Technology as a catalyst for cultural change

IT departments can do a lot to improve performance by optimising the infrastructure and the way they work internally, but the level of success ultimately depends on the prevailing business culture. Recognising this is important to achieving the best results. It is also key to understanding how the smart and creative use of …

[Jon Smit]

And there was me

Thinking this was going to be about False News.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this an advertorial?

Second paragraph in is a link to a commercial site promising answers to the question the author posed. Seems straight out of the consultant playbook.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

Re: Is this an advertorial?

Sort of. Good material for a round of buzzword bingo, though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is this an advertorial?

Freeform Dynamics has been our research partner for 10 years and this research involves Reg readers. So Dale's editorial link to his consultancy makes this an advertorial? FFS, guys.

[John Smith 19]

Corporate culture is a real issue if you want to try to change something.

Where IT is a service you get low interest in any notion the IT dept could know more about the business than the owner.

Where software is part of the whole business IE SaaS then people are much more receptive.

The joker is government systems where it's all backwards. Ministers want corporate changes and think IT can do that when they should start with the change. IOW software is the effect, not the cause.

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

Amazing

That many charts and graphs and these "con-sultants" manage to communicate nothing that is not already known ...

[Dale Vile, Freeform Dynamics]

Aww - come on guys - where's your Christmas spirit :-)

Dale here - the author of the piece. So a bit too much of a positive spin on this one then?

Seriously, the results are based on a survey of Reg readers (sorry that wasn't clear). We could have looked at the negative end of all the bars on the charts (and produced yet another 'sky falling in' survey shocker), but we thought for a change we would focus on the guys who seem to be doing pretty well. Unfashionable, perhaps, but we (perhaps sadly) found some of the findings quite interesting.

Anyway, look out for a follow-on piece soon from the same survey discussing the other side of the coin - feedback in answer to the question "What would you say are the biggest disjoints between IT and the business when it comes to acknowledging and responding effectively to external trends, pressures and imperatives?”. That yielded some interesting insights of a different kind.

Watch this space.