Saying “No” is easy. It stops all conversation and projects in their tracks.
Saying “Yes” is hard. It means you actually have to follow through on a commitment, be accountable for output and it opens you and your team up to possible failure.
But saying “Yes” more often is crucial for IT departments if they want to remain relevant in the eyes of business and actually help drive overall organization success.
So stated Gartner VP Distinguished Analyst Gene Phifer as part of the opening keynote of the Gartner Application Strategies & Solutions Summit. Technology teams need to say “Yes” to business partners more often than they do today.
They need to say “Yes” even when they’re not 100 percent sure on how to solve the particular business problem or deliver the best solution. This may sound like a recipe for failure, but Phifer saw it more as an opportunity for IT to learn and enhance its reputation throughout the organization. Say “Yes” and then figure out how to leverage new technologies in order to deliver and overcome the business challenge.
If IT starts saying “Yes” more often, we’ll see fewer instances of the business employing Shadow IT and looking outside of the enterprise to build proprietary systems. This, of course, leads to more headaches down the road as these non-approved vendors create products that are not or cannot be supported by internal IT.
By saying “Yes,” IT departments will also begin to realize that it’s more important to build systems that are flexible to change, rather than those that are built to last. In an agile world, software to last 25 years is no longer an option. Build it fast, iterate and continuously deliver something better built on the latest technology.
It all starts with “Yes.”
– Rob Mansell, CTO
