What to say to people at parties. Someone asks me what I do for a living, and I have to say that I worked for 35 years in local government IT and now I do consultancy. I see the panic in their eyes. How soon can they find they need the facilities, or their glass refilling?
If my unlucky conversational partner hasn’t bolted, I try to say that all life is there in the council’s IT systems – understand what they are doing and you get a fascinating overview of council operations, beaten perhaps only by the accountants. If you are interested, then a breeze through the systems should tell you what’s going on. My colleague Geoff, when talking about libraries and what they are, observed that really they are about the people. I have to say the same about technology. The systems are fascinating, but really it’s what people do with them and why that is so gripping. Forget that critical interaction, and you could be doomed.
We don’t need no education
I did an Masters degree in public administration some years ago and whilst there were modules on HR, organisational change and finance, there wasn’t anything about how to manage tech. There are plenty of MPAs out there but how many of them have managing technology as a core component? Managing people – tick, managing money- yes, managing technology – tell me about one that does it. Even an optional module would be nice. I looked at the top MPAs, Masters Public Administration Postgraduate Courses in England (postgraduatesearch.com) – a module in terrorism caught my eye (Public Administration and Management MPA | Prospective Students Graduate (ucl.ac.uk) ) – but nothing about managing technology. Creating digital services – great ( Executive Master of Public Administration – King’s College London (kcl.ac.uk) ). That is the sexy stuff, but keeping the whole show on the road, and running an organisation with technology? Not so much.
I mean, what is the point in teaching high falutin’ policy ambition if you don’t understand one of the key levers?
So, somehow, most senior managers have to learn how to manage technology on the job. If you had to build a house, you would employ a builder, but you wouldn’t just tell them to build your house and leave them to get on with it. You would expect to be consulted about the size, cost, bedrooms and bathrooms. You would expect extensive discussions about the kitchen layout. You would expect the cost to be roughly the same as the builder’s estimate. And you would prefer builders who didn’t treat you like an idiot.
What doesn’t work
Can’t the techies deal with it? Those techies need leadership like anyone else. Left to their own devices they can be dangerous. It is an all too familiar scenario for techies to be asking for guidance and not receiving any from business colleagues, or too little, too late.
Beautiful processes and code can only be created if someone with front line experience provides sufficient information and feedback to be clear about the outcome needed. It’s not a one and done, but an iterative process needing oversight, accountability and support.
What works
Boring stuff
He’s excited, but are they?
Think of it in the same way as money and HR. As a chief executive, you know your overall budget, where the pressure points are. You know how many people you have, how they are organised, who’s great and who needs to move on.
What do you need to know about your systems? A broad outline of what you have, how they are managed, which systems work, which don’t. Where are the gaps in your architecture? What is technology architecture? Can the architecture support digital services? If you don’t know the answer, then who in your organisation can tell you? And if you don’t understand what they are telling you, keep asking until you do understand. Tech is a pretty big landscape. There is no shame in not knowing, only in not asking.
Boring stuff leads to exciting stuff. You can do a lot if you have the right data in the right systems, can easily get that data out, and know it. So, I’ll be writing a bit more about these topics over the coming months. Get your drink ready.
Gillian Wheeldon is a senior associate consultant with Activist Group. The views expressed in this blog are her own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Activist.