Wander - Transforming IT Culture: How to Use Social Intelligence, Human Factors and Collaboration to Create an IT Department That Outperforms

CONTENTS

WILEY CIO SERIES

Founded in 1807, John Wiley & Sons is the oldest independent publishing company in the United States. With offices in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, Wiley is globally committed to developing and marketing print and electronic products and services for our customers professional and personal knowledge and understanding.

The Wiley CIO series provides information, tools, and insights to IT executives and managers. The products in this series cover a wide range of topics that supply strategic and implementation guidance on the latest technology trends, leadership, and emerging best practices.

Titles in the Wiley CIO series include:

Cover image: draco77/iStockphoto

Cover design: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright 2013 by Frank Wander. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com . For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Wander, Frank, 1957

Transforming it culture : how to use social intelligence, human factors, and collaboration to create an IT department that outperforms / Frank Wander.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-43653-0 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-57308-2 (ebk);

ISBN 978-1-118-57310-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-57549-9 (ebk)

1. Information technologyManagement. 2. Electronic data processing departmentsManagement. I. Title.

HD30.2.W3477 2013

004.068dc23

2012045107

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

William James

Dedicated to the Corporate Weaver: To those great and selfless leaders who unfashionably rely on sensitivity and outflowing concern to bond with their people; who peer deeply inside them with perceptive social intelligence (sogence); who understand that the social environment is their loom and their professionals are threads of experience; who weave these threads, one to another, forming a closely connected tapestry of mind and emotion, highly productive and deeply collaborative. Done skillfully, the result is pure harmonyinformation and productivity flow across the fibers. This is human social fabric, the material of modern productivitythe postindustrial equivalent of an assembly line. In this factory, what matters most are not the cost and quantity of thread but the qualityand whether each thread can be tightly woven into the section of the tapestry where it is needed.

This book uses the information technology (IT) profession as a lens through which we can see the importance of understanding the human factors of productivity and how to use them to unlock IT organizational effectiveness; this is how you make IT failure a rare exception, greatly increasing the success of projects, individuals, and teams; this is how you create an IT department that outperforms and companies that outcompete. Our workers are more than mere human resources, a dehumanizing description of talent that just reinforces the notion that professionals are interchangeable parts. They arentand they never were! The next productivity revolution will be launched by applying human understanding to unlock the full potential of our people. At long last, we will move beyond our industrial-era management practices and rely on trust, caring, and unselfishness to liberate the productivity of our knowledge workers.