Of maturity and mediocrity.
Just read Cory Doctorow’s “The High Priests of IT — And the Heretics”, and while I concede a little bit of truth in there, I also smell an awful lot of dairy air (as we used to call it during crop-fertilizing time in Europe).
Two things that Cory really misses the boat on when he roots for the “heretics” who bypass policies to bring in disruptive technology:
1. Whose policies does he think they are, anyway? If they’re done right, policies reflect the most senior management’s risk tolerance. Senior managers (of which he claims to have been one) not only want innovation; they also want stability, lower IT operational costs, and to keep their names out of the papers. It’s their job to balance these needs, and they do it by their strategic use of both policy and budget allocation.
2. There is no “sandbox” for new technology. Sooner rather than later, the users want to use it on real data, which means you’re putting corporate data at risk pretty much the minute you let something get hooked up. In fact, it’s been my experience that the senior executives (the ones who have access to the most sensitive data) are the first ones to want to bring in their toys. The riskiest part of your enterprise is the CEO’s iPhone.
Now, here in the US, we tend to go to extremes on just about everything. If something is new, it’s great. If it’s great, then we need as much of it as possible. And freedom? You’ll get my USB stick when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands (or steal it from my desk drawer, which is the more common scenario—thanks a lot). Innovation = good; stability = bad. Chandler Howell quoted Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk, “Rules prevent disaster, but what they guarantee is mediocrity.”
Come on, guys, this is bullshit. This is an extreme overreaction to the controls that every enterprise has and uses, and it doesn’t guarantee mediocrity except in the mind of someone who is incapable of innovation without running down the street buck nekkid.
In fact, this dovetails very nicely into Mike Rowe’s TED Talk, in which he points out that there can be no innovation without imitation: without steady workers replicating what one person created. Someone has to do the “responsible and sober” work, and in fact it’s utterly necessary to build the solid base from which “innovators” can safely launch themselves.
The two sides of the same coin have to work in partnership, and I’ll thank the “innovators” not to make my job harder by portraying my side as the uncool mainframe priesthood while pretending to be the cool, oppressed heretics. You want to bring these “innovators” into the church? Make them clean up their own messes (and everyone else’s) for a while; then they’ll appreciate maturity without mistaking it for mediocrity.
I almost wish you hadn’t linked me to that article, since my strongest initial reaction to it is a mixture of, “So who told him he couldn’t use New Toy X last week?” and “Umm are you even sure what your point to this is?” (As well as trepidation, since good journalists know you don’t report on the obvious; you write about controversial topics.)
Strange, too, since smack in the middle he has a paragraph that succinctly states the opposite of his stance. It starts with, “Good thing, too, of course. Today, every enterprise ...”
More thoughts:
1. My beliefe is plenty of those “heretic” people are “grass is greener…” people. They will always be jumping on whatever, not necessarily because it is better, but just because it is perceived as newer, shinier, and thus *must* be better for me (me me me). I might also mention they are just thinking about themselves. Perhaps Geek Squad cars should not be the same color and instead be whatever color the Geek Squad member who drives it wants it to be? At any rate, trying to spend company resources to keep up with such people is a waste.
2. I wonder if Cory would agree that even amongst the IT ranks we have innovation that needs to occur too? This is not an, “us against IT” argument here. If not, then he’s just another (sigh) “user” who feels held down by the “man,” when the “man” only exists from his perspective.
3. I like me heretics too (I’m into security, I really kinda have to!), but not at the expense of the whole, and especially not when the corporate culture is not wholly along for the ride. I believe you can run as admin and you can let people bring in what they want (and you can choose not to be public or expand beyond start-up days)...but you have to pay the price of that by being hard elsewhere. You then run contrary to many regulations, possible laws, and probably due diligence. It’s a way to go, but a multi-headed gauntlet to traverse. While this may make technophiles all giddy and happy at work, I would guess this is ultimately more costly than it is worth, especially beyond a start-up venture. Perhaps I’m throwing a strawman in the fire…
4. It is hard enough to get developers (people who should thrive using multiple machines) to use multiple machines, one being pristine and one being a sandbox, let along others. Pipe dream. And if you do have a sandbox, what is so fundamentally different that makes it ok to use as a sandbox but suffices these “heretics” to be able to fully use what they want? I think this is a paradox… It could be a typical ploy such “heretics” use. First argue for the sandbox, invest the time, and then turtle up around it and cling to it so hard and plead about it “because it’s already here!” to stick around beyond any testing periods.
5. I sense the assumption from Cory that all firms must/need/have to get on the bleeding edge and change/adapt/innovate. I’m not sold on that. Among other assumptions like the feeling that none of these heretics ever makes a mistake that sense, via Gmail, a contract to a competitor instead of a customer, or PII on a P2P network (both of which he happily mentions!).
Ultimately, I believe Cory has a point (made in a typically journalistic ‘talk about my story!’ way), which is said much better by your post above! I just think Cory has very little practical experience on the other side of the fence.