Response: Hack Work

Hack Work, Ian Marchant blog post dt 08/03/2010

Another thing from the Harvard Business Review. The challenge is how do we, as a large company, respond when our IT resources at home or even on our mobile phones are more powerful and flexible than the large corporate systems can be. It seems from the article that our problem is a common one - to quote, "the tools we use in life have leapfrogged over the ones we use at work. Business's lingering love of bureaucracy, process and legacy technology has fallen completely out of sync with what people need to do their best".

The articles solution is to 'hack work' - i.e. rule bending for the good of all. We all do this anyway so why not make it a virtue - "the illusion of corporate control is being shattered in the name of increased personal productivity". We can all think of examples where we have to do things 'outside the system' just to get things done. I know I do and I'm sure there are lots of good examples throughout SSE.

Feedback in response to Ian's Blog

Post Title - Hack Work
Date Posted - 08/03/2010
Name: Joseph George
Department: IT Architecture
Location: Havant
Comments:

Ian,

Thanks for highlighting the challenges we face today. I haven't seen this HBR article you quote, but would very much like to read in entirety.

Some years ago corporate systems had much more oomph than anyone could afford personally. And this discussion wouldn't have happened. The scenario has dramatically changed now.

Our current systems force us to work within constraints set for enforcing mediocre resources to output mediocre quality. It is a sorry state when we find ourselves in a situation where the corporate systems restrict us, rather than enable us to increase personal productivity. And you are quite right that SSE is not in this unique situation, and also that Corporate IT is a product of the business' lingering love of bureaucracy and process. Too much of which makes everything legacy very quickly in this age of incredible business changes happening within extremely short time-scales. I think we should loosen the chains a bit, rather than tightening the noose further. I also refer to your previous blog post. Google and its various products (including mail, calendar, collaboration, etc.), Zoho apps (goes one step further in enabling business productivity), Salesforce and many other cloud products are available everywhere except inside our corporate systems. These products are much cheaper and far more efficient than the legacy technology employed by the business.

You mention "IT resources", where I suspect you refer to physical hardware rather than to value-added services. And I concur that hardware is largely redundant, as any hardware lock-ins are a business risk, which makes physical hardware a white elephant in terms of Capex, Opex, and Security.

Thanks once again for your highly illuminating blog posts, which allow people to widen their thinking horizons. There seems to be some legitimacy to "thinking outside the box", when aided (prompted, supported) by the Chief Exec.

Kind regards,
Joseph

From: Ian Marchant
To: Joseph George
Date: 12/03/2010 16:30
Subject: Re: Hack Work
Sent by: Eilidh Marshall

Joseph,

Thanks for the feedback. Getting the balance right between robustness and routine and the need for agility is a key issue.

Regards,
Ian