On 12/16/2011 07:46 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:
On 12/15/2011 10:56 PM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
You're in a social situation - at a party or something - You're talking with
some CFO or otherwise interesting financial person about work, and Dilbert
cartoons, and the wastefulness and inefficiencies of typical corporations or
typical organizations, etc. Somebody uses a term like "overhead" or
"secondary" referring to support roles. But you're an IT person - You're a
support role, and depending on what is your core business, most likely
you're overhead.
With only a moment's thought, and only a few words, how do you describe the
value that your role adds to the organization? How do you justify your own
existence, casually, when talking to a CFO or somebody in a social
situation?
Having been both in management and in overhead positions. In many
businesses there are cost centers and revenue centers. IT is usually a
cost center providing essential services. But, IT is a cost that in many
cases cannot be tied directly to revenue.
Perhaps. Even when IT isn't the "business of the business" as another
poster described, IT in my opinion has the most potential for impacting
things directly related to revenue: employee efficiency, marketing,
research, etc. IT pervades everything a company does. IT in many cases
is what sets good/great companies apart from their competitors.
So the biggest thing you need to do IMHO is not let people conflate
"overhead" with "non-essential". All senior management is overhead.
That doesn't mean they are non-essential. Great IT, just like great
senior management, give the company a competitive edge. I think you
could make a strong argument that great IT gives /more/ of an edge than
pretty much anything else (where "great" IT means being cost-efficient
as well as capability-rich).
At Digital, years ago, we moved the entire Unix commands group the
Bangalore, and my group (compilers, development environment) moved
the assembler support to India.
Ouch. You can't be successful in business by outsourcing your core
technical competency. Unfortunately, many businesses didn't figure this
out until after they'd tried and failed.
Matt
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