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Reprinted from Keep the Joint Running.
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ManagementSpeak: Just give me a quick, Volkswagen solution.
Translation: Just give me a Rolls-Royce solution, and do it as quickly and cheaply as the Volkswagen version.
Tim Lawrence joins the KJR Club by giving us a Rolls-Royce translation of a Volkswageny phrase. |
When you have a flat tire, do you:
A. Keep driving, complaining about how bumpy the road is?
B. Pump air into the tire and hope it won't leak out this time?
C. Bolt on a new axle?
D. Repair or replace the tire?
In far too many companies the answer is, for some reason, "Anything but D."
Take, for example, the ITIL-v3-endorsed "best" practice of IT
governance through internal charge-backs -- an integral part of its
run-IT-as-a-business/internal-customer worldview. It's a classic case
of bolting on another axle so as to avoid repairing or replacing a flat
tire.
In this case the flat tire is ineffective business governance, and the nail that made it go flat is an absence of leadership.
Charge-backs are, in some situations, unavoidable, such as when
contractual requirements demand them. That's okay - customers are
customers, revenue is revenue, and if the cost of revenue is engaging
in a pointless waste of time, so what? If a customer wants to pay me to
waste my time, no worries.
But otherwise ...
Let's conduct a thought experiment. In it we institute charge-backs
to help the U.S. military run better. After all, if charge-backs are
best practice and we want the best military in the world, we'd better
get cracking.
And so ...
An Army brigade commander has money left in his budget, and decides
he should attack something. He'll need advance intelligence, air cover,
and because it will be an amphibious assault, help from the Navy.
He contacts the relevant parties, and it starts to go bad. First,
the Defense Intelligence Agency can't provide the real-time updates he
needs, explaining that the satellite they rely on isn't geosynchronous
and has other monitoring responsibilities. The best they can do is
every other hour, as they make clear in their published service levels.
"I don't care what the SLA says," roars the general. "I'm your
customer and you have to take care of me!" When they can't reach a
satisfactory agreement, the general shops his requirements around and
finally, after exhausting the domestic possibilities, reaches agreement
with the Latvian Foreign State Intelligence Service ... and at a better
price as well.
His negotiations with the Air Force are just as aggravating. "I'm
your customer, and I want F-22s," he explains impatiently. "Your
maintenance problems aren't my responsibility, and I don't agree that
F-16s will do the job. Get with the program or I'll outsource this to
the Brits. They've promised me Harriers!"
At least the Navy doesn't give him a hard time on the landing craft,
but the Army Supply System makes up for it by refusing to honor his
request for Heckler & Koch G3 assault rifles. "We've standardized
on the M-16," they tell him. "Do you know how much flak we'd get from
Congress if we bought foreign-manufactured rifles?"
But finally, after an aggravating few months, he has all of his
suppliers organized, and finds a week when everyone can fit the assault
into their schedule. He makes it happen, successfully, and the GAO
journals over the funds from his cost center to theirs (adding a 12.5%
transaction fee, on which the CBO adds a 3% audit charge).
And let me just tell you, the Portuguese ambassador was mighty miffed about the whole thing.
Of course this scenario is ridiculous. Even with plenty of budget in reserve, no brigade commander would attack Portugal.
Unless, that is, Belgium was closed for a holiday that weekend.
Much as I'd like to continue this little satire, I can't. I lack
sufficient imagination to properly envision the military operating
according to ITIL's so-called "best practice."
The U.S. military, in apparent contrast to ITIL, embraces a concept
called "leadership." Governance, I trust, comes, not from charge-backs,
but from integrated planning and coordination. Initiative at all
levels, far from being independent, is focused on clearly understood
goals and missions.
Internal charge-backs turn organizations into marketplace, where
shared-services departments like IT and Human Resources sell to their
internal customers.
Marketplaces have their uses, the most important of which is to
maintain a finely tuned balance between supply and demand. Companies
that have management but not leadership, drowning in political
positioning, value these internal marketplaces, because every
now-autonomous business unit can get what it needs, when it needs it. Nobody has to waste time and energy achieving consensus about
priorities.
Organizations that rely on such niceties as strategy and focused
action in the marketplace, in contrast, have no need for an internal
marketplace.
Instead, they plan.
Robert
Lewis is president of IT Catalysts, Inc., a consultancy focused on
improving IT organizational effectiveness and integration with the
enterprise. Contact him at
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Copyright 2009, IS Survivor Publishing, all rights reserved.
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