Is information technology management stuck in the 19th century?

TalkBack 1 of 16:

Next »

• Thread View
• Flat View

Is our culture holding us back?

I'm thinking that one of the big challenges to moving forward with any information technology is cultural change. We've seen an amazing capacity for younger generations (those in their teens and twenties today) to be able to understand and adapt to new technologies very quickly. Thus, consumer oriented services can achieve rapid adoption.

But those people are not running our businesses, and from many of my discussions with leaders in the high tech industry, are failing when they get hired into a business. Discussions about the challenges with twenty-something expectations aside, the fact is that organizational culture moves much more slowly - and each organization moves at their own pace.

Coordinating enough organizations in the same space at the same time looking for the same tools is extremely difficult. Those who run (either from a leadership standpoint or an operational one) businesses are focused on doing their jobs at work and have so many responsibilities outside of work (like looking after those teens and sometimes twenty-somethings) that they don't have time to adopt - or even become familiar with new technologies.

Especially in a down economy, finding time to make learning these tools and figuring out what they can do for you is difficult. In the best of times, many companies and their people get comfortable with what they are doing and don't look for change, either. Even when those things are good for them.

Automating supply chain transactions is a prime example. Studies have shown that it lowers costs, increases revenue, improves cost to serve, reduces compliance problems, improves visibility to inventory and stock situations and more. They have also shown that companies with top notch supply chains perform better from a stakeholder (read stock market) perspective than their competitors. Yet the penetration of these solutions is really meager compared to what it could be.

We can dream up new ideas all we want, but we'll continue to build an ever growing digital divide between an ever dwindling group of companies that get it and an ever growing group of companies that don't have the time or inclination to understand.

Posted by: bslarkin   Posted on: 04/17/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Infrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now