the caring with on-time projects, great solutions, deep collaboration, positive social chemistry, and organizational effectiveness. The bargain was unwritten but very clear.