Technology Innovation vs. Insubordination

You have been hard at work on your latest technology innovation. This innovation can take your organization to a higher level of profitability or streamlined operation. You've been successfully making your case for your innovation across departmental and hierarchical lines. But there are obstacles in your way:

- your boss doesn't believe your innovation can actually work
- there is no room in the budget to accommodate your innovation in the short term
- your innovation would open up new lines of business, but your organization's senior executives will not examine a relationship between a technology component and a profit potential of these lines of business

You truly and strongly believe that your innovation can take your organization higher, but the obstacles remain. You take all of the "believe in yourself" advice to heart in order to "hang in there", but the frustration continues to mount. The message of innovation can be tough to deliver to, and be accepted by an organization. On the surface, it can actually appear to be insubordination if your innovation is not part of the "master plan" in the minds of your organization's management.

Before your frustration bubbles over, you may want to consider these points:

- Understand your organization's short-term goals
For the next three or six months, your organization might not have the capacity to handle your innovation. There may be a critical window for your organization to focus on what it is doing right now, and what it plans to do in the short-term. You must exhibit an understanding and acknowledgment of your organization's situation and direction, otherwise a perception of aimless wandering regarding your ideas may result.

- Understand the current climate
You don't really feel the below-freezing temperatures when you are wearing seven sweaters - cut through the layers and get in touch. Who really holds the influence cards in your organization? Where exactly is your organization feeling the pressure that your innovation might relieve? Are there any factors outside the organization responsible for this pressure? And how much do you really know about them? Find out!

- Understand and believe in your organization's long-term goals
You are part of your organization because you want the organization to succeed in its goals, yes? If you ask yourself this question, and any part of the answer resonates "no", then you have an internal conflict of interest that no amount of innovation (or insubordination, for that matter) can overcome. You will need to reevaluate whether your goals for seeing your innovation put in play are in alignment with your organization's goals after all.

- Believe in yourself via persistence, not arrogance
Continue to make your case, but back it up with tangible benefits that can be sold across your organization. Exactly where and how will your innovation help your organization's people to complete your organization's goals? If you can state the costs and benefits of your innovation with equal and increasingly strong precision, you can avoid the far less convincing "I'm just right about this" and "Trust me" selling tactics.

When you can understand and accept the above, you know that you will need to take your mounting frustration to task, and focus on finding ways to work with or remove the obstacles in your way. You then can work towards a realized innovation and avoid an insubordinate situation that may not be necessary.

One exception to the above: emergency or crisis of organizational survival. There's nothing like a true survival emergency for an organization to consider ANY idea, no matter how far afield the idea lies. If a true crisis like this exists in your organization, and your organization's culture opens up its pathways of reception, you can go for the straight sell of your innovation. What may be perceived as insubordination at the outset can be forgiven, just as long as your organization weathers the crisis using your innovation, and of course, you are right about the results.

The Intersection of Business and Technology

What does the Intersection of Business and Technology look like?

Is the Intersection a shining Emerald City, where goals, ideas, and feedback are freely shared? Where IT principals understand the business and drive the technology to satisfy the business first, even before designing and deploying Greatest System Ever v10.0? Where business principals are sympathetic to the needs and specifications required for effective IT? Where regular partnership and joint accountability are merely business-as-usual, rather than a rarely-employed practice?

Is the Intersection a tall and wide impenetrable wall, where business goals are not shared, but volleyed back and forth between Business and IT? A place where business principals throw their problems over the wall as they hope and wait for a technology solution – any technology solution - to their operational problems and inefficiencies? Where the business principals rejoice when something – anything - has been thrown back over the wall for the first time in weeks or months? Is what they receive a true solution to their problems, or is it merely what the IT principals dictated as sufficient for the business without the ability or willingness to deliver more?

Is the Intersection a single blinking yellow traffic light, encouraging people to slow down but not stay around long enough to take a good hard look at what is being achieved or what is even possible? Or is the Intersection merely a desolate, unvisited crossroads whose only sign of activity is a tumbleweed traversing in the breeze?

When organizations establish their own Intersections, many treat the process like it is a Burning Man festival – that is to say, an exercise in temporary community. Principals from both Business and IT congregate for a few days to a week - often offsite - where they proclaim cooperation through rigorous presentations and sessions, show off their latest projects and business plans, share meals and shake hands, and then disband. When they return to their places of work, they often end up going back to the same or older practices, procedures, and policies - without making much progress. The partnerships do not survive the offsite event, and the joint accountability never materializes.

What does the Intersection of Business and Technology look like in your organization? How do you want it to look? Do you want merely the synergy of the temporary community without further partnership, the safety and protection from accountability that the impenetrable wall provides, or the shining Emerald City?

However you want the Intersection to look, one thing is certain: much like the Burning Man festival, the Intersection will contain only what you take with you.

A blog is born...

Welcome to my latest venture! This is the place to read about and discuss why effective leadership in uniting Business and IT goals and groups is so crucial for organizations, as they thrive and work to maintain their edge in a competitive marketplace.

This blog will cover:

- topics on leadership and unity of Business and IT groups of thriving organizations

- real-world anecdotes of effective (and not-so-effective) technology and business leadership

- people profiles and topics, to consider some outside viewpoints

- what it means to be an Exception-Tolerant Organization (ETO). I will flesh out this concept and its principles and practices in the coming days.


Who should read this blog:

- technologists of all levels looking to make a greater impact in their work and their organizations, and actively working to sharpen their growing edge of leadership

- business owners, executives, managers, and associates seeking more fulfillment and assistance from their IT groups and partners in accomplishing their business objectives


I hope that the blog will provide insight and open up a dialogue to improve leadership at all levels of an organization as we face the challenges ahead of us in the rest of 2008 and beyond.

Happy Reading!
Jason Sliss