ogy and nobody really knows how to use it.
There also has to be money in it for people. Give me something I can actually take my wife out to dinner with. It un-leashes a work dynamic where each member of a work team stands to make a few thousand dollars at the end of a quarter. Do you think they’re going to tolerate a slacker? No.
At Whole Foods, they coach people how to approach customers and what language they should use. These are well-informed workers.
How can it managers free up staff from putting out fires to making systems and processes more agile? Basic data center operations, help desk support, etc., that’s
Agility is the ability
to size up a situation
quickly and figure
out where the lever-
age points are.
utility computing and that needs to be outsourced. That’s how you free up your people; you outsource that work. Give it to people whose business is to do that and focus your attention on getting to know the business.
in your book, you also bring up this notion of “implicit leadership.” What is this, and why is it important? There’s “explicit leadership” where an authority figure
stands up and says, “Salute me, stand in line, and do as I say or else.” You need that sometimes, but use it sparingly. It produces burnout and apathy.
Implicit is the other kind of leadership, the people who inspire. The charismatic leaders you follow because you admire them. They do things, and you say, “Gee, I want to do that.” Implicit leadership is leadership for the long haul; it’s what teaches people to become agile.
What can it leaders do best to support the agile enterprise? They can start by figuring out the best way to leverage existing systems to get to where the organization wants to go. No more of this rip it all out,
big bangs, massive frontal assaults — where we pour a gazillion dollars into things. Leverage techniques like service-oriented architectures, grid computing and server virtualization.
Start to maximize what you already have to maximize an IT infrastructure that can be quickly reconfigured from one thing to another. Quickly respond to new business initiatives without going to the CFO and asking for millions of dollars.
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