usa visa: InfoWorld: When to tell the truth

======================================================================== THE ADVICE LINE: BOB LEWIS http://www.infoworld.com/ ======================================================================== Wednesday, March 23, 2005

IN THIS ISSUE

* When to tell the truth * Discussing the future of IT, if it has one

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WHEN TO TELL THE TRUTH

Dear Bob ...

To me, integrity matters - without it, I'd have nothing. Unfortunately, I'm starting to think that with it I have even less. I generally tell our managers the truth, instead of what they want to hear and I'm certain it's hurt my career.

Please tell me you'd do the same thing - tell the truth regardless of the consequences. Or in your eyes, is integrity not as important as it is to me?

- Straight talker

Dear Talker ...

Well ... no, not exactly. Or maybe the better answer is, yes, but not exactly. One of the more valuable lessons I've learned in life is the difference between being right and being persuasive.

One of the problems I've found with being right is that I'm not always. The second is that when I am, it mostly puts people off, because being right is about me. So I decided quite a few years ago to learn to be persuasive instead.

Being persuasive is about the person on the other side of the conversation. What that means, in part, is figuring out how to bring that individual around from their current point of view to one you think would be more useful or beneficial. That never starts with, "Here's why you're wrong." It rarely starts with, "I don't agree - here's why." Although the latter is far more effective than the former, because disagreeing doesn't lay claim to being the one who's right.

Even when specific facts exist that specifically prove my point, "The facts suggest otherwise," works better than, "You're wrong."

Simple phrases like, "There's another way of looking at the subject you might find useful," can help ease the way in, too.

And sometimes, if I'm convinced there's no way to persuade someone, I won't try.

In some cases, winning the point isn't worth the effort. In others, finding someone else to persuade is a better idea: The goal is usually to "persuade" the organization, so persuading individuals is a means to an end, not the end itself.

As you point out, most of what needs to get done involves some level of pain. That means just telling the truth as either of us see it will rarely be sufficient, and will often be counterproductive. There are, after all, a lot of good reasons to avoid going to the dentist.

- ...

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=C65E03:353CA35

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DISCUSSING THE FUTURE OF IT, IF IT HAS ONE

Dear Bob ...

I think your critique of the Gartner approach ( http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=C65E04:353CA35 ) was spot-on. Your advice to not get distracted and do a good job in the here and now was of your usual insightful quality. Nonetheless, I believe that the dream of putting most of the IT staff out of work is going to come to pass in the working lifetimes of our younger coworkers.

The automotive analogy is that ride-along mechanics got run over by engineering and manufacturing progress some time ago. You can still hire a mechanic but the only businesses with mechanics on staff have fleets, or use the mechanics to provide a service. While reasons for the changes in IT have to do with systematizing quality practice in a different (softer but harder?) realm of manufacturing, the need, the means and the trends are all there. Come to think of it, software doesn't wear out, at least in the same way that car parts do, so maybe the IT future is bleaker than I first thought.

All the gals and guys in the tools game may not know how to get there, but they know where they're going. It's toward selling stuff to business people who want working applications without having to deal with a bunch of on-staff technocrats. Building those tools won't be easy (although it may be fun), but the progress is observable and non-trivial. Someday the languages we know and love (or hate) will be historical artifacts. Process engineers (whether formally anointed as such or not) will be guided by wizard-like things into cajoling working applications out of software that builds software. Not only that, but those applications will deploy, and work out of the gate, better than the average thing that comes out of today's projects. Changing the generated applications will take a fraction of the time it now takes to change existing software.

Put another way, it's probably impossible to produce a recipe for running a project of any size - people are too diverse and their behavior is too complex. However, I predict it's possible to produce a recipe for one (or a small handful of people) to describe and generate quite complex software in times measured in hours or small numbers of days, thus taming the risk and the cost of large software projects for most businesses.

Really smart ...

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=C65E02:353CA35

Bob Lewis is president of IT Catalysts, Inc., http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=C65E09:353CA35 , an independent consultancy specializing in IT effectiveness and strategic alignment. Contact him at rdlewis@issurvivor.com .

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You can. That's exactly what I've engineered my IT leadership seminar to accomplish. If you're interested, visit http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=C65E05:353CA35

- Bob Lewis

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