“Neither here nor there” followup

Two weeks ago I posted a question from “Neither here nor there,” whose position was, apparently, going to go away as the result of his company being acquired (“When your position evaporates,” Advice Line, 2/13/2007). He was kind enough to provide a progress report. I’m posting it in its entirety – it should be of interest to everyone who works in corporate IT and will ever be on one side or another of a takeover. – Bob A few weeks ago, I had written for advice regarding what to do when a small business IT manager finds his department being absorbed when a larger company purchases his small company. After ten years of frustration working in large corporate America (some of the companies had the word “General” as part of their name), I seemed to have found my dream job in a small company. No more corporate BS, a manageable level of politics, low mileage commute, good pay, adequate benefits, etc. After ten years at this small company, we were purchased by a large firm, and the corporate stuff I thought I had left behind began to flow into my work life again. Things looked pretty bleak. Much of the technical foundation I had built over twenty years was to be scrapped, and with it my specific technical expertise. Staff resources were to be re-allocated, and my boss kept telling me not to panic, that he had plenty of technical work that needed to be done – which sounded a whole lot like “central IT doesn’t have any use for you.” Representatives from the central IT organization set up a two day meeting to discuss what was going to happen. The weekend before, I was nearly sick with anxiety. The senior person in the meeting did a very smart thing. He presented a six level chart identifying the performance of an IT Organization, from zero = “chaos” to level six = “IT As a value added partner of the business”. His goal was to get IT to level six. Currently, he rated the organization as a whole being at level one. He said that my group was at a high level two, possibly three.  “Everybody else in the company is taking a step forward, for you, it’s a step sideways.” That simple acknowledgment opened up a dialogue. His position in the organization meant that we wouldn’t be exactly equals, but I was now ready to listen. Over the course of two days, we went over the corporate strategic goals, the IT projects that supported those goals, and the IT projects that each business unit was seeking to get done.  We agreed that my ability to speak both technical and business language, my experience, and my somewhat unconventional nature was an orientation best suited to bringing IT to business projects, and there were plenty of projects that needed my skillset. At the end of the meeting, I was relieved. Have I been “assimilated into the collective”, “drunk the Kool-Aid”, “gone corporate”, etc.? To the degree that I understand what the organization is trying to do, and support those goals, yes. To the degree that I believe that my job will be “safe” simply because I follow the corporate rules, or that I completely agree with all the corporate methods, no. I came out of this experience with the following observations: First, big companies buy small companies for business reasons. If your company gets bought, you need to find out what you will be doing to fulfill the promise of those business reasons – otherwise, you’re an unneeded expense. If someone doesn’t tell you how you fit into the plan, start asking people, and if you can’t get an answer, start planning to get out. Second, a primary goal of IT is to drive the time out of business process, best accomplished with consistency, and if possible, uniformity. If you have multiple business units, and each has its own IT environment, you immediately have a bottleneck at the point where information has to pass from one environment to the next. Bridges and gateways are likely to exist, but you still end up slowing down the movement of information. Bottom line, central IT not only has the right, it has the responsibility to issue and enforce standards. Third, IT provides decision related information as close to the point of decision as possible. This is the place where “one size fits all” isn’t likely to work. Accounting decisions are very different from Sales decisions, which in turn are different from Manufacturing decisions. Helping a business get the information needed to make decisions quickly and effectively may be technologically dependent, but the understanding of the informational needs is more important than the knowledge of a specific technology. In other words, given the choice between understanding the business or understanding technology, choose both. Fourth if someone makes the time to present, explain and discuss the corporate IT plan in plain language with only the occasional buzzword slipping in (if I had a nickel every time said the the word “synergy”…), recognize that you represent some value to the organization. Whether it’s a couple of hours or a couple of days, the company is paying everybody to basically just sit and talk. Not a small thing in these days of constantly measuring ROI, yet an activity that IT people should likely engage in more often. Fifth, a professional is someone who gets the job done. However, a professional might end up in a place where their profession is no longer practicable. If a pipe bursts when an electrician is working in the bathroom, it’s probably best that they stop being an electrician for a bit. If your business changes to the extent that your skillset won’t get the job done, you have to change the skillset or change jobs. Finally, I have to respond to the comments about attitude. In my experience, when someone says, “you don’t have a good attitude”, it means “you aren’t behaving the way that I expect or I want, so I’m going to end this conversation”. That’s a cop out. If someone is demonstrating a bad attitude, they’re probably feeling threatened, and sometimes those threats are very real. I’ve never seen an example of someone being told that they have a bad attitude has helped anyone. Ever. If you can, you might help them identify the nature, reality and proximity of the perceived threat. Otherwise, you might find a way to tactfully bring the conversation to a close. My thanks to you and everyone who had input – it was very helpful. I’m still neither here nor there, but at least now I’m on my way.