Corporations, technology and ROI they just dont get it !

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w_i_t_n_a

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This is a rant.......

I'm working with Eric Mack ([url]http://www.ica.com) [/url] a well known poster to this forum about implementing GtD using his customised Lotus Notes templates together with some one on one coaching.

Sounds simple?

Well our IT has been out sourced to a major telco here in the 'land down under' (Telstra for aussie forum readers :shock: ) and to make things simple from an IT support point of view they have locked down the end users ability to make any changes to templates which for the moment has stalled my adoption of some great productivity tools from ICA.

Part of me understands that with 20,000 users you do need to keep some control over the operating environment but another part of me thinks that we have a great tool in Lotus Notes that is being used for little more than e-mail.

The investment in Notes is considerable and by not allowing people to utilise its potential the business is denying itself some great opportunities to improve collboration, share knowledge, and to simplfy and automate processes. It is that ridiculous that new Notes users are not even provided any basic training and you just pick it up as you go.......apparently.

On the other side of the ledger we have commenced a 10 year IT programme with IBM and Oracle implementing their e-Business solution. [PS dont believe the blurb about Oracle making Linux unbreakable...we broke it :)]

So on one hand we are spending gazillions on new technology when we already have a productivity tool that we pay for that is way underutilised...go figure.

It makes no sense, well to me at least, maybe its just a trait of large coporations, I'd be interested in other peoples experiences.

For me I will continue to be a burr under the saddle of the IT people :twisted: , I plan to "Next Action" them into submission :)

.........end of rant
 
Let's hope...

Let's hope there are some reasonable people in your IT department so you can discuss with them the possibility of official implementation of GTD templates. Don't be angry, try to understand them and use their own procedures to implement GTD. Avoid confrontation. With a little luck you may become the whole company "knowledge workers' productivity guru".
TesTeq
 
I discuss exactly this issue in one of my posts

I actually work for one of these big outsourcing IT companies, and have architected and promoted many locked down environments. At the same time I have been passionate about personal productivity and the end user experience that my customers get. This creates some big issues, which I want to do some research on, but I can not talk much about that in public right now. However I did write a post a while back about how big companies and their users are disconnected over personal productivity and its importance. You can read it here:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0135175/2004/02/29.html#a16

and loads more on GTD, Productivity, Home working etc in my blog

http://radio.weblogs.com/0135175/
 
Proving the value of IT

I think this problem goes beyond software like lotus notes and outlook/exchange servers. The same difficulty often applies to any business decision. As individual workers we can definitely see that our productivity is increased when we use an automated tool like GTD. And by productivity we mean the "work" that we produce. Thus we say that our productivity has gone up.

The challenge is that in the world of business decisions, particularly larger corporations, it's difficult to see whether or not the increased productivity is worth the additional expense. Because we were able to do more in our jobs was there a direct link to an increase in profits? Did the corporations operating expenses go down? In accounting terms, "productivity" is defined as net profit divided by operating expense. So unless either term is directly impacted by the change it's difficult to show an increase in real productivity. Just because we can do more work in less time doesn't mean that our productivity has actually increased. At least not in the accounting sense.

Most business decisions are made at the 40,000-50,000 foot level. They have to be because the decision makers answer to the board of directors and the shareholders whose goal is to make money. So unless you can show a real impact on productivity (or turns--which is net profit divided by inventory), it will likely be difficult to demonstrate to a decision maker that any additional expense is justified.

At the Runway and 10,000 foot level its often very easy to forget this.
 
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