Mistakes are bound to happen, in IT as anywhere. Is it appropriate to fire someone for a mistake? Should we penalize someone for failure in an innovative venture? I would argue against it.
Such an atmosphere could be deadly for innovation within any organization, but more so in an IT organization. Organizations and IT leaders that do not tolerate mistakes -- or innovative failures -- are likely to stagnate. Fear of retribution will reduce productivity and creativity and may cause the most valuable and innovative employees to leave.
People who do nothing make no mistakes. People who do nothing have no failures. The more a person does, the more opportunities there are for that person to make a mistake. So in an organization we should never penalize for mistakes. What we should do is teach people to ensure that they take adequate precautions to recover from a mistake. A good example is making a backup of the system before making a change. Another example is discussing a high-risk action or plan with other qualified people before execution.
Risk management should be part of the standard operating procedure. If a person fails to follow this procedure, we may have an argument for consequences. It is important to ensure that people feel comfortable owning up to errors so that appropriate corrective action can be applied and people can learn how to avoid the mistake in the future.
Quality control reduces errors and mistakes. All members of a team should work toward an atmosphere where people help each other avoid errors and share lessons learned. We should never hide or gloss over bad events.
Innovative people will have some ideas and projects that will not succeed. The person who executes on 10 innovative ideas will most likely fail in a few. If you are going to fail, it is important to fail early and inexpensively. It is dangerous to continue implementing a bad idea for fear of organizational retribution.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Jamshed Irani, former CEO of Tata Steel, who turned around the company in the late 80s and early 90s by engaging the entire organization in a culture of innovation. One of the ideas that emerged during his tenure was Tata's practice of giving "Dare to Try" awards for innovative ideas that were operationally unsuccessful.
Failed ideas teach us what does not work and provide the opportunity to think critically so that the next idea has a better chance of success.
There is an inherent risk of failure in trying anything new. We should ensure that people within a team are free to speak their minds and constructively criticize any new idea -- even if the idea comes from the team leader. People closest to the leader are more likely to see the flaws in the idea -- they may even be more qualified to evaluate the risks of the idea appropriately.
After various perspectives have been provided and everyone has had an opportunity to punch holes in the idea, chances are very high that the final decision will be stronger, with more of the risks identified and appropriately addressed. People should not feel bad about saying something incorrect. Only people who say nothing are always correct. People who actively participate in discussions are bound to say something incorrect once in awhile. It is important to recognize and acknowledge that this is going to happen.
So let us set our people free to innovate, create, and debate; and let our organizations enjoy the wonderful rewards of such an atmosphere.
"Should the person who works longer hours be paid better?"
@Mitch: There are other ways of judging people's efforts apart from the hours they worked. These could be the work they actually did. You can get that easily from project reports as well as from other people. Personally, I'm not in favor of judging someone's performance through the number of hours they put in.
"It is best evaluated at the impact that your work has on the firm and on the people involved"
@sotheco: That's an apt way to judge someone's performance in your company. Sometimes the work you do may not itself be useful but you may be having a lot of positive impact on other people from your presence in the company. That may be hard to identify but it is important.
It's easy to imagine a worker who works a 20-hour workweek, but whose work is so brilliant he's made himself indispensable to the organization. Management can try to entice him or bully him to work longer hours, but he has the power to refuse. Because of his brilliance.
However, for the vast majority of people, who are mere mortals, effectiveness has a direct correlation to effort.
Although there are studies showing that overtime isn't particularly effective either.
Good point. 'Achievement' isn't shown by the number of hours you've clocked in at the office, nor does it show by the number of reports you've turned it. It is best evaluated at the impact that your work has on the firm and on the people involved. Once you identify the high achievers in the firm, make sure you reach out to them and keep them happy so that they'll stay and continue to help the firm grow.
"That doesn't seem right to me -- or practical. We need to reward the high performers more. Otherwise, they'll go elsewhere"
@Mitch: That's exactly what my point was. Performance should be defined in terms of what you achieve. It should be defined as the magnitude of effort you put in. A high performer than becomes someone who's putting in the desired effort that was expected of him rather than what he achieved.
"It is the same thing with the advancement of civilengineering.Today we are in a position to buold more stable and high quality structures due to lessons learnt from failures of the past. And some of these failures have been really catastrophic"
@Paul: That's a good analogy. I think failures are better managed in science in engineering than they are in the business sector. This is something that corporate organizations can learn from the engineering field.
I think failure is not only a key to success in the world of IT but also have a universal impact in every facet of life as Success in life largely depends on how you handle your failures.
Take an example of atomic science in this regard .John dalton puts up the theory that matter was made from small indivisible particles called atoms which dates back to some five centuries B.C to democritos and a century B.C to leukiphos.
if their rejected theories weren't considered at that time ,Dalton could never had been able to put forward his successful theory.
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In all my years interacting with CFOs, I have not met one who actually understood IT -- not that I expected them to.
Why, then, do I continue to see ads seeking a strategic CIO who will report to the VP of Administration and Finance or the CFO? Sometimes ads are slightly better: CIOs report to the Chief Operating Officer. Those conducting the recruitment will sagely say: “The CIO will have complete empowerment and access to all cabinet members and the president.” However, these organizations appear to lack an understanding of the role of the CIO and the CFO.
After observing and writing about CEOs who do not leverage their CIOs to propel their organizations forward, it was very refreshing to learn about the great CEO/CIO partnership at Kaiser Permanente at this year’s World Health Congress held in Maryland.
Despite an initial round of federal funding to develop state health information exchanges (HIEs) as part of Obamacare, these clearinghouses were challenged to develop a financially sustainable model. Because it addressed sustainability early, the Delaware Health Information Network is viewed by many as a template for HIE success.
It began as a relaxing visit with my college buddy and his family. It became a glimpse into the technology-enabled future of worldwide collaboration in engineering.
True story: Despite the HITECH Act of 2009, the CEO of a major urban hospital continued his institution's policy of not hiring a CIO or CISO. Like many others, he took a wait-and-see attitude, even though HITECH strengthened the enforcement of healthcare security and privacy laws, and provided financial incentives for healthcare organizations to adopt electronic health records and information security.
The very low-tech "scrum" project technique introduces "crowd talking" to projects and also sets the entire crowd to problem solving. So far, these new social-media-style meetings appear to have supercharged project execution.
Cisco's rumored sale of Linksys suggests we may have problem with innovation and profit at the edge of our Internet, and that could be critical to the evolution of many Internet-delivered services.
Big-data has become a big point of emphasis for many businesses. While the technology is available to deploy these applications, the needed personnel often is not. As a result, analytic engineers' salaries have blown past the six-figure mark, and hiring these experts has become a challenge for IT managers.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
Showing results is the best way to win over social business doubters, according to Mary Maida, Medtronic lead information solutions manager. Internet Evolution's Mitch Wagner interviewed Maida at the E2 Innovate conference.
Software-defined networks, which deliver virtualization functions to enterprise networks, have the potential to dramatically change network design and significantly reduce costs and maintenance.
Companies need to take advantage of new technologies to simplify interfaces, improve capabilities, and enhance back-office processes. But they can't upgrade their Websites too often.
Wells Fargo uses social software to replace email chains and help its sales team collaborate more effectively to land deals, according to Kelli Carlson-Jagersma, VP Collaboration Strategy for Wells Fargo. Mitch Wagner spoke with Carlson-Jagersma at the E2Innovate conference
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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