Kathy Sierra wrote a great post titled, “It’s not too late to be a genius“. A lot of people use the excuse that they are too old to try something new, because they aren’t in their 20’s (of course, this is a load of crap). However, even worse than using this excuse on yourself is using it on your organization.

In a previous life, I was involved in hiring technology workers for a company that was very young, very successful, and very hip (at the time). The jobs were supporting a large web application, but the jobs required a large amount of anyalysis and familiarity with databases and data processing. It frustrated me to no end that we would hire a 25-year-old fresh out of college and then take 6 months to get them familiarized with statistics, reporting, databases, and data processing so they could contribute. This was considered a success.

If we couldn’t find a 25-year-old, we would hire a 50-year old as a contractor and take a month to get him familarized with web applications, something they were very interested in learning anyway. Then they could contribute and share with us their experiences of solving the same problems over the last 20 years. Even after that it was rare that we would end up converting these folks over to permanent employees.

This situation frustrated me to no end. I am from Generation X, and as a class we seem have a chip on our shoulder. A lot of our rebellion was simply in reaction to the Baby Boom’s hegemony and demographic dominance of the workplace. However, every organization has to understand that there is a great value in wisdom, especially that borne of experience. This is very rarely present in someone who has been in the workplace less than 5 years.

Duct Tape Marketing has an article with an incredibly insightful title, “Is CRM a Culture or a Software?”. In his posting, John opines that:

CRM starts with a strategic approach to marketing, a strategic approach to selling and a strategic approach to maximizing customer relationships. Nail those things and pretty much any of the major CRM tools can be customized to make it happen. Too many people waste lots of time and money trying to apply technology to fix a problem caused by a lack of business strategy.

Right on!!!!

Getting Skinny

While it is particularly prevalent with CRM, the phenomenon of “wishful purchasing” is seen across all organizations, especially with regard to information techology. Often, we think that if we just get the right hardware, software, and applications in place then our organization will be transformed into what it really ought to be.Which, of course, is complete balderdash. Hogwash. Horse Hooey.

This is the Atkins approach to information architecture, and in the long term it doesn’t work. You don’t lose weight by buying smaller sized clothing. You need to be eating sensibly, exercising, and dealing with the issues that got you to where you are in the first place.

What I am Trying to Say

I have seen organizations that have happy, profitable customers and don’t have any infrastructure ouside of a few spreadsheets. At the same time, I have seen organizations that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into technology and are losing customers at an epic rate. The tools didn’t make the difference, the culture did. Information Architects need to understand this so they can avoid the systems that are not going to deliver tangible value to their organization.

As John said,

The best … tool is the one you and your staff will actually adopt and adapt to achieve better sales results and automation.

Wishful purchasing is just an expression of consumerism in an organization.  Just because there are lots of people (salespeople, consultants, trade magazines, web sites, blogs, etc.) that tell you that you need something doesn’t mean that you do. Tools are tools, they enable you to do what it is you want to do. If you have organizational issues, spending money on infrastructure is just going to accentuate and reinforce those them.

The Scotsman wrote about a woman who returned home from the hospital to find a letter from the water company notifying her of her own death. While my guess is that this was a problem with information quality at the water, the breakdown could have happened at the hospital, in the government, or somewhere inbetween.  Regardless, it certainly is a black eye for data stewardship for someone.
Ignoring the recursive metaphysical implications of this situation, this really hits home how important information quality is in every organization.

NOTE: I originally spotted this on the upcoming page on Digg.

Simplicity is the art of maximizing the amount of work not done.

– Several sources, most notably the Agile Manifesto

A couple of things in the hopper that caught my eye …

1. Recently, a kidnapped teen outsmarted her captor by using his cell phone to send a text message for help.
2. Most 10-year-olds have mobile phones, according to The Register.
3. An 18-year old recently graduated college in one year (with a double major in Math and Physics).
4. A professor at North Carolina State University was asked to remove podcasts of his lectures from a for-profit download service.

First and foremost, I am very glad that this poor girl was so clever and was able to free herself, and that most 10 year olds (at least in the UK) have a safety valve in the case of an emergency. Second, this college professor has NOTHING to do with kidnapping, so please don’t infer that from their inclusion on the same list.

When combined, these stories point me towards the ownership issues that are springing up around intellectual property, organizations, and infrastructure. Each of these begs the question, “Who really owns your infrastructure?” In a disconnected, paper-based world, it is easy to resolve these types of issues. Clearly, if you paid for it then it is yours. However, this is becoming more and more of an issue in our highly networked universe. The prevalence of appliances, mashups, and web services make it incredibly easy for people to connect the right people and things. It is (and will continue to be) easy to create things that hadn’t even been considered in the initial design of your infrastructure. So, if your best and brightest users are building things on top of your information architecture and using it to create new and useful things, are they the owners?

The addition of millenials makes this question a lot more interesting. Digital natives don’t have the same kind of ownership issues that are prevalent in today’s IT world. A progressive workplace is going to have to deal with these type of issues if they want to hire the best and brightest in order to be successful.