Ignoring Complexity

Yesterday I spoke about IT staff hiding complexity, today I’ll cover the issue that is on the other side of the equation. Nobody escapes from this! 

As I mentioned the other day the population of the world outside of IT really have no idea what we do, how we do it and more worryingly why we do things. That would be OK if we were like the other great professions. 

Although times have changed, especially with the growth of that pesky internet thing, most people would assume that lawyers, architects, engineers or accountants have an understanding of their chosen subject and that when we engage in conversation with them we need to have done a bit of homework before we start.

We are not there yet! Everybody thinks they know enough to have an opinion….

There are two primary issues with the way ordinary people deal with IT in their lives. You may have seen or heard the evidence in your daily lives. I have two favourites:

• Question - “You’re in IT aren’t you?….. (a question then follows falling somewhere between problems with USB connections on a laptop to what will the internet look like in 10 years time and how can I make a million out of it!).” 
  

• Conclusion - People generally do not understand that we have instigated a division of labour scheme within IT. Just because we work in the industry it doesn’t mean that we are experts on all facets. Mind you that hasn’t stopped a lot of us from pretending that we do know everything! If we spent more time answering these questions with “I’m sorry that’s not my area of expertise I’ll find somebody who knows.” rather than throwing back half-cocked, misinformed opinions the world would be far simpler.
  

… the one that really scares me is…

• Question - “I’m not technical…..but…. (a statement then follows that can only be true if the speaker has suitable technical knowledge).”
  

• Conclusion - “The Dick Smith Syndrome” – I’ll be following this up later when I talk about the multi-nationals, but there is an underlying issue with technology and its social acceptance. People (especially guys) get turned on by gadgets, they see things in Dick Smith (NZ retail electronics store) and love them. I call it the techno-red-mist! They see no reason why these shouldn’t be used at work. While I agree that these gadgets can make a difference to an organisation their introduction into a critical environment like a business can be more risky then opening up the box throwing away the manual and charging the battery.

What is scarier is that this is usually the rational used by business people to make decisions on multi-million dollar projects! How many software deals have been sealed based on screenshots or feature lists – go on admit it!

Both of these issues cause major problems with the delivery of IT in the corporate world and they demonstrate an ignorance of the complexity of delivering IT services in most mature organisations.

In fact the problem doesn’t stop there. I have recently been working with a start-up (RedWeta) that is going to deliver IT services to small businesses.  Following some recent market research we found that 13 out 15 small business owners admitted they had no idea how IT works and what it does – how scary is that for the future of our modern world!

This ignorance of complexity within the business community is our major challenge moving forward. Until it is faced and embraced we will continue to add more layers and therefore complexity to the environments that already exist.

How we have coped or are hoping to cope with this is tomorrow’s subject.