Time again for management by walking around?
Monday January 16, 2006 (12:00 PM GMT)
Topic: Project Management
By: Rod Amis
In Search of Excellence: Lessons from Americas Best Run Companies, by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr., first appeared in 1982. The supposed threat of Japanese business practices outstripping those of the USA and changing the international economic dominance equation was the accepted wisdom. "Management by walking around," a popular idea for corporations back in the 1980s, was prominently promoted by people like Peters. Maybe it's time to bring back that philosophy.
Twenty years ago the idea of small, project-oriented teams within the enterprise and a management style that encouraged more contact up and down the organization was all the rage. Then we moved into the 1990s and everything changed. Many of the companies profiled in this book as fine examples of excellence, such as Atari, Data General, DEC, IBM, Lanier, NCR, Wang, and Xerox failed to continue to produce excellent results in their balance sheets, and the idea of management by walking around was all but forgotten. The Japanese tiger began to perform more like a sparrow, and that threat was soon forgotten. Management philosophy, driven by a focus on quarterly earnings, swung back to a more hierarchical approach.
It was also about this time that the legend of IT disdain for the business side of the enterprise took root and grew. The perception was that IT harbored a general disregard for the concerns of the generalist "drones" who could not comprehend machine logic.
However, the IT environment is constantly changing. The growth of new philosophies like Business Service Management (BSM) have acted as a partial antidote to this perception. BSM advocates aligning IT with the business goals more directly and focusing on "internal customers'" -- that is, the users' -- satisfaction.
Nowadays many IT teams form Six Sigma groups and analyze survey data. The only time users get to see IT people face-to-face tends to be a large gatherings or project launches.
Maybe this does not equal true "customer service." Perhaps the notion of Peters and Waterman's book, that customer focus is important to a successful enterprise -- including the internal customers of an IT department -- was not completely off base.
One way to test this question might just be to start walking again. Don't send a survey out your users in the business sector of the enterprise. Talk with users whenever a project is completed. Walk to the users' offices and let them show you what they like and dislike. Believe me, they'll be honest -- brutally honest.
While you're there, use their phone to call in a trouble report on the app and see how well it is handled. See if you're treated to telephone push-button hell, Musak, or instructions only a geek could understand.
Taking this challenge is, of course, risky, and we have all been conditioned to be risk-averse. But a survey, grudgingly filled out, is no substitute for actual user feedback. It mediates between IT management and the customers/users they serve. Two-way communication produces a buy-in and loyalty invaluable to your business operations. That sounds like a huge payoff for the perceived risk.
The notion of a successful project has at its core user acceptance and buy-in. Ask your users how satisfied they are.
