Friday, June 13, 2008

Don't ask your IT guys to use innovations

One of my favorite books 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' by R. Bach, talks about boundaries being in the minds of people. These boundaries create the impression of unachievable or impossible. And Bach is able to convey the message very clearly and in the most succinct way. The question is "Who creates these boundaries?” We collectively do it as a society. First we create these boundaries and later, once these boundaries have become rigid, we talk about removing them and innovating. We tell people that 'today business can thrive only on innovation' etc. We create new models for executing our jobs. We provide them some tools for doing their jobs more efficiently.

Still doesn't work. Does it?So, what do we do then? Well, instead of giving fodder to the horse, tell it the path to find fodder.

Enable your guys (again, I am referring to employees of an IT services firm) to be innovators and not just users of innovations. That is what you need -- A big team of innovators.

And how do we prepare this team?

This can only be achieved if you orient the thought process of your guys in the right way. Just lead them to the point from where they have multiple options to proceed ahead -- instead of leading them straight to the solution. Then tell them how the final solution was reached. Ask them what could be the other possibilities and in what scenarios would such possibilities form a better choice. So, instead of telling them how the internally-developed (by some geek at your firm) productivity enhancement framework/tool works to generate code (or whatever) for a particular tier, tell them how it could have been done differently to achieve a different end. This is actually what we call as stimulus for 'Lateral thinking'. And this is what today's IT services firms need.

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