They say that history repeats itself and the country that forgets its history is cursed to live through it again. I think something like this also applies to companies where IT management is concerned: continually in my working life, I have seen the same simple mistakes being made by senior managers who seem oblivious to the lack of direction that they are displaying.
For example, a few years ago, a friend won a contract at a major bank and I asked him what he was doing. He said that he was helping them introduce good project and programme management governance. I was very surprised at this. “Surely”, I said, “banks only really consist of people and information systems, so they should have mature processes by now?”
“Oh no” he said, “two years ago, under the regime of a dynamic American CEO, they threw all that out. All the processes, checks, reviews, gateways and other safety features were swept aside and the culture became JFDI”. System proposals were drawn up literally on the back of an envelope (or a “sketch” as they called it) and they began to implement new systems in a rapid fashion. “So what happened?” I asked, somewhat expecting the answer. “It was great for a couple of years” he said, “systems went in with an amazing rapidity. Of course, after that it all began to fall apart, so now they’re having to rebuild all the good practice that they had rejected earlier.”
I have just been working for a major transport company in the role of programme director of “digital transformation”. This is a bit of a buzzword at the moment and probably means different things to different organisations. In my case, I was originally hired as programme director of customer experience and it’s interesting that the company had taken the digital transformation name and strapped it onto a portfolio of existing system implementations; in other words, the classic emergent programme.
Nevertheless, the main aim was to improve customer experience and in particular, to reverse the decline in bus usage which continues to happen nationally. They also wanted to show an increase in revenues pending a possible IPO the following year. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that, despite introducing the best governance and processes that they could accommodate, they were missing the bigger picture. There were endless meetings and awkward senior level intervention (For example, the marketing director’s team took five months to choose the correct white colour on the new smartcard – how many of us look at our Oyster card daily?). Lots of meetings, however, I know substitute for leadership and clear direction. This was lacking. The company was failing to see the nose in front of its face.
The result was that the initiatives that could have brought in money for the company were endlessly wrangled over and subject to micromanagement and interference, while the larger programmes of little business benefit became something like sacred cows. Nobody would question the enormous resources they were consuming or the benefits they were going to deliver (or not in this case!)
While the massive implementation of the German accounting system package rumbled on and the overspend ran into the tens of millions of pounds, at the other end of the scale, the investment in customer experience began to stall. Introducing PayPal as a method of payment took five rounds of business case scrutiny, simply because they hadn’t defined who should approve business cases or what the process should be, and this was over a relatively insignificant £40,000 investment! Meanwhile the office 365 implementation ramped up to a team of over 30, who flew all over Europe, (note that 70% of this organisation’s staff are drivers and therefore a desktop application isn’t a great benefit to them!) At the same time, the marketing director vetoed the company selling smartcards on its buses, (the reason cited being the cost of purchase – a crippling £1.64 each) thus losing ground to competitors who were cheerfully selling joint operator season tickets from the cab, and thus grabbing market share. As has recently come to light in the case of the Oyster card, people put money on travel smartcards and then lose them down the back of sofas, so who benefits? Answers on a postcard to the marketing director please! Penny wise, pound foolish.
So, in a simple conclusion, this organisation was spending a lot of IT on systems that wouldn’t deliver much benefit, but virtually nothing on the systems that would deliver a great deal of benefit and generate revenue. How can it be that senior management were collectively blind to this? Well, unfortunately, (or fortunately if you’re a management consultant) companies continually make this kind of obvious mistake. It often becomes abundantly clear where the problem lies in a company and, at that point, all the management consultants have to do is supply a lot of analysis and data to back up a conclusion that they probably formed on day one.
So, what can you do to alleviate this situation? Well, I always think “start small and build on success”. In my case, I helped to energise the demoralised and demotivated teams to start delivering smartcard schemes and also saw through the RFP process for a new mobile app and for demand responsive transport. In many cases, rolling up one’s sleeves and helping a beleaguered project manager, and sometimes just demonstrating human sympathy and support, can have amazing results. If people feel that their work is valued and that they’re doing something worthwhile, then they are capable of amazing things. Once a little scheme is seen to be a success, then it starts to build to bigger things. Soon, a few smart card schemes have suddenly formed the basis of a national business to business sales initiative.
So, in conclusion, organisations will continue to make the same old leadership mistakes. But on the other hand, solid work and human kindness can still make amazing things possible!
Jonathan will be speaking at the Rail Revenue World Congress in Amsterdam. You can read about the conference and his speech here.
