I never want my IT organization to have a reputation as the “Department of No.” That doesn’t mean I direct my technical teams to say yes to every request that comes from the business.
How do we keep from developing a reputation as the No Police? It starts with listening and educating. When we’re approached with new requests from the business, we go in with open ears. By listening closely and trying to identify what we’re really being asked, we stand a better chance of helping.
The challenge IT faces is often one of definitions. Chances are most people in your business have varying definitions for key elements related to your business, for example, the customer. Ask someone in sales and someone in marketing who your customer is, and you’re bound to get slightly different answers. And that’s OK. People can work with levels of abstraction and ambiguity. Unfortunately, computers can’t. You must be very specific and descriptive with computers. If IT receives a request from the business to pull all of your organization’s customer data, that could mean a myriad of data that, frankly, isn’t feasible given the time and financial constraints you may be facing.
So what do you do? Do you say “no” to the request? Definitely not. There are a few things you should do.
- First, if the request simply isn’t feasible, explain why. The person asking may not realize that the information they’ve requested would require a huge capital investment or substantial commitments to try out a service. The key is not ending the conversation with, “You can’t afford this.”
- Try breaking down any request to get to the root of the problem. Find out what your colleagues are trying to achieve. It’s likely they don’t need as much data as they’ve requested.
- Once you’ve got a better idea of the root of the request, find a way to start small. A good IT person always starts with a limited build and makes sure that it is architected in a way that you won’t have to re-engineer it and start again later. Most companies start with that intention, but don’t design it that way and are stuck with it for years.
If you start small, help your business colleagues define what they want, and build something that they can see benefits in, then you can move forward from there. It’s not easy saying yes. But if you’re willing to listen and take the time to solve the problem, you can avoid earning the No Police badge.
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Sven Gerjets, CTO at Pearson and former senior vice president of information technology at DIRECTV, believes that in IT, it's too easy to hear no as "never." Read his approach to, "Moving IT beyond the department of no."
Cliff Tamplin is a consultant and former vice president of Technology Support & Risk Management at Hyatt Hotels Corporation. Tamplin has held a variety of roles with major global corporations including Barclays, M&M Mars, Diageo, Northwest Airlines and Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. These roles have spanned application design and development; infrastructure architecture and operations; and information security.
