Humour

Controlled chaos

T A Balasubramanian on why a CIO should turn from a dreaded throttler to a pleasing tickler.

Back for a long interactive session with the inexhaustible Dr Don Jong, Bobo Jitter, the perennially troubled CIO of Bazooka Company gets set to divine ever more unconventional truths. Fondly referred to as ‘The Oddfather,’ Dr Jong has the audacious ability to come up with strikingly different solutions for handling the stickiest situations that are thrown up in the IT world.

“You look ready to curl up and disappear in a puff of vapor. Ah, so what could be the cause of such gloom, young man?” says Dr Jong, lighting his pipe with a flourish.

“Well, Doc, it is a memo from our CEO, Mr Bazooka himself, in response to the missive from the young ‘rogue’ in our marketing department, Neo Tinker, that I talked about last week.”

“Ah, so we have the young rebel’s complaint about your restraining policy on free access to the Internet drawing a quick reprimand? Did your chief pull up Neo for his impetuous outburst?”

“Quite the opposite. It is a severe reprimand addressed to me, Doc. Here he goes: ‘Dear Bobo: From what I hear, it appears that you, our enlightened CIO, have decided to be the self-appointed head of the Throttle Users Society (TUS) in our company. Is there a pernicious attitude prevalent in our IT department which has the motto: ‘We will not let you have freedom, and we will not let you act freely as long as you work here?’ If so, it is the purest version of centralized IT control. Most of the correspondence I have received on the subject from Bazooka’s honest employees has been critical of your Security First manifesto which waxes eloquent about the dire threats to Bazooka from nameless hackers, virus designers and other heinous characters lurking in cyberspace. I do think you may have been hasty in creating such a tight firewall around Bazooka and a total PC lockdown on users. This leads me to the unavoidable conclusion that TUS members must necessarily resort to old-fashioned pencil and paper if they are to use any kind of information technology not sanctioned by your IT satraps.’ “

“Throttle Users Society, eh? I see. So that explains your glumness today.”

“There is more, Doc. Mr Bazooka attached copies of some of the responses to our Security First training classes which we foolishly thought would be enjoyed and appreciated. Here is one user’s comment—‘For the fifth time in my career here, everyone at the office has been summoned to endure hour upon hour of classes on yet another new restraining mantra that is supposed to boost productivity and improve life on our planet. Computer training has become the living hell of Bazooka, a loathsome ritual that highlights the mounting battle between the computer cognoscenti here and us mere mortals.’ There are more such witty remarks, but I will desist from reading those to you. Now here is another ingrate—‘One of my most intelligent colleagues was reduced during this latest round of training to incoherent babbling on the screen, culminating in a pathetic plea to be allowed outside for recess. With each advance in technology, I believe I have lost some significant part of my personality, some measurable portion of my soul.’”

“Oh, my. Oh my. The masses do overflow with gratitude in the rank and file at Bazooka, eh?”

“And all we did was training … is this an unmentionable horror that I seem to have unleashed in public, Doc? I mean, I had my Security First manifesto circulated with the best interests of the Bazooka user in mind, and this is what I get in return?”

“Welcome to the customer-driven enterprise, my boy. The best laid IT plans often go unappreciated by users everywhere, let me tell you, if it is any consolation. It has always been a ding-dong battle between the IT guys and users and the issue has always been about control and freedom. If you ask me, it all began in the early 1980s, when personal computers invaded business much to the consternation of the centralized IT guys. In the early 1990s, central IT gained control of the PC again, but sometime around 1993, happy users discovered the Internet and for a while it seemed that everyone in the company was having a ball with HTML except central IT. It took a while for the wary IT guys to catch up, but finally, in the late 1990s, IT slowly gained a measure of control over e-commerce. And ever since then, the Neo Tinkers have been up against the IT establishment.”

“That’s a good summing up of the situation, Doc. But what do I do now? I have to face my upset CEO with something more than a free-for-all policy of lawlessness. How can I condone that unless I bend over to say that complete chaos is desirable for an IT network? Working from a well-designed and managed central IT system provides too many advantages to Bazooka, and that is what my CEO should be rooting for. So how am I to get IT back in control in this den of derangement?”

“Well, Bobo, if Mr Bazooka is the kind of CEO who listens to the din and clamour of the user—the vox populi, so to speak—rather than take the side of his CIO in this face off, I think he would need to learn more about his responsibilities as a CEO. If he thinks he can achieve better results by bullying the people who work for him with sarcasm—such as TUS—then he is in need of a lesson in the strange ways that IT makes results happen.”

“And how, exactly will the lesson go, Doc?”

“Hmm. Perhaps by exposing users—your internal customers, by the way—and by default, the Big Boss himself, to the wonderland of controlled chaos.”

“And what exactly is controlled chaos?”

“I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but you could think of controlled chaos as your friend in need. Look for patterns in what Neo Tinker and the other ‘customers’ are badgering you for. If many of the marketing mavens want to run search engines roaming the Internet on their machines, maybe it is time for you to look at an isolated network for the marketing department that has no connection to Bazooka’s intranet. If most of the sales teams have installed contact-management software on their laptops, the company is ready and perhaps overdue for a customer-centered sales automation system. If many of the secretarial users have installed software for faxing direct from PCs, install a fax server and make it even more convenient and useful. If you discover many shadow systems using data retyped painfully from standard reports into spreadsheets, consider a business intelligence tool for them.  In short, give in to the chaos with a little control. Turn TUS into a ‘Tickle User Society’ and give them a free run in Bazooka.”

“What if I lose control, Doc?”

“Voila, but you already have no control, Bobo. From what your CEO is saying, you do not have these clamouring users on your side, and it is likely that they are all running rogue and shadow programs all over the place anyway. At least this way, you get to be seen as a happy giver of goodies—a pleaser of crowds—a tickler—and no more a dreaded throttler with a noose in hand.”