Beware the vicious cycle of bad IT results

When relations between business and IT break down, it’s difficult to repair them. Worse, such disarray damages the relationship between business and IT even more.

That’s because the relationship is a positive feedback loop, and positive feedback loops are pernicious little things. Without them, you can deal with challenges by addressing their root causes. With them, root causes cause themselves.

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The IT results loop

A more accurate description of the business/IT relationship would be to call it a results loop. The figure below shows how this loop works.

First, think of IT as a function — a black box. As is the case with all black boxes, it has inputs and outputs.

To oversimplify, IT has essentially two inputs: competence and budget. Together, they determine what IT ends up delivering. If IT isn’t competent, it won’t deliver good results; if its budget is too small, it either won’t deliver enough good results, or it will take on too much and won’t deliver any good results.

To further oversimplify, the IT function consists of two subfunctions: governance and delivery.

Governance refers to the means through which businesses decide where their IT organizations should focus their time, attention, and budget. This process might be formal or informal, rule-based or intuitive, fair or unfair, well-done or incompetent. One way or another, though, decisions get made as to what gets done and what won’t.

Once those decisions are made, IT does its best to deliver. Here is where processes and practices such as project management, application development, application integration, systems administration, and incident management come in. Through these processes and practices, IT delivers results of some kind.

The vicious cycle of poor IT results

If the results of this process are perceived as positive, the relationship between business and IT will improve, which will, in turn, actually increase IT’s competence, because IT’s business counterparts will be more inclined to accept IT’s word for the importance of those seemingly unnecessary and bureaucratic steps we know are necessary but are very hard to explain.

Equally important, a positive business/IT relationship is likelier to lead to a budget increase, for two reasons: (1) everyone involved in decision making will be more likely to take the CIO’s word that IT needs that much funding to get its job done; and (2) everyone involved in decision making will be more confident that the dollars allocated to IT is money well-spent.

But if IT’s relationship with the rest of the business deteriorates, the opposite happens. Trust deteriorates, eventually becoming distrust. If those outside IT no longer trust IT, they express that distrust by refusing to:

• Let project managers do their job the way they need to (“That’s just a lot of bureaucracy!”)
• Leave enough time for software quality assurance (“That’s just a lot of bureaucracy, too!”)
• Invest enough in each software effort to ensure strong engineering and desired features and functionality (“We aren’t willing to buy technology for technology’s sake!”)
• Do pretty much anything else IT requires, even though failing to do these things amounts to mortgaging the future

Their lack of trust will probably lead to cuts in the IT budget because, apparently, a lot of what’s spent there is wasted.

At this point, the cycle becomes vicious. IT’s budget and competence wane as a consequence of the deteriorating business/IT relationship, and results worsen. It’s an incredibly difficult loop to escape.

Your stake and your role

Everyone in IT has a role to play in this results loop and a stake in its outcome.

For staff, the role is quite clear. As was discussed in last week’s Advice Line, every interaction with IT affects the business/IT relationship. IT staff’s stake in the outcome is also clear: Work will be more enjoyable if IT’s budget is adequate, and you will be less likely to be overworked due to excessive budget cuts. Trust here plays a role as well, as you will be able to do your work the way you know it needs to be done.

The challenge is how to handle interactions with non-IT colleagues. After all, when the conversation turns to technology, your perspective is from the inside, while theirs is from the outside. This can lead to serious miscues. Then there’s the natural focus IT professionals place on engineering issues, a focus that can lead to ignoring the interpersonal dimension of interactions. In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to accidently give and take offense; in this case, neither giving nor taking is more blessed.

The secret, to the extent there is one, is harder to remember to do than to execute: It’s to listen. And I mean more than just giving airtime; I mean doing everything you can to make sure you understand what the other person is trying to tell you. By listening, your ability to explain yourself in terms the other person will understand is greatly increased.

Through a strange quirk of human nature, listening also makes you appear far more intelligent than when you talk. Ask a question that allows the other person to display their brilliance, and they will allow some of the goodwill they feel in airing their brilliance to rub off on you — which makes you more persuasive when your turn to speak finally arrives.

There’s a third (fringe) benefit that comes from listening: No matter how smart you are, if you listen instead of talking, you’ll be far more likely to learn something you didn’t know before.

Once you get the hang of it, listening is downright relaxing, too.

This story, “Beware the vicious cycle of bad IT results,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.