The four letter conundrum

IT folks have a fetish for equating quality to four letter words.

And size as well as height does matter when it comes to acronyms in the IT world. The higher the level and the more enigmatic sounding the word (I am ISO…….ISO27001!), the higher it moves in our hierarchy of respect. We love these acronyms- CMMI, ITIL, VALIT, COBIT, et al. We include them on our CVs. We proudly use them on our signatures. It’s a secret society created by IT, of IT, for IT.

No one outside, especially our customers in the business understand what the bleep are we talking about!

Before you form an opinion that I do not love these acronyms, hold your horses just yet. I have been in the IT world for 21 plus years now, so YES I too have a fetish for these profound four letters.

Quite often I get off from the wrong side of my right bed, full of pride and honor and announce to my wife how I have attained nirvana in the world of IT four letters. How I have climbed the Himalayan peaks of their levels and achieved lofty heights. How, given my conquest of these insurmountable heights, everyone in the family should bow in front of me and treat me like the God of Geekland, I am .

The response is usually in other four letters which incidentally are also quite famous in the IT world, however best kept verbal in context.

So the point is, whether I can impress my erudite family or not, I too have a passion for these acronyms. They represent an important aspect of quality. Process and frameworks are essential to guide a large workforce towards consistency in the quality of their outcomes.

However there is more to a passion for quality than just frameworks. The secret potion I believe lies in the intent of the workforce, in the shared sensibilities of the people. Therein lies the leadership challenge. How to engage the hearts, minds and the passion of a large workforce to significantly up the ante on quality? How to achieve a state wherein high quality is a way of life and not just a certificate embellishing corporate mahogany walls?

A number of strategies are deployed to try and get close to this state. However my favorite mantra to tackle this challenge, is encapsulated in this beautiful phrase ‘Show me the Taj’

The engineers on project teams and at the back office need to be up, close and personal to the goals their efforts are enabling for the business. They need to feel the pulse of the business and appreciate what underpins success. Sometimes an overdose of vision, mission, core values, value proposition, strategies, goals, objectives and other such terms can confuse the grass roots on exactly where the company is going and what it expects from them. A simple statement of ‘purpose’ which covers the essence can get the message across and its simplicity makes it sticky.

Nothing however beats conversations directly with the business managers to get close to the big picture and the final outcomes expected from IT projects. However the way IT goes about its business today, it ends up creating a two class society – the front office account managers and analysts who get to see and hear the business and the back office engineers who are allocated technical tasks, largely oblivious to or disconnected with the business outcomes.  This way of working seemingly optimizes the use of resources however misses the opportunity to engage the engineers at a deeper level.

There is a big difference in the subconscious engagement if an engineer believes he/she is building a search routine as opposed to knowing that he/she is organizing the world’s information. A big difference in their internal commitment to quality if they believe they are laying a brick as opposed to building the Taj.

Leaders need to build a framework to effectively show the Taj to all team members and in doing so ignite their creative spark and their passion for quality.