Next-gen IT trump card: Trust

Next-generation IT does everything possible to avoid being a business bottleneck. So here’s a question that, thankfully, has nothing to do with which team you’re on — Apple or Microsoft, Windows or Unix, apps or ops: What slows down IT? As next-gen IT can’t exist in a last-gen business, it’s also worth asking what slows down whole businesses.

There is no single answer, but here’s one of the most common and most important: making decisions. Doing it slowly clogs the corporate carotids. Fortunately, a solution is at hand. Business decision makers who want to improve the decision-making process can find it at a nearby community center. All they have to do is learn to play bridge.

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No, we’re not turning Advice Line into a column on playing cards, so I’ll keep this as short as possible: In bridge, two teams of two bid to decide which one plays offense and which plays defense. Bidding is tricky because every bid isn’t just a commitment to take a certain number of tricks. It’s also a coded message that describes a player’s hand.

Whichever player bids highest becomes the “declarer.” Declarer’s partner is called “dummy” (as in not allowed to talk). Dummy’s cards go face up on the table where the three other players can see them, and declarer can choose which dummy card to play on each trick.

Bridge and decision making in business

Here’s why bridge is such a valuable metaphor for business decisions: On every trick, the players have some information about where the cards lie, but not complete information. Nonetheless, they have to decide which card to play so as to maximize their chance of winning. Sound like just about every business decision you’ll ever have to make?

Furthermore, the best way to play a hand based on the information a player has might not be one of the ways that actually wins the hand. On any given hand, a bad bridge player might win when a good one doesn’t. Sound like just about every business decision you’ve ever heard of? Me too.

Another similarity: In a lot of bridge games, if declarer fails to make a winnable hand, dummy gets pretty steamed. That sounds like a lot of business decision making, too, doesn’t it? Only in business, “dummy gets steamed” can mean an abrupt change in career plans.

One more: Players don’t always trust their partners. It can get extreme, to the point of one making bad bids to make sure they become declarer so that their partner doesn’t play the hand.

Next-gen IT: Efficiency requires trust

Imagine a committee having to reach consensus before playing the first card — an excruciating thought. Yet this is how a lot of managers approach issues, and the bigger the company, the more likely that this is how way too many decisions are made.

Consensus is a good idea for some decisions — the ones where what matters most is buy-in. That’s a known property of consensus decision making: Consensus decisions aren’t the best decisions, and consensus is the slowest and most expensive decision-making technique available to you, but you get buy-in on the part of every stakeholder included in the consensus.

But let’s take a step back and think about what this says about the organization. It says that nobody trusts their colleagues enough to buy into a decision they didn’t personally participate in. Everyone has to be declarer or, if they can’t, at least share in the declarer role.

Why tribalism has no place in next-gen IT

If you want to speed up IT — or any organization, for that matter — focus on building trust. Any time one person could make a perfectly good decision but ends up requiring consensus instead, you have an opportunity to speed up the process.

Which means I lied when I said the question of what team you’re on isn’t part of this week’s subject. Anyone who considers themselves to be on one of these teams — Apple or Microsoft, Windows or Unix, or whatever collection of competing tribes leading to relegating the others to the dreaded role of “them” — and bases trust on tribal membership is part of the problem. The game of my team/your team always creates distrust.

That slows down your organization — a lot. If you need to establish someone as “them,” make it a competitor’s IT department. A healthy sense of rivalry with a competitor doesn’t slow down operations.

Quite the opposite: If they’re “them,” it will probably speed “us” up.

This story, “Next-gen IT trump card: Trust,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’ Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.