I have spent about half of my professional life in information technology management and the other half in general management, both in large bureaucracies and in small entrepreneurial ventures. Over these years I have seen many cases where one part of an organization has developed a cost-effective method for dealing with an operational problem while another department is using a dysfunctional approach to the same business issue. Here are a couple of examples.
The marketing department of a multi-billion dollar multinational manufacturing company has a sophisticated customer management system that consolidates worldwide sales and profitability data for each customer; it uses the outputs of this system to drive sales efforts and product modifications. Meanwhile, the purchasing department of that same company has no effective way consolidate raw material and parts purchases by the manufacturing locations, missing opportunities for bulk discounts and other benefits that normally accrue to large purchasers. Why doesn’t the marketing department talk to the purchasing department? Why doesn’t the purchasing department listen?
A software service provider modified its privacy policies and was surprised when it customers complained. This same company has a highly effective system for responding to customer requests for system changes, which has contributed greatly to the company’s success. Why didn’t it use the same methods for evaluating the privacy issue that it uses for evaluating product modification ideas?
The naïve answers to these rhetorical questions are “Things are not quite the same in purchasing as in marketing.” And “Privacy is in the hands of the lawyers and they always do things in their own way.” Probably true, but irrelevant to the real issue – how to make our organizations work better.
In this blog, I’ll develop these ideas in some detail. We will talk about organization structures (silos) and what organizations do with those structures (silage), This will lead us into many unexpected places, including health care, corporate planning and multinational organizations.
I invite your comments whether you agree with me or not. Perhaps we can all learn something from the interactions.
Gerry Hoffman