Technology as enabler

Once again, with feeling...

I've expressed the opinion several times in blog entries (and will say to anyone who gives me the slightest sliver of opportunity to riff on this) that technology is only as effective as the processes that it supports. I've said many times that I'd rather be running a company with outstanding processes and mediocre technology than a company with state-of-the-art technology and dysfunctional processes.

I started reading a book that's long been on my "must-read" list, and  - bang - in almost the opening pages is the empirical evidence for this observation.

In Good to Great by Jim Collins (and you really have to read it to get a sense of the depth of the five-year research that went into this book) he recounts a number of things that one might expect to have played a part in a company's transition from a good company to a great company, but in fact did not. One of these things was technology.

Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great. We did find technology to accelerate transformations, but we learned that technology cannot cause a transformation; it can never be a fundamental prime mover in a shift from good to great.

So, if you want to be where the action is, to effect change, or to try to achieve greatness in a company, it is definitely NOT in the IT department, writing code, maintaining networks or configuring servers, no matter how cutting-edge the technology. You have to be led and directed by someone who can formulate the goals and objectives the technology serves.